Is the govnernment itself responsible the bloodshed?
PHIL PONCE: How about reports–some of the government’s critics even go so far as to say that the government itself has had a hand in some of these abuses. Is there any credibility to that? MARY-JANE DEEB: The issue is built up in conjunction with the arming of private militias. There have been civilians that have been armed, given arms to protect villagers. And those militias have, in turn, committed some of the massacres, themselves, because they’re civilians, they’re not trained, there’s no supervision, they’re not accountable to anyone, and they have taken revenge on villages who had some role in destroying their own villages or in robbing them, or whatever. So people have taken the law into their own hand, and that’s very dangerous. But they’re linked to the government because the government has given them arms. An army of 18-, 19-year-old conscripts. PHIL PONCE: The government has strongly denied any involvement and today the ambassador from–the envoy from Britain said that as f
