DAILY BEAST
BÉLOKO, Central African Republic—They were all wearing military fatigues and armed with Kalashnikovs when they showed up suddenly at about 5 o’clock one Friday evening at the start of December. The four men were soldiers from the Central African Armed Forces (FACA) who drove right up to where I was interviewing about a dozen people hoping to get cross the border.
Among those I was interviewing were a couple of artisanal miners who had gathered in front of a security checkpoint in the Central African Republic (CAR) border town of Béloko. It is the country’s first customs checkpoint on the trade corridor linking the capital, Bangui, to the Cameroonian port city of Douala. A number of them had lost their homes following the fighting between rebels and Russian paramilitaries supported by FACA forces, and were hoping to find refuge in Cameroon.
Suddenly, four gun-wielding soldiers appeared from nowhere, rushed me, and started to drag me away. I began to scream for help but the civilians around, including those I was interviewing, were too scared to intervene. Two armed Russian paramilitaries, who came to the scene when they heard me screaming, encouraged the soldiers to assault me, telling the FACA officials to beat me up until I confessed to being a criminal. When one elderly man courageously asked the soldiers why they were dragging me away on a stony road, one of them replied: “He’s a terrorist.”
I didn’t resist their arrest, yet the soldiers manhandled me in such a brutal way that anyone watching would think I did not want to be apprehended. By the time we got to a nearby military outpost close to a customs checkpoint, there were bruises on my hands and legs.
FACA soldiers and Russian paramilitaries are very visible and active in Béloko. The town is the CAR’s main source of customs. About 80 percent of the country’s imports, including supplies from Russia, pass through here. A year ago, militants from the Coalition of Patriots for Change (CPC)—a fusion of major rebel groups in CAR— destroyed dozens of vehicles in Béloko, burned fuel stocks and razed the customs office. Two mercenaries from the Russian Wagner Group deployed to CAR and at least two other civilians were killed in the incident.
In September, three months before I arrived in Béloko, FACA soldiers and Russian paramilitaries repelled an armed attack against the town by CPC rebels. A civilian was shot and injured, and many houses were damaged during the incident. There were allegations that Russian paramilitaries, who continue to exert influence over the CAR’s security agencies, tortured a number of locals as they searched for the militants. It was also claimed that they were in the business of collecting bribes from drivers that transported goods from Cameroon. I was investigating the allegations when the soldiers seized me.
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