Rédaction Africa Links 24 with Tchadinfos
Published on 2024-03-14 11:09:47
Chad has just started compensating the victims and parents of victims of the former head of state Hissène Habré, who was overthrown in 1990. The Chadian government has released ten billion CFA francs for this purpose.
On Tuesday, March 5, a statement from the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ, a human rights organization) revealed that the first payments of compensation from the Chadian government to victims of Hissène Habré’s former regime began on February 23. About three years after the Chadian statesman’s death from Covid-19, and eight years after his life imprisonment sentence, 10 billion CFA francs are to be paid to the “prison survivors” and the “families of those killed under Habré”, according to the organization, with approximately 10,800 people affected. Djidda Oumar, president of the Association of Human Rights in Chad, specified that each victim would receive “925,000 CFA francs […] equally”, either “directly or indirectly”.
This announcement follows a meeting organized on February 22 between victim associations and the Chadian presidency, during which the latter reiterated its commitment to provide compensation for Hissène Habré’s victims, in a spirit of peace and national reconciliation. The stakeholders agreed on Ndjamena’s payment of a grant of 10 billion CFA francs, a decision praised by Adoumbaye Dam Pierre – president of the Association of Victims of Crimes of Hissène Habré’s Regime (AVCRHH) – while still waiting for the effective payment of the full compensation. “Imagine that today, it still brings some relief, even if it is not total, because there is still a lot of money left, but this bit could help [the victims] for their health, perhaps pay for their children’s education.”
These compensations are an important step in the national reconciliation process, initiated in 2015 by the Chadian justice system when it demanded the payment of 75 billion CFA francs in damages by the government and by 24 former agents of Habré’s regime’s secret police, for crimes against humanity, rape, executions, slavery, and kidnappings of nearly 40,000 victims, as estimated at the time by a Chadian inquiry commission. “The victims must first be appeased, in order to gradually move towards reconciliation,” the president of AVCRHH emphasized in an interview with Sébastien Nemeth, an Africa journalist at RFI.
Read the original article(French) on Tchad Infos
