Plea from My Team

This is a translation of a plea from one of our team members in Abidjan. As background, the individual who wrote this email is a confident, classy, savvy guy. Reading this email makes me BEYOND nervous about the situation. The tone is absolute terror. Mind you, this is a guy who works with some serious baddies to help bring peace and he is nervous. He has a wife and a two-year-old baby girl and they are afraid to leave their homes. Please write to your representatives to help the people in Ivory Coast.

"The news isn't good here. Things are rapidly declining toward the worst and the members of the RHDP [coalition party of the elected President and others that are against Ggagbo's party] do not seem to have any solutions. They seem like they are submitting to the UN and ECOWAS who have been lost since the summits and meetings that Laurent Gbagbo killed. Our neighborhood has become very dangerous and I do not know how everything will progress. I think, then, that I would like to evacuate my family to any place possible. Imam Kone came to inform me that his nephew, another imam, saw all of his family (6 people) decimated by Gbagbo's drug-crazed followers in Williamsville. We no longer know to which saint to pray. Last night my neighborhood was bombarded by heavy fire from 3:00 a.m. until 4:30 a.m. In the morning, we saw three bodies with a multitude of injuries. I am so paralyzed with fear that I barely use my computer.

It is imperative that the international community intervenes rapidly in order to defend civilians. The UN continues to be powerless in their assistance to end the killing of the Ivorian people. Today, there are more than 500 dead and the population has begun to plead in earnest to ONUCI and president elect Alassane Ouattara who, according to the population, has let Gbagbo kill the people who voted for him. We are truly close to chaos in Abidjan. How long must we wait for ONUCI to intervene? What about the international community? Does everyone from the north or from the center of the country need to be exterminated before the international community intervenes, like in Rwanda? Why don't the United States and France decide to stop this genocide which is the process of unraveling in front of their eyes?

This is an SOS to the international community for the protection of the innocent civilians who did nothing but vote. Why the double standard? Why Libya and not Côte d'Ivoire? May God watch over the poor innocents that we are."