00:00Murder, torture and rape.
00:04These are the accusations levelled against Côte d'Ivoire's student and school federation, FESSI.
00:09When we were at the university, there was a classmate, a girl, who was attacked by FESSI.
00:17They beat her up because she used a walkway reserved for FESSI leadership.
00:24Last week, President Watare's government shut down all student unions to rein in their
00:30powerful FESSI.
00:31But for years, it's been an open secret that the group murdered opponents, ran brothels
00:37and tortured students.
00:39So why did this go on for so long?
00:42Welcome to the Flipside.
00:45Security forces in Ivory Coast recently carried out a series of raids on university campuses
00:51where they found several machetes and grenades.
00:54For this story, I interviewed a former student of the Felix Hofe Buanya University.
01:00Although he is no longer a student, he still fears for his life and insists on hiding his
01:06identity.
01:07He continues his account of how one of his colleagues was attacked by FESSI members.
01:14When we got the information that she had been attacked, we tried to protest.
01:18We made a formal complaint and informed women's rights associations.
01:22At first, we felt that the case was progressing, but everything was stopped.
01:27We don't know what happened.
01:28We were informed not to talk about it anymore.
01:33Other crimes go back decades.
01:35On June 23, 2004, Human Rights Watch reported on the murder of Habib Dodo, a leader of a
01:42rival student organization by members of FESSI.
01:47Habib was abducted and hanged on campus.
01:50No one was prosecuted.
01:52That same day, another student leader was abducted.
01:56This time, the incident happened in the full glare of the police.
02:00This student, Richard Kwadwo, barely survived.
02:06During the war and during the reign of Laurent Gbagbo, FESSI was a movement that supported,
02:11that allowed Laurent Gbagbo's regime to hold on to defend itself against attacks.
02:16FESSI Organized Marches was one of the organizations that held support marches that criss-crossed
02:22the country.
02:23For Laurent Gbagbo, it gave him real political power.
02:30After his ouster, subsequent governments used the organization to go after the opponents,
02:36giving the group a license to unleash violence.
02:41Today, the government must find a way or credible interlocutors within the university, in particular
02:47new student associations, student delegates that already exist.
02:54The experts and students I talked with for this story agree that the government must
02:59stop instrumentalizing FESSI for their own goals, allow other student unions to flourish
03:06and bring current and past offenders to justice, because it is a recipe for anarchy when crimes
03:13go unpunished.
03:15And that's the flip side.
