Last year, Muslim militias helped overthrow the country's Christian president of the Central African Republic and marauded through Christian areas. Today, the circumstances are reversed, with Christian militias terrorizing Muslim communities and prompting a mass exodus.
Even in one of the poorest countries in Africa, the ubiquity of camera phones means the wounds live on after bodies are buried. They're texted and shared and become part of the terror driving tens of thousands of Muslims over the border to become refugees in Chad or Cameroon.
Donatella Rovera, a senior crisis adviser for Amnesty International, has been driving around the country talking to survivors.
"Those who are stating their determination to get rid of the Muslim population are making good on their threats," she says. "What we are seeing is the Muslim civilian population paying the price for the atrocities committed by the previous regime."
That regime, called the Seleka, came to power last March in a coup led by militias from the mostly Muslim northwest of the country.
It wasn't a religious takeover — there wasn't any talk of Islamic law — but it did feel to many Christians in the capital like their city was being overrun. The mostly Muslim fighters committed atrocities against the mostly Christian population, and many in the country accuse Muslim civilians of supporting the assault, even joining in to loot and kill and rape their Christian neighbors.
French forces arrived in December and forced the Muslim fighters to retreat. The Muslim president, who had been in power for just a matter of months, stepped down. The Muslim civilians were then exposed to a Christian majority bent on revenge. That's why in every grainy videos of Muslims being lynched, the sound of bystanders cheering is audible.
One of the most viral videos is just 19 seconds long. It shows a young man posing like a rapper and holding a burnt human leg. He mugs for the camera, brings the leg up to his mouth and bites with staged relish into the thigh.
"The cannibal," as the press referred to him, told reporters that he killed one Muslim stranger to avenge three Christian relatives.
Never piss off a cannibal.
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