Recently in Ivory Coast Category

These soldiers quote the Qur'an to justify brutalizing and beating people, and no one says anything. We quote the Qur'an in an AFDI showing how Muslims use the Qur'an to justify violence, and the media outcry is intense.

Note also the use of the word "savage" to describe one of these beatings. Will Mona Eltahawy spray-paint the offices of the Mail and Guardian?

"Scourge of violence against transgender sex workers in Cote d'Ivoire," from the Mail and Guardian, December 10 (thanks to Pamela Geller):

Transgender sex workers in the Cote d'Ivoire have increasingly become the target of violence since President Alassane Ouattara came into power.

It seemed like a case of simple blackmail. Late one night last month, two cars carrying around 10 soldiers pulled up to a group of prostitutes in Abidjan's Vallon neighbourhood and began demanding bribes.

To save themselves, some of the women in the group approached the soldiers and told them what they knew would divert their attention: they pointed to a sex worker cowering among them who goes by the street name of Raissa. And they sold her out.

The soldiers cornered her, stripped her and discovered her secret: Raissa, who requested that her real name not be used out of fear for her safety, is not a woman at all, but rather a man dressed as one.

They savagely beat her with their belts. Such scenes have become routine since the Republican Forces of Côte d'Ivoire assumed control of Abidjan in April 2011 at the end of a five-month conflict to oust ex-President Laurent Gbagbo and install his elected successor, Alassane Ouattara.

In interviews with the Associated Press, five victims and activists say transgender sex workers have been regularly stripped and beaten.

Sexual violence In the most extreme case, those dressed as women who were discovered to be men were held overnight at military camps and raped with Kalashnikov rifles, they say. Others charge their heads were shaved with broken beer bottles.

Raissa said she has endured three attacks during which she's been stripped, beaten and forced to beg for her life as soldiers threatened to shoot her. "With the rage that's in their eyes, you never know when they'll stop," she said.

"It's hard to talk about the first time or the second time because it's just happened so many times," said a transgender sex worker who goes by the street name, Sara. "No one has escaped the army."...

Victims said they immediately noticed a difference under Ouattara compared to the Gbagbo years, when such abuses were not nearly as extreme or widespread.

Ouattara signed a decree creating the FRCI in March 2011, and it was composed primarily of members of the New Forces rebel group, which used to control Côte d'Ivoire's predominantly Muslim north.

Victims almost uniformly attribute the attacks to the fact that many soldiers in the new army are Muslim.

During one attack in Abidjan's Zone 4 district in July, Raissa said a soldier invoked the Quran in justifying the violence.

"He said, "in the Qur'an it says that when you kill a homosexual you go to heaven,'" she recalled....

"The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger, and strive with might and main for mischief through the land is: execution, or crucifixion, or the cutting off of hands and feet from opposite sides, or exile from the land: that is their disgrace in this world, and a heavy punishment is theirs in the Hereafter." -- Qur'an 5:33

It looks as if these brothers' apparent support for the Christian Gbagbo over the Muslim Ouattara constituted "waging war against Allah and His Messenger."

"Brothers crucified by Ouattara forces in Ivory Coast," from Barnabas Aid, June 8 (thanks to Marty):

Two peasant brothers were brutally crucified on “the example of Christ” as forces loyal to Ivory Coast President Alassane Ouattara continue to target perceived supporters of his ousted Christian predecessor, Laurent Gbagbo.

Raphael Aka Kouame died of his injuries; incredibly his younger brother, Kouassi Privat Kacou, survived the ordeal. The pair were badly beaten and tortured before being crudely nailed to cross-shaped planks by their hands and feet with steel spikes on 29 May.

The brothers were falsely accused of hiding weapons in their home village of Binkro, which has been targeted by Ouattara supporters as the birthplace of a key enemy. They are looking for Prefect Koko Djei, President of the General Council of Oumé and an official in Gbagbo’s Ivorian Popular Front party, who is accused of distributing weapons to young Oumé men. The brothers repeatedly denied any involvement in a weapons cache, but their pleas were ignored.

After crucifying the brothers, Ouattara’s men took them on an extensive search of Binkro, but they found only a store of medical equipment and supplies, which they looted. The seriously wounded pair were then taken to prison in Oumé, where Raphael died in the night....