Yearbook 2006
Central African Republic. In the northern parts of the
country there were armed riots throughout the year.
Thousands of people escaped and by the end of the year, the
army was assisted by French troops to strike back a rebel
force that had occupied a few cities in the northeast. The
unrest in the North Central African Republic was linked to
both rebel rebellion in Chad and the conflict in the
Sudanese Darfur region. In a report from the African Union,
however, the Central African Republic's army was criticized
for contributing to the unrest through brutal treatment of
the civilian population.
According to
CountryAAH, President Ange-Félix Patassé was sentenced in August in
his absence to twenty years in prison for fraud and
embezzlement. However, the Central African Republic's Court
of Appeal decided to ask the International Criminal Court
(ICC) in The Hague to investigate charges against him,
Congolese presidential candidate Jean-Pierre Bemba and a
Chadian mercenary for abuse in the defeat of a coup attempt
against Patassé in 2002.
In October, the South African company UraMin began
extracting uranium in Bakouma in the eastern Central African
Republic. The company will invest the equivalent of just
over SEK 190 million. in the project, which is the first
major scale mining of uranium in the Central African
Republic.
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