Shadow work, missing out on history
In the documentary Shadow work published recently on U tube (Journeyman Pictures) the filmmaker Nigel Walker says he wishes to understand the roots of the crisis in the west African country of Cote d'Ivoire, through drawing a portrait of Charles Blé Goudé, a militant leader of the so-called Young Patriots, nicknamed 'the General', for his ability to mobilise large numbers of people onto the streets in a flash, stirring up the crowds for huge non-violent demonstrations, protest marches, sit-ins and hunger strikes.
Nigel Walker says in the voice over of the documentary that he was intrigued by Blé Goudé after reading a 2003 New Yorker article Gangsta War by Georg Packer; he then decided to embark on doing a film when Charles Blé Goudé said that "he would take over the country if the current President (Gbagbo) did not win the elections". This is a very grave accusation in view of the charges of crimes against humanity Charles Blé Goudé is currently facing at the International Criminal Court, and can not be made without specifying or providing hard evidence. Mr Walker will hopefully soon receive a complaint for defamation, as presumption of innocence is enshrined in Article 11 (1) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The factual errors in the film are ludicrous, such as stating that the Gbagbo government took away citizenship rights in 2002 from northerners and that this was the reason behind the 2002 coup d'état (which is defined as an ethnic civil war in the film). Can the filmmaker provide the government decree or any parliamentary ruling that actually implemented such a policy? No, he most likely can't, because "exclusion" or "ivoirité" was never a Gbagbo government driven policy. On the contrary recent socio-political studies have shown that the Gbagbo government was the most ethnically diverse that Cote d'Ivoire had ever had.
Northerners were never excluded from voting as the film claims, but only one presidential candidate was, in 2000, namely Alassane Ouattara, who did not meet the constitutional criteria his own party voted for in 2000. (That the president be born from both a mother and a father that are Ivorian, a criteria that is applied in most Constitutions worldwide.) One ambassador at the time, a neutral farsighted observer, denounced Ouattara's claim of "exclusion of a part of the population" and felt it was an excuse to bring havoc to the country (https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=OXo9GK9lv60)
The film stars out in 2006, in the middle of the crisis, leaving out how we got there. To catch up on the September 2002 events, which split the country in two, the viewer has just a few captions to read so as to try and understand. (Walker manages to also confuse the chronology of these few facts he lists as captions since Gbagbo was elected in 2000, well before the 2002 French and UN interventions.)
There were no ethnic tensions on the rise in 2002 as Walker claims. The film thus misses to tell us the main point of the story: who and why was the country attacked in September 2002 as Ivory Coast was faring quite well and was relatively peaceful at the time (and today diplomatic archives corroborate this) until the September coup, in which the then Defence Minister and General Guei, amongst others, were assassinated.
We hear Blé Goudé is a follower of Gbagbo, yet Walker also forgets to mention who Gbagbo is. Laurent Gbagbo and his political party, the Ivorian Popular Front, are the founders of Ivorian democracy and the multiparty system in the country, a democracy which the FPI won through over 30 years of non violent struggle. (More background on Laurent Gbagbo and the right to difference http://www.resetdoc.org/story/00000022184).
Further comments on film https://plus.google.com/112598194203727150192/posts/CBJCTMr2cHg
In the documentary Shadow work published recently on U tube (Journeyman Pictures) the filmmaker Nigel Walker says he wishes to understand the roots of the crisis in the west African country of Cote d'Ivoire, through drawing a portrait of Charles Blé Goudé, a militant leader of the so-called Young Patriots, nicknamed 'the General', for his ability to mobilise large numbers of people onto the streets in a flash, stirring up the crowds for huge non-violent demonstrations, protest marches, sit-ins and hunger strikes.
Nigel Walker says in the voice over of the documentary that he was intrigued by Blé Goudé after reading a 2003 New Yorker article Gangsta War by Georg Packer; he then decided to embark on doing a film when Charles Blé Goudé said that "he would take over the country if the current President (Gbagbo) did not win the elections". This is a very grave accusation in view of the charges of crimes against humanity Charles Blé Goudé is currently facing at the International Criminal Court, and can not be made without specifying or providing hard evidence. Mr Walker will hopefully soon receive a complaint for defamation, as presumption of innocence is enshrined in Article 11 (1) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The factual errors in the film are ludicrous, such as stating that the Gbagbo government took away citizenship rights in 2002 from northerners and that this was the reason behind the 2002 coup d'état (which is defined as an ethnic civil war in the film). Can the filmmaker provide the government decree or any parliamentary ruling that actually implemented such a policy? No, he most likely can't, because "exclusion" or "ivoirité" was never a Gbagbo government driven policy. On the contrary recent socio-political studies have shown that the Gbagbo government was the most ethnically diverse that Cote d'Ivoire had ever had.
Northerners were never excluded from voting as the film claims, but only one presidential candidate was, in 2000, namely Alassane Ouattara, who did not meet the constitutional criteria his own party voted for in 2000. (That the president be born from both a mother and a father that are Ivorian, a criteria that is applied in most Constitutions worldwide.) One ambassador at the time, a neutral farsighted observer, denounced Ouattara's claim of "exclusion of a part of the population" and felt it was an excuse to bring havoc to the country (https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=OXo9GK9lv60)
The film stars out in 2006, in the middle of the crisis, leaving out how we got there. To catch up on the September 2002 events, which split the country in two, the viewer has just a few captions to read so as to try and understand. (Walker manages to also confuse the chronology of these few facts he lists as captions since Gbagbo was elected in 2000, well before the 2002 French and UN interventions.)
There were no ethnic tensions on the rise in 2002 as Walker claims. The film thus misses to tell us the main point of the story: who and why was the country attacked in September 2002 as Ivory Coast was faring quite well and was relatively peaceful at the time (and today diplomatic archives corroborate this) until the September coup, in which the then Defence Minister and General Guei, amongst others, were assassinated.
We hear Blé Goudé is a follower of Gbagbo, yet Walker also forgets to mention who Gbagbo is. Laurent Gbagbo and his political party, the Ivorian Popular Front, are the founders of Ivorian democracy and the multiparty system in the country, a democracy which the FPI won through over 30 years of non violent struggle. (More background on Laurent Gbagbo and the right to difference http://www.resetdoc.org/story/00000022184).
Further comments on film https://plus.google.com/112598194203727150192/posts/CBJCTMr2cHg
