In a starling display of communal reconciliation in the Central African Republic, Muslim and non-Muslim communities in Bangui marched between two rival neighborhoods in an “inter-community tour” organized by the NGO Search for Common Ground and city officials.
Several thousand people participated in the march, between Bangui’s PK5 Muslim enclave and the Christian stronghold of Boy-Rabe, which was “designed to prove to the people that social cohesion is not an empty word.”
The latest crisis erupted in early 2013 when Seleka rebels drawn mainly from the Muslim minority toppled President Francois Bozize, provoking deadly reprisals by Christian militia fighters, Reuters reports:
Thousands have died in the violence. And one in five Central Africans has fled either abroad or internally, including most Muslims in the southwest, who were targeted by a campaign of ethnic cleansing.
Photographs courtesy of Search for Common Ground, a grantee of the National Endowment for Democracy.
