Report on the BRICIF operation at Thiotte on 27 April 2018

Thiotte, one of the four communes of the Belle-Anse district in the Sud-Est, lives on growing and processing coffee and is divided into two communal sections, Marmirande, formerly known as Pot-de-Chambre, and Colombier. The network and its south-eastern structure learned by radio that an operation by the Brigade d'Intervention contre l'insécurité foncière at Thiotte on 27 April 2018 had ended in what they call an unimaginable fiasco, with a minor seriously wounded by gunfire and the officers present narrowly escaping an ambush, and they investigated, interviewing the police, municipal and communal-section and judicial authorities of Thiotte, residents, the wounded minor's relatives, the Minister of Justice and Public Security and the Director General of the police. The report presents the commune, presents the brigade, sets out what happened before, on and after 27 April, describes the climate in Thiotte afterwards and gives the views of the state authorities. Its argument is institutional.

Giving so much capacity to a structure placed under political direction is dangerous in a country where influence-trafficking holds a leading place in social relations, and the police are by definition apolitical. Under the order creating it, the brigade may receive complaints from victims of dispossession and intervene at the scene of land crimes, which are offences defined and punished by the penal code and therefore matters for the courts. It is no secret, the report adds, that some judges, prosecutors, surveyors, notaries, lawyers and police officers organise to dispossess families of large areas of land in the capital and in provincial towns, and it is for the justice system to act against them, restore victims' rights and break with that impunity. The brigade cannot substitute itself for the courts without making land insecurity worse. The network asks for its existence and remit to be reviewed, its operations coordinated, the police hierarchy kept informed of them, and the operation of 27 April investigated so that it is not repeated.