President Faustin-Archange Touadéra of the Central African Republic (CAR) has accused Western nations of deliberately keeping his country politically unstable, just days after meeting French President Emmanuel Macron.
“The Central African Republic has been subjected to systematic looting since its independence, facilitated by the political instability maintained by certain Western countries or their companies that finance armed terrorist groups whose main leaders are foreign mercenaries,” he said on Sunday at a UN conference of the world’s Least Developed Countries (LDCs).
CAR troops and soldiers from the Russian mercenary group Wagner have been accused of heinous human rights violations, prompting the EU to sanction some of the group’s senior operative mercenaries in the country.
At the UN conference in Qatar, President Touadéra said the Central African Republic was a “victim of geostrategic aims linked to its natural resources”, and that “foreign interference” keeps his nation and others like it in a state of “dependence, insecurity, and instability”.
Before CAR switched to Russia, France maintained close economic and military ties with its former colony for many years after independence.
imposed on some of the group’s top operative mercenaries in the country.
