On the morning of Sunday March 13, 2011, a young merchant from the north of Côte d'Ivoire was visiting his relatives in the economic capital, Abidjan, on the south coast. The amulets he wore around his neck were characteristic clothing of the Dioulas, an ethnic group from the north of the country. Sadly, these talismans lost him his life. According to a gang of youths, all supporters of Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo, they were fatal evidence that he belonged to an opposition “army of rebels”. They tortured and stoned him to death. The incident took place in Yopougon, a district of Abidjan, and was filmed. The video was posted by YouTube user AfricaWeWish on March 15. On the video you can see a crowd gathered around the young man on the ground. He has been covered in tree branches. After hearing that the man is from a Northern city of Côte d'Ivoire, people start throwing bricks at his face. An Ivorian blogger has confirmed that the man killed in the video was from the north. At 00:44 minutes the assailant asks, “You were just passing by? Where did you come from?”. The man on the ground replies at 00:55 minutes, “I'm a trader in Séguéla (in the north of the country)” and at 01:20 minutes they start throwing stones at him. This corresponds with the version of the story shared on the Twitter hashtag #civ2010. This is the link to the video, but please be warned these are extremely graphic images. A city divided Abobo and Yopougon are two districts in Abidjan, the economic capital city of Côte d'Ivoire. One of West Africa's largest urban centres, it is a city divided. Abobo has around 1.5 million residents and is mainly a Muslim district. As a result, it is a natural electoral base for supporters of Alassane Ouattara, the internationally recognised president after the December 2010 election who is from the Muslim north. Map of Abidjan showing Abobo to the north and Yopougon to the south Yopougon meanwhile, with around 1.1 million residents, is the city's stronghold of Laurent Gbagbo supporters. Gbagbo, president since 2000, is widely believed to have been defeated by Ouattara in the public vote, but so far has refused to stand down despite international pressure. Since the election, violent clashes have been reported between supporters from both sides. In both districts, different religious and ethnic groups had mixed peacefully until the beginning of the recent Ivorian political crisis. For the last ten days however, both Abobo and Yopougon have witnessed incidents of ethnically motivated violence, further crystallising the political dispute and the threat of civil war. Since February 25, 2011, around 20-30,000 people have fled Abobo; on February 23, dozens of soldiers [fr] from Gbagbo's Security and Defense Forces were killed in the district by pro-Ouattara ‘Invisible Commando’ forces. YouTube user 2baz1 posted this video of people fleeing Abobo on February 27, 2011: Théophile Kouamouo explains the background to the violence in an article [fr] on website Jeune Afrique: On y trouve un cocktail politiquement explosif : une forte concentration de populations musulmanes originaires du nord du pays, vivier naturel de la cause « ouattariste », à laquelle s’ajoute une terrible désespérance sociale, conséquence d’une insécurité galopante, mais aussi de taux records de chômage et de séroprévalence. In the meantime, in Yopougon where the Muslim community is the minority, a mosque was vandalised by young Gbagbo supporters. On March 14, 2011, two men were burnt [fr] on suspicion of being members of Ouattara's ‘Invisible Commandos’. Escalation of hatred How did the country get to this point ? The question of religious identity resurfaced on December 3, 2010, when the Ivorian Constitutional Council, in opposition to Electoral Commission's results, declared Laurent Gbagbo president by invalidating the votes of some 600,000 people in the northern, mostly Muslim, regions of the country. Laurent Gbagbo and his wife, Simone, are both declared born-again Christians who are not shy about sharing their faith in a political context. On Simone Gbagbo's website [fr], religion is said to have an important place in the former first lady's life and political commitment: CONVAINCUE QUE LE SANG DE JESUS QUI A COULE A LA CROIX EST PUISSANT ET PEUT SAUVER QUICONQUE CROIT, LA 1ERE DAME PENSE QUE PAR CE SANG NOUS SOMMES LAVES ET PURIFIES ET RENDUS CAPABLES D'OPERER DANS LA MEME DIMENSION QUE NOTRE SEIGNEUR AFIN DE TRANSFORMER NOS COMMUNAUTES ET POURQUOI PAS NOTRE NATION (JEAN 14: 12).