Beloko, Central African Republic – When Sadock arrived in the northwestern Central African Republic (CAR) town of Koki in November 2022, he thought he had finally found a safe place to live and work.
For years, small-scale miners like him have been displaced and forced to relocate over and over again whenever foreigners entered a local area, seized surrounding gold mines and evicted local miners.
“Some of us [artisanal miners] decided to move to Koki because we thought at the time that no one was disturbing artisanal miners in the [northwest] region,” Sadock, who wanted to be identified by only his first name for fear of retribution, told media.
“We soon found out that we made a huge mistake,” the 23-year-old said.
After President Faustin-Archange Touadera asked for help to deal with rebel groups in CAR in 2017, Russia’s Wagner Group arrived.
The group has since amassed significant security and economic power and according to investigative group The Sentry, it is believed to have laid a blueprint for state capture, with reports that Wagner has “created a complex network of operations to plunder diamonds, gold, and other natural resources” in CAR.
In 2019 the Kremlin-linked group began taking control of gold mines in the central and eastern parts of CAR. In recent years they have also extended northwards.
In October, less than a year after Sadock moved to Koki, locals told media that Russian paramilitaries, in an attempt to seize a gold mine, allegedly executed at least a dozen people who had been rounded up in the town where less than 5,000 people live.
Some of the victims, witnesses said, were small-scale miners who, like Sadock, had moved there after being chased out of gold mines in the Andaha region in eastern CAR by Wagner forces two years ago.
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