Congrès Panafricain des Jeunes et des Patriotes

The Congrès Panafricain des Jeunes et des Patriotes (COJEP), commonly known as Young Patriots, of Côte d'Ivoire is the name given to a youth movement supportive of the former President of Côte d'Ivoire, Laurent Gbagbo and his ruling Ivorian Popular Front (FPI) party. Its founder is Charles Blé Goudé.

Set up in June 2001, the group has attracted controversy and international condemnation due to its alleged involvement in extra-judicial killings and demonstrations organised by the group which have often turned violent. The organisation is nationalist and opposed to the Islamification of the country, Gbagbo's supporters tend to be Christians from the south, as opposed to the rebel forces from the largely Muslim north, which had been fighting a war with the government from 2002 to 2006. The organisation itself claims that it rejects violence, and that it has been misrepresented in the Western media, especially that of France.

Blé Goudé founded COJEP in June 2001, at the end of his term as the head of another youth movement in Cote D'Ivoire, after it had suffered an ideological split and become deeply politicised, with one section allying itself to a military junta within the country. The new movement he set up was fiercely supportive of Laurent Gbagbo, who had been elected the previous year.

On September 26, 2002, within a week of the failed coup d'état by the Ivorian army, Blé Goudé, who was in Manchester finishing a degree, flew back to Abidjan to mobilise the COJEP along with several other youth movements, merging them into a more militant version of the group called Alliance des jeunes patriotes pour le sursaut national ("Youth Alliance for National Survival").

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Wikipedia