Thousands flee DR Congo as battle rages in region

BRAZZAVILLE, Thursday

About 7,000 people fleeing ethnic violence in the north of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) have crossed the border into neighbouring Congo Republic in the past 24 hours, state radio said yesterday.

A total 13,000 people have now taken refuge in north-eastern Congo-Brazzaville since fighting erupted last week in the village of Dongo in Equateur province in DRC, a United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) spokesman in Kinshasa told Reuters.

At least 47 policemen were killed last Friday as they intervened in a dispute among two tribes fighting over farming and fishing rights.
The violence is not related to fighting in Congo’s east between government troops and Rwandan rebels.

“Several villages have been burned and dozens of people killed as a result of these clashes,” one of the refugees told the Congo-Brazzaville official news agency.

The UNHCR has a joint humanitarian support mission with the government of Congo-Brazzaville to assist those displaced by the conflict.

DR Congo hosts the UN’s largest peacekeeping mission, with over 18,000 soldiers, but 90 per cent of the force is based in Congo’s eastern regions and there were no peacekeepers in the north when the violence took place.

Meanwhile, a top human rights group is accusing the Congolese military of killing more than 500 civilians in eastern Congo and says the UN peacekeeping force in the area did nothing to stop the soldiers from decapitating men and raping young girls.

The Human Rights Watch report came a day after the UN peacekeeping force, known by its French acronym MONUC, said it was suspending military aid to an army unit implicated in the deaths of 62 civilians between May and September.

Human Rights Watch said the UN peacekeeping force should immediately suspend its aid to the entire operation.

Viciously targeting

“Some Congolese army soldiers are committing war crimes by viciously targeting the very people they should be protecting,” said Anneke Van Woudenberg, senior researcher at Human Rights Watch. “MONUC’s continued willingness to provide support for such abusive military operations implicates them in violations of the laws of war.”

The report, released on Monday, was based on HRW fact-finding missions to the region and said that soldiers in eastern Congo had deliberately killed at least 505 civilians between March and September. It said another 198 civilians were killed earlier this year during a joint Congolese-Rwandan military operation. “If it’s true that people were killed, the investigation will determine that,” government spokesman Lambert Mende said Tuesday. “One has seen in the past how Human Rights Watch exaggerated.”

In New York, United Nations spokeswoman Michele Montas told reporters at UN headquarters on Tuesday that the Congolese Armed Forces command and MONUC are launching an immediate investigation to determine who is responsible and to take the necessary action. “We condemn these killings and all killing and abuse of civilians, whether by the Congolese Armed Forces or by armed groups,” Montas said. The UN peacekeeping mission started backing the Congolese army earlier this year in its effort to oust Rwandan Hutu militiamen, many of whom fled to Congo after participating in Rwanda’s 1994 genocide that killed more than 500,000 people.

The UN supports the Congolese army with transport, food, and fuel. UN officials have repeatedly told Human Rights Watch that they joined the military operation because they believed their participation could help minimize harm to civilians, the report said.

“What we are trying to do in the logistic support that we’ve given to the national army is instil this policy of zero tolerance in order to help minimize violent acts against the population,” Ross Mountain, the UN’s deputy mission chief in Congo, said Tuesday.

Mr Mountain said that MONUC and the Congolese government were trying to identify the units and areas where the killings were committed and which measures should be taken.

UN peacekeeping chief Alain Le Roy said Sunday that the U.N. would immediately cease support to the Congolese army’s 213th Brigade. Le Roy said the U.N. believed the unit had killed at least 62 civilians in the Lukweti area, some 50 miles (80 kilometres) northwest of the regional capital of Goma.

The Human Rights Watch report describes an August attack in the remote hamlet of Katanda in which it said soldiers decapitated four men and cut off their arms. They then raped 16 women and girls, including a 12-year-old girl, later killing four of them, the report said. Researchers also found that many of the more than 500 victims were women, children and the elderly. Some were hacked to death with machetes or clubbed to death, the report said.

Congo’s army is a ragtag, poorly paid collection of the defeated army of ousted dictator Mobutu Sese Seko and several of the rebel groups that helped overthrow him. (Reuters)