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Congo (Kinshasa): Human Rights Watch Testimony
Congo (Kinshasa): Human Rights Watch Testimony
Date distributed (ymd): 010524
Document reposted by APIC
Africa Policy Electronic Distribution List: an information
service provided by AFRICA ACTION (incorporating the Africa
Policy Information Center, The Africa Fund, and the American
Committee on Africa). Find more information for action for
Africa at http://www.africapolicy.org
+++++++++++++++++++++Document Profile+++++++++++++++++++++
Region: Central Africa
Issue Areas: +political/rights+ +security/peace+
SUMMARY CONTENTS:
This posting contains recent testimony from Human Rights Watch on
the human rights situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo. In
Lusaka this week, Defence and Foreign Affairs ministers from
countries involved in the DR Congo conflict, have agreed to begin
the withdrawal of their troops by 22 February next year. As noted
in the testimony below, troops of the warring parties are now
disengaging, but not yet withdrawing. It was also announced in
Lusaka that the first preparatory session of the Inter-Congolese
dialogue would take place on 16 July. A Security Council mission in
the region said that a solution was 'in sight.'
For more news updates, see
http://allafrica.com/congo-kinshasa
+++++++++++++++++end profile++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Human Rights Watch
Testimony on the Democratic Republic of Congo at the House
Committee on International Relations
http://www.hrw.org/backgrounder/africa/drc_testimony.htm
Suliman Ali Baldo: Senior Researcher, Africa Division of Human
Rights Watch
United States House Committee on International Relations
Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights
May 17, 2001
Thank you, Madam Chair, for the invitation to testify at this
hearing on the human rights situation in the Democratic Republic
of the Congo (DRC). My name is Suliman Baldo, and I am a senior
researcher at the Africa Division of Human Rights Watch. This
morning I will be commenting on the human rights abuses committed
by the warring parties and the ensuing humanitarian crisis in the
DRC.
Human Rights Watch is deeply concerned about the continuing
carnage and waste that the war has unleashed on the population of
the DR Congo. From our own coverage of the humanitarian and
human rights costs of local conflicts spawned by the larger war,
we find tragically realistic the recent estimates by the
International Rescue Committee and other humanitarian agencies
that the conflict has caused upward of 2.5 million deaths among
the Congolese population, resulting mainly from forced
displacement and the resulting lack of food, water, and medical
aid.
The link between rampant human rights abuses and the obviously
man-made humanitarian disaster is becoming all too familiar, in
particular throughout the areas controlled by the foreign
occupying armies of Rwandan, Uganda, and Burundi, and the
Congolese rebel groups backed by these regional powers. In
addition to these forces, other perpetrators in the eastern half
of the country include Rwandan and Ugandan insurgents fighting
the armies of their respective national governments on Congolese
soil. Among the Rwandan insurgents are some who participated in
the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. In many localities, local rural
militia known as Mai-Mai are also committing abuses against the
civilian population, although other Mai-Mai groups are
protecting their communities. In the disputed territories of
Equateur and northern Katanga, government forces (Forces Armees
Congolaises, FAC) have also conducted recent reprisal attacks on
civilians accused of supporting the rebels.
Whenever any of these forces attack villages, markets, churches,
hospitals, or other civilian locations, large numbers of
civilians flee their homes and fields. The destruction of their
properties and crops renders them totally destitute and
undermines their traditional survival strategies and community
based support structures. Many heads of households are killed,
and many of the young either are forcibly conscripted by the
rebels and their backers, or opt to become Mai-Mai fighters to
defend their communities against the generalized insecurity. A
dearth of outside humanitarian assistance contributes to the
aggravation of the crisis. As a result, malnutrition rises;
infant mortality skyrockets, and people succumb to curable
diseases because they can no longer afford even minimal medical
care.
This conflict has spawned serious and widespread human rights
abuses and violations of international humanitarian law
throughout the entire region. To achieve lasting peace and
security in Central Africa, the administration and the
international community must make accountability for these
abuses a fundamental tenet of their policy.
The peace process
Parties to the conflict generally ignored the Lusaka ceasefire
agreement for more than a year and a half, responding hardly at
all to diplomatic initiatives like the three days of discussion
at the U.N. Security Council in January 2000 and numerous
diplomatic missions to the region. But they finally began to
move towards implementation in February 2001, following the
death of Laurent Kabila and the installation of his son Joseph
Kabila as the Congolese president. All of the major parties
began pulling their troops back from their most advanced
positions along the frontline of the international war.
Promising though these developments are, it is unlikely that this
withdrawal will immediately end the many local conflicts that
have been exacerbated by war at the national and international
levels. We want to caution against early optimism: troops are
disengaging but not withdrawing at present; the Rwandan
Patriotic Army reportedly increased its presence in the Kivus;
and support by the Kabila government for the Hutu combatants
fighting the governments of Rwanda and Burundi has not yet
entirely stopped.
Government-controlled territory
Promises of internal reforms
Joseph Kabila has promised new respect for civil liberties and a
return to a state based on law but he has yet to initiate any
reform of civilian justice. Action on this urgent question
should include a review of persons currently detained in prison.
President Kabila should order the release of all those held
without charges or credible suspicion of guilt. The African
Association for the Defense of Human Rights (ASAHDO), one of the
leading monitoring groups in the Congo, estimates that at least
200 political prisoners continue to be detained without charge.
ASAHDO itself has been harassed by the Congolese government and
its security forces. Authorities detained the head of the
Association's chapter in Lubumbashi in mid- February, and
continue to hold him without charges on suspicion of involvement
in the assassination of the late President Kabila. On May 15,
agents of the National Intelligence Agency briefly detained the
acting chairman and an activist of ASADHO in Lubumbashi and
interrogated them overnight about a meeting they had at the
Belgian consulate.
Indicative of the distance between discourse and realities in
the DRC is the fact that ASAHDO's national office in Kinshasa
remains closed down following a 1998 government raid, despite
informal promises by Joseph Kabila's minister for human rights
that the association would be allowed to function openly. The
new president has promised improvements in the military justice
system. He should begin by abolishing the abusive Court of
Military Order, whose rulings cannot be appealed. He should also
insist on greater order and transparency in the investigation
into the assassination of the elder Kabila. The international
commission of inquiry in charge of this investigation, which has
representatives from the allied governments of Zimbabwe and
Angola in addition to Congolese officials, now detains
fifty-eight persons incommunicado, without charges or legal
representation.
In January President Joseph Kabila established a commission to
set terms for the national dialogue with other political forces,
as specified in the Lusaka Accords. On March 4 the government
and three main rebel groups signed the "declaration of Lusaka"
which laid down the general principles for the inter-Congolese
dialogue. However, leading opposition parties in Kinshasa
continued to boycott the preparatory commission since the
current legislation does not recognize the existence of political
parties. The political opposition and civil society groups
continue their own preparations for the dialogue but are
increasingly apprehensive that the government will focus its
attention on the participation of the armed opposition and try
to marginalize them.
Much of the current ethnic tensions in the Congo are rooted in
Mobutu Sese Sekou's attempts to strip Congolese of Rwandan
ancestry of their right to Congolese citizenship. President
Kabila should speak out firmly about the common citizenship and
rights of all Congolese, regardless of ethnic group or region of
origin.
Rebel Areas
The Congolese Rally for Democracy-Goma in Rwandan occupied areas
The rebel Congolese Rally for Democracy, known as RCD-Goma,
controls parts of North Kivu, South Kivu, Maniema, Orientale, and
Katanga provinces in the east and southeast. Human Rights Watch
holds that these areas should be considered as under the
occupation of Rwanda. Parts of South Kivu are also jointly
occupied by Burundi. We have received credible reports
indicating that Rwandan Patriotic Army troops withdrawn in
mid-March from the front lines have not left the country, but
were instead redeployed elsewhere in South and North Kivu. They
may be intending to try to eliminate Rwandan combatants now
known as the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda.
Redeployment may also be meant to permit more intensive
exploitation activities in certain mining zones.
As amply documented in Human Rights Watch's reports 'Eastern
Congo Ravaged: Killing Civilians and Silencing Protest, May 2000'
and 'DRC: Casualties of War: Civilians, Rule of Law, and
Democratic Freedoms, Feb. 1999,' combat between the RPA and its
Congolese allies of the RCD-Goma, on the one hand, and Rwandan
combatants, on the other, frequently results in indiscriminate
attacks on Congolese civilians accused of supporting the other
side. Since the beginning of the current war, RPA-RCD-Goma
soldiers have committed massacres against civilians in several
villages of eastern Congo, including Kasika (19998), Makabola
(1999), Katogota (2000), and Lusende (2000). Equally Hutu rebels
and Mai-Mai militias have committed grave abuses, including
massacres at Shabunda and Sake in 2000. Both parties have used
sexual violence against women as a weapon of war to punish and
humiliate communities they suspect of supporting their
opponents. The RCD-Goma and the RPA continue to forcibly recruit
Congolese adults and children, a campaign that has reached
alarming rates as of the last quarter of 2000. They have also
transferred from Rwanda the system of Local Defense Forces,
which enroll local people, many of them children, in
counterinsurgency at the village level.
Rwanda has recently launched an effort to assure it a lasting
influence in the Kivus, even if it were to withdraw from the
Congo. It has sent hundreds of Congolese community leaders,
civil service officials, and youth and women activists to
training sessions in Rwanda where they undergo intensive
indoctrination and limited military training. On March 18, 2001,
the top leadership of the RCD-Goma was on hand in Rwanda for the
graduation ceremony of some 400 Congolese local leaders who had
just finished a two-month session.
The RCD-Goma has a long record of harassing human rights
defenders. The activities annually organized by local women
rights groups in Bukavu to mark the international women day on 8
March were forbidden this year. Recently, RCD security agents
repeatedly interrogated activists of Heritiers de la Justice, a
leading monitoring group in South Kivu. In October 2000,
RCD-Goma security agents broke up a coordination meeting among
several human rights organizations in Bukavu; beat up the
participants publicly, and briefly detained them in a military
camp. In Goma, agents summoned activists of two other human
rights organizations and told them not to speak to Roberto
Garreton, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the DR Congo, during
his March visit to the region.
The Front for the Liberation of Congo in Ugandan occupied areas
The Movement for the Liberation of Congo (Mouvement pour la
Liberation du Congo, MLC), headed by Jean-Pierre Bemba, controls
much of Equateur province in the north. By early 2001, it had
established its sway over another, less well organized rebel
group, the Congolese Rally for Democracy-Liberation Movement
(Rassemblement Congolais pour la Democratie-Mouvement de
Liberation (RCD-ML), which claimed to control parts of North
Kivu, and Orientale provinces in eastern Congo. Uganda
engineered this merger among its Congolese rebel allies to unify
their military against the government alliance, and to shield it
from increasing international scrutiny of its role in
manipulating local political divisions and ethnic conflicts as a
means of consolidating its control over these resource rich
areas.
Uganda reacted angrily to the release in mid April of the report
of the U.N. Panel of Experts on the Exploitation of National
Resources and other Forms of Wealth of the DR Congo, threatening
at one point to withdraw from the Lusaka peace process. Under
international prodding, Uganda dropped the threat and committed
to withdraw its troops from the country, saying that they have
accomplished their mission of defeating the insurgent Allied
Democratic Forces (ADF).
Human Rights Watch in March 2001 published the report "Uganda in
Northeastern DRC: Fueling Political and Ethnic Strife" which
documented the following abuses in areas occupied by Uganda near
the border between Uganda and the DRC:
Ugandan military forces have played a decisive role in local
affairs, even changing administrative boundaries and designating
provincial officials, taking advantage of an administrative void
resulting from continuing disputes among the various offshoots
of the Ugandan- sponsored RCD-ML.
Within the context of the broader war and the continuing
political conflicts, a small-scale dispute over land between
Hema and Lendu peoples in northeastern DRC, one of many which
previously appeared to have been settled peacefully, grew in
scale and intensity. The Hema were thought to enjoy general
support from the Ugandans, attributed to a supposed ethnic bond
between the Hema of the DRC and those of Uganda. >From the first
violence in June 1999 through early 2000, an estimated 7,000
persons were killed and another 150,000 were displaced. In the
most recent incident of violence in January 2001, another 400
people were killed during one day of violence in Bunia and at
least 30,000 people were forced to flee the region.
The perception that the Ugandan army supported the Hema was made
real in many communities by Ugandan soldiers who helped Hema in
defending their large farms against Lendu attack and who helped
Hema militia attack Lendu villages. In some cases, these
soldiers provided support in return for payments to themselves or
their superior officers. In at least one case, Ugandan soldiers
also assisted Lendu in attacking Hema. In one reported clash
Ugandan soldiers backing different sides engaged in combat
against each other. The assistance of Ugandan soldiers as well
as the provision of training and arms to local forces resulted
in a larger number of civilian casualties in these conflicts
than would otherwise have been the case.
Under the guise of creating an army for the rebel movement,
Congolese political leaders developed their own groups of armed
supporters, bound to them by ties of personal and/or ethnic
loyalty. On several occasions in the last two years, these armed
supporters have engaged in operations in which civilians were
killed. Uganda trained these groups even when it seemed likely
that they would be used in local ethnic and partisan conflict
rather than as part of a disciplined military force.
All parties, including the Ugandans, recruited and trained
children to serve as soldiers. In August 2000 Uganda transported
some 163 children, part of a larger group of 700 recruits, to
Uganda for military training. Only in February 2001 did the
government of Uganda grant various international agencies access
to these children with a view to their demobilization and
resettlement.
Contending RCD-ML political leaders Wamba dia Wamba and Mbusa
Nyamwisi as well as Uganda People's Defence Force (UPDF)
soldiers have illegally detained political leaders whom they
have identified as opponents and held them under inhumane
conditions. In some cases the UPDF and RCD-ML forces have
tortured political opponents in detention.
The RCD-ML's "prime minister" Mbusa Nyamwisi, a local leader
from a third powerful ethnic group, the Nande, sought to increase
his power base by allying with Mai-Mai forces, groups of local
militia who had been fighting largely to expel foreign occupiers
of their territory. Originally ready to tolerate this alliance,
the Ugandans then rejected it. In subsequent conflicts with the
Mai-Mai, Ugandan forces as well as Congolese rebels loyal to
Mbusa extrajudicially executed captured Mai-Mai combatants.
Subsequently, the UPDF attacked local people thought to have
assisted the Mai-Mai, killing civilians and laying waste to
their villages.
Ugandan soldiers also formed and supported the front organization
called RCD-National, which appeared to be an operation to extract
and market the rich mineral resources of the Bafwasende area
rather than the political party which it claimed to be. This
blatant exploitation of Congolese wealth for the benefit of both
locally based and other more highly placed Ugandan military
officers symbolized the larger exploitation of the whole region
for the benefit of outside actors.
Recommendations to the United States
- Strongly and publicly denounce violations of international
humanitarian law by all parties in the DRC war and insist upon
accountability for the perpetrators. Exert strong and consistent
pressures on all foreign countries involved in the war as well as
on the Congolese government to observe their obligations under
international humanitarian and human rights law. Exert similar
pressure on rebel groups and local militia to also observe the
prescriptions of such law.
- Support measures to document crimes against humanity and
other gross violations of international humanitarian law during
this conflict. The U.S. should encourage the U.N. Security
Council to resume an investigation into these crimes stalled
since 1998. It should ensure that adequate resources are
provided for these investigations.
- Press President Kabila to implement the promised reforms of
the civilian and military judicial systems, to permit the
promised openness to political parties, human rights groups and
other forms of civil society. It should insist that he issue
immediate orders that the Congolese army observe the rules of
international humanitarian law and bring to justice those who
violate this law.
- Call on rebel groups and their backers to ensure that civil
society be permitted to function undisturbed in zones under
their control.
- Insist that all parties to the conflict instruct their forces
to immediately observe the rules of international humanitarian
law and hold accountable any of their combatants who fail to do
so. All parties should allow unfettered access and the neutral
provision of humanitarian assistance to all populations in need.
- Demand that all parties involved in the war immediately cease
the recruitment and use of child soldiers and provide for their
demobilization and reintegration into society.
- Increase its humanitarian aid to the DRC and involve local
nongovernmental organizations in its distribution.
- Support the strengthening the human rights part of the mandate
of the UN force in the DRC so that human rights monitors are
deployed in all locations where observers are present.
This material is being reposted for wider distribution by
Africa Action (incorporating the Africa Policy Information
Center, The Africa Fund, and the American Committee on Africa).
Africa Action's information services provide accessible
information and analysis in order to promote U.S. and
international policies toward Africa that advance economic,
political and social justice and the full spectrum of human
rights.
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