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JULY 05, 18:14 EST 200 Killed in Congo 'Witchhunt' By HENRY WASSWA
Associated Press Writer KAMPALA, Uganda (AP) — Villagers have hacked to death
about 200 suspected witches in rebel-held northeastern Congo since June 15,
blaming them for diseases that have gone untreated since Congo's war broke
out three years ago, a senior Ugandan army official said Thursday. Ugandan
troops, which had withdrawn this year from the district near the border, were
sent back to the area to stop the killings and make arrests, Brig. Henry
Tumukunde said. ``Villagers were saying that some people had bewitched
others, and they started lynching them. By the time we discovered this, 60
people had already been killed by early last week. About 200 people lost
their lives,'' Tumukunde said. Tumukunde refused to say how many people had
been injured or arrested. It wasn't clear whether the witches were mainly men
or women. The killings began three weeks ago in Aru, 50 miles south of Sudan,
but spread deep inside northeastern Congo, a country the size of Western
Europe. The region of rolling savannas was once a rich agricultural area
where wheat was grown and cattle raised, but a series of rebellions have left
communities destroyed since the 1960s. The war that began three years ago has
only made matters worse. ``The war forced people to move to other areas, and
the internally displaced were the targets of local villagers, who accused
them of witchcraft,'' Tumukunde said. He said diseases endemic to the region
were being blamed on witchcraft, noting that drugs to treat the diseases have
not been available during the duration of the war. In much of the rebel-held
60 percent of the country, routes that would carry trade and aid back and
forth are cut off. With no immunization programs or other health programs,
measles and other diseases are killing people in large numbers. Plague has
even made inroads. In the worst-hit areas, people are dying from a
combination of disease and starvation. Some charities have estimated an
indirect wartime death toll of about 2 million out of a population of 50
million in the former Belgian colony. In a report released jointly Thursday
by UNICEF and the World Health Organization, experts said after a recent
12-day visit to Congo that ``every facet of society — whether human rights or
economy, education or water and sanitation, housing or social care — has
collapsed.'' The 10-person mission blamed ``decades of state and external
looting of national resources'' and war for pushing ``Congolese households
over the brink.'' In Congo's countryside, there is hardly any running water
or electricity. In the most devastated areas, people are desperate just for
soap and salt. Although Uganda had withdrawn troops this year from the Aru
district, it still employs troops elsewhere in Congo. Uganda and Rwanda
joined forces in August 1998 in support of a rebellion seeking to oust
President Laurent Kabila, whom they had backed in a previous, successful
revolt that overthrew longtime President Mobutu Sese Seko of what was then
Zaire in May 1997. The senior Kabila's assassination in January and his son's
ascension to the presidency appear to have cleared the hurdles blocking the
implementation of a 1999 peace agreement signed by the Congolese government,
the rebels and Uganda, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Angola and Namibia, who are all
involved in the conflict. Zimbabwe, Angola and Namibia have poured in
thousands of troops and materiel in support of the Congolese government.
Congo, Uganda Leaders Hold Talks
AT A GLANCE Key Figures and Groups in Congo
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ON THE WEBCIA World Factbook on the Democratic Republic of the Congo
Copyright 2001 Associated Press. All rights reserved.
"We're not supposed to be perfect. We're supposed to be Useful."
Leonard Peltier
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