D.R. Congo: Arming Civilians Adds Fuel to the Fire
Congolese Authorities Must Bring Perpetrators of War Crimes to Justice
(New York, July 13, 2005) -- The arming of civilians by officials in eastern
Congo has increased the risk of further violence and is undermining United
Nations efforts to bring stability to this volatile region, Human Rights
Watch said in a report released today.
Rival factions of the Congolese army, fighting each other in December,
executed civilians and raped scores of women and girls in three towns in
North Kivu, a volatile province in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.
Victims were targeted on the basis of their ethnicity or their perceived
political loyalties. These abuses were exacerbated by the provincial
government authorities, who armed untrained Hutu civilians in the months
preceding the fighting.
"The arming of civilians in an environment of ethnic tension and ongoing
conflict is irresponsible and dangerous," said Alison Des Forges, senior
Africa advisor at Human Rights Watch. "The Congolese government and the U.N.
peacekeeping forces must take immediate steps to disarm civilians and reduce
local tensions."
The 34-page Human Rights Watch report, "D.R. Congo: Civilians Attacked in
North Kivu," documents war crimes and other serious human rights abuses
committed during fighting in December. The failure to integrate the former
belligerent groups into one unified national army was a major cause of the
conflict; another was heightened ethnic tensions in North Kivu. Some of the
newly armed civilians participated in the human rights abuses.
Soldiers of the Congolese Rally for Democracy-Goma (Rassemblement Congolais
pour la Démocratie-Goma, or RCD-Goma), a former rebel movement now turned
political party and member of the Congolese transitional government, in
December fought other troops of the national army for control of RCD-Goma's
base in North Kivu. The fighting took place in the context of increased
tensions between Congo and Rwanda. Rwanda had backed RCD-Goma during the war
that ended with the official withdrawal of foreign troops in 2002.
In the months just prior to the fighting, administrative and security
officials loyal to North Kivu's governor, Eugène Serufuli, distributed
thousands of weapons to Hutu civilians in the province. Serufuli is also a
high-ranking member of the Rwandan-backed RCD-Goma. Local analysts believed
this was an attempt by Governor Serufuli to counter plans by the national
government based in Kinshasa to retake this strategic area, which borders
Rwanda.
Some Hutu were threatened and at least one was killed for opposing the arms
distribution. In the provincial capital Goma, five local Congolese human
rights activists who denounced the arms distribution and the December abuses
were threatened and had to leave the city.
The distribution of arms to civilians in North Kivu highlights the problem
of the proliferation of small arms in central Africa, an issue addressed
this week in New York at a U.N. meeting on illicit trade in small arms. In
2003, following the country's brutal civil war, the U.N. Security Council
imposed an arms embargo on the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo,
which was recently extended to cover the entire country.
"The Congolese government should collect and dispose of all firearms held
illegally by civilians in the volatile eastern part of the country," said
Des Forges. "And all countries in the region must enforce the U.N. arms
embargo on the DRC."
Soldiers and irregular forces on all sides committed rapes and killings of
civilians, as well as widespread looting, during and after a week of intense
combat in December at Kanyabayonga and other locations in North Kivu. One
woman told Human Rights Watch that two of her daughters were killed when
RCD-Goma soldiers fired into a crowd at a church.
At a Hutu village, Mayi-Mayi combatants-locally-based militia opposed to
Rwanda and the RCD-Goma-threw a grenade at a wedding party, killing several
of the guests, including a three-year-old child being carried on a woman's
back. Because of the fighting and looting at Kanyabayonga and the town of
Nyabyondo, tens of thousands of residents were forced to flee into the
forest, where they lost access to humanitarian assistance.
In recent months, the U.N. peacekeeping mission known as MONUC and the
Congolese army have conducted a serious campaign of militia disarmament in
the Ituri district of northeastern Congo, but they have not articulated a
strategy for North Kivu.
Since the December fighting, there have been renewed incidents of violence
between rival army factions resulting in civilian deaths. On June 30 in
Goma, fighting between former RCD-Goma and Mayi-Mayi forces left three
soldiers and four civilians dead. On July 2, newly integrated troops in a
military camp just outside Goma burned several huts in a nearby Hutu and
Tutsi village in revenge for the killing of a soldier the night before,
reportedly by an armed civilian.
"Civilians suffer the brutal effects of the Congolese army's internecine
fighting," said Des Forges. "Soldiers and their officers must be held
accountable for this. Continued impunity will only add to further tensions
and abuses."
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Related Material
Democratic Republic of Congo: Civilians attacked in North Kivu
Report, July 12, 2005
http://hrw-news-africa.c.topica.com/maadJXBabiBmCa5B0Lbb/
D.R. Congo: Gold Fuels Massive Human Rights Atrocities
Press Release, June 2, 2005
http://hrw-news-africa.c.topica.com/maadJXBabiBmDa5B0Lbb/
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