U.S., Britain push Congo to prosecute soldiers over Minova rapes <http://www.reuters.com/> Description: ReutersBy Michelle Nichols | Reuters 8 minutes ago
By Michelle Nichols
GOMA, Democratic Republic of Congo (Reuters) - The United States and Britain
pushed Democratic Republic of Congo officials to prosecute soldiers accused
of raping some 130 women and girls in Congo's volatile east, U.N. Security
Council envoys said during a visit to the country on Sunday.
U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, and British U.N.
Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant raised the issue during a meeting between the 15
Security Council envoys and Congo's defense, interior and justice ministers
in Kinshasa on Saturday.
"Nobody knows better than the Congolese the price of impunity, because the
Congolese people have for years been the victims of armed groups who have
been killing and raping their way through eastern Congo," Power told Reuters
on Sunday.
"On the Minova case, the government must show it practices what it preaches
by punishing those officers and soldiers responsible. We made clear our
concerns about the lack of progress thus far," she said.
The United Nations threatened in February to withdraw support for two
Congolese battalions after soldiers raped at least 97 women and 33 girls,
some as young as 6, in the eastern town of Minova after the troops fled from
advancing M23 rebels in late November.
The peacekeeping mission decided to keep working with the 41st and 391st
battalions after 12 senior officers, including the commanders and deputy
commanders, were suspended and about a dozen soldiers were charged over the
rapes in Minova, according to a U.N. human rights report.
The 391st battalion was trained by the United States in 2010 as "a model for
future reforms within the Congolese armed forces," according to the U.S.
Africa Command website.
Lyall Grant said the Congolese ministers told them there was no question of
impunity and investigations were still continuing. The ministers said there
were some difficulties obtaining victim statements from a humanitarian group
due to patient confidentiality, which had delayed inquiries, he added.
"We made clear we were expecting some follow-up prosecutions because the
concern that we had was although some lower level soldiers had been arrested
and some others had been suspended, we hadn't seen any evidence of
prosecutions," Lyall Grant said.
After provincial capital Goma and the town of Sake briefly fell to M23
rebels, a U.N. report said, thousands of Congolese troops fled in a
disorganized manner toward Minova, where they "committed mass rape and other
acts of sexual violence, as well as arbitrary execution, mistreatment and
systematic looting."
Congolese troops and U.N. peacekeepers have been battling an M23 rebellion
in the resource-rich eastern part of the country for the past 18-months.
(Editing by Mohammad Zargham)
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