RIGHTS: U.N. Criticised for Congo Massacres

By Thalif Deen Reprint | | Print |

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Jul 14 1998 (IPS) - A leading U.S. human rights organisation has attacked the U.N. Security Council for its inaction over the killing of unarmed Hutu refugees by Congolese soldiers and their allies two years ago.

“Simply calling on the Congolese and Rwandan governments to investigate and prosecute their own officials makes no sense,” Peter Takirambudde of Human Rights Watch said Tuesday. “It’s an insult to the victims.”

Takirambudde, responding to a statement by the Security Council, said both governments so far had failed to cooperate with the United Nations in investigating these crimes – and had given no indication they would do so in the future.

The Council issued a presidential statement Monday which condemned the massacres and other atrocities and violations of international humanitarian law committed in 1996 and 1997 in the former Zaire (currently the Democratic Republic of the Congo).

The Council also deplored the delay in the administration of justice. It called on the governments of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda to investigate the allegations publicised in a U.N. report last month, and bring to justice any persons found to have been involved in these or other atrocities.

“Such action is of great importance in helping to bring an end to impunity and to foster lasting peace and stability in the region,” the statement added.

The Council expressed support for U.N. and other international activities to reduce ethnic tensions and promote national reconciliation in the region.

Human Rights Watch said that despite its condemnation of the massacres, the Security Council failed to authorise an independent investigation and prosecution of those responsible for these crimes.

“Unfortunately the Security Council has made its choice, and it’s a bad one,” Takirambudde said. He urged stronger action by the Council since the Congolese and Rwandan governments “are likely to prove, three months from today, as unwilling as ever to assume their responsibilities in accounting for these massacres.”

Takirambudde said the Congo massacres has underscored the urgent need for an International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate genocide and other crimes against humanity. A five- week U.N. conference on the establishment of an ICC is currently underway in Rome.

“The case of Congo shows that you cannot rely on the Security Council to dispense justice,” he noted.

The details of the atrocities were spelled out in a report released last month by a U.N. investigative team which was not allowed to carry out its mission fully and without hindrance.

The 52-page report, incomplete because of difficulties in gathering evidence, did not estimate the total number of Hutu killed but cited individual massacres of up to 500 people. It said the massacres would amount to genocide if it could be proved that “a decision was taken to eliminate this part of the Hutu ethnic group as such.”

In its report submitted to the Security Council last month, the U.N. team said that the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation (AFDL) of Congo, and its Rwandan and other allies, were responsible for the massacres of displaced Rwandan Hutus. The massacres were followed by a military campaign that installed President Laurent Kabila in power in the former Zaire.

Kabila and the United Nations fought a running battle over U.N. investigators’ access to massacre sites since the former rebel took power in May 1997. Secretary-General Kofi Annan in April was forced to withdraw the U.N. team from Congo.

The report said the government in Kinshasa “has shown no interest in fulfilling its obligation, under international law, to investigate responsibility for serious violations of human rights and grave breaches of humanitarian law.”

The report also blamed the killings on Kabila’s AFDL, which it said was aided by the Rwandese Patriotic Army (RPA), the former Zairian security forces, and other armed groups. According to the U.N. team, hundreds of unarmed Rwandan Hutus were massacred in Mbandaka and the neighbouring village of Wendji by AFDL troops apparently under RPA command.

“Forensic evidence indicates that bodies were removed from a mass grave site in Mbandaka, corroborating testimony that an effort was made to ‘clean up’ such sites prior to the arrival of the investigative team,” the report said.

The AFDL was accused of forcing large numbers of civilians to flee into scarcely populated areas under life-threatening conditions, and denying relief organisations access to ill and wounded non-combatants.