/IPS DEVELOPMENT BULLETIN/ CONGO: Kinshasha Hiding Massacre Evidence

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Oct 11 1997 (IPS) - Two human rights groups released evidence Thursday alleging that the government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, formerly Zaire, was involved in the mass slaughter of Rwandan refugees.

Human Rights Watch/Africa (HRW) and the International Federation of Human Rights Leagues (FIDH), issued a report containing photographs of what are believed to be mass graves, together with testimony gathered during a recent six-week mission to eastern C ongo, to support their claim that thousands of Rwandans have been killed.

The two groups blame the killings on the then rebel Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo (ADFL), headed by Laurent Kabila and its ally, the Rwandan Popular Army (RPA). Kabila, now the Congolese President, overthrew the dictatorship o f Mobuto Sese Seko.

“HRW and FIDH visited an eighty-kilometre stretch of road in one region of Congo, far from areas where combat took place, along which civilian refugees were slaughtered by members of the ADFL and RPA,” the groups declared.

“In this area, HRW and FIDH photographed mass grave sites of refugees and areas of road still littered with their decomposed bodies, among which the remains of women and children were still clearly identifiable. Many of the skulls seen and photographed

contained holes or were fractured, suggesting blows with a heavy object.”

The groups provided their evidence to U.N. investigators, who have been frustrated for six weeks in their effort to send a small team to suspected massacre sites to determine what happened to the Rwandans.

“This report and these photographs are exactly what Kabila and his allies are trying to hide,” said Peter Takirambudde, executive director of HRW/Africa . “A high-level team of U.N. investigators has been stuck in Kinshasa since Aug. 24. We have provi ded them with all of our evidence on these massacres, and it’s time for Kabila to let them out of the capital to do their job.”

The three-member U.N. team, led by Togolese Judge Atsu-Koffi Amega, arrived in New York Tuesday for consultations after U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan decided they were unable to conduct their investigations at present. U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard sai d that the team’s entourage remains in Kinshasa to await the investigators’ return, but noted that Congolese authorities have yet to allow the United Nations to visit suspected massacre sites.

Kinshasha officials deny they have blocked the way of U.N. investigation, but have urged the world body only to focus on eastern Congo – where the massacre reports originated – rather than on western towns like Mbandaka, where the U.N. team has tried to gain access.

“The teams’ responsibilities are in the eastern part of our country where the largest group of Rwandan refugees was concentrated”, the Congo Foreign Minister Bizima Karaha told IPS last week.

Karaha argued that investigators have not visited the eastern sites because the U.N. refugee camps there “were run by people who committed the genocide” in Rwanda during 1994. But if the team visits those sites first, he contended, “the team can go an ywhere and the team will be assisted.”

The latest report however, fuels suspicions that such assurances are designed to provide time to destroy evidence of massacres at other sites. The two groups assert that many remote parts of the country still contain mass graves and decomposed bodies.

Since last October, the report alleges, “authorities have made concerted efforts to conceal the evidence of civilian killings” and have accomplished “the physical cleansing of massacre sites” in much of eastern Congo. Some evidence remains, however, of the attempt to wipe out refugees who lived in camps in the east after they fled Rwanda in 1994 until the ADFL began its military campaign last year.

“From the beginning of the war (against Mobutu) up to the present, ADFL troops or their allies, in particular those of Rwandan or ethnic Tutsi origin, have carried out large-scale killings of civilians, predominantly refugees as well as some Congolese,’ ‘ the report says. “In addition, the intentional blocking of humanitarian assistance to civilian refugees by ADFL troops is likely to have resulted in thousands of additional deaths.”

Among the culprits the groups cite is the RPA, which they contend aided in the Congo fighting and allegedly killed refugees “in revenge for the 1994 genocide in which Tutsi and moderate Hutu were systematically massacred” by many of the same armed forc es that dominated the refugee camps.

The groups pointed to Lt. Col. James Kabarebe, a field commander who has spent time in Uganda, as the most powerful officer in Congo-Kinshahaha “as of this writing” and the official most responsible for the refugees’ fate. But the military command, the groups say, also includes officers clearly seconded by the RPA, including commanders who fought under the pseudonyms David, Wilson and Richard. Several of the commanders, the report claims, were involved in a massacre of more than 1,300 people at Mbandak a in May this year.

The report raises questions over the reported presence of U.S. troops in the Comngo.

“European journalists, citing French intelligence and other sources, charged the United States with having its own soldiers in Congo,” the report says. “Witnesses in Kinshasa and Goma reported to HRW and FIDH that they had seen U.S. military in Congol ese territory on different occasions between November 1996 and August 1997.”

A diplomatic source told The Boston Globe that the U.S. soldiers and other officials were there only to monitor the ADFL, arguing, “We wanted to see if these guys were for real.” U.S. officials have denied involvement in the Congolese war, and some hav e countered that the reports are French misinformation.

Similarly, Karaha has refuted claims of Rwandan involvement in the campaign, calling those reports “pure propaganda.” But Rwandan officials, including Army chief and Vice President Paul Kagame, have admitted to journalists that Rwandan troops were invo lved in at least the eastern battles against Mobutu’s tottering army.