RIGHTS-CONGO: 180,000 ‘Perfect Murders’? Impossible, Says UN

By Gustavo Capdevila Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Apr 20 1998 (IPS) - The perfect murder does not exist, let alone 180,000 perfect murders – the number of persons who disappeared in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) from October 1996 to May 1997, according to the UN special rapporteur on human rights in the DRC.

Chilean jurist Roberto Garreton said all historic truths, such as what happened in the former Zaire during the war of liberation against dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, eventually came to light.

Garreton said the truth about the reported massacres could be reconstructed through witness testimony, other documents and satellite images, and urged against a loss of hope in spite of the scarce progress made by his UN investigative team, sent to the DRC Jul. 8, 1997, and withdrawn last week.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan announced his decision last Friday, based on the constant obstacles set in the way of the team’s investigations by the government of the central African country, headed by President Laurent-Desire Kabila.

Experts were blocked from digging in areas where common graves were reported, while authorities harassed and intimidated witnesses who gave testimony to the UN team, said Annan.

The last incident took place Apr. 7 and 8, he added, when one of the team’s members, Canadian national Christopher Harland, was kicked out of the eastern city of Goma, and then detained in the airport of Kinshasa, the capital.

Minister of Justice of the DRC, Mwenze Kongolo, told the UN Human Rights Commission last week in Geneva that Harland had awakened suspicions among the security services by using two different identity documents – a free transit certificate issued by the UN and his Canadian passport.

Annan said his decision to pull the team out was based on the DRC government’s “total lack of cooperation.”

He pointed out, however, that the alleged massacres of 180,000 Hutu refugees from Rwanda, missing since the DRC’s refugee camps were closed in September 1997, remained under the jurisdiction of the Human Rights Commission, comprised of representatives of 53 countries.

The Commission is to reach a decision Tuesday on its evaluation of the human rights situation in the DRC and the pending investigation of the reported massacres. The Commission will vote on a draft resolution to extend Garreton’s mandate as special rapporteur for human rights in the DRC, to allow him to present his report at the Commission’s next session in March 1999.

Human rights groups predict that the Commission will unanimously renew Garreton’s mandate.

Three of the 53 members of the Commission – the DRC, Rwanda and Uganda – are governed by Tutsis, the ethnic group which lost up to one million of its members in the 1994 genocide waged by extremist Hutus in Rwanda.

A year ago, the government of the DRC refused to allow Garreton to enter the country. Then, in May 1997, it blocked the investigation by a Joint Mission designated by the UN Human Rights Commission.

The Joint Mission was comprised of Garreton, UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary and arbitrary executions Bacre Waly Ndiaye, and Jonas Foli, a member of the UN working group on forced and involuntary disappearances.

Although Garreton called Annan’s decision to pull his team out of the DRC “correct,” he said he was afraid the investigation would grind to a halt. Impunity is the most disturbing aspect, he added, because there are people who will begin to take advantage of the situation to escape punishment.

Nevertheless, his inability to enter the DRC did not preclude an investigation, said Garreton.

While certain scientific procedures can only be carried out at the site of the crime and in the immediate surroundings, a judge does not necessarily need to visit the site of a crime that has been repeatedly committed, he pointed out. Police reports and witness testimony are often enough, because if one piece of evidence is missing, another will be available, he added.

No one ever counted the corpses in Auschwitz, for example, but everyone knew how many there were, who the victims were, and who killed them, he said.

Garreton added that he was confident that images obtained by satellite would help clear up what happened, pointing out that photos taken by satellite played a key role in the probe into the excesses committed in the former Yugoslavia.

Minister Kongolo reproached the international community for forgetting its responsibility in the two recent calamities that hit Africa’s Great Lakes region: the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and the refugee crisis in the eastern part of former Zaire.

The genocide in Rwanda consisted of the physical elimination of almost one million Tutsis and moderate Hutus, he said.

After instigating and organising the genocide in Rwanda, the country’s former leaders, with the complicity of certain UN member countries, orchestrated the mass deportation of the population towards the eastern part of what was still Zaire, he maintained.

The operation, said Kongolo, had UN support and was staged by France under the name Operation Turquoise. It consisted of evacuating the ringleaders of the genocide, who took thousands of innocent persons as hostages to accompany them on their flight to Zaire.

The minister said he was sorry that a heavyweight investigative mission was never sent to Rwanda to identify those guilty of the genocide.

RIGHTS-CONGO: 180,000 ‘Perfect Murders’? Impossible, Says UN

By Gustavo Capdevila Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Apr 20 1998 (IPS) - The perfect murder does not exist, let alone 180,000 perfect murders – the number of persons who disappeared in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) from October 1996 to May 1997, according to the UN special rapporteur on human rights in the DRC.
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