GOMA, Democratic Republic of Congo — The lights are out in most of Goma. There is little water. The prison is an empty, garbage-strewn wasteland with its rusty front gate swinging wide open and a three-foot hole punched through the back wall, letting loose 1,200 killers, rapists, rogue soldiers and other criminals.
Now, rebel fighters are going house to house arresting people, many of whom have not been seen again by their families.
“You say the littlest thing and they disappear you,” said an unemployed man named Luke.
In the past week, the rebels have been unstoppable, steamrolling through one town after another, seizing this provincial capital, and eviscerating a dysfunctional Congolese Army whose drunken soldiers stumble around with rocket-propelled grenades and whose chief of staff was suspended for selling crates of ammunition to elephant poachers.
Riots are exploding across the country — in Bukavu, Butembo, Bunia, Kisangani and Kinshasa, the capital, a thousand miles away. Mobs are pouring into streets, burning down government buildings and demanding the ouster of Congo’s weak and widely despised president, Joseph Kabila.
Once again, chaos is courting Congo. And one pressing question is, why — after all the billions of dollars spent on peacekeepers, the recent legislation passed on Capitol Hill to cut the link between the illicit mineral trade and insurrection, and all the aid money and diplomatic capital — is this vast nation in the heart of Africa descending to where it was more than 10 years ago when foreign armies and marauding rebels carved it into fiefs?
“We haven’t really touched the root cause,” said Aloys Tegera, a director for the Pole Institute, a research institute in Goma.
He said Congo’s chronic instability is rooted in very local tensions over land, power and identity, especially along the Rwandan and Ugandan borders. “But no one wants to touch this because it’s too complicated,” he added.
The most realistic solution, said another Congo analyst, is not a formal peace process driven by diplomats but “a peace among all the dons, like Don Corleone imposed in New York.”
Congo’s problems have been festering for years, wounds that never quite scabbed over.
But last week there was new urgency after hundreds of rebel fighters, wearing rubber swamp boots and with belt-fed machine guns slung across their backs, marched into Goma, the capital of North Kivu Province and one of the country’s most important cities.
The rebels, called the M23, are a heavily armed paradox. On one hand, they are ruthless. Human rights groups have documented how they have slaughtered civilians, pulling confused villagers out of their huts in the middle of the night and shooting them in the head.
On the other hand, the M23 are able administrators — seemingly far better than the Congolese government, evidenced by a visit in recent days to their stronghold, Rutshuru, a small town about 45 miles from Goma.
In Rutshuru, there are none of those ubiquitous plastic bags twisted in the trees, like in so many other parts of Congo. The gravel roads have been swept clean and the government offices are spotless. Hand-painted signs read: “M23 Stop Corruption.” The rebels even have green thumbs, planting thousands of trees in recent months to fight soil erosion.
“We are not a rebellion,” said Benjamin Mbonimpa, an electrical engineer, a bush fighter and now a top rebel administrator. “We are a revolution.”
Their aims, he said, were to overthrow the government and set up a more equitable, decentralized political system. This is why the rebels have balked at negotiating with Mr. Kabila, though this weekend several rebels said that the pressure was increasing on them to compromise, especially coming from Western countries.
On Sunday, rebel forces and government troops were still squared off, just a few miles apart, down the road from Goma.
The M23 rebels are widely believed to be covertly supported by Rwanda, which has a long history of meddling in Congo, its neighbor blessed with gold, diamonds and other glittering mineral riches. The Rwandan government strenuously denies supplying weapons to the M23 or trying to annex eastern Congo. Rwanda has often denied any clandestine involvement in this country, only to have the denials later exposed as lies.
Many people in Goma don’t like the fact that the M23 is so closely linked to Rwanda, with Rwandan-speaking soldiers strutting around this city as if they own it — which they do right now. But the venom toward Joseph Kabila seems even greater.
The lights are now out in most of the city, the prison is empty, water is scarce and the rebels are going door to door arresting people.
“He treats us like street kids,” said Kalimbiro Kambere, a police officer who makes only $50 a month, despite 37 years in service. “No one wants to fight for him.”
Few countries in the world have been as disastrously ruled as Congo. Western interference has not helped — from the 1880s when King Leopold II of Belgium turned Congo into an enormous labor camp to produce as much rubber and ivory as possible, to the violence in the Goma area today, which may have been set into motion by a miscalculation on the part of Western ambassadors.
Last November, Mr. Kabila ran for re-election. He was widely unpopular, suspected of hoarding millions if not billions of dollars from mineral deals and leaving the bridges, roads, hospitals and schools a fiasco.
During the election, his agents were caught red-handed stuffing ballot boxes, and his soldiers gunned down opposition supporters who protested. But Western diplomats, though expressing unhappiness, did not press the case.
Several Congolese and Western rights advocates and analysts said that the diplomatic corps then urged Mr. Kabila to arrest Bosco Ntaganda, a Rwandan-speaking army general nicknamed the Terminator, who had been a commander in several brutal rebel groups and was wanted for years by the International Criminal Court on war crimes charges.
“Kabila miscalculated,” Mr. Tegera said. “And so did the West. They pressured him.”
In March, as Mr. Kabila began to move against Mr. Ntaganda and threatened to dislodge the Rwandan-speaking rebels who had been incorporated into the national army, they mutinied. They were far more powerful than the government expected, and United Nations officials said the rebels quickly drew reinforcements from Rwanda. They seized town after town, culminating in Goma, where power lines were cut in the fighting, casting it into darkness. At each battle, the government army unraveled.
The bodies of government soldiers now litter the roads around Goma, someone’s father or son rotting in the bush, eye sockets and mouth sizzling with flies. Villagers trudge past, looking away. For them, misery is a familiar face.
On Friday, Alfonse Kiburura stood in front of his twig and tarp hut in a camp for displaced people. The rains are falling hard now, every day. His family curls up on a floor of cold, wet mud.
This was the second time this year that the Kibururas have had to pick up everything they own, throw it over their heads and dash down the road away from the combat. Mr. Kiburura said that as soon as his 5-year-old son, Destin, heard gunfire, the boy knew what to do.
“This isn’t the first time he’s heard gunshots,” he said. “He’s heard them many times before.”
Source: New York Times
Showing posts with label M23. Show all posts
Showing posts with label M23. Show all posts
Monday, November 26, 2012
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
DR Congo: US Should Urge Rwanda to End M23 Support
The United States government should publicly support sanctions against Rwandan officials backing the armed group M23, which has been responsible for widespread war crimes in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. M23 rebels, whose commanders have been implicated in serious abuses, captured the city of Goma on November 20, 2012.
“The US government’s silence on Rwandan military support to the M23 rebels can no longer be justified given the overwhelming evidence of Rwanda’s role and the imminent threat to civilians around Goma,” said Tom Malinowski, Washington director at Human Rights Watch. “The US government should support urgent sanctions against Rwandan officials who are backing M23 fighters responsible for serious abuses.”
Rwandan military support for the M23 rebels has been evident in their offensive that began on November 15, Human Rights Watch said. Several civilians living near the Rwandan border told Human Rights Watch that they saw hundreds of Rwandan army soldiers crossing the border from Rwanda into Congo at Njerima hill, Kasizi, and Kabuhanga in apparent support of M23 fighters. Human Rights Watch has also documented several incidents in which Rwandan and Congolese soldiers fired across the border from either side between November 16 and 20.
A draft of the final report of the United Nations Group of Experts on the Democratic Republic of Congo, soon to be published, alleges that the Rwandan government has provided “direct military support to M23 rebels” and that the “M23’s de facto chain of command includes General Bosco Ntaganda and culminates with the Rwandan Minister of Defense General James Kabarebe.” Ntaganda is on the UN sanctions list and is sought on arrest warrants from the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Human Rights Watch has independently established that the Rwandan army has regularly provided significant military support to the M23, including overseeing operational planning, providing weapons and ammunition, recruiting at least 600 people in Rwanda to fight for the M23, training new recruits, and deploying Rwandan army troops to eastern Congo in direct support of M23 rebels.
Over the past seven months, Human Rights Watch has documented widespread war crimes by M23 rebels in eastern Congo, including summary executions, rapes, and forced recruitment, including of children. Rwandan officials may be complicit in war crimes through their military assistance to M23 forces throughout this period, Human Rights Watch said.
The draft UN Group of Experts’ report says that, “Rwandan officials coordinated the creation of the rebel movement as well as its major military operations” and “provided military support to M23 through permanent troop reinforcement and clandestine support by RDF [Rwandan Defence Forces] special units.” The Group of Experts found that “RDF commanders operated alongside M23 and provided logistical support during the July 2012 operations which enabled the capture of Bunagana, Rutshuru, Kiwanja and Rumangabo.” During these operations, “the rebels killed one [UN] peacekeeper at Bunagana and fired on the [UN peacekeeping] base at Kiwanja,” the report states.
The Group of Experts also documented support to the M23 by commanders of the Ugandan People’s Defence Force. While stating that “Rwandan officials exercise overall command and strategic planning for M23,” they note that “senior Government of Uganda officials have also provided support to M23 in the form of direct troop reinforcement in DRC territory, weapons deliveries, [and] technical assistance.”
“The fall of Goma to the M23 magnifies the security risks to civilians in eastern Congo,” Malinowski said. “As a permanent member of the UN Security Council, the US should press for sanctions that target not only the M23 but the foreign officials backing their atrocities.”
The Group of Experts has recommended individual sanctions against several Rwandan and Ugandan officials named in its report.
The M23’s latest offensive began on November 15 with M23 rebels fighting UN peacekeepers and Congolese army forces as the rebels progressed toward Goma. By the early afternoon of November 20, after heavy fighting in and around Goma, the M23 had taken control of key areas of Goma. Congolese army soldiers had fled the town, while UN peacekeepers were still present.
Human Rights Watch has received reports of at least 11 civilians killed and dozens of others wounded during the fighting in and around Goma since November 15. An estimated 80,000 people are newly displaced in the area around Goma, including an estimated 60,000 who were in a displacement camp about 10 kilometers outside Goma, according to the UN Office for Humanitarian Affairs.
“The US should endorse all measures that would enable UN sanctions against Rwandan officials who are assisting the M23,” Malinowski said. “All parties to the conflict should take urgent measures to protect civilians and stop abuses.”
Background on the M23
The M23 is largely made up of soldiers who took part in a mutiny from the Congolese army between late March and May 2012. Many were previously members of the National Congress for the Defense of the People (CNDP), a former Rwanda-backed rebel group that integrated into the Congolese army in January 2009. Bosco Ntaganda, who was then a general in the Congolese army, initially led the mutiny. In May, Col. Sultani Makenga, a former colleague of Ntaganda in the CNDP, announced he was beginning a separate mutiny. In the days that followed, Ntaganda and his forces joined Makenga. The new armed group called itself the M23. The M23 claimed the mutiny was to protest the Congolese government’s failure to fully implement the March 23, 2009 peace agreement (hence the name M23), which had integrated them into the Congolese army.
Some of the M23’s senior commanders have well-known histories of serious abuses, committed over the past decade in eastern Congo as they moved from one armed group to another. They have been responsible for ethnic massacres, recruitment of children, mass rape, killings, abductions, and torture. Before the mutinies, at least five of the M23 leaders were on a UN black list of people with whom the UN would not collaborate due to their human rights records.
Ntaganda has been wanted by the International Criminal Court since 2006 for recruiting and using child soldiers in Ituri district in northeastern Congo in 2002 and 2003. In July, the court issued a second warrant against him for war crimes and crimes against humanity, namely murder, persecution based on ethnic grounds, rape, sexual slavery, and pillaging, also in connection with his activities in Ituri.
Human Rights Watch has documented numerous war crimes and crimes against humanity by troops under Ntaganda’s command, as well as by other M23 commanders, including Col. Makenga, Col. Innocent Zimurinda, Col. Baudouin Ngaruye, and Col. Innocent Kayna.
On November 12, 2012, the UN Security Council added Makenga to its list of individuals under sanctions, including an asset freeze and a travel ban. On November 13, the US imposed sanctions on Makenga, which includes an asset freeze and forbids American citizens from undertaking any transactions with him.
Source: Human Rights Watch
“The US government’s silence on Rwandan military support to the M23 rebels can no longer be justified given the overwhelming evidence of Rwanda’s role and the imminent threat to civilians around Goma,” said Tom Malinowski, Washington director at Human Rights Watch. “The US government should support urgent sanctions against Rwandan officials who are backing M23 fighters responsible for serious abuses.”
Rwandan military support for the M23 rebels has been evident in their offensive that began on November 15, Human Rights Watch said. Several civilians living near the Rwandan border told Human Rights Watch that they saw hundreds of Rwandan army soldiers crossing the border from Rwanda into Congo at Njerima hill, Kasizi, and Kabuhanga in apparent support of M23 fighters. Human Rights Watch has also documented several incidents in which Rwandan and Congolese soldiers fired across the border from either side between November 16 and 20.
A draft of the final report of the United Nations Group of Experts on the Democratic Republic of Congo, soon to be published, alleges that the Rwandan government has provided “direct military support to M23 rebels” and that the “M23’s de facto chain of command includes General Bosco Ntaganda and culminates with the Rwandan Minister of Defense General James Kabarebe.” Ntaganda is on the UN sanctions list and is sought on arrest warrants from the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Human Rights Watch has independently established that the Rwandan army has regularly provided significant military support to the M23, including overseeing operational planning, providing weapons and ammunition, recruiting at least 600 people in Rwanda to fight for the M23, training new recruits, and deploying Rwandan army troops to eastern Congo in direct support of M23 rebels.
Over the past seven months, Human Rights Watch has documented widespread war crimes by M23 rebels in eastern Congo, including summary executions, rapes, and forced recruitment, including of children. Rwandan officials may be complicit in war crimes through their military assistance to M23 forces throughout this period, Human Rights Watch said.
The draft UN Group of Experts’ report says that, “Rwandan officials coordinated the creation of the rebel movement as well as its major military operations” and “provided military support to M23 through permanent troop reinforcement and clandestine support by RDF [Rwandan Defence Forces] special units.” The Group of Experts found that “RDF commanders operated alongside M23 and provided logistical support during the July 2012 operations which enabled the capture of Bunagana, Rutshuru, Kiwanja and Rumangabo.” During these operations, “the rebels killed one [UN] peacekeeper at Bunagana and fired on the [UN peacekeeping] base at Kiwanja,” the report states.
The Group of Experts also documented support to the M23 by commanders of the Ugandan People’s Defence Force. While stating that “Rwandan officials exercise overall command and strategic planning for M23,” they note that “senior Government of Uganda officials have also provided support to M23 in the form of direct troop reinforcement in DRC territory, weapons deliveries, [and] technical assistance.”
“The fall of Goma to the M23 magnifies the security risks to civilians in eastern Congo,” Malinowski said. “As a permanent member of the UN Security Council, the US should press for sanctions that target not only the M23 but the foreign officials backing their atrocities.”
The Group of Experts has recommended individual sanctions against several Rwandan and Ugandan officials named in its report.
The M23’s latest offensive began on November 15 with M23 rebels fighting UN peacekeepers and Congolese army forces as the rebels progressed toward Goma. By the early afternoon of November 20, after heavy fighting in and around Goma, the M23 had taken control of key areas of Goma. Congolese army soldiers had fled the town, while UN peacekeepers were still present.
Human Rights Watch has received reports of at least 11 civilians killed and dozens of others wounded during the fighting in and around Goma since November 15. An estimated 80,000 people are newly displaced in the area around Goma, including an estimated 60,000 who were in a displacement camp about 10 kilometers outside Goma, according to the UN Office for Humanitarian Affairs.
“The US should endorse all measures that would enable UN sanctions against Rwandan officials who are assisting the M23,” Malinowski said. “All parties to the conflict should take urgent measures to protect civilians and stop abuses.”
Background on the M23
The M23 is largely made up of soldiers who took part in a mutiny from the Congolese army between late March and May 2012. Many were previously members of the National Congress for the Defense of the People (CNDP), a former Rwanda-backed rebel group that integrated into the Congolese army in January 2009. Bosco Ntaganda, who was then a general in the Congolese army, initially led the mutiny. In May, Col. Sultani Makenga, a former colleague of Ntaganda in the CNDP, announced he was beginning a separate mutiny. In the days that followed, Ntaganda and his forces joined Makenga. The new armed group called itself the M23. The M23 claimed the mutiny was to protest the Congolese government’s failure to fully implement the March 23, 2009 peace agreement (hence the name M23), which had integrated them into the Congolese army.
Some of the M23’s senior commanders have well-known histories of serious abuses, committed over the past decade in eastern Congo as they moved from one armed group to another. They have been responsible for ethnic massacres, recruitment of children, mass rape, killings, abductions, and torture. Before the mutinies, at least five of the M23 leaders were on a UN black list of people with whom the UN would not collaborate due to their human rights records.
Ntaganda has been wanted by the International Criminal Court since 2006 for recruiting and using child soldiers in Ituri district in northeastern Congo in 2002 and 2003. In July, the court issued a second warrant against him for war crimes and crimes against humanity, namely murder, persecution based on ethnic grounds, rape, sexual slavery, and pillaging, also in connection with his activities in Ituri.
Human Rights Watch has documented numerous war crimes and crimes against humanity by troops under Ntaganda’s command, as well as by other M23 commanders, including Col. Makenga, Col. Innocent Zimurinda, Col. Baudouin Ngaruye, and Col. Innocent Kayna.
On November 12, 2012, the UN Security Council added Makenga to its list of individuals under sanctions, including an asset freeze and a travel ban. On November 13, the US imposed sanctions on Makenga, which includes an asset freeze and forbids American citizens from undertaking any transactions with him.
Source: Human Rights Watch
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
Widespread human rights abuses committed by Congo rebels
Rebels in eastern DRC who allegedly are receiving support from neighbouring Rwanda have committed widespread war crimes including dozens of rapes and killings, Human Rights Watch said in a report on Tuesday. Congo’s eastern hills — haunted by armed groups for nearly two decades — have seen six months of bloody clashes after hundreds of soldiers defected from the army, sparking a conflict that has forced at least 220 000 people to flee their homes.
United Nations experts say that Rwandan officials have provided logistical support and troops to the uprising, known as M23, although Kigali strongly rejects the claims. Allegations of widespread human rights abuses by M23 come as efforts to find a solution to the crisis appear to be stalling, with the UN’s peacekeeping head saying the deployment of a neutral force to tackle the rebels remains “only a concept”.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a statement on Tuesday that at least 33 of M23’s own fighters had been executed for trying to desert, while 15 civilians also had been deliberately killed in rebel held territories since June.
“The M23 rebels are committing a horrific trail of new atrocities in eastern Congo,” Anneke van Woudenberg, HRW’s senior Africa researcher, said.
The rights group said it had based its research on nearly 200 interviews and had uncovered evidence of at least 46 women and girls who had been raped.
One victim said that M23 fighters had burst into her home, beaten her son to death and repeatedly raped her before dousing her legs in petrol and setting her ablaze, the rights group said.
M23 did not respond to telephone calls and messages requesting comments on Monday night, but HRW said that M23’s leader, Colonel Sultani Makenga, denied allegations of human rights abuses, including widespread forced recruitment.
“We recruit our brothers, not by force, but because they want to help us... That’s their decision,” Makenga is quoted as saying.
HRW also said that at least 600 men and boys have been forcibly or unlawfully recruited in neighbouring Rwanda, with recruitment continuing after allegations of Rwandan complicity were published in an interim UN report in June.
“The United Nations Security Council should sanction M23 leaders, as well as Rwandan officials who are helping them, for serious rights abuses,” van Woudenberg said.
NO NEUTRAL FORCE YET
Rwanda’s leaders have denied any involvement in the M23 rebellion, and have accused the U.N. team behind the report of bias, but that has not stopped several international partners, including the United States and Sweden, from suspending aid to Kigali.
A recent lull in fighting has seen opinions as to the real situation on the ground diverging, with the UK restarting some of its blocked budget support, saying that Rwanda was constructively engaged in the search for a solution.
But in his message to regional leaders at a conference over the weekend, UN secretary General Ban Ki Moon said that the humanitarian situation remained dire, and that he was “deeply concerned by continuing reports of external support to the M23.”
The regional meeting in Kampala, which Rwandan president Paul Kagame did not attend, failed to hammer out the details of a proposed neutral force to police the border between Congo and Rwanda, despite an offer of troops from Tanzania.
On Monday the U.N. under secretary general in charge of peacekeeping poured cold water on the idea of the world body providing direct backing for a neutral force, which has been agreed in principle by both Kinshasa and Kigali.
“I think the concept needs to be fleshed out... I would not think that the security council would be in a position to make a determination just on an idea,” Herve Ladsous told journalists at a press conference in Kinshasa.
Source: Times Live
United Nations experts say that Rwandan officials have provided logistical support and troops to the uprising, known as M23, although Kigali strongly rejects the claims. Allegations of widespread human rights abuses by M23 come as efforts to find a solution to the crisis appear to be stalling, with the UN’s peacekeeping head saying the deployment of a neutral force to tackle the rebels remains “only a concept”.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a statement on Tuesday that at least 33 of M23’s own fighters had been executed for trying to desert, while 15 civilians also had been deliberately killed in rebel held territories since June.
“The M23 rebels are committing a horrific trail of new atrocities in eastern Congo,” Anneke van Woudenberg, HRW’s senior Africa researcher, said.
The rights group said it had based its research on nearly 200 interviews and had uncovered evidence of at least 46 women and girls who had been raped.
One victim said that M23 fighters had burst into her home, beaten her son to death and repeatedly raped her before dousing her legs in petrol and setting her ablaze, the rights group said.
M23 did not respond to telephone calls and messages requesting comments on Monday night, but HRW said that M23’s leader, Colonel Sultani Makenga, denied allegations of human rights abuses, including widespread forced recruitment.
“We recruit our brothers, not by force, but because they want to help us... That’s their decision,” Makenga is quoted as saying.
HRW also said that at least 600 men and boys have been forcibly or unlawfully recruited in neighbouring Rwanda, with recruitment continuing after allegations of Rwandan complicity were published in an interim UN report in June.
“The United Nations Security Council should sanction M23 leaders, as well as Rwandan officials who are helping them, for serious rights abuses,” van Woudenberg said.
NO NEUTRAL FORCE YET
Rwanda’s leaders have denied any involvement in the M23 rebellion, and have accused the U.N. team behind the report of bias, but that has not stopped several international partners, including the United States and Sweden, from suspending aid to Kigali.
A recent lull in fighting has seen opinions as to the real situation on the ground diverging, with the UK restarting some of its blocked budget support, saying that Rwanda was constructively engaged in the search for a solution.
But in his message to regional leaders at a conference over the weekend, UN secretary General Ban Ki Moon said that the humanitarian situation remained dire, and that he was “deeply concerned by continuing reports of external support to the M23.”
The regional meeting in Kampala, which Rwandan president Paul Kagame did not attend, failed to hammer out the details of a proposed neutral force to police the border between Congo and Rwanda, despite an offer of troops from Tanzania.
On Monday the U.N. under secretary general in charge of peacekeeping poured cold water on the idea of the world body providing direct backing for a neutral force, which has been agreed in principle by both Kinshasa and Kigali.
“I think the concept needs to be fleshed out... I would not think that the security council would be in a position to make a determination just on an idea,” Herve Ladsous told journalists at a press conference in Kinshasa.
Source: Times Live
Tuesday, June 19, 2012
Congo war crimes suspects named
The U.N.'s top human rights official on Tuesday named five Congo rebel leaders who she says may be responsible for war crimes, a rare step prompted by concerns that their group - known as M23 - could continue to rape and kill civilians in the east of the country.
Navi Pillay, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, frequently speaks out about serious abuses being committed around the world, but it is unusual for her to single out individuals unless they are suspected of being responsible for large-scale atrocities.
“The leaders of the M23 figure among the worst perpetrators of human rights violations in the Democratic Republic of Congo, or in the world for that matter,” Pillay said in a statement issued by her Geneva-based office.
The newly formed group is composed of former rebel fighters who were integrated into the army after a 2009 peace deal but have since deserted again.
Pillay named the group's leaders as Col. Sultani Makenga; Col. Baudouin Ngaruye, Col. Innocent Zimurinda; Col. Innocent Kaina; and Gen. Bosco Ntaganda.
“Many of them may have been responsible for war crimes,” she said, noting their “appalling track records including allegations of involvement in mass rape, and of responsibility for massacres and for the recruitment and use of children.”
Ntaganda is already wanted by the International Criminal Court on war crimes charges for recruiting and using child soldiers between 2002 and 2003.
Makenga, too, recruited child soldiers and is suspected of involvement in a 2008 massacre in which his then group, the CNDP, executed at least 67 civilians in Kiwandja in Congo's North Kivu region. The U.N. also linked him to the 2007 killing by another rebel group, the FARDC, of 14 civilians in Buramba, North Kivu.
Fighting between rebels and the army has flared up again in North Kivu since April, causing more than 200,000 people to flee their homes.
Abuses attributed to Ngaruye include recruitment of child soldiers and involvement in the killing of up to 139 people in Shalio, North Kivu, in April 2009. The FARDC troops believed responsible also abducted about 40 women, some of whom were gang-raped and mutilated, the U.N. said.
Zimurinda is also alleged to have had command responsibility for the Kiwandja and Shalio massacres. The U.N. Security Council placed him on a sanctions and travel ban list in Dec. 2010.
Pillay said Kaina “is alleged to have been involved in a range of human rights abuses including crimes committed in Ituri, Orientale province, in 2004.” He was arrested by Congolese authorities in June 2006, but released without trial less than three years later.
“Every effort must be made to hold these men, and the soldiers under their command, accountable for human rights violations committed against civilians, both for crimes committed within the context of the current mutiny, and also for offences committed previously,” Pillay said.
“I fear the very real possibility that they will inflict additional horrors on the civilian population as they attack villages in eastern DRC,” she added.
Source: IoL
Navi Pillay, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, frequently speaks out about serious abuses being committed around the world, but it is unusual for her to single out individuals unless they are suspected of being responsible for large-scale atrocities.
“The leaders of the M23 figure among the worst perpetrators of human rights violations in the Democratic Republic of Congo, or in the world for that matter,” Pillay said in a statement issued by her Geneva-based office.
The newly formed group is composed of former rebel fighters who were integrated into the army after a 2009 peace deal but have since deserted again.
Pillay named the group's leaders as Col. Sultani Makenga; Col. Baudouin Ngaruye, Col. Innocent Zimurinda; Col. Innocent Kaina; and Gen. Bosco Ntaganda.
“Many of them may have been responsible for war crimes,” she said, noting their “appalling track records including allegations of involvement in mass rape, and of responsibility for massacres and for the recruitment and use of children.”
Ntaganda is already wanted by the International Criminal Court on war crimes charges for recruiting and using child soldiers between 2002 and 2003.
Makenga, too, recruited child soldiers and is suspected of involvement in a 2008 massacre in which his then group, the CNDP, executed at least 67 civilians in Kiwandja in Congo's North Kivu region. The U.N. also linked him to the 2007 killing by another rebel group, the FARDC, of 14 civilians in Buramba, North Kivu.
Fighting between rebels and the army has flared up again in North Kivu since April, causing more than 200,000 people to flee their homes.
Abuses attributed to Ngaruye include recruitment of child soldiers and involvement in the killing of up to 139 people in Shalio, North Kivu, in April 2009. The FARDC troops believed responsible also abducted about 40 women, some of whom were gang-raped and mutilated, the U.N. said.
Zimurinda is also alleged to have had command responsibility for the Kiwandja and Shalio massacres. The U.N. Security Council placed him on a sanctions and travel ban list in Dec. 2010.
Pillay said Kaina “is alleged to have been involved in a range of human rights abuses including crimes committed in Ituri, Orientale province, in 2004.” He was arrested by Congolese authorities in June 2006, but released without trial less than three years later.
“Every effort must be made to hold these men, and the soldiers under their command, accountable for human rights violations committed against civilians, both for crimes committed within the context of the current mutiny, and also for offences committed previously,” Pillay said.
“I fear the very real possibility that they will inflict additional horrors on the civilian population as they attack villages in eastern DRC,” she added.
Source: IoL
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