Questions raised on Congo slaughter

FILE - In this May 19, 1997 file photo, a Hutu refugee with his hands bound begs for his life while being jabbed with a machete and punched by two Alliance soldiers, who the photographer identified as Rwandan Tutsis, 47 kilometers south of Kisangani, Congo, then Zaire. According to the photographer, the soldiers killed him seconds later. The discovery of mass graves prompted investigations that led to a controversial U.N. report published on Oct. 1, 2010 which accuses invading Rwandan troops of killing tens of thousands of Hutus 1996 and 1997. (AP Photo, FIle)

AP Enterprise: Questions raised on Congo slaughter


By MICHELLE FAUL (AP) – 5 hours ago
MUSEKERA, Congo — The mass graves are hidden in the darkening shade of a hard-to-reach banana plantation, high up a mountain above the cloud line, at the end of a treacherous dirt track slippery with mud and animal dung.
Those who survived say they did not go to the meeting called by Rwandan soldiers.
The Congolese Hutu peasants who did were brought out of the thatched-roof meeting house two by two, to be bludgeoned to death with their own hoes, picks and axes. Some 300 villagers died that morning of Oct. 20, 1996, according to the local Observation Center for Human Rights and Social Assistance.
The story of the 1994 genocide of more than a half million Tutsis slaughtered by Hutus in Rwanda has been told in the world's press, in books and in movies such as "Hotel Rwanda." But the subsequent slaughter of Hutus in neighboring Congo is little known, and its perpetrators never have been brought to justice. The discovery of mass graves prompted investigations that led to a controversial U.N. report published on Oct. 1, which accuses invading Rwandan troops of killing tens of thousands of Hutus in 1996 and 1997.
"There are many, many such mass graves. We've identified 30 just in this Rutshuru district, but our research indicates that this was the first massacre committed by Rwandan troops," the center's coordinator, Herve Nsabimana, said beside the banana trees.
Many victims told their wives to take the youngest children and hide in the fields. Today, Musekera is a village of widows. The only man over 50 was at a nearby health center during the massacre.
Matata Ihigihugo has relatives in three mass graves: her husband and two sons in the one reserved for males, a sister in the women's grave, and her 8-year-old daughter in the one where children's small bodies were buried.
"They killed all my people. I have no life left," said Ihigihugo, who thinks she is 40 but looks many years older.
She objected to being asked to name her massacred family. "Why do you ask me to call out the names of those who are dead?" she demanded. "There can be no peace for me until they are properly buried."
It was the Rwandan Tutsi soldiers, led by now-president Paul Kagame, who as rebels ended Rwanda's 1994 genocide. But they now are accused of vengeful massacres of Hutus when they took the war into Congo.



Roberto Garreton, a Chilean lawyer who for eight years was the U.N. special rapporteur in Congo, told The Associated Press that his first report detailing massacres by Kagame's troops involved Hutus killed in Rwanda in 1994. He said the United Nations suppressed that report, apparently because of embarrassment and guilt that it did nothing to stop the genocide. The United Nations initially denied the existence of the report, which later was leaked.



After the Tutsi rebels triumphed and took over Rwanda's government, Kagame became vice president and defense minister. He sent troops into Congo in 1996 - although he denied it at the time - in an invasion that led to the ouster of Congo's longtime dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko.



U.N. reports in 1997 and 1998, including one by Garreton, blamed a coalition of Congolese rebel forces that Kagame later admitted were commanded by Rwandan officers for massacres of Hutus, and said they were on a scale to suggest a possible genocide. Then-U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan responded by asking Congo and Rwanda to investigate the allegations - basically to investigate themselves.
The evidence later became too big to sweep under the carpet. In 2005, U.N. peacekeepers uncovered mass graves in east Congo of hundreds of civilians believed to have been executed by Rwandan soldiers. The discovery prompted renewed investigations that culminated in the latest U.N. report, which said the killings in Congo were so systematic that a court could consider it genocide.
The report recommends that those responsible be punished but doesn't name names. Congo has said it is willing to establish a transnational court to punish those responsible. After months of denials that Rwandan troops were in Congo, Kagame took ownership of the invasion, admitting he had planned and ordered it. Among officers commanding the coalition forces was Joseph Kabila, now president of Congo.



Last month, 40 Congolese police officers and a few army military investigators completed a course in forensic science that trained them to find evidence in mass graves. It was paid for by the U.S. State Department and organized by the American Bar Association. The training was led by Peruvian forensic anthropologist Jose Pablo Baraybari, who has investigated massacres in Bosnia.



The trainees worked on dummies set up on mock graves, Elysee Sindayigaya said from the bar association's office in Goma, eastern Congo. "We're making representations to the government of Congo to try to get access to real mass graves, but it's very sensitive."



Kagame, whose reputation is pegged to the moral high ground of having stopped Rwanda's Hutu-led genocide while U.N. peacekeepers and the international community did nothing, tried to get the latest report quashed by threatening to withdraw Rwandan troops from U.N. peacekeeping operations in several countries, including the commander of the forces in Darfur, Sudan. The report was published with some language moderated, but the reference to possible genocide remained. Its publication was delayed to include lengthy rebuttals from Rwanda and Congo.



Rwanda's Foreign Minister Louise Mushikiwabo calls the report "an attempt to rewrite history" and "flawed and dangerous."



Kagame has succeeded in the past in stifling similar accusations.



"The question now is the same question there was then: Is there the political will to identify the killers and bring them to justice?" asked Reed Brody, a former deputy U.N. investigator who helped write the 1998 report.



Human rights activists say Kagame's allies in the U.S. and British governments, which pour aid into Rwanda and have used it as a platform to dilute French influence in the region, don't want him investigated. Many fear digging further could destabilize the already volatile Central African region.



Kagame was trained at the U.S. Army Command and Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, in 1990. Once he came into power, the U.S. Special Forces trained Rwandan troops before, during and after the invasion of Congo - even as U.N. and other investigators reported their alarm at alleged atrocities by the government soldiers.



Kagame has said his invasion of Congo was aimed at dismantling massive refugee camps that sheltered both Rwandan Hutu refugees and perpetrators of the genocide. At the time, reporters documented how the camps were being militarized by genocide perpetrators who used them as launch pads for cross-border raids into Rwanda.



Many times, Kagame urged the United Nations to separate the armed men from the refugees and dismantle the camps. Kagame has said that in 1996 he warned the United States and the United Nations that if they would not do it, he would.



A 1997 Human Rights Watch report that sought to identify commanders of the massacres said James Kabarebe, who became Rwanda's defense minister in April, was the most senior Rwandan officer in Congo during the invasion. Messages left at Rwanda's Ministry of Defense got no response to requests for a comment.



Kagame has said most of those who died were genocide perpetrators. But the new U.N. report says Rwandan troops routinely invited refugees or villagers to meetings and then slaughtered them.



"The extensive use of edged weapons (primarily hammers) and the apparently systematic nature of the massacres of survivors after the camps had been taken suggests that the numerous deaths cannot be attributed to the hazards of war or seen as equating to collateral damage," the report says, adding that most victims were "children, women, elderly people and the sick."



Like the report, Brody noted that the impunity established then has helped fuel violence in Congo that persists to this day.



"The fact that these killings of tens of thousands, if not more, went utterly unpunished, the fact that there was clearly not the political will to identify the authors of these massacres and to bring them to justice, has facilitated the cycle of violence," he said.



Brody said his own investigation in 1997 and 1998 was obstructed by Congo's government and by the U.S. Embassy in Kinshasa, the Congolese capital.

"We were asking the U.S. for information, for satellite photos we knew existed of the refugee camps. We never got a thing," he said. Requests for interviews about the role the United States military and its diplomats played during Rwanda's invasion of Congo all were referred to the U.S. State Department, which did not respond to questions. U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice, who was assistant secretary of state for African affairs from 1997, refused a request for an interview.
Brody said that while Washington probably felt tremendous guilt for not doing anything to stop the 1994 genocide and was glad that Rwanda helped rid Congo of Mobutu, "at the same time there were these thousands of cold-blooded unforgivable murders of, for the most part, unarmed people."
Uncovering the graves, proving how people were killed and even perhaps identifying them could bring closure for people like Ihigihugo, one of the widows of Musekera.



"There can be no rest for people buried like that," she said of the mass graves. "Giving a proper burial to my family also would put my heart at rest."

Les questions soulevées sur le Congo d'abattage

DOSSIER - En ce 19 mai 1997 photo d'archives, un réfugié hutu les mains liées supplie pour sa vie tout en étant piquée avec une machette et frappé par des soldats Alliance deux, qui était le photographe identifiés comme Tutsis rwandais, 47 km au sud de Kisangani, au Congo , alors le Zaïre. Selon le photographe, les soldats l'ont tué quelques secondes plus tard. La découverte de charniers suscité des recherches qui ont abouti à un rapport controversé de l'ONU publié le 1 octobre 2010 qui accuse les troupes d'invasion rwandaises d'avoir tué des dizaines de milliers de Hutus en 1996 et 1997. (Photo AP, Dossier)

Enterprise AP: Les questions soulevées sur le Congo d'abattage


Par Michelle FAUL (AP) - Il ya 5 heures

MUSEKERA, Congo - Les charniers sont cachés à l'ombre d'un assombrissement difficiles à atteindre des plantations de bananes, en haut d'une montagne au-dessus de la ligne de nuages, à la fin d'un chemin de terre glissante dangereuse avec de la bouse de boue et des animaux.

Ceux qui ont survécu disent qu'ils ne vont pas à la réunion convoquée par des militaires rwandais.
Les paysans Hutu congolais qui n'ont été mis hors de la maison au toit de chaume réunion deux par deux, d'être battue à mort avec leurs propres houes, pioches et de haches. Quelque 300 villageois sont morts ce matin du 20 octobre 1996, selon le Centre local d'observation des droits de l'homme et l'aide sociale.
L'histoire du génocide de 1994 de plus d'un demi-million de Tutsis massacrés par les Hutus au Rwanda a été dit dans la presse mondiale, dans les livres et dans des films comme "Hôtel Rwanda". Mais l'abattage ultérieur des Hutus au Congo voisin est peu connue, et ses auteurs n'ont jamais été traduits en justice. La découverte de charniers suscité des recherches qui ont abouti à un rapport controversé de l'ONU publié le 1 octobre, qui accuse les troupes d'invasion rwandaises d'avoir tué des dizaines de milliers de Hutus en 1996 et 1997.

"Il ya beaucoup, beaucoup de tels charniers. Nous avons identifié 30 seulement dans ce district de Rutshuru, mais notre recherche indique que ce fut le premier massacre commis par les troupes rwandaises,« coordinateur du centre, Hervé Nsabimana, a déclaré à côté de la bananiers.
Beaucoup de victimes ont dit à leurs épouses de prendre les plus jeunes enfants et se cachent dans les champs. Aujourd'hui, Musekera est un village de veuves. Le seul homme de plus de 50 a été dans un centre de santé de proximité pendant le massacre.
Matata Ihigihugo a des parents dans trois charniers: son mari et ses deux fils dans l'une réservée aux hommes, une sœur dans la tombe de la femme et sa fille de 8 ans dans celui où le corps des enfants petits ont été enterrés.
"Ils ont tué tous mes gens. Je n'ai pas de vie à gauche", a déclaré Ihigihugo, qui pense qu'elle est de 40, mais semble depuis de nombreuses années et plus.
Elle s'est opposée à leur demande de nom de sa famille massacrés. «Pourquoi me demandez-vous d'appeler les noms de ceux qui sont morts?" elle a exigé. "Il ne peut y avoir de paix pour moi jusqu'à ce qu'ils soient bien enterrés."
Il a été les soldats Tutsi rwandais, dirigé par maintenant-président Paul Kagame, qui en tant que rebelles terminé Rwanda du génocide de 1994. Mais ils sont maintenant accusés de massacres de Hutus vengeance quand ils ont pris la guerre au Congo.
Roberto Garreton, un avocat chilien qui depuis huit ans a été le rapporteur spécial des NU au Congo, a déclaré à l'Associated Press que son premier rapport détaillant les massacres par les troupes de Kagamé impliqués Hutus tués au Rwanda en 1994. Il a dit que l'Organisation des Nations Unies supprimé ce rapport, apparemment en raison de l'embarras et la culpabilité qu'il n'a rien fait pour arrêter le génocide. L'Organisation des Nations Unies d'abord nié l'existence du rapport, qui plus tard a été divulgué.
Après les rebelles tutsis triomphé et pris le pouvoir au Rwanda, Paul Kagame est devenu vice-président et ministre de la Défense. Il a envoyé des troupes au Congo en 1996 - bien qu'il l'ait nié à l'époque - dans une invasion qui a conduit à l'éviction du dictateur de longue date du Congo, Mobutu Sese Seko.
rapports de l'ONU en 1997 et 1998, dont un par Garreton, a accusé une coalition de forces rebelles congolaises que Kagame a admis plus tard ont été commandés par des officiers rwandais pour des massacres de Hutus, et ont dit qu'ils étaient sur une échelle de suggérer un éventuel génocide. Puis-U.N. Secrétaire général Kofi Annan a répondu en demandant Congo et le Rwanda pour enquêter sur les allégations - essentiellement à enquêter eux-mêmes.
Les éléments de preuve plus tard est devenu trop grand pour balayer sous le tapis. En 2005, les Casques bleus de l'ONU à découvert des fosses communes dans l'est du Congo de centaines de civils auraient été exécutés par des soldats rwandais. La découverte a suscité un regain d'enquêtes qui ont abouti dans le dernier rapport de l'ONU, qui a déclaré les massacres au Congo ont été aussi systématique que le tribunal pourrait considérer comme un génocide.
Le rapport recommande que les responsables soient punis, mais ne pas citer des noms. Congo a déclaré qu'il est disposé à établir un tribunal transnationale pour punir les responsables. Après des mois de refus que les troupes rwandaises au Congo ont été, Kagame a pris le contrôle de l'invasion, en admettant qu'il avait planifié et ordonné. Parmi les officiers commandant les forces de la coalition a été Joseph Kabila, actuel président du Congo.
Le mois dernier, 40 agents de la police congolaise et les enquêteurs d'une armée peu de militaires complété un cours de science médico-légale qui a formé à trouver des preuves dans des fosses communes. Il a été payé par le Département d'Etat américain et organisé par l'American Bar Association. La formation était dirigée par péruvienne anthropologue légiste Jose Pablo Baraybari, qui a enquêté sur les massacres en Bosnie.
Les stagiaires ont travaillé sur des mannequins mis en place sur les tombes maquette, Elysée Sindayigaya a déclaré le bureau du barreau à Goma, dans l'est du Congo. "Nous faisons des représentations auprès du gouvernement du Congo pour tenter d'obtenir l'accès aux charniers réel, mais il est très sensible."
Kagame, dont la réputation est indexé sur le terrain moral d'avoir arrêté le génocide dirigé par les Hutus au Rwanda alors que des Casques bleus des Nations Unies et la communauté internationale n'a rien fait, tenté d'obtenir le dernier rapport annulée en menaçant de retirer les troupes rwandaises des opérations de maintien de la paix des Nations Unies dans plusieurs pays, y compris le commandant des forces au Darfour, au Soudan. Le rapport a été publié avec un langage modéré, mais la référence au génocide est resté possible. Sa publication a été retardée afin d'inclure de longues réfutations du Rwanda et du Congo.
Rwanda ministre des Affaires étrangères Louise Mushikiwabo appelle le rapport «une tentative de réécrire l'histoire" et "erronée et dangereuse."
Kagame a réussi dans le passé à étouffer des accusations similaires.
"La question est maintenant la même question il y avait alors: Y at-il la volonté politique afin d'identifier les assassins et les traduire en justice?" demandé Reed Brody, un ancien sous-enquêteur de l'ONU qui a aidé à rédiger le rapport de 1998.
militants des droits humains disent alliés de Kagame dans les gouvernements américain et britannique, qui versent l'aide au Rwanda et l'ont utilisé comme une plate-forme de diluer l'influence française dans la région, ne veulent pas enquêté sur lui. Beaucoup craignent en outre creuser pourrait déstabiliser la région déjà instable centrale africaine.
Kagame a été formé à l'US Army Command and Staff College à Fort Leavenworth, au Kansas, en 1990. Une fois qu'il est arrivé au pouvoir, les Forces spéciales américaines formés troupes rwandaises avant, pendant et après l'invasion du Congo - alors même que l'ONU et d'autres enquêteurs ont déclaré que leur alarme à des atrocités alléguées par les soldats du gouvernement.
Kagame a déclaré que son invasion du Congo visait à démanteler les immenses camps de réfugiés qui abritait les réfugiés hutus rwandais et les auteurs du génocide. À l'époque, les journalistes documenté comment les camps ont été militarisées par les auteurs du génocide qui les a utilisées comme tapis de lancer des raids transfrontaliers au Rwanda.
Plusieurs fois, Kagame a exhorté l'Organisation des Nations Unies pour séparer les hommes armés de réfugiés et de démanteler les camps. Kagame a déclaré que, en 1996, il a averti les Etats-Unis et l'Organisation des Nations Unies que, s'ils ne le ferais pas, il le ferait.
A 1997 de Human Rights Watch qui a cherché à identifier les commandants des massacres, a déclaré James Kabarebe, qui devint ministre de la Défense du Rwanda en avril, a été le plus haut dirigeant rwandais au Congo lors de l'invasion. Les messages laissés au Rwanda, Ministère de la Défense n'a obtenu aucune réponse aux demandes d'un commentaire.
Kagame a déclaré que la plupart de ceux qui sont morts ont été les auteurs du génocide. Mais le nouveau rapport des Nations Unies dit que les troupes rwandaises régulièrement invité des réfugiés ou des villageois à des réunions et les abattaient.
"L'utilisation intensive des armes blanches (surtout marteaux) et le caractère apparemment systématique des massacres de survivants après les camps avaient été prises suggère que les nombreux décès ne peut être attribuée aux dangers de la guerre ou la considérer comme équivalant à des dommages collatéraux», les dit le rapport, ajoutant que la plupart des victimes sont des "enfants, femmes, personnes âgées et les malades."
Comme le rapport, Brody a noté que l'impunité a créé ensuite aidé alimentent la violence au Congo, qui persiste à ce jour.
"Le fait que ces meurtres de dizaines de milliers, sinon plus, a tout à fait impunie, le fait qu'il n'y avait manifestement pas la volonté politique d'identifier les auteurs de ces massacres et de les traduire en justice, a facilité le cycle de la violence, dit-il.
Brody a sa propre enquête en 1997 et 1998 a été entravée par le gouvernement du Congo et par l'ambassade américaine à Kinshasa, la capitale congolaise.

"Nous avons demandé aux États-Unis pour obtenir des renseignements, des photos satellites que nous connaissait l'existence des camps de réfugiés. Nous n'avons jamais eu une chose, dit-il. Les demandes d'interviews sur le rôle de l'armée des États-Unis et ses diplomates ont joué lors de l'invasion du Rwanda du Congo tous ont été renvoyés au Département d'Etat américain, qui n'a pas répondu aux questions. L'ambassadeur américain aux Nations Unies Susan Rice, qui était secrétaire d'État adjointe aux affaires africaines de 1997, a refusé une demande pour une entrevue.
Brody a dit que tandis que Washington se sentait probablement une énorme culpabilité de ne rien faire pour arrêter le génocide de 1994 et il s'est réjoui que le Rwanda a aidé débarrasser le Congo de Mobutu », dans le même temps, il y avait ces milliers de meurtres de sang-froid impardonnable, pour la plupart , des gens désarmés. "
Découvrir les tombes, ce qui prouve combien de personnes ont été tuées et peut-être même leur identification pourrait mettre un terme à des gens comme Ihigihugo, l'une des veuves de Musekera.

"Il ne peut y avoir de repos pour personnes enterrées comme ça, dit-elle des fosses communes. «Donner une sépulture digne à ma famille serait également mis mon cœur au repos."

UN's Congo report could spur genocide trials

By FRANK JORDANS (AP) – 1 day ago




GENEVA — On Nov. 14, 1996, armed men surrounded the Mugunga refugee camp in eastern Zaire and began shooting indiscriminately at its inhabitants as they huddled for safety or tried to flee.
Hundreds of men, women and children died over a three-day period, according to eyewitnesses and forensic evidence later gathered from mass graves.
A report published Friday by the U.N. human rights office says the killings at Mugunga may have been one of many instances that qualify as crimes against humanity or even — taken together — genocide by the Rwandan army, which at the time was hunting down Hutu rebels in neighboring Zaire, now called Congo.
The genocide suggestion sparked an angry response from Rwanda, whose President Paul Kagame has basked in international approval for ending the 1994 genocide there, during which more than half a million people, mostly Tutsis but also moderate Hutus, were killed.
Calling the report "flawed and dangerous from start to finish," Rwandan Foreign Affairs Minister Louise Mushikiwabo said it was an attempt to rewrite history.
In a written riposte to the United Nations, the Rwandan government said its troops "never fired any weapons into the camp" at Mugunga and civilians only were killed when armed rebels inside the camp tried to stop people from fleeing. Later, civilians who were held as human shields by the rebels died in the crossfire, it said.
The Red Cross and other organizations cited in the report refused to comment on it, saying the subject was too sensitive in light of ongoing human rights abuses in the region. The U.N. says more than 500 rapes have been committed in eastern Congo since late July.
Previous reports have described massacres and indiscriminate killings in Congo. But the latest report's depth will make it harder to ignore, experts say.
The report cost $3 million to produce and details 617 incidents from 1993 to 2003, when a five-year civil war that killed millions through disease and neglect ended. It concludes that tens of thousands of people — mostly women and children — were slain in attacks by the many armed groups roving eastern Congo.
U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay stressed in a statement that the report "is not a judicial investigation" and "does not establish individual criminal responsibility."
The aim of the report "was to encourage efforts to break the cycle of impunity and continuing gross violations, by showing the scale and seriousness of the violations of human rights and international humanitarian law," she said.
Martin Nesirky, spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, backed Pillay's statement, saying "it's about helping them to fight impunity and avoid perpetuation of this cycle of violence which we have seen even in the past month."The Congolese government welcomed the report's suggestion that a tribunal be set up to prosecute those responsible.
Congo's ambassador to the United Nations in New York, Ileka Atoki, described the report as "heartbreaking" and "horrific."
"The victims deserve justice," said Atoki. "The Congolese government is firmly committed to that endeavor," he said, proposing an international meeting in Kinshasa to discuss the report.
Amnesty International said the report was "very thorough."
"What we want now is for action to be taken," said Veronique Aubert, the group's deputy Africa director. "The cycle of violence in the region will only stop if those responsible for these horrific crimes are held to account."
The report has reopened old wounds in Africa's Great Lakes region, where massive mineral wealth has fueled conflict even as many people in the region live in dire poverty.

Rwandan and Ugandan officials mounted a sophisticated public relations campaign before the report's release. They distributed detailed attacks on the findings and warned that their governments might pull out of U.N. peacekeeping operations.
Rwanda's President Paul Kagame dropped that threat just a few days ago. It would have been a major blow to the 22,000-strong U.N.-African Union force in Sudan's Darfur region which is commanded by a Rwandan general and includes more than 3,200 Rwandan troops.
Asked whether the secretary-general had done "a tradeoff" with Rwanda — that the U.N. wouldn't push for judicial steps to follow up the report if the government kept its troops in Darfur and other peacekeeping missions — U.N. spokesman Nesirky replied: "There's no linkage, no quid pro quo. Any follow up would be on its merits."
Mushikiwabo, the Rwandan foreign minister, said the U.N. was trying to "undermine the peace and stability attained in the Great Lakes region." Ugandan foreign ministry spokesman Guma Muganda called the report "fake and malicious." Muganda said Ugandan soldiers were never deployed in areas where they are now accused of crimes.
One incident the report said involved Ugandan troops took place in the night of June 5-6, 1996, in the border village of Bunagana. Rwanda and Ugandan soldiers allegedly killed at least 28 civilians, mostly Rwandan Hutus.
"Tutsis from Bunagana are thought to have been used as scouts, pointing out the houses of people to be killed to the commandos," the report said.
Ugandan army spokesman Felix Kulayigye said troops never killed anyone at Bunagana.
The first challenge in prosecuting anyone will be proving that crimes on the scale described actually took place, said Louise Doswald-Beck, a law professor at Geneva's Graduate Institute.
"There is a big difference between doing a fact-finding report, where you evaluate the evidence on the balance of probabilities, and convicting someone in a criminal tribunal, when you need to prove that someone is guilty beyond reasonable doubt," she said.
In the end, prosecutors may choose to pursue only accusations of crimes against humanity, which have a lower burden of proof than genocide, an act that must have been planned, said Doswald-Beck.
Rwandan officials warned of consequences.

"This is a report that is capable of destabilizing the whole region and even capable of destabilizing the peace process and reconciliation in Rwanda," said Venetia Sebudandi, the country's Geneva ambassador.
Anneke van Woudenberg, senior Congo researcher for New York-based Human Rights Watch, said prosecutions will depend on the U.N. Security Council and Rwandan cooperation.
"We know that Rwanda plays hardball," she said. "But if they want a lasting peace they are going to have to compromise."



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Human Rights Group Calls For Prosecution of Human Rights Abusers In Congo

A major international Human Rights group has welcomed the release of a United Nations report documenting atrocities, including serious violations of human rights, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the decade between March 1993 and June 2003.

The report raises serious allegations of brutal and horrific mass killings, rape and other abuses during the period in question.
“It’s a powerful reminder of the events and the terrible crimes that took place in the DRC over this ten year period,” said Carina Tertsakian, a Senior Researcher at Human Rights Watch.
She said for all these years the perpetrators of these crimes - massacres, rapes, and other abuses against civilians- have not been brought to justice. “We hope the publication of this report will form the basis of concerted international action to begin setting up a process of justice for these crimes.”
Four African nations -- Angola, Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda -- have rejected or protested the report, which implicates their armed forces in the alleged crimes.
Tertsakian told VOA from London that she is not surprised by the protestations of these countries. “None of these governments has ever acknowledged or even less admitted that their troops took part in very serious human right abuses at that time.”
She said it is understandable that they should be sensitive to these allegations but added that “a blanket denial of the events and the rejection of the [UN] report is not really helpful.” “Instead of simply denying that these things happened they would do better to take the allegations seriously and cooperate with any international effort to follow up the findings of this report,” said Tertsakian.
The report, she added, merits a serious response from the UN and from its member states and particularly those governments of the Great Lakes region. The UN Security Council, she said, should insist that those states that are implicated in the report assist in efforts to bring about justice.
“We hope this report will act as a trigger for some action. It’s not too late, even though there should have been much stronger international action at the time (the crimes were committed).
Tertsakian said western governments can still prove their will to find solutions to the crisis in the region by acting and putting resources and political will behind the process of justice.
She decried earlier threats by Uganda and Rwanda to pull out their troops from peacekeeping operations if the report was released, and described their threats as blackmail.
Tertsakian urged the governments of Uganda and Rwanda to keep the issue of peacekeepers separate from the findings of the report.

DR Congo demands justice for massacre victims

(AFP) Posted Friday October 1, 2010 - 11:34am

Democratic Republic of Congo on Friday demanded justice for the victims of genocide-style massacres described in a bitterly disputed investigation which has thrown the United Nations into a diplomatic storm.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon made no immediate comment on the report, which has caused controversy in Africa among the eight nations implicated in the 1993-2003 carnage. Experts meanwhile highlighted that uncontrolled violence remains rife in DR Congo.
"The victims deserve justice and they deserve that their voices are heard by my government and by the international community," DR Congo's ambassador to the United Nations, Ileka Atoki, said in a statement which backed possible mixed international-Congo courts to try the perpetrators.
Atoki called the accounts of killings of thousands of people "heartbreaking."
He said the Congo government was "appalled at the horrific nature and scope of crimes documented in this report that the people of the Congo have suffered."
"The perpetrators of these crimes are both Congolese and non-Congolese nationals, including those, African or not, who have profited from our mineral resources and helped to drive the war," the ambassador said.
But he added that "in addition to seeking justice for the victims of the terrible crimes, we also seek to improve diplomatic and brotherly relations with all our neighboring countries for a lasting peace."
The UN Human Rights Council report on atrocities carried out in DR Congo between up to 2003 proposes a possible court in DR Congo with national and international judges.
The ambassador said the Congo government would study this and other options.
Ban Ki-moon's spokesman, Martin Nesirky, said the UN secretary general has the report but that he would not make an immediate comment. A leaked version of the report forced him to carry out a special mission to Rwanda to assuage the fury of its president who demanded the report be withdrawn.
Rwanda had threatened to withdraw troops from UN peacekeeping missions. Uganda has since made a similar threat. Burundi has also expressed anger at the report. Ban brokered a deal under which all countries named could add their comments to the final version.
With the UN clearly under pressure, Nesirky called it "an awful period of human suffering" but said the intention of the investigation was not about "establishing criminal responsibility."
He said UN legal experts had intensely scrutinized the final report. "It does talk about groups but it does not talk about individuals."
The report "is supposed to be helping the Democratic Republic of Congo overcome the cycle of impunity," Nesirky told a press briefing.
DR Congo is still afflicted by serious ethnic violence with hundreds of women targeted by mass rapes by militias in the mineral-rich east of the country last month.
Reed Brody, who was deputy head of a UN investigation into the killings in the 1990s, said "if ever we are going to break the cycle of violence today, the authors of these past crimes need to be brought to justice."
Brody, who now works for the Human Rights Watch group, said the UN Security Council "buried" the report by his UN team in 1998.
"It was like giving a green light to these armies, militias and rag-tag armed groups to do anything that they wanted in DR Congo."
He added that the rapes last month had been "at least facilitated by the failure to anything about the crimes of yesterday."
John Hirsch, a senior advisor at the International Peace Institute in New York, also said that the report should be used to reinforce efforts to control today's violence in DR Congo.
"I'm not sure how easy it will be to organize now tribunals into these past events," he said.

UN Congo Report Released Amid Protest from Uganda, Rwanda

The United Nations on Friday released a controversial report documenting massive violations of human rights in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The report has sparked protests from both Rwanda and Uganda, whose armed forces are implicated in the crimes. The African countries of Angola and Burundi have also disputed aspects of the report.

On Friday the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights released the final version of a report documenting crimes against humanity and human rights violations committed in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The report documents over 600 major crimes including mass rape, targeted killings of civilians and other crimes against humanity from 1993 to 2003. The report implicates armed forces from Uganda and Rwanda in many of the crimes, suggesting that some may have amounted to genocide.
An initial draft leaked in late August sparked a diplomatic crisis, with Rwanda threatening to pull troops out of peacekeeping operations in the Darfur region of Sudan. While Rwanda has since withdrawn its threats, Foreign Minister Louise Mushikiwabo called the final report "flawed and dangerous" and said it was a "moral and intellectual failure" aimed at "reigniting conflict in Rwanda and the region."
But the United Nations is standing by the report. The Director of Field Operation and Technical Cooperation for the UN Commissioner on Human Rights, Anders Kompass, said the research was held to the highest standard and conducted impartially.
"We have absolutely no interest in fabricating things that are so serious, so sad like the ones that are in this report," said Anders Kompass. "What is important to say is that the report does not make and definitive legal conclusions. What is in this report has then to be brought to a competent court where the evidence is then presented by both sides. What the report does is to provide a preliminary assessment of the facts."
After the initial outcry from Rwanda and Uganda, the United Nations invited the countries mentioned in the report to submit comments, which have been published along with the final version. There were fears the Rwandan threats might compel the U.N. to dilute the report's findings but the final version maintains its initial conclusions, with some changes to the language.
The report refers to many of the attacks as systematic in nature, and suggests they could possibly be characterized as genocide before a court of law.
The report has essentially challenged the narrative of the Rwandan genocide which left over 800,000 dead in 1994. Much of President Paul Kagame's legitimacy has been based on his role in ending those killings. But the report implicates Rwandan forces under Mr. Kagame's command of similar crimes just across the border.
In the wake of the 1994 genocide, the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front pursued Hutu forces responsible for the genocide into the Congo. While Rwanda maintains it was pursuing military opponents, the report finds many instances of Hutu civilians being deliberately targeted.
But the Rwandan government says the report is aimed at promoting the theory of "double genocide."
The report also met with fury from the government of Uganda, similarly accused of serious crimes in the report.
Following in Rwandan footsteps, the government issued a statement earlier this week saying the report could undermine its commitment to international peacekeeping operations. Uganda makes up a large portion of peacekeeping troops currently stationed in Somalia and there were fears the report would provoke their withdrawal from the troubled region. But the spokesman of the Uganda People's Defense Force, Felix Kulayigye, told VOA Uganda remained committed to the AMISOM mission in the Horn of African nation.

UNHCHR Finds Evidence of War Crimes, Genocide in Congo War

2 October 2010 :: J.E. Robertson

A new report on the intricacies of regional involvement in the brutal civil war that was fought in the Democratic Republic of Congo, between the late 1990s and early 2000s, whose resulting chaos, factionalism and scarcity, continue to take huge numbers of lives every month, has found that other nations contributed to the hostilities and that some alleged atrocities might constitute war crimes or genocide. Rwanda, Burundi and other nations, say the report is flawed and they were not involved in any such crimes.
The UN reports:
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights released Friday a 550-page report listing 617 of the most serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law over a ten-year period by both state and non-state actors in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Tens of thousands of people were killed, and numerous others were raped, mutilated or otherwise victimized during the decade. The report also examines in detail various options for truth and reconciliation, as well as for bringing those responsible for serious crimes to justice, thereby ending a climate of near-total impunity and setting the foundation for sustainable peace and development in the DRC.
The report is the product of a “Mapping Exercise” that took more than two years to research and produce, including eight months work on the ground in the DRC by a 33-strong team charged with interviewing witnesses and examining other information from a wide range of sources. Many of the attacks were directed against non-combatant civilian populations consisting primarily of women and children, the report says. Over 1,280 individual witnesses were interviewed to corroborate or invalidate alleged violations, including previously unrecorded incidents, and more than 1,500 documents were collected and analysed.
The government of Rwanda has warned the report could contribute to deterioration in security conditions across the region and warns it could inflame ethnic tensions and lead to calls for vengeance and retribution. Rwanda, in particular, is cited as having supported genocide in the Democratic Republic of Congo, even after the catastrophic genocide inside Rwanda was halted.
The Kagame government has been credited by some with ending the Rwandan genocide, in 1994, and has been praised for efforts to achieve reconciliation and root out the ethnic extremism that led to the killings. There are concerns that if the government is associated with ethnic killing between Hutus and Tutsis in the DRC, the nation could be destabilized.
Rwanda has threatened to pull out of the UN peacekeeping force in Darfur, which has been deployed with the specific mandate to prevent genocide. Ban Ki-moon, secretary general of the United Nations, has flown to Kigali, to do the work of high diplomacy to diffuse tensions relating to the findings of the draft report.
According to Reuters:
“The Burundi government has asked the U.N. Secretary General to take Burundi off the list of countries accused of involvement in killings in D.R Congo from 1993 to 2003,” government spokesman Philippe Nzobonariba, said on State Radio and Television late on Tuesday.
Echoing evidence of what is today alleged to be the most extreme atmosphere of sexual assault and impunity for such crimes, the report finds that “Violence in the DRC was, in fact, accompanied by the apparent systematic use of rape and sexual assault allegedly by all combatant forces”. Navi Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said the report “also suggests that other countries have a role to play in assisting a transitional justice process in the DRC”.