UN report slams rebel abuses

2003-08-01 10:32

New York - United Nations investigators said testimony from more than 500 people indicated that rebels used looting, killing, violence against women and cannibalism as "premeditated tools of war" in northeastern Congo, according to a report.

Investigators from the UN peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo were sent to look into acts of cannibalism and other human rights abuses that took place between October and December between the northeastern towns of Mambasa and Beni.

According to the investigators, 173 killings and executions were reported, including 12 incidents of cannibalism.

They documented 102 incidents of physical violence including 69 cases of rape, with witnesses, and 33 cases of cruel and inhuman treatment.

Family members and witnesses also reported numerous abductions, illegal detention, forced labor and systematic looting.

When rebels from the Congolese Liberation Movement (MLC) and the Congolese Rally for Democracy-National (RCD-N) took the town of Mambasa on October 12, there were "massive rapes, as well as systematic lootings, destruction of health infrastructures and forced labor," said the report, released on Thursday.

Bodies mutilated, left in public

The first murders took place at the end of October when the Congolese Rally for Democracy-Liberation Movement (RCD-ML) was counterattacking.

During the fighting, the Nande people, the tribe from which most of the RCD-ML leadership comes, were specifically targeted.

"Bodies were mutilated and left in public places as a strategy to terrorise the population," said the report. This continued until RCD-ML troops took back Mambasa at the end of October.

When the other rebel groups - the MLC and RCD-N - took back Mambasa and advanced toward Beni at the end of November and in December, systematic looting continued along with frequent rapes, and there was systematic violence against pygmies, forcing them to flee from the forest, it said.

According to testimony received by the UN investigation team, "the human rights abuses allegedly committed by the RCD-ML side were relatively few".

But the RCD-N combatants had a special unit "which was at the forefront of the abuses".

Most of the victims from Mambasa and neighbouring areas were reportedly killed by MLC and RCD-N soldiers, whereas the majority of victims from the nearby town of Komanda were reportedly killed by their allies from a Hema tribal faction, known as the Union of Congolese Patriots, the report said.

Cannibalism was 'form of revenge'

"The testimony of 503 persons... indicates a pattern of looting, killing and violence against women used as premeditated tools of war by MLC, RCD-N and UPC military forces in October and during fighting in December," the investigators concluded.

Most acts of cannibalism "seem to have been committed with the aim of taking revenge on the Nande and pygmy populations, perceived as assisting and supporting the RCD-ML authorities," they said.

"The acts of cannibalism, preceded by corporal mutilations and sectioning of internal body parts, particularly concerning the pygmies' internal body parts such as the heart and the liver, can be considered to be pure fetishism aimed at helping the perpetrators to acquire the capacity and ability of the victims to hunt and live in the forest," the report said.

"The fact of forcing family members to eat the parts of their loved ones could be considered as part of a policy of psychological torture," it said.

The investigators said MLC president Jean-Pierre Bemba, at a February 13 meeting in Gbadolite, confirmed their findings of summary executions, rapes, ill-treatment and looting - but not cannibalism.

Psychological support

But, the MLC refused to allow investigators to interview soldiers in confidentiality.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said the trials of 27 individuals accused by the MLC of involvement in the atrocities in and around Mambasa were illegal and illegitimate, the report noted.

The investigation team recommended that the cases of rape and forced disappearance be followed up, that a non-governmental organisation be asked to give psychological support to victims of rape and witnesses of executions and acts of cannibalism, and that forensic experts be sent to analyse mass graves in Mambasa and surrounding Ituri province.

- AP