Identify the Congo killers and bring them to justice

The Rwandan government's attempt to discredit the report into atrocities in
DR Congo makes one wonder what it has got to hide by
Reed Brody
Published in:
The Guardian (UK)
October 1, 2010
Refugees carrying all their remaining possessions arrive at Kibumba camp,
Goma, after crossing the border out of Rwanda.
© 1994 Tom Stoddart/Getty Images
RELATED MATERIALS:
DR Congo: UN Report Exposes Grave Crimes
Today, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights
is publishing a vitally important report cataloguing the atrocities
committed in the Democratic Republic of Congo between 1993 and 2003. Those
who go through its 500-plus pages cannot fail to be touched by reading of
the horrors the Congolese people have suffered and continue to suffer.
While many of the massacres have been documented previously, this is the
first report to comprehensively analyse and compile these horrendous
attacks, perpetrated by a variety of armed actors over the course of a
decade. The report is a powerful reminder of the gravity of the crimes
committed in Congo and of the shocking absence of justice. I know because I
was there.
In 1997, I was deputy chief of an investigative team sent by UN
secretary-general Kofi Annan to investigate crimes committed in Congo from
1993 to 1997. The worst period was from late 1996 to 1997, when forces
supporting Laurent-Desiré Kabila, father of the current Congolese president,
attacked Rwandan Hutu refugees as the elder Kabila swept to power with the
support of Rwanda. We received detailed reports of mass slaughter, but our
attempts to reach massacre sites were repeatedly thwarted by travel bans,
"spontaneous" demonstrations and the arrest of one of our investigators.
Although we were stuck for months in Kinshasa, the capital, we were
nevertheless able to conclude that some of the attacks revealed "the intent
to eliminate those Rwandan Hutus who remained" in Congo.
The UN report published today supports our preliminary findings and
documents horrific crimes by many other actors in Congo. Fortunately, this
time the UN team had full access to the massacre sites and to witnesses. The
key question now, as it was when our team delivered its report in 1998, is
whether the international community has the political will to take the next
step: identifying the killers and bringing them to justice.
In 1998, our team called on the UN to seek justice for the crimes we
documented, and Annan told the security council that "those guilty of
violations must be brought to book." The council effectively buried our
report, however, signaling to all of those competing to control the eastern
part of this resource-rich country that there were no holds barred. As the
new report documents, a multiplicity of government armies, rag-tag rebel
groups and brutal ethnic militias took that signal as a green light to
continue to kill, rape and plunder.
Although the new report does not attribute individual responsibility, it
does make clear that many of the soldiers who committed the 1996-7
atrocities were under the effective command of Rwandan army officers and
that their overall commander was Colonel James Kabarebe, a Rwandan who had
become the interim chief of staff of the Congolese armed forces. He was
promoted to chief of staff of the Rwandan army several years later, and
today is Rwanda's defence minister.
This conclusion is no surprise. Although the United States denied our team
crucial intelligence regarding the structure and movement of Rwandan troops,
witnesses consistently told us that officers speaking the Rwandan language
were present during the killing of unarmed refugees. Even at the time,
Rwanda's strongman - now its president, Paul Kagame - boasted that his
government planned and led the military campaign, telling the Washington
Post that his objectives were to "dismantle" the Hutu refugee camps in Zaire
(as the Congo was then called), "destroy the structure" of the Hutu militia
units and "deal with" the Hutu extremists.
What were his exact orders? We are not sure, but as the new report notes,
the campaign's final massacres, in Mbandaka and Wendji, over 2,000
kilometres west of Rwanda, "were the final stage in the hunt for Hutu
refugees that had begun in eastern Zaire, in North and South Kivu, in
October 1996". It adds that the deaths of "several tens of thousands", many
of whom were killed after the refugee camps had been dismantled, "cannot be
attributed to the hazards of war or seen as equating to collateral damage".
It found that "the majority of the victims were children, women, elderly
people and the sick, who posed no threat to the attacking forces".
The Rwandan government has attempted to discredit the report and to pressure
Ban Ki-moon to stop its publication, threatening to pull out of its UN
peacekeeping commitments in Darfur and elsewhere. By seeking to quash
publication of the report, the Rwandan government is raising further
questions about what it may be trying to hide. Kagame's forces played a
crucial role in ending the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, but this does not
absolve them of scrutiny for crimes they may have committed in the years
that followed, both in Rwanda and Congo.
Indeed, the Rwandan government's reaction can only hinder efforts to find a
lasting solution to the continuing conflict in Congo. As Annan noted in
1998, one of the root causes of the region's conflicts is "a vicious cycle
of violations of human rights and revenge, fuelled by impunity. This cycle
has to be brought to an end if lasting peace and stability are to be
restored to the region." Twelve years later, it is time to heed these words
by identifying and bringing to justice the individuals responsible for these
atrocities.
http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2010/10/01/identify-congo-killers-and-bring-them-
justice