Reports Point to Mass Killing of Refugees in Congo

Reports Point to Mass Killing of Refugees in Congo
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
Published: Tuesday, May 27, 1997

Since the middle of last month, no outsider has been allowed down the six miles of jungle road that begin at a roadblock manned by soldiers at Kilometer 42 south of here. But a growing number of accounts emerging from that zone suggest that some form of systematic killing of refugees and disposal of the evidence has been taking place there.

The accounts suggest -- although they do not conclusively prove -- that people have died in significant numbers in the jungle and that their remains, often in the form of ashes, are being disposed of en masse. Aid workers now express a deepening conviction that the jungle astride the road, as it runs along a bend in the Congo River, has been turned into a killing camp.

The accounts come from refugees who have emerged from the jungle, from aid workers who deal with the victims, from Congolese who live nearby, from a disaffected Congolese soldier who says he worked in the zone, and from aid workers who saw a military unit move into the area. All of the more than 25 people interviewed refused to be identified or to have their aid agencies identified for fear of retribution.

Among the things that cannot be documented are how many people may have died or are continuing to die. But with an estimated 40,000 refugees, mostly ethnic Hutu from neighboring Rwanda, still missing in the area, the refusal of the soldiers at the roadblock to admit outside observers has only darkened the suspicions about their role.

''They march them down the road -- yes, children and mothers too,'' said a terrified 34-year-old man in the Biaro camp, just south of here. He said he had heard from other refugees what had happened. ''They kill them, and then at Kilometer 52 they mix corpses together and make fire with them.''

Such disclosures, if proved true, could be a major embarrassment for the new Government of Congo, formerly Zaire, led by Laurent Kabila, who took power just more than a week ago after winning a seven-month rebel war. The new Justice Minister, Mwenze Kongolo, said he knew nothing directly about what was happening near here.

The Hutu refugees ''lie a lot,'' he said. In denying that his Government was in any way responsible for their deaths, he pointed to a separate group of refugees, many suspected of being former Rwandan Hutu militia members, that had emerged hundreds of miles away, in the western town of Mbandaka.

''They were fighters,'' he said. ''If we'd been logical and consistent, we'd have killed them instead of treating them medically and bringing them near the airport. How can you put that together with accusations that we are killing them?''

It is impossible to say for certain if refugees have been killed on the orders of top Congo officials or by local commanders and rogue units, perhaps with the cooperation of neighboring Rwanda.

But still, Congo Government soldiers south of here will not let anyone past the roadblock to look. Even diplomats with the personal permission of Mr. Kabila who have come thousands of miles to find out what happened to the refugees have been barred from the area. Many accounts, all essentially consistent, suggest that something deeply disturbing has gone on there, more disturbing even than the accusations last month by United Nations officials that the Hutu refugees had been condemned to a slow death from starvation and disease by Mr. Kabila's forces.

One reason the accounts are emerging is that the soldiers operating in the zone have needed the help of local people to carry out their work. Local people say they have been dragooned to work south of Kilometer 42, carrying bodies, driving trucks or digging graves.

Witnesses have reported the arrival of a well-drilled and heavily armed military unit in the days before the jungle area was sealed off. Second-hand accounts report killings and funeral pyres deep in the rain forest, and soldiers carrying off bags of human ashes.

It is not clear how many of the soldiers from this unit remain in the area. But at least one former Zairian soldier who worked in the zone said about 30 refugees are still being killed each day as they emerge from hiding places in the forest.

Soldiers and Civilians Tell of Grisly Killings

Mr. Kabila's forces, who this month won their war to end the 32-year reign of Mobutu Sese Seko, have from the start included large numbers of Tutsi, ethnic rivals of the Hutu in Congo and neighboring countries. The refugees are among some 1.2 million Hutu who fled neighboring Rwanda in the summer of 1994 after a Tutsi-led Government came to power and ended a genocidal three-month campaign by Hutu leaders against Tutsi and moderate Hutu that killed half a million people.

From the start of Mr. Kabila's rebellion last September, which began in the eastern area bordering Rwanda, Congolese rebels received assistance from the Rwandan Government, diplomats now say. Once the fighting began, most of the Rwandan Hutu refugees who had lived in the border area for more than two years returned home, but tens of thousands fled deeper into Congo's interior ahead of Mr. Kabila's advancing forces.

Now, the suspicions swirling about the activities along the jungle road here include the possibility that a combat unit -- which witnesses say is formed from Tutsi speaking the Rwandan dialect and perhaps from Rwanda itself -- is conducting or completing a campaign of reprisal or pre-emptive killings against those Hutu who survived their exile and were preparing to be returned to Rwanda by the United Nations and other aid groups.

According to refugees and aid workers who have talked to survivors and to local Congolese soldiers who say they have helped bury the bodies, groups of refugees are being waylaid as they stumble up the road toward a United Nations airlift that would be their salvation. The men are tied up, made to kneel and then strangled or hacked to death as others watch, they say. Sometimes women and children are killed too, and sometimes the children are released to go on up the road -- this time alone, they say.

Beyond Kilometer 42, there are reports of burial pits from which the bodies from earlier killings are being dug up and burned. Soldiers and local Congolese civilians who have trucked in wood and gasoline say there is an open-air crematorium beside a quarry at Kilometer 52.

According to The Associated Press, a disaffected soldier from Mr. Kabila's forces who said he killed no one but helped remove bodies described how the ashes of the burned bodies are shoveled into white bags and stored to be dumped into rivers later. The soldiers operating south of Kilometer 42 are under great pressure to hurry before outsiders gain access to the area, said the soldier, who said he had volunteered the information because he had grown disgusted with the killings.

''When the U.N. eventually comes to investigate, there will be no evidence left,'' the A.P. quoted him as saying.

The soldier told the A.P. that he had seen killings himself, including 43 refugees who were hacked to death one by one.

The A.P. also quoted the account of a 15-year-old boy, too frightened to give his name, who said soldiers captured him in the forest. ''I was in a group that was later killed,'' the boy said. He said it was a group of about 50. ''I managed to escape through the bush, but others were killed.''

The soldier also provided the A.P. with a detailed map of the 10-kilometer stretch, purporting to show where mass graves are, a cremation area where bodies are piled on gasoline-soaked wood and burned on pyres, and houses where the ashes are stored.

The soldier told A.P. that between 200 and 600 people slain by Mr. Kabila's troops were buried there.

Outsiders Are Hampered During Investigation

A New York Times and an A.P. reporter and a diplomat who entered an area to which the United Nations has access found one set of what appeared to be graves -- seven earth-covered pits about 10 feet by 10 feet each with clothes and identity cards scattered nearby and a cross made of sticks wired together. The reporters and several diplomats also tried reach a house where the map said bags of crematorium ashes were stored but were stopped by the village chief, who said it was a military base and off limits.

There is no way to know how many people may have been killed. The United Nations estimates that 40,000 refugees are still missing in the area. They are part of an estimated 80,000 refugees who scattered into the forest from two camps, Biaro and Kasese, south of here, after being attacked by local villagers and rebel soldiers on April 22.

Some are presumably still hiding in the jungle. About 6,000 who had been lying on the ground, too sick from cholera and diarrhea to walk, had simply vanished, relief workers said, after the workers were allowed back into the camps later in April.

Local Red Cross workers who said they had witnessed killings at Kasese on April 22 told a diplomat that Tutsi soldiers had buried bodies behind the abandoned camp with the help of a bulldozer that had been rented by the United Nations to smooth roads and dig latrines. But journalists and relief workers workers who tried to find that grave were stopped by the sound of gunshots.

For weeks, representatives of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees have been engaged in a quiet game of brinksmanship at Checkpoint 42, the roadblock manned by Mr. Kabila's soldiers just beyond the Biaro refugee camp, from which the United Nations evacuated the last of the 35,000 refugees who remained there this week.

Every few days, a convoy of white Land Rovers has driven up to the barrier and disgorged a group of high-level diplomats from the United Nations, the United States, and other countries, who have traveled several days to get there.

Ritually, they tell the three soldiers at the pup tent and easy chair beside the barricade that the United Nations agency has the international mandate to come in and search for refugees and that Mr. Kabila has given his personal permission as well. Ritually, the soldiers say that their commander, whom they will not identify, has said nothing to that effect, so the convoy cannot pass. Then the Land Rovers turn back.

''We just have to keep testing the envelope on access,'' one discouraged diplomat said. Hutu survivors and local people say the soldiers operating south of Kilometer 42 are from a unit of 200 to 400 soldiers who landed at Kisangani Airport on April 17 and moved through the city, across the river and down the road to the south.

An aid worker, who watched the troops board the river ferry, said they appeared ''extremely impressive.'' ''Disciplined,'' the worker said. ''Perfect uniforms. Real boots. Heavily armed -- they had heavy machine guns, and each man had two AK-47's with him.''

The uniforms he described matched the dark green, non-camouflage pattern of the uniforms donated to the Rwandan Army two years ago by Germany. The precise identity of the soldiers is not clear, however. A man with long experience in the American military who saw them said they looked to be a search-and-destroy unit, based on how heavily armed and well-drilled they appeared. ''Every army has them -- the Americans, the Israelis, the Germans,'' he said, speculating that the Rwandans would want such a unit as well.

Among the refugees, there are armed former Hutu guerrillas who could be considered a legitimate military target. But a refugee from Burundi, which also has several thousand refugees in Congo, said the unit did not limit itself to that mission. It drove through the refugee camps, taunting the crowds that they were going to kill them. ''They were Tutsi,'' he said. ''Some from Rwanda, some from Uganda, some from Burundi that we recognized.''

New Rulers Quarrel With Relief Groups

On April 22, the whole road south of Kisangani was closed. When it reopened two days later, the two huge refugee camps were empty. Slowly, wounded refugees emerged from the forests, telling stories of being machine-gunned by uniformed soldiers and hacked at by local villagers.

The European aid group Doctors Without Borders issued an angry statement on May 16 criticizing Mr. Kabila's forces. It said that relief aid had been used as a lure by the Congo military in order to draw the refugees out of the forest and onto the road, where according to witnesses, they would then be killed.

Workers from the relief group are now being harassed, other aid agencies say.

Asked about those charges, Mr. Kongolo, the Congo Justice Minister, said the relief group ''gets us really irritated with their lies.''

''They're selling whatever it is they're selling,'' he said. ''I was at the point of expelling them.'' He also said that ''these refugees lie a lot.''

He spoke in Mbandaka, in Congo's far west, which will be the focus of another United Nations rescue operation, to assist thousands of refugees who have arrived there after a nearly 1,000-mile trek across the breadth of the country.

The Mbandaka refugees are overwhelmingly male and in better shape than were the refugees at the Biaro and Kasese camps, and piles of uniforms and weapons were found in the forests. Although the refugees deny it, both the Kabila Government and the aid agencies say those refugees appear to be former Hutu soldiers and militiamen who may have helped to carry out the massacres in Rwanda in 1994.

Mr. Kongolo said the Mbandaka refugees had not been attacked.

One refugee there, Sirva Ladijimana, 23, said, ''We have no problems with the Kabila soldiers here.''

Mr. Kongolo said he did not know anything about the situation near Kilometer 42, which is some 500 miles east of Mbandaka.

Diplomats and pilots in the Mbandaka area said they had heard that elements of the unit suspected in the reported killings near Kisangani had shown up and been confronted by the local military commander, whose troops are Congolese, and told they would be attacked if they attempted a massacre there. There was no way to verify their accounts.

Here in Kisangani, a remnant of the unit is said to have remained behind to waylay remaining refugees who might straggle up the road. The refugees said they did not feel safe even when they were inside Kisangani itself at the camp near the airport. ''The soldiers at the gate whisper, 'You think you got away, but we'll get you in Rwanda,' '' one refugee said.

While afraid to talk openly or to be identified, local Congolese said they knew what had happened in the forest because the unit suspected in the killing hired stretcher-bearers and drivers and bought supplies in villages beyond Kilometer 42.

Not all of the villagers in the area have been hostile to the refugees. Some have grown sympathetic to the refugees' plight and have fed Hutu refugee families and adopted abandoned Hutu children. When the refugee trucks pull up to the muddy Congo River ferry slip in the evening, it is common to see women who look as if they can barely afford it buying bunches of small bananas and handing them up to the children inside.

''I was crying because of some dead babies on the ground -- that these little ones should die,'' said Therese Mbuaya, a worker at the transit camp in the city, ''and the soldiers said to me, 'Mama, why do you cry? Don't you know they are snakes? Maybe they will kill you tonight.' ''

Diplomats and aid workers here said they were horrified by what they were sure was going on, but they also said they felt powerless to stop it or to object too loudly. Whenever they do, things suddenly tend to go wrong with the rescue operations: cars are stolen, ferries drift away, villagers block roads and throw stones. Their first priority is to save the refugees they can and to keep their own staffs alive and out of harm's way.

Assuming that Rwanda may be behind the killings or could at least help gain them access to the suspect zone, the diplomats and aid workers have begun to suggest that the United States, Britain and other donors should threaten to cut off the $600 a million a year they give to Rwanda for projects like rebuilding bridges and schools. ''It's that old question of linkage,'' one high-ranking Western diplomat said. ''Pressure, massive pressure, is all these regimes understand.''

Map of Congo showing the location of Kisangani: The United Nations has been impeded in its investigations near Kisangani. (pg. A10)

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