Human Rights Watch (HRW) says rebel groups in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo have committed war crimes, including rapes and massacres.

HRW issued a statement on Tuesday saying that since June about 33 members of the March 23 movement (M23) who had wanted to defect had been killed and 15 civilians had also been killed in the provinces of North Kivu and South Kivu in the eastern Congo, Reuters reported.

“The M23 rebels are committing a horrific trail of new atrocities in eastern Congo," Anneke van Woudenberg, HRW's senior Africa researcher, said in the report.

The New York-based nongovernmental group said its research is based on some 200 interviews, and it has discovered that at least 46 women and girls have also been raped by the rebels.

One woman told the group that M23 mutineers broke into her home, beat her son to death, and repeatedly raped her; then the rebels poured petrol over her legs and set her on fire.

In addition, the HRW report said that more than 600 men and boys were recruited against their will or unlawfully in neighbouring Rwanda.

“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.

Rwanda has denied the claims that high-ranking Rwandan officials are supporting the rebellion in Congo.

Kinshasa and the United Nations have said that the rebels fighting the Congolese army were trained in Rwanda.

On August 18, 2012, the 15 member states of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) denounced Rwanda for backing rebel groups in the eastern Congo, saying Rwandan "interference" in the Congo was threatening regional peace and stability.


Since early May, over 220,000 civilians have fled their homes in the eastern Congo. Most of them have resettled inside Congo, but tens of thousands have crossed into neighboring Rwanda and Uganda.

The M23 rebels defected from the Congolese army in April in protest over alleged mistreatment in the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo (FARDC). They had previously been integrated into the Congolese army under a peace deal signed in 2009.

The mutiny is being led by General Bosco Ntaganda, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court on a charge of recruiting child soldiers.

The eastern Congo has experienced interminable cycles of violence since 1998.

The war in the Congo has dragged on for over a decade and left over 5.5 million people dead.
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