20091222
allafrica

Kinshasa — A new report released Monday by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and MONUC (the UN Mission in DR Congo) outlines a rolling series of attacks carried out over a ten-month period by the renegade armed group known as the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), during which they killed at least 1,200 people, abducted 1,400 – including some 600 children and 400 women – and displaced a total of around 230,000 people.

"These attacks and systematic and widespread human rights violations carried out by the LRA… may constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity," the report says, echoing a second report, also issued on Monday by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, on a similar pattern of LRA attacks in neighbouring South Sudan -- see separate press release at www.ohchr.org.

The dozens of attacks on towns and villages described in the report, which covers the period from September 2008 to June 2009, took place in various parts of DRC's northern Orientale Province. They were sometimes carefully synchronized and also involved mutilations, torture and multiple rapes. Women and girls were often raped before being killed, and many of those who were abducted "were forced to marry LRA members, subjected to sexual slavery, or both."

The roving bands of LRA members also carried out widespread destruction and looting of property, the report says: "Thousands of homes, dozens of shops and businesses, as well as public buildings, including at least thirty schools, health centres, hospitals, churches, markets…were looted, set on fire, or both."

Driven out of Uganda in 2002 and South Sudan in 2005, the LRA took refuge in the DRC's Garamba National Park, in the northeastern part of Orientale Province, where they carried out occasional human rights violations consistent with their practice ever since they first emerged in northern Uganda in 1986.

The Congolese army (FARDC), with support from United Nations Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUC), launched an operation (Rudia) in September 2008 with the aim of limiting LRA incursions. By the end of October 2008, 3,000 FARDC troops had been deployed, but the extremely remote and difficult terrain, and inadequate logistical support meant they made little difference, and the LRA continued to carry out sporadic attacks. The LRA killed during September and October 2008 at least 76 persons.

On 14 December 2008, another anti-LRA operation was launched, this time a joint one known as Operation Lightning Thunder, involving Ugandan and Sudanese troops as well as the FARDC. In response, the LRA launched a series of systematic and organized military attacks against the civilian population.

The most devastating wave of synchronized attacks was unleashed on 25 December 2008, ten days after the start of Operation Lightning Thunder, apparently to exploit the fact that people were gathering in groups in towns and villages to celebrate Christmas Day. Attacks were launched in seven locations in and around the town of Faradje, killing at least 147 people. Around the same time, a further 13 locations close to the town of Doruma were also attacked, with a further 330 people killed. In one of these locations alone – Batande -- the report says, "members of the LRA killed 80 people, women, children and men, who had been locked in a church" People who helped bury the dead in Batande testified to UN human rights staff that a dozen women had been found "their hands tied, clothes torn and legs apart." In all, in a space of 24 hours in two clusters of locations some 400 km apart, two groups of between 100 and 150 LRA fighters had killed at least 477 civilians and abducted hundreds of others.

Further attacks continued in both areas later in December and into January, despite the major military operation that was under way to tackle the LRA. In subsequent months the attacks were more sporadic and less coordinated, but no less vicious in nature, with a similar pattern of killings, rapes and large numbers of abductions especially of children. By the end of June a total of 228,000 people had been displaced within DRC and a further 16,400 had fled as refugees into the neighbouring Central African Republic and Sudan, despite the fact that LRA splinter groups had also crossed both borders and were carrying out similar, if smaller-scale, attacks there (see separate press release and report on South Sudan).

In some cases, the report says, the terror inflicted by the LRA in various parts of Orientale Province was compounded by troops belonging to the Congolese army (FARDC): "Displaced persons were also subjected to harassment, extortion, rape and summary executions committed by the Congolese security forces." Camps sheltering displaced people were also attacked by the LRA, causing further displacement.

The report urges the Congolese government and its foreign military allies to "conduct a realistic assessment of their capacities to defend and protect civilian populations" and, with assistance from the international community, to implement "a military operation that takes into account the duty to protect civilians."

Among other recommendations, it also urges the international community "assist the DRC to establish a vetting system to improve the quality of its security forces and their ability to protect civilians" and to "cooperate with the ICC in investigating, arresting, and transferring all LRA leaders accused of international crimes covered by the Rome Statute."

Arrest warrants, on 33 counts of crimes against humanity and war crimes, were issued against the LRA's leader, Joseph Kony, and other senior LRA members by the International Criminal Court in 2005. Two students, who were abducted on 17 September 2008 and subsequently escaped, told UN human rights investigators how they had been among a group of abductees presented to Kony in his camp in Garamba National Park.