Democratic Republic of the Congo

APC	Armée populaire congolaise, Congolese People’s Army, military wing of RCD-ML
FDD	Forces pour la Défense de la Démocratie, Forces for the Defence of Democracy, rebel group fighting the Burundian government
FIPI	Front pour l’Intégration et la Paix en Ituri, Front for the Integration and Pacification of Ituri, led by Kawa Mandro.
DRC	Democratic Republic of Congo, formerly Zaire
Interahamwe	Mainly Rwandese Hutu militia
Mayi-mayi	Congolese militia
MONUC	Mission de l’Organisation des Nations Unies au Congo, United Nations Organization Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo
MLC	Mouvement de libération du Congo, Movement for the Liberation of the Congo, headed by Jean-Pierre Bemba and backed by the Ugandan government
RCD-Goma	Rassemblement congolais pour la démocratie-Goma, Congolese Rally for Democracy-Goma, backed by the Rwandese government and led by Adolphe Onusumba Yamba.
RCD-ML or RCD K/ML	Rassemblement congolais pour la démocratie-Mouvement de libération, Congolese Rally for Democracy-Liberation Movement, also known as RCD-Kisangani, led by Mbusa Nyamwisi, backed by the Ugandan government and close allies of the DRC government
RCD-N	Rassemblement congolais pour la démocratie-National, Congolese Rally for Democracy-National, led by Roger Lumbala and backed by the Ugandan government.
RPA	Rwandese Patriotic Army, the Rwandese army
UPC	Union des patriotes congolais, Union of Congolese Patriots, led by Thomas Lubanga
UDPS	Union pour la démocratie et le progrès social, Union for Democracy and Social Progress, political party led by Etienne Tshisekedi
UPDF	Ugandan People’s Defence Forces, the Ugandan army

Democratic Republic of the Congo

“Our brothers who help kill us” - economic exploitation and human rights abuses in the east.

Introduction

“I am convinced now…that the lives of Congolese people no longer mean anything to anybody. Not to those who kill us like flies, our brothers who help kill us or those you call the international community… Even God does not listen to our prayers any more and abandons us.”[1]

Salvatore Bulamuzi, a member of the Lendu community whose parents, two wives and five children were all killed in recent attacks on the town of Bunia, north-eastern DRC.

“Let’s not hide the facts: there are only two principal actors in the area controlled by the rebels. On the one hand there is Uganda and its army, the UPDF. And on the other, there is Rwanda and the RPA [the Rwandese army]. The others you call rebels are only the local servants in the service of Kigali [Rwanda] and Kampala [Uganda]… And since they also find wealth in this way, they join up with these forces and all we poor people can do is die…”[2]

Hangui.T, a resident of Nyankunde, a small town near Bunia in Ituri, where more than 200 people died in intercommunal violence in September 2002.

Four years of conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have proved among the most disastrous in the history of modern Africa. Some three million people are believed to have lost their lives and more then two-and-a-half million have been driven from their homes, 500,000 to neighbouring countries. The inhabitants of the eastern part of the country, under the control of foreign forces and armed political groups opposed to the government in Kinshasa, the capital, have experienced the highest levels of suffering.[3]

Thousands of Congolese civilians have been tortured and killed during military operations to secure mineral-rich lands. Foreign forces have promoted interethnic conflicts and mass killings as a means to secure mining zones. Combatants of the various forces in the region have killed or tortured independent miners and traders for their minerals or money. Many of the hundreds of thousands of inhabitants, driven from their homes into neighbouring countries or other parts of the DRC, have died from malnutrition and lack of access to humanitarian assistance[4]. Children as young as 12 have been among those forced into hard labour in the mines. Human rights defenders who have reported or criticized such abuses have been beaten, detained, forced to flee, or killed.

It is estimated that more than three quarters of the killings in the DRC over the last four years have taken place in eastern DRC and about 90 per cent of the DRC’s internally displaced population have fled violence in that region. However, in eastern DRC, the neighbouring states of Rwanda and Uganda, in alliance with Congolese armed political groups have systematically plundered the region on a vast scale, justifying their military intervention and control of the area by the threat to their own security from the activities of Rwandese and Ugandan insurgent groups[5] operating from within the DRC. The ambition of all theses combatant forces to exploit eastern DRC’s mineral and economic wealth has been the biggest single factor in the continuing violence. The major beneficiaries have been senior members of the Ugandan and Rwandese armed forces, foreign businesses and leaders of armed political groups. Recent troop withdrawals have not affected continuing control of the exploitation by Rwanda and Uganda. These economic interests have led to the emergence of a pattern of violence by all forces in the region that is aimed primarily at Congolese civilian communities and is predatory in character.

Yet, despite the scale of the still unfolding tragedy, the human rights crisis has been under-reported and misunderstood, allowing the major protagonists to escape scrutiny. The Kinshasa government has allowed the armed forces of Zimbabwe to exploit the DRC’s diamond fields and commit human rights violations in return for their military support. In eastern DRC, the entrenched pattern of impunity has perpetuated the violence and lawlessness of armed forces in the region.

In an earlier report, Amnesty International examined the impact on human rights of the diamond trade in government-controlled DRC, where lethal force has routinely been used against unauthorised miners who have encroached on state-controlled mining concessions.[6] Amnesty International’s current report is the result of research, including in eastern DRC, into human rights abuses associated with economic exploitation taking place in areas under the control of the armed opposition groups and foreign forces. It sets out the economic context in which violations are taking place. It looks at the major actors, and at the economic forces and mineral resources fuelling the war. It documents human rights abuses and the failure to bring those suspected to be responsible to justice. It shows how the search for economic gain is still costing civilian lives.

This report concludes with recommendations aimed at achieving accountability and justice addressed to all parties to the conflict, both governments and armed political groups, and to the international community, including companies doing business in eastern DRC. Concerted and robust international action is needed to end the human rights and humanitarian crisis in DRC and to ensure that impunity for the military and political leaders who have condoned, encouraged and organized human right abuses does not remain the only response to such dire tragedy.

Amnesty International calls on the governments of Rwanda and Uganda, and on the leaders of the armed political groups, to end the killings and other grave human rights abuses committed by their forces in eastern DRC. It urges the governments to bring to justice those suspected to be responsible for abuses and the armed political groups to acknowledge and condemn the human right abuses by their combatants, and to immediately remove any combatant suspected of abuses and cooperate with any investigations.

Amnesty International’s principal recommendations to the international community are the establishment both of an international commission of inquiry into human rights abuses in eastern DRC and supporting judicial mechanisms that can bring to justice perpetrators charged with war crimes, crimes against humanity and other serious human rights abuses. To bring to trial those responsible for the abuses would be the most effective deterrent to others. The recent withdrawal of some Rwandese and Ugandan forces from eastern DRC does not diminish their responsibility for atrocities committed in the course of the DRC armed conflict or the pressing need to see justice done.

Amnesty International also recommends the adoption of measures by the UN Security Council to promote transparency and to ensure that minerals from eastern DRC entering international markets have not been obtained in a manner that contributes to human rights abuses. International commercial interests in coltan, gold, diamonds, timber and other precious resources have, knowingly or unknowingly, contributed to human rights abuses. Minerals such as coltan are used in the manufacture of electronic products found in most homes in the industrialized world. Gold is a widely traded commodity as a hedge against inflation and is viewed as an investment. Diamonds are bought for ceremonial occasions. Timber is used for a variety of purposes in households in all parts of the world. DRC’s resources, in other words, have international uses and have an international market. And yet international consumers have access to only limited information about the circumstances in which such resources are mined and procured, and the effect of such trade on the lives of people in communities around the plantations and minefields.

Revenues generated from commercial contracts involving national resources should contribute to the progressive realization of the inhabitants’ social and economic rights. The international community has a responsibility to link the quest for justice in the global campaign against impunity with global efforts for greater accountability regarding economic activities and their impact on human rights.

The Panel of Experts on Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and Other Forms of Wealth in the Democratic Republic of Congo (UN Panel of Experts) appointed by the UN Security Council, has recommended the establishment of a long term monitoring body to be established to scrutinize continuing economic exploitation in the DRC.[7] Amnesty International recommends that such a body’s remit include assessment of the human rights abuses that have resulted from that exploitation. It calls mainly on the governments of Rwanda and Uganda, and on companies involved in mining operations in eastern DRC, to ensure that all commercial contracts involving the DRC’s national resources are negotiated transparently and according to internationally recognized principles of public tendering and bidding. Amnesty International also makes recommendations to companies operating in eastern DRC, the most important being to ensure that they are not complicit in human rights abuses.

I-The conflict: ‘Our brothers who help kill us’

Most of the three million people estimated to have died as a result of the war launched in August 1998 to overthrow the DRC government have been women, children and the elderly. Many died in the humanitarian catastrophe caused by the war’s disruption of food production and trade, as well as the disruption of access to shelter and medical care.

The number of victims of the conflict is very high. More than three quarters of the dead and about 90 per cent of the internally displaced have been in eastern DRC. Many were victims of disease and malnutrition brought about by displacement and the conflict; the remainder were victims of killings by foreign forces or Congolese armed groups. The inter-ethnic killings in Ituri are the exception, but these too are intimately linked to political manipulation and insecurity created by combatant forces. Social structures, medical facilities and local administrations have collapsed. Constant shifts in political and military alliances based on economic interests have left a political vacuum and stoked ethnic conflicts. Many communities suffering severe food shortages and starvation remain beyond the assistance of international humanitarian organizations. Insecurity as a deliberate strategy of war has allowed the combatants to justify their continued presence in the region and given them free rein to loot its natural resources.

1-The major protagonists

Eastern DRC has been under the control of the armed forces of Uganda and Rwanda, and to a lesser extent Burundi, in shifting alliances with local armed political groups, since August 1998.

Until the withdrawals of Rwandese and Burundian government forces in late 2002, the Rwandese Patriotic Army (RPA), the Rwandese Army, and their ally, the Goma-based faction of the armed political group the Rassemblement congolais pour la démocratie (RCD-Goma), Congolese Rally for Democracy, controlled the greater part of North-Kivu province, all of South-Kivu and Maniema provinces, and a large part of the province of Kasai Oriental and Oriental province, including Kisangani, the DRC’s third largest city. Burundian forces controlled a relatively slender zone along the western shore of Lake Tanganyika. The RCD-Goma continues to control much of this territory following the withdrawal of their foreign allies although many areas have fallen under the control of mayi-mayi groups. The RCD-Goma claims to be the true political and military authority in these provinces, and undertakes local administrative functions, for example the collection of custom duties and business taxes. But the movement is militarily weak and relies heavily on the numerically and militarily superior forces of the Rwandese army, especially in the interior. Behind the scenes, Rwandese officials exercise administrative, political, military and economic power in the region. Policies implemented are decided and approved in Kigali. “The RCD are the allies of the RPA, not the other way round,” according to one Congolese human rights defender.

The Ugandan People’s Defence Forces (UPDF), the Ugandan army, and the Ugandan government have provided political and military backing to four armed political groups acting in differing capacities and with varying strengths. They are the RCD-Mouvement de libération (RCD-ML), RCD-Liberation Movement, the Mouvement de libération du Congo (MLC), Liberation Movement of the Congo, RCD-National (RCD-N), RCD-National, and a recently formed group, the Union des patriotes congolais (UPC), the Union of Congolese Patriots. RCD-ML and RCD-N are break-away factions of RCD-Goma. The UPC, made up primarily of members of the Hema ethnic group, also recently broke away from the RCD-ML and controls Bunia, the capital city of the Kibali-Ituri province created by Uganda in 1999. Uganda’s transfer of support from the RCD-ML to the UPC suggested that it was seeking to sustain the newly formed Hema-dominated group and retain control of the gold-rich Ituri region[8]. Internal divisions subsequently emerged again within the UPC, with one faction reportedly favouring alliance with Rwanda and another with Uganda. This latter faction emerged as a new armed political group, the Front pour l’intégration et la paix en Ituri (FIPI), led by Gegere Chief Kawa Mandro Panga, whose formation was announced at the Speke Hotel in Kampala, Uganda, on 14 February 2003.[9] These groups control much of northern and north-eastern DRC, including parts of North-Kivu province, Ituri province and large portions of Oriental and Equateur provinces. The four groups have been more or less in constant conflict with one another. Ethnic divisions and loyalities, notably in Ituri, have been a factor in these divisions, as has been ambivalent and shifting Ugandan political and military support to each group. Large numbers of civilians have been killed in periodic bouts of in-fighting.

Opposing the Rwandese army, the Ugandan and Burundian forces and their client Congolese armed political movments in eastern DRC are the local Congolese armed groups collectively known as mayi-mayi, the mainly Rwandese Hutu combatants -- who include former interahamwe militia -- and Ugandan and Burundian insurgent groups.

The governments of Rwanda and Burundi reportedly supply RCD-Goma forces with most of their arms and training. Arms include rocket launchers, armoured cars, machine guns, light artillery, mortars and landmines, manufactured in a wide range of countries, including China, USA, Belgium, France, the former Yugoslavia, Germany and Bulgaria. According to RCD-Goma personnel, Puma helicopters and Antonov aircraft have been used both in RCD-Goma and Rwandese army operations in eastern DRC and also to import arms and export timber and and minerals such as coltan. They are said to be piloted by Ukrainians or Russians hired by companies with financial stakes in the coltan and diamond trade. The same situation prevails in Ugandan-controlled DRC. Most of the arms used by armed political groups there are supplied by and through Uganda. Uganda also provides military training to the warring movments including the MLC, RCD-ML, UPC and FIPI. The DRC government reportedly supplies arms and uniforms to the RCD-ML of Mbusa Nyamwisi. In 2002, Bunia residents and local human rights NGOs saw RCD-ML combatants wearing the uniforms of the Forces Armées Congolaises (FAC), the Congolese Armed Forces.

2-Peace negotiations

Lusaka Ceasefire Accord

Under the auspices of the OAU [10] (Organisation of African Unity) and the UN, a ceasefire agreement (accord de cessez-le-feu en République Démocratique du Congo) was signed on 10 July 1999 in Lusaka, Zambia, to end the conflict[11]. It is called ‘The Lusaka Ceasefire Agreement’. Clear ceasefire lines were defined and agreed upon by all belligerents. The agreement recognized the various armed political groups supported by Uganda and Rwanda, in control of part of eastern DRC. The agreement called for the withdrawal of foreign forces and further dialogue between the various Congolese actors. It also called for the disarmament of armed groups not party to the agreement, including the mayi-mayi, Interhamwe and other Rwandese, Ugandan and Burundian insurgent groups. These were characterized as “negative forces” (les forces negatives). The Lusaka Ceasefire Agreement remains, de facto, the only political framework for the peaceful settlement of the conflict.

MONUC[12]

By virtue of the Lusaka Ceasefire Agreement, a neutral ceasefire monitoring body was to be set up as well as a Joint Military Committee. Resolution 1291 of the UN Security Council, passed on 24 February 2000, created MONUC with an initial strength of up to 5,537 military personnel, including up to 500 observers.[13] MONUC is an observer mission one of whose major roles was to monitor the ceasefire lines. The mission was also authorised to include appropriate civilian support staff in the areas, inter alia, of human rights, humanitarian affairs, child protection, political affairs, and medical and administrative support. MONUC has five main operational sectors covering Kinshasa, Kisangani, Kananga, Kalemie and Mbandaka.

MONUC has been constantly under criticism from international NGOs and Congolese civil society for being understaffed, passive and unable to protect civilians on many occasions. Since the signing of the Lusaka Ceasefire Agreement the frontlines have changed and at least 90% of the armed clashes occur in zones known previously as non-combat areas. The deterioration of the security situation in Kisangani and the escalation of communal violence in Ituri has emphasised that there is a crucial role for MONUC to play. However, during the last quarter of 2002 and at the start of 2003 fighting between various armed political groups in parts of Oriental and South-Kivu provinces was escalating with no sign of MONUC being able to stop it or prevent the killings and displacement of unarmed civilians. On 4 December 2002, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 1445, increasing MONUC’s military personnel from 5,537 to 8,700 to enable it to carry out more efficiently its ceasefire-monitoring role.

The Inter-Congolese “dialogues”

In March and April 2002, parties to the armed conflict, Congolese representatives of political parties and civil society met in an Inter-Congolese Dialogue in Sun City, South Africa. In response to the allegations of illegitimate exploitation of the DRC’s natural resources, all sides agreed upon the need to review all commercial contracts concluded since the start of the conflict in order to ascertain their validity.

Politically, a power-sharing agreement between the DRC Government and the MLC was also reached in which Joseph Kabila remained DRC President and armed opposition leader Jean-Pierre Bemba was to become Prime Minister. That political component of the agreement was not signed by the Rwanda backed RCD-Goma, one main armed political group. A significant number of the main unarmed opposition groups also refused to sign it. The peace deal was not all-inclusive and proved extremely difficult to be implemented on the ground. Major ideological and opportunistic divergences arose between Joseph Kabila and Jean-Pierre Bemba. In practice, the agreement led only to months of fruitless negotiations to form a transitional government. In the meantime, the non-signatory parties, mainly RCD-Goma and the UDPS of Etienne Tshisekedi formed a coalition to oppose the agreement and called for a more inclusive accord. Fresh peace talks resumed in Pretoria, South Africa, in October 2002, which aimed at an all-inclusive power-sharing arrangement that would include the opposition groups left out of the Sun City agreement. [14]

Bilateral peace initiatives lead to troop withdrawals

On 30 July in Pretoria, South Africa, and on 15 August 2002 in Luanda, Angola, Rwanda and Uganda signed two separate bilateral accords with the DRC government, agreeing to the total withdrawal of their troops in the DRC by 5 October and 15 December 2002, in line with the Lusaka ceasefire agreement. Uganda also agreed to establish a Joint Pacification Committee for the region of Ituri. Rwanda told the UN Security Council that it had completed withdrawal of its forces on 5 October 2002, under the supervision of MONUC and other international monitors. Burundi also announced that it had pulled its troops out in October, although its government has denied involvement in the DRC conflict.

In October 2002, Uganda withdrew more than 90 per cent of its forces, but the UN Secretary-General asked that it to retain troops in Bunia, in Ituri province, to maintain security. Officially, three UPDF battalions remain in the province. Amnesty International has concerns that the Ugandan army has failed to be impartial in the inter-ethnic crisis in Ituri, threatening peace and fuelling further violence in the region. There are also strong indications that some Rwandese troops have not left their positions in eastern DRC or that they and their heavy weapons have been incorporated into the RCD-Goma forces. Local human rights groups have confirmed the presence of RPA forces in North-Kivu province, especially around the mineral-rich areas of Burungu, Kishanga in Masisi, and in Rushuru and Goma.

Troop withdrawals and economic exploitation

“The withdrawal of foreign forces is an important step towards ending the illegal exploitation of natural resources. Yet the necessary networks have already become deeply embedded to ensure that the illegal exploitation continues, independent of the physical presence of the foreign armies.” (Report of the UN