Subject War Crimes Ambassador Rapp Visits Drc; 3mphasizes Need For Accountability Origin Embassy Kinshasa (Democratic Republic of the Congo) Cable time Mon, 30 Nov 2009 06:34 UTC Excerpt: -- The IDP returns are being stimulated in some areas by Congolese politicians who are hyping the return of Congolese Tutsi refugees from Rwanda who are reportedly crossing clandestinely at night in an organized fashion. UN officers strongly believed this movement is indeed occurring. UNHCR reportedly believes that some 12,000 people have clandestinely crossed from Rwanda, but refuses to describe them as refugees because camp populations do not appear to have changed; the MONUC military G2 strongly embraces that figure. The returnees Qthe MONUC military G2 strongly embraces that figure. The returnees are reportedly mostly heading toward Mushake, Kichanga and Kirolirwe in Masisi district. Some have speculated that they might be Congolese Tutsis who went to Rwanda intending to stay, but have since decided to return home--or are being pushed to go. -- Local chiefs strongly oppose the movement of these refugees, which they believe is related to the issue of land-grabbing by ex-CNDP integrated into FARDC. Ex-CNDP FARDC moved into the Bisie mines and violently pushed civilians, primarily Hutu and Hunde, from areas around Nyabiondo and Lukweti. UN Joint Human Rights teams who were prevented by hostile Mai Mai groups from investigating reports that ex-CNDP had killed hundreds in the Nyabiondo area in October stumbled across solid evidence of massacres in nearby Lukweti (ref A). -- Fear that ex-CNDP/Tutsi will move back to their land has fueled the growth of Mai Mai groups to defend locals against the outsiders, according to UN officials. Mai Mai are also disenchanted by their inability to integrate into the FARDC at ranks they consider appropriate and resent the influence of ex-CNDP in the army. Major active, unintegrated groups in the area include Janviers ACPLS (Hunde), LaFontaines PARECO group (Nande), and Mai Mai Kifuafua (Tembo, Nyanga, etc). The ACPLS appears to be the most powerful of these at the moment and is notable for its hostility to FARDC and MONUC, its working relationship with FDLR in the area and its good ties with (non-Tutsi) local civilians (ref B). -- There was an interesting difference of emphasis between Blege from Civil Affairs and Yoho from the Joint Human Rights Office, who together met with the Rapp group. Yoho believed that FDLR crimes were worse than the CNDPs, whereas Blege noted that the FDLRs worst massacre, at Busurungi in May was immediately preceded by a massacre of Hutu civilians by FARDC at nearby Shalio. The Rapp delegation also met in Kiwanja with a group of civil society representatives and then with a group of survivors of the massacres the year before. The civil society representatives described the tensions in Kiwanja as basically a conflict between Tutsis from the CNDP military and Hutu civilians, though much of Kiwanja is also ethnic Nande. They complained about impunity and how people had not been punished for their crimes, specifically mentioning Bosco Ntaganda, who commanded the CNDP troops during the Kiwanja killings. They complained that the presence of the FDLR destabilized Congo, but also blamed Rwanda for its unwillingness to allow an inter-Rwandan dialogue that might encourage the FDLR to return. ¶22. (SBU) The survivors of the Kiwanja massacre told a series of horrifying tales. In almost all cases, CNDP moved through the town, knocking on doors and killing, possibly because they suspected the residents were hiding anti-CNDP fighters. Each story was worse than the one before. A young mother with an infant said that she lived only because one of the soldiers told the others that, while they should kill everyone else in the house, if they killed the mother with the baby they would be cursed. Notably, one of the victims -- a man crippled by gunshot wounds in an arm and a leg -- said he had been shot in August 2009, not during the Kiwanja massacres. Members of the Rapp delegation were struck by the follow-on effects of the disaster that lingered in Kiwanja a year later: survivors were often rendered homeless; they not only lost their property but also the family breadwinners; the wounded, who were sometimes badly maimed, lost the ability to generate income until they recovered sufficiently to return to work. cablegatesearch.net/cable.php?id=09KINSHASA1042&q=genocide%20hutu%20tutsi
Posted on: Tue, 11 Mar 2014 11:56:58 +0000
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