Congolese flee rape, murder onto floating islands
CONGO: Thousands of civilians have taken refuge on floating islands
in the lakes of Congo's Katanga province to escape rape and murder by
government and militia fighters, a top U.N. humanitarian official said
on Thursday.
Some 120,000 people have fled their homes in the remote Mitwaba area,
where hundreds of women have been raped during fighting between the army
and former pro-government militiamen that U.N. peacekeepers are unable
to control, he added.
Congo is staggering towards elections, due later this year, but
fighting continues in Katanga and elsewhere in the lawless east, where
minerals are plentiful and gunmen continue to roam, nearly three years
after the war was officially declared over.
Daniel Augstburger, the head of the U.N.'s Office for the
Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Congo, said many people
had taken refuge on islands formed by clumps of papyrus plants floating
on lakes in Katanga's Upemba National Park.
"In and around Upemba there are thousands of people living on
floating islands because it is the only place they feel safe," he said.
"There is systematic sexual violence. Hundreds of women have been
treated for rape."
He said it was difficult to know exactly how many rapes there had
been as many women were afraid to come forward. Local militias in the
southern mining province of Katanga were originally armed by the
government in Kinshasa to fight against Rwandan-backed rebels during
Congo's five year war.
Since the war officially ended in 2003, some of the gunmen, rag-tag
fighters known as Mai Mai who anoint themselves with potions they
believe make them invincible, have been integrated into Congo's new
army.
Others, however, have turned their guns on the population.
At the end of last year, government forces launched attacks on the
Mai Mai, vowing to put an end to their reign of terror and allow
elections to be held.
But, as with most units in Congo's army, which is supposed to unite
former government forces and rebels, the soldiers are ill-disciplined,
seldom paid and poorly fed.
"Both sides are living off the backs of the population - there is
total impunity. There are attacks, murders, mutilation and pillaging,"
Augstburger said.
"There are now more than 120,000 who are displaced in Mitwaba," an
area 400 km (250 miles) north of the Lubumbashi, the capital of
copper-rich Katanga.
Congo is home to some 17,000 U.N. peacekeepers, making it the world
body's largest peacekeeping mission.
But they are spread thinly across the vast country and just several
hundred have been deployed to Katanga, which is the size of France.
Kinshasa, Friday,(Reuters) |