AP News, January 5th, 2008
Congolese government forces summarily executed civilians and members of a politician's private militia and used excessive force during clashes with the militia last year, according to a preliminary report by U.N. human rights investigators.
The investigators had probed March clashes in Kinshasa, Congo's capital, between Congolese forces and security guards of Jean-Pierre Bemba, a former warlord who was runner-up in 2006 presidential elections.
In a statement released Friday in Geneva, the U.N. human rights commissioner's office put the toll at at least 300, but said the number summarily executed was difficult to pin down.
Congolese Defense Minister Chikez Diemu said the government would have no comment.
"There are means of dealing with such serious issues, and not through the media," Diemu said in Goma, in the far eastern region of Congo where officials were gathering for peace talks with another warlord.
According to Congolese officials, the clashes started when Bemba's troops took over a part of Congo's capital. Bemba said his men were defending him from an assassination attempt. Bemba, who once controlled an army of 20,000, still had a battalion of roughly 600 men.
He had refused to disband his personal militia after the 2006 vote, claiming he needed it to ensure his safety, while the government accused him of keeping the armed soldiers to mount an insurrection. His fighters missed multiple deadlines to register with the army.
The U.N. investigators called for Congolese authorities to conduct their own judicial investigation into the March 22-23 violence and to make a public statement about the clashes and what has been done since to address any wrongdoing.
"The investigative team received credible information that at least 40 civilians and surrendered (Bemba) soldiers were summarily executed," the U.N. statement said. "Reports of mass burial sites and evidence of bodies of unidentified victims recovered in the Congo River, however, indicate that there may have been a significantly higher number of summary executions committed."
The statement also detailed illegal detentions and "cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment while in detention."
While the most serious charges were laid against government forces, the report also said Bemba's fighters as well as government forces engaged in looting and used heavy weapons in central Kinshasa and in Kinshasa residential areas "where no military objective could justify the means or degree of force used, and where no consideration was given to the safety of the civilian population."
Congo has been ravaged by years of dictatorship and war. The 2006 vote was its first free and fair elections in more than 40 years. Bemba came in second behind President Joseph Kabila, another former rebel.
Following the March clashes, Bemba fled to Portugal.
