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| East/Subsaharan Africa | |
| Nearly 1,000 massacred in Congo | |
| 2003-04-06 | |
| Nearly 1,000 people have been killed in ethnic violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the United Nations said Sunday, one day after the signing of an accord to end over four years of war in the vast Central African country. nice timing or poor communications or just hateful spite? The massacres, which took place on Thursday in the northeastern region of Ituri, had caused "at least one thousand victims," the U.N. mission in the DRC said in a statement in the Rwandan capital Kigali. Which did nothing to stop it It said this information came from "witness accounts" of the massacres, which took place in the parish of Drodo and 14 neighboring areas. According to lists compiled by local leaders, 966 people were "summarily executed" in three hours of massacres, said the U.N. mission, which on Saturday sent a team to Drodo and the surrounding areas. Soon to issue a resolution condemning slaughter of 1100 or more civilians on a single day - bag limit The U.N. mission said it had visited 49 seriously injured victims in a local hospital. Most had machetes wounds and some had been hit by bullets. The team had also witnessed "20 mass graves, identifiable by traces of blood that was still fresh.". The U.N. mission said it would continue its investigations to identify those responsible for the bloodletting. Thank you, Inspector Clouseau The violence came one day after the warring parties in the Democratic Republic of Congo signed a historic pact on Wednesday to end more than four years of brutal warfare. The accord between the government, opposition parties and several rebel groups ended 19 months of tortuous peace negotiations. it did, huh? explain that to the newly dead? It enabled President Joseph Kabila to issue on Friday a new constitution which opens the way for a national unity government and the first democratic elections in the former Belgian colony for more than 40 years. A commission, set up to try and bring peace to the troubled Ituri region, began work on Saturday. Earlier on Sunday, Ugandan officers, who have troops stationed in Ituri, said between 350 and 400 members of the Hema ethnic community had been killed in the region in attacks by members of the Lendu ethnic group. The head of the rebel Union of Congolese Patriots (UPC), Thomas Lubanga, confirmed the massacres and said more than 900 people had died. Lubanga, whose rebels recently engaged in fighting against the Ugandan troops in Ituri, accused the Ugandan army of taking part in the Lendu attacks. But General Kale Kaihura, the commander of Ugandan troops in Ituri, rejected the claims, saying he had sent his men to the site of the massacres after receiving information from local chiefs. In a sign of further instability elsewhere in the Democratic Republic of Congo, weapons fire resounded on Sunday afternoon in the town of Bukavu, the main centre in the eastern province of South-Kivu. A spokesman for the rebel group which controls Bukavu, the Congolese Rally for Democracy, said it was a "restrained" attack by local militia in protest at the arrest of their leader on Thursday. "We are hearing shots from heavy and light arms which started some time ago and are continuing," said an inhabitant from the village who was taking refuge inside a church. The war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the former Zaire, broke out in 1998, one year after the fall of reviled dictator Mobuto Seke Seso. It has claimed around 2.5 million lives, either directly or through disease or starvation. There will never be a lack of tribal fighting until the UN peacekeepers do their job ruthlessly
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| Posted by:Frank G |
| #5 Democratic Republic of Congo (Zaire) has a 10% muslim population, total approx. 4.6 million muslims. Shares southern borders with Angola (25% muslim population) and Zambia (15% muslim population) and northern borders with Central African Republic (55% muslim population) and the Sudan (85% muslim population, pretty extremist too) Does anybody know if there is a religious aspect to the internal violence? |
| Posted by: anon1 2003-04-06 22:10:25 |
| #4 Ah, yes.........Africa after the Queen left....... |
| Posted by: Alaska Paul 2003-04-06 21:32:08 |
| #3 From what I understand, there are something like thirty-five different warring parties. No treaty is going to be able to bring them all together peacefully, as long as the hatred between two or more different tribes continues to exist. Some of this fighting has been going on since the early 1900's and was actually encouraged by the Belgian colonial government. The situation in the Congo is so bizarre that I don't think ANYBODY really understands it, which makes it almost impossible to actually get the people to work together for any length of time. As bad as French colonialism was, it was better than Belgian administration, and led to far fewer open wars once these areas achieved independence. Ruanda, scene of even more horrendous clashes and higher death tolls, was also a former Belgian colony. |
| Posted by: Old Patriot 2003-04-06 19:33:25 |
| #2 lol... when will we see THAT headline?... "in a daring display of disregard for international opinion, Pres. Chirac announced today that he just refuses to get involved in the Congo - he was quoted as saying "Zat backwater hellhole zhust has no market for French products..." the story might continue something like this... "..and once again, American forces are in the field against uncertain odds and an almost indeterminable enemy in order to secure the safety and freedom of thousands of unappreciative and uninterested third world civilians... Chirac's only comment on the US operation in the Congo was to say "well, I don't particularly like it, but then again, its the Congo, so who the heck cares"..." |
| Posted by: Steve 2003-04-06 18:39:56 |
| #1 Chiraq: "I zhon't give a shit about zhem, zhey don't want to buy my nuclear reactor" |
| Posted by: rg117 2003-04-06 18:09:38 |