Democratic Republic of Congo

DRC police arrest youth gangs in Kinshasa

Police in the Democratic Republic of Congo were Tuesday on the offensive against youth gangs in the capital, long accused of robbing, beating up and even murdering residents, police said.

“Operation Likofi (“punch” in Lingala) began in Kinshasa on November 15 and will end on February 15,” police colonel and spokesman Pierre Mwana Mputu told AFP. “We have mapped out the hotbeds of criminal activity.”

The youths known as “kuluna” roam the streets in packs, often under the influence of drugs or alcohol. They violently snatch bags, jewellery and mobile phones. Victims who resist face being clubbed or hacked with machetes. Several have been killed.

“The threat has grown in scale. It’s as if there was no state… it pleased the supreme authority (President Joseph Kabila) to instruct the police to eradicate this phenomenon… and clean up the town,” Mwana Mputu said.

Most people in Kinshasa, a city of some 10 million, live in dire poverty. But the authorities have urged them to help by denouncing gang members, who include the children of police officers and soldiers, several residents told AFP.

On the streets, police officers — some of them masked — have been arresting many young bandits, who will be sent before magistrates especially assigned to the task. State television has shown footages of dozens of youths, including women, handcuffed with bands of cloth.

“Let us hope that this lasts, because in Kinshasa the authorities often don’t go through with their missions to the end,” a women resident said.

“This is a really good idea. The kuluna sometimes kill pregnant women for no reason. They even wreck the stalls of people selling bread and fritters,” she added.

The more notorious gang leaders have sought to evade the police crackdown by disguising themselves, locals said.

Some residents claimed that police officers have carried out several summary executions of youths, sometimes in front of the homes of the alleged gang members. Human rights organisations told AFP that they had received reports of such killings, without being able to confirm them.

Mwana Mputu denied the allegations and said that if any breaches of regulations came to the notice of authorities, these would be punished. – AFP

M23 rebels lay down arms after defeat in Democratic Republic of Congo

Democratic Republic of Congo rebels said Tuesday they were laying down their arms after a crushing assault by the UN-backed army pushed them out of the country’s mineral-rich troubled east.

The M23 movement said in a statement that it had “decided from this day to end its rebellion” and instead to pursue its goals “through purely political means.”

The move ends the insurgency that for 18 months has wracked the region rich in natural resources and the scene of some of Africa’s deadliest conflicts over the past two centuries.

Earlier, Kinshasa claimed “total victory” over the M23 after capturing the last two hills held by the movement’s die-hard fighters.

“The last remnants of the M23 have just abandoned their positions,” said Lambert Mende, communications minister and government spokesman.

“It’s a total victory for the DRC,” he said, adding that the holdout insurgents fled to neighbouring Rwanda.

“We have finished the job,” said Lieutenant Colonel Olivier Amuli, an army spokesman in the North Kivu region that was the scene of the fighting.

The Congolese army launched a major offensive against the rebels on October 25, steadily claiming their strongholds until dozens of fighters were this weekend pushed onto three hilltops about 80 kilometres (50 miles) north of the regional capital Goma and near the border of Rwanda.

The beleaguered insurgents called for a truce, but the army pressed on with its assault, claiming one of the hilltops on Monday.

The UN special force in the region, which had been backing the Congolese forces with aerial reconnaissance, intelligence and planning, joined direct combat late Monday after getting the green light to bombard the remaining positions of the beleaguered rebels.

“We will continue to fire until everything is under control,” said a source at the UN brigade.

With the rebels on the backropes, M23 leader Bertrand Bisimwa had on Sunday called for a ceasefire to allow a resumption of peace talks.

But the fighting only appeared to intensify after the M23 leader’s appeal, despite a statement issued early Monday by envoys from the European Union, African Union and the United Nations that said they were “concerned about the renewed outbreak of violence” that followed the truce call.

The UN and African leaders had urged the M23 — ethnic Tutsi former rebels who were incorporated into the Congolese army under a 2009 peace deal — to declare an end to the rebellion they first launched in April 2012, claiming that the government had not kept up its end of the deal.

“It is important that the M23… declare the end of the rebellion. The fighting must stop,” the head of the UN mission in DR Congo, Martin Kobler, said in a statement on Monday.

Meeting in South Africa late on Monday African leaders echoed the sentiment, saying that a peace deal for DR Congo could be signed if the rebels declared an end to their insurgency.

“The parties would sign an agreement on condition that the M23 makes a public declaration renouncing rebellion,” said Stergomena Tax, executive secretary of the 15-country Southern African Development Community (SADC) in Pretoria.

Analysts say better preparation by the Congolese troops and the backing of the UN brigade with the unprecedented offensive mandate have helped changed the game in the restive east of the DR Congo.

The heavily-armed 3,000-strong UN intervention brigade joined 17,000 peacekeepers already deployed with a mission to carry out offensive operations against the rebel fighters, who are accused of human rights abuses including rape, murder and recruiting child soldiers.

The latest fighting to break out in the border region, rich in sought-after minerals, has sent thousands of people fleeing to neighbouring Uganda.

The UN refugee agency said on Monday it had moved another 3,000 Congolese refugees to its transit camp in Uganda’s town of Kisoro to escape the fighting, bringing the total number of refugees in the small town to 8,000.

The area of North and South Kivu in DR Congo has for decades been the centre of conflict because of its location — having borders with Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi and Tanzania — and the minerals that lie buried underneath its lush green hills.

The minerals include gold and coltan and tin, key component in electronic devices from cell phones to televisions and computers. – AFP

Zuma deploys soldiers to Democratic Republic of Congo

President Jacob Zuma has informed Parliament that 1345 soldiers have been deployed to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the presidency said on Friday.

“Our soldiers are doing exceptionally well in the continent. We congratulate them and assure them of the support of their compatriots as they continue to contribute to the building of a better Africa, as a force for peace,” Zuma said in a statement.

“We are very proud of them and their contribution to African renewal and development.”

The deployment was from June 13, 2013 to March 31, 2014. The expected cost of the deployment was R402,800,000.

The soldiers would be part of a “force intervention brigade”, under the United Nations Monusco peacekeeping force.

Zuma arrived in Luanda, Angola, on Thursday for consultations with Angolan President José Eduardo dos Santos and DRC President Joseph Kabila Kabange.

“The three heads of state are expected to discuss a range of issues relating to peace and stability in the region, particularly the current peace efforts in the DRC,” Zuma’s spokesman Mac Maharaj said in a statement at the time.

The SA National Defence Force said on Friday that South African soldiers in the DRC had not been engaged in armed combat with rebels in the country,

“I can confirm that… the DRC [defence] force engaged with the M23 rebels,” SANDF spokesman Siphiwe Dlamini said.

“We are in a defensive line — we are not engaging.”

He said the intervention brigade comprising of soldiers from South Africa, Tanzania, and Malawi was mandated to engage “armed groups”.

“They will not wait and watch while civilians are being attacked by armed groups,” Dlamini said.

“They will intervene to engage, neutralise, and disarm.”

On Thursday news agency Agence France-Presse reported that fresh fighting broke out outside the city of Goma.

M23 rebels attacked government-held positions on Wednesday night 20 kilometres north of the capital of North Kivu province.

Both sides said they were not yet able to say how many people had been killed or wounded. – Sapa

Many civilians massacred in Congo, say U.N. officials

Rival armed groups may have killed hundreds of civilians in massacres and other “incomprehensibly vicious” attacks in eastern parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), senior U.N. officials said on Wednesday.

The violence is focused in North Kivu province near the border with Rwanda where warring groups have targeted villages seen as supporting their opponents, while the national army has been diverted to fight a movement of mutineers known as M23.

“The deterioration of the overall security situation in North Kivu following the M23 mutiny and related ruthless attacks against civilians is extremely alarming,” said Roger Meece, special representative of U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

Meece was cited in a United Nations report issued in Geneva as saying a new round of systematic killings of villagers appeared to have occurred in early August.

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said allegations of hundreds of killings were still being verified, but preliminary investigations suggested that a large number of people, mainly women and children, had been slaughtered.

“The sheer viciousness of these murders is beyond comprehension,” she said.

The Congo government in Kinshasa this month rejected calls by other countries in the region for an exclusively African force to tackle the insurgency in the east.

Congo says some of the insurgent groups have support from countries such as Rwanda and Uganda – a charge both those governments deny – and wants an expansion of the 17,000-member U.N. peacekeeping force in the vast, mineral-rich state.

Pillay’s office in Geneva said its mission in Congo had recorded 45 attacks on 30 North Kivu villages since May by a group dubbing itself “Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda” or FDLR, and another called Raia Mutumboki.

The FDLR is largely composed of ethnic Hutus, many of whom fled into the Congo after the defeat of a Hutu government widely viewed as responsible for the massacre of up to a million Tutsis and opponents of its policies in Rwanda in 1994.

The movement sometimes stages attacks in alliance with another armed group, Nyatura, the United Nations says.

Raia Mutumboki is a local militia group that says it is protecting the local population. It targets FDLR members and their families, and has been linked to other attacks against people in Congo perceived to be from Rwanda.

Marie Claire Bangwene Mwavita, administrator of North Kivu’s Masisi territory where much of the fighting has taken place, said that she did not know how many civilians had died so far in the violence, but that there was a risk of growing ethnic conflict.

“I can confirm there are several armed groups operating in Masisi, but I cannot confirm that hundreds have been killed,” she said. “As the armed groups are ethnically motivated, there’s a risk (of growing conflict). But the provincial government is already organizing meetings between different communities to put an end to the problem.”

The U.N. force, known as MONUSCO, focuses on protecting civilians but has been forced to divert resources to tackle the fallout from fighting between the Congolese army and M23.

That conflict has displaced nearly half a million people since the mutiny in April led to the formation of the rebel group that accuses Kinshasa of violating a 2009 peace accord. – Reuters