UN Urged to Cease Support for Congo Army

Human Rights Watch has called on the UN to withdraw its support of a military operation aimed at eradicating Rwandan rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), which it says has ended up in a humanitarian crisis.

The US-based rights group said in a new report that the UN Security Council should act to protect Congolese civilians from further atrocities by government and rebel forces, and to ensure that peacekeepers are not implicated in human rights abuses.

The report also asks the peacekeeping forces to halt its support of the DRC’s military until clear procedures and means to evaluate and implement the operation are in place, so as to avoid violating international humanitarian laws.

The new report gives a full account of the operation, carried out between January and September 2009 by the Congolese army with UN backing, to rout a Rwandan Hutu militia group.

More than 1400 civilians were deliberately killed and thousands of rape cases were reported in the operation to dismantle the rebel Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), which is believed to have played a part in the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

The UN has said that the campaign was meant to reinforce stability in the region, and claims the situation would have been worse if the peacekeepers were not deployed.

The UN Security Council is expected to renew the mandate of the peacekeeping mission in Congo (MONUC) this week, and has vowed to withdraw support of any military unit indicted of atrocities.

Elections under a new constitution in 2006 saw Joseph Kabila elected as president in the DRC’s first multi-party elections since independence, ending the civil war that had claimed over 5.4 million lives. [ER].