A Voice For the Voiceless
The Advocacy Project helps marginalized communities to tell their story, claim their rights and produce social change. We recruit graduate students to volunteer as Peace Fellows with partners.
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"The Mama Bled to Death”
The violence in Eastern Congo dates back to the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide in 1994, when three million Hutu fled into the neighboring DRC. They included those responsible for the genocide (genocidaires) who regrouped and launched attacks on Rwanda. In 1996, the Rwandan and Ugandan armies invaded the Congo to suppress the attacks. Working with Congolese Tutsis, they toppled the regime of Sese Seko Mobutu in the DRC and installed Laurent-Désire Kabila as President.
Kabila was assassinated in 2001 and replaced by his son, Joseph Kabila, who won a national election in 2006. But the East remained extremely unstable as competing militia fought over valuable minerals, including coltan (left).
On September 25, 2008, Ned described how the pursuit of minerals had taken the life of one woman in Uvira: “In South Kivu, minerals like coltan are used to fund various militias. Today, the curse of the mines played out before our eyes in a very real manner. There is a man in Uvira rumored to be involved in the coltan and gold trade. He left to go on business in neighboring North Kivu Province about a week ago. While his wife and kids were alone in the house, bandits (possibly demobilized soldiers) arrived last night and opened fire, probably hoping to steal any minerals that were in the house.
“The kids we able to flee, but the mama (who was pregnant) was shot numerous times. A doctor was called, but he was understandably afraid to walk the road at night to get to her house. I am less sympathetic to his other reason for not responding: the wounded woman had no money. Despite the pleas of her oldest daughter, who called the doctor on her cell phone, he refused care until payment was made. In the meantime, the mama bled to death in her house.”
“Catching Kimya 2”
The violence surged after the Congolese Army (FARDC) launched an operation in January 2009 (Kimya 2) against the Rwandan rebels (the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, FDLR). For many on the ground, the main impact of the operation was to displace another 900,000 Congolese. As Ned and Walter both reported in their blogs, the constant displacement has contributed to the malnutrition and disease that has claimed over five million lives in Eastern Congo since 1994.
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| Emergency Food aid is distributed by UN peace-keepers: Starvation and disease have caused most of the 5.4 million deaths in Eastern Congo |
In one May 13 2009 blog, Ned reported that the inhabitants of Uvira talked of “catching Kimya 2”: “If you have severe diarrhea in Uvira, you will say ‘Nasikia Kimya II kabisa’ (“I have serious Kimya II”). This uncomfortable and dangerous killer used to be called ‘kuhara’ (‘diarrhea’ in Swahili), but is now named after the government operation to mop up FDLR rebels. According to a 2008 report by the International Rescue Committee, diarrhea is one of the main reasons why 30,000 civilians die each month due to ‘war-related’ causes. Having had no running water in three weeks, everyone in Uvira is starting to feel a bit of ‘Kimya II’ one way or another.”
PrisonersThe Congolese Army (FARDC) captured hundreds of members of the Rwandan militia during the Kimya 2 operation. Walter James met some of them July 30, when he visited a government jail in the village of Livungi with investigators from Arche d’Alliance. He was allowed to take photos (below) and found “seven prisoners in a space that couldn’t have been bigger than 2×2 meters. The cell was secured by pushing a bench against the door, and tin roofing had been nailed to all the windows.”
Juvernal Twaibo, one of the two Arche investigators, took the names of the prisoners and asked about conditions. They had been detained for four days and were only allowed out to urinate, under guard. Commander Nguale decried the poor condition of the cell, but insisted that he “did not have the means” to make improvements. Eventually, the prisoners would be taken to the Rwandan frontier at Bukavu, where they would have the choice of integrating into the Rwandan military or demobilizing and going back to civilian life in Rwanda. This would be done by the UN peace-keeping mission (MONUC). “Part of Juvernal’s monitoring work is to ensure that the FDLR prisoners were moved out of their squalid jail and into the DDR program in a quick and orderly fashion.”
Arche also interviewed another FARDC detainee, Rose Shukurami (right), in Livungi. Rose’s husband is a member of the Rwandan rebel group, FDLR. He escaped, but Rose was picked up by the Congolese Army (FARDC), together with her daughter Julienne, and her daughter’s two small children. Walter found that they were sleeping in a “shabby room next to the FARDC cachot (below). They were given no food, and Rose was not permitted to seek medical assistance for her sick grandchild.”“Songolo, one of the two Arche investigators, told the officer-in-charge that since Rose and her family were civilians, they needed to be taken to the UNHCR’s reintegration program in Sange, a nearby village, where they could find food, medical treatment. They could then be taken out of Congo to Rwanda. ‘We can’t just let her go,’ sputtered the soldier, ‘She will rejoin her husband in the bush! The child may go to Sange to receive medical treatment, but the women and the other child must stay.’”
A more senior officer arrived, and the Arche team again made their argument: this thin grandmother and her family posed little threat to security. Walter writes that the officer was non-committal, but did allow Songolo and Juvernal to question Rose.
Rose said she had not been mistreated, but was finding it difficult to obtain food. Her options were limited. As a Rwandan with a connection to the Hutu rebels (responsible for the 1994 genocide in Rwanda) she was reluctant to return to Rwanda. Besides, she had lived in the Congo since before the genocide and he daughter and grandchildren had been born in the Congo. Still. She was hardly safe here in the Congo.Eventually, Arche’s persistence paid off. Two days after their visit, Rose Shukurami and her family were released to the UNHCR refugee camp in Sange.
Soldiers
After visiting the FARDC prison in Livungi, Peace Fellow Walter James interviewed Arche inqueteur Juvernal Twaibu. Juvernal said that the jail was in “flagrant violation of its prisoners’ rights”. Sanitation was bad, the prisoners had a very hard time getting food, wounded prisoners were refused medical treatment, and it was often hard for humanitarian workers to gain access to the prisoners.
“Indeed, our visit was the exception rather than the rule,” writes Walter. “Juvernal told me of cases where the wives of imprisoned FDLR had come to visit their detained spouses, only to be forced into relationships with the men who were guarding their husbands.”Does monitoring help at all? Juvernal seems to think so. “Often we arrive at the prison, we advocate on behalf of the wrongly imprisoned, and then people are liberated.” Juvernal told Walter that while sexual abuse by government troops did not appear to be as serious as in other parts of Eastern Congo, soldiers were still marrying minors, which is against the law in Congo.
The biggest concern is that FARDC troops make little effort to distinguish between rebels and civilians. “Ten days ago, the 33rd Brigade of the FARDC attacked a group of FDLR in the village of Kigushuwe. Both FDLR and civilians fled the village into a nearby valley. After a while, the FDLR offered to surrender. Instead of accepting the offer, the FARDC commander began shelling the valley with mortars and killed over 60 people, many civilians included. He shrugged off the civilian deaths, saying that if the civilians were in the same valley as the FDLR, they weren’t “real” Congolese. After concluding this grisly tale, Juvernal shook his head. “Our soldiers are not professionals,” he sighed.”
The Internally DisplacedOver a million Congolese fled from their homes in 2009 as a result of the conflict, placing enormous pressure on the refugee ands on those who give them shelter. On July 21, 2009 Peace Fellow Walter James accompanied an Arche team on a field visit to Lubarika (right), a village that had taken in many refugees from the fighting.
The team first visited the local clinic (poste de santé) which was short of medicine and equipment. The clinic has registered 1635 new refugees in six days. Some had traveled for six days by foot, but some also came from villages as close as Buheba, which Walter could see from the clinic.
Walter wrote: “The Congolese way is one of hospitality, and the citizens of Lubarika have opened up their homes to the refugees. Most of the refugees have come to Lubarika because they have family there, but some are lodging with strangers.” One refugee, Rehema (below, left), had been on the move for years. They decided to leave again recently after hearing gunshots. The women and children went to the relative safety of Lubarika, while the men went to Uvira to find work. Rehema is staying with a household of two adult men, three adult women, and numerous children. Furaha (below, right) another refugee from the village of Kaziba, has nine children. Fortunately, her husband has found work in a manioc field in Lubarika.
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Despite the hospitality of the villagers, the influx of refugees has been difficult on Lubarika. Work and food are hard to come by, and the clinic staff told Walter that new cases of malaria, diarrhea, and malnutrition has further stretched the resources of their tiny clinic.
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Martin Masumbuko (right), an investigator for Arche d'Alliance, interviews IDPs in Lubarika. The team is particularly keen to identify elderly, physically disabled, children without parents, and victims of sexual violence. Arche’s report will be sent to aid agencies and NGOs, who provide emergency aid for the refugees and communities hosting them.
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