Watch Congo rebel commander arrested in mass rapes

Congo rebel commander arrested in mass rapes


GOMA, Congo — A leader of a Congolese rebel group suspected of commanding the rape of at least 303 civilians two months ago has been taken into custody, a United Nations peacekeeping mission in Congo said.

OMA, Congo — A leader of a Congolese rebel group suspected of commanding the rape of at least 303 civilians two months ago has been taken into custody, a United Nations peacekeeping mission in Congo said.

The chief of staff of the Mai Mai Cheka rebel group, Lt. Col. Sadoke Kokunda Mayele, was arrested by U.N. peacekeepers in the Walikale territory of North Kivu province Tuesday in a joint action with the Congolese government, the U.N. said in an e-mailed statement.

Mayele is accused of coordinating a series of attacks between July 30 and Aug. 2 on 13 villages in Walikale with two other rebel groups. At least 235 women, 52 girls, 13 men and 3 boys were raped, a report by the U.N. Joint Human Rights Office in Congo said last month.

"The numerous criminal acts committed under Lt Col. Mayele's command cannot be undone, but let his apprehension be a signal to all perpetrators of sexual violence that impunity for these types of crimes is not accepted and that justice will prevail," Margot Wallstrom, the Special Representative of the U.N. Secretary General on Sexual Violence in Conflict, said in a statement Tuesday.

The U.N. force, known as MONUSCO, said Mayele had been handed over to military judicial authorities, who have opened a judicial inquiry.

Both the U.N. and the Congolese army bolstered their troop presence in the region after coming under criticism for not responding to the attacks sooner.

Walikale is a mountainous region in a remote, forested part of the country. Numerous armed groups, including some members of the army, are fighting over control of mines and trade routes in the area, which is rich in tin ore, gold, and coltan, an ore used in electronics.

Three pilots have been kidnapped since July from the region's main airstrip by Mai Mai Cheka rebels, after which trade in minerals from the region was halted by Congo's President Joseph Kabila to root out the "mafia groups" who the government said control the sector.
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prevented the rape UN 'was not told about DR Congo mass rapes'

UN 'was not told about DR Congo mass rapes'

UN troops could not have prevented the rape of more than 150 women and boys by rebels in DR Congo because they did not know it was happening, a UN envoy said.

Peacekeepers passed through the area twice but were told only that rebels were setting up road blocks, he said.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said he was "outraged" by the attacks and has sent two envoys to investigate.

The UN has called an emergency session of the Security Council to discuss a response to the violence.

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The rapes happened in Luvungi town and surrounding villages, within miles of a UN peacekeeping base, a US aid worker and a Congolese doctor have said.

Some reports say rebels occupied the area and gang-raped nearly 200 women and some baby boys over four days before leaving.

A UN joint human rights team confirmed allegations of the rape of at least 154 women by fighters from the Rwandan FDLR militia and Congolese Mai-Mai rebels in the village of Bunangiri.

But Roger Meece, a UN official in eastern DR Congo, said that while local people had told the UN patrols about roadblocks, they said nothing about the sexual violence. The UN was only told about it 10 days later by an aid group.

Speaking to journalists by video from Goma, Mr Meece said the villagers may have feared reprisals from the rebels or have been ashamed by the cultural stigma of rape.

But the BBC's Barbara Plett at the UN says there was clearly a serious failure in communications, made all the more significant as the peacekeepers work from a small forward operation base established to increase the UN's contact with civilians in the volatile region.

Mr Meece said the UN was now investigating ways of improving communication with local people.

One idea is for villagers to contact the base daily, "with the default being that if the communication is not made, there would be an assumption of a problem and a patrol despatched," he said.

'Must speak out'
DR Congo has a shocking reputation for sexual violence and rape is commonly used as a weapon of war.

Haunted by Congo rape dilemma
But even by normal standards, the latest attacks were particularly vicious, says our correspondent.

Mr Ban said he had met victims of "appalling crimes of sexual violence" in DR Congo last year and felt compelled to ask whether more could have been done to protect the latest victims.

"Women and children should not have to live in fear of rape. Communities should not suffer the indignity of knowing that human rights abusers and war criminals can continue to behave with impunity," he said.

"We must speak up and we must act."

The UN has previously described Congo as "the rape capital of the world", with more than 8,000 women raped during fighting in 2009.

A report released in April by the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative showed that 60% of rape victims in South Kivu province had been gang-raped by armed men.

More than than half of the assaults took place in the victims' homes, the report said, and an increasing number of attacks were being carried out by civilians.

Eastern DR Congo is still plagued by army and militia violence despite the end of the country's five-year war in 2003.

UN peacekeeping troops have been backing efforts to defeat the FDLR, whose leaders are linked to the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and who are operating in eastern DR Congo.

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Enjoy UN investigates claims of mass rape by DR Congo rebels

UN investigates claims of mass rape by DR Congo rebels
The United Nations is investigating claims that rebel fighters raped more that 150 women and baby boys in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Thousands of women are raped each year in DR Congo, the UN says
The attacks happened over four days within miles of a UN base, a US aid worker and a Congolese doctor said.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon is sending two top aides to the country to help investigate the alleged assaults in the country's volatile eastern region.

Mr Ban also urged the Congolese government to investigate the attacks.

Aid workers and UN representatives knew that rebels had occupied Luvungi town and surrounding villages in eastern DR Congo the day after the attack began on 30 July, the International Medical Corps (IMC) said on Tuesday.

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“
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The secretary-general is outraged by the rape and assault”

Ban Ki-moon
UN Secretary-General
They could not get into the town until the rebels left, said the IMC's Will Cragin.

According to reports, the rebels gang-raped nearly 200 women and some baby boys over four days before leaving.

The region lies approximately 10 miles (16km) from a UN peacekeepers' base.

Mr Ban is sending Atul Khare, assistant secretary-general for peacekeeping, immediately to DR Congo to help investigate, UN spokesman Martin Nesirky said.

He also ordered his special representative for sexual violence in conflict, Margot Wallstrom, to take charge of the UN's response to the attacks.

A UN joint human rights team confirmed allegations of the rape of at least 154 women by fighters from the Rwandan FDLR militia and Congolese Mai-Mai rebels in the village of Bunangiri, Mr Nesirky said.

"The secretary-general is outraged by the rape and assault. This is another grave example of both the level of sexual violence and the insecurity that continue to plague Congo," he told the Associated Press.

'World rape capital'
The victims are receiving medical and psychological care.

Ms Wallstrom condemned the rapes. She said: "It should be noted that this incident represents a very extreme case in terms of its scale and the level of organisation of the attacks.

The "terrible incident" confirmed her findings during a recent visit to Congo of the "widespread and systematic nature of rape and other human rights violations."

DR Congo has a shocking reputation for sexual violence. In April, a senior UN official said it was "the rape capital of the world".

A report by the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative showed that 60% of rape victims in South Kivu province had been gang-raped by armed men.

More than than half of the assaults took place in the victims' homes, the report said, and an increasing number of attacks were being carried out by civilians.

More than 8,000 women were raped during fighting in 2009, the UN says.

Eastern DR Congo is still plagued by army and militia violence despite the end of the country's five-year war in 2003.

UN peacekeeping troops have been backing efforts to defeat the FDLR, whose leaders are linked to the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and who are operating in eastern DR Congo.
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Reports of mass rape by DRC rebels

Enjoy Reports of mass rape by DRC rebels

The UN says at least 5,400 women in the DRC are believed to have been raped in 2009 alone [
Almost 200 women have been raped by rebels in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), during a four-day seizure of a town, aid groups have said.

A US aid worker and a Congolese doctor told the Associated Press on Monday that the attacks occurred within miles of a UN peacekeepers' base

Will Cragin of the International Medical Corps (IMC) said that aid and UN workers knew fighters from Rwandan rebel FDLR group and Congolese Mai-Mai rebels had occupied Luvungi town and surrounding villages the day after the attack began on July 30.

Three weeks later, the UN peacekeeping mission in Congo issued no statement about the attacks and said on Monday that it was still investigating.

Cragin also told the Associated Press that his organisation was only able to get into the town, which he said is about 16km from a UN military camp, after rebels withdrew on their own on August 4.

Systematic rape

"There was no fighting and no deaths, Cragin said, just "lots of pillaging and the systematic raping of women".

Luvungi is a farming centre on the main road between Goma, the eastern
provincial capital, and the major mining town of Walikale.

MONUC was based in the DRC since 1999 to help the government gain control of the east
Four young boys were also raped, according to Kasimbo Charles Kacha, the district medical chief.

UN spokesman Martin Nesirky said the peacekeeping mission has a military operating base in Kibua, about 30km east of the village, but villagers were prevented from reaching the nearest communication point as FDLR fighters blocked the road.

Civil society leader Charles Masudi Kisa said there were only about 25 peacekeepers and that they did what they could against some 200 to 400 rebels who occupied the town of about 2,200 people and five nearby villages.

"When the peacekeepers approached a village, the rebels would run into the forest, but then the Blue Helmets had to move on to another area, and the rebels would just return," Masudi said.

"During the attack [the rebels] looted [the] population's houses and raped several women in Luvungi and surrounding areas," Stefania Trassari, spokesperson for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said
on Monday.

"International Medical Corps (IMC) reported that FDLR systematically raped the population during its four-day stay in Luvungi and surrounding areas. A total of 179 cases of sexual violence were reported," Trassari said, adding all of the cases
were of rape against women.

Harrowing accounts

The IMC said it was treating the victims.

"Nearly all reported rapes were described as having been perpetrated by two-to-six armed men, often taking place in front of the women's children and husbands," it said in a statement.

The United Nations has withdrawn 1,700 peacekeepers in recent months in response to demands from DRC government to end the mission next year, but still supports operations against several armed groups in the country's east.

Roger Meece, the new head of the UN mission called MONUSCO - which replaced predecessor MONUC - said last week that the rebels were still a huge threat to the population and the UN would keep trying to wipe them out.

Margot Wallstrom, the UN special representative on sexual violence in conflict, said in April the withdrawal of UN peacekeepers from the country would make the struggle against endemic rape "a lot more difficult".

Accurate figures for sexual violence are hard to come by as many rapes are unreported but according to the UN, at least 5,400 women reported being raped in neighbouring South Kivu province in the first nine months of 2009 alone.

MONUC had been in the former Belgian colony since 1999 to help the government of the DRC as it struggles to re-establish state control over the vast central African nation.

A war from 1998-2003 and the ensuing humanitarian disaster have killed an estimated 5.4 million people in the country.
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We are see the First wave of transfers in mass repatriation of Roma

Watches this enjoy First wave of transfers in mass repatriation of Roma

FRANCE SENT dozens of Roma on flights home to Romania yesterday in the first mass repatriation since French president Nicolas Sarkozy unveiled a crackdown on crime, a move condemned by human rights groups.

Some 60 Roma left on a chartered plane from Lyon and about a dozen boarded a flight from Paris, the first wave of transfers in a campaign to send 700 people living in squalid camps across France back to Romania and Bulgaria by the end of the month.

Following riots in two French cities last month, Mr Sarkozy ordered 300 illegal camps of Roma dismantled. The move came as part of a crime crackdown targeting immigrants the government blames for a rise in violent crime in France’s poor suburbs.

Roma who agree to leave receive €300 and an additional €100 for each of their children.

The French government says the departures are all voluntary, though some Roma say they were coerced to leave and many are vowing to return to France.

“I want to return. It’s much easier there. Here we don’t have any chance, no jobs, nothing,” Ovidiu, a thin man of 23 from the western Romanian city of Oradea on the border with Hungary, said after arriving at Bucharest.

France repatriated some 10,000 Roma last year and other European countries, including Germany, Italy, Denmark and Sweden have taken similar steps.

But the latest deportations have gained more attention and some French politicians, including a deputy in the president’s UMP party, have likened the raids on Roma camps to the round-up of Jews in Nazi-occupied France.

Others have accused Mr Sarkozy of waging a cynical campaign to distract voters from an illegal donations scandal and high unemployment that have dogged his government and pushed his personal ratings near record lows.

Romanian foreign minister Teodor Baconschi told French radio that he was worried France’s campaign could spark “xenophobic reactions”. The European Commission has said it is scrutinising the situation to ensure France does not violate bloc rules.

The French government says it has a right to counter the influx of Roma, many of whom beg on street corners and live in camps under atrocious conditions. Many experts question the effectiveness of the French plan, arguing it is a waste of resources as nothing will prevent those who have received cash from returning.
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