As the trial of former militiamen Mathieu Ngudjolo and Germain Katanga opened this week at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, residents of their home district of Ituri in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) are losing faith in the court. 

By Sylvere Unen

In March 2005, the arrest of Thomas Lubanga Dyilo struck a chord with the population of the DRC and their attention turned to the ICC, where one of the principal actors in the Iturian tragedy was going to be tried for the recruitment and use of child soldiers.

In Ituri, the lack of equitable justice, poor governance, and the absence of dialogue have all contributed to the rise in bloody inter-ethnic violence, which has claimed more than 60,000 lives. The ICC seemed to offer an opportunity to re-establish peace through justice.

However, from the outset the Hema community - to which Lubanga belongs - saw the court as an instrument of oppression by the international community.

In February 2008, the arrest of two more Iturians, Germain Katanga and Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui, changed everything.

The two new defendants came from the Lendu ethnic group which fought the Hema during the war. The two men were accused of committing crimes in Bogoro, a Hema village located 30km south of Bunia. From that point on, the talk in Ituri was of actions perpetrated against sons of this district.

Jean Bosco Lalo, president of the Civil Society in Bunia explains: “Our desire would be for the investigation to continue beyond Ituri, knowing well that what happened in Ituri did not involve only Iturians.”

“Trying the weak”
Having been targeted by the ICC, Iturians pinned their hopes on the court.

Dheda Tikpa is a spokesperson for the Lendu community in Bunia. “We want justice to be executed in an equitable manner,” he said, “and for those responsible for these crimes, whether they are Iturians or from outside of the country, to be tried by this court. It is on that condition alone that the ICC will not appear to be a court destined to try the weak.”

Tikpa’s view resonates among the Hema as well. The community’s spokesperson in Bunia, Professor Pilo Kamaragi, says: “I think that it was high time to carry out investigations into the tragedy in Ituri.” He added, “Unfortunately, I don’t see any systematic investigations into this tragedy.”

“No movement”
This criticism has eroded the credibility of the court little by little. So it was that efforts by the ICC Information Unit to promote awareness of Ngudjolo and Katanga’s trial did not get the attention of many people. People were frustrated by the slow pace of the proceedings in the Thomas Lubanga case. As one member of the Lendu community put it, “Nothing is moving forward there.”

While the court in The Hague has yet to reach a verdict, the president of the Ituri military tribunal in Bunia, Major Innocent Mayembe, points out that during the last four years he has already tried Yves Panga Mandro Kahwa - chief of staff of the army branch of Thomas Lubanga’s Union des Patriotiques Congolais - for war crimes as well as the killers of two UN observers in Mungwalu.

Other rulings for serious crimes have been pronounced in Mbandaka and Katanga.
Seeing such results from their own courts, Iturians are losing trust in the international court in which they had initially placed their hopes.Five years after the first investigations opened, they are no longer expecting much from the ICC.