Congolese soldiers killed 50 Rwandan Hutu refugees and abducted and raped around 40 women during an attack on a refugee camp in eastern DR Congo last April, a UN special rapporteur said Thursday.

"Congolese soldiers shot and beat to death at least 50 Rwandan Hutu refugees, and burnt their camp to the ground in an attack in April 2009," UN rapporteur Philip Alston said of the camp in the Shalio area.
 

"Some 40 women were abducted from the camp. A small group of 10 who escaped described being gang raped, and had severe injuries - some had chunks of their breasts hacked off.”
 

The fate of the 30 other women was not known, added Alston, who is special rapporteur on extra-judicial killings and spent 12 days in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Alston said he believed those who carried out the attack were former Tutsi rebels who had been integrated into the DR Congo army as part of efforts to build peace in the country's east.
 

Other incidents
The UN expert said he had received indications of many other killings by the DR Congo army that must be investigated. He also gave details of a previously known massacre blamed on Rwandan Hutu rebels, saying 96 civilians were killed on May 10 "largely in retaliation" for the Shalio deaths.
 

The massacre by the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) rebels occurred in Busurungi, which is near Shalio, he said. Some FDLR members are believed to have participated in the 1994 genocide in neighbouring Rwanda and later fled to eastern DR Congo. The region has long been hit by unrest, with Rwanda and the DR Congo accusing each other of backing rebels there.
 

“Impunity is chronic”
But the two long-time foes joined forces in a joint military operation early this year to pursue the FDLR in eastern Congo.
 

The DR Congo military is now carrying out its own military operation in the east with logistical backing from UN peacekeepers, and Alston heavily criticised it as "catastrophic". "Hundreds of thousands have been displaced, thousands raped, hundreds of villages burnt to the ground, and at least 1,000 civilians killed," he said.
 

Among the DR Congo military, "impunity is chronic", said Alston. "The (military) often gets away with murder. Its soldiers also face no significant risk of punishment for raping and looting the civilian population."
 

"Peace will not come, nor will justice, until the government and the international community take seriously the notion that those accused of heinous crimes must be indicted immediately," he said.
 

UN role
As for the UN peacekeeping mission in the country, known as MONUC, Alston said he was "deeply impressed by the professionalism and dedication of its officers, but the human rights dimension of its activities needs to be rethought".
 

"The [UN] Security Council's mandate has transformed MONUC into a party to the conflict in the Kivus," he said, referring to two eastern Congolese provinces. He continued, "This inevitably creates a conflict of interest in terms of its ability and willingness to investigate allegations of abuses by the [DR Congo army] or by its own forces."
 

Lord’s Resistance Army
Alston also looked into the presence of Ugandan Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels in the DR Congo and said the LRA had killed more than 1,200 civilians in the country since September 2008.
 

Despite the government's claims of success against the rebels, northern Orientale province remains an LRA stronghold, the UN expert said. "The government claims to have pushed the [LRA] out of the Congo and is ready to declare victory, but the sad reality is that the LRA is still very much in business in Orientale. Killings and kidnappings continue apace," he said.
 

Source: AFA