DRC soldiers ‘abduct civilians’

KINSHASA-Congolese army soldiers are kidnapping civilians to provide forced labour in the country’s northeast, says the United States-based Human Rights Watch.

The New York-based rights group said that civilians abducted in the volatile Ituri district had been forced to work in fields, dig in gold mines, transport goods for the army at gunpoint and, in some cases, had later been killed. Ituri was a particularly bloody corner of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s 1998-2003 war, which sucked in six neighbouring states and sparked a humanitarian disaster that had killed more than four million people.A presidential run-off and provincial elections on October 29 should wind up a long and costly peace process, but violence continued in much of the east, where rag-tag army units, backed up by thousands of UN peacekeepers, still battled militia fighters.Alison Des Forges, senior Africa adviser at Human Rights Watch, said: “Congolese government soldiers were sent to Ituri to protect civilians against abuses by local militias, but they themselves are devastating the area.”Civilians being held without charge to provide free labour to the soldiers must be released at once.”Human Rights Watch called on the authorities in the DRC to investigate and prosecute soldiers suspected of the crimes.Three years after the war officially ended, the army remained a chaotic and often unpaid collection of fighters from the plethora of armed groups that took part in the DRC’s war.They were backed by the UN peacekeepers in operations against rebel groups and militia fighters still resisting central authority.But, they often posed as much of a threat to the population as the gunmen they were sent to fight against.HRW said that, during the last two months, researchers had spoken to dozens of victims and witnesses who described forced labour under the government’s soldiers.Nampa-ReutersIturi was a particularly bloody corner of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s 1998-2003 war, which sucked in six neighbouring states and sparked a humanitarian disaster that had killed more than four million people.A presidential run-off and provincial elections on October 29 should wind up a long and costly peace process, but violence continued in much of the east, where rag-tag army units, backed up by thousands of UN peacekeepers, still battled militia fighters.Alison Des Forges, senior Africa adviser at Human Rights Watch, said: “Congolese government soldiers were sent to Ituri to protect civilians against abuses by local militias, but they themselves are devastating the area.”Civilians being held without charge to provide free labour to the soldiers must be released at once.”Human Rights Watch called on the authorities in the DRC to investigate and prosecute soldiers suspected of the crimes.Three years after the war officially ended, the army remained a chaotic and often unpaid collection of fighters from the plethora of armed groups that took part in the DRC’s war.They were backed by the UN peacekeepers in operations against rebel groups and militia fighters still resisting central authority.But, they often posed as much of a threat to the population as the gunmen they were sent to fight against.HRW said that, during the last two months, researchers had spoken to dozens of victims and witnesses who described forced labour under the government’s soldiers.Nampa-Reuters