DR Congo conflicts threaten people’s already-shaky living conditions – UN official

Although the global spotlight has been on the conflict in the volatile far east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), violations have been occurring in other parts of the vast African nation, a senior United Nations human rights official today said.

“The public space for protests and criticism in the rest of the country has diminished,” Kyung-wha Kang, Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights told the Human Rights Council in Geneva, as she presented the latest report on the DRC.

There have been many cases of authorities clamping down on those critical of their policies, she said.

“Mainly as a result of inadequate wages, police and army officers commonly use their power to obtain financial or other benefits, often by using arbitrary arrests and physical force,” Ms. Kang noted.

Further, the lack of an independent judiciary robs the Congolese people of a means to lodge complaints or seek redress, she added.

In the war-torn east, the clashes between the Government and armed groups has resulted in arbitrary executions, sexual violence, abductions, detention and pillaging becoming “commonplace,” the official noted.

She stressed that “a new impetus must be given to efforts to address the issue of impunity,” with the DRC, backed by the international community, dealing with the issue in a “forceful and unequivocal manner in order to discourage those who would resort to violence to gain or keep political influence or to control natural resources.”

In a related development, Alan Doss, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative in DRC, has welcomed strides made in the voluntary repatriation of former Rwandan rebels – associated with the ethnic Hutu militia known as the Democratic Liberation Forces of Rwanda (FDLR) – based in the DRC and their dependents.

The UN Mission in the DRC, known as MONUC, reported that over 1,400 Rwandan rebels and their family members have returned to their country since January, bringing the total number of Rwandans who have left north-eastern DRC for their home nation in recent months with UN help to 5,700.