UN troops fail to stop 'tens of thousands' rapes in Congo

MILITIAMEN and renegade soldiers have brutally raped and beaten tens of thousands of women and young girls in eastern Congo, an international human rights group said yesterday.

Nearly all the crimes have gone unpunished by the country's broken judicial system.

UN peacekeepers in the area have failed to prevent the rapes and some have been accused of sexual attacks and exploitation themselves.

Hundreds of new rapes are reported every week, but only 10 soldiers and militants have been convicted of rape in relatively lawless eastern Congo since the end of the country's devastating war in 2002, New York-based Human Rights Watch said in a report. "Perpetrators of sexual violence are members of virtually all the armed forces and armed groups that operate in eastern Congo," according to the 52-page report.

"The Congolese justice system has, to date, failed to address the egregious problem."

Rape is often a preferred weapon of armed groups fighting the east's battles, as it was during the 1998-2002 war.

The report quotes a World Health Organisation study that documented more than 40,000 rapes in two eastern provinces during the conflict.

Marauding gunmen gang-raped children as young as three years old, and often raped women and young girls - some to the point of death - as their families helplessly watched.

At least 10 women were being raped every day in the tiny, embattled town of Bunia as recently as October, according to the report.

Warring ethnic Hema and Lendu militia continue to terrorise Bunia - kicking down doors in the night and snatching girls in the fields - despite the presence of thousands of UN peacekeepers based there.

Peacekeepers in Bunia have also been accused of raping young girls living in the town's sprawling camp for those displaced by fighting, or trading sweets and pocket change for sex.

The UN reported at the weekend that Lendu militia, in the northern Ituri province, had kidnapped thousands of people and used many of them as sex slaves. In some cases, even boys and men were being raped by armed groups.

In all, the report states "tens of thousands" of rapes had been reported, and many more are believed to have gone unreported.