Congolese ‘forced to eat relatives by rebels’

THE UN yesterday confirmed it had found evidence of cannibalism, mass executions, torture and rape

“The rebels forced people to consume body parts of their family members,” UN spokeswoman Patricia Tome said in the capital Kinshasa.

The report by the UN’s peacekeeping mission detailed systematic human rights abuses in two remote towns, Mambasa and Mangina, about 930 miles to the north-east.

Inspectors interviewed hundreds of witnesses and victims of Operation Erase the Blackboard, a rebel plan aimed at “looting every house and raping every woman”.

They spoke of “babies whose hearts were torn out and taken away or given to someone to eat, of small children who were killed, mutilated, and of people who were executed in front of their families.”

Among the accused rebel groups are the Congolese Liberation Movement (MLC) of Jean-Pierre Bemba, one of two main guerilla movements.

Along with the Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD) rebels, the MLC have been promised a leading role in the country’s government under a power-sharing deal agreed to end the war.

The UN’s report found 117 instances of arbitrary executions in one four-day period alone. It cited 65 cases of rape, including the rape of children, 82 kidnappings and 27 cases of torture in the same period.

As word of the atrocities spread, Mr Bemba ordered the arrest of five of his rebel fighters, including his chief of operations in Ituri province, which includes the two towns.

Mr Bemba said the five would be tried by a rebel military court.

Mineral-rich Ituri province has been the scene of often confusing shifts of allegiance between the MLC, RCD, and various other smaller rebel groups.

The Pygmies that populate the deep forests of the region have been hit particularly hard by the renewed clashes.

UN investigators have previously highlighted cases of Pygmies either being eaten by the rebels, or forced into cannibalism themselves at gunpoint. Congo’s war broke out in 1998 when Rwanda and Uganda joined rebels battling then-President Laurent Kabila. More than two million people are thought to have died, mostly from starvation and disease, since then.