Mapping Report > Section II. Specific Acts of Violence > CHAPTER I. Acts of violence committed against women and sexual violence > C. September 1996 – July 1998: first war and the AFDL/APR regime

This period was marked by acts of sexual violence by AFDL/APR¹⁰²³ troops during a war that ended in the seizure of power by the advancing ADFL/APR and the retreat of the FAZ. The first years of the AFDL regime were marked by numerous cases of rape as a result of abuses of power on the part of soldiers and the ensuing political repression.

With the arrival en masse of Burundian and Rwandan refugees in Kivu in 1993 and 1994, anti-Tutsi propaganda became widespread, particularly targeting the Banyamulenge living in South Kivu. When the authorities incited the population to chase out the Banyamulenge from Fizi territory in September 1996, a number of women and young girls were raped – sometimes by dozens of soldiers – and then killed along with their families during the violence instigated by the FAZ and “armed Bembe elements”.¹⁰²⁴ In North Kivu, the armed forces are reported to have raped Tutsi women and permitted civilians to do the same.¹⁰²⁵

The violations of international humanitarian law were so massive during the first war and cost the lives of so many victims, most of them women and children, that published reports covering this period have given little space to, or at least made little distinction between, crimes of sexual violence and other serious crimes committed at this time. This is a concrete example of a general trend towards the under-reporting of this kind of violence. For example, the Secretary-General’s Investigative Team charged with investigating serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law in the DRC notes, without giving any details, that rapes were likely to have been committed by the AFDL/APR during attacks on the five large refugee camps in North Kivu in October and November 1996.¹⁰²⁶ The Mapping Team was able to document alleged incidents of some women who were raped before being killed, e.g. in the course of the refugee massacres at Hombo, a village on the border between North and South Kivu, in December 1996;¹⁰²⁷ at Kausa near Nyamitaba in North Kivu in December 1996;¹⁰²⁸ at Humule, 50 kilometres from Goma, in April 1997;¹⁰²⁹ and at Kilungutwe, Kalama and Kasika, in Mwenga territory of South Kivu, in August 1998. Women were reportedly also tortured and subjected to mutilation, particularly sexual, during these massacres.¹⁰³⁰

Moreover, during their advance, the AFDL/APR soldiers also are alleged of having raped numerous Zairian women, particularly in North Kivu during October and November 1996, and in Oriental Province, in Équateur and in Bandundu in May 1997.¹⁰³¹

As they fled in the face of the advancing AFDL/APR soldiers, the FAZ allegedly also engaged in multiple rapes, sometimes also of men, and abducted women and young girls.¹⁰³² Numerous alleged rapes committed by the FAZ, often gang rapes, have thus been documented along the whole length of the route they took during their retreat: mid-November 1996 in Butembo and Béni (North Kivu);¹⁰³³ November and December 1996 in Bunia, at Kisangani,¹⁰³⁴ in Opala,¹⁰³⁵ in the south-west of Orientale Province, on the border with Kasai Oriental and at Komanda, in Ituri district;¹⁰³⁶ between December 1996 and the end of February 1997 at Buta and Bondo, in Bas-Uélé in Orientale Province;¹⁰³⁷ from the end of February to early march 1997 in Kailo territory in Maniema;¹⁰³⁸ and, finally, in May 1997 in Équateur¹⁰³⁹ and Bandundu.¹⁰⁴⁰ Innumerable women were abducted, used as sex slaves and forced by the FAZ to act as bearers of looted goods. At Bunia, the FAZ allegedly raped the girls of Likovi secondary school so savagely and so systematically that seven of them died. They also reportedly raped women in the maternity unit of the town’s hospital and raped and battered nuns in the town’s convent.¹⁰⁴¹

A number of rapes committed by Rwandan Hutu refugees fleeing from the advancing AFDL/APR were reported, particularly in Mbandaka region, Équateur, in May 1997.¹⁰⁴²

The installation of the new AFDL/APR regime in Kinshasa was marked by numerous abuses of power, and tolerance regarding the use of sexual violence by AFDL/APR soldiers and security forces, who enjoyed total impunity.

Once the new authorities were in place, the AFDL/APR soldiers besieged the military camps that had been deserted by the ex-FAZ. Many wives and female children of ex-FAZ were still living in these camps and are said to have been raped and forced to carry out domestic chores for the soldiers of the new government army, particularly in Kinshasa and Bas-Congo.¹⁰⁴³ Some of them were reportedly gang raped, including one woman, for example, accused of having been the mistress of one of the FAZ soldiers by 17 AFDL/APR soldiers.¹⁰⁴⁴

Following an AFDL decree banning women from wearing trousers, leggings or mini-skirts, some who flouted this ban were publicly humiliated, stripped, manhandled and even severely beaten with nail-studded pieces of wood. One female student in Lubumbashi was allegedly undressed, whipped and threatened with death by AFDL/APR soldiers for having worn trousers.¹⁰⁴⁵

Once established in the different provinces, the FAC/APR¹⁰⁴⁶ soldiers reportedly engaged in sexual violence against women, young girls and even primary schoolgirls, as in North and South Kivu, for example.¹⁰⁴⁷ Around the military camps, at roadblocks or during routine patrols, numerous women were reportedly subjected to gang rapes and torture by the FAC/APR soldiers, particularly in Kinshasa, Goma and Lubumbashi.¹⁰⁴⁸ In one case, soldiers apparently poured burning wax on the genitals and body of a young woman they had gang raped at the Kokolo military camp in Kinshasa.¹⁰⁴⁹

These situations were clearly the result of an abuse of power on the part of the new regime’s security forces, particularly when an arrest or arbitrary detention for minor reasons was followed by rape. Some women were reportedly taken back to hotels by members of the security forces to rape them there.¹⁰⁵⁰ FAC/APR soldiers apparently abducted young girls from their families and raped them during operations in Mont-Ngafula commune of Kinshasa. Some women were also reportedly forced to work as domestic servants for FAC/APR officers.¹⁰⁵¹ In 1997, in South Kivu, accusations of witchcraft were reportedly made against at least four women and two girls aged six and seven. Arrested, they were allegedly severely tortured, mutilated, raped and stoned by FAC/APR soldiers. One of them did not survive.¹⁰⁵²

Rape was also used to subdue civilian populations suspected of supporting the Mayi-Mayi. During brutal search-and-sweep operations in North Kivu in April 1998, the FAC/APR reportedly raped dozens of women and young girls and, on several occasions, forced men to sleep with their sisters and daughters.¹⁰⁵³

Finally, the clampdown on any form of opposition led to the arrest of numerous women within, or perceived as being within, the immediate entourage of their opponents. Several of them were subsequently raped by the security forces. For example, in Kinshasa in December 1997, a group of soldiers allegedly spent the whole night beating and gang raping two sisters of a political dissident they had gone to arrest but had not found at home.¹⁰⁵⁴ Rape of women and electric shocks to the genitals of men are reported used as a means of torture in different detention centres, particularly in Kinshasa.¹⁰⁵⁵