Mapping Report > Section I. Most serious violations > CHAPTER II. First Congo War > B. Attacks against Hutu refugees > 4. Orientale Province > Along the Ubundu to Kisangani railway line

After crossing the Luluaba River at Ubundu village, most of the refugees pressed onwards and settled around 14 March 1997 in a makeshift refugee camp known as “Camp de la Paix”, or “peace camp”, in the village of Obilo, 82 kilometres from Kisangani. On 15 March, however, AFDL/APR/UPDF troops captured Kisangani and most of the refugees decided to continue on their way, except for a few hundred refugees who remained in Obilo.

• At dawn on 26 March 1997, AFDL/APR units allegedly killed at least 80 refugees, including women and children, at the Obilo camp, in the Ubundu territory. Several days before, AFDL/APR soldiers from Kisangani had gone to Obilo and ordered the local authorities to take all the refugees in the village back to the Camp de la Paix so they could receive humanitarian aid. Also on 26 March 1997, villagers heard around 45 minutes of gunfire. The next day, they entered the camp, which was littered with spent cartridge cases, and found the bodies of the victims. As they left Obilo, the soldiers told the people that the refugees were evil and that they should on no account assist the survivors. The bodies were buried in four mass graves by the Red Cross and some of the residents. Two of the graves are located near the market, one near the church of the Jehovah’s Witnesses and another on the banks of the Obilo River.²⁷⁴

The refugees who had left Obilo before the attack split and headed in two different directions. One group, which included ex-FAR/Interahamwe units, left in the direction of Équateur province, cutting through the forest at the 52 kilometre marker and then travelling through the Opala territory. Most of the refugees continued to head towards Kisangani in the hope of accessing humanitarian aid, or even being repatriated. Several tens of thousands of people set up camp in the village of Lula, seven kilometres from Kisangani, on the left bank of the river. On 31 March 1997, however, AFDL/APR soldiers arrived in the area and forced them to turn back towards Ubundu. The refugees then crowded into makeshift camps along the 125 kilometres of railway line linking Kisangani and Ubundu. Towards the middle of April, at least 50,000 refugees were living in the Kasese I and II camps,²⁷⁵ located near the Kisesa locality, 25 kilometres from Kisangani. A second makeshift camp at Biaro, 41 kilometres from Kisangani, received 30,000 refugees.²⁷⁶ Aid workers rallied quickly to assist the refugees living in these camps. Given the scale of the needs and due to problems accessing the camps, only a small proportion of the refugee population were able to benefit from humanitarian aid.

Aid workers were also faced with the hostility of AFDL/APR officials in the field. In this context, the Mapping Team documented the following alleged incidents:

• In April 1997, when between 60 and 120 refugees were dying each day from disease or exhaustion, AFDL/APR soldiers barred aid agencies and humanitarian NGOs from accessing the camps on several occasions and hindered the repatriation of refugees to Rwanda. In spite of the official approval by AFDL authorities on 16 April 1997 of UNHCR’s plan to airlift and repatriate the thousands of refugees around Kisangani, the Rwandan Government opposed the plan and insisted that the refugees be repatriated by road.²⁷⁷ On several occasions, however, the operations to repatriate refugees by road were delayed for a variety of excuses. The scheduled repatriation of 80 children from the Biaro camp on 18 April was called off by AFDL/APR officials on the controversial grounds that several cases of cholera had been reported in the nearby Kasese camp.²⁷⁸ Subsequently, an aid convoy and a WFP food store were attacked by locals at the instigation of AFDL/APR soldiers, and aid workers found themselves banned from accessing the camps south of Kisangani. A checkpoint set up at Lula marked the entrance to this restricted zone for all aid workers. On 19 April and 20 April, MSF negotiated entry but was only able to work in the camps for two hours each day. From 21 April onwards, aid workers were banned entirely from accessing the camps.²⁷⁹

• On 21 April 1997, the residents of Kisesa, visibly encouraged by AFDL/APR soldiers, attacked the Kasese I and II camps with machetes and arrows, killing an unknown number of refugees and looting aid stores. Several sources have reported that the attack had been carried out in retaliation for the murder of six Kisesa villagers by the refugees. This version of the events has nonetheless been challenged by a number of reliable sources. AFDL/APR soldiers at the scene are alleged to have directly incited the people to attack the camps.²⁸⁰

Many witnesses and various sources have told how a train from Kisangani arrived near the camps on 21 April 1997, carrying members of the APR special units that had been deployed at Kisangani Airport since 17 April.

• On the morning of 22 April 1997, AFDL/APR units, accompanied by villagers, allegedly killed at least 200 refugees in the Kasese I and II camps, in the presence of several APR senior figures. The massacre lasted between seven and twelve hours. According to several sources, some ex-FAR/Interahamwe units are thought to have been in the camps but the victims were mostly civilians.²⁸¹ After the massacre, the soldiers headed to the village of Kisesa and ordered the villagers to go to the camps and gather up the bodies, which were initially buried in mass graves. At a later date, the AFDL/APR soldiers returned to Kisesa to dig up the bodies and burn them. On 24 April, UNHCR and WFP officials and several journalists visited the Kasese I and II camps under AFDL/APR military escort. All the refugees, including the sick and the children, had disappeared.²⁸²

Straight after the Kasese massacres, AFDL/APR soldiers attacked Biaro camp, 41 kilometres from Kisangani.

• On 22 April 1997, AFDL/APR units allegedly opened fire indiscriminately on the Biaro refugee camp, killing close to 100 people, including women and children. The soldiers then went in pursuit of those who had managed to escape into the forest, killing an unknown number of them. They also requisitioned a bulldozer from a Kisangani-based logging company to dig mass graves. Witnesses saw AFDL/APR units transporting wood in trucks. This wood was then used to build pyres and burn the bodies.²⁸³

On 28 April 1997, the non-governmental organisation MSF was granted permission to visit the Kasese and Biaro camps, but all their occupants had disappeared. According to MSF,²⁸⁴ before the attacks these camps were sheltering at least 5,000 people in a state of extreme exhaustion.²⁸⁵

On 22 April 1997, while the attacks were taking place on the Biaro and Kasese camps, AFDL/APR soldiers and villagers stopped refugees who were trying to escape and forced them to leave in the direction of Ubundu town centre.

• On 22 April 1997, at the 52 kilometre marker, AFDL/APR soldiers ordered refugees to stop and sit down. They then opened fire on them, allegedly killing an unknown number of people, including a large number of women and children. Their bodies were piled up by the roadside and then buried or burned.²⁸⁶

In May 1997, while UNHCR and aid workers were arranging the repatriation of a group of refugees between the 41 kilometre marker and Kisangani, the massacres continued in the area south of Biaro camp. The zone remained out of bounds to aid workers, journalists and diplomats until at least 19 May. On 14 May, the delegation of UNHCR Assistant High Commissioner Sérgio Vieira de Mello was refused access to the zone by AFDL/APR soldiers.²⁸⁷ At the same time, when questioned by journalists as part of a television report, a Zairian member of the Katangese ex-Tigers who had been integrated into the AFDL/APR claimed to have witnessed over a thousand executions each week in this zone. He also reported that the victims’ bodies were transported to certain sites at night to be burned.²⁸⁸ The AFDL/APR soldiers led an “awareness-raising” campaign among the people to stop them speaking out about what had happened.²⁸⁹

From 30 April 1997 onwards, AFDL/APR soldiers began to transport several groups of refugee survivors of the attacks on the Kasese camps by train to the transit camp that had been set up near Kisangani Airport.

• On 4 May 1997, AFDL/APR soldiers allegedly caused the deaths of over 90 refugees by forcing them to travel in a train in conditions likely to cause considerable loss of human life. The AFDL/APR soldiers who had refused to allow aid workers to arrange their repatriation had crammed the refugees into wagons without observing minimum safety guidelines for passenger survival.²⁹⁰