Mapping Report > Section I. Most serious violations > CHAPTER III. The Second War > A. Attacks directed at Tutsi civilians > 1. Kinshasa

In early August 1998, clashes broke out between the FAC, which had remained loyal to President Kabila, and Tutsi soldiers in the Kokolo and Tshatshi camps.⁴⁶⁷ At the same time, President Kabila’s security forces embarked on a series of searches throughout the capital, looking for rebels and their possible accomplices. Almost a thousand civilians responded to the call from the Congolese authorities and signed up to “popular defence” groups. The Congolese Government apparently equipped them with edged weapons and used them alongside the regular security forces. People of Tutsi or Rwandan origin or who bore a physical resemblance to them were the prime targets. Several senior figures in the regime, including the head of President Kabila’s cabinet, Mr Abdoulaye Yerodia Ndombasi, stirred up hatred against the Tutsis, comparing them to a “virus, a mosquito and filth that must be crushed with determination and resolve”.⁴⁶⁸In this context, the Mapping Team documented the following alleged incidents.

• From August 1998 onwards, elements of the Police d’intervention rapide (PIR) [Police Rapid Intervention Force] arrested several high-ranking figures suspected of supporting the RCD as well as numerous Tutsi or Rwandan civilians. Unknown numbers of women were also arrested and raped by police officers in the prisons of the PIR and the Inspection de la police provinciale de Kinshasa (Ipkin) [Kinshasa Provincial Police Inspectorate]. On 14 September 1998, 111 people, including numerous Tutsis, were detained in the Centre pénitentiaire et de rééducation de Kinshasa [Kinshasa Penitentiary and Re-education Centre] (CPRK, the former Makala prison).⁴⁶⁹

• Also from August 1998 onwards, FAC soldiers arrested, took out of combat and shot some 20 Rwandan soldiers, Congolese Tutsis and a number of ex-FAZ members suspected of having supported the rebels. The bodies of the victims were buried on the road to Matadi, at a location between the Mbenseke cemetery and the Gombe-Lutendele neighbourhood in the municipality of Mont-Ngafula. Other groups of Rwandan/Banyamulenge soldiers were subsequently executed in similar circumstances.⁴⁷⁰
• Again from August 1998 onwards, an unknown number of people held at the Palais de Marbre, the GLM (Litho Moboti Group) and the Palais de la Nation, including numerous Tutsis, were shot dead and buried where they had been detained or tied up in sacks weighted down with stones and thrown into the river.⁴⁷¹

• From August 1998 onwards and over the course of the following months, FAC soldiers executed or tortured and subjected to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment an unknown number of civilians, including numerous Tutsis and Rwandans and people who resembled Tutsis in the Kokolo camp. The victims were often tortured in the prison of the 50th Brigade and in the offices of the land forces information officer, which had been converted into ad hoc prison cells. On 19 August, over 160 Tutsi prisoners were counted by the ICRC in the Kokolo camp. Most of the prisoners were held in conditions likely to result in a significant loss of human life. Women detainees were raped on a regular basis, particularly when they went to take a shower. According to several witnesses, the bodies of people who had been killed or had died were burnt or buried in mass graves dug inside the camp itself.⁴⁷²

• Again, from August 1998 onwards and over the course of the following months, FAC soldiers detained, tortured and executed an unknown number of people, including numerous Tutsis, in underground prison cells at the Tshatshi camp in Kinshasa. According to one witness, a soldier from the camp’s 501st battalion explained that “the people who are here are to be slaughtered”. The bodies of the victims were thrown directly into the river.⁴⁷³

When the ANC/APR/UPDF troops entered the suburbs of Kinshasa around 26 August 1998, the members of the popular defence groups and to a lesser extent, the FAC began to hunt down the infiltrators and their supposed accomplices. An unknown number of Tutsis, people of Rwandan origin and others who resembled them were killed during this period. On 27 August, in the municipality of Kasavabu, a civilian declared on Radio France Internationale (RFI) that it was the population and not the soldiers who were at the front of the queue to “burn the Tutsis”.⁴⁷⁴ People with traces of red mud on their shoes, such as is found in the Bas-Congo, people wearing sports clothes, certain members of the attacking forces moving around as civilians and several people with learning disabilities who did not comply with the ceasefire were attacked.⁴⁷⁵ In total, at least 80 people were killed, some of them burned alive by necklacing, others impaled or mutilated to death and others shot. The bodies of the victims were most often left in the streets or thrown into the River Ndjili or the River Congo.⁴⁷⁶ During these events, several hundreds of people were wounded and large amounts of property pillaged.⁴⁷⁷ Many isolated cases were reported, although the Mapping Team has not been able to verify all of these. In this context, the Mapping Team documented the following alleged incidents.

• On 27 August 1998, two members of the security forces threw a person, probably Tutsi, from a bridge over the River Ndjili in the municipality of the same name, and opened fire. The scene was filmed and broadcast on television screens throughout the world.⁴⁷⁸

• Around 27 August 1998, civilians and members of the popular defence groups burned several people alive in the neighbourhoods of Vundamanenga, Kimbiolongo and Ndjili Brasserie in the village of Mbuku, in the municipality of Mont-Ngafula. Several infiltrators, exhausted, were arrested, burned alive and then buried in the forest by residents of these neighbourhoods.⁴⁷⁹

• Around 27 August 1998, on avenue Kasavubu, civilians dragged a charred human body a distance of several metres. Corpses were also burned at the bus stop between 12th and 13th Street, on boulevard de Limete, opposite the police station. A man with a learning disability was shot multiple times in the central marketplace.⁴⁸⁰

• In the sub-region of Tshangu, east of Kinshasa, a section of the population, primarily young people, killed at least ten people suspected of being infiltrators. Some were beaten to death and others burned alive. Nine bodies were buried in a mass grave in the Siwambanza area of the Mokali neighbourhood in the municipality of Kimbanseke.⁴⁸¹

• On one night at the end of August 1998, a group of armed men wearing balaclavas violently beat the members of a Tutsi family living in rue Luapula, in the municipality of Barumbu.⁴⁸²

Between September and December 1998, a commission made up of representatives of the Government of Kinshasa, international organisations and national non-governmental organisations (NGOs) arranged for the exhumation of an unknown number of bodies in the General Motors neighbourhood of the municipality of Masina, in the neighbourhoods of Kingasani ya suka and Mokali in the municipality of Kimbanseke, in the neighbourhoods of Ndjili/Brasserie and Kimwenza in the municipality of Mont-Ngafula, in the neighbourhood of Binza/Météo in the municipality of Ngaliema and in the neighbourhood of the CETA camp in the municipality of Nsele. The bodies were later buried in the cemetery of Mbenseke Futi in the municipality of Mont-Ngafula. It has not been possible to confirm the number of people exhumed.⁴⁸³

Arbitrary arrests, rapes and summary executions continued for over a year, although in a more attenuated form. At times, over a thousand people were reportedly detained in the military camps and the various prisons in Kinshasa.⁴⁸⁴ In this context, the Mapping Team documented the following alleged incidents.

• At the end of 1998, an unknown number of people were still detained in conditions likely to result in a significant loss of human life in the prison cells of the Détection militaire des activités antipatrie (DEMIAP) [Military detection of antipatriotic activities]. According to witness statements, those detained could see lorries taking the bodies of prisoners who had died, following the ill treatment and torture they had suffered, out of the camp on a regular basis.⁴⁸⁵

• In early 1999, one night a firing squad made up primarily of members of the Presidential Guard executed around 20 Tutsis and members of the ex-FAZ at the Kibomango Training Centre on the road to Bandundu. The victims had been imprisoned at the GLM. Their bodies were buried in a mass grave close to the Centre.⁴⁸⁶

• On 12 January 1999, the FAC from the 50th Brigade arbitrarily arrested around 30 people, including at least 25 Tutsis, mostly women, and took them to the Kokolo camp. At the instigation of the Apostolic Nunciature, the victims were given shelter at the Centre Béthanie in La Gombe, which the FAC pillaged and vandalised during the operation. At the beginning of January, there were still almost 140 Tutsis in the Kokolo camp in conditions likely to result in a significant loss of human life.⁴⁸⁷

The total number of people killed during this period on the basis of their Tutsi or Rwandan origins or physical appearance is impossible to estimate. Following pressure exerted by the international community and the personal commitment of the Congolese Minister of Human Rights, the authorities in Kinshasa agreed to transfer some detainees to the “Accommodation site for vulnerable people” in the premises of the Institut national de sécurité sociale (INSS) [National Social Security Institute] in Cité Maman Mobutu in the municipality of Mont-Ngafula.

At the end of 1998, the ICRC counted at least 925 people, the majority of whom were Tutsis, in the INSS centre and the various detention centres it visited.⁴⁸⁸ Between June and September 1999, the ICRC and UNHCR were able to help almost 1,000 people leave the country, including people at the INSS centre, prisoners and people living in secret.⁴⁸⁹ In 2002, however, over 300 Tutsis were still reported to be at the INSS centre, as well as Hutus and people from mixed marriages awaiting resettlement.⁴⁹⁰