Mapping Report > Section I. Most serious violations > CHAPTER III. The Second War > B. Attacks on other civilian populations > 5. Maniema
In September 1998, President Kabila sent several tens of thousands of soldiers to Kindu to launch a counter-offensive against the ANC/APR in North and South Kivu. On
- October, however, after seven days of fighting, the ANC/APR soldiers took control of Kindu. The rest of Maniema province moved into the RCD’s zone of influence during the months that followed, without the ANC/APR encountering any real resistance. In spite of the presence at the head of the RCD of two important figures in the province, the movement remained unpopular in Maniema. In early 1999, Mayi-Mayi from South Kivu began to infiltrate the province.
- On 10 March 1999 at around 4 a.m., elements of the ANC/APR allegedly raped 10 women, pillaged civilian property and set fire to over 300 houses in the village of Kipaka in the Kasongo region. The attack was organised after a Mayi-Mayi from the Fizi region had fought with a police officer in Kipaka, three days earlier.587
The disproportionate scale of the retaliation prompted numerous young people in the Kasongo region to join the Mayi-Mayi movement. A week after the incident in Kipaka, the Fizi Mayi-Mayi leader in South Kivu came in person to Kipaka to recruit young soldiers. From the Kasongo region, the Mayi-Mayi movement gradually spread to the Kabambare, Kibombo, Kailo and Pangi regions. During the second quarter of 1999, Mayi-Mayi and ANC/APR troops fought each other for control of the villages in the Kabambare region. In this context, the Mapping Team documented the following alleged incidents.
- On 15 May 1999, elements of the ANC/APR killed 11 civilians in the Kimbanguist church of Musoni in the village of Kabambare. Ten civilians were burned alive and a female priest who had tried to escape was buried alive. ANC/APR troops also set fire to a large number of houses and caused the deaths of an unknown number of civilians. The attacks took place as part of an ANC/APR offensive against the Mayi-Mayi in the region.588
- On 18 June 1999, elements of the ANC/APR set fire to the village of Saidi, in the Kasongo region. Saidi was the birthplace of the Mayi-Mayi leader Rambo, based in Bikenge. People living in Saidi had left the village following the arrival, one week earlier, of ANC/APR soldiers in Karomo, a village seven kilometres from Saidi. Confrontations between the Mayi-Mayi and the ANC/APR resulted in several other villages in the region being set on fire.589
- At the end of August 1999, elements of the ANC/APR executed 10 civilians close to their base in Kipaka, in the Kasongo region. The victims were arrested on 20 August in Yambayamba whilst the ANC/APR soldiers pillaged the village. Nine of the victims were former members of the Tande Mahango Mayi-Mayi group, who had laid down their weapons. One of the victims was the brother of a former Mayi-Mayi fighter, who was away from the village on the day of the raid. The bones of the victims were discovered by the villagers a year later; identifiable from clothing found at the scene.590
587 Interviews with the Mapping Team, Maniema, March 2009; Politique africaine, “Le Maniema, de la guerre de l’AFDL à la guerre du RCD”, no. 84, December 2001, p. 74.
588 Interviews with the Mapping Team, Maniema, March 2009; Document submitted to the Mapping Team by the NGO ADDHELI [Action de développement, de défense des droits de l’homme and de lutte contre l’ignorance], Kalemie, March 2009.
589 Interviews with the Mapping Team, Maniema, March 2009.
590 Interviews with the Mapping Team, Kasai Occidental and Kasai Oriental, April 2009.
