Mapping Report > Section I. Most serious violations > CHAPTER IV. Towards Transition > A. Orientale Province

From January 2001 to June 2003, in spite of acceleration in the pace of the peace negotiations, the situation did not improve for those living in Orientale Province. In the area under the control of the RCD-Goma (the town of Kisangani and the Ubundu, Opala, Isangi and Yahuma regions), ANC/APR soldiers reportedly continued to commit atrocities and use disproportionate force against civilians;

• In January 2001, in the village of Obenge, elements of the ANC/APR based in Opala tortured and killed at least 11 civilians, including women and children, who were suspected of belonging to a Mayi-Mayi group. The soldiers are also said to have set fire to part of the village.⁷⁰²

In June 2001, the ANC/APR launched a punitive operation against the Mayi-Mayi groups operating in the diamond-producing area of Masimango, in the south of the Ubundu region. In this context, the Mapping Team documented the following alleged incidents.

• During the night of 20 to 21 June 2001, before they reached Masimango, elements of the ANC/APR killed 11 civilians, including several minors, with edged weapons in the village of Kababali. They then set fire to the village, sparing only the women and four men.⁷⁰³

• On the morning of 21 June 2001, elements of the ANC/APR killed 16 people and raped 10 women in the village of Masimango.⁷⁰⁴

• During the six months following the attack of 21 June 2001 on the village of Masimango, ANC/APR soldiers based in the region killed at least 100 people, most of them unarmed civilians. They also looted and set fire to several villages.⁷⁰⁵

In April 2002, Joseph Kabila and Jean-Pierre Bemba signed a power-sharing agreement. As the agreement was rejected by the RCD-Goma and the main opposition party, the UDPS, the negotiations taking place as part of the Inter-Congolese Dialogue stalled. On 14 May 2002, in Kisangani, a group of soldiers and police officers with no identifiable leader called on the RCD-Goma security forces to rebel. They also incited the local population to kill any Rwandans in the town.

• On 14 May 2002, several unidentified civilians, responding to the call of the ANC’s rebels, are said to have killed at least six people. The victims were Rwandans, people of Rwandan origin and those who resembled them.⁷⁰⁶

Over the course of the day, soldiers from the ANC/APR were sent reinforcements from Goma and regained control of the town.

• Between 14 and 22 May 2002, elements of the ANC/APR allegedly killed at least 276 civilians and wounded hundreds in Kisangani, particularly in neighbourhoods in the municipality of Mangobo, at Camp Ketele, at Bangoka airport and on the Tshopo bridge. The soldiers also committed an unknown number of rapes and looted civilian property during their search operations. Numerous bodies were thrown into the River Tshopo, some of which had been mutilated and disembowelled.⁷⁰⁷

During the period under consideration, the Bas-Uélé district remained under the control of ALC/UPDF soldiers. The latter allegedly committed serious violations against all those who dared to dispute their authority or criticised their involvement in pillaging the natural resources of the region. The case below is mentioned for illustrative purposes.

• From 2001 to January 2003, elements of the ALC/UPDF apparently tortured and killed an unknown number of civilians in the town of Buta. Most of the victims were held in muddy holes in conditions likely to cause death through disease or exhaustion. After a human rights activist had been tortured and held in one of the muddy holes by the soldiers, MONUC and United Nations organisations sent out an investigative mission and had these prisons shut down.⁷⁰⁸

Between 2001 and 2003, troops from the ALC, the army of the MLC, and the few soldiers in Roger Lumbala’s RCD-National⁷⁰⁹ confronted elements of the APC, the armed wing of the RCD-ML, for control of the district of Haut-Uélé on several occasions. During the period under consideration, the town of Isiro passed back and forth into the hands of both sides several times. In October 2002, faced with the advance of the APC, the ALC sent reinforcements from Équateur to Isiro as part of the “Clean the blackboard” operation (Operation effacer le tableau). This operation was designed to destroy the APC once and for all, so as to deprive the Government in Kinshasa of its ally, the RCD-ML, in the eastern Congo and to get hold of the natural resources still under the control of the RCD-ML before the transition period began. The UPC, which was also trying to crush the APC, joined in with the operation. Elements from the “Clean the blackboard” operation mounted an ambush against the APC in the village of Madesi. In this context, the Mapping Team documented the following alleged incidents.

• On 30 or 31 July 2002, elements of the APC gang-raped six women in the area around the village of Madesi.⁷¹⁰
• During and after the fighting, between 31 July and 2 August 2002, elements of the ALC taking part in the “Clean the blackboard” operation tortured, mutilated and killed at least 16 APC combatants as well as an unknown number of civilians, including women and children. ALC soldiers used the organs of some of their victims (genitals and ears) as war trophies and showed them to the population of Isiro. The Mapping Team was not in a position to confirm the allegations that elements of the “Clean the blackboard” operation indulged in acts of cannibalism after the fighting.⁷¹¹
• In early March 2003, ALC soldiers tortured to death six palm-oil sellers in Ganga in the Haut-Uélé district. The day after the killing, they massacred a woman by beating her with a hammer on the grounds that she was wearing an item of clothing with the APC logo on.⁷¹²

• In late 2002 and early 2003, elements from the Forces armées du peuple congolais (FAPC), an armed group active in the Aru and Mahagi regions of the Ituri district raped and killed an unknown number of civilians in the area around the Kilomoto gold mine, in the Watsa region of the Haut-Uélé district.⁷¹³