Global General

Some 200 women gang-raped near Congo UN base

(Agencies)
Updated: 2010-08-24 03:48
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Spokeswoman Stefania Trassari said her UN Organization for the Coordination of Humanitarian Aid was monitoring the situation but that access for humanitarian workers remains "very limited due to insecurity."

Luvungi is a farming center on the main road between Goma, the eastern provincial capital, and the major mining town of Walikale.

Kacha said on one day during the rebel occupation Indian peacekeepers had provided a military escort against the rebels to a large commercial truck traveling from Kemba to Luvungi, which is near a cassiterite mine and about 88 miles (140 kilometers) south of Goma.

UN mission spokesman Madnodje Mounoubai promised to get military comment on the assumption that the peacekeepers were protecting commercial goods but not civilians, which is their primary mandate.

Survivors said their attackers were from the Rwandan rebel FDLR group that includes perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide who fled across the border to Congo in 1994 and have been terrorizing the population in eastern Congo ever since, according to Cragin. The Rwandans were accompanied by Congolese Mai-Mai rebels, he said, quoting survivors.

Masudi, the civil society leader, said the rebels arrived after Congolese army troops without explanation redeployed from Luvungi and its surroundings to Walikale. He said this happened after some soldiers deserted and joined rebels in the forest.

Rape as a weapon of war has become shockingly commononplace in eastern Congo, where at least 8,300 rapes were reported last year, according to the United Nations. It is believed that many more rapes go unreported.

Congo's army and U.N. peacekeepers have been unable to defeat the many rebel groups responsible for the long drawn-out conflict in eastern Congo, which is fueled by the area's massive mineral reserves. Gold, cassiterite and coltan are some of the minerals mined in the area near Luvungi, with soldiers and rebels competing for control of lucrative mines that give them little incentive to end the fighting.

"The minerals are our curse with the FDLR looting on one side and the soldiers looting on the other," said Masudi.

The Congolese government this year has demanded the withdrawal of the $1.35 billion-a-year UN mission, the largest peacekeeping force in the world with more than 20,000 soldiers, saying it has failed in its primary mandate to protect civilians.

Mission officials have said that the peacekeeping army is too small to police this sprawling nation the size of Western Europe, and that its peacekeepers are handicapped by rebels using civilians as shields and operating in rugged terrain where they are difficult to pursue.

The mission also has a difficult mandate of supporting the Congolese army, whose troops often also are accused of raping and pillaging.

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