A government offensive in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) that rights groups say has caused many civilian deaths should not be suspended and UN peacekeepers should continue supporting it, a senior UN official said on Friday.
The disarmament of some 1,000 of an estimated 6,000 rebels in eastern DRC has come at a cost of nearly 900,000 people displaced, 1,000 dead civilians and 7,000 rapes of women and girls, humanitarian and rights groups say.
But Alan Doss, head of the UN peacekeeping mission in the DRC, rejected suggestions that the world body withdraw support for government forces fighting Rwandan Hutu rebels, who have been central to 15 years of violence in Central Africa.
PHOTO: AFP
“Reducing the pressure now would give the FDLR [Hutu rebels] time to regroup and rearm,” Doss told a meeting of the UN Security Council on the DRC.
“It would also send an ambiguous message to some elements of the [Congolese army] who have in the past cooperated with the FDLR,” he said. “Rwanda might also see this as a step backwards from the rapprochement that has opened up an entirely new perspective” for mineral-rich eastern DRC.
The rebels, known as the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, include some members of extremist Hutu groups from Rwanda’s 1994 genocide and are seen as a root cause of violence in the DRC, which has simmered despite elections in 2006 meant to end years of war.
Launched in January, the offensive started in North Kivu Province with the backing of Rwanda, the DRC’s former enemy, and has been extended into South Kivu with the support of the UN Security Council.
But rights groups say the offensive has sparked massive displacement as civilians are caught between attacks by rebels and widespread abuses by government troops now including hastily integrated former rebels and militia fighters.
Doss acknowledged the criticism of the Congolese army and said UN forces “will withdraw support from battalions that show a blatant disregard for international humanitarian law.”
He later told reporters the UN force has thus far not stopped supporting any Congolese battalions.
Philip Alston, the UN’s special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, said in Kinshasa last week that Congolese soldiers had killed at least 50 civilian refugees and raped some 40 women and girls during an incident in April.
Alston said the massacre happened when the soldiers, mainly former Congolese Tutsi rebels integrated into the army as part of a January peace deal, attacked the village of Shalio during an offensive into South Kivu Province.
Doss said there should be an investigation of the incident but said it had not occurred during a UN-supported operation and involved no UN personnel.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un sent Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) greetings with what appeared to be restrained rhetoric that comes as Pyongyang moves closer to Russia and depends less on its long-time Asian ally. Kim wished “the Chinese people greater success in building a modern socialist country,” in a reply message to Xi for his congratulations on North Korea’s birthday, the state-run Korean Central News Agency reported yesterday. The 190-word dispatch had little of the florid language that had been a staple of their correspondence, which has declined significantly this year, an analysis by Seoul-based specialist service NK Pro showed. It said
On an island of windswept tundra in the Bering Sea, hundreds of miles from mainland Alaska, a resident sitting outside their home saw — well, did they see it? They were pretty sure they saw it — a rat. The purported sighting would not have gotten attention in many places around the world, but it caused a stir on Saint Paul Island, which is part of the Pribilof Islands, a birding haven sometimes called the “Galapagos of the north” for its diversity of life. That is because rats that stow away on vessels can quickly populate and overrun remote islands, devastating bird
A 64-year-old US woman took her own life inside a controversial suicide capsule at a Swiss woodland retreat, with Swiss police on Tuesday saying several people had been arrested. The space-age looking Sarco capsule, which fills with nitrogen and causes death by hypoxia, was used on Monday outside a village near the German border. The portable human-sized pod, self-operated by a button inside, has raised a host of legal and ethical questions in Switzerland. Active euthanasia is banned in the country, but assisted dying has been legal for decades. On the same day it was used, Swiss Department of Home
‘CLOSER TO THE END’: The Ukrainian leader said in an interview that only from a ‘strong position’ can Ukraine push Russian President Vladimir Putin ‘to stop the war’ Decisive actions by the US now could hasten the end of the Russian war against Ukraine next year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday after telling ABC News that his nation was “closer to the end of the war.” “Now, at the end of the year, we have a real opportunity to strengthen cooperation between Ukraine and the United States,” Zelenskiy said in a post on Telegram after meeting with a bipartisan delegation from the US Congress. “Decisive action now could hasten the just end of Russian aggression against Ukraine next year,” he wrote. Zelenskiy is in the US for the UN