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| Abyssine Miniunga, internally displaced on an islet in the middle of the Congo River near Yumbi, poses near her shelter for a photograph on January 28, 2019. |
By Our Staff Correspondent, Kinshasa DRC
Authorities in the Democratic
Republic of Congo have not brought to justice those responsible
for the massacres of ethnic Banunu in Yumbi territory one year ago.
On December 16 and 17,
2018, hundreds of ethnic Batende assailants killed at least 535 people and
wounded 111 more, though the actual death toll is most likely much higher. The
assailants also damaged, destroyed, and pillaged more than 1,500 houses as well
as health centers, schools, and polling places, according to witnesses, the
United Nations, and the Congolese government.
“The Congolese
government needs to do much more to hold accountable those responsible for the
Yumbi massacres last year,” said Lewis Mudge, Central
Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “Prosecuting the people who planned
these attacks will provide justice for victims and their families and help
prevent future atrocities in this volatile region.”
Congolese military justice
officials have begun preliminary proceedings, but they are closed to the public
and the status of the investigations is uncertain.
Human Rights Watch
investigated the massacres in Yumbi territory in the country’s northwest and in
Makotimpoko sub-prefecture, Congo-Brazzaville, in February, and interviewed
over 100 people, including survivors, witnesses, police, military personnel,
and government officials.
The UN joint human rights office in Congo also documented the
attacks in March, as did Congo’s National Commission on Human Rights and a Human Rights Ministry commission in May, and the UN secretary
general-appointed Group of Experts on Congo in June.
The ostensible cause of
the violence was the secret burial of a Banunu customary chief on private land
claimed by the Batende on the night of December 14, said Batende leaders and a
UN report. The region has long experienced rivalries between the two groups
over customary land rights.
Hundreds of Batende
villagers, including demobilized and retired soldiers, attacked the town of
Yumbi on December 16 and Nkolo II and Bongende villages, further south, on
December 17.
Many attackers were
bare-chested, adorned with banana leaf skirts, ash on their faces, and other
attire considered to have magical properties. Some were armed with hunting
rifles or automatic weapons, while others carried machetes, knives, fishing
spears, axes, bows and arrows, and clubs.
The UN Group of Experts
reported that the assailants targeted their victims based on their ethnicity or
perceived ties to Banunu, while sparing others. The attackers sometimes
mutilated and disfigured their victims, including women and children, and took
body parts with them.
Attackers used gasoline
to torch homes and other structures, looting and carting away victims’
belongings.
A 40-year-old teacher
who lost 22 members of his extended family told Human Rights Watch that many
people “fled toward the riverbed…. Many were wounded by machete.
Others had already been
killed, their arms cut off. Pregnant women were cut open and had their genitals
cut out. It was terrible. Lots of small children were wounded and killed by
machete.”
About 16,000 people
from the Yumbi area fled to the Republic of Congo (Congo-Brazzaville), about 15
kilometers across the Congo River. A year later, about half had returned to
Congo. Another 20,000 were displaced internally.
The UN Group of
Experts, the UN joint human rights office, and the government in two reports
concluded that local Batende leaders planned and organized the attacks. In
addition, two confidential reports that Human Rights Watch reviewed, one from
the government and one from the military, also found that local leaders assisted
in the planning and execution of the attacks.
One local Batende chief
has since been arrested. Other evidence of planning included barriers along the
main road from Yumbi that the assailants erected at least five days before the
attacks to prevent people and supplies from entering Banunu neighborhoods.
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| A burned house in Bongende village, Yumbi territory, on the banks of the Congo River, Democratic Republic of Congo, January 27, 2019. |
Congo’s military
justice officials began investigating the Yumbi killings shortly after the
massacres and arrested scores of suspected assailants over the next few months.
The principal suspects were transferred to Kinshasa, Congo’s capital. About 50
suspected assailants remain in pretrial detention, but no trials have taken
place.
“It’s a huge
disappointment,” said a Banunu resident of Bongende who lost 30 family members.
“One year after these massacres, we still have not seen a trial and many of our
attackers are moving freely around Yumbi territory.”
Judicial authorities
should conduct their investigations transparently, impartially, and promptly,
and the military prosecutor should make its preliminary report public, Human
Rights Watch said.
The government should
request technical support, including forensic assistance, from the experts
mandated by the UN Human Rights Council to support such investigations.
The military prosecutor
should transfer appropriate cases to the civilian courts, keeping in line with
the UN Human Rights Committee, the body of independent experts that monitors
implementation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights,
which has stated that civilians should be tried by military courts only under
exceptional circumstances and only under conditions that genuinely afford full
due process.
After the attacks, UN
peacekeepers maintained a small presence in the territory, but withdrew in
March. The Congolese government should reinforce the military presence in Yumbi
with well-trained police to develop a long-term strategy to enhance security in
the area.
The government, with
international assistance, should provide necessary health care and psychosocial
support to survivors. They should reconstruct schools and health centers and
seek foreign assistance for humanitarian agencies to rebuild and repair homes,
with a view to facilitating the safe and voluntary return of those displaced.
“One year on, the
families of more than 500 victims are desperate for justice,” Mudge said. “The
government should abide by its obligations to the dead and wounded and their
families, and fully investigate and prosecute those who planned and carried out
the Yumbi massacres.”
Yumbi is one of eight
territories in the Mai-Ndombe province in western Congo. The ethnic community
of Batende is the majority in 33 of Yumbi’s 38 towns and villages, mostly
situated in the interior, where their livelihoods depend largely on subsistence
farming.
The ethnic Banunu live
mostly along the Congo River, where they primarily engage in fishing. The
Banunu are the majority in the territorial capital of Yumbi, located along the
river, as well as in neighboring Nkolo II and Bongende.
While Mai-Ndombe has
been largely peaceful in recent decades, longstanding grievances between the
Batende and Banunu concerning changing administrative demarcations and
customary and political leadership have occasionally sparked violent
confrontations.
The tensions in Yumbi
territory stem in part from a 1943 decision by the Belgian colonial
administration that gave some of the land previously controlled by Batende
customary leaders to the Banunu.
The fight over land is
often a top issue during elections in rural areas, with constituencies largely
voting for members of their own ethnic group, whom they believe will protect
their interests and access to land. In the Yumbi region, elections have been
flashpoints for violence. Clashes broke out during both the 2006 and 2011 elections.
Several Banunu told
Human Rights Watch that tensions between the two communities mounted prior to
elections scheduled for December 30, 2018.
On December 2, the
leader of Yumbi’s Banunu community, Fedor Mantoma, died in Kinshasa. A
controversy broke out between members of the Banunu and the Batende communities
about Mantoma’s place of burial, with the Banunu contending that he should be
buried on private property in town – on what some Batende claimed was their
land – while Batende insisted he should be buried in the town cemetery.
This appears to have
exacerbated tensions, according to the UN, the National Human Rights
Commission, and civil society leaders in Yumbi. Some Batende warned of attacks
if the burial took place in the private plot.
Banunu leaders in the
town of Yumbi and Bongende called on the population, including Batende, to
respect rituals as they grieved the chief’s death. Mantoma was secretly buried
in a family plot in Yumbi town during the night of December 14. Batende
politicians in Kinshasa told Human Rights Watch that the burial provoked local
Batende to initiate deadly attacks on Banunu the next day.
Batende assailants
attacked Yumbi and the villages of Bongende and Nkolo II on December 16 and 17.
The worst killings and destruction were in Bongende. Some Banunu tried to
defend their villages but were neither prepared nor equipped to repel hundreds
of assailants armed with firearms and crude weapons.
The UN joint human
rights office reported that assailants killed at least 528 people during the 3
attacks and an additional 7 people during an attack at a logging company
workers camp called Camp Nbanzi.
Two navy sailors in
Nkolo II and one navy sailor in Bongende were also killed. The actual toll is
most likely much higher, given that some people were burned beyond recognition
in their homes and others were thrown in the Congo River or drowned while
trying to flee.
Following the
massacres, assailants and residents of nearby villages looted Banunu homes. - Africa
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