GENEVA: The UN Human Rights Council will decide Friday whether to launch an international investigation into alleged violations and abuses committed as deadly clashes gripped the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.
DR Congo requested the urgent meeting of the UN’s top rights body to discuss escalating fighting by Rwanda-backed armed group M23 in North and South Kivu provinces, and drew up a draft resolution that would set up the probe.
“It will be an occasion for us to present to the world what is going on -- and to ask the world to act, to stop what is going on in DRC,“ Congolese government spokesman Patrick Muyaya told reporters in Geneva.
Last week, M23 fighters and Rwandan troops seized Goma, the provincial capital of North Kivu -- a mineral-rich region in eastern DRC that has been blighted by war for over three decades.
The DRC’s Foreign Trade Minister Julien Paluku stressed the urgency of international action, blaming Rwandan President Paul Kagame for the serious violations being committed.
“Today, the international community regrets not having intervened in 1994 to stop the (Rwandan) genocide,“ he told reporters in Geneva.
“DRC is saying to the international community: be careful, President Kagame, whose people were the victims of that genocide, is in the process of doing the same thing.”
M23’s lightning offensive against Goma was a major escalation after more than three years of fighting.
The battle for Goma killed at least 2,900 people, the UN said Wednesday, as the fighters launched a new offensive in South Kivu.
Muyaya, the DRC’s communications minister, said the situation was “catastrophic” and urged countries to impose tougher sanctions on Rwanda and suspend economic cooperation.
‘Indescribable’ violations
The support of more than a third of the Human Rights Council’s 47 member states is required to convene a special session, and 29 backed the DRC’s call, along with 22 observer states.
At an organisational meeting in the chamber on Thursday, Paul Empole Efambe, the DRC’s ambassador in Geneva, said the council should consider the “alarming” and “indescribable human rights violations following the aggression by Rwanda”.
He cited “abductions, massacres and summary executions of civilians”.
“Staying silent or indifferent would be a dereliction of duty,“ he said.
Rwandan ambassador James Ngango said: “Rwanda has always said that it will defend its security by all available means.”
But Paluku told journalists that “for us, the motive for war is economic”.
The eastern DRC has deposits of coltan, a metallic ore that is vital in making phones and laptops, as well as gold and other minerals.
‘International crimes’
The draft resolution to be discussed Friday condemns rights violations in Kivu, and the “unlawful exploitation of natural resources”, and calls for strict measures to stop the plundering.
It “strongly condemns the military and logistical support provided by the Rwanda Defence Force” to M23, and demands that they “immediately halt their human rights violations”.
It demands that the fighters “immediately cease all hostile actions in and withdraw from the occupied areas”, and urges them to ensure unhindered humanitarian access to all those in need.
The draft resolution calls for “an independent fact-finding mission on the serious human rights violations and abuses and violations of international humanitarian law” in Kivu.
The mission should collect evidence of abuses for use in future court cases and try to identify those responsible, the draft text said.
The campaign group Human Rights Watch and more than 70 other rights organisations called on the council to set up the investigation.
