Chris McGreal in Bukavu, Congo, uncovers new evidence of genocide as mass graves are unearthed around the country
SIX villagers led the way up the narrow path off the main road about 15km from Bukavu, on the far-eastern border of the former Zaire. One carried a spade. He knew where he was headed, but the final marker was an arm which rigor mortis had slowly wormed out of the ground to beckon him towards the first of the mounds.
The man went to work with a shovel. He did not have to dig deep to uncover first one, then three, mutilated corpses.
“These ones died slowly. See, he has no eyes. They killed others just over there. Maybe 20 or 30 are buried there. We only saw these ones and then they told us to get away,” he said.
Two of the villagers witnessed the killings of the three men. They said the victims were Rwandan or Burundian Hutus and the killers were foreign.
“The killers were Tutsis. They weren’t from here. They did not speak like us. They had smart uniforms. I’m sure they were Rwandan,” said the man with the spade.
The villagers described how the soldiers descended in January. They rounded up a few dozen people they believed to be Hutus from across the border, including women and children. Some were allowed to go. The rest were killed.
Among them was one of the men in the opened grave. He was hit about the head with a gun. His nose and face were smashed with a rock. Then one of the soldiers pierced his eyes with his bayonet. As he writhed on the ground, the “rebels” turned their attention to the other two men. The villagers were later forced to bury them.
The admission by Rwanda’s Minister of Defence and Vice-President General Paul Kagame that his largely Tutsi army led Laurent Kabila’s rebellion in the rechristened Democratic Republic of Congo has reinforced suspicions that his soldiers also played a leading role in the systematic murder of Hutu refugees – remnants of the one million Rwandans who fled into then- Zaire in 1994.
Most were driven home to Rwanda at the outbreak of the rebellion in Zaire in October, but more than 200 000 who headed west were hunted across 1 600km of then- Zairean territory through the eight-month war. Among them were militiamen responsible for the genocide of Rwanda’s Tutsis three years ago, but there were also many women and children.
Aid workers and United Nations officials accuse Kabila’s troops of sentencing thousands of people to death by exhaustion and hunger. Others were doomed by the many diseases thriving in the Congo Basin’s rainforests. But there is also growing evidence of killings by military death squads, some led by Rwandan soldiers.
Roberto Garreton, the Chilean lawyer appointed by the UN to investigate allegations of massacres, issued a report this month identifying the sites of 134 mass killings blamed on Kabila’s army or those backing it.
“The methods used were deliberate, premeditated massacres; the dispersal of refugees to inaccessible, inhospitable areas; the systematic blockade of humanitarian assistance; and the stubborn opposition thus far to any attempt to conduct an impartial, objective investigation into the very seriously allegations,” said the report.
Kabila’s government accuses those refugees who say they witnessed killings of lying. Foreign Minister Bizima Karaha said the only mass graves in Congo were for the victims of cholera or murders by Hutu extremists.
No one knows how many genuine refugees are missing, let alone the number dead. The UN says more than 40 000 people are unaccounted for around Kisangani alone.
The European Union and the United States have said future aid to the bankrupt country – its coffers long plundered by the exiled, ailing despot Mobutu Sese Seko – depends on full co-operation with the UN investigation.
That did not stop Kabila blocking it while demanding Garreton’s removal. The UN has bowed to the pressure. A new investigator is expected to be appointed shortly, but the delay has bought more time to destroy evidence.
In some areas, the same units which led the killings later co-ordinated the disposal of the bodies. Local people were pressganged into disinterring the mass graves, which were set ablaze before the ashes of the victims were scattered.
Around Bukavu, forces fighting for Kabila killed several hundred Rwandan and Burundian Hutus at Chimanga camp, 40km from the city, in November. Foreigners identified what they believe to be other grave sites west of Bukavu. Some are latrines which give off the stench of rotting flesh.
Among the main killing fields is Shabunda, where there are eyewitness accounts of Rwandan-led squads carrying out summary executions of Hutu men.
A Rwandan army officer, known to UN officials as Commander Jackson, identifies himself as “The Exterminator”. He is said to have boasted his mission was to pursue Hutu refugees.
Credible witnesses report at least three mass graves in the Shabunda area, thought to contain the corpses of thousands of people, including children and babies.
Aid agencies say they were duped into laying a trap for refugees around Shabunda by encouraging them to come out of the forest for food.
In some areas, troops backing Kabila played on deepening resentment toward the refugees among local communities to organise local gangs of killers.
In the village of Kasese, Rwandan soldiers galvanised the local population on April 22 into attacking a refugee camp which held some armed Hutu militiamen, but mostly women and children.
After Rwandan-led rebel forces followed up with a machine-gun and grenade attack, the death toll in the camp is believed to have run into hundreds. Red Cross workers say they saw a bulldozer being used to bury the victims.
One foreign aid team discovered a container near Minova in South Kivu stuffed with the corpses of what they believe were Zairean Hutus who had been locked inside and left to die. Others stumbled on mass burials as they were taking place.
The fate of refugees on Idjwe Island, on Lake Kivu between Congo and Rwanda, is uncertain. Local authorities say they have been repatriated, but other reports say they were driven into a cave and left to starve.
While the focus of international criticism has fallen on Kabila and his Alliance of Democratic Forces, human-rights investigators and aid workers are asking who stands to benefit most from the killing of Hutus.
“It takes a lot of effort to kill that many people and to cover up the evidence. Who has an interest in doing that? I don’t think it’s Kabila. His interest was in getting to Kinshasa as quickly as possible. This is not really about Zaire at all. It’s about the Hutu-Tutsi conflict across the border in Rwanda, and I think that’s where responsibility lies,” said an aid worker who has worked in the region for three years.
Some diplomats talk of Rwanda being given a free hand in eastern Congo as a quid pro quo for engineering Kabila’s sweeping victory. It is doubtful that Congo’s new president could have stopped the slaughter even if he wanted to. There is little evidence he exercised real control over his army.
On a visit to Kisangani shortly after the alliance seized it, Kabila’s orders were ignored by the English-speaking soldiers he supposedly commanded.
Kagame, who admitted that his army played the leading role in seizing four key cities in the former Zaire, has conceded that atrocities may have taken place. But he blamed them on individuals, not a systematic strategy to exterminate Hutus.
l Leaders from 10 African countries, including Zimbabwe, Zambia, Namibia and Mozambique, gathered in Kinshasa this week to denounce what they termed a “disinformation campaign” designed to undermine Kabila’s government.
They also called for an independent investigation into massacre allegations stretching back to 1993. South Africa turned down an invitation to the summit.