More than 100 people are reported to have been massacred in the Democratic Republic of Congo in an apparent bid to shore up Rwanda’s unpopular occupation of the country’s eastern provinces.
The killings followed a failed uprising against the Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD) — a rebel movement formed and commanded by neighbouring Rwanda — in Kisangani. Many people in the town believe the uprising was incited by the rebels themselves to provide a pretext to crack down on dissent.
Aid workers and church authorities said the victims included dissident soldiers and civilians.
In Pweto more than 500 rebel fighters were reported to have defected to the government side last week in protest at their leaders’ refusal to make peace.
Red Cross workers said the death toll was impossible to estimate because many of those slain in Kisangani were decapitated, disembowelled and thrown into the Tshopo river. About 3km away, 100 United Nations military observers were confined to base.
The round-up came in response to a brief uprising in the early hours of May 14, which was sparked by a bizarre call by the RCD’s radio station.
”The radio said there had been a mutiny by soldiers and we must go into the streets to drive out the Rwandans,” said Father Celestine Bwamba Malekani, head of the town’s Catholic radio station. ”Thousands of people came out with machetes, rakes and rocks.”
The crowd lynched at least three people, including two suspected Rwandans. On the radio the professed mutineers urged the people on, pausing only to play gospel songs.
Then, after three hours, with no greater commotion than a brief scraping of chairs, the radio station changed its tune. ”A new voice said what we had heard was not true — and anyone found in the street would be killed,” Malekani said. ”That gave the RCD their excuse to start the arrests — it was all a game, a snare.”