UN set to publish DR Congo 'war crimes report'

UN set to publish DR Congo 'war crimes report'
By BBC News
Fri 01 Oct. 2010, 11:10 CAT

The United Nations is set to publish a controversial report into human rights violations in the Democratic Republic of Congo in the 1990s. The final version is believed to have toned down its language after an earlier, leaked draft provoked fury from Uganda and Rwanda.

Both countries were accused of committing war crimes against ethnic Hutus in DR Congo during the conflict. They had threatened to pull out of UN peacekeeping missions in response.

The report into conflicts in the DR Congo between 1993 and 2003 is said to detail crimes never previously documented.

It covers some 600 incidents and includes allegations of massacres of civilians, torture, and the destruction of infrastructure that led to civilian deaths.

Rwanda had reacted furiously to allegations that its Tutsi-led army may have committed genocide in DR Congo, known as Zaire until 1997, against Rwandan Hutus.

Under President Paul Kagame, Rwanda has always said its forces entered Zaire to pursue Hutu militias responsible for carrying out mass killings in Rwanda - the rebels had fled to Zaire along with tens of thousands of Hutu refugees.

'Deeply flawed'

President Kagame threatened to withdraw Rwandan peacekeepers from the joint UN-African Union peacekeeping mission in Sudan's Darfur region in response to the report.

He was only persuaded not to after a visit from the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, and agreement that Rwanda would be allowed to submit comments for inclusion in the report.

DR Congo and Rwanda: Troublesome neighbours
map

* April-June 1994: Genocide of Tutsis in Rwanda
* June 1994: Paul Kagame's Tutsi rebels take power in Rwanda, Hutus flee into Zaire
* Rwanda's army enters eastern Zaire to pursue Hutu fighters
* 1997: Laurent Kabila's AFDL, backed by Rwanda, takes power in Kinshasa

* Congo killings 'may be genocide'
* Analysis: Defining genocide
* Q&A: DR Congo conflict
* Profile: Rwanda President Kagame

The BBC's Barbara Plett at the UN says that while the final version appears to still contain the suggestion that Rwanda's army may have committed genocide, the language used has been toned down.

Despite the changes, Rwanda's Foreign Affairs Minister Louise Mushikiwabo said the document remained "flawed and dangerous from start to finish".

She criticised the methodology used to collect evidence and accused the UN of seeking to rewrite history, saying the report had been "a moral and intellectual failure as well as an insult to history".

Uganda, which was also accused of atrocities, described the draft report as "deeply flawed" and had threatened to pull out of peacekeeping missions, such as Somalia.

The country's UN ambassador, Ruhakana Rugunda, has told the BBC the document should not be published as it is not a "well-considered, objective report".

But he said Uganda's commitment to Africa would not be derailed.

"Our resolve to play our role in the region remains certain because we regard it as our inherent pan-African obligation to stand by the side of other African brothers and sisters," he said.

The UN report covers the wider conflict in DR Congo, which dragged in several neighbouring countries in what has been called "Africa's world war".

More than five million people died in the war and its aftermath - mostly from starvation or disease.