Impunity Watch: Africa

UN Allegedly Gives War Criminal a Role in Restoration of Order in DR Congo

By Ted Townsend
Impunity Watch Reporter, Africa

GOMA, DR Congo - In an attempt to restore order to the eastern region of DR Congo, the United Nations has apparently given General Bosco Ntaganda a major part in the command chain, despite the fact that he is wanted by the UN for war crimes.  The crimes alleged against Ntaganda include  enlisting child soldiers, and using them in hostilities.  The UN has denied this report. 

Still reports from the BBC and others indicate that Ntaganda spoke during an operations meeting.  In response, Human Rights Watch has accused the UN of ignoring the issue. "It's time now this is addressed head on. Rather than denying or ignoring the role being played by Bosco Ntaganda, the UN should be actively seeking his arrest and transferring him to The Hague," siad HRW in a release. 

Reports of Ntaganda's involvement come amid the resumption of fighting between Hutu militias and the Congolese army.  This fighting has led to the displacement of over 100,000 civilians, causing a major humantarian crisis.  Aid groups are unable to reach most of the fleeing victims.

Further, according to Human Rights Watch, those responsible for protecting the victims of this crisis "have themselves been involved in many of the abuses. Of the 91 women and girls known to have been victims of sexual violence in recent months, at least 56 reported they were raped by government soldiers, who often accused their victims of being the wives of FDLR combatants." Government forces have burned hundreds of homes, arbitrarily arrested civilians, and looted their property, according to HRW.

For more information, please see:

BBC News - Congo Ex-Rebel 'Working With UN' - 29 April 2009

The Huffington Post - DR Congo: report Says 100,000 Civilians At Risk of Attack and Humanitarian Aid Desperately Needed  - 29 April 2009

VOA News - Return of Hutu Militias Sparks 100,000 New Displacements in Eastern Congo - 27 April 2009

Humanitarian Situation Worsens in DR Congo in Wake of FDLR Attacks

By Ted Townsend
Impunity Watch Reporter, Africa

KINSHASA, DR Congo - The humantiarian situation has continued to worsen in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, causing Congolese civilians to flee their homes in droves.  Many of those fleeing, almost 100,000 in the past two months, fear attacks by the rebel Hutu militia, who refer to themselves as the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR).

FDLR rebels recently attacked the village of Luofo in Eastern DRC, leaving seven dead, including five children, and hundreds of homes burned to the ground.  The five young children burned to death in their homes.  According to reports, Congolese army soldiers positioned between the approaching FDLR members and the village put up little to no resistance and fled, along with many village residents who had asought refuge there from previous attacks.

These attacks appear to be reprisal acts against the people of the DRC.  The attacks are in a response to an operation launched by the Congoloese army to eradicate and defeant the rebels.  According to some reports, FDLR rebels are engaged in a house-to-house terror campaign, telling those they visit: "you will all die."

In nearby towns, the situations for displaced persons has gorwn increasingly dire.  Many do not have food or medicine.  At least three displaced persons have died recently of hunger and disease.  Further, other local families who are hosting the displaced are starting to feel the pressure, making their situation extremely fragile.

The United Nations sent a peacekeeping envoy to meet with village leaders about the incident.  Alan Doss, the representative, was told by several chiefs of the seven dead and the burned houses.  The chiefs also voiced their concerns for their villages' security with regard to future retaliation by the FDLR.  Doss assured the locals that the relevant officials would hear their concerns, and continue to attempt to bring peace to the region.

For more information, please see:

Human Rights Watch - DR Congo: Children Burned to Death by Rwandan Hutu Militia - 23 April 2009

Reuters - DRC: 100,000 Estimated Displaced in Last Two Months - 24 April 2009

UN News Centre - DR Congo: UN Envoy Hears of Revenge Attacks by Hutu Militia on Locals - 23 April 2009

Two Protestors Shot Dead by Government Troops in Madagascar

By Ted Townsend
Impunity Watch Reporter, Africa

ANTANANARIVO, Madagascar - Anti-government protesters and security forces clashed in Madagascar this week, leaving two dead and at least ten wounded.  The protests broke out after a group of protestors march on a courthouse, in response to the governments closure of two radio stations.  Police and soldiers fired upon the crowd, after using tear gas to attempt to disburse the demonstrators.  At least one witness saw a person shot in the back at close range.

Other reports have a youth dying on the spot and another after being hospitalized, as a result of the violence.

Tuesday, supporters gathered to pay homage to the dead

The incident stems, in part, from the March ouster of former President Marc Ravalomanana by his rival, Andry Rajolina.  The international community referred to this action as a coup, and as a result, suspended Madagascar from the African Union.  Those who were fired upon were supporters of the now-deposed president, who claims he plans to return to Madagascar within the next few weeks, claiming the "only way out of the crisis" is to hold early elections or referendums before the end of the year.

These types of protests are becoming more common in the island nation.  The incident this week was very reminiscent of those protests organized at the outset of the year by Rajoelina's supporters to orchestrate Ravalomanana's ouster.  In February, Ravalomanana's guards fired into a crowd of opposition supporters, killing thirty civilians in what some call the turning point of the campaign against him.

In an announcement by the new government, all protests were effectively suspended in the wake of Monday's actions, in order " to ensure that calm prevails."

For more information, please see:

AFP - Ousted Madagascar President's Camp Mourns Dead - 22 April 2009

ReliefWeb - Two Shot Dead, Over 10 Injured in Conflicts in Madagascar - 20 April 2009

BBC News - Madagascar Protests Turn Deadly - 20 April 2009

Amnesty Accused Nigerian Police of Torturing and Killings in the Niger Delta

By Dahee Nam
Impunity Watch Senior Desk Officer, Africa

LAGOS, Nigeria - Amnesty International reported Thursday that Nigerian police are increasingly using illegal and violent means, including enforced disappearance, torture, and illegal killings, to battle criminals and militants in the Niger Delta region.  Nigerian police denied the allegations.

“We are seeing what appears to be a worrying rise in the use of extreme violence by the police in the Niger Delta – despite reported government suggestions of a gun amnesty as a way of trying to resolve some of the serious problems that have been plaguing the region for years,” Amnesty International quoted its Nigeria researcher, Aster van Kregten.

Amnesty International said that on April 7, Chika Ibeku, a former member of the Deewell, a criminal gang in the Niger Delta region, was arrested by the police with three other unnamed men.  It is reported that Ibeku had gone to the police station to hand over his weapon after the government's recent announcement of amnesty for militants in the region.  The four men are reported to have been held by the Swift Operation Squad (SOS) in Port Harcourt, Rivers state, but all of the four are now missing. 

While Amnesty International expressed concerns that the four men may have been tortured or killed by the police, the police denied any knowledge of their whereabouts.

"We really want to know what happened to Mr. Ibeku.  I think it's extremely important that the Nigerian police is clear about what they do. If they arrest people then they should bring them to the court, and the Nigerian constitution is very clear on that.  They should [bring] suspects to the court within 48 hours.  We really want to know what happened to Mr. Ibeku, and we really want to see him in court," Kregten said.

For more information, please see:

Amnesty International - Men Arrested in Niger Delta Region of Nigeria Feared Tortured and Killed - 17 April 2009

VOA - Nigerian Police Deny Amnesty Claims of Torture and Illegal Killings in Niger Delta - 17 April 2009

Amnesty International - Nigeria: Police ‘Disappear’ Four in Port Harcourt - 16 April 2009

AP - Amnesty: Nigerian Police More Violent in South - 16 April 2009

Rights Group Calls Eritrea a "Giant Prison"

By Ted Townsend
Impunity Watch Reporter, Africa

ASMARA, Eritrea - According to a Human Rights Watch report, any dissenters to Eritrea's government are placed in underground cells and metal shipping containers.  These reasons, among others, caused the group to refer to the Red Sea state as a "giant prison" Thursday and condemned the country's growing humanitarian crisis. 

HRW further urged outside countries not to send back Eritrean Asylum-seekers, and called on the international community to pressure the government about its rights record.

In the report, based on interviews with over fifty alleged victims of the rights violations, HRW detailed the multitude of violations, including detention, torture and extended military conscription.  "Many if not most political prisoners and those detained for trying to flee the country or for practising illegal religions are held incommunicado in appalling conditions, often underground or in metal shipping containers," the group said. Many religious or political dissenters have been detailed trying to avoid national service or the mandated military service. 

Evangelical Christians have been some of the most targeted individuals, with many being routinely rounded up and detained.  According to sources, one woman was held in a shipping container for three months after just reading the bible.  Other victims have been tied down and left in the sun, tied to a cross or a tree and beaten.

The report also focused quite heavily on the military conscription angle, accusing the president of using a border-dispute with Ethiopia as a platform to maintain a permanent state of war.  This state of war has become indefinite.  Where adult Eritrean citizens used to be conscripted for eighteen months, currently most of the adult population now remains conscripted indefinitely.  According to a refugee, "[t]he only people who don't go to military service are blind or missing their trigger fingers."

HRW also noted that there is no independent civil society and media outlets have been shut down.

For its part, Asmara denies the reports, and accuses them of attempting to undermine Eritrea's sovereignty.  It further says the international community is hypocritical and attempting to bully smaller nations over violations that are rife in Western nations.

For More Information, Please See:

BBC News - Eritrea Becoming 'A Giant Prison' - 16 April 2009

AFP - Eritrea Becoming 'A Giant Prison': Rights Group - 16 April 2009

Reuters - Rights Group Condemns Eritrea Over Detentions - 16 April 2009

Refugees Begin Return to Mogadishu

By Ted Townsend
Impunity Watch Reporter, Africa

MOGADISHU, Somalia - Since the start of this year, over 60,000 Somali civilians have returned to Mogadishu, despite the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) expressed fear that the city still has a "volatile security situation."  Many of those who have returned were uprooted by violence, but now are returning amid a perceived lull in the fighting.  UNHCR has also reported a number of returnees from neighboring countries, including Kenya, Yemen and Ethiopia.

Many of those returning were in settlements for the internally displaced in southern and central Somalia.

But the UNHCR has concerns that the region's perceived stability is not what it seems, and has not encouraged the return of refugees due to the city's unstable security situation and lack of fundamental services.  Further, fighting, though at a lull now, broke out at the end of March between an armed opposition group and government forces that ended up displacing over 1200 civilians.

The returnees are facing basic necessity issues, such as lack of adequate shelter, drought and limited employment.  The heavy fighting of the past few years has destroyed many houses.  The insecurity in the region has also been intensified by a drought in rural areas, which has been intensified by a heavy loss of livestock in cetain areas.

The UNHCR further added that it would re-open its offices in Mogadishu as soon as possible, depending on security issues.

For More Information, Please See:

AFP - Thousands of Somali Refugees Return to Capital: UN - 14 April 2009

Reuters - Some 60,000 Return to Mogadishu This Year Amid Relative Lull in Fighting - 14 April 2009

UN News Centre - Somalia: 60,000 Return to Unstable Conditions in Capital - UN Agency - 15 April 2009

Somali Militants Fired Mortars at U.S. Congressman

By Dahee Nam
Impunity Watch Reporter, Africa

MOGADISHU, Somalia – Militants of Somalia's hardline Islamist rebel group fired mortar shells at the Mogadishu airport as a plane carrying a U.S. Congressman took off on Monday.  The plane flew out safely, but 19 Somalis in nearby residential areas were wounded. 

Donald Payne, a Democrat from New Jersey and a foreign affairs committee member, who escaped unhurt from the attack, said that he did not know the violence occurred until he reached Kenya after the flight from Mogadishu.

Al-Shabab, Somalia’s hardline rebel group, claimed their responsibility for the attack. 

“We fired on the airport to target the so-called Democratic congressman sent by Obama.  . . .  We carried out mortar attacks against the enemy of Allah who arrived to spread democracy in Somalia," Sheikh Husein Ali Fidow, a spokesman for al-Shabab said.  “No single group can claim control of Mogadishu, and Al Shabab will continue its attacks,” he added.

Only hours earlier, Payne met Somali President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed and Prime Minister Omar Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke to discuss current hostage in the Indian Ocean as well as peace and reconciliation in Somalia and possible ways to cooperation between U.S. and Somalia.

Last Sunday, US snipers fatally shot three of four Somali pirates who had held Captain Richard Phillips in a drifting lifeboat for five days in the Indian Ocean after their unsuccessful attempt to hijack the U.S.-flagged container ship Maersk Alabama.

A Somali pirate chief accused Washington of breaking an agreement to end the stand-off peacefully and threatened to target American citizens in revenge for Phillips' rescue.

"The American liars have killed our friends after they agreed to free the hostage without ransom... this matter will lead to retaliation and we will hunt down particularly American citizens travelling our waters," Abdi Garad, a pirate of Eyl, told AFP.

For more information, please see:

AFP: Mortar Shells Fired at US Congressman in Somalia - 13 April 2009

AP: Congressman Escapes Injury in Somali Mortar Attack - 13 April 2009

New York Times: Mortars Threaten U.S. Congressman’s Plane in Somalia - 13 April 2009

Reuters (UK): WRAPUP 5-Somali Militants Fire at U.S. Lawmaker - 13 April 2009

Mugabe Said to Seek Amnesty Using Violence

By Dahee Nam
Impunity Watch Reporter, Africa

HARARE, Zimbabwe – Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s top lieutenants are trying to seek amnesty for their past crimes by abducting, detaining, torturing, and murdering opposition officials, activists, and unarmed civilians according to senior officials of Mugabe’s party.

The New York Times (NYT) reported Friday that Mugabe’s generals and politicians are concerned that they are suddenly vulnerable to prosecution for crimes committed during last year’s election campaign. 

Mugabe’s party, ZANU-PF, have organized campaigns of terrocr to extend Mugabe's 28-year reign.  But now the opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), has a place in the nation’s new power-sharing government.  An official said that Mugabe’s lieutenants fear losing their power and ill-gotten wealth because their 85-year-old leader would not be able to shield them much longer.

 “Their faces were immediately pasted on the wall for everyone to see that they were behind the killing, the violence, the torture and intimidation,” a senior official in Mr. Mugabe’s party said anonymously, according to the NYT. 

The NYT further reported that Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa, one of Mr. Mugabe’s principal negotiators in the power-sharing deal, informally told opposition officials that Mugabe’s party wanted an amnesty around February when the new government took office, citing a senior official of Mugabe’s party.

“We wanted to find out if it would be possible to have amnesty dating back to 1980s,” the NYT quoted the official. “The M.D.C. did not sound very forthcoming.”

However, the opposition has not offered such assurances yet.

Last year, almost 200 people were killed, and thousands were tortured in state-sponsored political violence, but no one has been prosecuted or punished, according to a human rights report of U.S. Department of State released in February.

For more information, please see:

The Zimbabwe Telegraph: ZANU-PF Try to Force Amnesty for Crimes Against Humanity - 11 April 2009

UPI: Mugabe Forces Seek Amnesty in Violence - 10 April 2009

New York Times: Mugabe Aides Said to Use Violence to Get Amnesty - 9 April 2009

Former Sierra Leone Rebels Sentenced for Over One Hundred Twenty Years

By Ted Townsend
Impunity Watch Reporter, Africa

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone - Sentences were handed down today by an international tribuna, jailing three former guerilla leaders for a total of nearly one hundred and twenty years for their crimes against humanity.  All three, Issa Sesay, Morris Kallon and Augustine Gbao, were senior leaders of the rebel group the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), and accused of committing atrocities during Sierra Leone's decade-long civil war.

Sesay was sentenced to fifty-two years, Kallon to forty years, and Gbao to twenty-five.  All were charged with  extermination, murder, rape, sexual slavery, forced marriages and physical violence as well as enslaving civilians, mutilating people and pillaging.  Convictions were handed down in February of this year, finding Sesay and Kallon guilty of sixteen counts of crimes against humanity and Gbao guilty of fourteen.

The three are the first RUF rebels to be tried by the court, and also the first to be convicted for the offenses of "attacks on peacekeepers" and "forced marriage."  The total jail terms ran for well-over a thousand years combined, however the terms are set to run concurrently.  The death penalty cannot be assessed by the Special Court.

The rebels were known for mutilating civilians, often by hacking off hands and feet.  Following their conviction in February, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch noted that "[t]he RUF were renowned for leading one of the most brutal rebel movements in modern days. Everyone knows about the signature atrocity of limb amputation, but there was also horrific sexual violence, abductions, use of child soldiers and forced marriages."

The convictions culminated what had become a five-year trial.  All three rebels pled not guilty.

For More Information, Please See:

BBC News - Sierra Leone RUF Rebels Sentenced - 8 April 2009

Reuters - UN-backed Court Jails Sierra Leone Rebels - 8 April 2009

CNN - 'Brutal' Sierra Leone Rebels Face Sentencing - 8 April 2009

Defense Attorneys for Former Liberian President Seek His Acquittal

By Dahee Nam
Impunity Watch Reporter, Africa

HEAGUE, the Netherlands – Defense attorneys for former Liberian President Charles Taylor sought his acquittal Monday on all charges relating to his alleged involvement in Sierra Leone's civil war, claiming that there was no evidence to support his conviction.

Taylor, 61, has been on trial at the Hague-based Special Court for Sierra Leone since June 2007, for charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity including murder, rape, sexual slavery, and conscription of child soldiers during the 1991-2001 civil war in Sierra Leone.  On Monday, he has pleaded not guilty to all 11 counts.

"The evidence presented to date, viewed in an objective manner, is not sufficient for or capable of supporting a conviction," Morris Anyah, Taylor’s attorney told a three-judge panel during a special session to hear the defense motion.

Anyah said there is no doubt that terrible crimes occurred in Sierra Leone or that citizens in the country faced "atrocities of unimaginable proportions."

However, the prosecution has failed to show enough evidence to link Taylor to the planning, instigation, execution, or aiding of those crimes, he argued.

The prosecution is scheduled on Thursday to respond to the defense motion for judgment of acquittal. If the judges are convinced there is no sufficient evidence to support a conviction, an acquittal will be granted at the close of the prosecution case under Rule 98 of the tribunal's rules of procedure.  If the motion is denied, Taylor will stand as the first witness when his defense argument starts this summer.

For more information, please see:

AFP:Dismissal Motion in Epic Taylor War Crimes Case - 6 April 2009 

Afrol News: Lawyers Seek Taylor’s Acquittal - 6 April 2009

Reuters: Charles Taylor's Defence Counsel Seeks His Acquittal - 6 April 2009

VOA News: Former Liberian President's Lawyers Ask for Acquittal - 6 April 2009