Aid agencies are calling for the international community to step up action against Africa's most brutal rebel group
LONDON (AlertNet) - Aid agencies are calling for the international community to step up action against Africa’s most brutal rebel group amid fears it could stage another Christmas massacre.
The Lord’s Resistance Army is now the deadliest militia operating in Congo where it has killed or abducted more than 1000 adults and children in the last year alone, according to a report by the aid groups.
The rebels are notorious for their extreme violence – including hacking off body parts, crushing victims’ skulls with clubs, abducting children and forcing them to rape and kill.
It is estimated that a fifth of children kidnapped by the rebels are forced to fight, four fifths are used for labour and all the girls are raped.
“It is unbelievable that world leaders continue to tolerate brutal violence against some of the most isolated villages in central Africa and that this has been allowed to continue for more than 20 years,” said Marc Stoessel, head of Oxfam in Democratic Republic of Congo.
On Christmas Eve 2008 the LRA launched a three-week killing spree in northeastern DRC and southern Sudan, beating to death 865 people, including children, and abducting hundreds more. Last year, the rebels slaughtered some 300 people between December 14 and 17.
“This Christmas families in northeastern Congo will live in fear of yet another massacre, despite the presence of the world’s largest peacekeeping mission,” said Stoessel.
Both massacres went largely unnoticed by the outside world, said Stoessel, speaking by phone from the remote district of Haut Uele after attending a commemoration for last year’s victims.
Although the LRA has recently killed more people in Congo than any other militia, Stoessel said the United Nations mission had only deployed a reported 850 of its 18,000 troops to the area where the rebels operate.
TROOP ESCORTS
Originally from northern Uganda, the LRA has morphed into a larger regional threat. More than 400,000 people have fled their homes since 2008 as rebels rampaged across remote villages in DRC, Sudan and Central African Republic. The LRA’s leaders are wanted by the International Criminal Court.
Stoessel said it was not completely clear why the shadowy group had twice struck around Christmas but one reason might be that people tend to have feasts so there is more to loot.
Rivers are also low in northeastern DRC at this point in the year so it is easier for the rebels to move around and it is harvest time so food is more plentiful.
“It’s all very speculative because this group is very mystical no one knows really what they are after. But what is sure is that people really live in fear over Christmas,” Stoessel told AlertNet.
“People are clearly afraid. They are afraid to move between villages. They are afraid to leave the town to go to their fields.”
Stoessel said the United Nations should deploy more troops to the area but he stressed that the Congolese authorities also had a duty to protect villagers from attack.
One of the villagers’ most pressing needs is to have escorts to take them to their fields, he added.
Survivors attending Tuesday’s commemoration for those who died in the 2009 attack clearly felt abandoned, Stoessel said.
“We were with all these people who had fled the attacks last year and they are still displaced and they still don’t have access to their fields,” he added. “You could see the desperation these people had, the frustration they have and the feeling that they are forgotten by the world.”
The report also highlights the need for a massive expansion of radio and telecommunications coverage and road access to enable communities to warn one another of impending attack and to call for help.
But the report warns that previous military operations against the LRA have had devastating consequences for civilians. In 2008, Operation “Lightning Thunder” failed to capture any senior LRA commanders and only prompted a murderous backlash by the rebels.
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