Aid group says June one of worst months on record, survey reveals widespread fear
DAKAR (AlertNet) – Inhabitants of Congo’s Province Orientale, bordering Sudan, are increasingly preyed on by armed groups, particularly the Ugandan Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a report from international aid group Oxfam said on Thursday.
Despite military operations by the Congolese and Ugandan armies to snuff out the LRA, 90 percent of the 3.3 million people in the Haut and Bas Uele territories of eastern Congo still live in fear of attack, according to Oxfam's annual survey. Small groups of “hungry fighters” from the LRA wreak havoc on civilians and are responsible for widespread killings, lootings and abductions.
The charity said in a statement that June was one of the worst months on record for LRA violence in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). There were 53 attacks, involving 26 deaths and 23 kidnappings, including 10 children.
Attacks in the first six months of 2011 totalled 158, representing a 53 per cent increase on the previous year. Some 45,000 civilians fled the LRA in the same period.
“Our future is dark,” said an unnamed respondent in the Haut Uele region. “We are scared all the time. The LRA continue to kill us and burn our houses down.”
Since September 2008, the LRA - which was chased out of Uganda, and is famous for mutilating its victims and abducting children to work as porters and sex slaves - has killed more than 2,300 people, abducted over 3,000 and displaced more than 400,000 others in DRC, Sudan and Central African Republic.
Its fighters are particularly dreaded by locals because they loot crops and destroy farms, leaving impoverished people even poorer and hungrier.
CALL FOR MORE UN PROTECTION
Oxfam has called for more troops from the U.N. peacekeeping force in Congo (MONUSCO) to be deployed in regions where the LRA is active.
MONUSCO is the largest U.N. peacekeeping force in the world, with more than 18,000 troops across the country. Yet fewer than 1,000 peacekeepers are estimated to be deployed in LRA-affected areas.
“At the moment, only 5 per cent of MONUSCO’s total force is deployed to LRA areas, while 20 percent of population displacements in DRC are due to the LRA. Both those figures need to change as soon as possible,” said Oxfam country head Pauline Ballman.
But it’s not just the LRA that is responsible for the abuses.
The Congolese armed forces (FARDC) and national police (PNC) - which are deployed to protect civilians, even accompanying them to farms - are notorious for extortion, illegal taxation, arbitrary arrests, kidnapping for ransom, sexual violence, looting and destroying crops, and forced labour.
The Ugandan People’s Defence Force (UPDF), deployed to support Congolese forces in combating the LRA, is also accused of looting and sexual abuse.
Nonetheless, most respondents in the Oxfam survey said they preferred to have the FARDC around than the LRA. Many want the Congolese government to equip its soldiers better to fight the LRA and to pay their salaries on time so they do not extort money from locals.
Oxfam said the Congolese military authorities should order troops to respect the status of non-combatants and enforce policies that call for zero-tolerance of human rights abuses.
For now though, people in eastern Congo face the stark choice of submitting to the abuses or fleeing their villages to survive.
People have curbed their movements, and have stopped going to markets and fields, which is crippling their livelihoods. Some communities have even arranged to take turns between doing forced labour for the FARDC and working on their farms.
In cases where communities have tried to protect women by sending men to accompany them on trips, the men have been attacked and raped too.
“We don’t know which god to turn to,” one unnamed inhabitant of the town of Fizi said in the Oxfam report.
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