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| Residents gather outside the UN base to protest the killings of two locals earlier in the morning in Beni in North Kivu province, DRC, Oct. 22, 2014. |
Congolese army commanders orchestrated a wave of massacres that killed hundreds of people between 2014-2016 as they vied for influence with anti-government insurgents in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo, a new report said on Monday.
The report by the Congo Research Group (CRG) at New York University is the most comprehensive to date on the killings of more than 800 people and the first to offer a definite theory of the perpetrators’ motives.
It is based on 249 interviews with perpetrators, eyewitnesses and victims as well as internal U.N. reports and arrest records that document participation in the killings.
Millions died in eastern Congo between 1996-2003 in regional conflicts and dozens of militia groups continue to operate there. But the massacres around the town of Beni were the most macabre and mysterious in recent memory.
CRG cited multiple witnesses saying that army commanders, including the former top general in the zone, supported and in some cases organized the killings. During some massacres, sources told CRG, soldiers secured the perimeter so that victims could not escape.
Congo government spokesman Lambert Mende said a number of high-ranking officers had been convicted for their roles in the massacres but criticized CRG for “trying to revive an old affair”. The general named in the report, Muhindo Akili Mundos, has repeatedly denied any personal responsibility.
The report recommends a parliamentary investigation and U.N Security Council sanctions against individuals involved in the violence around Beni.
Several senior Congolese militia leaders, including a former vice president in a power-sharing government, have been convicted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague for crimes committed during wars in Congo and in neighbouring Central African Republic.
