Aid workers warn against "second Srebrenica" in Congo

By Antje Passenheim, dpa
Nairobi (dpa) - Africa is facing genocide again, only a few hundred kilometres from the site of the last one in nearby Rwanda.

This time the killing is taking place in north-eastern Congo. However - like before, in Rwanda in 1994 - the United Nations have so far merely been watching the unfolding ethnic violence.

The violence between Hema and Lendu militias in and around the town of Bunia has spiralled more and more in recent days, despite the presence of a few hundred powerless U.N. soldiers, who are deployed to observe the so-called peace in Congo.

Civilians and aid officials have accused the world community of neglect. Only in the eleventh hour, it seems, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan has called for volunteers to end the terror in the Ituri province in the border area with Uganda and Rwanda.

"We are facing a second Srebrenica or Rwanda,'' one aid worker said. The sentiment is shared by many.

Among them is Austrian Markus Sack, project leader with the German humanitarian agency Deutsche Welthungerhilfe (DWHH) in Bunia.

"There has been a circle of the most archaic violence. But despite this and despite knowing about it, the U.N. have not been prepared to send military help to break it,'' he says.

The long-standing feud between the two tribes revolves around land, claimed by both the Hema, who are nomadic pastoralists, and the Lendu, who are settled farmers.

The killings lead to revenge, which again leads to further killing, observers say.

In recent years, the rivalry between the two tribes has been exacerbated by the discovery of gold and oil in an area that has many natural resources, observers say.

In the past, the tribes used to fight each other with machetes, bows and arrows. However, since the neighbouring rivals Rwanda and Uganda got involved in Congo's civil war, the tribal militias have also got grenade throwers and assault rifles at their disposal.

About 50,000 people have already died as a result of the violence, aid workers estimate. About 500,000 have been driven from their homes.

Observers in the area fear that the dominant Lendu militias could end up committing genocide against the Hema.

However, despite Rwanda's terrible example in the past, the U.N. has not done anything so far to prevent the new killings, Sack and many of his colleagues say.

Because of their lack of power Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni even dismissed the soldiers of the U.N.'s Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Monuc) as "danger tourists''.

"They have taken on a task which they cannot fulfil,'' says Sack. Only about 700 blue berets are facing 28,000 militiamen in the conflict.

"The troops are not only too few, they are also insufficiently armed and badly trained,'' he adds. The U.N. soldiers, mostly from Uruguay, were speaking neither French nor the main local languages Lingala and Kiswahili.

As a result, Sack says: "The soldiers can communicate with neither the civilians nor the militias. They are no protection for the locals or the aid workers.''

"From what we know this could already be a genocide,'' says Carla del Ponte, the chief prosecutor for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia at the international tribunal in The Hague.

Annan's response as head of the U.N. peacekeeping missions has been criticized as inadequate in Rwanda in 1994, because he had received information about pending genocide three month before the massacre.

The security council, which did not release the information to the public, did not agree to a deployment of troops which might have saved the lives of 80,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

At least 5,000 soldiers would be necessary to prevent a massacre in Eastern Congo, aid workers and Sack, himself a former soldier, estimate.

The international forces, the aid workers say, also need "a mandate that forces a peace, by allowing them to protect civilians effectively and bring apart the warring sides.''

dpa pas emc AP-NY-05-14-03 1136EDT

Copyright (c) 2003 dpa Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH
Received by NewsEdge Insight: 05/14/2003 11:36:33