Former Congolese Rebels Mobilizing New Recruits, Child Soldiers, HRW Says
Former rebels who joined Democratic Republic of Congo’s army last year as part of a peace deal are mobilizing new recruits, including children, and are threatening to re-start a rebellion, Human Rights Watch said.
Since September, more than 1,000 men and boys have been forcibly recruited into the National Congress for the Defense of the People, or CNDP, the New York-based rights group said in an e-mailed statement today. Escapees said the former rebels are considering a return to war, the group reported.
“Armed groups in eastern Congo are pulling youth from schools, homes, and fields and forcing them to fight,” said Human Rights Watch senior Africa researcher, Anneke Van Woudenberg. “These children desperately need the protection of their government and United Nations peacekeepers.”
The CNDP joined the Congolese army in March of last year after their leader, the ethnic-Tutsi rebel General Laurent Nkunda, was arrested by neighboring Rwanda. The former rebels have refused to re-deploy outside of Congo’s eastern provinces and are involved in the smuggling of gold, tin ore, and other natural resources, according to a UN report released last month.
Congo is Africa’s largest producer of tin ore and its eastern provinces also have large deposits of gold and coltan, an ore used in electronics.
Investigating
The Congolese military is looking into the recruitment accusations, Captain Olivier Hamuli, a regional spokesman for the army, said by phone today from Goma, in eastern Congo.
“No family has told us that their children have been recruited,” he said.
Bosco Ntaganda, the current leader of the former CNDP rebels and a general in Congo’s army, is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes, including the use of child soldiers.
The CNDP, which almost took over North Kivu province in 2008, claims to protect the interests of minority ethnic groups in eastern Congo, particularly the Tutsis.
In a letter sent to President Joseph Kabila in September, the former rebels said they would not redeploy until the army had neutralized Rwandan Hutu rebels based in eastern Congo with links to the 1994 Rwandan genocide of Tutsis and moderate Hutus. The group also asked for better pay, promotions, and the safe return of Tutsi refugees living in camps in Rwanda.
The army and government are considering the demands, Hamuli said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Michael Kavanagh in Kinshasa mkavanagh9@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Antony Sguazzin in Johannesburg at asguazzin@bloomberg.net.
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