Congo: Bringing Justice to the Heart of Darkness
By Steve Crawshaw, London Director of Human Rights Watch
Published in The Independent
"C'était beau ici," says a Congolese, on entering the little town of Nyakunde. It is easy to see how the town might
indeed once have been beautiful. The town nestles amidst soft green hills. Banana trees and oil palms, acacia and
eucalyptus grow in profusion.
Now, though, to enter Nyakunde - which once had 20,000 inhabitants - feels like entering a ghost town, a kind of
Congolese Mary Celeste. A few thousand inhabitants have returned. But this is indeed a place of ghosts. The survivors,
meanwhile, are waiting for justice.
On the once-bustling main street, buildings have partly vanished beneath the creepers that have enfolded them in the
past three years. There are no obvious signs of the nightmare that engulfed Nyakunde. Instead, a terrible emptiness
remains.
The once-admired hospital, whose fame and reputation spread well beyond the immediately surrounding district, is
deserted except for a few chickens clucking their way through the wards. In the former operating theatre, a few pieces
of remaining equipment, now broken, hang forlornly.
The war in the Democratic Republic of Congo has had a higher civilian death toll than any other conflict since the
Second World War. More than three million have died, in massacres and from disease and starvation because people were
too frightened to return to their homes.
The events of Nyakunde were horrific even by the standards of the Congolese war. The killing spree began on 5 September
2002. From the hills above the town, militias descended on Nyakunde. The attack lasted for 10 days, including a
door-to-door operation which the militias called Operation Polio - mass murder as social vaccination. The hospital was a
particular target for looting, burning and slaughter.
A woman described watching her eight-month-old daughter killed in front of her. A group of 14 hid in the ceiling of the
operating room for several days without food or water, until the militias discovered them and dragged them out. Some
were taken to a nearby house which served as a makeshift prison for those who were of the wrong ethnic identity or who
opposed the killings. One woman later remembered: "In the room where we were, a two-week-old baby died. His body was
thrown into the latrine." Another survivor, who helped to bury hundreds of bodies, described: "We broke the latrines to
put them in there, as there was no time to dig proper graves."
At least 1,200 people were murdered during those days. Most in Nyakunde believe the numbers of dead to be closer to
3,000; two ethnic groups, the Hema and the Bira, were especially targeted. Rape was widespread - one survivor remembers
how she and two other women were repeatedly raped for an hour and a half. "There were about nine fighters. Four of them
had guns, others had machetes, spears and axes. They made us strip and then they raped us." With insane courage,
somebody in the hospital sent an e-mail, even as the killings were still under way. The e-mail was headed "Nyakunde - on
fire and in blood". Church groups forwarded the message to the United Nations mission in Congo. The UN did not respond.
Two obvious factors motivating the Congo conflict have, as ever, been power and greed. North-eastern Congo contains some
of the richest mineral deposits in the world. That should be a blessing. But as one gold miner said: "We are cursed
because of our gold. All we do is suffer. There is no benefit to us."
Greed and violence are constant twins in a country where gold, diamonds and other precious minerals are found in
abundance. The brutal Mobutu Sese Seko, who ruled the country (Zaire, as he renamed it) from 1965 until his overthrow in
1997, helped to ensure that the word "kleptocracy" gained international currency. Following the spectacular example of
King Leopold of Belgium a century earlier, Mobutu diverted Congo's wealth into his many bank accounts.
Western companies - though less obviously cynical than in Conrad's day- have continued to let the desire for mineral
riches trump considerations of human rights. Last year, Human Rights Watch documented the relationship between AngloGold
Ashanti, one of the world's largest (and most respected) gold companies, and a murderous warlord in the muddy
gold-mining town of Mongbwalu, in the rainforest 30 miles from Nyakunde. As the (now-jailed) warlord in Mongbwalu
boasted: "If I want to chase [AngloGold Ashanti] away, then I will." (In the wake of the publication of Human Rights
Watch's report, The Curse of Gold, AngloGold pledged not to support such militia groups in the future.)
There are glimmers of hope on the horizon, despite the renewed violence that continued in eastern Congo in recent weeks.
National elections are due in April which could pave the way for long-term peace. The International Criminal Court has
made the crimes committed in Congo the subject of its first investigation. Those who bear ultimate responsibility for
the killings of Nyakunde and elsewhere may yet face justice.
The mayor of Nyakunde, Jean Gaston Herambo, certainly hopes so. Scattered through the town, there are mass graves -
bodies were thrown down a well, buried in latrines, and elsewhere. Mr Herambo wants to build a monument to the dead. At
the side of his house lies what appears to be a macabre memento - a box containing 20 skulls. The violent deaths are all
too clear; the skulls are marked with jagged gashes from the killers' machetes. But Mr Herambo's intentions are not
macabre. He hopes this and the mass graves can yet yield valuable evidence for investigators: "It is important that [the
killers] should be judged and brought to justice so that this can't happen again."
Previously, such hopes might have seemed mere fantasy. No longer, perhaps. The ICC investigation means that everything
could change. The court's chief prosecutor has said that, after two years of investigations, the first Congolese arrest
warrants will probably be issued soon.
A number of the most feared warlords are already behind bars in the Congolese capital, Kinshasa. If the ICC brings
charges against them, they are likely to be transferred to the Hague. So far, so almost simple. But the court faces a
challenge, in Nyakunde and elsewhere.
The machete-bearing young men and their leaders who came whooping down from the hills into Nyakunde, intent on killing
men, women and children, committed criminal acts. But they did not act alone. Those who bear the ultimate responsibility
for these and other massacres remain in high places - including in the Congolese government in Kinshasa and senior
military commanders in neighbouring Rwanda and Uganda.
It remains to be seen whether the court is ready to grasp this crucial nettle, or whether the belief in a putative
"stability" will mean those who bear ultimate responsibility for some of Congo's bloodiest crimes remain untouched by
the law. There are unhappy precedents for this eagerness to prosecute lesser crimes, while the worst crimes remain
unaddressed. Thus, after the fall of Slobodan Milosevic, it was initially suggested that the former Serb leader might go
on trial in Belgrade on charges of corruption - while the most deadly crimes of his regime would be ignored.
In Congo, those who have argued hardest on behalf of the ICC hope that justice will not pick and choose according to the
political comfort zone, but will not hesitate to put those who bear ultimate responsibility for the massacres of recent
years in the dock. Joel Bisubu of Justice Plus, a Congolese NGO, which has played a key role in documenting human rights
abuses across the region, argues: "People are forced to choose between peace and justice. But you can't have peace
without justice. The people who are dead are dead. But if you try to compromise peace for justice, that doesn't help."
At least now there is the chance that justice may be achieved. The massive loss of life at Nyakunde and elsewhere in
eastern Congo went almost unremarked by the rest of the world at the time. But prosecution of those responsible could
send a message that, finally, the determination to turn a blind eye to evil has changed.