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Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
Integrated Regional Information Network for Central and Eastern Africa

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CENTRAL AND EASTERN AFRICA
IRIN-CEA Weekly Round-up 178
07 - 13 June 2003


CONTENTS:

GREAT LAKES: Human rights NGO decries rights violations
DRC: UN Security Council team arrives in Kinshasa
DRC-UGANDA: Refugee influx from Ituri into Bundibugyo continues
DRC-UGANDA: More multinational troops deploy in Bunia
DRC-UGANDA: Kampala boosts army presence along border
UGANDA: Landmine blows up bus, kills four
CAR: Leaders of former ruling party arrested
CAR: UN agency repatriates 1,108 refugees
BURUNDI: Nkurunziza calls for new transition framework
BURUNDI: Cantonment zone inadequate, rebel faction says
RWANDA: EU gives €10 million for poverty eradication
RWANDA: More genocide suspects rearrested
ROC: Agreement reached to repatriate 6,500 Rwandans
ROC: Health minister declares end of Ebola outbreak
TANZANIA: EU, Germany agree on €44 million water project
KENYA: Food shortages expected despite heavy rainfall - report

GREAT LAKES: Human rights NGO decries rights violations

Human rights violations continue unabated in Burundi, Rwanda and the
Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), according to a new report issued
by a regional human rights NGO, Ligue des Droits de la Personne de la
Region des Grands Lacs (League for Promotion of Human Rights in the Great
Lakes).

In its 92-page annual report, the organisation said as a result of years
of civil strife in the three countries, poverty levels and insecurity had
increased, forcing people to abandon their daily activities and to be
constantly on the move, retarding development. Conflict in the region had
resulted in a "massive" abuse of people’s rights by warlords and
governments, especially in war-stricken Burundi and the DRC, the NGO said.

In Burundi, it said, war had led to a standstill in government programmes,
denying the local populations access to public services. "Rape, murder,
robbery and economic crimes, lack of freedom of expression have become a
daily menu in the war zones of the region," the report said.

The NGO criticised Rwanda's ruling party, the Rwandan Patriotic Front, for
"targeting liberty of opinion, freedom of expression and association".
[The report is available online, in French, at: www.ldgl.org]

DRC: UN Security Council team arrives in Kinshasa

Ambassadors of 15 Security Council member countries arrived in Kinshasa,
capital of the DRC, on Tuesday on a two-day visit to provide impetus
towards a national unity government, the UN mission in the country (MONUC)
reported.

"The Security Council has come to the Congo to encourage the transition,"
Jean-Marc de La Sabliere, the French ambassador to the UN who is leading
the delegation, said on arrival.

Despite the progress in the peace process in the country, he said, the
situation was still fragile. As such, he said it was important to adopt
measures of good neighbourliness and end violence.

"It is essential to stop the fighting in the east of the country,
especially in Kivu and Ituri, and also human rights violations," he said.

Similarly, he added, the illegal exploitation of the DRC's natural
resources must end. He said the Security Council wanted to help the DRC
and had already given strong support to MONUC, and authorised the
deployment of a multinational force to Bunia, the main town in the
troubled Ituri District. [Full story at:
http://www.irinnews.org/print.asp?ReportID=34662]

DRC-UGANDA: Refugee influx from Ituri into Bundibugyo continues

The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has completed
its resettlement programme for Congolese refugees who had fled violence in
Ituri District, eastern DRC, into Uganda's Bundibugyo District, a UNHCR
official told IRIN on Tuesday.

The UNHCR completed the resettlement in less than a week after the
programme began. Of the 11,000 people who the UNHCR had estimated were
displaced into Bundibugyo, bordering southern Ituri, 97 had agreed to move
to the Kyaka II refugee camp for relief aid.

"For now, these 97 individuals are the only ones willing to be moved to
the Kyaka II camp," Bushra Malik, the UNHCR spokeswoman in Uganda, said.
"The UNHCR has done a thorough survey of what the refugees want after a
team was sent in to Bundibugyo, so that's it."

She said those still at Bundibugyo were "self-settled", preferring to make
their own arrangements, rather than register as refugees to receive
government and UN help. She added that this was because some had family
connections in Bundibugyo, while others were waiting to return to Ituri
when a comprehensive peacekeeping force was assembled.

By 6 June, however, continuing ethnic clashes in Ituri were resulting in a
steady increase of refugees fleeing into Bundibugyo, worsening an already
critical humanitarian situation in the district, according to the latest
humanitarian update by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian
Affairs. The report said the influx over the past two months has reached
14,700, and is already affecting sanitation and the distribution of food
and other consumer items in the district. The areas most affected by the
influx included Kanara, Rwebishengo, Karogoto and Bundibugyo town, the
report said. [Full story at:
http://www.irinnews.org/print.asp?ReportID=34724]

On 5 June, meanwhile, US embassy officials in Kinshasa said that the US
government had sent a consignment of emergency supplies to help 55,000
people displaced internally from the Bunia area. The consignment,
organised by USAID, represents the first part of a 165-mt emergency aid
delivery. It included plastic sheeting, blankets, jerry cans, water
purification equipment and medical kits, the officials said. The supplies,
which had arrived in Goma on 8 June would be distributed through the UN
Children's Fund and its partner NGOs, they said. [Full story at:
http://www.irinnews.org/print.asp?ReportID=34726]

DRC-UGANDA: More multinational troops deploy in Bunia
 
So far, 250 soldiers of an estimated 1,500 for the multinational force
authorised by the UN for the DRC have already deployed in Bunia, the main
town in Ituri District, to begin the task of restoring order, French
military sources said on Wednesday.

Another 450 logistical support staff are camped at Uganda's Entebbe
International Airport, which also serves as an airbase, setting up
transport and communications networks for the mission.

"By this [Wednesday] morning, there were 700 people in Entebbe and Bunia.
We are expecting another 200 to arrive in Entebbe today and we will be
carrying another 70 to 100 ground troops from Entebbe to Bunia, also
today," Capt Frederic Solano, a French army spokesman, told IRIN.

The bulk of the force are military personnel from France, with a Belgian
and a Canadian support team. "We want it to be noted that they are not all
French," Solano said. "This is a multinational effort. We have 60
Canadians and 20 Belgians working on the logistical side already." [Full
story at: http://www.irinnews.org/print.asp?ReportID=34673]

On Wednesday, the EU Council adopted a decision to deploy troops to the
DRC to form part of the 1,500-strong multinational force. In a statement
issued from Brussels, the EU said it had launched the military operation
in the DRC, codenamed "Artemis", in accordance with the mandate set out in
the UN Security Council Resolution 1484.

In adopting Operation Artemis, the EU said that the force commander of the
EU troops was to, "with immediate effect, release the activation order
(ACTORD) in order to execute the deployment of the forces, prior to the
transfer of authority following their arrival in theatre, and start
execution of the mission". [Full story at:
http://www.irinnews.org/print.asp?ReportID=34705]

DRC-UGANDA: Kampala boosts army presence along border

The Ugandan army has bolstered military monitors on the border with the
DRC after recent clashes in the Congolese border town of Kasenyi, on the
shores of Lake Albert, raised fears that fighting in Ituri District could
spill into Uganda.

"We are concerned about how close the fighting is to Uganda and that's why
we have forces monitoring the situation closely at the border," Maj Shaban
Bantariza, the Uganda People's Defence Forces spokesman, told IRIN on
Monday.

He said Uganda's primary concern was that elements hostile to the country,
such as the dissident Ugandan People's Redemption Army, which Ugandan
security officials say is operating in the DRC, could take advantage of
the attention given to the fighting in Ituri to attack Uganda. Kasenyi is
on the Ugandan border. "There is a long history of terrorists using
situations like this," he said.

However, he said, Uganda would under no circumstances redeploy to the DRC.
"Never, never. We shall handle the threat from our side," he said. [Full
story at: http://www.irinnews.org/print.asp?ReportID=34636]

UGANDA: Landmine blows up bus, kills four

At least four people were killed on Tuesday and 25 others wounded in Pader
District of northern Uganda, when an antitank mine blew up the bus in
which they were traveling, news agencies reported.

The mine had been laid by rebels of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA)
moments before the bus, which was travelling southwards to the capital,
Kampala, passed by, the agencies said.

LRA fighters who were hiding in the bush reportedly shot at passengers who
attempted to flee after the bus overturned, the agencies said. The wounded
were reported to have been taken to hospital in neighbouring Kitgum
District.

Deus Mutakirida, the deputy resident district commissioner for Kitgum,
told IRIN it was the first time a landmine had exploded in northern Uganda
in at least 10 years. He said the army had been deployed to detect any
more mines in the area. [Full story at:
http://www.irinnews.org/print.asp?ReportID=34667]

CAR: Leaders of former ruling party arrested

Eight executive board members of the former ruling party in the Central
African Republic (CAR) were arrested on 8 June as they held a meeting in
the capital, Bangui, Communication Minister Parfait Mbaye told IRIN.

He said the Mouvement de liberation du peuple centrafricain (MLPC) leaders
had been organising "subversive meetings" to destabilise the new
administration in Bangui.

Those arrested included the former minister of state for communication and
MLPC Second Deputy Chairman Gabriel Jean Edouard Koyambounou, the former
MLPC secretary-general and former President Ange-Felix Patasse's special
adviser, Joseph Vermont Tchendo, and the former minister of education,
Andre Ringui.

Since the coup, all three men had been hiding in the Nigerian, Chadian and
Japanese embassies, respectively. Former Prime Minister Martin Ziguele is
still hiding in the French embassy, together with several other former
ministers. [Full story at:
http://www.irinnews.org/print.asp?ReportID=34612]

CAR: UN agency repatriates 1,108 refugees

The UNHCR has repatriated 1,108 refugees from the DRC and the neighbouring
Republic of the Congo (ROC) since Monday, an official of the CAR told IRIN
on Wednesday.

The first 200 of some 3,500 CAR refugees who had been living in the DRC
since June 2001 arrived on Monday. About 2,000 had been living in
Brazzaville, the ROC capital, and in the northern towns of Impfondo and
Betou.

The UNHCR protection officer in the CAR, Mamadou Diane, told IRIN on
Wednesday that it was easier to charter an aircraft to fly the refugees
from the neighbouring ROC than to transport them by road or river.

Since the former army chief of staff, Francois Bozize, ousted President
Ange-Felix Patasse on 15 March, many CAR exiles have returned home
spontaneously and many others have demanded repatriation. Full story at:
http://www.irinnews.org/print.asp?ReportID=34697

BURUNDI: Nkurunziza calls for new transition framework

Burundi needs a new "charter of transition" for peace to be restored in
the country and to allow it to prepare "suitably" for elections, Pierre
Nkurunziza, the leader of the largest of two factions of the rebel Conseil
national pour la defense de la democratie-Force pour la defense de la
democratie (CNDD-FDD), told IRIN on Tuesday.

The transitional government and the CNDD-FDD should submit their versions
of the document to regional facilitators, who would then provide experts
to combine the drafts into a framework of how best to prepare Burundi for
the remaining 17 months of transition, he said.

"Only once the text is ready can we sit down and call a regional summit,"
Nkurunziza said.

He was in Dar es Salaam for talks with the Tanzanian facilitators about
how to continue the on-going peace process. Regarding the African Union
Mission in Burundi, Nkurunziza said, in principle, he had "no objection"
to the mission, but that it had to be neutral and inclusive. [Full story
at: http://www.irinnews.org/print.asp?ReportID=34665]

BURUNDI: Cantonment zone inadequate, rebel faction says

Rebels loyal to Alain Mugabarabona's faction of the Forces nationales de
liberation (FNL) said on Tuesday that conditions at a troop cantonnment
site 30 km northwest of the capital, Bujumbura, were inadequate.

"Our commanders visited the place last weekend [7-8 June] and noted that
sanitation and material conditions were not yet ready: there is no food,
no barracks for combatants," Leandre Sikuyavuga, the secretary-general of
the FNL faction, told IRIN.

He said FNL commanders had been ready to be barracked since 8 June, "but
till now nobody has come to pick them up". He urged the African Union
(AU), which is directing the cantonment operations, to speed up the
process at the Muyange site.

But the AU representative in Burundi, Ambassador Mamadou Bah, rejected
FNL's allegations. "I wonder if these people have fighters to be
cantoned," he said. "We asked them several times to tell us where we can
find their combatants in order to regroup them in pre-assembly areas, but
this has never been done." [Full story at:
http://www.irinnews.org/print.asp?ReportID=34642]

RWANDA: EU gives €10 million for poverty eradication

The EU has pledged €10 million (US $11.7 million) for a new poverty
reduction programme known as "Ubudehe" in the Kinyarwanda language, an EU
official said on Monday.

The programme seeks to decentralise poverty reduction efforts and is
designed to involved local communities directly in the implementation of
the National Poverty Reduction Strategy. In Kinyarwanda, Ubudehe means
collective communal work, with villagers assisting a family one at a time.

The EU mission in Rwanda made an initial release of €1 million in May for
pilot projects in the country's 10,000 cellules. The cellule is Rwanda's
lowest administrative unit.

"We have already disbursed a good portion of our pledge," a local
newspaper, The New Times, quoted Jeremy Lester, the EC head of delegation
in Rwanda, as saying. He said the EU would soon disburse the remaining
funds to roll out Ubudehe across the country.

The Ubudehe approach seeks to bring the community together to identify
their problems, prioritise them, find solutions and implement the approach
agreed upon. The approach involves direct funding of a project identified
by the cellule residents themselves. This is aimed at putting in place an
effective system of intra-community cooperation through collective action.
[Full story at: http://www.irinnews.org/print.asp?ReportID=34638]

RWANDA: More genocide suspects rearrested

The Rwandan government has rearrested 5,770 genocide suspects who had been
provisionally released in early 2003, an official told IRIN on Wednesday.

They were rearrested after fresh allegations were made against them,
Hannington Tayebwa, head of judicial services in the justice ministry,
said. The allegations were made in two reports by IBUKA, an umbrella
organisation that groups associations of the 1994 genocide survivors, he
said.

The rearrests began in May, with 787 of them being held soon after they
left camps where they had undergone three months of reintegration and
rehabilitation. The suspects were taken from their homes back to prison,
Tayebwa said. They were among 22,567 suspects who completed the training
in the camps across the country. Most had spent between seven and eight
years in prison awaiting trial for genocide-related crimes.

IBUKA listed some of the suspects, accusing them of "not being open and
telling the truth" about the crimes they committed during the 1994
genocide. [Full story at:
http://www.irinnews.org/print.asp?ReportID=34679]
 
ROC: Agreement reached to repatriate 6,500 Rwandans

Agreement has been reached to repatriate about 6,500 Rwandan refugees who
have been living in the ROC since May 1996.

Officials of the governments of ROC and Rwanda, as well as the UNHCR,
signed the accord on 6 June in the ROC capital, Brazzaville.

The security adviser at the ROC Ministry of Security and of Police, Col
Pierre Mongo, said the repatriation would be voluntary and that it would
begin in three or four months. The intervening time would be used to
ensure that reception sites in Rwanda were safe and ready for the
refugees.

Most of the refugees live in Brazzaville; in the north the country; and
along the banks of the River Congo, where they are engaged in crop and
livestock farming. But at the onset of the ROC's own war in 1997 between
rebels and the government of Denis Sassou-Nguesso, most of the Rwandans
fled again to Angola and Cameroon.

ROC: Health minister declares end of Ebola outbreak

Health Minister Alain Moka announced on 5 June an end to the latest
outbreak of the Ebola virus in the ROC. He told reporters in Brazzaville
that there had been no deaths due to Ebola since 22 April.

He said sufficient time had passed to allow an official declaration of the
end of the outbreak that erupted at the beginning of 2003 in the Cuvette
Ouest Region, 500 km north of Brazzaville.

Moka said a public information campaign conducted by his ministry and the
ministry of communication had helped prevent further spread of the
disease.

"However, more work remains to be done to consolidate the gains we have
made so that in the event of future epidemics we will have a population
and professional staff with a good understanding of how to react," he
said. [Full story at: http://www.irinnews.org/print.asp?ReportID=34571]

TANZANIA: EU, Germany agree on €44 million water project

Germany and the EU have agreed to provide €44 million (US $51.37 million)
to provide safe drinking water to "almost one million water users" in
three Tanzanian towns.

In a statement received by IRIN on Wednesday, the EU delegation of the EC
in Tanzania said residents of Mwanza, Iringa and Mbeya would benefit from
affordable water supply and wastewater management services.

The deal was signed in Dar es Salaam on 6 June.

Water supplies are now the responsibility of the Urban Water and Sewerage
Authorities (UWSA) that, the EU said, had been unable to meet the demand
for safe drinking water. "On average only two-thirds of the population are
served by the UWSA, most of the time only for a few hours per day and with
inadequately treated water," the EU stated.

It said that the towns' water authorities would be responsible for the
implementation of the water supply programme. The programme includes
rehabilitation and upgrading of existing water systems; extension of
production, treatment and distribution facilitities; as well as
installation of water metres.

In addition, the progamme will help improve the authorities' management
and operational capacities by helping with wastage reduction, improved
collection efficiency and the undertaking of customer awareness campaigns.
The EU said it was also funding the rehabilitation and extension of the
Mwanza sewerage system, "which will have a positive effect on the water
qualify in Lake Victoria" and the health of the town's residents.

KENYA: Food shortages expected despite heavy rainfall - report

Although many parts of Kenya have received exceptionally high rainfall
this year, food shortages continue to bite, especially in traditionally
arid areas in the north, where maize prices have already risen
dramatically, a new report has revealed.

A USAID Early Warning System Network report, released on Monday, said
potential benefits of the April and May rains in terms of food production
had been limited by the late onset of the season, and severe flooding
around the Lake Victoria and Tana river basins. As a result, crop
development in the country was behind schedule, the report said. The late
onset of the rains was likely to result in a fall in production of up to
50 percent in eastern and central parts of the country.

Meanwhile, the international relief organisation Action Churches Together
has appealed for US $1.04 million to help victims of the May floods, which
affected 17 districts in Kenya. The floods resulted in at least 70 deaths
and displaced an estimated 60,000 people. [Full story at:
http://www.irinnews.org/print.asp?ReportID=34701]http://www.irinnews.org/print.asp?ReportID=34701


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