U N I T E D N A T I O N S 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 10 covering the period 5-12 Mar 1999
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO: Western officials expelled
The DRC government expelled five British officials and an American seconded to the UK foreign office after accusing them of "spying", news agencies reported on Friday. Britain has recalled its ambassador from Kinshasa for consultations. Interior Minister Gaetan Kakudji said on state television on Thursday the men had illegally entered the Ndolo military base and were carrying "sophisticated" cameras and maps. The British foreign office has denied the officials were spies and said they were reviewing emergency evacuation plans for embassy staff.
Kakudji also charged that those expelled had links with three American arrested in Zimbabwe on Sunday for allegedly trying to smuggle weapons out of the country. The men had travelled to Zimbabwe from the DRC.
Congolese seek safety in Zambia
More than 4,000 refugees fleeing conflict in Katanga province have crossed into northern Zambia since last Friday, UNHCR said on Tuesday. The new arrivals said more Congolese were on their way as anti-government rebels were reportedly attacking targets south of the town of Moba on Lake Tanganyika. Rebel-controlled radio in Uvira said on Thursday intense fighting was continuing around Pepa and Moba.
The DRC refugees are scattered along the border near the Zambian towns of Kaputa and Nsumbe, UNHCR said. There is an urgent need for plastic sheeting and sanitation facilities for the refugees, as it has been raining heavily in the area over the past several days and many of the arrivals are sleeping in the open. Zambian security forces disarmed and held several hundred Congolese soldiers and policemen near the border, UNHCR added.
Kabila meets Chiluba in Zambia
DRC President Laurent-Desire Kabila travelled to the Zambian town of Ndola last Friday to hold urgent talks with President Frederick Chiluba, news agencies said. Reuters said the two presidents discussed Zambia's decision to cut fuel supplies to southern parts of the DRC and a parallel move to curtail flights to the DRC across Zambian airspace. Zambia is the only route for petrol supplies to southern Congo, including Lubumbashi, which was already reported to be facing fuel shortages, Reuters said. After the meeting, Kabila flew to Lubumbashi, where he told state radio that his meeting with Chiluba focused on the problems and "misunderstandings" prevailing between Zambia and Angola.
Increased outflow of refugees
The flow of Congolese refugees into western Tanzania has increased, with new arrivals reporting an upsurge of fighting in eastern DRC. A UNHCR report said close to 3,500 Congolese refugees had arrived in Kigoma, mainly from the Fizi and Uvira areas of South Kivu, between 2-8 March. The refugees reported that Mayi-Mayi fighters had stepped up attacks on rebel-held positions around Fizi. Those arriving from the Kalemie area of Katanga province, meanwhile, reported that war-planes had been bombing rebel bases in that area, the report said.
Both sides claim gains
Kabila said on state television on Wednesday that Mayi-Mayi militia armed by his government had captured the rebel-held town of Mwenga some 70 km southwest of Bukavu in South Kivu. Meanwhile, Rassemblement congolais pour la democratie (RCD) rebels said its forces were advancing around Penge, some 50 km north of Kabinda in Kasai Oriental. AFP also quoted RCD military commander Jean-Pierre Ondekane in Kisangani as saying on Wednesday that his forces had captured Pepa south of the Katangan town of Moba.
Rebels hold Kindu, government retakes Bolobo
RCD leader Ernest Wamba dia Wamba told the Associated Press (AP) on Tuesday that his movement had repelled a government counter-offensive. AP quoted rebel army sources as saying government troops backed up by Zimbabwean aircraft had tried unsuccessfully to advance toward rebel-held Kindu in Maniema province. Reuters on Monday quoted government officials in Kinshasa as saying Kindu remained in rebel hands.
Government forces retook the town of Bolobo some 250 km northeast of Kinshasa, state television said on Sunday. "The interior ministry announced that the Congolese Armed Forces have liberated Bolobo, which was occupied by former Special Presidential Division forces who were wreaking havoc there," the television was quoted as saying. News agencies last week had reported that a new rebel group called the Union of Nationalist Republicans for the Liberation had issued a statement from neighbouring Brazzaville claiming to have captured Bolobo. AP quoted a spokesman for the new group as saying its military commander was Colonel Jean Imbamba.
Rebels spotted close to Kinshasa
Allied air reconnaissance has spotted RCD rebels just 180 km east of Kinshasa, security sources told IRIN on Wednesday. It is unclear at the moment whether the troops are part of a fresh attempt on Kinshasa or a probing team, the sources said. Meanwhile, a Harare-based defence specialist told IRIN the situation on the ground was "entering a fluid stage" with both sides seeking military advantage before returning to the negotiating table. He added that allied strategy is to "husband their resources" while training and reorganising DRC government forces.
Annan pushes for polio-campaign truce
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Tuesday welcomed the assurances provided by the DRC government and the RCD rebels that they would stop fighting to allow an urgently-needed polio immunisation campaign to be carried out in the country. UN spokesman Fred Eckhard said in New York that Annan extended his full support to the WHO/UNICEF initiative. In a joint letter to the Secretary-General, the heads of the two agencies described the DRC campaign as the "single highest priority for global polio eradication".
UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Sergio Vieira de Mello has been designated to coordinate support for the initiative, Eckhard said. The DRC ministry of health is tentatively planning to conduct three vaccination rounds between July and September. A national immunisation campaign scheduled to start in August 1998 was cancelled due to the outbreak of the war. A vaccination campaign was subsequently organised by the government in December, but it only covered certain areas.
UN humanitarian office opens in Goma
The UN has reestablished its humanitarian presence in Goma, Eckhard said on Tuesday. The office is under the lead of UNICEF and includes a representative from the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, he said. The UN agencies will address the immediate needs of the victims of the conflict, with priority being given to providing health care and food aid to some 68,000 displaced persons in the Goma area, he added.
GREAT LAKES: More Bwindi suspects killed
Ugandan troops inside the DRC killed another 10 Rwandan Hutu rebels suspected of involvement in last week's massacre at Bwindi National Park in southwest Uganda, 'The Monitor' newspaper reported on Sunday. It said a group of 300 rebels were ambushed by the Ugandan army last Thursday some 25 km inside the DRC border. Another 15 suspected Interahamwe rebels were killed on 2 March by Ugandan troops hunting down those responsible for the massacre of eight foreign tourists and four Ugandans at Bwindi.
At least 600 Ugandan soldiers and an unknown number of Rwandan troops have crossed into the DRC in pursuit of the Rwandan Interahamwe militia said to be responsible for the tourist killings. A team of British investigators arrived in Uganda last Friday to help hunt down the rebels, news agencies reported. A US FBI team had previously arrived to assist. Reuters quoted a senior Ugandan investigator as saying the US and British teams would work inside Rwanda and Congo as well as in Uganda.
Meanwhile, Human Rights Watch (HRW) has expressed concern that civilians including ethnic Hutus may become the victims of punitive army operations, including summary executions, in the Congo and it urged the Ugandan army to respect international humanitarian law in its operation.
"Alarming alliances" among region's rebel groups
In a statement received by IRIN on Monday, US-based HRW also called on the international community to increase its efforts to seek an end to the "unacceptable level of human rights abuses" being committed by rebel movements and some governments in the region. "The brutal killings of these 12 civilians cannot be seen as an isolated incident," HRW Executive Director Ken Roth said in a 4 March statement. He said the attack was "part of a broader pattern" of attacks against civilians in the Great Lakes region over the past few years.
Meanwhile, Ugandan Defence Minister Steven Kavuma told the 'East African' newspaper that Hutu extremist rebels had regrouped in the DRC's border areas and were being trained for a fresh wave of attacks in the region. "Many of them have been recruited in Kinshasa and are fighting alongside the Kabila forces," Kavuma said, adding that the Bwindi tourist killings had confirmed "their plan for criminal activities in the region." The DRC government has rejected any responsibility for the Bwindi killings.
RWANDA: Massive resettlement in northwest
Hundreds of thousands of displaced persons in northwest Rwanda have left their highly-congested camps and moved to grouped settlement sites in their sectors of origin, the Office of the UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Kigali said in its February update received by IRIN on Tuesday. Of the estimated 650,000 displaced persons who were registered in December in northwest Rwanda's Ruhengeri and Gisenyi prefectures, 478,735 had since moved to 172 grouped settlement sites set up in the two prefectures, the report said. The movement of displaced persons under the grouped settlement process, known as "umudugudu", was largely completed, and the displaced camps had been mostly dismantled, the report said.
"Significant challenges" remain
While one stage of the northwest crisis may have been overcome with the massive resettlement, significant challenges remained in the year ahead, the OCHA report said. The acute malnutrition rate among Ruhengeri's children was 8 percent, chronic malnutrition was 59 percent, lack of understanding about general preventative health care was widespread in the northwest, many people had to travel long distances to fetch water, people had low purchasing power, and inadequate rainfall and tenuous security conditions had hampered agricultural activities. As a result, UN and NGO interventions "remained more vital than ever" to ensure a transition from emergency to development in the northwest, the report added.
Children in detention
Some 4,553 minors aged between 14 and 18 years at the time of their arrest on genocide-related charges remained under detention in Rwanda, according to the latest available figures provided by UNICEF. About 200 children who were below the age of criminal responsibility at the time of their arrest were still detained, while 204 children were receiving vocational training and other services at the Gitagata Reeducation Centre. In addition, some 285 infants and young children were in prison with their detained mothers, UNICEF said, citing January figures.
During 1998, a total of 183 young children detained with their mothers were reunified with other family members, while 163 minors below the age of criminal responsibility were reintegrated with their families after completing a reeducation programme at the Gitagata centre, UNICEF said. Another 345 minors detained without judiciary files were released and reintegrated within their community during the year. At the end of January, Rwanda's prisons and other detention facilities held 124,198 people, according to ICRC figures reported by OCHA-Kigali.
Concern over prison conditions
Members of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination last Friday voiced their concern about crowded prison conditions in Rwanda and the slowness of the administration of justice. The committee's rapporteur on Rwanda, Theodor van Boven, told the committee that the Rwandan authorities were reluctant to accept international monitoring and that the rule of law in the country was difficult because of sentiments of "ethnic and racial motives," according to a UN press release. The committee was meeting in Geneva under its early warning measures aimed at preventing existing problems from escalating into conflicts, the statement said.
BURUNDI: Peace talks resume in Arusha
Peace talks on Burundi resumed in Arusha, Tanzania, on Wednesday. Delegates were meeting in committees dealing with the nature of conflict, democracy and good governance, peace and security, and economic reconstruction and development. "We are hopeful that the negotiations will be reached by the end of the year," Nyerere Foundation spokesman Mark Bomani told IRIN.
Prior to the resumption of the talks, the foundation held a two-day workshop to sensitise delegates on conflict management and techniques for peace negotiation with a team of international mediators who had helped negotiate peace deals in Bosnia, Northern Ireland and Mozambique. "The importance of these sessions was to give insight and enable delegates learn from other countries the basic components of conflict management and peace negotiation. We also hoped that it would make the people of Burundi realise that their problem was not unique." The attendance was large with representatives from civil society, women's groups and religious leaders, he noted.
SUDAN: ICRC negotiates return of officials
ICRC is negotiating to bring home two of its workers, both Swiss nationals, who were abducted in Kong area southeast of Pariang, in southern Sudan by SPLA rebels on 18 February, ICRC spokesman Juan Martinez told IRIN on Monday.
The Swiss nationals were part of a group of seven sent on an assessment mission to the area. The SPLA says it is still interrogating the others who included three government officials and two members of the local Red Crescent Society. The SPLA maintains it offered to release the two ICRC members immediately, but they declined demanding the release of "their Sudanese colleagues and the government officials."
SPLA spokesman Samson Kwaje told IRIN the SPLA was now holding six people since one of the Sudan Red Crescent workers had escaped, but he was emphatic that the release only applied to the Swiss nationals.
Militia raids on increase, US committee says
The US Committee for Refugees has released a report which profiles several southern Sudanese individuals and families who have been uprooted by their country's war and have suffered constant rounds of famine, slave raids, bombings and attacks. "The people of southern Sudan have fled their homes in larger numbers than in any other country on earth, four million are internally displaced within the country, and 350,000 are refugees in neighbouring countries," it noted. Although a massive international food airlift curtailed the famine late last year, the health situation remains precarious in 1999, it warns. The report further warned that the deadly raids by government-supported militia against villages in the south have increased again in recent weeks, threatening to disrupt aid efforts.
Militia recruits deployed to war zones
The government on Monday sent at least 1,000 new militia recruits to the front. Defence Minister Lieutenant-General Abdel Rahman Sir Al-Khatim told the departing Popular Defence Force fighters that more militia would be sent to battle zones "until peace is achieved", Reuters reported. Meanwhile, the state news agency SUNA quoted a government official as saying at the weekend that new identity documents would be issued to foil those dodging their compulsory national service.
ETHIOPIA/SOMALIA: Ethiopia denies looting Somali border town
Ethiopia on Wednesday denied press reports that its troops engaged in massive looting of private property in the Somali border town of Balanballe. A statement from the Ethiopian embassy in Nairobi termed the Ethiopian force "a disciplined outfit" which has no track record of "looting property or any misconduct anywhere, anytime." The statement said it respects the territorial integrity of Somalia despite the absence of a central government. Press reports had alleged that Ethiopian troops in pursuit of Muslim fundamentalists from the Al-Itihad Al-Islam group crossed over to the Somalia side where they kidnapped one person and stole medicine and other property.
ETHIOPIA: WFP to provide relief food to displaced
A recently-approved WFP emergency operation will provide 45,350 mt of relief food assistance for some 272,000 Ethiopians internally displaced by the border conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea, WFP's latest emergency report said. Fighting between the two countries has displaced some 337,300 Ethiopians, WFP said. The government was trying to integrate the displaced within the local population, instead of in camps, the report noted. In response to the government's request, WFP will assist people displaced by the conflict and ease the burden on host communities and host families who themselves were experiencing food insecurity, the report said. The US $24.3-million operation is to last nine months.
KENYA: Government says 30 killed in clashes
The Kenyan government said on Thursday that 30 people died in last weekend's clashes between Turkana and Pokot communities in the northwest. "The bodies collected by police officers were 30. Sixteen of them Turkanas and 14 Pokots. Seven were injured and are still admitted in hospital," an official from the department of internal security told IRIN. Press reports have provided conflicting figures of the number of people killed in the clashes, with some placing the number at 100. The security official said the clashes appeared to have been caused by cattle-rustling. "It took us by surprise because there has been quite a lull and peaceful co-existence between the two communities," he said.
TANZANIA: WFP approves emergency operation
WFP has approved an emergency operation to distributed 19,550 mt of urgently-needed food aid to people in 12 of the most food-insecure areas in Tanzania. The US $1-million operation, which started in early March, will last three months, a WFP emergency report said. A joint rapid assessment of the food security situation in Iringa region had recommended relief food interventions in the north of Iringa, where agro-climatic conditions were very similar to that of the hard-hit Dodoma region. A WFP team in Dodoma reported declining school attendance levels in Kondoa South district as children were forced to join in the search for food. Other areas in the region reported poor rainfall while the availability of grain in the markets remains very low. In Singida region, some 8,660 mt of maize grain has been distributed to 158,594 beneficiaries under the drought operation, the report said.
Nairobi, 12 March 1999, 13:00 GMT
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