UN watchdog slams militia attacks in eastern DR Congo

KINSHASA: A UN rights monitor said Tuesday that more than 900 people had disappeared or been killed in eastern DR Congo in the last half of 2020 as a notorious militia stepped up attacks in the region.

"The human rights situation (in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo) deteriorated significantly," the United Nations Joint Human Rights Office (UNJRHO) said in a report.

"The ADF (Allied Democratic Forces) continued to attack the civilian population, with a peak during the month of December 2020 in the Rwenzori sector," it said.

The watchdog said it had recorded 313 breaches of human rights from July 1 to December 31, compared to 173 cases in the first half of 2020.

At least 468 civilians were killed by summary execution during the second half of the year, comprising 345 men, 108 women and 15 children, the French-language report said.

Another 457 people, including 62 women and nine minors, were listed as missing, the UNJRHO said.

It said it would consider these as cases of forced disappearance unless evidence to the contrary emerged.

The ADF is the most notorious of scores of armed groups that trouble the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, a vast country the size of continental western Europe.

The group evolved from Ugandan Muslim rebels opposed to Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni.

They moved into the east in the mid-1990s, at a time when the region was the theatre of a bloody regional conflict.

The ADF has been blamed for killing at least a thousand civilians in the Beni region, in North Kivu province, since 2014.

It intensified its attacks after the army launched an offensive in October 2019.

From July last year, the UNJRHO said, attacks by small groups of ADF increased beyond North Kivu.

Since New Year's Eve, at least 71 civilians have been killed by suspected ADF members in the regions of Rwenzori, in North Kivu, and Irumu, in neighbouring Ituri province.