HRW: UN-backed Congolese troops attacking, raping civilians

Nairobi/Goma - United Nations-backed Congolese forces are attacking and raping civilians instead of protecting them from rebel groups, Human Rights Watch said Thursday. The army late last year and early this year launched operations aimed at flushing out Hutu rebels involved in ongoing violence and a Ugandan rebel group that has taken refuge in the Democratic Republic of Congo. HRW said that it had found a dramatic increase in attacks on civilians over the last six months and that the majority of rapes it investigated were carried out by government troops. 'The Congolese government's military operations have been a disaster for civilians, who are now being attacked from all sides,' Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch,said during a visit to eastern Congo. The army, in conjunction with South Sudan and Uganda, in December attacked Ugandan rebel group the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). It followed this up by partnering with Rwanda to take on the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) - a Hutu rebel group formed by those who perpetrated the 1994 massacre of 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in Rwanda. Both the FDLR and LRA embarked on revenge attacks against local communities following the operations. HRW said that more than 1,500 civilians have died, thousands of women and girls have been raped and thousands of homes have been burned to the ground by all sides. Hundreds of thousands have fled the attacks, swelling the number of people displaced by earlier violence. The UN peacekeeping mission in the DR Congo (MONUC) provided logistical support to the Congolese army on some of the operations and HRW said this may implicate them in the violence. 'UN peacekeepers should not support Congolese armed forces that are committing war crimes and failing to protect civilians and refugees,' said Roth. 'By continuing to back such military operations, the peacekeepers risk becoming complicit in abuses.' MONUC has faced continuous criticism of its role in DR Congo. The 17,000-strong force was unable to protect civilians during a flare-up in fighting last year that displaced 250,000 people. More than five million people are estimated to have died as a result of the DR Congo's 1998-2003 conflict and its long aftermath, most of them from hunger and disease.