Congo-Kinshasa: UN Rights Body Should Renew and Expand Investigation Into DR Congo's Kasai Region

press release

We have just heard horrifying accounts of atrocities committed in the Democratic Republic of Congo's Kasai region, which the Human Rights Council's teamof experts concluded could amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity by both Congolese security forces and various militias. Since August 2016, an estimated 5,000 people, and possibly many more, have been killed in the Kasais, and more than 1.4 million people displaced. Only a few low-level criminal suspects have been prosecuted, and no one has been held to account for the murder of the two UN investigators and the disappearance of their Congolese drivers and interpreter in March 2017. Attacks on civilians continue in the Kasais, and there's a risk of re-escalation as the underlying causes of the violence have not been addressed.

Today, close to 4.5 million people from throughout Congo are displaced. Since last December, violence has escalated in Ituri province, with terrifying incidents of massacres, rapes, and decapitation. Civilians also continue to be targeted in the Kivu provinces, where armed groups and security forces have killed more than 460 people and abducted 730 others since January. In Tanganyika province, more than 200 people were killed and numerous villages and camps burned since violence re-emerged in mid-2016.

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