War and Human Rights Situation
The Banyamulenge, the term historically describing the ethnic Tutsi Rwandans (Banyarwanda) concentrated on the Itombwe Plateau of the province, have been the focus of much controversy. The ambiguous political and social position of the Banyamulenge has been a point of contention in the province, in the wake of incursion by fleeing Interahamwe forces responsible for the genocide of Rwandan Tutsis into the Kivu region after the liberation of neighboring Rwanda by the Tutsi-led RPF, leading to the Banyamulenge playing a key role in the run-up to the First Congo War in 1996-7 and Second Congo War of 1998-2003.
South Kivu, along with North Kivu, has been the center of the conflict resulting from the Second Congo War. The UN estimates that in 2005, approximately 45,000 women were raped in South Kivu. It forms the new Congolese military (FARDC's) 10th Military Region, under General Pacifique Masunzu, whose undisciplined former factional fighters are responsible for many continuing human rights abuses, due to a continuing culture of impunity for military personnel, bad conditions, lack of pay, and lack of training.
Masunzu is a Banyamulenge (South Kivu Banyamulenge Tutsi) who broke with the Rwandan-backed Rally for Congolese Democracy (RCD) back in 2003. He was formerly commander of the 122nd Brigade in the Minembwe area, who in 2005 rebelled against the authorities in defence of the Congolese Banyamulenge, against harassment and physical abuse. Also previously former second in command of 4th Military Region in Kasai-Occidental. Africa Confidential said in 2011 that he 'clearly remains implacably opposed to the Rwandan government.' His deputy Colonel Baudouin Nakabaka is a former Mai-Mai fighter with close links to the FDLR.
In July 2007, United Nations human rights expert Yakin Erturk called the situation in South Kivu the worst she has ever seen in four years as the global body's special investigator for violence against women. Sexual violence throughout Congo is "rampant," she said, blaming rebel groups, the armed forces and national police. Her statement included that "Frequently women are shot or stabbed in their genital organs, after they are raped. Women, who survived months of enslavement, told me that their tormentors had forced them to eat excrement or the human flesh of murdered relatives."
Read more about this topic: South Kivu
Famous quotes containing the words war and, war, human, rights and/or situation:
“Only the person who has experienced light and darkness, war and peace, rise and fall, only that person has truly experienced life.”
—Stefan Zweig (18811942)
““... War is for everyone, for children too.
I wasn’t going to tell you and I mustn’t.
The best way is to come uphill with me
And have our fire and laugh and be afraid.””
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“No one is without Christianity, if we agree on what we mean by that word. It is every individual’s individual code of behavior by means of which he makes himself a better human being than his nature wants to be, if he followed his nature only. Whatever its symbol—cross or crescent or whatever—that symbol is man’s reminder of his duty inside the human race.”
—William Faulkner (1897–1962)
“Crimes increase as education, opportunity, and property decrease. Whatever spreads ignorance, poverty and, discontent causes crime.... Criminals have their own responsibility, their own share of guilt, but they are merely the hand.... Whoever interferes with equal rights and equal opportunities is in some ... real degree, responsible for the crimes committed in the community.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“Much poetry seems to be aware of its situation in time and of its relation to the metronome, the clock, and the calendar. ... The season or month is there to be felt; the day is there to be seized. Poems beginning “When” are much more numerous than those beginning “Where” of “If.” As the meter is running, the recurrent message tapped out by the passing of measured time is mortality.”
—William Harmon (b. 1938)