SUMMARY

Nearly seven years ago, on April 24, 1990, President Mobutu Sese Seko ostensibly gave in to mounting pro-democracy pressure by announcing the end of the one party state and the beginning of transition to multiparty democracy in Zaire. Seven years into the transition, there have been at least ten different governments but no transition. The president's refusal to step down or to relinquish control of the governments he appointed and manipulated have managed to make a mockery of the promised passage to democracy. The rapid advance of the rebel troops from the east, in turn, threatened to subordinate political change wholly to the passage of arms.

Prime Minister Kengo wa Dondo took office in June 1994 with promises to implement reforms and create an environment that would lead to elections by mid-1995. The promised elections never took place and genuine political participation and debate continued to be severely curtailed by government-imposed restrictions on basic democratic freedoms. The commanders of the military and the security services as well as regional and local administrators continued to be handpicked by the president to ensure consistent ethnic and regional loyalties to him and his political alliance. Military and police deployed throughout the country cracked down on opposition activities routinely and violence against the population continued unabated as unpaid soldiers and civilian agents alike profited from extortion and payoffs, looting and armed robberies. The failed transition left the country with a president whose term in office had long since expired, an unelected parliament, and a prime minister supported only by a minority in parliament. These anomalies were edging the country toward disintegration even before war came to the east.

A rebel coalition, reportedly backed by the governments of Rwanda and Uganda, attacked throughout much of eastern Zaire beginning in October 1996, easily routing Zairian troops, dispersing Rwandan and Burundian refugees and dealing a major blow to the complacent Zairian leadership. The insurgency showed up the hollowness of the political transition underway in the country and further confirmed the predatory nature of Zaire's own armed forces. While there have been human rights abuses committed by both rebel and Zairian troops, the Zairian forces have engaged to a vast extent in pillaging and destruction, including widespread reports of rape. With the insertion of ethnically based militias and mercenaries, the war threatens to launch the country into a period of generalized violence.

The conflict in eastern Zaire came as a culmination of policies of the Zairian government that sought to divert popular protest and challenges to its legitimacy by fanning ethnic and regional tensions. The official discrimination against Zairians of Rwandan origin and the decision to deprive them of their citizenship was yet another application of such policies, and it was these Zairians who at first formed the bulk of the rebel force. As members of other ethnic groups joined the insurgents who took up arms in rejection of these measures, the alliance they formed, the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire, (ADFL) (l'Alliance des Forces Démocratiques pour la Libération du Congo-Zaire, AFDL), proclaimed its intention of toppling President Mobutu.

Efforts to organize elections within the timetable set by Zaire's Transitional Act (Acte Constitutionnel de la Transition), without having established the minimal conditions required to have made them meaningful as a free and fair vehicle of political participation, were interrupted by the war. Little had been done to create conditions for free and fair elections, although these were to have begun with a constitutional referendum in the month of February 1997 and three rounds of national elections to be completed by July. The credibility of the election process was under attack from Zairian opposition groups, churches and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), who suspected that the government would impose elections without the necessary preparations in order to insure President Mobutu's reelection. As if to confirm the worst fears of civil society, the government used the pretext of the war to further restrict political freedoms. In the face of mounting popular pressure for a negotiated settlement to the war and a return to the agenda of a genuine transition, the Zairian cabinet in mid-February 1997 banned all public demonstrations and introduced strict censorship guidelines to silence the state-owned and private press. Incidents involving the detention, beating, and humiliation of journalists, students, union activists, and opposition leaders, some of whom enjoyed parliamentary immunity, rose significantly in the first quarter of 1997.

The situation in strategic regions such as Shaba, discussed below, illustrated the scope of abuses and the resistance of the Mobutist administration to changes that could have ensured or allowed fair elections. Human rights violations by the military and security services were a daily occurrence and did nothing to encourage confidence that these forces would respect the voting rights of citizens. Weeks away from the scheduled date for a constitutional referendum, the local electoral commissions were not functioning, campaigning was prohibited and Mobutu's appointees were still insisting on their prerogatives to organize the elections process.

Shaba also offered a demonstration of the vital role that local human rights and other civic organizations had come to play since the start of the transition in the regions as well as at the national level. These groups maintained constant pressure on the military and civilian authorities, documenting and calling for accountability for human rights abuses. They also pressed the political class for the strict realization of the preconditions which were defined back in 1992 as essential for a genuine transition to democracy and conducted grassroots voter education programs to prepare the population for elections.

President Mobutu and the Zairian government, yielding to battlefield pressures and intense international diplomatic efforts, called for a cease-fire in late March, and the formation of a "national council" to resolve the crisis in Zaire. The efforts by a group of African heads of state to mediate for a peaceful resolution, including Nelson Mandela and Daniel arap Moi were initially denounced by the government of Zaire as an "Anglophone" plot to dismantle the country. The western allies who have been most deeply involved in Zaire, primarily France, Belgium and the United States, succeeded for a brief time in the mid-1990s in concerted action on Zaire, but were unable to find a coherent common position as the current crisis unfolded.

The call for peace is strongest among the populations that are caught up in the war. Placed between a rebel "liberator" who they do not trust and a government "occupation force" that has lived off their backs for more than twenty years, they fear the disproportionate impact a counteroffensive may have. As one NGO leader from Goma, which has been shelled by rebels and bombarded by Zairian government mercenary aircraft, said, "We hear the government talking all the time about `liberating the land.' What do they plan to do with the people?"1 With the increasing likelihood of a defeat of the government on the battlefield and the total collapse of Mobutism, the organizations of civil society represent some of the fragile bulwarks against political anarchy and social disintegration.

The world has been mesmerized by two interrelated dimensions of the crisis in Zaire: the humanitarian crisis that dates from the Rwandan genocide, and the massive refugee flows that followed, and the war and political upheaval set in motion by all these factors that today ripples toward the capital, Kinshasa. The flight in 1994 of more than a million Rwandans into Zaire, including an army and militia that had been the instruments of genocide, in turn displaced tens of thousands of Zairians and triggered renewed ethnic conflict in Zaire. International conflict loomed as Rwanda protested Zairian support for the armed Rwandans in the camps that lined its border, and the armed incursions that increased during 1996. In October 1996, a new rebel group comprised of Zaire's ethnic Rwandans, the Banyamulenge, with apparent Rwandan support, attacked the refugees' camps, driving some 600,000 refugees back into Rwanda and sending hundreds of thousands more, still under the control of the armed remnants of the genocidal army, fleeing into the interior of Zaire.

In the months that followed, what had appeared to be an affair largely of Rwandans and their Zairian kin had taken on an expressly Zairian complexion wholly unforseen by most international observers. Rwandan protests at incursions from Zaire were replaced by Zairian protests at what Kinshasa alleged was an invasion, from both Rwanda and Uganda. The war's displacement of hundreds of thousands of civilians, Rwandans and Zairians alike, beyond theassistance of humanitarian organizations, created conditions in which many faced starvation. Calls for cease fires so that relief agencies could reach the concentrations of civilians were ignored by both sides.

As the Mobutu government crumbles without having fulfilled its pledge to speed the democratization process, the war threatens to forcibly remove whatever remains of his personal system of government. The real challenge for Zaire will be whether the scant progress toward a restoration of the rule of law since 1990 can be salvaged and built upon by whatever new government emerges from the current crisis. The prospects for elections, already dimmed by the failure of the Mobutu/Kengo government to support even the basic infrastructure and reform they would require, appear even more distant in the upheaval of the war.

After the fall, in mid-March, of Kisangani, the central Zairian city which had been touted as the military bastion from which Mobutu's government would regain control over the east, the armed opposition was increasingly seen to have the potential to sweep the country. The growing likelihood of an ouster of the ailing Mobutu and the remnants of his government, without waiting for it to collapse of its own weight, added new uncertainties to a transition process which had done little to prepare Zaire for a democratic process and a future under the rule of law.

This report, the outcome of Human Rights Watch missions to Zaire in July 1996 and in December 1996-January 1997, focuses on the internal political dynamics of Zaire that are at the roots of the current crisis; on the failed transition process; and on the building blocks from which a real transition could go forward upon resolution of today's conflict, including the emerging elements of civil society that show real promise for the rebuilding of Zaire.