IV. ETHNIC STRIFE: HEMA AGAINST LENDU

The First Round of Killings, June-December 1999
"We saw flames coming from another village so we left suddenly. That was at Gokpa. It was during the day. We left suddenly, with no belongings. We came as a family; there are six of us, but we lost three family members. It took us two days to get here [Bunia]. It was August 1999," an elderly war victim told Human Rights Watch researchers.⁵⁶ A teacher from Fataki, met at the same church center housing mostly Hema displaced by the war, started crying without warning as she recounted how someone had his throat cut:

I was a teacher at Fataki. We heard that Hema houses were destroyed at Lenga. We asked why people were displaced. We taught with a Lendu brother and had Lendu children at the school. Suddenly the Lendu teachers and the students withdrew to the forests-that was July 1999. We continued and finished the school year. They didn't come back. Towards Libi there were fires, people fled to Fataki. Now the noise started approaching at night. There were fires all around. [At this point she broke down in tears, describing the killings.] We had no means to go anywhere. We had gone to the priests. They transported the mamas who couldn't walk. Before the attack, our chief went into the forest. He was a Lendu. He went that day to tell the people in the forest not to attack. He spoke to people in church and told us to be calm. The next day they attacked. The attackers also killed a Lendu who didn't want to take sides with them. They had machetes and spears and wood from the forest that someone had carved. The people who attacked included some of our students [the ones who had disappeared earlier.⁵⁷

A transport manager from Rukimo village described how he and his family had been attacked on December 1, 1999:

There were many of them, hundreds, armed with traditional arms, spears, machetes. We participated-we took up stones to defend ourselves. At that time we had no arms-now we do. There were lots of victims. Some were thrown in the Shari River. Some people were decapitated. Others were brought here to the general hospital in Bunia. It went on from 7 to 11 p.m.-then they returned to their village at Buli.⁵⁸

The witnesses said the attackers were sometimes people they knew. Some were friends and neighbors who shared their lives until the clashes began in the many small villages dotting the hills and plains of the Djugu zone, that most affected by the conflict. A humanitarian worker who worked throughout the zone at the height of the killings described what he saw:

I came across many burned down villages. There were extremists on both sides. The Lendu drugged themselves and attacked Hema villages, wielding traditional weapons against civilians indiscriminately. In July and August the UPDF deployed units mainly in Hema villages. The Lendu reacted by erecting roadblocks and attacking the [Ugandan] military. The soldiers accompanied Hema extremists in attacks on Lendu villages and hideouts in the surrounding forests. Their convoys fired on whatever moved.⁵⁹

Records of humanitarian agencies and local health facilities confirm the witness accounts. At the public hospital in Bunia, for example, several months after the clashes ended, the vast majority of victims being treated for machete wounds and traumatic amputations were Hema while many Lendu were recovering from bullet wounds.⁶⁰

An estimated seven thousand persons were killed and at least 150,000 displaced in the clashes between June and December 1999, according to U.N. sources.⁶¹ Countless others from both ethnic groups were raped, tortured, or otherwise seriously injured during these months. The Lendu fled mostly to the bush, often beyond the reach of humanitarian relief; Hema converged on Bunia and other towns and large villages along the main roads between Bunia and the Ugandan border. Many of those displaced in 1999 had not yet returned home when the conflict resumed in late 2000, forcing thousands more to flee in the latest round of what has become the largest humanitarian crisis in the war-torn Congo. Inflammatory rhetoric has spiraled along with the killings, with each side accusing the other of "ethnic cleansing" and of harboring genocidal intent.

During generations of living together more or less harmoniously in the northeastern Congo, the Hema and the more numerous Lendu came to share one language, Kilendu, and regularly intermarried. People of the two groups live from farming, but the Hema, some of whom have sizable herds of cattle and large land holdings, are generally thought to be richer than the Lendu. The Hema were also favored by Belgian colonialists who recruited them as farm managers to oversee workers who were usually Lendu. When the Belgians fled the Congo at the time of its independence in the early 1960s, many Hema took over their farms. Their wealth allows the Hema greater access to education and hence to administrative posts and positions of political leadership. The two groups have clashed over land rights in the past, including in 1972, 1985, and 1996.⁶² In past incidents, local authorities intervened promptly and cut short the violence by calling upon customary mechanisms of arbitration and mediation.

In mid-June 1999, some Hema landholders in the locality of Walendu/Pitsi reportedly tried to exploit the absence of a credible local authority by expanding their holdings on territory claimed by Lendu communities. The Hema landholders allegedly presented land titles falsified with the help of local officials: this, at least, was the perception of the local Lendu communities involved. The dispute led to violence: both Hema and Lendu formed militia to attack villages of the other group and to defend their own people. In some cases Hema owners of large farms established armed bands to defend their property. The conflict escalated because there was no effective civilian administration to intervene. Some Ugandan soldiers deployed in the conflict zone to contain the initial clashes tried to take advantage of the situation. In most cases, these soldiers reportedly lent their support to the Hema and assisted them in their efforts to extend their sway. In a few instances, other Ugandan soldiers also reportedly supported or tired to protect the Lendu.⁶³

Administrative Changes: the Creation of Ituri Province
When the conflict began, the area was nominally controlled by Wamba's branch of the RCD, which had just moved to Kisangani, but that fledgling administration was just getting organized and it had no real military force. Ugandan troops, which had arrived in the area in November 1998 as part of the contingent fighting the Congolese government, were the only effective authority in the region at that time. Even after the RCD-Kisangani became the RCD-ML and fielded its own troops, Ugandan troops continued to "exert strict control over the Congolese soldiers," according to a report by the U.N. Integrated Regional Information Network (IRIN). At one point, the Ugandans reportedly ordered the Congolese to carry no guns and restricted bodyguards of political leaders to their compounds.⁶⁴

In June 1999 Adele Lotsove Mugisa, a former Hema teacher turned career politician, sought the support of Brigadier General James Kazini, then commander of the UPDF in Congo as well as chief of staff of the UPDF, in establishing a new province. Ituri province was to be created from Orientale province's Kibali and Ituri districts. Although this proposal had been backed by some in the area for some time and was brought to Kazini by a Congolese political leader, it was the decree of the Ugandan general which effectively altered administrative boundaries in the area. He named Lotsove as the first governor of the new province, a choice which many in the area-whether Hema or Lendu-took as a signal that the Ugandans favored the Hema. Wamba, who had just fired Lotsove as second deputy governor in Kisangani and charged her with insubordination, was not consulted about the appointment. Lotsove arrived as the land clashes were beginning to escalate and was widely criticized during her tenure for helping consolidate the economic and political power of the Hema. After Wamba dismissed her for the second time in December 1999 and replaced her as governor with Uringi Padolo, who was from the Alur people and thus not identified with either Lendu or Hema, the strife between the two rival groups diminished.

The role of Ugandan soldiers
The impact of Ugandan meddling with the local civilian administration was intensified by the behavior of some Ugandan troops who clearly took sides with the Hema. Local commanders, apparently acting on their own initiative, assigned soldiers to defend the Hema and carry out attacks, sometimes in return for cash payments. Other soldiers tried to provide security for all local residents, but their conduct did not make up for the partisan support given by their fellows who supported the Hema cause. The introduction of Ugandan troops, with their superior firepower and military training, also helped increase the death toll of a conflict which would otherwise have been fought with traditional arms and tactics.⁶⁵

The role of some Ugandan soldiers emerges clearly from two investigations of the clashes, one done by a "Committee of Pacification and Follow-up" named by Governor Lotsove in August 1999. Although the report usually refers to "soldiers" without specifying nationality or military unit, other details make clear that it is the UPDF rather than the generally ineffective troops of the RCD-ML that are meant. In other instances, the report explicitly deplores the conduct of Ugandan troops in support of Hema militia.

In its report, the committee quoted the local customary chief of Masumbuko village as saying "certain Hema use the military to burn houses, while the military fire on the population."⁶⁶ Committee members interviewed forty-one seriously wounded survivors of such an attack at the hospital of Rhety. The report cited information from eleven of the survivors who described how soldiers, acting on the orders of two farm owners known to them, attacked their villages from August 27 to 29, 1999, opening fire on the population without provocation.⁶⁷ A pastor in another village accused several Ugandan soldiers by name of complicity with the same two farm owners.⁶⁸

Despite these instances of misconduct by Ugandan soldiers, Lendu community leaders appeared to recognize that there was no other force in the area capable of enforcing order. Thus rather than call for the withdrawal of Ugandan troops, they appealed instead for the "impartiality of the army," or the "repression of the partiality of the army."⁶⁹ The Committee of Pacification concluded that for the Lendu, security would require the "immediate and unconditional replacement of soldiers, credibly called `the soldiers for the Hema,' and the disarmament of Hema militia and traders who illegally hold assault weapons."⁷⁰ Those who spoke for the Hema not surprisingly said nothing about replacing Ugandan soldiers and instead said that their security required "dispersing Lendu extremists who were hiding in the bush, training, and being drugged, to attack the Hema and undermine efforts of reconciliation."⁷¹

In October 1999 the RCD-ML appointed Jacques Depelchin, its commissar for local government, to chair its own Commission for Security and Peace in the Djugu Zone. The commission examined the role of Ugandan soldiers who protected Hema farms. After visiting eleven farms, it reported finding twenty-one soldiers posted at eight of the farms and also five young people waiting to be sent for military training in Bunia.⁷² In a later interview with a Human Rights Watch researcher, Wamba explained how the system worked. He said:

Hema farm owners who at the beginning of the conflict wanted to expand their land possessions faced resistance from their Lendu farm workers and villagers affected by the expansion. To contain the potential unrest, some of them hired UPDF soldiers to protect them and their farms against some payments to their commander. The soldiers thus became private guards for farm owners.⁷³

Wamba reported in January 2000 that a Ugandan commander "had been dismissed for hiring out soldiers to Hema leaders."⁷⁴ He later identified this soldier as Captain Kyakabale, who he said commanded UPDF troops in the Bunia region from the start of the conflict until he was recalled to Uganda in December 1999.⁷⁵

In its commission report, completed in December 1999, and in other public statements, the RCD-ML described misconduct of Ugandan troops that amounted to serious violations of international humanitarian law, but it did not call for either investigations or prosecutions of the soldiers. Instead, like the Lotsove-appointed committee, it recommended replacing all the military units previously deployed in Djugu territory by new ones, chosen for their neutrality.⁷⁶ As recently as August 2000, officials of the RCD-ML continued to criticize the conduct of their allies, without pushing for accountability for the abusers. They told the Sunday edition of the official Ugandan newspaper New Vision that the clashes in Ituri "would have been resolved much earlier had it not been for the controversial role played by certain Ugandan officers who backed wealthy `Hema' tycoons and `Hema' militias against the majority `Lendu' ethnic group."⁷⁷

The information gathered by the two commissions was confirmed and supplemented by more balanced inquiries by local human rights organizations. One compiled a detailed, though not exhaustive, chronology of nineteen attacks by the Lendu on the Hema from June 1999 to January 2000 and of twenty-seven attacks by Hema on Lendu from June 1999 through April 2000. It based its information on local official and unofficial sources as well as on its own witnesses. The organization attributed all the attacks on Hema villages to Lendu militiamen. It attributed fourteen of the attacks on Lendu localities to Ugandan (UPDF) soldiers, another ten to joint raids by the UPDF soldiers and Hema militia, and two to raids by the militia alone.⁷⁸

In December 1999 a leading Congolese human rights organization, Association Africaine pour le Defence des Droits de l'Homme (ASADHO), charged Captain Kayakabale with massive violations of human rights and international humanitarian law, including arbitrary arrests, civilian massacres, and large-scale destruction of civilian property. According to ASADHO, "in early July 1999 the commander of Ugandan troops in Bunia, Captain Kayakabale, dispatched a unit to the conflict zone. Our information is that Ugandan soldiers reportedly began decimating the Lendu without warning, and to ravage entire villages. Sources interviewed by ASADHO consistently accused the Ugandan army of massacring Lendu civilians."⁷⁹

Not all Ugandan soldiers sided with the Hema. The Lendu trusted at least one, Col. Peter Kerim, and appealed to him to protect them and to serve as a mediator between them and the Hema. In July 1999 an influential Lendu leader called on Kerim to facilitate reconciliation meetings between his community and the Hema. In September he wrote to alert the colonel to recent attacks by the Hema and "their soldiers" on displaced Lendu. In his letter, the Lendu leader asked the colonel to keep the UPDF from withdrawing units from the villages of Dhebu and Linga and to keep the Ugandans from replacing their troops at Kwandroma. It was only these three units, he wrote, that had protected the Lendu in Djugu, which explained why Lendu displaced persons at that time converged at these three locations. The letter closed with a desperate appeal: "Afande Colonel, that's why we do need your bodily intervention. Without your help, there is no peace."⁸⁰

In September, perhaps in response to this and similar appeals, UPDF soldiers from a border post in Uganda reportedly entered into the Congo to intercept another UPDF unit that was accompanying Hema in an attack on Kwandroma. The two UPDF units supposedly exchanged fire, leading to casualties among the Ugandan soldiers. The incident reportedly triggered an investigation, but its results have not been published. ⁸¹

Kerim was said to have trained and armed 1,000 Lendu, paying the cost with profits made from the sale of coffee from the region. In January 2000 Lt. Colonel Noble Mayombo, the deputy chief of military intelligence of the UPDF, denied that Kerim had trained Lendu militia. He said: "The army officer they are talking about, Colonel Peter Kerim, is not in active service and lives in his village of Alur, and in any case all training camps for the Congolese are inside Congo not Uganda."⁸² According to an RCD-ML official, Col. Kerim had indeed served "time out" in his home village of Alur after his suspension from the UPDF in 1998 for misconduct: "Kerim's village straddles the border between Uganda and Congo. He had only to cross to the other side to find himself inside Congo," the official added.⁸³

At some point, the UPDF recalled Kerim to active service and appointed him liaison officer at the Ugandan border post of Paida. According to UPDF spokesman Captain Bantariza, Kerim's assignment in March 2000 was to oversee reconciliation between Lendu and Hema and to "make sure that the conflict in Ituri does not spill over into Uganda." He added that Lendu fighters had been surrendering arms "mainly bows, arrows, spears, and a few rifles," to UPDF units in the area.⁸⁴

Ugandan Response
The worst of the first round of fighting between Hema and Lendu had ended by late 1999 although some attacks continued until April 2000. The replacement of the Ugandan-named Hema governor by the Wamba-appointed Alur apparently helped restore calm, as did the replacement of Ugandan soldiers known to have taken sides by fresh troops. A human rights activist in Bunia accurately assessed the impact of Ugandans on the Hema-Lendu conflict when he said, "Uganda alternated the roles of the arsonist and firefighter in this conflict."⁸⁵ As reports by the two commissions, denunciations by human rights groups, and criticism by other observers increasingly underlined Ugandan responsibility for the worsening conflict in northeastern Congo, Ugandan army spokesmen rejected these allegations or made vague references to "investigations" of these reports. Speaking of the ethnic strife in Ituri province in late November 1999, a Ugandan military official told the press, "we are not in that place to support either of those groups; we are there for our security." The official then added "there could be some errant soldiers who are supporting one group, but I have not received information on that."⁸⁶ Several months later UPDF chief of military intelligence Col. Henry Tumukunde characterized charges of Ugandan involvement in the Hema-Lendu conflict as "both baseless and ridiculous because the problem pre-dates UPDF entry into Congo, and is rooted in Congo's post-colonial misrule and distortions."⁸⁷

But faced with a tide of negative reports even by his allies, President Museveni in December 1999 invited representatives of the Hema, Lendu, and other communities affected by the conflict to Kampala for a hearing. Following their visit, the UPDF deployed fresh troops in the region and appointed Colonel Arosha as sector commander in Bunia to replace Captain Kayakabale.⁸⁸ The withdrawal of troops represented a minimal response to misconduct tantamount to war crimes in some cases. Ugandan authorities have apparently investigated only one officer, Captain Kayakabale, for his reported hiring out of soldiers to Hema farm owners. Even in this case, UPDF spokesman Maj. Phinehas Katirima claimed in August 2000 that he was "not sure of the nature of the offence."⁸⁹

Although Colonel Arosha reportedly was generally well accepted in the months after his appointment, Wamba deemed him "undesirable" in late March 2000. Wamba charged him with partiality to the Hema after Arosha showed reluctance in investigating cases brought to him by RCD-ML. Among the cases was one involving the appropriation of a vehicle belonging to a humanitarian agency which was then used to transport arms and munitions to farms where Hema militia were being trained. Wamba also complained of Arosha's arrogance after the colonel reportedly himself beat up the head of RCD-ML protocol. ⁹⁰

Ugandan authorities recalled Arosha in April 2000 and named Col. Charles Angina to replace him. According to several RCD-ML officials, they were satisfied with Angina's relations with the rival communities in Djugu and pleased with his responsiveness to their concerns. The governor of Ituri named by the RCD-ML attributed the relative absence of violence after April to his close collaboration with Angina.⁹¹

UPDF Role in Training RCD-ML Recruits in 2000
In September 2000 a regional newspaper reported that hundreds of Congolese recruits were being trained in Uganda, referring to the group of mutineers who attempted to topple the RCD-ML leadership in late July. UPDF spokesman, Maj. Phinehas Katirima, acknowledged they were in Ugandan military schools and said they were being trained "to enhance their capacity in understanding [their struggle], understanding that the military is subordinate to civilians; that the military behaves in an organized way and it is not enough to have a gun. They must learn to respect civilian authority."⁹² The statement did not address the nature of the group, which draws almost exclusively from the Hema ethnic group. Despite continuing ethnic tensions in the region, the UPDF trained hundreds of recruits, many of them children, from the Hema and the Lendu as well as from other ethnic groups. Pressed by developments in the broader war, including the disintegration of its alliance with the Rwandan army and a wave of Mai-Mai attacks on its positions, the UPDF appeared to have traded its professed ideals of exporting revolutionary ideology and military discipline and professionalism for crude pragmatism. Thus, it ended up relying in RCD-ML areas on local rebel clients who lacked a political program and resorted to ethnicity for rallying support and providing recruits. When Hema and Lendu resumed their conflict in late 2000, both sides had enough trained combatants to be in a position to inflict serious damage on the other.

Most of the APC recruits who enlisted in Bunia and were trained at Rwampara camp by Ugandans were Hema, while those recruited by Mbusa in Beni and sent for training at Nyaleke were more ethnically diversified. Mbusa sent teams to bring in young recruits from a large catchment area in parts of north Kivu and Orientale provinces under the nominal control of the RCD-ML, including the troubled Ituri district. According to a former cadre who participated in these missions, recruiters toured villages in designated zones for periods lasting from three days to a week. He showed a Human Rights Watch researcher a "mission order" signed on June 6, 2000, by Mbusa who was then in Kampala. The order, valid for three months, authorized fifteen persons named in the document to travel from Bunia-Beni to Mont Hawa in Aru zone (see maps). Their assignment was to "mobilize and recruit at the villages of "Mahagi, Aru, Faradje, Watsa." In the column "Observations," the commissar asked that "civilian as well as military authorities lend a hand vigorously (prêter main forte) to the recruiters to ensure the success of their mission," implying that force could be used.⁹³

According to the recruiter, teams ordinarily returned from missions with a truckload of between one hundred to two hundred children and youth, aged thirteen to eighteen years old. UPDF instructors at Nyaleke camp provided three to six months of infantry and weapons training. "We trained them rapidly," added the source. "The important thing was to learn how to use and maintain firearms."⁹⁴ Conditions at Nyaleke for the estimated one thousand young Congolese present in January 2000 were deplorable, according to a report by the missionary news agency MISNA: "living conditions are terrible, and many children die before completing the training, due to abuse and lack of health assistance."⁹⁵

Mbusa's groups intensified recruitment in early 2000, apparently because they feared that Uganda might end its military aid, given the approaching elections and the growing unpopularity of the Congo war among Ugandan constituents. Anticipating a rapid growth of their force, said an aide to Mbusa, their faction ordered and received 10,000 uniforms with the APC insignia as well as other equipment. According to representatives of civil society, Mbusa was personally involved in creating the military force and, himself in uniform, lived with the recruits at Nyaleke.⁹⁶

As president and defense minister of the RCD-ML, Wamba participated in graduation ceremonies of units trained at Bunia, seeming thus to give his approval to recruitment which primarily was based on ethnic or personal following. But when Mbusa, Tibasima, and others subsequently accused him of having replaced APC and UPDF soldiers in his own guard with "bands of deserters of the APC, the ex-FAC, and the ex-FAZ selected on tribal bases,"⁹⁷ Wamba turned the accusation back on them. He said they were responsible for "recruitment by clientelism, delegated to civilians and oriented by tribal criteria" as well as of "interference with the mandate of the minister of defense, of which I am the holder, by managing recruitment and training centers without the least reference to the general chief of staff."⁹⁸

Lack of Unity in the APC
Even as they recruited and trained soldiers in units based on personal or ethnic loyalty, members of all parties recognized the risks of such practices. A former recruiter for Mbusa said, "When there is political confusion, the master of the training is the one who commands the kids."⁹⁹ Asked about the rational for the recruitment of Lendu in particular, another official of Mbusa's camp explained that the recruiters targeted Lendu villages because the first round of interethnic killings had left thousands of orphaned and unaccompanied children in the area. "These were an easy target," the source said, adding: "there was no political design beyond this practical consideration. Once they had finished their training, the plan was to deploy them far away from their home area, to places like Isiro and elsewhere, but events overtook this plan."¹⁰⁰ The events referred to were the deployment of the Usalama Battalion in Bunia, followed by the desertion of many of its members, as detailed above.

About fifteen hundred soldiers remained in Beni after Usalama's departure. According to the official, the Lendu represented at least 600 to 750 of the combatants trained in Beni.¹⁰¹ Following the demise of Battalion Usalama in Bunia, and the departure of its commander and several of his immediate subordinates to Kampala, many of the Lendu and other soldiers deserted the APC and returned to their villages. According to Wamba, his own Presidential Protection Unit considered reenlisting a group of thirty Lendu soldiers who in late September arrived in Bunia by foot, but ultimately dismissed them because members of the group were not armed.

Tibasima, who readily admitted in August 2000 that most soldiers trained in Bunia were Hema,¹⁰² told a Human Rights Watch researcher four months later that the RCD-ML had committed a "grave error" by also recruiting and training "as many as 2000" Lendu at Nyaleke training camp. "I fear for my community," he concluded after discussing how the disjointed military structures of the RCD-ML might end up feeding into a renewed ethnic war in Ituri.¹⁰³

Four commanders of the 700 mostly Hema troops transported to Uganda for training expressed similar concerns to a Human Rights Watch researcher in December 2000. They suggested that if the political confusion among their elders were not resolved and if ethnic strife continued, they might end up joining Hema at home to fight Lendu. Likewise, they predicted that their Lendu counterparts would react in the same way. Speaking for the others, a young cadet expressed regret that this could be the outcome. He said, "This would not be the intention of the soldiers on either side. A well-trained soldier would not align himself along these lines. Our concern is to develop the Congo."¹⁰⁴

Ethnic Strife Linked to Political Rivalries
Politics and ethnicity became increasingly linked in conflicts throughout 2000, raising the level of violence. After Wamba averted the coup threatened by the Hema troops, he attempted to stave off further disintegration of the APC by announcing a "major" restructuring of the armed force. An assistant minister of defense loyal to Wamba implicitly acknowledged that the UPDF had trained disparate military units with little coordination or unity of command among them. "The APC should henceforth function better from the lowest ranks and the unit of reference will be the battalion. The new philosophy is, above all, to build up a national army and not militia groups." The official, Sova Luaka, explained that the restructuring would begin from the bottom up: "We have started new battalions and we are going up to the brigade level then to the high command," Bunia's local radio quoted him as saying.¹⁰⁵ The attempt came too late: Wamba faced another threat soon afterwards, already described, from soldiers loyal to Mbusa.

As the political standoff between Wamba and Mbusa continued in October and November 2000, ethnic tensions grew once more in the region of Bunia, fueled by uncertainty over the relative weight that each ethnic group would play in the arrangements being negotiated between the political factions. In mid-December 2000 Human Rights Watch researchers visited the villages of Katoto and Letti, forty kilometers north of Bunia. Letti had been burned down to the ground in the first round of fighting. There they found displaced Hema still clustered in other villages along the main road while Lendu displaced persons sheltered in remoter villages or in the bush, often inaccessible to humanitarian agencies. Rumors circulated of Lendu fighters training in the hills for an impending attack on the town of Bunia. Reports arrived in town of a Hema farm owner who fired on Lendu as they tried to return home, killing several. The group had written the local village chief to announce their intention of coming home.¹⁰⁶

Lendu and associated militia of Ngiti people together with less organized bands of villagers, most of them armed with traditional weapons, launched a major attack on Hema villages in the region of Bunia in mid-December. According to some survivors, some Lendu also had automatic rifles. The fighters brought the violence into Bunia on January 19 when they attacked UPDF headquarters at the airport. They apparently wanted to disable a helicopter gunship that the UPDF had used against them in earlier attacks. They also wanted to occupy the airport to prevent the triumphal return of local Hema leaders, who were increasingly appearing as the winners in the negotiations going on in Kampala.

Some eighty attackers were slain by UPDF fire, including gunfire from the armed helicopter. Retreating Lendu militia ruthlessly massacred some sixty Hema residents in outlying residential areas and the villages of Soleniema and Mwanga north of Bunia. In the hours after the attack was repulsed, Bunia residents reported seeing UPDF officers encouraging Hema youth in several quarters of the town to arm themselves and to identify and kill Lendu infiltrators. This call apparently set the stage for reprisal attacks on Lendu residents by Hema militiamen and soldiers of the APC loyal to Mbusa. According to some witnesses, at least 150 to 250 Lendu were slaughtered, many of them Lendu intellectuals and community leaders.

Horrified witnesses described a scene of militiamen and soldiers parading for hours around town on a truck, displaying the head of a Lendu on a spear, and singing victory songs.¹⁰⁷ At the wheel, according to witnesses, was an APC battalion commander. Town residents accused the UPDF of having stood by without intervening from 8 a.m., when the reprisals began, until late in the evening. Colonel Muzoora, the UPDF sector commander, then yielded to pressure from community leaders affiliated with neither Hema nor Lendu and from humanitarian agencies and ordered his troops to intervene to stop the killings. Some 20,000 people fled in all directions inside Ituri as an estimated 10,000 others, mostly Hema, sought refuge in Uganda in the first week of January. This latest fighting made Ituri the scene of one of the bloodiest conflicts fought in the shadow of the Congo's broader war. The resulting displacement and movement of refugees to Uganda is one of the largest humanitarian emergencies in Congo today.

Mediation Efforts and Reconciliation
By mid-February, the Front for the Liberation of Congo appeared to be reestablishing control in the area. Violence diminished and hopes for peace increased. Following a three-day conference attended by some 160 traditional chiefs and notables of Ituri province, the FLC managed to broker a peace agreement between representatives of the Hema and the Lendu peoples. Signed on February 17, the agreement called among other things for an immediate cessation of hostilities and the disarmament of all militia groups. Olivier Kamitatu, national secretary of the FLC, told Human Rights Watch that the new front, "as public authority," undertook to implement these and other provisions of the agreement, including to dismantle training centers for militia, control movements of soldiers, secure border crossings, and guarantee the free movement of goods and people along roads.¹⁰⁸

The FLC also undertook to appoint magistrates and revive the justice system as specified in the peace agreement as a condition for achieving a durable solution for the conflict. In the accord, the two communities called upon the public authorities, i.e. the FLC, to "collaborate with the competent international justice bodies in order to bring the presumed planners and instigators of the conflict before the International Criminal Court."¹⁰⁹ In a conversation with a Human Rights Watch researcher, the national secretary of the FLC support prosecutions before an international tribunal, a process which would require a similar commitment to action by the international community.¹¹⁰

Representatives of the two communities addressed the root causes of the conflict by agreeing to revive collective grazing rights in the disputed territory of Djugu and to establish a solidarity fund for the rehabilitation of the infrastructure destroyed by their eighteen-month war. In order to restore local administration, the FLC asked representatives of the two communities each to name five candidates for the posts of vice-governors. On February 23 the FLC appointed two vice-governors, one Hema and one Lendu, from these lists. The head of the local administration would be from neither group, the conference agreed.¹¹¹

In addition to the meeting organized by the FLC, humanitarian agencies operating in Ituri initiated a "community rapprochement" process in a bid to facilitate humanitarian access to all the victims of the conflict and to support reconciliation between the two communities.

According to a joint U.N.-NGO mission which visited the interior of the province from February 14 to 19, these promising initiatives had not yet relieved fear and tension in the rural areas. The primary means of communication in Ituri is through public addresses by traditional chiefs and notables to their communities and the leaders had not yet had time to spread the news of the peace pact.¹¹² The mission warned that the FLC and the humanitarian community had a window of two weeks to move the population away from the "logic of fear and war" towards "mental recovery."¹¹³ The mission report warned that threats to the fragile reconciliation would come from "acts of banditry and bad faith [that] can ruin the whole process, and at the same time, portray humanitarian efforts as pure rhetoric or treachery."¹¹⁴

Hema and Lendu leaders twice signed peace and reconciliation agreements in 1999, but Congolese leaders consumed by their own quarrels and Ugandan actors focused on their own interests failed to support these efforts at peace. In order to succeed, the new reconciliation bid will require security forces of the FLC and the occupying UPDF to observe strict impartiality among the parties. For durable peace to be achieved, a state of rule of law and the installment of a functioning administration was required. The international community could shore up the fledgling reconciliation process by supporting local conflict resolution initiatives and by responding more effectively on the desperate humanitarian crisis resulting from the conflict.

⁵⁶ Human Rights Watch interview, Collège FIC, Modzi Pela Catholic center, Bunia, December 10, 2000.

⁵⁷ Human Rights Watch interview, teacher from Fataki, Bunia, December 13, 2000.

⁵⁸ Human Rights Watch interview, transporter from Rukimo, Bunia, December 12, 2000.

⁵⁹ Human Rights Watch interview, Bunia, December 12, 2000.

⁶⁰ United Nations, IRIN, "DRC: IRIN special report on the Ituri clashes [part two]," UN OCHA- IRIN-CEA, 3 March, 2000, http://www.reliefweb.int/w/rwb.nsf/s/45B299FBC622751385256898006CC44D.

⁶¹ Ibid., United Nations, IRIN, part one.

⁶² According to the Congolese human rights organization ASADHO, the 1973 land law contributed to land problems by making it possible for a buyer to purchase land that is already inhabited and to present title to it as much as two years later, when it can no longer be contested in court.

⁶³ See ASADHO, "Rapport de l'ASADHO sur le conflit inter-ethnique Hema-Lendu en territoire de Djugu dans la province Orientale,"; See also: United Nations, IRIN, "DRC: IRIN Special Report on the Ituri clashes, [parts I and II]," March 3, 2000.

⁶⁴ United Nations, IRIN, "DRC: IRIN Special Report on the Ituri Clashes [part two]," March 3, 2000.

⁶⁵ Human Rights Watch interviews with RCD-ML senior officials, New York, Washington, Bunia, and by telephone: Bunia and Kampala, November 1999-March 2001; See also: "Greed fans ethnic flames in Congo war," Daily Mail and Guardian, February 7, 2000, and "Ugandan involved in Congo ethnic war," Daily Mail and Guardian, February 9, 2000.

⁶⁶ Rapport de Mission, Comité de Pacification et de Suivi, Bunia, le 13 Septembre 1999, p. 10.

⁶⁷ Ibid, pp. 12-13.

⁶⁸ Ibid, p. 16.

⁶⁹ Ibid., pp. 16, 17

⁷⁰ Ibid., p. 21.

⁷¹ Ibid., p. 21.

⁷² "Rapport des travaux de la Commission de Sécurite et de Paix en Territoire de Djugu," RCD document, Bunia, December 21, 1999.

⁷³ Human Rights Watch telephone interview, Wamba dia Wamba, Dar es Salaam, January 26, 2001.

⁷⁴ "Thousands die in Congo ethnic clashes," Daily Mail and Guardian, Johannesburg, January 21, 2000.

⁷⁵ Human Rights Watch telephone interview, Wamba dia Wamba, Dar es Salaam, January 26, 2001.

⁷⁶ Ibid., "Rapport des travaux."

⁷⁷ "Bunia UPDF Probed," Sunday Vision, August 13, 2000.

⁷⁸ Aciar ONGD-Jusitce Plus, "Tentatives de paix, action humanitaire, et bilan des affrontements sanglants entre Lendu (bbale) et Hema (Gegere) en territoire de Djugu," Bunia, March-August 2000.

⁷⁹ ASADHO, "Rapport de l'ASADHO sur le conflit inter-ethnique Hema-Lendu en territoire de Djugu dans la province Orientale," p. 8.

⁸⁰ Letters to Col. Peter Kerim, July 21 and September 7, 1999. Copies in the possession of Human Rights Watch.

⁸¹ Human Rights watch interviews, Bunia, December 8-14, 2000; see also "Rapport de l'ASADHO sur le conflit inter-ethnique Hema-Lendu..," Ibid.; and United Nations, IRIN, "DRC: IRIN special report on the Ituri clashes [part two]," 3 March 2000, Ibid.

⁸² U.N. IRIN, "DR Congo: Uganda denies training Lendu people," IRIN-CEA Weekly Round-up 5, January 29-February 4, 2000.

⁸³ Human Rights Watch interview, January 2000.

⁸⁴ "DRC: Lendu reportedly surrendering arms to Ugandan army," IRIN Update No. 877 for the Great Lakes, IRIN-CEA, March 8, 2000.

⁸⁵ Human Rights Watch interview, Bunia, December 9, 2000.

⁸⁶ U.N. OCHA Integrated Regional Information Network, "DR Congo: IRIN focus on Hema-Lendu conflict, Nairobi, November 15, 2000.

⁸⁷ "Uganda deploys more troops in Congo," Panafrican News Agency (PANA), Kampala, February 15, 2000.

⁸⁸ Ibid.

⁸⁹ "Bunia UPDF probed," Sunday Vision, Kampala, August 13, 2000.

⁹⁰ Human Rights Watch telephone interview, Wamba dia Wamba, Dar es Salaam, January 16, 2001.

⁹¹ Human Rights Watch telephone interview, Uringi Padolo, Kampala, January 17, 2001.

⁹² "Hundreds of Congolese rebels training in Uganda," the East African, Nairobi, September 28, 2000.

⁹³ "Ordre de Mission, No. 001/ROUTE/C.G./R.C.D.K/2000," fait à Kampala, le 06 Juin 2000, [signé] Mbusa Nyamwisi.

⁹⁴ Human Rights Watch interviews, December 2000.

⁹⁵ MISNA, "RDC - Butembo -Beni: Enfants soumis à l'exercise militaire au camp de Nyaleke," January 13, 2000.

⁹⁶ Human Rights Watch interviews, Bunia-Butembo-Kampala, December 2000.

⁹⁷ Letter dated June 10, 2000, No. 155/CG/RCD/K/2000, from the general commissariat of the RCD-ML to the movement's president. Signatories: Mbusa Nyamwisi, general commissar and president of the assembly, Tibasima Mbogemu Ateenyi, deputy commissar general, and several other members of the general commissariat.

⁹⁸ "Communiqué important à l'attention de tous les membres du commissariat general," RDC, RCD/Kisangani, Quartier General/Bunia, Bureau du President, 14/06/2000.

⁹⁹ Human Rights Watch interviews, December 2000.

¹⁰⁰ Human Rights Watch interview, February 2001.

¹⁰¹ Estimates also confirmed by Wamba dia Wamba, Human Rights Watch telephone interview, Dar es Salaam, February 22, 2001.

¹⁰² Human Rights Watch telephone interview, Tibasima Ateenyi, Kampala, August 15, 2000.

¹⁰³ Human Rights Watch interview, Kampala, December 22, 2000. Human Rights Watch later learnt from sources associated with recruitment at Nyaleke that the number of Lendu trained there would be closer to 750.

¹⁰⁴ Human Rights Watch interview, Kampala, December 23, 2000.

¹⁰⁵ IRIN-CEA, "DRC: RCD-ML restructures army," No. 983, August 7, 2000.

¹⁰⁶ Joint briefing to Human Rights Watch researchers by representatives of Hema and Lendu communities from Djugu territory, Bunia, December 8, 2000.

¹⁰⁷ Ian Fisher, "Congo's war turns land spat into a blood bath," New York Times, January 29, 2001.

¹⁰⁸ Human Rights Watch telephone interview, Bunia, February 16, 2000.

¹⁰⁹ "Protocole d'accord relatif à la resolution du conflit inter-ethnique Hema-Lendu en province d'Ituri," section 2, paragraph 5, signed at Bunia, on February 17, 2001.

¹¹⁰ Human Rights Watch telephone interview, Olivier Kamitatu, Bunia, February 16, 2001.

¹¹¹ Ibid.

¹¹² U. N., IRIN-CEA, "DRC: `Fear and tension' in Ituri," Update 1,124 for the Great Lakes, February 28, 2001.

¹¹³ Ibid.

¹¹⁴ Ibid.