Human Rights Watch condemned the killing of civilians in Uganda, including the recent murders of eight foreign tourists and four Ugandan park officials by ethnic Hutu rebels.
The brutal killings of these twelve civilians cannot be seen as an isolated incident," said Ken Roth, Executive Director of Human Rights Watch. "It's part of a broader pattern that Human Rights Watch has documented, with countless attacks like this one, against civilians in the Great Lakes regions over the past few years. The international community must get involved to stop this senseless slaughter of civilians."
Two attacks, apparently by the same rebel group, took place just weeks before the tourist killings. On February 20, 1999, a group of about fifty heavily armed rebels reportedly "hacked to death" five villagers near Kisoro town, about twenty miles away from Bwindi Impenetrable Forest where the tourists were killed. On February 17, 1999, a group described by the media as "Interahamwe militia," estimated at 50-100 men armed with AK-47 rifles, reportedly attacked the border town of Ishasha, killing two people.Ishasha is only a few miles from Bwindi Impenetrable Forest.
Some twenty rebel groups are currently operating in the Great Lakes region against their respective governments in Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Rwanda, and Burundi. The war in the DRC has encouraged the emergence of alarming alliances among some of these groups, and has increased access to arms for rebel groups with records of past human rights abuses. Uganda and Rwanda actively support rebels fighting to oust the Congolese government. President Kabila, in turn, has reportedly recruited into his army and rearmed thousands of former Rwandan government soldiers and Interahamwe militia (the Hutu fighters who carried out the genocide in Rwanda in 1994). At least eight foreign governments, including Angola, Burundi, Chad, Namibia, Rwanda, Uganda, Sudan, and Zimbabwe, are currently involved in the conflict in DRC, which has seen widespread abuses by both sides to the conflict.
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has ordered his army to "catch or kill" the rebels. Human Rights Watch is concerned that the Ugandan army may engage in summary executions of suspected rebels, and that civilians including ethnic Hutus may become the victims of punitive army operations in the Congo. "In the past, the Ugandan army has tortured and severely abused rebel suspects in order to extract confessions," said Roth. "We urge the Ugandan army to respect international humanitarian law in its operations, and call upon international investigators including the FBI to help ensure that the human rights of suspects are respected."
