UN says Congo militia’s atrocities are being committed by children

AN ARMED militia that has been fighting Congo’s government for a year and executed at least 79 people is largely composed of children, some as young as seven, the UN said yesterday.

Congolese refugees told the authors of a UN report that they believed the Kamuina Nsapu had magical powers, and militia members believed their rituals – including young girls drinking the blood of decapitated victims – would make them invincible.

“This generalised belief about the powers of Kamuina Nsapu and the fear it triggers among the population in the Kasai Province may partly explain why a poorly-armed militia, composed to a large extent of children, has been able to resist a trained national army for over a year,” the report said.

The report detailed more than 250 “extrajudicial or targeted killings” of civilians in Congo’s Kasai region from mid-march to mid-june, counting dozens of children among those massacred. A militia formed to defeat the Kamuina Nsapu is suspected of a campaign of ethnically based massacres and rapes, the UN investigators added.

The report, detailing violence that the UN said may amount to crimes against humanity, shines a light on the

‘Accounts serve as a grave warning to the government to prevent violence tipping into ethnic cleansing’

role of children and witchcraft in a conflict that has killed thousands.

“Their accounts should serve as a grave warning to the government to act now to prevent such violence from tipping into wider ethnic cleansing,” Zeid Ra’ad al-hussein, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said in a statement. Responding to the report, the Congo government said it would investigate and punish crimes. A second militia group, the Bana Mura, was formed in March or April, allegedly armed and supported by local leaders and officials from the army and the police, to attack the Luba and Lulua ethnic groups, to which Kamuina Nsapu fighters belong.

Scott Campbell, head of Central and West Africa at the UN human rights office, said the violence had spiralled out of control with the complicity of the government of Joseph Kabila.

The report said the Bana Mura was often accompanied by Congolese soldiers who have committed atrocities.

The Congo government says the convictions of seven soldiers last month for murdering suspected militia members in Kasai show the justice system is working.

Lambert Mende, a government spokesman, did not confirm or deny any elements of the report but said that the UN would help Congo with a forthcoming investigation in Kasai.