POLITICS-DRC: Cautious Calm Settles Over War-scarred Ituri Region
By Michael Deibert
Inter Press Service
BOGORO, April 17, 2008 (IPS) - Wading through the chest-high grass outside of this hamlet in north-eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, Mathieu Nyakufa gestures to the bones -- still bleaching in the sun -- of those who have been lost to the country's wars.
"I was living just down here in the valley," the 52-year-old farmer says of one terrible morning in February 2003. "They were killing people with guns, with machetes, with spears and arrows. I escaped because I saw people running in my direction. Three of my children were killed in my own house."
An estimated 200 civilians were killed in Bogoro, located in the heart of the Ituri region, when combatants of the Forces de Résistance Patriotique d'Ituri (Patriotic Resistance Forces of Ituri, or FRPI), a militia dominated by the Ngiti and Lendu ethnic groups, attacked this scattered collection of thatched-roof huts and mud dwellings. At the time, Bogoro was a stronghold of the Union des Patriotes Congolais (Union of Congolese Patriots, UPC), an armed group loyal to the Gegere and Hema tribes.
"The UPC told me, 'Papa, run away, don't wait, because the Lendu are killing your people'," says Nyakufa.
The Bogoro massacre was one of many such slaughters that occurred in Ituri, which contains some of the world's most valuable deposits of gold and reserves of timber. A brutal extension of the civil war which engulfed this vast African nation from 1998 until 2003, the conflict in Ituri saw neighbouring Uganda and Rwanda arm militias in an ever-shifting web of alliances, as much for their own designs on Congo's natural resources as for any political solidarity with the Congolese.
Read the full article here.
Showing posts with label Hema. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hema. Show all posts
Friday, April 18, 2008
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Note from Ituri
We picked our way through the tall grass outside of the village of Bogoro in the Ituri region of the Democratic Republic of Congo, a farmer, my guide and myself.
This was the place where, in February 2003, at least 200 people were slain when the Ngiti and Lendu-dominated Force des Resistance Patriotique d’Ituri (FRPI) militia attacked this largely Hema town, at the time a redoubt of the Gegere and Hema-led Union des Patriots Congolais (UPC ). The siege was part of the terrible wave of atrocities on both sides that went on, largely with the connivance of neighboring Uganda and Rwanda, until 2005.
As we walked through the field in the strong morning light, the farmer pointed out the scattered bones on the ground. He explains how three of his own children were killed in his house and how “we could not even recognize the skeletons of our children” when he returned to the village because there were so many there. At least 60,000 people are said to heave died in the area’s fighting.
Ituri has the misfortune to have abundant timber, and gold deposits that many experts believe to be among the most promising in the world, and yet so many tens of thousands of its people were sent to die brutal, criminal deaths so that those competing to control those very resources might have a moment of political advantage. Dressed up under the guise of ethnic conflict, the fall of the machete and the report of the rifle, as so often the case here in Africa, represented in the final analysis an expression of monetary greed.
I will write an article about it very soon, but before I do I think it is appropriate to ponder all those who passed.
I remember some lines that the poet Philip Larkin once wrote:
A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognised, and robed as destinies.
And that much never can be obsolete,
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round.
This was the place where, in February 2003, at least 200 people were slain when the Ngiti and Lendu-dominated Force des Resistance Patriotique d’Ituri (FRPI) militia attacked this largely Hema town, at the time a redoubt of the Gegere and Hema-led Union des Patriots Congolais (UPC ). The siege was part of the terrible wave of atrocities on both sides that went on, largely with the connivance of neighboring Uganda and Rwanda, until 2005.
As we walked through the field in the strong morning light, the farmer pointed out the scattered bones on the ground. He explains how three of his own children were killed in his house and how “we could not even recognize the skeletons of our children” when he returned to the village because there were so many there. At least 60,000 people are said to heave died in the area’s fighting.
Ituri has the misfortune to have abundant timber, and gold deposits that many experts believe to be among the most promising in the world, and yet so many tens of thousands of its people were sent to die brutal, criminal deaths so that those competing to control those very resources might have a moment of political advantage. Dressed up under the guise of ethnic conflict, the fall of the machete and the report of the rifle, as so often the case here in Africa, represented in the final analysis an expression of monetary greed.
I will write an article about it very soon, but before I do I think it is appropriate to ponder all those who passed.
I remember some lines that the poet Philip Larkin once wrote:
A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognised, and robed as destinies.
And that much never can be obsolete,
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round.
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