Volker Turk says his office has ‘confirmed’ cases of rebels killing and recruiting children in eastern DRC.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk on Tuesday accused Rwanda-backed rebels, who seized a second major city in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, of killing children and attacking hospitals and warehouses storing humanitarian aid.
Turk said in a statement on Tuesday that his office “confirmed cases of summary execution of children by M23 after they entered the city of Bukavu last week. We are also aware that children were in possession of weapons”.
He did not refer to specific events, but UN agencies have previously accused both Congolese government forces and the rebels of recruiting children.
The United Nations Human Rights Council earlier this month launched a commission that will investigate atrocities, including rapes and killings akin to “summary executions” committed by both sides since the beginning of the year.
The statement also said Turk’s office received reports about “arbitrary arrests and detentions”, as well as mistreatment and “alleged forced returns of Congolese young men fleeing violence in neighbouring countries”.
The M23 rebels on Sunday captured Bukavu, the city of 1.3 million people, after seizing Goma, 101 kilometers (63 miles) to the north last month. At least 3,000 were reported killed and thousands displaced in the Goma fighting.
The M23 is the most prominent of more than 100 armed groups vying for control of eastern DRC’s trillions of dollars in mineral wealth, critical in the production of much of the world’s technology. The rebels are supported by about 4,000 troops from neighboring Rwanda, according to UN experts.
Rwanda accuses DRC of enlisting Hutu fighters responsible for the 1994 genocide of minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus. M23 says it’s fighting to protect Tutsis and Congolese of Rwandan origin from discrimination and wants to transform Congo from a failed state into a modern one — though critics say it is a pretext for Rwanda’s involvement.
Unlike in 2012, when the M23 briefly seized Goma and withdrew after international pressure, analysts have said the rebels are eyeing political power this time.
The decades-long fighting has displaced more than 6 million people in the region, creating one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises.