Thousands flee from Congolese ethnic-cleansing campaigns

Thousands of Congolese refugees are fleeing from killing-raids in ongoing warfare which has already killed 5-million people. The raids by the Ugandan Lords' Resistance Army now concentrate on killing all the villagers and torching their homes.

Some 15,000 people have just fled Tora and are reaching Dungu's overflowing streets, Doctors without Borders reports. (see video). The third-largest country in Africa has been engulfed in warfare waged against unarmed villagers by neighbouring armies from Uganda and Rwanda -- who try to control its valuable mineral resources and often also used to raid villages for child-slaves. However, Doctors without Borders reports that the tactics of the most infamous of these slavery-gangs, the Ugandan Lords' Resistance Army, now have changed from slave-raiding to destruction of entire villages with all the residents inside. Villagers are methodically murdered and their villages torched. Some 5million lives have already been lost in the ongoing warfare over the past ten years. see The Congo is the world's largest producer of cobalt ore and a major producer of copper and industrial diamonds. It has significant deposits of tantalum, which is used in the fabrication of electronic components in computers and mobile phones. However especially the smuggling of coltan and cassiterite -- which are the ores of tantalum and tin, respectively and desperately needed by international electronics manufacturers -- has helped pay for the ongoing warfare in the Eastern Congo. Recently the Dutch labour party launched a campaign to ban coltan - in order to stop the child-slavery in the region's many informal mines. See The financial stakes are high in the battle for the Congo's mineral wealth, for instance Katanga Mining Limited, a London-based company, owns the Luilu Metallurgical Plant, which has a capacity of 175,000 tonnes of copper and 8,000 tonnes of cobalt per year, making it the largest cobalt refinery in the world. Over the past month, the well-funded Ugandans have however switched tactics: they no longer raid the villages for new child-slaves, but instead have launched a very methodical ethnic-cleansing campaign, targetting all the unarmed civilians in the mineral-rich region, according to the Doctors without Borders organisation. Doctors without Borders basically now travel to the attacked villagers right behind the marauding killer-gangs to try and rescue any people who may have been left behind wounded or who had managed to flee in time. They report that from the injuries they see on the dead villagers, it is becoming clear that the LRA now have started the methodical killing of all the Congolese villagers - and then they torch all the homes. Getting help to the survivors remains the biggest problem: this remote and increasingly unstable area poses immense logistical challenges for aid agencies, the United Nations says, due to the lack of roads or their poor condition. Ground transport here has always been difficult. The terrain and climate of the Congo Basin present serious barriers to road and rail construction, and the distances are enormous across this vast country. Furthermore, chronic economic mismanagement and the constant internal conflict has led to serious under-investment over many years ever since they gained their 'independence' from European colonial powers such as Belgium and France. There are however thousands of kilometres of navigable waterways, and traditionally water transport has been the dominant means of moving around approximately two-thirds of the country. The UN logistical problems are worsened even more by the fact that all air carriers certified by the Democratic Republic of the Congo have been banned from European Union airports by the European Commission, because of inadequate safety standards. Ron Redmond, spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said there have been renewed assaults in the north-east Democratic Republic of the Congo over the past weeks. The estimated number of people displaced since the attacks began last September now stands at 135,000, according to UNHCR - however it's hard to establish the exact number of displaced people, nor how many have been killed, because the UN's cumbersome trucks are unable to get there - and many drivers refuse to travel to the region because they fear attacks on UN convoys. The latest estimates are that more than 560 Congolese people have been killed by the LRA over the past few weeks. The LRA has always been notorious for abducting children for troops and sex slaves - however they are now methodically wiping out all the villages in their path. "Condemnation' from UN - and 'negotiations". The attacks have prompted condemnation from Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. The UN security council has also voiced 'its grave concern at the scale of the atrocities'-- and emphasized that "those responsible must be brought to justice." A UNHCR team in the town of Dungu, in Orientale Province, that itself was raided by the LRA in November, reported that the same group on Saturday attacked the nearby town of Tora, raping all the young girls and then methodically killing all the residents and burning homesteads. 69,000 refugees in Dungu alone: Some 15,000 people who had fled Tora and the neighbouring villages managed to reach Dungu, which already hosts some 54,000 refugees. They are arriving in desperate condition, on motorbikes, bicycles and on foot, the UNHCR team said. Carrying few possessions, the new arrivals have occupied public buildings, schools and empty houses and the streets of Dungu are overflowing with hungry people. The refugees also told UNHCR that many more people are on their way to Dungu, hiding or taking a break in the forests along the way.UNHCR said it would support the local Red Cross in starting rapid registration of the newly arrived population and identifying those in urgent need. The distribution of food and aid items such as plastic tarpaulins, blankets, sleeping mats and soap started in the village of Bamokandi, 17 kilometres north of Dungu, and eventually will cover the whole Dungu area. Olusegun Obasanjo, the UN's secretary-general's special envoy oin the Great Lakes Region, has meanwhile held emergency talks in Kinshasa with DRC President Joseph Kabila: there are rumoured to be some very delicate 'negotiations' going on to establish a 'lasting peace' in the region under the guidance of Obasanjo and ex-Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa. It's not exactly clear who they are negotiating with.