Human rights organisation Amnesty International has accused the Rwandan-backed M23 rebels of killing, torturing and forcibly disappearing civilian detainees in two cities in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The NGO made the claims in a new investigation published on Tuesday.
The report's publication comes amid major fighting in the mineral-rich east of the country, where M23 rebels seized the largest city, Goma, in January. Thousands were killed and tens of thousands were displaced there.
M23 then took Bukavu, the region’s second biggest city, in February.
Between February and April, Amnesty International interviewed 18 civilians who said they had been detained by M23 in Goma and Bukavu.
Many of the detainees, who were all men, said that the rebel group did not provide them with evidence to support the allegation that they supported the Congolese army or government.
Torture, killings, disappearances
Nine of the interviewed men said they had been tortured by M13 fighters, while eight people told Amnesty that they saw other detainees die in detention, likely from torture and brutal conditions.
Two of the interviewees described seeing fighters from the rebel group kill two detainees with hammers and shoot another dead.
Amnesty said that M23 fighters frequently refused to grant relatives of detainees access to their loved ones, or denied that they were held there, which the human rights group said amounted to enforced disappearances.
The rebel group has also made families pay sizeable ransoms to have their family members freed, the human rights organisation said.
The interviewed detainees reported hundreds of people being held in overcrowded, unsanitary cells without enough food, water or sanitation.
“It was incredibly hot… People were drinking each other’s urine. On rainy days, you could drink rainwater,” said one former detainee, who added that there were only three toilets for hundreds of people.
“Congolese know all too well the cruelty of M23…They continue to live in misery as international actors have become complacent, waiting patiently for a peace deal while M23 keeps brutalising Congolese,” said Tigere Chagutah, Amnesty International’s Regional Director for East and Southern Africa.
Amnesty International demands that the group immediately release all civilians and “cease these unlawful, brutal practices”, Chagutah said.
“These acts violate international humanitarian law and may amount to war crimes,” Amnesty said in a statement.
Child executions
M23 is the most powerful of the roughly 100 armed groups fighting for control in the country’s east, which holds valuable mineral deposits that are critical to much of the world’s technology.
They are supported by around 4,000 troops from neighbouring Rwanda, UN experts say.
After M23 fighters seized Bukavu in February, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said his office had “confirmed cases of summary execution of children by M23 after they entered the city of Bukavu”.
Türk said his office was also aware of children with weapons.
The UN has accused both the Congolese government forces and M23 rebels of recruiting child soldiers, and the UN Human Rights Council in February launched an investigation into atrocities committed by both sides, including rapes and killings.
The decades-long war has created one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, displacing more than seven million people, including 100,000 who fled their homes this year.
