Congo Urged to Protect Rwanda Refugees

GENEVA — The U.N. refugee agency urged Congo President Laurent Kabila and other African leaders Tuesday to take steps to protect Rwandan refugees in the wake of the killing last week of an aid worker and four refugees in the eastern Congo.

Spokeswoman Pam O’Toole said the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees is suspending its aid work at Karuba, near Goma, where Kabila’s soldiers reportedly carried out the May 29 shooting.

The victims’ bodies have not been found in the remote area, but the refugee agency said it has no reason to doubt the report pieced together by the London-based Save the Children aid group.

“Save the Children say that local reports suggest the attackers were part of the military,” O’Toole said, adding that the reports describe the attackers as being members of the former rebel Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire.

“Some elements of the military appear to be out of control and need to be brought under control before any more lives are lost,” she told a news briefing.

“Such reports only underline the need for an independent international inquiry into allegations of human rights abuses in the area. We would call on both President Kabila and the Organization of African Unity summit [meeting in Zimbabwe] to take measures to protect refugees and ensure that law and order is upheld in the Democratic Republic of Congo,” the spokeswoman added.

The incident was the latest to tarnish the image of Kabila’s soldiers amid increasingly vocal calls for his new government to cooperate with an independent international inquiry into allegations of abuses.

A team of U.N. human rights investigators last month were refused entry into the country to inspect alleged mass graves in the east.

Reports of violence against ethnic Rwandan Hutus have continued since Kabila’s Tutsi-dominated army drove out former dictator Mobutu Sese Seko last month, ending a seven-month military campaign.

The refugees are remnants of 1.1 million Hutus who fled Rwanda in 1994 to escape reprisals in the genocide of an estimated 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus. More than 800,000 have returned home since November, while 46,000 have been found in Congo and nearly 250,000 remain unaccounted for, according to the refugee agency.

Save the Children, in a statement issued late Monday in London, identified the slain aid worker as Katumbo Mburanumwe, who assisted in a program that tries to trace refugee families and reunite them with unaccompanied children.

He was taking a group of 11 unaccompanied Rwandan children for repatriation when the attack occurred. A child in his arms and two men and a woman were the other victims, the statement said.