18 September 2017•Update: 18 September 2017
By Godfrey Olukya
A report released Monday implicated senior army officers in the Democratic Republic of Congo of involvement in the killing of hundreds of civilians -- a charge immediately denied by the army.
The report, “Mass Killings in Beni Territory: Political Violence, Cover Ups, and Cooptation,” by the non-profit U.S.-based Congo Research Group, said that since 2013, a mysterious string of mass killings has taken place around Beni, in the country’s northeast, with over 800 killed and 18,000 displaced.
It added that while Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) rebels participated in many of the massacres, it is clear that several overlapping networks of actors, including DRC army officers, were also involved.
“At some point in mid to late 2014, officers in the Congolese army’s Sukola I operation, led by Gen. Akili Mundos, were able to penetrate these networks,” said a summary of the report posted by the group.
“Instead of bringing the perpetrators to justice, however, they appear to have co-opted these networks and escalated the violence in order to control their rivals. All sides benefitted from being able to blame ADF, a foreign Islamist organization, for the killings.”
It added that while the initial operations aggressively targeted the ADF, at the cost of the lives of hundreds of Congolese soldiers, the subsequent commander of operations became complicit in the killing himself.
“Specifically, it is clear that officers belonging to the former Armée patriotique congolaise (Congolese Patriotic Army, APC) initiated the massacres that began in 2013, in conjunction the ADF and local chiefs,” it said.
But the DRC army denied the allegation. Lt. Levi Mwisi, deputy army spokesman in the North Kivu province, told Anadolu, “Those allegations are not true. Our officers were never involved in the chaos. Those making the allegations simply want to tarnish our name.”
He said that the whole world knows that it was ADF rebels that killed innocent people, not DRC army officers, as alleged.
