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UN adviser warns Congo against genocide
The UN adviser on genocide urged the combatants in eastern Congo on Friday to refrain from actions that might encourage genocide and warned that anyone promoting ethnic killings will be held accountable.
- AP
- Published: 08:26 November 8, 2008
United Nations: The UN adviser on genocide urged the combatants in eastern Congo on Friday to refrain from actions that might encourage genocide and warned that anyone promoting ethnic killings will be held accountable.
Francis Deng, the special adviser to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, noted the tragic loss of life in the region over at least 15 years, "including on the basis of ethnicity," and said he has been "especially alarmed by the escalation of violence in the past few weeks."
The conflict in eastern Congo is fuelled by ethnic hatred left over from the 1994 slaughter of a half-million Tutsis in neighbouring Rwanda. Rebel leader Laurent Nkunda, who went on the offensive August 28, claims he is fighting to protect minority Tutsis from Rwandan Hutu rebels who participated in the genocide and fled to Congo afterward.
In a statement released at UN headquarters, Deng emphasised "that the belligerents in eastern Congo must refrain from actions that might encourage genocide and that they, and any actors who provide material support, will be held accountable if they fail to do so."
Under international law, he said, "the intention to destroy an ethnic population group, in whole or in part, is a grave crime ... which the international community, including member states in the region and beyond, has an obligation to prevent and to punish when it does occur."
Alan Doss, the top UN envoy to Congo, has warned repeatedly of heightened ethnic tensions as a result of the upsurge in fighting.
Among the dozens of militia groups operating in eastern Congo's remote terraced valleys and hills are Nkunda's Tutsi fighters, the anti-Tutsi Mai Mai, and ethnic Hutu insurgents who fled from Rwanda after helping carry out Rwanda's bloody genocide.
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