‘Umoja Wetu’, MONUC dismiss HRW allegations

GOMA – The joint Rwanda-DRC Operations Command Centre in Goma yesterday dismissed reports by Human Rights Watch (HRW) that troops of the Joint Task Force (JTF) had committed human rights abuses in the ongoing operations. The report titled: “DR Congo: Rwandan Rebels Slaughter Over 100 Civilians. Congolese and Rwandan Forces Should Make Protecting Civilians a Priority’ went as far as singling out Rwandan troops. It also alleges that MONUC is not involved and has no say on what is happening on the ground and therefore failed to protect the population. “These allegations are fabricated, baseless and unfounded aimed at discrediting the positive progress of the ongoing joint operations,” states the strongly worded JTF communiqué. “First of all, the government of DRC fully leads the JTF operations against FDLR and the issue of troops that attacked FDLR in Ufumambo being largely Rwandans is baseless,” reads the JTF communiqué. MONUC, the UN peacekeeping force also dismissed the report as just “allegations.” “For us, we have not, so far, we have no report confirming – information confirming that the coalition forces and the Rwandan troops have committed any rape during their operation in Congo,” said Sylvie Van Den Wildenberg, MONUC’s Public Information Officer in Goma. She denied HRW’s allegations that the UN body was being kept in the dark on the manner of the operations. “Our partnership is very good and we are sharing information on a daily basis and in our protection plan we try to adopt our deployment and our effort to protect the population. Protection is a shared responsibility of both the coalition and MONUC. We are there to support you and it is working well – the partnership is working very well,” stated Van Den Wildenberg. “Let us not forget that this is a report made by some external actors and that they don’t maybe have a full sense of our mode of very good collaboration with the coalition – everything is fine,” she said. The JTF goes ahead to advise HRW to “distance itself from” propaganda aggressively propagated by the FDLR and their partisans worldwide and, stresses that, the joint forces adequately collaborates with the UN Mission in DRC – MONUC. “The JTF appreciates the support and good collaboration it benefits from MONUC in operation Umoja Wetu,” the communiqué underlines, saying that the “unsubstantiated allegations” are aimed at undermining its achievements – repatriating hundreds of FDLR combatants and thousands of civilians to Rwanda. “The JTF shares information with MONUC on a daily basis as far as protection of civilians is concerned as stipulated in the JTF Operation Plan,” the statement says, concluding that anybody who wants to investigate the allegations was welcome. Ends