Executions continuing in Kisangani, says UN official

Arrests and executions are continuing in Kisangani in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), following a failed mutiny within an armed anti-government movement, UN Special Representative to the DRC Amos Namanga Ngongi said on Tuesday.

"A week later we are still receiving worrying reports of serious human rights abuses," said Ngongi, who had just attended a meeting of the UN Security Council on the Great Lakes.

Fighters of a splinter group of the rebel Rassemblement congolais pour la democratie (RCD) seized control of the radio station in Kisangani on 14 May and called for the expulsion of all Rwandan soldiers from the DRC. However, the main body of the movement crushed the mutiny within hours.

The fighting left scores dead. Ngongi did not dismiss Monseigneur Laurent Monsengwo, the archbishop of Kisangani's estimate that at least 50 people had been killed, including 30 civilians.

On 6 May, a local human rights NGO, Groupe LOTUS de Kisangani, published a list of 23 people it said had been killed in the city's communes of Makiso and Mangobo.

Ngongi appealed to the RCD to restore calm to the city and said that since it was the de facto authority there it was its responsibility to ensure the population's safety. As a result of last week's fighting, he added, the Security Council might take stronger action to back its resolution for the demilitarisation of the city. Until now, he said, the Council had "almost unanimously" resisted proposals to change the mandate of the UN Mission to the DRC from peacekeeping to peace enforcement.