Kisangani still tense, but schools, shops open for business

An eerie atmosphere still pervades Kisangani in the northeast of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), 17 days after fighters of the rebel Rassemblement congolais pour la democratie (RCD-Goma) crushed a revolt by some of its members who had seized an official radio station on 14 May, from which they called on city residents to expel all Rwandans from the country. Markets and schools have reopened, as has the bridge over the River Tshopo, where scores of people were killed in the fighting between the rival sides. But many civilians and soldiers remain in hiding, fearing for their lives. Arrests continue, and residents desert the streets as dusk falls over this city of 700,000 residents in Orientale Province. The Kisangani neighbourhood of Mangobo, where anti-Rwandan demonstrations started, remains under the vice-like grip of the RCD-Goma. No accurate figures have emerged relating to the casualties of the events in which anti-Rwandan residents reportedly killed five people believed to be Rwandans. Various sources in the city say that up to 159 could have died and 85 wounded. The events of 14 May drew swift reaction from the mainstream RCD-Goma that day. The Congolese commander of the RCD-Goma's 7th brigade retook the radio station by 08:30 local time. Between 14:00 and 16:00, witnesses and humanitarian workers said, four flights by an Antonov-12 aircraft operated by Uhuru Airlines and Air Victoria brought 216 Rwandan and RCD-Goma troops to the city. Then the reprisals began, targeting the mutineers and UN-trained policemen, most of whom were killed along the River Tshopo, from which dozens of corpses, many of them beheaded and disembowelled, were later retrieved. Civilians were killed indiscriminately in the neighbourhoods of Mangobo and Makiso. Residents have accused Rwandan troops and Congolese RCD-Goma fighters of committing these atrocities and looting homes. They said the Kinyarwanda-speaking soldiers maltreated a Belgian priest and stole all his belongings. However, a Rwandan government spokesman, Joseph Mutatoba, on 27 May rejected all charges of Rwandan involvement in the affray as "unfounded", reiterating Kigali's assertion that Rwanda had no troops in Kisangani. When the uprising first erupted, the governor of Kisangani, Jean-Pierre Bilusa, charged civil society with responsibility, and immediately banned its activities. However, once the first signs of a lessening of tension emerged this week, the RCD-Goma leader, Adolphe Onusumba met six civil society leaders, including Dismas Kitenge of the Groupe Lotus, who had taken refuge in the Kisangani compound of the UN peacekeeping mission in the DRC. At the meeting, Onusumba announced he was lifting the ban on civil society activities on the understanding that its components would abide by the law in the city, which is controlled by the RCD-Goma. Moreover, he offered his condolences to those who had lost family members during the violence. He also urged RCD-Goma soldiers who had looted homes to return the stolen goods to their owners. The circumstances surrounding the mutiny remain murky. Civil society unanimously rejects the official RCD-Goma version of events that there had been a mutiny within its ranks. Civil society was referring to a "provocation", saying the "so-called mutineers" had stood no chance of success, one member of civil society told IRIN on condition of anonymity. "It's strange that they took over the radio without any shooting, and that so far, RCD hasn't produced a face or name of these mutineers," he said. In Brussels, RCD-Goma spokesman Kin-Kiey Mulumba said he could not exclude the possibility that some RCD-Goma soldiers had taken in the killings. "If there are some hardliners within the RCD, they should clearly be denounced and isolated in order not to extinguish the fire of hope," he said. He repeated RCD-Goma's appeal for an international commission of inquiry into the incident "in order to know who did what and to punish the culprits". Some analysts doubt that the RCD-Goma's political wing was responsible. They say it could have been the victim of a plot to undermine its credibility, thereby to ensure that the demilitarisation of Kisangani would not be effected. A result of the events has been the cancellation of the peace symposium, to be convened by the archbishop of Kisangani, Monsignor Pasinya Monsengwo, which would have brought international observers to the city.