UK envoy warns of rights violations on all sides

Britain's ambassador to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) launched a human rights seminar in Kinshasa over the weekend with a condemnation of arbitrary arrests and abuses by government soldiers and police officers.

"Every week we learn of people who are threatened, arrested and detained by the police, by the military, by men in uniform and by men in positions of power. And for what reason?" Jim Atkinson told Congolese lawyers at the Supreme Court.

"It is clear that the abuse of human rights continues here in Kinshasa and it's an abuse by certain individuals who do it with impunity. When we try to intervene for the safety of Congo's citizens, we are threatened ourselves," he said.

His comments came shortly after an incident in which staff of the German embassy in Kinshasa were reportedly threatened at gunpoint by a DRC general.

Atkinson was opening a six-month-long series of seminars to familiarise local lawyers with international human rights law. The UK government is funding the seminars with US $28,000. The course coincided with a visit to Kinshasa by the newly-appointed UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in the DRC, Iulia Motoc.

"Do not think that the world is ignorant of what's going on here ... My government and other governments watch what's going on very closely," the British diplomat said.

The worst human rights abuses have occurred in rebel-held areas in DRC, but Atkinson said the government was also guilty.

He said many of the improvements that have been made over the past year as the former Zaire moves towards peace are undermined by rogue elements within the armed forces and police.

"There still exist elements of the state that continue to abuse the human rights of its people. And I'm not talking about the occupied territories, I'm talking about Kinshasa," he said.

Congo's Minister of Justice, Ngele Masudi, present at the opening ceremony, declined to reply to Atkinson's comments.

"I'd rather give the government's message: Human rights today are an undeniable and accepted right. Congo has chosen to evolve as a state to accepted international standards," he said.