UN rapporteur to probe recent Kisangani violence

The United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, Asma Jahangir, will be in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) from 16 to 22 June to gather information on extrajudicial killings alleged to have occurred in the eastern city of Kisangani on 14 May 2002 and immediately thereafter, the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights reported on Tuesday.

The tour will start in the DRC capital, Kinshasa, where Jahangir will meet government officials and UN representatives. She is then scheduled to travel to the eastern city of Goma to meet representatives of the Rwandan-backed Rassemblement congolais pour la democratie (RCD-Goma), the de facto authority in Kisangani.

Jahangir's visit will conclude with a visit to Kisangani to meet local authorities, international agencies, witnesses and victims of alleged human rights violations. "I will endeavour to meet with all relevant parties and interlocutors, in order to make a balanced and independent assessment of the events reported," Jahangir said.

The mission comes at the request of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson following a 24 May Presidential Statement from the Security Council on the events at Kisangani.

Relations between RCD-Goma and the UN have been strained since the UN peacekeeping mission in the DRC (known by its French acronym, MONUC) produced a report on 23 May accusing RCD-Goma of "grave violations of human rights and humanitarian law" in Kisangani, following a mutiny within the rebel group.

The RCD-Goma leader, Adolphe Onusumba, then declared the MONUC head, Amos Namanga Ngongi, "persona non grata" and demanded his recall. He accused Ngongi of supporting the agreement reached in April in Sun City, South Africa, by Joseph Kabila's government, Jean-Pierre Bemba's rebel Mouvement de liberation du Congo, and a majority of political opposition and civil society groups in the DRC.

Furthermore, the UN's human rights chief in Kisangani, Luc Henkinbrant, and two other UN officials, were also ordered out of RCD-controlled territory for "threatening internal security". MONUC rejected the accusations against the officials, stating that it "strongly protested against the intrigues and intimidatory measures" taken against them, notably the deployment of RCD-Goma military around their homes. MONUC also demanded an end to the "unacceptable harassment" of UN staff.

Upon completion of the mission, Jahangir will share her findings with Robinson, who will in turn brief the president of the Security Council.

Jahangir, an advocate at the Supreme Court of Pakistan, was appointed special rapporteur in August 1998. Since then, she has carried out field visits to Mexico, East Timor, Nepal, Turkey and Honduras, as well as to the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia, and to Albania in connection with the Kosovo conflict.