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New Vision (Kampala)
October 22, 2003
Posted to the web October 22, 2003
Alfred Wasike
Kampala
AMNESTY International, (AI) the UK-based human rights watchdog, has said Uganda and Rwanda have continued to support warring groups in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), triggering bloodshed and fuelling economic plunder.
AI boss Irene Khan now on a tour of the Great Lakes Region where she met, President Yoweri Museveni, his Rwanda colleague Paul Kagame and due to meet DRC president Joseph Kabila in Kinshasa today.
She yesterday launched a 51-page report called "DRC: Ituri: a need for protection, a thirst for justice," at a news conference in Kampala to mark the Africa Human Rights Day and ten years since the Burundi President Melchior Ndadaye was murdered in a bloody coup in Bujumbura.
"The Transitional Government and the groups must support the work of the Ituri Pacification Commission to establish a civil administration.
Uganda and Rwanda must stop their support of armed groups," Khan said.
Pressed for evidence linking Uganda to the warring DRC groups, Khan's colleague, Marcel Akporo, a researcher on economic exploitation said, "We gathered evidence from Peoples Armed Forces of Congo, Party for Unity & Safeguarding of Integrity of Congo and the Front for National Integration in Aru and Mahagi. The Congolese admitted they received support from Uganda and Rwanda."
She said President Museveni insisted AI produces evidence to pin Ugandans fuelling the strife so that they could be punished.
