Human Rights Watch: Gold Fuels Massive Human Rights Atrocities

[Jack Rabbit]

From Human Rights Watch
Dated Thursday June 2

D.R. Congo: Gold Fuels Massive Human Rights Atrocities
Leading international corporations established links to warlords

(Johannesburg, June 2, 2005) — The lure of gold has fuelled massive human rights atrocities in the northeastern region of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Human Rights Watch said in a new report published today. Local warlords and international companies are among those benefiting from access to gold rich areas while local people suffer from ethnic slaughter, torture and rape.

The 159-page report, "The Curse of Gold," documents how local armed groups fighting for the control of gold mines and trading routes have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity using the profits from gold to fund their activities and buy weapons. The report provides details of how a leading gold mining company, AngloGold Ashanti, part of the international mining conglomerate Anglo American, developed links with one murderous armed group, the Nationalist and Integrationist Front (FNI), helping them to access the gold-rich mining site around the town of Mongbwalu in the northeastern Ituri district.

The Human Rights Watch report also illustrates the trail of tainted gold from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to neighboring Uganda from where it is sent to global gold markets in Europe and elsewhere. The report documents how a leading Swiss gold refining company, Metalor Technologies, previously bought gold from Uganda. After discussions and correspondence with Human Rights Watch beginning in December 2004, and after the report had gone to press, the company announced on May 20 that it would suspend its purchases of gold from Uganda. The Metalor statement was welcomed by Human Rights Watch.

"Corporations should ensure their activities support peace and respect for human rights in volatile areas such as northeastern Congo, not work against them," said Anneke Van Woudenberg, senior researcher on DRC at Human Rights Watch. "Local warlords use natural resources to support their bloody activities. Any support for such groups, whether direct or indirect, must not continue."

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[Jack Rabbit]

1. HRW Report: The Curse of Gold

Report from Human Rights Watch
Dated Thursday June 2

The Curse of Gold

Summary

The northeast corner of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is home to one of Africa’s richest goldfields. Competition to control the gold mines and trading routes has spurred the bloody conflict that has gripped this area since the start of the Congolese war in 1998 and continues to the present. Soldiers and armed group leaders, seeing control of the gold mines as a way to money, guns, and power, have fought each other ruthlessly, often targeting civilians in the process. Combatants under their command carried out widespread ethnic slaughter, executions, torture, rape and arbitrary arrest, all grave human rights abuses and violations of international humanitarian law. More than sixty thousand people have died due to direct violence in this part of Congo alone. Rather than bringing prosperity to the people of northeastern Congo, gold has been a curse to those who have the misfortune to live there.

This report documents human rights abuses linked to efforts to control two key gold mining areas, Mongbwalu (Ituri District) and Durba (Haut Uélé District), both bordering Uganda.

When Uganda, a major belligerent in the war, occupied northeastern Congo from 1998 to 2003, its soldiers took direct control of gold-rich areas and coerced gold miners to extract the gold for their benefit. They beat and arbitrarily arrested those who resisted their orders. Ignoring the rules of war for the conduct of occupying armies, they helped themselves to an estimated one ton of Congolese gold valued at over $9 million. Their irresponsible mining practices led to the collapse of one of the most important mines in the area in 1999, the Gorumbwa mine, killing some one hundred people trapped inside and destroying a major livelihood for the residents of the area.

The Ugandan army withdrew from Congo in 2003, following Rwanda, another major belligerent, which had withdrawn the year before. Each left behind local proxies, the Lendu Nationalist and Integrationist Front (Front des Nationalistes et Intégrationnistes, FNI) linked to Uganda, and the Hema Union of Congolese Patriots (Union des Patriotes Congolais, UPC), supported by Rwanda. With continued assistance from their external backers, these local armed groups in turn fought for the control of gold-mining areas and trade routes. As each group won a gold-rich area, they promptly began exploiting the ore. The FNI and the UPC fought five battles in a struggle to control Mongbwalu, each resulting in widespread human rights abuses. Human Rights Watch researchers documented the slaughter of at least two thousand civilians in the Mongbwalu area alone between June 2002 and September 2004. Tens of thousands of civilians were forced to flee from their homes into the forests to escape their attackers. Many of them did not survive.

Read more.

[applegrove]

2. Anyone hear about those miners who got closed into the mine

in Africa? Is this true? I want to know more.

[Englander]

3. Observer - 'Forgotten child soldiers who want to stop killing'

Hunger and poverty drove thousands of children to fight in Congo's brutal war. Their plight will be highlighted by Bob Geldof's Live8 protest next month. Anushka Asthana in eastern Congo met the killers who, rejected by their parents and villages, cannot go home

Sunday June 5, 2005
The Observer

'They made me kill.' Emmanuele looked at the ground as he fumbled with the tassels on his coat. 'If I refused to go to the front line they beat me. They treated me like an animal.'

Emmanuele was 15 when he joined a rebel army group in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The decision was his own. 'I had no money and they said they would give me some,' he said. Other children were taken by force. Serge was at school when a group arrived, firing shots in the air and setting fire to the building. 'I was afraid but I had to go.' He was taken to an army base in Bunia, in the largest town in the Ituri region of the country, where he was put to work on a roadblock.

Serge was then eight. 'I remember holding a gun and shooting,' he said, dropping his voice. 'When it stopped all I could see was bodies on the ground. I knew it must be me who had killed them.' Racked by guilt and missing home Serge cried all the time. He desperately wanted to leave but did not know how.

Eventually he was released and taken to a Save the Children camp in the city of Goma, where he now waits to be reunited with his parents.

It has been two years since the conflict, known as Africa's world war, was officially declared over, but the violence has yet to stop. So far it has claimed more than three million lives.'

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1499540,00.html