Burundian rebels of the Forces nationales de liberation (FNL) killed at least a dozen people in late August in Rusabagi, 85 km south of Bukavu in South Kivu Province of eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), provincial Vice-Governor Jean-Pierre Mazangi told IRIN last Thursday. The Bukavu-based human rights NGO, Heritiers de la Justice, had earlier reported the raid.

On 29 August 2003, police officers arrested Guy Kasongo Kilembwe, editor-in-chief of the satirical newspaper "Pot-Pourri", following the publication of an article criticising a member of parliament's reported embezzlement of funds. On 31 August, after being held in police custody for 48 hours, the journalist was transferred to Kinshasa's Penitentiary and Reeducation Centre (Centre pénitentiaire et de rééducation de Kinshasa, former Makala central prison). "Without commenting on the content of the offending article, we condemn all cases of preventive detention for defamation, which should fall within the competence of civil courts," Reporters sans frontières (RSF), Secretary-General Robert Ménard said. He asked that Kasongo be released, presumed innocent, and granted a fair trial.

Early next week a French-led contingent of multinational troops will pull out of the Congo town of Bunia after barely three months of peacekeeping. A replacement force will serve a further year in an attempt to end the regional conflict which since 1998 has claimed more than 3.3 million lives. But while efforts are rightly focused on seeking a truce between the Hema and Lendu militia groups, and urging an end to Ugandan and Rwandan interference, western diplomats might also think about getting their own houses in order. In an uncanny repetition of western intervention in the region that dates back to the 19th century, complicit multinational corporations and unknowing - or unthinking - western consumers have contributed to the regional conflagration.

The top United Nations (UN) human rights envoy to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has called for the creation of a tribunal of national and international judges to try abuses committed in the country. "It is time to end impunity," UN special rapporteur Iulia Motoc told reporters in Bunia this weekend in the DRC's troubled northeastern Ituri province.

President Joseph Kabila of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) submitted to parliament on Thursday a declaration of his wealth, in accordance with the national transition constitution that came out of the inter-Congolese peace and reconciliation dialogue. The contents of Kabila's declaration will be made known only to members of the National Assembly, unless disclosure of the information to anyone else was necessary.

A series of militia attacks on the town of Fataki, 60 km northwest of Bunia, have left 200 people dead, 237 abducted and the town deserted, an official of the Hema militia group Union des patriotes congolais (UPC) told IRIN on Sunday.

One of the world's biggest hippo populations in the Democratic Republic of Congo faces extinction as poachers and armed factions kill them for their meat and teeth, nature body WWF International said Friday. The Swiss-based body said it was "deeply concerned" about a new census showing the hippo population in the Virunga National Park had dropped 95 percent to around 1,300 from 29,000 less than 30 years ago.

The new government of the Democratic Republic of Congo has encountered a diamond scandal in its infancy, as gems worth $10 million go missing from a state company. The missing gems are equivalent to 80% of the monthly production the Congolese state diamond company, the Miba.

Human rights activists have criticised the recent appointment of military officials alleged to have been involved in massacres in Kisangani, northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), during hostilities that erupted in May 2002.

This article argues that the ongoing conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo, fuelled by exploitation of natural resources and power struggles, is having an untold impact on the exploitation of children. The report suggests that the situation in the DRC is a result of decades of poor governance and broader regional insecurity.

Transitional government officials designated by the two principal former rebel movements in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) took their oath of office on Thursday in the capital, Kinshasa, after a modification was made in the pledge of allegiance. Fourteen ministers and eight vice-ministers from the two groups - the Rassemblement congolais pour la democratie (RCD-Goma) and the Mouvement de liberation du Congo (MLC) - had refused to take the oath of office on Friday because it required a pledge of allegiance to President Joseph Kabila, but not to the institutions and laws of the country.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has expressed outrage at the five-year sentence given to Donatien Nyembo Kimuni, Lubumbashi correspondent for the Kinshasa-based private weekly La Tribune, on a charge of defamation. The charge stemmed from a June 5 La Tribune article by Kimuni titled, "Congo Mineral: Workers Are Paid Poorly and Exploited." According to journalists at La Tribune, Kimuni had based his article on a report from a public mining firm and the testimony of local miners who alleged that Congo Mineral, a private mining company, provided poor working conditions for its employees.

Human rights defenders in the Democratic Republic of Congo are under increasing attack, Human Rights Watch says in a newly-released backgrounder on freedom of expression and freedom of assembly. In the past few years, the main rebel groups and the previous DRC government have been responsible for intimidating and harassing those who have exposed human rights abuses. But the new transitional government in Kinshasa offers the chance to break this pattern, Human Rights Watch said.

The international criminal court is likely to investigate war crimes in the Democratic Republic of Congo, its chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno Ocampo, has said. Mr Moreno Ocampo said that he was "closely following" the situation in Ituri, the north-eastern province where thousands of civilians have been killed in tribal conflicts since last year.

The EU has called for a stronger mandate for the UN Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, similar to that of the multinational peace force mission deployed to the north-eastern town of Bunia.

Ituri, the province where the peace process in Congo now faces its stiffest challenge and where French-led peacekeepers are attempting to halt the bloodshed, has remained a frontier of unbridled capitalism ever since King Leopold of Belgium sent in two Australian gold prospectors 100 years ago. Warlords and adventurers have thrived on the trade in gold, diamonds and timber, receiving arms in exchange from godfathers in Kinshasa, Uganda and Rwanda, all of which have been battling for control of the province through proxies.

The humanitarian crisis continues in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. While the recent formation of an interim government and arrival of a multinational protection force in the province of Ituri have brought a new level of security and opportunity to the country, they have not ended fighting among rival militia groups or prevented violence against civilians and human rights violations in the eastern territories. The undersigned in the letter available by clicking on the link provided call on their governments to support, each to the limit of its capacity, an expanded and strengthened effort in the DRC, that matches the extent of the emergency.

The leader of the second largest rebel group in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Jean Pierre Bemba, has arrived in Kinshasa, ahead of Thursday's inauguration of the vice-presidents in the new transitional government.
Related Link:
* "No turning back" as vice-presidents sworn in
http://irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=35455

The head of the main rebel group in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has officially announced the end of his movement's five-year war against the Kinshasa-based government, the rebel group said on Saturday.

The sending of French and British soldiers to the DRC, where the most modest estimates suggest that around three and a half million people have died as a result of war in the last five years, has received little comment. Yet the question remains: has the problem of the Congo been too much intervention, or too little? The Congolese state has been bankrupted by the costs of war. The people survive in conditions of desperate poverty. Successive outside players have done nothing to encourage self-government or even the conditions in which democracy could grow. The arrival of the French troops has been met therefore with cynicism.