PRESS CONFERENCE ON HUMAN RIGHTS IN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO

Press Briefing

PRESS CONFERENCE ON HUMAN RIGHTS IN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO

The Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Roberto Garreton, told a Headquarters press conference this morning that the mechanisms of rapporteurs and working groups, established 20 years ago to particularly address the dictatorship in Chile, his own country, had shown their usefulness and had worked and benefited those who fought for democracy.

Those same mechanisms had to be strengthened and improved, not weakened, he said. He was worried that the establishment of parallel mechanisms could, in the end, lead to situations in which governments subjected to an investigation by a rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights could begin to select the mechanisms of their choice.

He said that there were three human rights mechanisms of the United Nations today for the Democratic Republic of the Congo. First, himself, the Special Rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights appointed in 1994, who had to submit an annual report to the Commission and who, this year, was also asked to submit a report to the General Assembly.

Second, he said, the Commission had asked him, along with the Rapporteur on Summary Executions and a member of the working group on disappearances, to conduct an investigation in the eastern Congo on the massacres that had taken place since the war. Since that group had not been able to go into the Congo, which was then Zaire, because it was prevented first by rebel forces and afterwards by the Government, the Secretary-General designated a third mandate. That group went to Kinsasha, spent about 40 days there and unable to conduct an investigation, returned to New York. On Monday, 10 November, it returned to Kinsasha and would start its activities on 17 November.

Mr. Garreton said he had submitted the annual report of the Special Rapporteur to the General Assembly on 15 September. The Organization had taken two months to edit and translate the report and it was issued on Tuesday, 11 November, prior to his statement on Wednesday, 12 November. That was not his fault. The Secretary-General's sending a commission back to the Congo for the second time, on the same date that the report was issued, had nothing to do with him. It was not, as had been claimed by the representative of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, an act of sabotage to submit the report on the same day the commission was dispatched.

The report gave an account of three things, he said. First, human rights violations in the territories controlled by former President Mobutu up to 17 May. He could not exclude that from the report, because it would have been disrespectful to the Government of the Alliance to not state what the Mobutu Government had done up to that date. Second, information that had been circulating in the Assembly since July on the massacres and the refugee camps,

Human Rights Press Conference - 2 - 14 November 1997

including the Rwandan refugee camps in Zaire. Third, human rights violations committed by the present Government in areas occupied by the Alliance from 1 January to the present and other country-wide violations since 17 May.

In addition, he said, the report addressed the human right to democracy, because during the last period of the Mobutu Government there was a transition process under way towards democracy. Mobutu had never liked that process and he always tried to delay or undermine it, although it was supported by the churches, non-governmental organizations and civil society. The process was administered without enthusiasm by the political elite, which was benefitting from the status quo of a transition to democracy that never led to democracy, he added.

Commenting on a democratic process that involved civil society and cost a great deal of Zairian blood between 1990 and 1996, Mr. Garreton said that every time there was a protest it was repressed. Every time the people organized what had been called "les villes mortes (the dead cities)", which was a protest in which people would refuse to go out in the streets, there would be 300 to 400 dead in that city. As a result, today the entire process of involvement in the democratic process had been paralysed.

He said in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, political parties were illegal, except for one, the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire. Yesterday, the representative of that country said it was not true that there was only a single party, because in the Cabinet there were several members from the Union for Democracy and Social Progress, which was the party that supported former President Mobutu. Responding to that statement, Mr. Garreton said, "it is true that there are some members of that party in the Alliance, but in order to be members of the Cabinet they have to renounce all former parties and become members of the Alliance".

When asked whether the hindrance to human rights teams getting to work in Kinsasha was because evidence was being hidden or was deteriorating, he replied that many non-governmental organizations had suggested that was being done and they had witnessed fires in places where bodies had been seen. "It is never possible to hide all the evidence", he said. If the current authorities were doing that, there would always be something left, such as a small bone, which would provide proof of not only the crime, but also of the attempt to conceal the evidence.

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