Mass rape, cannibalism, body parts as medals: UN team finds Congo war atrocities that ‘beggar description’
UN investigators suspect all sides in the Congo conflict in the Kasai region were guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity
Rebels and government troops in Congo have committed atrocities including mass rape, cannibalism and the dismemberment of civilians, according to testimony published on Tuesday by a team of UN human rights experts who said the world must pay heed.
The team investigating a conflict in the Kasai region of Democratic Republic of Congo told the UN Human Rights Council last week that they suspected all sides were guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Their detailed 126-page report catalogued gruesome attacks committed in the conflict, which erupted in late 2016, involving the Kamuina Nsapu and Bana Mura militias and Congo’s armed forces, the FARDC.
The testimony included boys being forced to rape their mothers, little girls being told witchcraft would allow them to catch bullets, and women forced to choose gang-rape or death.
“What happened in the Kasai simply beggars description,” Congo’s Human Rights Minister Marie-Ange Mushobekwa told the Council.
“One victim told us that in May 2017 she saw a group of Kamuina Nsapu militia, some of whom sported female genitals as medals,” the report said.
“Some witnesses recalled seeing people cutting up, cooking and eating human flesh, including penises cut from men who were still alive and from corpses, especially FARDC, and drinking human blood.”