Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have moved, with pleasure, this motion on the devastating humanitarian situation taking place in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. At the outset, I would like to thank Mark Clarke from the Office for Justice and Peace in the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne, who first brought this issue to my attention. Mark has been working with the Melbourne Congolese community to bring attention to the humanitarian disaster occurring in their country of birth, a disaster that is being driven by the incredible wealth derived from the mineral resources of that country. Mark is a persistent individual. I first put this motion on the books in 2009, so I am finally thanking the House for getting it up and thanking Mark for not getting off my back to see that it finally happened. I would like to have been thanking Clovis Mwamba from the Congolese community of Melbourne for being present. Sadly, Clovis is still in the air because his plane has been delayed, but the Congolese community of Melbourne is very thankful that people within the Australian parliament have finally heard their pleas, and this will be getting wide coverage within the community.

Since 1996 the Democratic Republic of the Congo has been embroiled in the deadliest conflict since World War II. It has been devastated by various wars, which have resulted in widespread humanitarian rights violations and the intervention of multiple armed forces and armed non-state actors from other countries in the region. It is estimated some 5.4 million people have died from the ravaging effects of the war and its aftermath, with 45,000 perishing each month, mainly from hunger and disease, in a country that has incredible wealth. Furthermore, more than one million people have been displaced. Worse still, armed groups routinely commit acts of rape and violence against Congolese women and girls.

While we have seen in recent days some progress in this area, there is still much to do. While we have seen issues being taken up in recent times, and some legal proceedings, it is still true that the quelling of mass rapes by armed combatants in Congo needs to be dealt with. The UN have noted that their peacekeeping mission is still absolutely essential, and deep concerns remain about the insecurity, violence and humanitarian rights violations taking place in the DRC.

The mismanagement and illicit trade of extractive resources from the country has been a prime cause of the atrocities and conflict. International companies investing in the Congo are interested in the resource extraction sector. Indirectly, this investment is fuelling competition and conflict between armed groups, which has been the driving force behind the atrocities and conflict which has marred the DRC throughout its history. The Congo’s vast natural recourses are financing multiple armed groups that target the local population, particularly in the eastern Congo. These groups operate with different agendas. Some are purely criminal while others have political foundations. The one thing they have in common is the atrocities they commit against Congolese civilians, with rape and other forms of violence used to suppress the local population. As the UN has noted, continual vigilance is required to ensure that individuals and entities buying minerals from eastern Congo establish whether or not the minerals are controlled or taxed by illegal armed groups. It is ethically and legally imperative that minerals known to originate—or suspected to originate—from illegal armed groups are denied trade or purchase. Any trade involving the Congo’s natural resources which empowers the militias must be condemned and those responsible for engaging in such behaviour must be held accountable.

Mass rape is deployed as a deliberate strategy by armed militias to intimidate and control Congolese communities, as the militia groups profit from the illicit trade in these minerals. Eastern Congo is frequently referred to as the most dangerous place in the world to be a woman or a girl. In 2008 Major General Patrick Cammaert, former UN deputy force commander, described the situation for women in the DRC: ‘It is more dangerous to be a woman than to be a solider right now.’ Rape is used as a form of intimidation in these areas. Once a woman has been raped, generally her husband disowns her and she is left to indelible poverty. It is a tool to intimidate, control, terrorise and humiliate communities. Furthermore, the few women and girls who have had the courage to identify their rapists rarely see prosecutions. To quote Anneke Van Woudenberg from Human Rights Watch:

In Congo, if someone starts an armed group or kills people, they have a better chance of becoming a senior minister or a general than being put behind bars.

Perpetrators of rape and sexual violence must be held accountable and punished for their horrific crimes.

The first round of presidential and parliamentary elections in the DRC will be held in November this year. There are already reports of oppression of human rights activists, including illegal arrests and the death of a prominent activist in highly suspicious circumstances. We need to keep an eye on these atrocities. Keep in mind that this is a country in need of our protection; we cannot leave it off the radar.

Bert Van Manen (Forde, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Chisholm for her motion. I have spent some time researching this issue and it is certainly a terrible situation. It was not something I was aware of, and I am sure a lot of other people I have spoken to are not.

The Democratic Republic of Congo is a vast country with immense natural resources, yet its development is retarded by corruption and a war that is referred to by some as Africa’s ‘world war’. As this motion correctly points out, this conflict has left the country in the grip of a humanitarian crisis.

The crisis in the eastern region of the DRC dates from August 1998 when rebel forces, backed by Rwanda and Uganda, launched a drive to overthrow the government, resulting in the instalment of Laurent Kabila as President. In 2001 he was assassinated, only to be succeeded by his son Joseph Kabila. This episode is but a sad reflection of the history of the Democratic Republic of Congo, a history of mutiny, attempted succession, assassinations, civil war and corruption. A peace deal, a transitional government in 2003 and elections in 2006 served to bring some respite. News of elections later this year is also good news.

However, in 2008 a series of coup attempts and sporadic violence heralded renewed fighting in the eastern part of the country. Rwandan Hutu militias clashed with government forces—displacing thousands of civilians and leaving people in the east of the country in terror of marauding militia—and this has lead to the deaths of an estimated 5.4 million people since 1998 and continues to cause untold death and suffering today. It is a sad fact that these atrocities are carried out by all sides as they knowingly target civilians, who are killed, raped, arbitrarily arrested, pressed into forced labour and their possessions looted. According to Human Rights Watch there are currently more than two million people internally displaced and a further 145,000 refugees in neighbouring countries. The war has an economic as well as a political side. Fighting is fuelled by the country’s vast mineral wealth, with all sides taking advantage of the anarchy to plunder natural resources at the expense of the country’s future.

The United Nations have had a peacekeeping mission in Congo since 1999. This mission was renamed the UN Organisation Stabilisation Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo—MONUSCO for short. Its brief has been to work with and assist the Congolese army. However, their record has also been mixed. Human Rights Watch reports in their January 2011 report that while MONUSCO has sought to improve its organisational and operational process, the actual implementation has proved difficult and consequently known perpetrators of human rights abuses continue to be supported in the Congolese military. I note that the Congolese government has requested the withdrawal of MONUSCO. At this date no time frame has been agreed on.

Everyone in this region has the right to feel safe and that their life is not at risk. They have the right to enjoy the freedom to go about their daily lives. They also should not be subject to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. The UN special representative Margot Wallstrom visited the Democratic Republic of the Congo in April 2010 and described the vast African nation as ‘the rape capital of the world’. This is a sad indictment on the Congolese government, particularly when some of these rapes are being carried out by its own military personnel.

We call on the Congolese government to urgently deal with the corruption within their own military forces and the government to ensure that these basic human rights are respected, that abuses of any kind are not tolerated and to ensure that perpetrators are brought to justice. The Congolese government needs to recognise that if it does not bring its own house into order it is going to be very difficult to ask others to do so. We also call on those neighbouring countries that are either actively or tacitly supporting these rebel elements to withdraw all support for these groups and work with the Congolese government to bring an end to this conflict.

Laurie Ferguson (Werriwa, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In common with my colleague the member for Chisholm, the mover of this motion, I have a close affinity with the Congolese community. In 2009 I took the opportunity to bring a number of Sydney representatives to this parliament to inform members about conditions in the Congo and to get their views on movement towards solutions. It is no accident indeed that, whilst we had approximately 200 Congolese in this country at the time of the 2001 census, over 3,000 Congolese have entered the country in the 10 years since then. An important challenge to our settlement processes is that 44 per cent of those predominantly refugee newcomers are under 15 years of age, and they often come from very dislocated families.

The Congo has 80 per cent of the world’s coaltan and is strong in diamonds, zinc, copper, cobalt, tantalum and, very importantly, hydroelectricity. Despite that wealth of opportunity and resources, it has a per capita income of only $342 a year. A variety of issues have contributed to the situation which exists in the Congo, including the previous government, which was described as a kleptocracy; the fall of that government; and the intrusion of a number of foreign powers—Namibia, Angola, Rwanda, Zimbabwe and Uganda—who were helping those internal Congolese with whom they had some tribal affinity but, more importantly, were exploiting resources. Often, whether a group is supporting Hutus or Tutsis or other groups in the country, it is essentially an excuse to seize resources, and in many cases to enslave local Congolese to exploit those resources.

This is not a new phenomenon, as people have indicated. Human Rights Watch noted that all sides targeted civilians, who were killed, raped, arbitrarily arrested, pressed into forced labour and looted. In 2009 the United Nations Special Rapporteur Philip Alston spoke of sexual violence causing death, vigilante groups, the murder of human rights defenders, a campaign against alleged witches and a situation where many hundreds of people were killed by the FDLR and the FARDC, which are both, in some manner, related to previous developments in Rwanda. He called for the indictment of senior commanders; the integration of forces into the national army; a budget for prisons, which were severely overcrowded and basically run by the prisoners; and better monitoring by the United Nations, the organisation he represented.

In the last week we have read in the newspapers about a roving court which has indicted some people for rape. Previous Vice-President Jean-Pierre Bemba Gombo has been sent to trial for his crimes. But, overall, we can have no optimism about the current situation. In another recent development, the Lord’s Resistance Army, which has caused so many internal problems in Uganda over the last few decades, has moved into the Congo and late last year bludgeoned to death 345 civilians. Another problem in the country is the failure of the Congo to ever move away from hostility towards what are, at times, very longstanding migrant groups. Groups that arrived in the country before its independence from Belgium have been denied citizenship. They have tribal and ethnic confreres across national boundaries who tend to intervene for them. There has been a failure by the administration to tackle localised native tribal power and to give the country a sense of national identity.

I do congratulate the member for Chisholm for bringing forward this motion relating to a country in which at any one stage—there are various figures—two million people are either internally displaced or in exile. It is a serious situation: 5½ million people are dead. It is well past due that we in this house take the opportunity to speak on this matter.

Teresa Gambaro (Brisbane, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Citizenship and Settlement) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I also rise tonight to speak to this motion on security in the Democratic Republic of Congo. I thank the member for Chisholm for putting the motion forward. I also thank the previous speakers, the member for Forde and the member for Werriwa. There is a dire humanitarian situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The Congolese are very, very poor people who have suffered for a very long time and for many reasons that are beyond natural comprehension. Ever since decolonisation from the Belgian empire, the Congolese have been subject to catastrophe after catastrophe, which has resulted in suffering seen nowhere else in the world. Similarly with other conflict zones, such as Afghanistan, there is no central working government. As is the case with all countries in this situation, regional warlords and a fractured army control vast areas of land, exploit local inhabitants and trade illegally in extractive and contraband resources. Unfortunately, women and children are often the ones who suffer the most and the most heinous crimes, which are often rewarded and seldom brought to justice.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, the FDLR, have moved across the porous land border in the east and are committing the same crimes that they committed in the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Despite the army trying to integrate some of the militant units under the peace accord in March 2009, a number of the armed groups dropped out. This resulted in hundreds if not thousands of people being killed and gang raped as each warring party accused the local populations of supporting its enemies. One of these groups that splintered was the National Congress for the Defence of the People, the CNDP. An example of this was when at least 105 civilians were killed in the western Masisi territory, where former CNDP troops conducted operations against the FDLR and their allies. Another incident was in the Walikale territory in early August. FDLR troops and a local armed group, the Mai Mai Cheka, systematically gang raped at least 303 civilians in 13 villages. The perpetrators accused the villagers of supporting the CNDP.

These people are using rape and HIV-AIDS against entire villages. They not only are destroying the population now but also are ensuring that these villages will never, ever recover into the future. In a completely separate case the Lord’s Resistance Army, which is a Ugandan rebel group, spilled into the Democratic Republic of Congo from the north, where they now continue their brutal and inhumane campaign. An example of just one of the atrocities committed by the LRA was in 2009, when the LRA combatants clubbed to death at least 645 civilians and abducted 250 others in the remote Makombo area. The LRA have also carried out operations in the Bas-Uele district, where children were deliberately targeted in widespread abductions and forced by the militant group to serve as child soldiers.

The rate of sexual violence in the DRC is one of the highest in the world. Over 15,000 cases of sexual violence were reported in 2009 and over 7,500 cases in the first six months of 2010. What is really tragic is that most of the victims were under the age of 18 years. But however bleak and heart wrenching this outlook is, there is always a glimpse of hope. In 2009 the FDLR president and his deputies were arrested in Germany on a warrant by the International Criminal Court for war crimes committed by FDLR troops under their command. There were similar arrests in France.

These are very sad stories. There is no sign of improvement on the horizon for the Congolese, who have been suffering for a very long time. Nevertheless, we need to have hope. We need to have faith that there is good in people and that it will triumph over the evil that compels wicked people to commit such horrific acts. My thoughts and prayers go out to those people in the Democratic Republic of Congo who are now suffering. May they find peace.

Dick Adams (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The time allotted for this debate has expired. The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.