The Economist - USA (2019-07-13)

TheEconomistJuly 13th 2019 43

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s he slipped out of consciousness,
Batsi Lokana watched the militiamen
who had attacked him slice off his mother’s
head. When he came to, her body was gone.
“Either they ate her, or they threw her into
the river,” he surmises from his hospital
bed in Bunia, the capital of the Democratic
Republic of Congo’s Ituri province. Given
Ituri’s history of gore, it is not a far-fetched
conclusion. The past two decades have
seen civil war, mass killings, systematic
gang-rape and a vile scramble for loot. For
some militias, cannibalism is just another
way to terrify one’s enemies.
Last month saw a reprise of the violence
as Ituri’s cattle-herding Hema and seed-
sowing Lendu ethnic groups again turned
on each other. Armed men emptied vil-
lages, burned down houses, hacked bits off
their occupants and ripped the fetus out of
at least one woman. A mass grave found in
the village of Tche contained 161 bodies, ba-
bies and small children among them.
At least 276 people have been killed, es-
timate activists in Bunia. Some 300,000
more have fled, aid workers reckon. Most
of the victims have been Hema. It was the
worst violence since late 2017 and early
2018, when scores were killed and hun-
dreds of thousands more fled before an

uneasy calm returned.

Outsiders often assume that the fight-

ing springs from ancient ethnic hatred. It

does not. True, the Hema and Lendu have

been at each other’s throats for some time.

But their enmity has been fostered, and

perhaps even brought into being, by out-

side forces. Belgian colonists favoured the

Hema, just as they did the Tutsi in neigh-

bouring Rwanda. Mobutu Sese Seko, Con-

go’s post-independence dictator, gave

plum posts to the Hema, who acquired

much of Ituri’s finest land. The more popu-

lous Lendu looked on resentfully.

Such tensions are easy to exploit. Hema

and Lendu militias have been armed in the

past by outsiders with an eye on the gold

that studs Ituri’s riverbeds and the oil be-

neath Lake Albert. Mr Lokana reckons that

the men who killed his mother were mem-

bers of codeco, a Lendu agricultural col-

lective established in the 1970s. Farming

support groups are not normally peopled

with killers. codeco, however, is long be-

lieved to have had a sideline in mysticism

and fetishism. Nursing land-related griev-

ances against the Hema, it is also accused

of radicalising and training Lendu fighters.

Hema representatives say that codeco

fighters have started much of the violence

(although some Lendus have been killed

too). Its fighters, some wearing hats with a

bullet dangling from them as a charm, have

been accused of ritually eating Hema flesh.

Many suspect that the group, which seems

to have petrol, weapons and ammunition

in abundance, is backed by one of Congo’s

meddlesome neighbours. The violence was

far from spontaneous, says Victor Ngona, a

Hema leader in Bunia. “This was planned.

You don’t just wake up one morning and

start cutting people up as if they are trees.”

Ituri was one of the bloodiest theatres of

the second Congo war of 1998-2003. Mili-

tias butchered at least 55,000 people. Much

of the violence can be blamed on the invad-

ing Rwandan and Ugandan armies. Both

countries used proxy militias to plunder

Congo’s mineral resources. Uganda backed

and armed Lendu militias. Rwanda threw

its weight behind the Union of Congolese

Violence in Congo

Ituri’s injuries

BUNIA
Killings in Congo’s northeast spark fears of a return to war

CONGO

RWANDA

UGANDA

SOUTH SUDAN

1,494

136

Bunia

Tc h e

Ituri

North

Kivu

Kigali

Kampala

Lake

Victoria

Lake

Albert

200 km

Ebola deaths, 2018-19*

Source: WHO *To July 7th

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