Amnesty International’s mission ended with a week long visit to Goma and other areas of North Kivu, from where we were unable to provide a daily blog for security reasons. Our team met with local human rights activists, representatives of MONUC, UN agencies and a number of international humanitarian NGOs, and were able to gain further eyewitness testimony of recent killings and other human rights abuses.
We held detailed discussions about our human rights concerns with General Mayala, commander of the North Kivu military region, Laurent Nkunda, leader of the CNDP armed group, and representatives of PARECO / mayi-mayi armed groups. Despite at time vigorous exchanges, however, all these people denied that their forces had committed human rights abuses.
Andrew Philip, Amnesty International researcher, blogging from the field.
Back in Mbarara, after a strange sort of day.
We went back to Ishasha this morning. Yesterday many more people had arrived and the camp and the town were jam-packed with people.
Humanitarian agencies there are now overwhelmed, doing their best, trying to organize the evacuation of refugees to other places and refugee camps further inside Uganda where they can receive them.
Andrew Philip, Amnesty International researcher, blogging from the field.
Today we were at Ishasha, on the bridge over the river that divides the DRC and Uganda, and we saw hundreds of people crossing, probably over 5000. Today’s flux was unusual, according to an UNHCR official who told us they had never seen so many arrivals in one day since the end of October.
Fighting between the Mayi Mayi and the CNDP armed groups happened today in Nyamilima and Kinyandoni. People flee to get out of the DRC as soon as they can. Some are lucky and get accommodated in large tents, but today, thousands of people will sleep outside, many of them with no food and very little water remaining after the twenty kilometres they had to walk to make it to the border.
I came back from the demonstration in front of Mr. Brown’s office, at 10 Downing Street in London, in a good mood and with a utopian sense of hope.
There was a mix of powerful energy, clear demands, clocks, banners and a crowd of around 150 people backing up the demands that heads of the different organizations present and a Congolese youth activist made to the Prime Minister.
Livewire is the new home of blogs produced by Amnesty International's International Secretariat. It includes blogs from campaigning actions, from research missions, from high level meetings and events written by Amnesty International staff.
Amnesty International's new action-zine for human rights is available now. Click here to access features, appeals, information and easy actions.
Para información y artículos en español, ver La Revista
