Newsreal: The graveyards of hope

In the area of the three villages where you spent six weeks, how many people do you estimate were massacred?

We don't know. Initially, the numbers seemed relatively small. But the more time I spent there, the more mass graves and bodies I was shown. I visited one mass grave in which around 30 bodies were still decomposing. At another site, there were 14 bodies. At another, eight bodies, and so on. The people who accompanied me told me that a lot of the bodies had disappeared. Many had been dragged off by animals or the people had thrown the bodies into rivers. This was typical of what happened along the road where the Rwandan army came across small groups of civilian refugees.

I also visited the remains of what had been a large refugee camp, housing about 4,000 people when the army came through. The camp was littered with clothing, equipment, sneakers -- the kind of articles refugees simply would never leave behind. It was also littered with bullet shells. According to nearby villagers, there had been a large-scale massacre there, but there were no bodies to be found. There wasn't a bone, nothing. The villagers told me the bodies had been thrown in the river which bordered the site. In terms of what I could personally verify, I would say hundreds were killed around these three villages. According to the testimony of local villagers, the number was in the thousands.

Which is one reason why the U.N. wanted inspectors to go in -- to determine just what happened and how many died. But Kabila refused.

He completely refused to allow the U.N. in, except under his conditions. He wanted the head of the mission be changed. He didn't like the first report on the subject, written in late March by Special U.N. Rapporteur Roberto Garreton from Chile, which said there was a high likelihood of large-scale massacres committed in the eastern Congo. Kabila also insisted that investigators go back before the war that brought him to power, all the way back to 1993, to examine the killings within the context of the Tutsi-Hutu ethnic conflict. I think that was a legitimate request.

And the U.N. did agree to change the head of the mission.

They caved in. It's a terrible precedent to set, allowing any dictator to tell the U.N. who it wants to conduct its investigations. I thought it was a major embarrassment to the U.N. But (U.N. Secretary-General) Kofi Annan thought he was being pragmatic. He said the U.N. needed answers; that it wasn't about who runs the mission but about getting the truth out.

How much truth has the mission been able to get out up to now?

Very little. Kabila let them go to the eastern Congo. But the problem there is that until very recently it had been a war zone. There was no security, and it was very difficult for the team to get out there and do its work. The other problem is that most of the massacre sites in the eastern Congo have been cleaned up. Kabila's soldiers and Rwandan troops already have gone in to the places where there were mass graves, exhumed the bodies and either burnt them or hidden them in other places. The U.N. team found very little.

Now, for the first time, they've gone to western Congo, beginning with Mbandaka on the Congo River. Are they likely to have any more success here?

In Mbandaka, there was a very well-documented massacre of as many as 1,000 people in broad daylight in front of all the residents. So there are many witnesses, everybody knows where the mass graves are. Journalists have visited them.

But five months have passed. Couldn't Kabila and his forces destroyed or removed much of the evidence in the region.

That's an important question because there are several mass grave sites in and around Mbandaka that are very well known. Have they been tampered with? That's what the U.N. team will find out.

What should the inspectors be looking for?

They have to look for forensic evidence -- bones -- and eyewitness testimony to corroborate the allegations, of course. But I don't think anyone doubts that massacres took place; it's generally accepted. What the team should really be looking for is to establish who was responsible, who ordered the killings, who let them happen. The point is that we shouldn't be doing a U.N. investigation just so we can get on with pumping in aid dollars. Unfortunately, that is the attitude of much of the diplomatic community -- that this is simply a hoop we have to jump through before we can get on with giving money to Kabila. The real issue should be: How do we avoid these horrible killings from happening again and again in the region?

How can U.N. inspectors do this?

They can't make recommendations for prosecuting those found responsible. But they can make those names known to Kofi Annan. Then it becomes his responsibility and the responsibility of the Security Council to take the measures necessary to hold these people responsible. That's what will prevent it from happening again. If that doesn't happen, we'll see the same thing happening in Rwanda, Congo and the rest of the region within the next year.

So much depends on Kabila's cooperation. Do you think his recent concessions signify a genuine change of heart?

Not at all. I suspect he will do everything he can on the ground to make sure the mission doesn't get anywhere. I think the interference will be more subtle than before. There will be more tactically placed obstacles placed in the way -- security problems, for example. This isn't over by a long shot.

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