The Congo needs more political initiatives from the EU to stabilize the country!

The Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV) called on Monday for more political initiatives from the European Union (EU) to ensure the stabilisation of the Congo. "If peace and stability in the Congo are to be secured for more than a short time the reform encouraged by the EU for the regular Congolese army must be properly carried through”, said the GfbV Africa expert, Ulrich Delius, on Monday. "Much more attention must then be paid to human rights. As long as these are not taken seriously by many Congolese soldiers the civilian population will have no chance of experiencing a sense of security and constitutional order.” With its constant raids the army is earning itself a bad name among the people, said Delius. In February 2006 Congolese soldiers took away many civilians, arbitrarily arresting, raping, torturing and shooting them, and plundering villages. More than 70 girls and women aged between 12 and 70 in the region of Itun in the east of the country were raped by regular soldiers in the past month. Civilians who were arbitrarily arrested have been kept for days in holes in the ground and systematically beaten. Thanks to the EU Advisory Mission for the support of the army reform (EUSEC) it has now been established that the regular army numbers not 340,000 soldiers, as was maintained in Kinshasa, but 100,000. Many generals had created a ghost army in order to obtain the pay for fictitious soldiers. The EU must decide before the end of March 2006 if the work of the Advisory Mission EUSEC, which has been in operation since May 2005, is to continue.