15 08 13 Bloombnerg Congo Rebels Execute Human-Rights Worker in Katanga Province

     Armed men from the secessionist Kata
Katanga group forced
their way into the victim’s
house on Aug. 7 in Pweto territory
in eastern
Katanga before killing him, Scott Campbell, the
director of the UN’s joint human-rights office in
Congo, said by
e-mail yesterday. The UN wouldn’t
release the victim’s name or
organization for
security reasons, he said.
     “In the province of
Katanga, where we are witnessing a
resurgence of
violence against civilians as a result both of
attacks by Bakata Katanga and the lack of protection
offered by
the army, those who do speak out are
particularly exposed,”
Campbell said.
     The Kata Katanga group is one of several rebel
movements
fighting against the national army in
central Katanga. Its name
means “cut out Katanga”
in the Swahili language, while Bakata
Katanga means
“the people who cut out Katanga.” Almost 370,000
people have fled their homes in the province as of
July, mainly
because of the violence, according to
the UN’s Office for the
Coordination of
Humanitarian Affairs.
     The UN mission in Congo
said it was “gravely concerned by
the arbitrary
execution” of the activist and called on
Congolese
authorities to protect human-rights defenders and
their families, in a separate e-mailed statement
yesterday.
     In March, about 250 Kata Katanga
militants fought
government soldiers and police in
the provincial capital,
Lubumbashi, before
surrendering to the UN. At least 15 people
died in
the fighting, according to the government. The UN put
the death toll at about 35.
     Congo was the world’s eighth-largest producer of
copper
last year, almost all of which came from
Katanga.