DRC: Year in Brief, Jan – June 2005 - A chronology of key events
NAIROBI, 9 January 2006 (IRIN) -
JANUARY
11 Jan 2005 - The UN Mission in the DRC, MONUC, announces that efforts to disarm combatants in the northeastern district of Ituri are now succeeding. It says by 11 Jan 2005, more than 2,000 ex-combatants had handed in their guns, and that arms and ammunition had been collected. [Full report]
12 Jan - South African President Thabo Mbeki arrives in Kinshasa in a bid to save the DRC’s transitional government from collapse. He holds talks with President Joseph Kabila and his four vice-presidents. One vice-president, Jean-Pierre Bemba, had threatened to pull his movement out if certain preconditions for elections were not met by 31 January. [Full report]
13 JAN: - Stone-throwing demonstrators burnt tyres and blocked Kinshasa's main streets to protest against the announcement that polls might have to be postponed beyond 30 June, as planned. [Full report]
13 Jan - Caritas International appeals for US $900,000 to help resettle thousands of people displaced by renewed fighting in the eastern DRC. MONUC estimates that 150,000 people in Kanyabayonga and other towns in the province of North Kivu, were displaced in December 2004 after units of the Congolese army fought each other. [Full report]
18 Jan - People in army uniform loot the Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) facility in Kabati, North Kivu, forcing it to suspend its activities. The raiders take money, communication equipment and a vehicle. Kabati had been used as a base to help some 100,000 people in the districts of Masisi and Rutshuru. [Full report]
19 Jan - UNHCR announces that out of more than 10,000 refugees from the DRC who escaped fighting by crossing into Uganda's southwestern Kanungu District, at least 7,000 have returned home. [Full report]
26 Jan - Armed militiamen burnt down the village of She in Ituri District, Orientale province, forcing at least 1,500 residents to flee to nearby localities. She, is 60 km northeast of Bunia, the main town in Ituri. The Union des Patriotes Congolais headed by Thomas Lubanga, and the Front des Nationalistes Integrationnistes, accuse each other of the attack. [Full report]
FEBRUARY
1 Feb 2005 - The spokeswoman for the UN peacekeeping mission in Ituri, Rachel Eklou, announces that some 2,500 half-naked people have so far returned to their ruined homes in She, one week after militias burnt down the village. [Full report]
21 Feb - Twenty small-scale miners die and scores are missing following the collapse of a mine at Kapangla, a village in the south-central province of Kasai Occidental.
25 Feb - Militiamen in Ituri kill nine Bangladeshi UN peacekeepers in Kafe village. [Full report]
MARCH
9 March 2005 - The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reports that at least 88,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Ituri are again receiving relief aid. Humanitarian actors resume aid to Kakwa, Tché and Gina IDP sites after they suspended services following the killing of nine Bangladeshi UN peacekeepers on 25 February. [Full report]
13 March - The head of the UN Mission in the DRC, William Swing, gives Ituri militiamen a two-week ultimatum to disarm and be integrated into the country's national army. [Full report]
16 March - In their ongoing Operation Cordon and Search, some 500 UN troops from Bangladesh, Pakistan, Morocco, Nepal and South Africa seize guns and ammunitions in Ituri. Elements of the rebel Front des nationalistes et integrationniste (FNI) are suspected of being based in the territory. [Full report]
20 March - Union des patriotes Congolais leader Thomas Lubanga is arrested. His arrest and those earlier in March of other Ituri militia leaders, follows the killing on 25 February of nine Bangladeshi UN soldiers. [Full report]
20 March - Some 550 former combatants surrender guns in Ituri in a disarmament effort targeting 4,000 militiamen, the largest number so far. [Full report]
24 March - A new UN report says efforts to stop UN peacekeepers in DRC from sexually abusing the local population have not been effective. The report, by Prince Zeid Ra'ad Zeid Al-Hussein, Jordan's permanent representative to the UN, recommends establishing better mechanisms to investigate sexual abuse cases.[Full report]
APRIL
1 April 2005 - MONUC's deadline to Ituri militias to hand in their guns expires at midnight.
[DRC: Interview with Gen Jean-Francois Collot D'Escury, head of UN mission in Kinshasa]
2 April - Fighting erupts between government troops and Rwandan Hutu militias, known as Interahamwe, at a village 150 km north of North Kivu’s capital, Goma. [Full report]
6 April - An officer in charge of special investigations in MONUC, Sonia Bakar, says nine women were killed and 5,300 civilians displaced in the southwestern province of Katanga following fighting on 17 March in Konga village, 446 km northwest of Lumbumbashi. The fighting was between government troops and Mayi-Mayi militias. [Full report]
11 April - The International Court of Justice at The Hague, the Netherlands, begins hearing a case brought by the DRC, accusing its neighbour, Uganda, of invading its territory and committing human rights violations. [Full report]
9 April - Judicial authorities, backed by UN peacekeepers, arrest in Bunia, Kahwa Panga Mandro, the leader of a coalition of militias known as the Parti pour l'unité et sauvegarde d'intégrité du Congo, or PUSIC. He is accused of murder, arson and misuse of public funds. [Full report]
13 April - The Union des Patriotes Congolais, one of the major militia groups in the country's northeast, announces an end to its insurrection in Ituri. [Full report]
13 April - The remaining 416 militiamen of the Forces armees du peuple congolais (FAPC) surrender their guns to UN troops in Mount Awa, 25 km from Aru, northern Ituri, effectively dismantling the movement. [Full report]
18 April - The UN Security Council extends an embargo on arms and military financing in the DRC to include a travel ban on violators and the freezing of their assets. [Full report]
19 April - The army announces that two more battalions of government troops have arrived in Bunia, Ituri district, ahead of their deployment to formerly militia-occupied territories of Mahagi and Aru. [Full report]
MAY
9 May 2005 - South Africa's Defence Ministry announces the deployment of a company of reservists outside the country, for the first time, to replace regular troops on a peacekeeping mission in the DRC. [Full report]
6 May - At least 30 civilians and military personnel suspected of plotting secession for the province of Katanga are arrested. Among the detainees is Andre Tshombe, son of former Congolese Prime Minister Moise Tshombe, who led Katanga's secessionist war in the 1960s. [Full report]
11 May - The leader of thousands of Rwandan Hutu militiamen based in eastern DRC, Ignace Murwanashyaka, arrives in Bukavu a month-and-a-half after he signed a declaration vowing to end the armed struggle against the government of Rwanda. He met FDLR combatants and made them aware of the declaration. [Full report]
12 May - A UN peacekeeper is shot dead and six others are wounded when an armed group ambushes a convoy carrying 40 UN Bangladeshi troops in Ituri. [Full report]
12 May - National Electoral Commission Chairman Apollinaire Malumalu announces that the Belgian company, Zetes Pass, has been picked to organise the identification and registration of voters. [Full report]
17 May - Police impose a curfew in Mbuji-Mayi, a major mining town in Kasai Oriental province, following violent demonstrations against the extension of a transitional period designed to return the country to democracy. [Full report]
17 May - UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan names a five-member panel of experts to monitor an arms embargo the UN has imposed against the DRC. The panel's mandate expires on 31 July. Panelists are Ibra Deguène Ka, from Senegal, the panel's chairman; Kathi Lynn Austin from the US; Abdoulaye Cissoko from Mali; Jean Luc Gallet from France. [Full report]
18 May - Rwandan Hutu rebels are responsible for hundreds of summary executions, rapes, beatings and hostage-taking of Congolese civilians in the territory of Walungu, South Kivu province, the UN Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo, MONUC, says in a report documenting the human rights. [Full report]
19 May - Some 1,600 IDPs begin their journey home along the River Congo, from Kinshasa, the nation's capital, to the provinces of Equateur and Orientale. [Full report]
24 May - Two militiamen are killed in fighting between local Mayi-Mayi militiamen recently integrated into the new national army, and members of the Presidential Guard in Kisangani, capital of Orientale. [Full report]
25 May - A Soviet-era Antonov 12 aircraft carrying 21 passengers and five crew, crashes in a remote bamboo forest in Walungu, South Kivu, killing everyone on board. The four-engine propeller aircraft belonged to Victoria Air, a local carrier. [Full report]
27 May - Rwandan President Paul Kagame says his government welcomes a recent conciliatory declaration by the FDLR in the DRC, but would not hold talks with it as a precondition for its disarmament and repatriation of its members.
30 May - OCHA announces that at least 6,000 civilians have fled Nindja, a village in Walungu, following an attack the previous week in which 19 civilians were killed and scores of others wounded and taken hostage by Rwandan Hutu rebels. [Full report]
31 May - UNHCR announces the repatriation of the last 263 Angolans in the refugee camp at Kisenge in the southern province of Katanga, ending a refugee programme that had run for more than 20 years. [Full report]
JUNE
1 June 2005 - Another brigade in the newly integrated army completes training and readies to deploy to the east of the country. [Full report]
3 June - The International Rescue Committee reports that some 7,400 civilians who in May fled violence by Rwandan Hutu rebels in the village of Nindja, South Kivu, are in urgent need of relief aid. The displaced take refuge in and around the town of Walungu. [Full report]
7 June - OCHA spokeswoman in the Congo Rachel Scott says at least 1,700 people have fled villages and towns in Kalemie, Katanga, following attacks by Mayi-Mayi militiamen. [Full report]
20 June - The National Electoral Commission launches its registration of 3.5 million voters in Kinshasa, marking the start of a nationwide registration campaign. [Full report]
24 June - The AU issues a report saying up to 45,000 of its peacekeepers could be needed to disarm an estimated 15,000 Rwanda Hutus based in eastern DRC. [Full report]
24 June - The EU special representative to Africa's Great Lakes region, Aldo Ajello, says the Union might support military action against the Rwandan Hutu rebels, if they refuse to disarm and return home. [Full report]
27 June - Experts on peace and security begin meeting in Nairobi to prepare documents that will constitute the Pact of Security, Stability and Development that heads of state of the region are to sign in November. The experts are from countries of the Great Lakes: Angola, Burundi, Central African Republic, Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Rwanda, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia. [Full report]
28 June - President Joseph Kabila tells diplomats in Kinshasa that he has ordered his army to begin disarming, immediately, thousands of foreign rebels in the east of Congo. [Full report]
30 June - At least seven protestors are killed and hundreds arrested in demonstrations in Kinshasa and other urban areas. The protests, called by the opposition l’Union pour la Democratie et le Progres Social (UDPS), are held to protest the delay in holding national elections. [Full report]
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