Congo: Forest of the dead

Reporter Nima Elbagir and director Edward Watts have gone to the jungles of Nort East Congo, beginning in the town of Dungu. Aid agencies say that in the last few weeks alone, tens of thousands of people have fled their homes here. Nima speaks to some people in the road who are refugees and asks them what happened. the woman said that a group of armed men had come and attacked their village. They came into the village and set fire to it and abducted their children, which is why they have left to go to the next safe town. For the last 2 months there have been constant attacks on their village Duru and many more people are leaving because they're just too scared to stay out in the bush.

Nima and Edward joined the UN mission to the town of Duru. It had been under attack for the last 4 months and it was the first time anyone had gone out there. They went with 3 helicopter carriers of troops because no one knew what were going to find out there. When they landed, the town was deserted. Many of the huts had been knocked down and the catholic church had been looted. Villagers started coming out of the bush when they saw the soldiers. Nima asked one of them what had happened in the last attack. The man said just yesterday 3 people were killed. When asked who did it, they were told it was the Lord's Resistance Army, a gorup of notorious rebels from Uganda. The villagers say that they dont know why this is happening to them. In the beginning the LRA were just looting but then they started stealing their children, then buring their homes and then killing them.

Many people started gathering as word spread about the soldiers and people came to see if they could get aid. One lady was carrying her injured little girl, whose Dad was shot trying to run away with her and the bullet went through his body and into the baby. There is no nurse, the baby is sick and they find out it is unlikely the baby will survive the week. They were taken to a school which the LRA broke into during lesson time and abducted the children. They say nearly 100 were abducted from the class. They broke the windows and started passing the kids out through them.

Because of the dense rainforest, the group are invisible until they strike.

Dungu is the heart of a major military operation launched by Sudan, Uganda and the Congo, which have suffered the most since the LRA first emerged in 1987. So far they remiain undefeated but they have managed to rescue some abductees. They spoke to one 15 year old who was taken from the school in Duru. He was sent to a camp where he had to work in the fields and was recieving military training. A group of boys in his camp tried to escape but were caught and made to lie face down on the ground in front of the other abductees. One by one they had to hit the boys with a club on the head then pass the club along until they had beaten the boys to death. When she asked hin why he thought they were doing the things they were doing, he said that they were never told why they were fighting and if you asked you were beaten so they were questions you learnt not to ask. The LRA have always been notorious for their use of children as fighters. Aid groups estimate that up to 1000 children have been abducted in the Congo since last year.

They visit another village which aid groups were bringing medical supplies to. They are met by a group of men who have made rifles, machetes and spears in an attempt to have something to protect themselves with. Nima spoke to the catholic priest there, Father Maurice, about what had been happening. He said the first time the LRA came was 4 months ago and it was after that that they decided to arm themselves and fight. They were waiting for their deaths. He said that the LRA are trying to exterminate them but they weren't going to be forced off this land. There is no police presence and no government presence. The weapons were their last resort, even he the priest was carrying a knife in self-defence. They go to the huts where the victims in need of medical help are. One of the victims, an old man, was beaten on the head with clubs. Another young man was captured, tied to a tree, beaten with sticks and then they started hacking at him with machetes.

The military offensive has only splintered the LRA into smaller groups, making them harder to find. The countries have tried creating safe areas that are always protected but they are over stretched and under resourced.

So that Nima and Edward could go to another village where there had been attacks, they had to travel on motorbikes with a Congalese soldier and a patrol had been sent ahead because security was so unstable. The first thing they saw when they came in were graves where people had buried their loved ones. They spoke to a vilager, Sebastian, who had actually witnessed the massacre. He said the village had been attacked on Christmas day just after mass and they had just come out of the church to go to where they had prepared their christmas lunch when the LRA surrounded them. The villagers had been tied together and then marched into the bush. They were walked down a path to their death as the LRA started smashing their skulls. They massacred people, left their bodies dripping blood and then sat down and cooked their meals. While going down the path that the LRA had taken the villagers, the soldiers, Sebastian, Edward and Nima find a dead body. Sebastian realised that he knew the woman who had been killed, and that she had been pregnant. Her skull was collapsed in where she was clubbed to death. As they keep walking, they find more and more dead bodies.They were introduced to an old woman, who was the only survivor. She said they came in the afternoon, told the villagers all to lie down and then beat them on the head with clubs. She had been buried under a pile of dead bodies and laid there for a whole night, waiting until morning to crawl out. Her brother that she was visiting was killed during the attack.

Over Christmas and Boxing Day the LRA carried out a series of coordinated attacks across the North East of Congo. The death toll stands at nearly 1000 and new bodies are still being found.

Next Nima and Edward went to the Duru hospital to meet some of the victims. They met Elaina and her grandchildren. The LRA had killed the childrens mother, Elaina's daughter and hit the children on the head with wooden clubs and left them for dead. Elaina had been told that one of her grandchildren would never walk again.

They met a man who was trying to make a list of all of those that had died, so that they wouldnt be forgotten. There were many babies and pregnant women on the list. He said there are very few survivors as once the LRA have entered a village, you have to presume everyone is dead. When Nima asked him why he thought they were doing these things, he said he didnt know.

Nima and Edward flew to the north of Uganda, the birthplace of the LRA, to see if anyone could tell them why they were doing this and what it is they actually want. One of the old generals of the LRA, who had turned himself in years earlier, agreed to speak to them. He was abducted as a child by the LRA and fought with them for 18 years. Nima asked him why the way they are killing civilians is so horrifically violent and he said it was a campaign of terror designed to scare villagers into leaving so that the LRA could take over their territory. she asked him what they want and he said the LRA's leader Joseph Koni was fighting for his survival, to protect his life and existence. When asked how it can be stopped, he said the time for talking was over and the world had only one option: the military one.

Nima asked a village elder what he though the cost of the war has been for the people of Uganda. He said that they had watched their women raped, their children butchered, that the war had destroyed their people and that there were now more dead than living.

No one knows how long it will take for peace to come.

Image: Joseph Koni

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