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Tag: congo

  • Battles over safe Ebola burials complicate work in Congo

    A runaway hearse carrying an Ebola victim has become the latest example of sometimes violent community resistance complicating efforts to contain a Congo outbreak – and causing a worrying new rise in

    BENI, Congo (AP) — A runaway hearse carrying an Ebola victim has become the latest example of sometimes violent community resistance complicating efforts to contain a Congo outbreak – and causing a worrying new rise in cases.

    The deadly virus’ appearance for the first time in the far northeast has sparked fear. Suspected contacts of infected people have tried to slip away. Residents have assaulted health teams. The rate of new Ebola cases has more than doubled since the start of this month, experts say.

    Safe burials are particularly sensitive as some outraged family members reject the intervention of health workers in the deeply personal moment, even as they put their own lives at risk.

    On Wednesday, a wary peace was negotiated over the body of an Ebola victim, one of 95 deaths among 170 confirmed cases so far, Congo’s health ministry said. Her family demanded that an acquaintance drive the hearse, while they agreed to wear protective gear to carry the casket. A police vehicle would follow.

    On the way to the cemetery, however, the hearse peeled away “at full speed,” the ministry said. A violent confrontation followed with local youth once the hearse was found at the family’s own burial plot elsewhere. The procession eventually reached the cemetery by day’s end.

    The next day, with a better understanding of what was at stake, several family members appeared voluntarily at a hospital for Ebola vaccinations, the ministry said.

    “They swore no one had manipulated the corpse,” it added. Ebola spreads via bodily fluids of those infected, including the dead.

    The Beni community where the confrontation occurred is at the center of Ebola containment efforts. To the alarm of the World Health Organization and others, it is also where community resistance has been the most persistent – and where many of the new cases are found.

    So far, the Ebola work in Beni has been suspended twice since the outbreak was declared on Aug. 1. A “dead city” of mourning in response to a rebel attack caused the first. Wednesday’s violence caused the second. With each pause, crucial efforts to track thousands of possible Ebola contacts can slide, risking further infections.

    Defending themselves, Beni residents have pointed out the shock of having one of the world’s most notorious diseases appear along with strangers in biohazard suits who tell them how to say goodbye to loved ones killed by the virus.

    “Until now we didn’t know enough about Ebola and we felt marginalized when Red Cross agents came in and took the corpse and buried it without family members playing a role,” Beni resident Patrick Kyana, who said a friend lost his father to the virus, told The Associated Press. “It’s very difficult. Imagine that your son dies and someone refuses to let you assist in his burial. In Africa we respect death greatly.”

    Until recently many people in Beni didn’t believe that Ebola existed, thinking it was a government plot to further delay presidential elections, Kizito Hangi, president of Beni’s civil society, told the AP.

    Now the population has started to catch on and cooperate, Hangi said. “The problem was that the health workers all came from outside, but local specialists have been included to persuade and inform people in local languages.”

    The head of emergency Ebola operations with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, Jamie LeSueur, acknowledged the problem. In early October two Red Cross volunteers were severely injured in an attack during safe burials in the community of Butemo. Another volunteer was injured in September by people throwing stones.

    “It raised a lot of questions for all of us. Where is the violence coming from?” he said. They have stepped up efforts to collaborate with communities and be clearer about messaging while working within cultural norms as best as possible.

    “Of course there are limitations,” LeSueur said. “Some people like to view the corpse as it is buried but with Ebola it is difficult to open up the body bag.” In the emotionally charged environment where families have lost loved ones, a misstep could quickly raise tensions.

    While Congo’s government is acting to give more protection to its own safe burial teams in Beni, LeSueur noted that the “militarization” of similar efforts in the far deadlier Ebola outbreak in West Africa a few years ago led some residents to hide or not report deaths from the virus.

    “I don’t think that will be the case in this event” but everyone remembers that lesson, he said.

    With its position of neutrality the Red Cross doesn’t use armed guards in any case, LeSueur added. “Community acceptance, that’s our security.”

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    Anna reported from Johannesburg.

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    Follow Africa news at https://twitter.com/AP_Africa

  • UN team reveals rebels, govt troops in Congo dedicated atrocities – The Globe and Mail

    Rebels and executive troops in Congo have devoted atrocities together with mass rape, cannibalism and the dismemberment of civilians, in step with testimony revealed on Tuesday via a crew of UN human rights mavens who stated the world must pay heed.

    The staff investigating a war within the Kasai area of Democratic Republic of Congo advised the UN Human Rights Council closing week that they suspected both sides have been responsible of struggle crimes and crimes in opposition to humanity.

    Their precise 126-page document catalogued gruesome attacks committed in the war, which erupted in late 2016, related to the Kamuina Nsapu and Bana Mura militias and Congo ’s military, the FARDC.

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    The testimony incorporated boys being compelled to rape their moms, little women being advised witchcraft may allow them to catch bullets, and girls compelled to choose gang-rape or loss of life.

    “What came about within the Kasai simply beggars description,” Congo ’s Human Rights Minister Marie-Ange Mushobekwa informed the Council.

    “One victim told us that during May 2017 she noticed a gaggle of Kamuina Nsapu militia, some of whom sported female genitals (clitorises and vaginas) as medals,” the document mentioned.

    “A Few witnesses recalled seeing people slicing up, cooking and consuming human flesh, including penises reduce from males who had been nonetheless alive and from corpses, particularly FARDC, and consuming human blood.”

    Lead investigator Bacre Waly Ndiaye informed the Council that during one incident, a minimum of 186 males and boys from a single village have been beheaded by way of Kamuina Nsapu, lots of whose participants were kids compelled to combat, unarmed or wielding sticks, and were sure that magic had made them invulnerable.

    Many such kid infantrymen have been killed whilst FARDC soldiers machine-gunned them indiscriminately, he mentioned.

    “The bodies were often buried in mass graves… or have been every now and then piled in vehicles by soldiers to be buried in other places.”

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    there have been first of all thought to be about 86 mass graves, however after investigating at the floor the group suspected there is also loads, he stated.

    A Congolese executive spokesman told Reuters that such data have to be handed to magistrates in Congo.

    “We were not aware of this and it is very curious. But it’s obviously a politically stimulated press marketing campaign that has nothing to do with justice,” he stated.

    Mushobekwa stated the government had given the professional staff its complete-hearted cooperation and wanted the reality to come out, however she said some of the findings have been “rather doubtful” because the investigation had been done briefly.

    “one thing is basically positive. Each part of regulation enforcement and safety forces that may be accountable for those crimes will resolution for his or her actions and will be severely punished,” she said.