SUMMARY
The Ituri province, a region in the north-eastern parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo (Zaire) has been a focus of fierce conflicts and violence targeting civilians. Most of the violence, perpetrated by a vast number of more or less organized groups, sprung from a land conflict between the Hema and Lendu ethnic groups, but evolved more and more into a regional conflict over resources. The Lendu is one of the largest ethnicities in Ituri, with a size of between 750 000 and 1 million people, whereas the Hema are remarkably smaller with a size of between 300 000 and 400 000 people.
Tensions between the Hema and Lendu can be led back to pre-colonial times, although they most of the time lived peacefully alongside each other. The first violence between the groups was reported already in 1880, although the oral history in the region often state 1911 as the first main clash between the groups. Under the Belgian colonizers the Hema were favored. They had access to higher positions and got better chances for education. The Lendu were mainly treated as a manual labor force. When the decolonization process started, the Hema minority remained in place as the elite, with at times even employing the Lendu as their servants. Tensions between the Hema and Lendu led to violent conflict in 1973, 1990 and 1997. The major conflict in Ituri started however in 1999. In that year, a commander of the Ugandan army, General James Kazini created a separate province of Ituri with Bunia as its capital. He then appointed a Hema as the province top-administrator triggering the violence.
The magnitude of violence after 1999 cannot be compared to the conflicts in earlier years. The different ethnicities in the province started to organize themselves, first into ethnic militias, then into rebel groups, allied to regional players in the main DR Congo intrastate war before splintering and forming new alliances across ethnicities. While the conflict over land and local power has been the prime reason for violence, the presence of gold and other minerals in Ituri has been the reason for the continuation of fighting. Ituri’s war officially ended with peace agreements in 2005 and 2006, but some armed group activity persisted most of it by groups just as opposed to the disarmament process.
In June 2003, the FNI, FRPI, and RCD-K-ML (Front Nationalist et Integrationist, Front for National Integration; Forces de Résistance Patriotique d’Ituri, Patriotic Force of Resistance in Ituri; Rassemblement Congolais pour la Démocratie-Mouvement de Libération, Congolese Rally for Democracy-Liberation Movement) attacked Kasenyi, a fishing town on the shores of Lake Albert in the Ituri region of the Democratic Republic of Congo (Zaire). The predominantly Lendu FNI and FRPI joined forces with the RCD-K-ML for this event.
Kasenyi hosted an important PUSIC (Parti pour lunité et la sauvegarde de lintégrité du Congo, Party for Unity and Safeguarding of the Integrity of Congo) military camp. The coalition of FNI, FRPI, and RCD-K-ML first dislodged all PUSIC forces in the town, and then continued attacking the civilians. The people living in the village mostly were internally displaced persons who belonged to the Hema ethnicity. The rebels killed over one hundred people, and kidnapped 20 people who needed to carry the property the militia had looted in the village. People kidnapped who could not do this were executed using a machete. Most victims were killed using guns or rifles. Furthermore, some victims were killed with edged weapons.
The FNI, FRPI, and RCD-K-ML coalition first became a one-sided actor in UCDP data in 2003, when the one-sided violence resulted in more than 25 civilian deaths. The threshold was reached in June of that year when the coalition attacked Kasenyi town, resulting in more than 25 deaths.
