Congolese women and children were raped and subjected to other atrocities during a large exodus of migrant workers from Angola to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, according to a doctor, officials, and the UN.
According to rights groups and the United Nations, Angola has deported hundreds of employees in recent months, reflecting earlier purges over the past 12 years during which atrocities also occurred.
The size of the latest exodus is unknown, but according to previously unreported figures from the United Nations’ migration agency, the International Organization for Migration (IOM), 12,000 workers have passed through one border crossing near the Congolese town of Kamako in the last six months.
Last month, United Nations personnel visited the area and compiled an internal preliminary report on the situation, which Reuters obtained.
“Girls and women are arrested wherever they are, without the necessary needs, detained and then separated from their children and husbands, subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment, sometimes raped,” the report said.
The report, which would have to be checked by various partner organisations before any possible publication, did not explicitly identify the perpetrators. A doctor working in the area blamed civilians in Congo and Angola security forces.
A spokesperson for Angola’s migration authority, Simão Milagres, said there had been an increase in expulsions in the past few weeks but denied that rapes and other abuses had occurred.
“That’s not true,” he said. “I can guarantee that there isn’t an institutional attitude promoting violence against migrants.”
RISE IN CASES
The United Nations report does not specify the number of incidences of abuse. However, Victor Mikobi, a doctor who specializes in treating victims of sexual violence at a Kamako health center, claimed local clinics had registered 122 cases of rape this year, which he described as unusual for the area.
“These are women or girls expelled from Angola, some of them under 10 years old, without any means of subsistence and very vulnerable to this type of violence,” he said. Instances of gang rape have caused medical complications, he said.
Based on accounts from patients treated at his health centre, he estimated that at least 14 rapes were committed by Angolan security forces. Dozens of others were committed by civilians in Congo, he said.
A Congolese immigration official who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity because he is not authorised to speak to the media said that in meetings officials had talked about dozens of rapes on both sides of the border.
The governor of Kasai region in southern Congo, Dieudonne Pieme Tutokot, said he was aware of instances of rape and had opened an investigation.
SEARCH FOR DIAMONDS
The diamond-rich Lunda Norde region of Angola has long drawn thousands of migrant workers from Congo’s isolated, impoverished south. Many arrive illegally: according to a United Nations assessment, only 20% of deported workers had licenses.
Fabien Sambussy, the head of the IOM’s Congo mission, told Reuters that Kamako had become an “open-air migrant camp.”
“The Congolese end up occupying whole villages in Angola, and the Angolans feel that they will disappear,” said Abbé Trudon Keshilemba, president of a coalition of civil society organizations in Kamako.
Milagres, the spokesperson for Angola’s migration authority, stated that the crackdown on illegal labor came as the country sought to boost legitimate migration through an online visa application process.
Every few years, there are mass deportations from Angola to Congo. The largest, in 2018, resulted in the dismissal of 330,000 people. Over the course of two months in 2010, the United Nations assessed that more than 650 people were sexually abused during expulsions from Angola.
“We are witnessing this without being able to do anything due to a lack of resources,” the Congolese immigration officer said.
