The DRC has borders aplenty. A vast country with a relatively tiny corridor to the sea, it borders Angola, the Republic of the Congo, Zambia, the Central African Republic, Uganda, Sudan, Burundi and Rwanda. It's a country of just under 59 million people, with over 250 distinct ethnic groupings. It has been embroiled in civil war since 1997 and during that time about 4 million people died as a direct cause of war. Each of them had their own name, their own story, their own hopes, their own fears and their lives were every bit as important and real as yours and mine. For a while it seemed that the civil war was ending there, but on December 14
George Monbiot wrote that the Rwandan army had crossed into the North-Eastern DRC.
A more recent
report suggests that they have since retreated. Let's hope it's true.
Where you have wars, you have refugees and the DRC is no exception. According to the
World Refugee Survey 2004 the DRC has approximately 3.2 million people who have been internally displaced, some million of whom fled their homes in the last year. A further 440 000 have fled across international borders, mostly to surrounding countries. The World Refugee Survey 2004 reports that
Significant numbers of Congolese refugees lived in 13 African countries, including some 150,000 in Tanzania, 80,000 in Congo-Brazzaville (also known as the Republic of the Congo), 60,000 in Zambia, 41,000 in Burundi, 35,000 in Rwanda, 13,000 in Angola, 12,000 in Uganda, 10,000 in Central African Republic, 9,000 in South Africa, 5,000 in Zimbabwe, 4,000 in Cameroon, 4,000 in Mozambique, 3,000 in Malawi, and 1,000 each in Benin and Namibia. Nearly 11,000 Congolese were asylum seekers in Western countries.
The first observation I'd like to make about these figures is that the brunt of the burden associated with providing refuge for asylum seekers are falling squarely on the backs of those nations whose populations are the worst off. Tanzania, for example, has an infant mortality rate of 102.13/1000 live births ( C.I.A. Factbook ) The average life expectancy is just over 43 for men and 45 for women. GDP per capita is just U.S. $600 (adjusted for purchasing power parity). On the 2004 Human Development Index (HDI) Tanzania ranks 162nd out of 177 nations ( U.N. HDI 2004 ). And of the nations that have received Congolese refugees, it is not the worst off. On the 2004 HDI, Zambia ranks 164th, Burundi ranks 173rd, Angola ranks 166th, the Central African Republic, 169th, Malawi, 165th and Mozambique, 171st.
In 2004, large numbers of Congolese refugees have been forcibly returned to the DRC from Angola. Their passage has been extremely hazardous and accompanied by severe human rights violations. Amnesty International reported that Angolan security forces held returning refugees in transit camps, stealing any valuables, forcing them to submit to body cavity searches and frequently raping women and young girls. If these refugees were not destitute on leaving Angola, they are destitute when (or rather, if) they arrive in the DRC.
Here's my second observation:
Only 0.025% of all Congolese refugees are currently seeking asylum in the vastly wealthier `Western' countries.
All too often, they don't get a warm reception.
The Institute of Race Relations describes in detail what awaits Congolese deportees whose U.K.
asylum claims are rejected by the Home Office. It makes for grim reading. Returnees are imprisoned and interrogated as a threat to national security. Some are able to secure their release through bribes, but others are immured at Makala prison in Kinshasa. Some die there, of beatings, but also of starvation and disease.
(BTW, the U.K. is ranked 12th out of 177 nations on the HDI). According to the article, larger numbers of Congolese refugees are deported from Belgium (6th on HDI) and the Netherlands (5th on HDI), but the numbers being deported from the U.K. is likely to rise.
I have failed to find much recent information about the experiences of Congolese refugees in the United States (8th on the HDI). In the late 1990's however, the introduction of expedited asylum hearings resulted in some Congolese refugees almost being deported to their deaths. Here are two accounts from Human Rights First, formerly the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights.
· A Congolese man who fled to the United States to seek asylum was nearly returned from Boston's Logan International Airport on September 21, 1998. The man, who had been repeatedly detained, interrogated and beaten by the military in the Democratic Republic of Congo, arrived at the airport afraid and exhausted and was never told by INS officers that he could ask for protection. His deportation was averted after he broke down in tears when he realized that he was about to be put on a plane. After being detained for four months, he was granted asylum.
· Patrick Mkhizi escaped torture and imprisonment in the Democratic Republic of Congo to seek asylum in the United States, arriving in Philadelphia in May 1997. He was nearly deported under expedited removal after an INS asylum officer concluded--in an interview conducted without a translator--that because Mr. Mkhizi did not speak French, he was not from Congo. Mr. Mkhizi was denied the right to apply for asylum and taken to the airport in shackles for deportation. He escaped deportation because the pilot of the airplane on which he was placed refused to take off when Mr. Mkhizi protested in tears.
People subjected to torture are often emotionally traumatised by the experience. They may recount their experiences numbly or impassively. I wonder how many have had their asylum claims rejected and been subsequently deported because they could not emote to their judge's satisfaction?
3.8 million dead. 3.2 million internally displaced. 440 000 refugees, most of them fled to some of the poorest, most desperate countries in the world.
Empires cast long shadows.