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, authorities, and the UN.
According to rights organisations and the United Nations, Angola has deported hundreds of employees in recent months, reflecting earlier purges over the last 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 region and compiled an internal preliminary assessment on the situation, which journalists 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, and sometimes raped,” according to the study.
The study, which would have to be reviewed by a number of partner groups before it could be published, did not clearly name the culprits. A local doctor accused residents in Congo and Angolan security troops.
Simão Milagres, a spokeswoman for Angola’s migration office, acknowledged there had been an increase in expulsions in recent weeks but denied rapes and other abuses had happened.
“That’s not true,” he said. “I can assure you that there is no institutional attitude that promotes violence against migrants.”
Increase In Cases
The United Nations report does not specify the number of incidences of abuse. However, Victor Mikobi, a doctor who specialises in treating victims of sexual assault at a Kamako health center, claimed local clinics have registered 122 occurrences 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 added. He said that gang rape had resulted in medical consequences.
He believed that at least 14 rapes were perpetrated by Angolan security agents based on testimony from patients treated at his health institution. Hundreds more were committed by civilians in Congo, he said.
According to a Congolese immigration officer who spoke to journalists on the condition of anonymity because he is not permitted to speak to the media, authorities have discussed dozens of rapes on both sides of the border in meetings.
Dieudonne Pieme Tutokot, governor of the Kasai area in southern Congo, claimed he was aware of rapes and has launched an inquiry.
Search For Diamonds
The diamond-rich Lunda Norde area of Angola has long drawn thousands of migrant labourers from Congo’s remote, impoverished south. Many arrive illegally: according to a United Nations assessment, just 20% of deported workers had licences.
Fabien Sambussy, the director of the IOM’s Congo mission, told journalists that Kamako had become a “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, head of a collection of civil society groups in Kamako.
Milagres, the spokeswoman for Angola’s migration office, said that the crackdown on illegal labour occurred as the nation attempted to boost legitimate migration via an online visa application procedure.
Every few years, there are mass deportations from Angola to Congo. The greatest, 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 individuals were sexually abused during expulsions from Angola.
“We are witnessing this without being able to do anything due to a lack of resources,” stated a Congolese immigration official.
