Growing human rights abuses by Angolan soldiers on migrant Congolese diamond miners may raise fresh questions about whether diamonds mined in border areas of Angola are actually conflict-free. The Angolans often commit the abuses before forcibly driving the miners back across the northern border of Angola into the Democratic Republic of Congo. Angola and DRC share the border near a diamond-rich Angolan province, Lunda Norte, where migrant Congolose miners have long worked.

Non-governmental organizations Human Rights Watch and Medecins Sans Frontieres, which is working in the border area, reported the abuses. According to people receiving treatment from MSF in DRC, Angolan forces encircled a remote mine in Kaninda in Lunda Norte for four days – leaving those inside with no food or water. Upon entering, the Angolan military separated families before subjecting them to an intrusive strip-search for money and diamonds. In addition to being tortured with fire and machetes, men were forced to perform sexual acts on soldiers while women were raped.

"We have information from people from at least five other diamond mining sites confirming that Kaninda is no exception. What is being allowed to happen is unacceptable," says Alain Decoux, head of the MSF Mission for the Democratic Republic of Congo. According to the MSF, many have spoken of the existence of prisons for miners at Kakanda and Lukapa. These establishments, surrounded by anti-personnel mines to prevent escape, are reported to contain between 1,000-2,000 people where, as elsewhere, women and children are separated from men. MSF says it has confirmed women are systematically called into small rooms where they are raped, even while pregnant.

In other reports given to the MSF team, Congolese civilians are used as human shields around several of the mines as the battle rages between the Angolan armed forces and the Tigers (ex-gendarmes originating from the Katanga region of DR Congo who run sections of the mines) for control of diamonds.

MSF has demanded the Angolan and Congolese governments guarantee the protection of the Congolese miners from violence and attend to their basic human needs. The group called upon other international actors to intervene as quickly as possible to put an end to this situation.

"Congolese migrants returning to the Democratic Republic of Congo describe the abuses and public humiliation they have endured in Angolan towns [in Lunda Norte], where Angolan soldiers searching for diamonds have forced them to undergo public strip searches," says Human Rights Watch.

Angolan authorities argue that they are repatriating Congolese and other workers involved in illegal mining. The expulsion has led to tensions in DRC between the routed Congolese miners and Angolan refugees who fled Angola during its civil war and are still in DRC. In what appeared to be a retaliatory attack last week, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees reported an angry crowd of returned Congolese migrants set fire to two houses at a site hosting 1,500 Angolan refugees at Napassa, in the southwestern DRC province of Bandundu.

by Peggy Jo Donahue