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Congolese drift back to war-weary Bunia

"When I heard on the radio that Bunia was calm again, I came back on my own to check things out before fetching my family."

Onda Tubaya, villager

Hundreds of residents of battle-scarred Bunia yesterday streamed back into the northeast Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) town, where security has greatly improved over the last few weeks, thanks in large part to the presence of a French-led EU force.

Most of the town's population, estimated at between 200,000 and 350,000, fled in early May with the onset of another round of inter-ethnic clashes.

Onda Tubaya, 28, carrying a mattress on his head, had walked some 35km from the village of Medu, to where he and his family had fled "because of the war."

"We were afraid of the explosions. We left without looking back," said Tubaya, one among a stream of people encountered by reporters on one of the roads leading into Bunia.

Luckily for them, this is the mango season, and many of the returning residents were enthusiastically feasting on nature's succulent windfall, while here and there small boys climbed the fruit trees to gather more.

Tubaya said he had sold all his other modest possessions -- clothes, shoes and kitchen utensils -- to pay for food for his family while in Medu, where thousands of other Bunia residents had also sought shelter.

"When I heard on the radio that Bunia was calm again, I came back on my own to check things out before fetching my family," he said.

A French soldier at one checkpoint said he had counted more than 700 civilians returning between 7am and 10am.

On another road into Bunia, Jeanette Bombali was walking with her eight children; her husband had been killed in the May fighting.

"There was not much food there, and so as soon as we heard that the French had secured the town, we packed up and came home," she said.

Whereas the clashes reduced Bunia to a virtual ghost town littered with corpses and roaming gunmen, much of its former urban buzz gradually returned following the deployment in early June of some 700 French troops with a UN mandate to secure the town and its airport and protect its population from inter-tribal violence.

Most shops, which were all looted, are still closed, but the streets are lined with traders in fruit, vegetables, charcoal and local currency.

Gunmen who were not pulled out by Bunia's dominant faction, the Union of Congolese Patriots, were obliged to leave when the EU force imposed a "no visible guns" rule last week.

Still, the town cannot yet be described as fully back to normal. Many of those coming back will find their front doors broken in and their houses looted of anything of value.

Several districts are still deserted, while thousands of people continue to live in makeshift camps under the protection of a separate UN mission.

And security is still a problem. A young man hired reporters as a translator and occasional reporter went missing early Thursday afternoon and has not been heard of since.

Meanwhile, European lawmaker Emma Bonino arrived in the DRC yesterday to ask President Joseph Kabila to pardon 30 people sentenced to death for the murder of his father, former president Laurent Kabila.

"I will ask the president to make a public commitment not to execute his father's assassins," Bonino told reporters shortly before an audience with the president in the capital Kinshasa.

Her request is part of a wider EU campaign against the death penalty, dubbed "hands off Cain," which has the support of 14 Nobel Prize winners including Desmond Tutu, she said.

In January, a now-dissolved military court handed down death sentences to 30 people convicted of planning and taking part in the assassination of president Laurent Kabila on January 16, 2001.

There is no appeal procedure against the verdicts, which only the president has the power to overturn.
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