The report, compiled by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, is the first to document in details crimes that the Rwandan army has been accused of committing when it invaded the region in 1996. The Rwandan army was also the force behind the rebel AFDL movement led by Laurent Kabila, who became president in 1997 and renamed the country then called Zaire into the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The UN attempted to investigate these crimes when Laurent Desire Kabila was still president but he refused to give them access to the region where mass graves and other evidence of the atrocities had been found. Some of the atrocities were documented by the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Congo, Roberto Garretón, in a 1999.

The current report is the result of a mapping exercise and investigation that the UN says used over 1,200 witnesses, with at least two witnesses needed to corroborate every reported violation.

The report details atrocities against ethnic Hutu refugees who had fled into eastern Zaire after the Rwandan genocide in 1994.

“The systematic attacks, in particular killings and massacres perpetrated against members of the Hutu ethnic group, are described extensively in section I of the report. These attacks resulted in a very large number of victims, probably tens of thousands of members of the Hutu ethnic group, all nationalities combined,” the report says.

“The majority of the victims were children, women, elderly people and the sick, who posed no threat to the attacking forces. Numerous serious attacks on the physical or psychological integrity of members of the group were also committed, with a very high number of Hutus shot, raped, burnt or beaten.”

Excerpts of the leaked report were first published by the French daily Le Monde on Thursday last week. Excerpts of the report in English were published by the BBC. The full report is available in French on Congo Planete.

A report presented to the Sanctions Committee of the UN Security Council on Friday says that Rwandan authorities “have been complicit in the recruitment of soldiers, including children, have facilitated the supply of military equipment and have sent officers and units” from the Rwandan army to help warlord Laurent Nkunda.

Congolese authorities have always said that the eastern Congo rebels were being supplied in men and arms by Rwanda. After the rebels started their offensive this summer, the government presented documents found on rebels killed in combat that linked them to the Rwanda Defense Forces (RDF). The documents included RDF identity cards and mission orders from their commanders to report to Laurent Nkunda.

The report also says that Rwanda helped the rebels’ advance towards Goma in October with a barrage of artillery and mortar fire.

Even more damaging, the UN experts presented evidence of satellite phone calls between the office of Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame and Laurent Nkunda’s CNDP rebels.

The Financial Times is reporting that “In a blow to Kigali, Bert Koenders, the Dutch development minister, said his government would be suspending budgetary support to Rwanda as a result of the UN findings. The €3m ($4m, £2.7m) package is relatively small but the Dutch move is a sign of international impatience with neighbourhood meddling in Congo”.

Other governments and organizations may soon cut funding to the Rwandan government because of its support to Laurent Nkunda rebels, who have been accused for years of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity in eastern Congo.

On Thursday, US rights group Human Rights Watch released a report on how Laurent Nkunda’s rebels summarily executed an estimated 150 innocent civilians on November 4-5, 2008 in the town of Kiwanja.

More than 5,400,000 people have died in Congo since 1998, most of them in eastern Congo, because of wars launched by foreign-backed rebels. 45,000 are estimated to be dying each month. More than 1,000,000 innocent civilians are displaced today in eastern Congo because of Laurent Nkunda’s resources war.

The UN report also says that the rebels use the mines under their control to finance their rebellion. It cited warlord Laurent Nkunda’s control of the Bibatama mine of Columbite-Tantalite (Coltan), a mineral used worldwide to produce electronics components in cell phones, LCD screens, TVs and computers.

Many experts on the Great Lakes region have long discarded Laurent Nkunda’s claim of protecting the Tutsi minority in Congo as the real reason for his rebellion. They have accused the warlord of fighting a resources war instead, and using the presence of Rwandan Hutu militiamen (FDLR) in eastern Congo as a pretext.

This is not the first UN report to establish the link between mineral resources and the rebels in eastern Congo. A UN report released in 2002 accused Rwandan-backed rebels and the Rwandan army of mass-scale looting and exploitation of natural resources in eastern Congo.

If Tutsis are under attack in the Congo then there must be a widespread conspiracy not to report these attacks by the local media, the Rwandan media, the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Congo (MONUC), and the international media, at least for the last five years. The fact is that attacks against Congolese of all ethnic groups are a daily occurrence in the region. Laurent Nkunda’s troops are responsible for most of these attacks.

Not only have countless civilians lost their lives, hundreds of thousands of Congolese women have been raped by rebels and militiamen in an epidemic that has reached apocalyptic proportions. Tutsis have not been singled out for attacks. Congolese have certainly not attacked Tutsis in Congo. But, they are paying the high price of an unjust and immoral war imposed on them by the Rwandan government and its local agents.

One of the enduring mysteries of the conflict in eastern Congo is why have more than 5,400,000 innocent Congolese civilians had to die at no fault of their own. There are more than 300 ethnic groups in the Congo. Tutsi villages are mainly found in the two Kivu provinces. Tutsis are a small minority in North and South Kivu. Is one ethnic group superior to all other 300 ethnic groups present in the Congo? Should one ethnic group have special dispensations to entertain a war that continues to kill countless civilians, a war that continues to cause tens of thousands of women to be raped, and the displacement of more than 1,000,000 civilians?

Congolese did not invite and have never welcomed the Rwandan Hutu militiamen to their country. Much to the contrary, Congo has no interest and absolutely nothing to gain by their presence. Congolese citizens would like nothing more than to see all remaining Hutus go back to Rwanda. Paul Kagame wants them to stay in Congo. He has frustrated all attempts by the Congolese government and the international community to repatriate them back to their country. He failed to finish them off when he had tens of thousands of his troops occupying the region, before “withdrawing” some of them under international pressure in 2003 and leaving the job to Laurent Nkunda.

Some have bought into the pretext of an endangered Tutsi minority in Congo. They never fail to mention that Laurent Nkunda is supposedly fighting to protect “his people”. They have failed to question his true motives which are to occupy the mineral-rich North-Kivu province, pillage its resources, and act as a proxy army in eastern Congo for the Tutsi-led Rwandan government in Kigali. Kagame wants a foothold in eastern Congo so his country can continue to benefit from the pillaging and exporting of minerals such as Columbite-Tantalite (Coltan). Many experts on the region agree today that resources are the true reason why Laurent Nkunda continues to create chaos in the region with the help of Paul Kagame.

What’s shocking is that some in the media have no shame in calling and joking with the rebel leader in interviews while he continues to be the main reason why more than 1,000 people are dying per day in Congo, 600 of them children. These journalists should think twice before cozying up to a person that will go down in history as a war criminal and mass murderer alongside Radovan Karadzic and Adolph Hitler.

Laurent Nkunda is a war criminal. The Congolese government issued an international arrest warrant against him for war crimes in 2005. Human Rights Watch has been calling for his arrest for war crimes since February of 2006. He is on a UN Sanctions List for breaches of the UN arms embargo in the DRC. On October 31, 2006 U.S. President George W. Bush signed Executive Order 13413 freezing his assets for contributing to the conflict in the Congo.

Laurent Nkunda belongs in a prison cell at The Hague along with his acolyte Bosco Ntaganda, who is being sought under an unrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) and unsealed on April, 28 2008. Laurent Nkunda is also under investigation by the ICC. Many Congolese are wondering why there has not yet been an indictment of Laurent Nkunda while the court was quick to issue one against former Congolese vice-president Jean-Pierre Bemba for crimes that while equally important and indefensible, pale in comparison against those of Laurent Nkunda and his troops.

Laurent Nkunda’s boss Paul Kagame was indicted on November 17, 2006 by then French magistrate in charge of counter-terrorism affairs Jean-Louis Bruguière. He is accused in the indictment of ordering the attack on the plane carrying then Rwandan President, Juvenal Habyarimana and his counterpart Cyprien Ntaryamira of Burundi. Their deaths led to the genocide of an estimated 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus. Judge Fernando Andreou Merelles of the Spanish Central Instruction Court issued indictments against 40 senior officers of the Rwanda Defense Forces formerly of the Rwanda Patriotic Army for committing mass killings after the 1994 Rwanda Genocide. He said he also has evidence against Paul Kagame who only escaped indictment because he is a sitting president.