[5] According to Roberto Garretón, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Congo, "The tactic [consisted] of laying siege to camps before attacking them, [...] summoning the inhabitants of predominantly Hutu towns to meetings in schools or churches, so as to massacre them; issuing appeals over the official radio stations urging all those hiding in the forests to come out for medical care and food aid, so as to murder them; and hampering or opposing humanitarian operations in the camps".

[3] Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights's DRC Mapping Exercise Report listed incidents of women who were raped before being killed, e.g. in the course of the refugee massacres at Hombo in December 1996.

[3] On a number of occasions, attacking forces made it impossible to get humanitarian aid to starving, exhausted and sick refugees, either by blocking access to them or by relocating them out of the reach of assistance, thus depriving them of resources essential to their survival.

The total number of refugees who died of hunger, exhaustion or disease in this part of South Kivu is impossible to establish but is probably in the region of several hundred, or even several thousand".

"Efforts in both of these areas-cleanups and intimidation intensified since April 1997, paralleling an increase in allegations of massacres and the arrival in the region on four occasions of United Nations investigative teams.

An example is of the 30 October 1996 killing of 350 Hutu Congolese by AFDL units with blows of hammers to the head in Rutshuru town centre, close to the ANP house.

"In the days leading up to the massacres, the soldiers had appealed to civilians who had fled the village of Kiringa, one kilometre from Rutshuru, to return home to attend a large public meeting on 30 October.

• "At the time of the incidents covered by this report, the Hutu population in Zaïre, including refugees from Rwanda and Burundi, constituted an ethnic group within the meaning of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide of 1948" (OHCHR, 2010, p. 280).

[3] • The extensive use of edged weapons (primarily hammers) and the systematic nature of the massacres of survivors (children, women, the elderly and the sick, undernourished) after the camps had been taken indicate that the numerous deaths cannot be attributed to the hazards of war or to collateral damage.

Numerous serious attacks on the physical or mental integrity of members of the group were committed, with a very high number of Hutus shot, raped, burnt or beaten".

The humanitarian assistance intended for Hutu refugees was deliberately blocked by the Rwandan army, particularly in the Orientale province, thus depriving them of resources essential to their survival (OHCHR, 2010).

[17] The DRC Mapping Exercise report team noted that "The question of whether the numerous serious acts of violence committed against the Hutus (refugees and others) constitute crimes of genocide has attracted a significant degree of comment and to date remains unresolved.