DRC imports weapons for war crimes

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NEW YORK, June 12 (UPI) -- Amnesty International Tuesday called for an international treaty to limit weapons transfers to groups in the Democratic Republic of Congo to stem atrocities.

Amnesty said Congolese armed forces are using weapons from China, Egypt, France, South Africa, Ukraine and the United States to terrorize the country and called for a treaty to restrict the DRC's access to weapons and ammunition.

Such a treaty, which is to be the subject of negotiations at the United Nations next month, would require suppliers to perform a thorough risk assessment of each arms transfer to determine if the weapons will be used to violate human rights, Amnesty said in a release accompanying its report titled "If you resist, we'll shoot you."

Weapons sent to the DRC in recent years include tear gas, armored cars, artillery and mortars.

"I've taken Rumangabo two times," Laurent Nkunda, leader of the National Congress for the Defense of the People, which left 150 dead in Kiwanja after looting a military depot in Rumangabo, told Amnesty International in 2008. "We can't even count the number of weapons we capture at Rumangabo. There were so many."