‘I’m a Civilian. I’m Innocent’: Who’s in Congo’s Mass Graves?<br />Mr. Ruphin, a shopkeeper originally from the neighboring Katanga region, which he fled a few years ago<br />because of violence, said soldiers had tried to dress him up as a Kamwina Nsapu militia member and get him to work as their informant.<br />Ruphin said that The Kamwina Nsapu and the government are just as bad as one another,<br />The slaughter in Nganza was part of a wider conflict<br />that has engulfed the Kasai, a region in the center of this vast country, where government forces are fighting a militia opposed to President Joseph Kabila.<br />The violence, rooted in political and economic grievances, was ignited last August when troops killed the group’s leader, a hereditary chief who went by the name<br />of Kamwina Nsapu (pronounced ka-MEE-na SA-poo) meaning "black ant." His followers, many of them children, retaliated, and the conflict spread like wildfire.<br />Ruphin said that If you carry an electoral card, the Kamwina Nsapu consider you on the side of the government,<br />The government cites violence in the Kasai as one reason not to hold a vote this year,<br />but critics accuse the president — who has already been in power for 16 years — of trying to buy time to allow him to change the Constitution and run for a third term.<br />Jose Maria Aranaz said that It’s the worst humanitarian and human rights crisis in a decade, when both sides have committed serious crimes,
