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They witnessed the horror in their village in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, and had to walk tens of kilometers in fear and cold to escape the massacre of civilians at the hands of the M23 rebels.
An AFP team met Samuel, Tuyisenge, Eric, Florence and other survivors on Friday in a camp for displaced persons in the town of Kitshanga, in Masisi territory, where they had arrived in recent days. Depending on the path they took, they traveled between 40 and 60 kilometers through the hills to reach this camp called Mungote, having fled the massacre on November 29 in their village of Kishishe and neighboring Bambo.
According to a preliminary UN investigation, at least 131 civilians were executed that day by the M23, a predominantly Tutsi rebel group that has seized vast tracts of territory north of Goma, the capital of North Kivu province, in recent months. eastern DRC. The rebels are also accused of rape, kidnapping and looting in acts of retaliation against the civilian population after an attack by mainly Hutu armed groups.
“The M23 rebels started shooting in all directions,” says Samuel, a very young man who says he saw three relatives, including his older brother James, and three other Kishishe residents killed before his eyes. “I made the decision to flee and it has taken me a week to reach Kitshanga on foot,” he says.
Tuyisenge is a 30-year-old mother of a family. “I was in the church and I was able to escape. Some resisted and were killed. I have seen nine dead,” she says with tears in her eyes. “I have seven children, but I have arrived here with three. The other four have disappeared and I have no news of my husband,” she adds, surrounded by other women who also want to tell of the terror they have experienced. They have nothing and they arrived with just the clothes they were wearing when they fled.
– “They arrive with nothing” –
A little further away, in the middle of some displaced huts, Florence, 45, also walked for several days to reach the field. She also has no news of her husband or two of her children. “In the field, whoever takes pity on me gives me sweet potatoes,” she says sadly. Eric is tormented by the image of his two nephews, Jacques and Musayi, who “came out of the house screaming + there are shots +”. “They were shot at the door and died instantly,” he recalls.
Kitshanga has been hosting war displaced persons for years, some of whom arrived after a previous offensive by the M23. The movement occupied Goma for ten days at the end of 2012 before being defeated the following year by the Congolese army, backed by UN peacekeepers. At the end of last year, the M23 took up arms again, reproaching the Kinshasa government for not respecting its commitments regarding the demobilization of its combatants.
According to those responsible for the Mungote camp, the site already houses more than “40,000 households”, of which 4,000 have recently arrived. “Up to four families sleep in a cabin, men, women and children. People are dying,” says Vumilia Peruse, vice president of the camp. “They arrive with nothing… The authorities must intervene as quickly as possible to avoid a catastrophe,” she warns.
“We thought that this war was between the military and that we would find ourselves on the sidelines,” says Toby Kahunga, president of the Bashali village group. “But they kill people,” this man is indignant, asking Rwandan President Paul Kagame to “take the men away from him.” According to the DR Congo government, UN experts and Belgian and US diplomacy, Rwanda supports the M23.
Kigali refutes this and accuses Kinshasa of supporting the Hutu rebels implicated in some cases in the genocide of Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994.
