The FDLR terrorist group has killed at least 582 people just in the territory of Kalehe in South Kivu Province in DR Congo, according to a new report by a local non-profit organisation.
The atrocities were committed between 1997 and 2021, according to the report published on September 21 by Action de Recherche pour la Paix, le Développement et la Promotion Paysanne (ARPDP), which looked into conflict dynamics in South Kivu.
FDLR is a militia group that was created by remnants of the former Rwandan army and the Interahamwe militia who committed the Genocide against the Tutsi thirty years ago. For three decades, they have lived in DR Congo where they continued to plot their attack against Rwanda.
According to the report, the militia group that is sanctioned by the United Nations, was also responsible raping at least 142 women, injuring 211 other civilians and setting on fire 790 houses in the different parts of Kalehe.
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The organisation, which collected information from residents of Kalehe, documented damning abuses including gang rapes, the murder of men who refused to sleep with their wives in front of their children, and incidents of people who were burnt alive.
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The report also pointed to members of the FDLR in South Kivu, particularly in Butembo, who have changed the militia name to dissociate themselves from the atrocities.
"More than 500 people have been identified as killed by these Interahamwe in the Batembo territories who, today, have changed their name from FDLR to MCDPN (a strategy to disguise themselves),” reads part of the report.
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The FDLR has long operated in eastern DR Congo, where it has among other atrocities has been spreading hate speech and a genocide ideology.
It is part of a coalition of the Congolese army which is fighting the M23 rebels in North Kivu. Rwanda has for years asked the Congolese government to disarm the genocidal militia.
The report also points to the Wazalendo, the name given to Mai Mai Nyatura, FDLR and other groups in eastern DR Congo, which are fighting alongside the government army.
"Generally speaking,” the authors say, "the result of this study in the Kalehe territory reveals the following; there is an increase in insecurity in the territory linked to the presence of armed groups by each territory ... and this creates regular clashes between ethnic communities; the presence of FDLR elements allied with the Nyatura, an armed group made up of Congolese Hutu, is camouflaged in the Congolese communities and today bears the name Wazalendo.”
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The FDLR was founded in 2000. It was born out of the Army for the Liberation of Rwanda (ALIR), which had been listed by the United States government as a terrorist group.
Its former vice president Straton Musoni, who now lives in Rwanda after he was deported from Germany in 2022, admitted to the role of Congolese military and political leaders in the creation of the militia, which has been at the centre of the conflict in eastern DR Congo.
"FDLR was founded at a time when the Congolese government wanted to find a way to solve the problem of Rwandans in Congo,” Musoni said in an interview with The New Times in April 2023 during his rehabilitation at Mutobo Demobilisation and Reintegration Centre in Musanze District.
"[President Joseph] Kabila was behind the establishment of FDLR. The government of Congo supported it,” he said.
The FDLR has also posed a threat to Rwanda’s security over the last three decades. It has launched cross-border attacks on Rwanda.
Its integration into the Congolese army has led to diplomatic tensions between DR Congo and Rwanda.