PHOTOS: UN Genocide prevention chief hears ‘harrowing stories’ of Congolese refugees in Rwanda

The United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Special Advisor to UN Secretary-General on the Prevention of Genocide, Alice Wairimu Nderitu, on Tuesday, July 23, visited Nkamira Transit Centre, a camp housing hundreds of Congolese Tutsi refugees, in Rubavu District, Western Province. According to her office, Nderitu who met President-elect Paul Kagame, earlier on Monday, was briefed on the living conditions in refugee camps and talked with people housed in Nkamira, who are mostly from conflict zones in DR Congo, including North Kivu Province. ALSO READ: Who are the M23 rebels in DR Congo? She listened to their heartbreaking stories of violence and unimaginable hardships, her office said on X, formerly Twitter. I visited the Nkamira center housing Congolese Tutsi fleeing the DRC, yesterday. The harrowing stories I heard of identity-based attacks, brutal killings, tortures, rapes, I am carrying with me. They will be heard. We must urge action for peace & safety, and their return home. https://t.co/6M3yGItg22 pic.twitter.com/TiSd18iKee — Alice Wairimu Nderitu (@WairimuANderitu) July 24, 2024 By August last year, Rwanda had received more than 11,500 refugees from eastern DR Congo since 2022, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. The first cohort of Congolese refugees arrived in Rubavu District, Western Province in November 2022, when the conflict between the Congolese armed forces and M23 rebels - a Congolese rebel group fighting to protect persecuted communities in DR Congo - moved closer to the Rwandan border. “The harrowing stories I heard of identity-based attacks, brutal killings, tortures, rapes, I am carrying with me. They will be heard. We must urge action for peace & safety, and their return home,” Nderitu said on X, formerly Twitter. During her meeting with Kagame, on Monday, their discussions focused on her office’s work particularly combating genocide denial and hate speech in the region and beyond. Rwanda is home to more than 82,000 Congolese refugees sheltered in different camps including Nkamira Transit Centre in Rubavu District and Mahama Refugee Camp in Eastern Province. Congolese Tutsi communities in particular have been the target of hate speech and ethnically motivated violence as documented by the UN. As a result, most of them fled their communities to neighbouring countries. While in Kigali in April, Nderitu stressed that the Congolese government has the responsibility to protect the Tutsi and Banyamulenge communities who are targeted for their identity. In an exclusive interview with The New Times, Nderitu who was in Rwanda for the 30th commemoration of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, echoed her warning that there are risk factors for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity,” in eastern DR Congo. Nderitu’s office has documented the violence in eastern DR Congo, especially the persecution of the Tutsi communities who are targeted by groups like the FDLR, a Rwandan militia group linked to the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. The group was formed by remnants of the perpetrators of the 1994 genocide. In November 2022, she said the violence against the Congolese Tutsi and Banyamulenge communities was “a warning sign” in a region that had a history of genocide Bernard Maingain, a Belgian lawyer has, in the past, condemned hate speech in eastern DR Congo and called on the international community to put aside other interests and finance an effective justice system to deal with hate speech in the country, to no avail. The influx of Interahamwe militia and members of the former Rwandan army – the perpetrators of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda – into DR Congo in 1994 intensified their genocide ideology inside DR Congo, this time targeting the Congolese Tutsi. “The hate ideology has been there for years and it was amplified within the past months but in reality, the issue is that there was never a process to completely eradicate such ideology and we are seeing the consequences,” Maingain said in a televised show on the national broadcaster on December 27, 2022. ALSO READ: Belgian lawyer on why genocide ideology doesn’t dissolve three decades after dispersion of genocidaires The roots of the conflict, the persecution and violence against Kinyarwanda-speaking Tutsi communities, sometimes referred to as Banyamulenge – one of the Kinyarwanda-speaking groups in DR Congo – can be traced as far back as the early 1960s, when the vast country gained independence. Instead of addressing the root causes of insecurity in eastern DR Congo, the United Nations Security Council preferred to focus on the consequences of the Rwandan genocidal militia’s presence in eastern DR Congo. The nationality of the communities, which found themselves within the borders of Congo after the 1885 Berlin Conference, has been contentious. African leaders such as Tanzania’s former president late Julius Nyerere, and South Africa’s former President Thabo Mbeki, have spoken out on the issue of the Congolese Tutsi communities. ALSO READ: President Mbeki says DR Congo should implement Sun City agreement and disarm FDLR genocidal forces Among others, Mbeki said that the Congolese government must recognise that all the people of the DR Congo are all Congolese and it is a responsibility of the government “to protect all of them.” “The fundamental reason the M23 emerges, whoever is behind it, is because a section of the Congolese population in eastern Congo doesn’t feel protected,” said Mbeki, who traces the problem in the days of President Mobutu Sese Seko, who ruled the country, then called Zaire, from 1971 to 1997. Mbeki who served as the second president of South Africa from June 1999 to September 2008, noted that it was said since the days of Mobutu that Banyamulenge were not Congolese and that they were Rwandans.

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PHOTOS: UN Genocide prevention chief hears ‘harrowing stories’ of Congolese refugees in Rwanda