They escape horror, walking miles in the cold. This is the reality for a group of Congolese who fled after the massacre of civilians by the M23 rebel group.
They witnessed the horror in their village in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, and had to walk < strong>tens of kilometers under fear and coldto escape the massacre of civilians at the hands of the rebels of the M23 group.
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 arrived in the last days. Depending on the path they took, they traveled between 40 and 60 kilometers through the hills to reach this field called Mungote, after having escaped the November 29 massacre in his village of Kishishe and neighboring Bambo.
According to a preliminary UN investigation, at least 131 civilians were executed that day by the M23, a A predominantly Tutsi rebel group that in recent months has seized wide tracts of territory north of Goma, the capital of North Kivu province, in eastern DRC. The rebels are also accused of rape, kidnapping and lootingin acts of reprisal against the civilian population after an attack by armed groups mainly Hutu.
“The M23 rebels started shooting in all directions,” said Samuel, a very young man who He claims to have seen three relatives, including his older brother, James, and three other Kishishe residents, dead before his eyes.
“I made the decision to flee and it has taken me a week to reach Kitshanga on foot,&# 8221;, he declared.
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’ve seen nine dead & # 8221 ;, 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 added, surrounded by other women who also want to recount 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.
& # 8220; In the field, whoever has mercy on me gives me sweet potatoes & # 8221; , she says sadly. Eric is tormented by the image of his two nephews, Jacques and Musayi, who “came out of the house shouting ‘there are shots!”. “They were shot at the door and died instantly& #8221;, he recalled.
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 on the demobilization of its combatants.
According to those responsible for the Mungote camp, the site already houses more than “40,000 homes”, of which 4,000 have recently arrived. “Up to four families sleep in a cabin, men, women and children. People are dying”, declared Vumilia Peruse, vice president of the camp. “They arrive with nothing… The authorities must intervene as quickly as possible to avoid a catastrophe,” he warned.
“We thought that this war was between the military and that we would find ourselves on the sidelines,” commented Toby Kahunga , Chairman of the Bashali Village Cluster. “But they kill people,” this man is outraged, asking Rwandan President Paul Kagame to “remove the men 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.