They escape the horror, walking miles in the cold. That is the reality of 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 tens of kilometers under fear and cold to escape the massacre of civilians at the hands of the rebels of the M23 group.
An AFP team met on Friday with Samuel, Tuyisenge, Eric, Florence and other survivors in a camp for displaced persons in the town of Kitshanga, in Masisi territory, where they arrived in recent 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 mainly Tutsi rebel group that seized in recent months vast tracts of territory north of Goma, the capital of the North Kivu province, in the eastern DRC. The rebels are also accused of rapes, kidnappings and looting in 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 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 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 have seen nine deaths, ”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 tell 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 countryside, Whoever has pity on me gives me sweet potatoes”he 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 on the spot,” 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, 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 households”, 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 field. “They arrive with nothing… The authorities must intervene as quickly as possible to avoid a catastrophe,” she warned.
“We thought that this war was between the military and that we would find ourselves on the sidelines,” said Toby Kahunga, president of the Bashali village group. “But they kill people”, this man is outraged, who asks the 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.