{"id":79959,"date":"2024-07-24T17:52:29","date_gmt":"2024-07-24T17:52:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/rwanda\/all-news\/un-genocide-prevention-chief-hears-harrowing-stories-of-congolese-refugees-in-rwanda"},"modified":"2024-07-24T18:06:28","modified_gmt":"2024-07-24T18:06:28","slug":"un-genocide-prevention-chief-hears-harrowing-stories-of-congolese-refugees-in-rwanda","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/rwanda\/policy\/un-genocide-prevention-chief-hears-harrowing-stories-of-congolese-refugees-in-rwanda","title":{"rendered":"UN Genocide prevention chief hears \u2018harrowing stories\u2019 of Congolese refugees in Rwanda"},"content":{"rendered":"

Africa-Press – Rwanda. <\/strong><\/span>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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

She listened to their heartbreaking stories of violence and unimaginable hardships, her office said on X, formerly Twitter.<\/p>\n

I visited the Nkamira center housing Congolese Tutsi fleeing the DRC, yesterday.<\/p>\n

The harrowing stories I heard of identity-based attacks, brutal killings, tortures, rapes, I am carrying with me.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe 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,\u201d Nderitu said on X, formerly Twitter.<\/p>\n

During her meeting with Kagame, on Monday, their discussions focused on her office\u2019s work particularly combating genocide denial and hate speech in the region and beyond.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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,\u201d in eastern DR Congo.<\/p>\n

Nderitu\u2019s 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 \u201ca warning sign\u201d in a region that had a history of genocide<\/p>\n

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 \u2013 the perpetrators of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda \u2013 into DR Congo in 1994 intensified their genocide ideology inside DR Congo, this time targeting the Congolese Tutsi.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe 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,\u201d Maingain said in a televised show on the national broadcaster on December 27, 2022.<\/p>\n

The roots of the conflict, the persecution and violence against Kinyarwanda-speaking Tutsi communities, sometimes referred to as Banyamulenge \u2013 one of the Kinyarwanda-speaking groups in DR Congo \u2013 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\u2019s presence in eastern DR Congo.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s former president late Julius Nyerere, and South Africa\u2019s former President Thabo Mbeki, have spoken out on the issue of the Congolese Tutsi communities.<\/p>\n

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 \u201cto protect all of them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fundamental reason the M23 emerges, whoever is behind it, is because a section of the Congolese population in eastern Congo doesn\u2019t feel protected,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n\r\n