CYAMINUNU: They come in single file, a line of ragged gunmen, slapping 30 pairs of black gumboots down the orange forest-track. Without pausing, the lead man unshoulders his rifle and swings left. The next turns right. The rest follow suit; covering every hut and shadow of Cyaminunu, a tiny village in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), with a precision unknown in Africa’s bedlam wars.
The village’s traditional warriors — until now, a raucous gang of drunks — gape in silence, then slope self-consciously away. Not for them this meeting with the fugitive remnants of Rwanda’s genocidal ‘Interahamwe’ Hutu militia: murderers of 800,000 innocents, Tutsis and Hutu moderates, in 100 blood-filled days in 1994.
Last to arrive, the Hutu leaders: six middle-aged men, in the same black wellies and a show of civilian garb. One is clearly in charge. Slight and smartly dressed, he presents himself as Jean Gubosisse, a civilian representative of the Democratic Force for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), the Interahamwe’s reincarnation, which is almost certainly a lie. Villagers say that he is Major Hagai, commander of around 1,000 Hutu militiamen hiding in the rainforest around Cyaminunu. Most of them could not have taken part in Rwanda’s genocide because they are children. But to look into the gaunt face of ‘Gubosisse’ is to wonder what role he played.
This meeting is the first between the UN and the leaders of an estimated 15,000 FDLR fighters haunting eastern Congo, where they fled from the Tutsi army that ended the genocide. Its aim is to persuade them to give up their guns and go home. And for this there is a desperate need, as revealed by another terrible statistic last week.
According to the estimate of the International Rescue Committee, a US charity, four and a half years of war in Congo have cost up to 4.7 million lives — the heaviest death toll in any conflict since the Second World War. And the Hutus are its main cause.
Congo’s war began when Rwanda’s Tutsi government invaded to hunt the Hutus down. The invasion sparked a regional war, which at one time saw nine national armies fighting on Congo’s soil. Most have now withdrawn. But while the Hutus remain in Congo, so — Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame suggests — will Rwanda. Within Rwanda’s vast area of occupation — held principally through its murderous rebel proxies — the killing rages on.
In the genocide’s aftermath, according to Human Rights Watch, Kagame’s Tutsi rebels slaughtered about 150,000 Hutus in Rwanda, and several hundred thousand more in Congo. Most were civilians. Western donors, who supply 70 per cent of Rwanda’s budget, barely murmured. Nor do they baulk when he locks up his opponents — like the former Hutu Prime Minister, Pasteur Bizimungu, another hero of the struggle to end genocide. It is partly because of this that Hutu children still follow men like Gubosisse.
In the UN’s Lubero repatriation camp, 500 kms north, another deserter tells a tale. “Our commanders tell us they are murdering Hutus in Rwanda,” said Dukuzumurenyi Jouibne. In Rwanda, he hopes to find his wife and four children, whom he has not seen since being pressganged by the FDLR in 1997.
Jouibne was one of the last Hutus to pass through Lubero. Shortly afterwards, Rwanda’s proxy rebels, the Rally for Congolese Democracy (RCD), attacked and scattered his militia, just as they were due to meet the UN. If Hutu leaders want to keep their fighters in Congo, so does Rwanda.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service.
