Human Rights Watch says on Tuesday (October 18th) that units of the DR Congo army fought the Tutsi rebels of the M23 in the east of the country alongside the armed group of Rwandan Hutu origin FDLR and Congolese militias involved in “serious abuses“.
Kinshasa accuses Kigali of actively supporting the M23, a former Tutsi rebellion which took up arms again at the end of last year and has occupied Bunagana, a Congolese town in North Kivu bordering Uganda for more than four months.
“Serious abuses”
Experts commissioned by the UN recently affirmed in a report, not published but consulted by AFP, that the Rwandan army had intervened in recent months in the east of the DRC, directly and in support of the M23. Rwanda denies and in return accuses the DRC – which also denies – of collusion with the FDLR (Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda), a movement of Rwandan Hutu rebels, some of whom were involved in the genocide of the Tutsi in 1994 in Rwanda.
Presented as a threat by Kigali, the existence and violence of this militia justified past Rwandan interventions in Congolese territory. During the recent fights against the M23, “Congolese national army units supported armed groups implicated in serious abuses“Assures HRW in a press release. “Between May and August 2022“, these units fought “alongside a coalition of Congolese militias as well as the FDLR», Specifies the organization for the defense of human rights.
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“Accountable”
“Congolese army units are again resorting to the discredited and damaging practice of using abusive armed groups as proxies“, declares in the press release Thomas Fessy, principal researcher for DR Congo at HRW. The Congolese government, he says,should put an end to this support which leads to military complicity in the abuses, identify the officers responsible and hold them accountable“.
Regarding the FDLR, the NGO says it has received “credible reports that members of the Congolese army” their “provided more than a dozen boxes of ammunition (…) to Kazaroho, one of their strongholds in the Virunga National Park, on July 21“.
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“Two months earlier, dozens of FDLR fighters“and another armed group”would have taken part in a vast counter-offensive with the regular army in the area of Rumangabo and Rugari“, also indicates HRW. The Congolese army had not yet reacted Tuesday at midday to this press release from HRW.