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Tension has again risen between the government in Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and the pro-Rwandan Rassemblement congolais pour la democratie (RCD-Goma) rebel movement, this time over the freedom of movement of Kinshasa's armed forces in territory controlled by RCD-Goma in order to disarm exiled Rwandan Hutu fighters.
An accord signed on Tuesday between the governments of DRC and Rwanda provides for the disarmament and repatriation of these combatants by the Kinshasa government, coinciding with the withdrawal of Rwandan troops from DRC territory.
"We will not let the government forces manoeuvre in the territory under our control unless it is done within the context of a national army that includes armed factions of all Congolese belligerents [RCD-Goma, Mouvement de liberation du Congo, and Kinshasa]," the RCD-Goma leader, Adolphe Onusumba, told IRIN on Thursday, in response to a Kinshasa government declaration that most of the Rwandan armed groups to be disarmed and repatriated were in RCD-Goma-controlled territory.
"The important thing is that the government has recognised for the first time since the beginning of the conflict that it has Interahamwe [Rwandan Hutu militias implicated in the 1994 Rwandan genocide of some 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and politically moderate ethnic Hutus] on its territory, and that it must disarm them and turn them over to Rwanda," Onusumba said.
"It's not our job to disarm them since the government recognised them as allies who fought on its side," he added.
While Rwanda has estimated that as many as 50,000 Interahamwe and members of the former Rwandan army (ex-FAR, also implicated in the 1994 genocide) are based in the DRC, the UN mission in the DRC has estimated their numbers as between 8,000 and 15,000.
"We gathered in Kamina all those [Interahamwe and ex-FAR] who were on our side, with the majority remaining in territory under the control of RCD-Goma and Rwanda," DRC Minister of Human Rights Ntumba Luaba said. An estimated 2,000 combatants have been demobilised and garrisoned at the Kamina military camp in the southeastern DRC province of Katanga.
Rwanda, which has fought alongside RCD-Goma during the past four years of war in the DRC, justifies its presence on Congolese territory by its need to pursue the Interahamwe and ex-FAR.
This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions
