Former Rwandan rebels commence new life
eNCA - 1 hour ago
Africa Sunday 1 June 2014 - 11:42am

UN peacekeepers stand alongside local residents as they look at
members of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (DFLR)
rebel group boarding a bus to go to the UN cantonnement camp in
Kanyabayonga after a weapons surrender ceremony on May 30. Picture:
JEAN BAPTISTE BADHERA / AFP
KANYABAYONGA, DRC - In a huge hangar covered in white tarp, nearly a
hundred rebels from a group linked to the 1994 Rwandan genocide were
preparing Saturday for a new start.
Welcomed to the UN's camp in Kanyabayonga, in the east of the
Democratic Republic of Congo, with a bowl of gruel and a promise of
help to return home or claim asylum, the men handed over their guns
and weaponry.
Hutu members of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda
(FDLR), the rebels are remnants of a group accused of participating in
the killing of at least 800,000 ethnic Tutsis during the country's
genocide, according to the UN.
Some 20 years on from the massacres, 105 men, most of them young,
surrendered on Friday at a grammar school in the DRC's North Kivu
province.
By Saturday the group were at the UN's hillside camp north of
provincial capital, Goma, surrounded by corn fields and eucalyptus
trees.
For the first day, this is a good start, but more can be done.
"We arrived a bit late," Major Jean-Pierre Faustin Mugisha, one of the
commanders of the rebels, said. "We were put up, and in the morning,
given a bowl of gruel and something to drink. We have been well
received."
The delay was apparently to do with some last-minute details: the
rebels did not want to leave without their families.
"Our dependents should come as well," said Major Mugisha, a fighter in
his forties somewhat older than many in his group. "We are going to
fulfil (our commitments) but we want our families to join us."
After some negotiations, it was decided their wives and children would
join them on Sunday.
After so many years on the run, it was only a minor hold-up.
North Kivu governor Julien Paluku said Friday that the surrender was
the first step in a process which should be wound up "within 22 days",
with the ex-rebels given a choice to return to Rwanda or ask for
political asylum.
The UN mission in DRC (MONUSCO) has welcomed the rebels' surrender,
but cautioned that it would take time to see if the movement was
serious about disarming.
In the end, only 97 of the 105 men who had handed themselves in on
Friday boarded the lorries to take them to the UN camp, but it is
hoped that this will be just the "first wave" of defections.
"For the first day, this is a good start, but more can be done,"
General Abdallah Wafi, MONUSCO's number two, told AFP.
"We are encouraging the process and have mobilised all our [military
and logistic] resources but only coming days will tell us if the
process is credible and serious."
The FDLR -- whose fighters have been refugees in the east of the DRC
since 1994 -- is today much weakened, numbering 1,500 combatants
according to the United Nations, although Kigali gives a figure of
4,000.
The rebels are scattered across Kivu province, where they have been
accused of widespread violence and rights abuses.
Previous attempts to settle the FDLR problem have failed, but in April
the group said it wanted to "devote itself to the political struggle"
in Rwanda.
It said it had no intention of starting conflicts or creating
insecurity in Rwanda, but the government there has refused to enter
into any form of dialogue.
On Saturday, a spokesman for Joseph Kabila, the president of the DRC,
called the "voluntary disarmament" of the rebels a sign that the
country was "on the right track" in terms of tackling various
conflicts in the country.
Kabila, the spokesman said, now "wants to make up for time lost to
war, sedition and destruction".
Some locals say that of late, the FDLR have behaved better, living
"peacefully" and cohabiting with the local population.
Maskia Espe, who runs a restaurant in Kanyabayonga, says some of the
FDLR are "good", but he welcomed a sign that things might be changing.
"Congo is for the Congolese," he said. "We want them to get help to
return" to Rwanda.
Major Mugisha says he wants to go home, but he knows it is complicated.
"The return to Rwanda will depend on the government in Kigali. We want
to return, but with dignity. If the government in Rwanda commits to
real dialogue, we'll return without any problems, and unarmed," he
said. -AFP
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SIBOMANA Jean Bosco
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