(Goma) Amid the chaos of the Kanyaruchinya camps in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, war-displaced people recount the rapes and injuries they suffered before and during their flight from areas now controlled by the M23 rebellion.
After four months of relative calm, fighting resumed on October 20 between M23 militiamen and the Congolese army.
The soldiers abandoned many positions to fall back about twenty kilometers from Goma, the capital of North Kivu, a city of more than a million inhabitants sitting on the border with Rwanda.
Furaha* is crying, wrapped in her loincloth dress. This 45-year-old mother remembers the day in May when the rebels took her daughter for two days before releasing her.
“She had refused advances from the militiamen. One night, while we were sleeping, they came in, took her away and raped her”. She is 15 years old.
In his hut of branches and patched up tarpaulin, Furaha continues his story.
A few weeks after her daughter was attacked, she and one of her friends were attacked while picking potatoes in a field in Nyesisi, a village under M23 control 35 kilometers north of Goma.
Since January, this town bordering Virunga Park has been attacked by the M23, then passed under their control. At least 30 Congolese soldiers, including a colonel, were killed in the first attack.
“Three men raped me, and six raped my friend. They were all in military uniform,” says Furaha.
Since then, her husband has repudiated her, she finds herself alone, displaced in a muddy camp of more than 70,000 people, with ten mouths to feed.
Also in Nyesisi, in June, “two men in Rwandan army uniform” raped Mwiza, 34. His ordeal ends when shots ring out, causing his attackers to flee.
Kinshasa accuses Rwanda of providing M23 with support that UN experts and US officials have also pointed out in recent months. Kigali disputes, accusing in return Kinshasa of collusion with the FDLR, Rwandan Hutu rebels established in DR Congo since the genocide of the Tutsi in 1994 in Rwanda.
Killed by the same bullet
“I ran away to go to Gisigari hospital,” Mwiza continues. On the spot, the doctors advised her not to speak about this story to her husband. “So that he doesn’t chase me away,” says the young woman, head down, fingering a rosary in one hand.
In the Kanyaruchinya camp, the doctor Didier Buindo protests. “All these crimes must be punished! He is a volunteer with the Goma Actif platform, a citizens’ initiative to help people displaced by war.
The Dr Buindo has cared for a dozen rape victims in November alone.
According to him, sexual attacks also take place in the IDP camps north of Goma: “Two girls aged 5 and 16 were raped in the Kahembe primary school camp, the oldest became pregnant”. .
It is not just the sexual violence suffered by residents fleeing Rutshuru territory.
Augustin, 32, limps because of pain. Despite the surgery he received at the International Committee of the Red Cross’ war-wounded care unit in Goma, he is still suffering.
“It was in August, I was returning from my field in Kibumba (30 km north of Goma) when the M23 fired on me,” he says. One of the bullets lodged in his left leg.
As for Mutoni, 22, a projectile struck her in the face, also in August. She now bears a scar. “An element of the M23 shot at me at close range,” says the young woman, who immediately fled her village of Kurigikeri, near Kibumba, to seek refuge in the camps on the outskirts of Goma.
Mutoni is a survivor. Her niece, whom she held in her arms, was killed instantly by the same bullet.
*All names of victims have been changed.