Children flee, fight amid DRC’s growing Kasai violence At least 36 Burundian refugees killed during clashes
SECURITY forces in the Democratic Republic of Congo have killed at least 36 Burundian refugees during clashes over plans to send some of them home.
Maman Sidikou, the head of MONUSCO, the UN’s peacekeeping mission in the country, said in a statement on Saturday that at least 36 refugees had been reported killed and more than 100 injured.
He called for a swift investigation and urged Congo’s security forces to use force as a last resort only.
Josue Boji, a Democratic Republic of Congo interior ministry official, said troops had tried to disperse the refugees by “firing in the air but were overwhelmed” when the group responded by throwing stones during Friday’s confrontation.
Police and soldiers opened fire as the refugees protested over the resettlement plan and tried to free some of their
DAKAR — Democratic Republic of Congo’s Kasai region is the latest deadly hotspot in the vast central African country that has had violent rebellions for decades. Once again, children are among the most vulnerable victims.
Well over 1 million people have fled the fighting that began a year ago when DRC’smilitary killed the regional tribal leader of the Kamwina Nsapu militia. More than 3 300 people in the region have died, according to estimates by the Catholic church. The United Nations has counted more than 80 mass graves.
Across the once-peaceful region, children are forced to take up weapons, either recruited by militias or to defend their homes. Children make up more than half of the displaced people, said Yvon Edoumou, arrested compatriots in the town of Kamanyola in eastern Congo, sources said.
Activist Wendo Joel said the refugees had seized a weapon and killed a soldier, though that account was not confirmed by other sources. A Burundian refugee said: “I saw people falling down, men, women and children who were completely unarmed.” Al Jazeera was unable to independently verify the death toll. A local army spokesman, Dieudonne Kasereka, told Reuters there had been clashes between soldiers and refugees armed with knives and machetes, but that he did not know if there were any deaths.
The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) also called for an investigation of “this tragic incident,” saying in a statement that it was “in shock and saddened”.
spokesperson for the UN humanitarian office in DRC. “We see families who say they are fleeing because militias were going into their villages, and most of the time we have one mother and two to four young kids, even toddlers and babies in their arms,” Edoumou said. “The men are almost nowhere to be seen. So children are taking a very heavy toll from all this violence.”
Children in the Kasai region are being forced to endure horrific ordeals such as abuse and recruitment into militia groups, the UN children’s agency says, with more than 850 000 left without basic services. One 12-year-old told the agency he escaped from a militia group where he was a combatant. Now in a UN-backed safe house, he is trying to deal with the trauma. “I was given things to swallow.
UNHCR spokesman Andreas Kirchhof said that the “circumstances are not clear”. He added that teams have been sent to the area, including medical staff to treat those injured.
Burundian Foreign Minister, Alain-Aime Nyamitwe, on Twitter described the incident as a “shooting” and said “explanations are needed”.
Jason Stearns, of the Congo Research Group, told Al Jazeera that while it is still very difficult to know what happened, the context is important.
“The Congo has not only harboured many refugees, but many people that the Burundian government has deemed to be its opponents,” Stearns said.
“The Burundian government, along with the Congolese government have, at least in the past, targeted those opposition members”. — AFP.
Afterwards, they took a machete and hit me three times on the chest. Next they gave me plastic bags to swallow, saying that if I concentrate on something, I can become it,” he said. “After that, they hurt me all over to show that even if I am attacked, I can’t be hurt. In the end, they gave me a knife and stick to go and fight.”
He said he decided to leave “because promises weren’t kept. Also, lots of people had been killed.”
The boy wants to return to his family and go to school but faces the risk of stigma and violent reprisals. About 440 000 children in the Kasai region could not complete their schooling last year, largely due to the violence and insecurity, Unicef says. It has launched a campaign to get 150 000 children back into school. Another boy, 16-year-old Edouard, was taking exams when the fighting reached his hometown. His school is among the 400 that Unicef says have been attacked.
“There was the noise of gunfire. We had never experienced that in our lives. When we heard it for the first time, we were scared and we ran,” he told the agency. He said he lived in the forest with his family, surviving on leaves and edible roots.
With so many lives affected, the UN and other humanitarian organizations have been trying to gain a footing in the remote and impoverished Kasai region. And security concerns soared after the murder of two UN experts in March.
The biggest needs are water, food and medicine, particularly for children, Edoumou said. But funding is low. A $64.5 million UN request for support is not even halfway funded, he said.
Both Congolese and the international community are watching in dismay as the initial fighting between government forces and militias has shifted and made the region even more precarious.
“It has evolved into fighting between communities who up until months ago had been living together in a peaceful way,” Edoumou said.
Communities, including children, have turned to defending their homes and whatever ethnic rights their area demands, he said.
The UN’s human rights office has warned of ethnic cleansing and urged DRC’s government to prevent further violence in the Kasai region, which has been a stronghold of opposition to President Joseph Kabila’s administration. Security forces have been known to back local leaders seen as loyal to Kabila, while militia groups have supported those believed to back the opposition.
Congo’s long-delayed presidential elections contribute to the tensions. Though voter registration finally began this week for millions in the Kasai region, the electoral commission says the work won’t be completed until next year — defying an agreement with the opposition that called for a vote by the end of 2017.