Abducted — then sent to die in Congo’s war
Schoolboy who got lost in new city found himself press-ganged into army
JEAN-BAPTISTE Kalinda*, 17, was so distressed by the death of his mother after a long illness that his father sent him to live with his elder sister in Kigali. The Goma high-school student arrived in the Rwandan capital on Sunday August 4, and enrolled in a Congolese school. A fortnight later, he says, he was snatched from the street in broad daylight and press-ganged into the M23 rebel army.
“I remember it was a Tuesday afternoon. I was walking from my sister’s house into town when I got lost,” he says. Asking for directions was difficult, because he speaks Swahili, not the local language of Kinyarwanda.
“By chance I met two men who were speaking in Swahili, so I asked them for directions to the nearest police station. They said it was far away, but they would take me in their car to Amahoro Stadium, which was near my sister’s house.”
After walking for several blocks they arrived at the car. “Five other boys were there with their hands bound with cable ties. [The men] threatened me with knives and tied me up too.”
From there the youngsters were taken to Kanombe military camp near Kigali airport and put in a room with dozens of other captives. Later that night they were loaded onto two trucks and driven out of town, escorted by military vehicles. They left the main road, passed a military checkpoint and were transferred to fresh trucks. Their escort returned to Kigali and the young men were taken to another military camp. “There I saw soldiers wearing uniforms with the flag of Uganda,” Kalinda said.
After a couple of days the captives arrived at the M23 military camp at Rumangabo, 50km north of Goma.
“That evening they told us we would be trained as soldiers. From the beginning I felt very afraid. I saw four people trying to escape and they shot them, saying to us: ‘This should serve as an example to you. If you want to escape, go ahead. But if we catch you, we will execute you.’ ”
The next morning their boot camp training began. “They made us run for many kilometres, then they ordered us to fetch fire wood and do other heavy work.
“Later we were divided into units with specific tasks, like cooking, fire wood and so on.” Barely a week after being kidnapped and with no weapons training or even uniforms, the captives were sent to the front.
On Monday August 26, orders arrived that the M23 position at Three Towers hill, 13km north of Goma, urgently needed more mortars, rockets and bullets after heavy fighting the previous week. The next day a detachment of 15 “new recruits”, including Kalinda, was sent to the front line with crates of ammunition.
“After we had offloaded the ammunition on Tuesday afternoon they said we must spend the night there before going back to Rumangabo camp,” he says.
Three Towers — named after the three cellphone masts there, including one belonging to Vodacom that was knocked over in the fighting — was a key strategic position occupied by M23, from where rockets were lobbed into Goma. Kalinda counted about 200 rebel soldiers occupying the hill.
The next morning, all hell broke loose.
I saw four people trying to escape and they shot them, saying to us: ‘This should serve as an example to you’
Congolese army troops, known by their French acronym FARDC, supported by the United Nations intervention brigade — including South African soldiers — unleashed artillery, helicopter cannon, mortar and sniper fire on Three Towers.
“It was about seven or eight in the morning,” says Kalinda. “It became very hot and when everyone was panicking and the M23 looked like they wanted to abandon their positions, I made a run for it.”
Kalinda, together with nine fellow recruits from Rumangabo, used the Nyiragongo volcano as a landmark to guide him to the Dom Bosco Catholic school in the Majengo quarter on the edge of Goma, where he joined a group of refugees. Here he waited until it was dark, then walked the remaining hour to his home in Goma.
Now the shell-shocked youth is preparing to return to school, but is haunted by his ordeal — and fears he could be assassinated by M23 spies in Goma because of his knowledge of the rebels’ military camps and recruitment methods.
“Of course I’m happy that I didn’t die and that I’ve rejoined my family,” he says. “But the fear hasn’t gone away. I keep thinking the M23 will come and find me and kill me.”
Kalinda’s own home was bombed by the M23 rebels when they briefly took Goma in November 2012 while UN peacekeeping forces looked on. During that attack his six-year-old neighbour’s arm was ripped off by shrapnel. The family had to bury the limb in the street outside their home because they could not afford cemetery fees.
Goma’s prisons are filling up with youths abducted to swell the ranks of the M23 army — but who were captured or deserted in the recent fighting.
Elie Habimana, 17, lived with relatives in Goma, where he went to school. He decided to visit his family in Kijanwa, a town 70km north of Goma in M23-controlled territory, for the December holidays.
“I was walking down the street and some M23 soldiers came to me and took me by force to the stadium,” he told the Sunday Times. “Then a truck took us to Rumangabo military camp.”
Two refused to go. “They were shot dead immediately,” says Habimana. “We felt so scared we didn’t dare say anything after that.”
They spent three days “resting” in the camp. “Then we started training. For three months they drilled us with AK47s, machine guns, RPG, mortar, and in military tactics. I didn’t like it because it stopped my studies.”
After completing their training on March 9, six of the boys were ordered to serve as guards at the home of rebel leader General Innocent Kayna.
Habimana’s first battle was at Mutaho in July. “We were sent there for two days of heavy fighting, then they took us back to Kibumba,” he says. “Of the six of us deployed, four were killed. I was scared the whole time. We were not very well trained yet.”
He says he did not kill anyone during battle. “I shot one man in the legs. I pray to God for forgiveness for doing that.”
On July 16 he escaped from Kibumba and took a motorbike to Goma to hand himself over to the UN, placing his uniform and a hand grenade in a bag to prove he was a surrendering combatant and therefore entitled to UN protection. On the way he was stopped and searched by military police. “I confessed everything, so they brought me here,” he says, gesturing to the dank cell where he has been held for two months. He shares it with several M23 prisoners, including Rwandan cattle herders Olivier Nzayisenga, 14, and Patrick Micumiza, 15.
“We were taking care of our cattle in Kibaya in Rwanda, looking for some grazing, when we were captured by the M23,” says Nzayisenga. “Now we are here.”
In the past year, UN and Human Rights Watch investigators have documented dozens of cases of M23 rebels abducting youths in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda to serve in their army, often with the complicity of the Ugandan and Rwandan military.
Ida Sawyer, a Human Rights Watch researcher in Goma, says that in some cases “children are arrested by the M23 first, held in horrific conditions in M23 prison cells, forced to go through a
Of the six of us deployed, four were killed. I was scared the whole time. We were not very well trained yet
quick military training and sent to the front lines”. The organisation has also “documented numerous cases of new recruits who were summarily executed by M23 fighters when they tried to escape”.
The M23, Rwanda and Uganda strenuously deny these charges. Ugandan government spokesman LieutenantColonel Paddy Ankunda told the Sunday Times this week that he believed Kalinda’s story was “a setup”.
“We are not interested in helping the M23,” he said. “We can’t be involved in facilitating dialogue and support one group. The accusations are baseless.”
Rwanda, which is massing forces on its border with the DRC after dozens of shells landed on its territory in recent weeks, regularly denounces UN and Human Rights Watch evidence of its alleged support for the M23. However, the government has not commented on Kalinda’s allegations.
M23 leader Rene Abandi, who heads the delegation expected to resume peace talks in Kampala, Uganda, tomorrow, said of the claims: “These are all lies and manipulation to demonise our troops. A lie doesn’t become true because it’s repeated.”
* Not his real name