Top-secret testimonies implicate Rwanda’s president in war crimes

By Judi Rever and Benedict Moran

In early July 1994, as the genocide in Rwanda was nearing its end, Christophe, whose real name and location are being withheld for safety reasons, was recruited by the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF). 

July 1994 Kigali: Then Rwandan vice-president Paul Kagame, the Tutsi-led RPF (Rwandan Patriotic Front) commander. (Alexander Joe/AFP/Getty Images)

Christophe, a medical student before the war, was assigned to care for wounded RPF soldiers in Masaka, a neighborhood in the southeast of Rwanda’s capital, Kigali.

The RPF was on the brink of winning the war. It was the culmination of a bloody campaign that began in 1990 when its forces invaded Rwanda from their base in Uganda, where their Tutsi families had been forced into exile for three decades.

Their struggle for political power in Rwanda took a drastic turn on 6 April 1994, when a plane carrying Rwanda’s then president Juvénal Habyarimana, a Hutu, was shot down in Kigali, killing everyone aboard, and abruptly ending a power-sharing deal that was supposed to end three-and-a-half years of violence.

The plane attack set off a killing spree that left hundreds of thousands of Tutsis dead, mostly at the hands of their Hutu countrymen. By mid-July, the RPF had routed the former Hutu government, and purportedly put an end to the massacres.

From his battle clinic in Masaka, though, Christophe saw that the killings were continuing. “People were disappearing,” he recently told the Mail & Guardian.

Many of the new recruits Christophe treated began to share sobering details about what they were being ordered to do to Hutu civilians — men, women and children who had no apparent connection to the killing of Tutsis.

These Hutus were being arrested in different areas of the capital by RPF officials, they said, and brought to a nearby orphanage called Sainte Agathe, where they were summarily executed. 

The young recruits told Christophe that they were being forced by their RPF superiors to tie up civilians and kill them with hammers and hoes, before burning the victims on site and burying their ashes. It was grisly, traumatising work conducted daily, they told him. 

Many of the soldiers asked Christophe to provide them with a sick leave note to avoid taking part in the killings. “They didn’t want to kill anybody,” he said. One of the recruits told Christophe that over a mere five days, more than 6 000 people were slaughtered at the orphanage.

Blame game: RPF soldiers investigate the site of the plane crash that killed then Rwandan president Juvénal Habyarimana in 1994. One theory suggests that Hutu hardliners shot down the plane, but RPF informants have told the ICTR that the RPF planned and executed the attack. (Photo: Scott Peterson/Liaison)

In late July, the RPF sent Christophe and thousands of other recruits to Gabiro, a military training camp located in eastern Rwanda, on the edge of the vast wilderness that made up Akagera National Park.

The rebel army had established a base there earlier in the war, and it was off limits to international nongovernmental organisations, United Nations personnel, and journalists.

The RPF had begun to recruit Hutu men, promising them safety if they joined the RPF cause. Many heeded the call. But at Gabiro, Christophe saw that these new Hutu recruits had been deceived. Instead of receiving training, on arrival they were screened by military intelligence agents, taken to a field and shot. 

Even Tutsi recruits from Congo, Burundi and Uganda, whom military intelligence considered disloyal or suspect, were disappearing, he said.

Even more chilling, though, were the truckloads of Hutu civilians Christophe witnessed arriving in another part of the camp, in an area he could see from a distance. Every day, for months on end, he said, RPF soldiers killed these Hutus and then burned the bodies.

Backhoes — which Christophe referred to by their brand name, Caterpillar — worked day and night burying their remains. “You could see the trucks, you could see the smoke. You could smell burning flesh,” Christophe told M&G. “All those lorries were bringing people to be killed. I saw the Caterpillar and could hear it. They were doing it in a very professional way.”

As the massacres continued, Christophe became worried that as a witness he, too, could be a target. Some soldiers, traumatised by what they were forced to do, tried to escape Gabiro. But they were caught and executed, he said. To his relief, in April 1995, he was transferred out of Gabiro, and a week later, he fled Rwanda and never returned.

Several years after leaving, Christophe began speaking to investigators from the UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). The tribunal, set up in the aftermath of the genocide, was tasked with prosecuting the most serious crimes committed in 1994.

Publicly, the tribunal focused exclusively on prosecuting high-level Hutu figures suspected of organising and committing genocide against Tutsis. But privately, a clandestine entity within the ICTR, known as the Special Investigations Unit (SIU), gathered evidence of crimes committed by the RPF. By 2003, investigators at the SIU had recruited hundreds of sources, with dozens giving sworn statements. 

According to a summary report submitted to the ICTR’s chief prosecutor in 2003, the SIU’s investigative team had gathered explosive evidence against the RPF. Numerous witnesses corroborated Christophe’s testimony that the RPF had engaged in massacres of Hutu civilians in Gabiro and elsewhere before, during, and after the genocide. Sources testified to the SIU that the RPF  was behind the 6 April 1994 attack on Habyarimana’s plane. 

Former soldiers even told investigators that RPF commandos undertook false flag operations. Some commandos, operating in civilian clothes, had allegedly infiltrated Hutu militias, known as Interahamwe, to incite even more killings of Tutsis in a bid to further demonise the Hutu regime and bolster the RPF’s moral authority in the eyes of the international community.

In the report, UN investigators listed potential RPF targets for indictment, including President Paul Kagame himself. But when the tribunal officially wound down in 2015, the more than 60 individuals who were convicted and jailed for genocide and other war crimes were all linked to the former Hutu-led regime. Not a single indictment of the RPF was ever issued by the UN; all evidence of RPF wrongdoing was effectively buried. 

Christophe met with investigators three times, and provided a written, sworn testimony to the tribunal, but for nearly two decades, his testimony, together with that of dozens of other RPF soldiers who witnessed RPF crimes, have remained sealed in the tribunal’s archive. 

In this exclusive report, the Mail & Guardian is publishing 31 documents based on testimonies the witnesses provided to UN investigators. The documents were leaked to M&G by various sources with extensive experience at the tribunal. The witness statements, which contain identifying information, have been redacted by the tribunal and by the M&G to protect the informants’ privacy and safety. 

The informants who testified against the RPF to the tribunal faced serious risks, and some were kidnapped, according to the investigators. However, it is widely believed by our sources that the unredacted witness statements are already in the possession of the RPF. One statement is unredacted because the witness died in 2010.

Since 1994, many human rights researchers, journalists, academics and legal experts at the ICTR have contended that the crimes committed by the RPF were not comparable in nature, scope, or organisation to the Hutu-led atrocities against Tutsis. 

The Rwandan government has asserted that any crimes committed by members of the RPF were only acts of revenge that have already been tried by the competent Rwandan authorities. 

These testimonies, which include gruesome details about RPF massacres — often from soldiers who directly participated in the killings — challenge that understanding. Although these accounts do not in any way prove culpability, they may constitute prima facie evidence needed for indictments. 

Taken as a whole, the evidence collected by the SIU suggests that RPF killings were not a reaction to the killing of Tutsis but instead were highly organised and strategic in nature. If proven by a court, the RPF not only played a seminal role in triggering the genocide by shooting down Habyarimana’s plane; its senior members also engaged in widespread, targeted massacres of civilians before, during and after the genocide.

Many of the RPF commanders implicated in the crimes documented by the SIU have held, or continue to hold, important positions in the Rwandan government and military. Kagame, who was the leader of the RPF at the time of the 1994 genocide, has been the president of Rwanda since 2000 and remains a close ally of the United States. 

Behind bars: A crowd of prisoners stand at mealtime in the Giterama prison in Rwanda. The prison, 50km outside Kigali, was built to house 1 000 people, but in 1995 held 6 000 men and women accused by the RPF of complicity in the 1994 genocide. (Photo: Malcolm Linton/Liaison)

General Patrick Nyamvumba, who was head of the Gabiro training camp, served as the head of the Rwandan military from 2013 until 2019, and before that, from 2009 until 2013, as commander of Unamid, the joint UN-Africa Union peacekeeping force in Sudan. He was also minister of internal security until April 2020.

Lieutenant Colonel James Kabarebe, whom witnesses cited for his leading role in massacres in northern Rwanda and in planning the assassination of Habyarimana, was Rwanda’s minister of defence from 2010 until 2018 and remains a senior adviser to Kagame.

General Kayumba Nyamwasa, who was head of the RPF’s military intelligence during the genocide, is alleged to have conceived and organised the RPF infiltration of Hutu militia and the mass killings of Hutu civilians throughout Rwanda. Nyamwasa fled the country in 2010 and is a major figure in the Rwandan opposition in exile.

Neither the RPF, the Rwandan president’s office, the Rwandan Media High Council, nor Nyamwasa responded when asked for comment on the documents. On Twitter, Yolande Makolo, an adviser to Kagame, dismissed an M&G query about the documents and called the questions “ridiculous”. 

Filip Reyntjens, a Belgian political scientist who has spent decades studying Rwanda and provided expert testimony to the ICTR, said the RPF’s legitimacy is based on saving Tutsis and stopping the genocide, and that any critical examination of its real record would undermine that official narrative. 

“The legitimacy of the RPF is in large part based on its image as representing and defending the victims of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi. They are the ‘good guys.’ Any evidence that points to the RPF committing massive crimes or having a role in shooting down the presidential plane, an act that sparked the genocide, challenges that legitimacy, which is why they have to fight it tooth and nail,” Reyntjens told the M&G.

Christophe, whose statements and interviews with the M&G are corroborated by other witnesses who offered similar testimony, said he believed the killings that he witnessed at Gabiro could not have been carried out as revenge for the crimes individual Hutus committed during the genocide. 

The killings by the RPF went on “for too long [and] were too programmed and well organised,” to amount to retaliation, he said. 

Other witnesses bolstered Christopher’s account, providing testimony that the RPF began killing at Gabiro in April 1994, shortly after Habyarimana was assassinated. Speaking to investigators in French, one witness, a former soldier who joined the RPF in 1992, told investigators that displaced Hutu civilians from villages in northern Rwanda were brought to Gabiro aboard tractor-trailer trucks, and left at a residential complex called the House of Habyarimana, 3km from the military camp. 

“The intelligence officer selected the intelligence staff and instructors to execute the people brought by trucks … The soldiers tied their elbows behind their backs, and one by one, made them walk to a ‘grave site’ above the House of Habyarimana, where they were shot … These summary executions were done day and night between four and five weeks that I was there … By the end of April, early May, after two weeks of summary executions, the smell of corpses reached the Gabiro camp. Two bulldozers were used to bury the bodies.”

The witness said he participated in burning bodies using a mixture of oil and gasoline to turn the corpses into ash in a forest near another training camp called Gako. The soldier in question said a lieutenant called Silas Gasana who was in charge of security for a man referred to as “PC-Afandi”, oversaw the killings at Gabiro. “PC-Afandi” is a military moniker for  Kagame, according to former members of the RPF who were separately  interviewed on the topic. 

The witness told investigators that Gasana was in communication with Nyamvumba, who at the time was the operations commander and chief instructor at Gabiro.  

Another former RPF soldier who was sent to Gabiro in mid-April 1994 told the tribunal:

“Many trucks came from different regions around the camp. Recruits who went to get firewood could see these trucks pass. In two instances, while I was about a kilometre from our camp looking for wood, I personally observed these trucks. They were tractor-trailers, or semi-trailers. The vehicles had 18 or 24 wheels with no licence plates. They drove past me, very close. They were full of men, women, children and old people. They were brought to an area near the houses of the former head of state,  near the Gabiro airstrip, and massacred.”

The witness said the victims were from northern areas of Rwanda and were killed so that Tutsi refugees living in Uganda could acquire their land. The testimony highlighted the RPF’s alleged practice of falsely blaming Hutus for atrocities they didn’t commit.

“The main objective of these massacres … was to prepare the land and pastures for the people who had been [Tutsi] refugees in Uganda and who were repatriated. Until today, anyone [that is Hutus] who might think of living there without having returned from Uganda, would run the risk of  being accused of being an Interahamwe.”

Other witnesses spoke of killings at the military camp on the edge of the park. A former intelligence officer described Gabiro as a main “killing hub”.

The officer took part in operations in Giti, in northern Rwanda, from April 1994, in an area where no Tutsis had been killed during the genocide. Despite the commune being safe for Tutsis, RPF special forces killed up to 3 000 Hutus there, he testified.

“Between two and three thousand [civilians] were executed in the commune of Giti, and were buried in mass graves and latrines. Thousands of other victims were brought to Gabiro. It was a killing hub, above all isolated and near Akagera Park … At one point, victims from areas surrounding Giti began to arrive in military trucks, on their way to Gabiro, where they were simply eliminated.”

A number of former RPF soldiers testified that Hutu civilians were attacked prior to the genocide, in particular in northern Rwanda. 

One soldier said that as soon as the RPF seized an area — which he referred to as a “liberated zone” — Hutus living there were systematically slaughtered.

“The [RPF] was convinced that Hutus were uncontrollable, so it was better to get rid of them. That’s why a systematic ethnic cleansing was organised in these ‘liberated zones’. Two methods were used to achieve this goal. The RPF would organise murderous attacks, where hundreds of Hutu peasants were killed. The survivors would then flee and empty the zone. The RPF would also spread rumours about imminent attacks, a tactic that would cause peasants to flee.”

A RPF soldier who served in the northwestern region near Ruhengeri testified that in 1993, the purpose of his unit was to “kill the enemy and bury or burn their corpses.” The soldier said he was part of this unit until August 1994. 

“The goal of our group was to kill Hutus. That included women and children. We killed many people, maybe 100 000. Our unit killed on average between 150 and 200 people a day. People were killed with a cord [around their neck], a plastic bag [over their head], a hammer, a knife, or with traditional weapons [machete, panga]. The bodies were then put into mass graves or sometimes burned.”

In their summary report, SIU investigators cited a host of methods used by the RPF to kill victims, including strangling them with cords, smothering them with bags, pouring burning plastic on their skin, and hacking Rwandans with hoes and bayonets.

According to three testimonies, RPF soldiers wore uniforms seized from the [Hutu government] Rwandan Armed Forces (FAR) and used government-issued weapons to commit crimes in false flag operations. One former RPF soldier described the logic behind RPF attacks against civilians in a demilitarised zone before the genocide:

“The most important task was to destabilise the regime by killing civilians. Once they [the RPF] withdrew, they spread the rumour that the [Habyarimana] regime was incapable of protecting civilians.”

Coalition: Then Rwandan president Pasteur Bizimungu and his deputy, Paul Kagame, in July 1994. Photo: Alexander Joe/AFP/Getty Images

These RPF commandos, known as “technicians”, embedded within the Interahamwe, were stationed in zones controlled by the Interahamwe and participated in killing civilians at road blocks during the genocide, according to the witness. “They even killed Tutsis,” said one former RPF soldier.

Another former RPF soldier, who was based in Kigali from April to July 1994, witnessed similar events. He told investigators that RPF commandos dressed up as government soldiers or disguised themselves as members of the Interahamwe, and used machetes to kill Tutsi civilians at roadblocks. The witness claimed the RPF deployed more than two battalions of these commandos in the capital alone. 

“They checked IDs [and] killed people by machete exactly like the Interahamwe, so no one would be suspicious.”

False flag operations continued until well after the end of the genocide, according to various testimonies. 

Early on in the genocide, it was widely believed that Hutu hardliners were responsible for shooting down the president’s plane in a bid to hold on to power. The belief in this hypothesis remains widespread. However, RPF informants told the tribunal that the RPF planned and executed the attack on Habyarimana’s plane. 

A number of former RPF soldiers said the RPF unearthed secret weapons caches immediately preceding the 6 April attack to prepare for battle. Sources told the SIU that Kagame and his senior commanders held three meetings to prepare the attack.

In the summary report, UN investigators “confirmed” the existence of a RPF team in charge of surface-to-air missiles, which were allegedly transported to Kigali from the RPF’s military headquarters in northern Rwanda, near the Ugandan border. SIU documents named the individuals who allegedly brought the missiles into the capital, hid them and fired them on April 6, 1994, and included Kagame and Nyamwasa as potential targets for indictment.

One witness testified that before the attack on the plane, on the night of 6 April, RPF soldiers were told to get ready:

“On 6 April 1994 at 19:00 hours, the order was received from Kayonga to be on ‘stand-by one’. This meant to be in full battle dress and ready for an attack. All the companies moved outside the camp into the trenches … At approximately 20:30 hours, I saw the president’s plane crash.”

Another witness was later told by an intelligence agent that the RPF was indeed behind the plane attack:

“He told me that it was the RPF who shot down Habyarimana’s plane. When he realised his indiscretion, he threatened me with reprisals if I didn’t keep it to myself.”

The testimonies support the work of an earlier investigation undertaken in 1997 by the ICTR, by a lawyer called Michael Hourigan, who collected evidence indicating that the RPF was behind the plane attack.

Louise Arbour, the UN tribunal’s chief prosecutor at the time, shut down the probe and told Hourigan that she did not have the mandate to investigate acts of terror, according to a number of interviews Hourigan gave after he quit his job in frustration with her decision.

In later years, Arbour told The Globe and Mail newspaper that Kagame’s government blocked efforts to investigate RPF crimes and the tribunal did not have the resources to carry out such an inquiry safely.

In 2000, Carla Del Ponte, who took over after Arbour, made it clear she intended to indict the RPF.  “For me, a victim is a victim, a crime falling within my mandate as the [Rwanda tribunal’s] prosecutor is a crime, irrespective of the identity or ethnicity or the political ideas of the person who committed the said crimes,” she said in a speech in 2002.

“If it was Kagame who had shot down the plane, then Kagame would have been the person most responsible for the genocide,” she later said at a symposium organised by the French Senate.

But in 2003, the US government warned Del Ponte that if she went ahead with her plans to indict the RPF, she would be fired, according to her memoir. Within a few months of a tense meeting she had with Pierre-Richard Prosper — then US Ambassador for War Crimes Issues, who had served as a prosecutor for the ICTR from 1996 to 1998 — Del Ponte was removed from the ICTR. 

According to this leaked memo, dated 2003, Prosper struck a deal with the court to transfer jurisdiction for prosecuting RPF crimes — and evidence of RPF crimes collected by UN investigators — from the UN tribunal to the Rwandan government.

Prosper is currently a partner at Arent Fox, where he advises and represents the Rwandan government in international arbitration and litigation, according to the firm’s website . Prosper did not respond to our request for comment. 

Hassan Jallow, Del Ponte’s successor, who oversaw the court’s prosecution until it closed in 2015, was ultimately unwilling to indict the RPF. In 2005, he defended the ICTR’s decision not to prosecute the RPF, writing that Kagame’s army had “waged a war of liberation and defeated the Hutu government of the day, putting an end to genocide.”

Since 1994, several other UN agencies have investigated RPF attacks on Hutu civilians, both inside Rwanda and in neighbouring countries. These reports were also suppressed, or became the focus of vigorous denials from Kigali. Although they address other alleged crimes of the RPF, they corroborate the SIU’s general findings that the RPF committed widespread, targeted crimes against Hutus. 

Robert Gersony, a US consultant, was hired by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in the summer of 1994 to assess whether it was safe for Hutu refugees who had fled Rwanda to neighbouring countries to return home. Gersony’s 1994 report was never officially made public, but according a version that was leaked in 2010, investigators concluded that the RPF killing of Hutus during the genocide was “systematic” and resulted in the death of tens of thousands of civilians. 

A senior official of the UN’s peacekeeping force in Rwanda said Gersony gave a verbal briefing in which he put forward evidence that the RPF had carried out a “calculated, pre-planned and systematic genocide against the Hutus.”

Taking the capital: RPF soldiers gather on a road on 26 May 1994 to prepare to march into Kigali. Photo: Scott Peterson/Liaison

The UN Mapping Report, which investigated abuses committed by pro-Rwandan forces in the DRC between March 1993 and June 2003, concluded that attacks against Hutu civilians in that country, “if proven before a competent court, could be characterised as crimes of genocide.”

Despite the Mapping Report findings, the RPF has never been prosecuted for its alleged crimes in the DRC. Human rights advocates such as Denis Mukwege, a Congolese doctor who won the Nobel peace prize in 2018 for treating women who have experienced sexual violence, have repeatedly called on the international community to set up a tribunal to try all perpetrators of atrocities and end the culture of impunity in the DRC.

Nevertheless, the UN High Commission for Human Rights, whose investigators authored the 550-page Mapping Report, has chosen to keep its database of suspected perpetrators confidential. 

Efforts by France to investigate the shooting down of Habyarimana’s plane have similarly failed to establish any accountability. In 2006, after a lengthy investigation, a French judge issued arrest warrants for several RPF officials in connection with the assassination of the Rwandan president, a move that triggered a diplomatic row between Kigali and Paris. 

In December 2018, a court dismissed the case against the RPF, citing insufficient evidence to proceed to a trial and, on 3 July this year, an appeals court in Paris confirmed the decision and agreed not to reopen an investigation.  

Researchers have recently attempted to estimate the number of victims of violence, both Tutsi and Hutu. In January, the Journal of Genocide Research published several studies that estimated between 500 000 to 600 000 Tutsis were killed during the genocide, and between 400 000 and 550 000 Hutus lost their lives in the 1990s.

Marijke Verpoorten, an academic at the University of Antwerp, says it remains impossible to establish a reliable death toll of the killings of Hutus.

Instead, she attempts to estimate how many Hutu lives were lost in the 1990s, either as a direct result of violence, or indirectly, after the rapid spread of contagious diseases in refugee camps, and the dire war conditions. She arrives at a “guesstimate” of 542 000, although admits there is a very large uncertainty interval.

Yet only one ethnic group has been internationally recognised as victims. Inside Rwanda, community-based gacaca courts tried more than 1.2-million alleged perpetrators of the Tutsi genocide. An official genocide survivor fund does not recognise Hutus who were killed, even if they lost their lives trying to protect Tutsis. Hutus are not allowed to publicly grieve their loved ones or request justice for RPF crimes in Rwanda. 

After formally closing, the ICTR became a residual tribunal — now called the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (MICT) — and continues to search for high-profile, alleged Hutu génocidaires.

In May, French police arrested 87-year-old Félicien Kabuga, who had lived in hiding for 26 years. He stands accused of financing the genocide against Tutsis by funding an extremist radio station. Kabuga has denied the allegations and is currently in The Hague awaiting a trial. 

The MICT did not respond when asked for comment on prosecuting RPF officials. – Mail & Guardian 

Nearly 1 million children at risk of starvation in South Sudan - Report

JUBA, South Africa

About a million children face starvation in South Sudan amid calls for an urgent and large-scale global response to help avert a humanitarian crisis, Save the Children said today.

In a statement, the children’s organizations said about 11 million children under five face extreme hunger or starvation across 11 countries in Africa, the Caribbean, the Middle East, and Asia. 

“Save the Children is particularly concerned for children in five ‘hunger hotspot’ countries/regions where the food crisis is extremely serious, made worse by insecurity: Afghanistan, Yemen, South Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central Sahel (Mali, Niger & Burkina Faso). COVID-19, conflict, and climate change could tip millions of families over the edge,” the statement reads in part.

Save the Children’s CEO Inger Ashing said children's lives are at risk of acute hunger caused by a persistent lack of access to nutritious food threatening efforts towards reducing child mortality and alleviating poverty.

“Ending global hunger and malnutrition will not be easy. The international community must address the root causes of food shortages and malnutrition while at the same time providing immediate support to hungry and undernourished children,” he said. “Only by putting an end to global conflicts, tackling chronic poverty as well as the risks brought by climate change, and building more resilient communities with access to strong nutrition services, will we be able to ensure that every child can grow up healthy. The time to act is now. Millions of children’s lives hang in the balance.”

According to Save the Children, lack of nutritious food for children under five can cause stunted growth, impede mental and physical development, increase risks of developing other illnesses, and untimely cause of death.

The analysis reveals that in war-torn Yemen, 10.3 million children are facing food shortages with more than half a million children under five suffer acute malnutrition, and 1.5 million and 4 million children facing hunger in Afghanistan and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) respectively.

Ashing said, “Conflict, insecurity, a changing climate, extreme weather events, and recent invasions of desert locusts are all driving up levels of global hunger and malnutrition, leaving entire populations extremely vulnerable to additional shocks like COVID-19 and its secondary impacts, including lockdowns, school closures, and economic recession.”

“Save the Children is calling for the international community to act fast to avoid a potentially devastating loss of life. The aid agency is also asking world leaders to prioritize humanitarian responses that provide urgent assistance to families facing hunger. Providing cash and vouchers directly to families – alongside essential nutrition support – is one of the best ways to address hunger and malnutrition in the short-term, as well as support more long-term community resilience enabling families to better withstand future shocks,” the statement concluded. - Africa

 

Report alleges Burundian refugees were disappeared, tortured

By Cara Anna and Eloge Kaneza, NAIROBI Kenya

The men kicked down the door well before dawn. They shoved their way into the home of the Burundian refugee and put him in handcuffs, while asking why his wife was standing there crying.

Within minutes, they were gone. That day in March was the last time she saw her husband, the woman told The Associated Press. He became one of at least 18 Burundian refugees and asylum seekers who have forcibly disappeared from refugee camps in Tanzania over roughly the past year, according to a new report by Human Rights Watch.

Many were tortured at a police station in Kibondo, Tanzania, the report says. Seven remain missing. Three were released after several weeks. Eight were handed over to authorities in Burundi and imprisoned “in abysmal conditions” without due process, indicating collaboration with Tanzania’s police and intelligence services, the report says, highlighting both the pressure on refugees to go home and alleged continuing repression under Burundi’s new president.

Many of the more than 150,000 refugees in Tanzania fled deadly political turmoil in 2015 when Burundi was accused of cracking down on protests over late President Pierre Nkurunziza’s ultimately successful bid for another term. The U.N. human rights office reported more than 300 extrajudicial killings and was kicked out of the country. Burundi’s government has denied it targets its people.

Now, from prison, some of the recently abducted refugees describe being accused of involvement with unnamed armed groups and of seeking to cause trouble, with few details. In some cases, the refugees were told the police and intelligence officials had received information about them from Burundian authorities.

The refugees said Tanzanian police hung them from the ceiling by their handcuffs, “gave them electric shocks, rubbed their faces and genitals with chili and beat and whipped them,” the report says.

“We screamed as if we were crucified,” one refugee told the rights group, and said police demanded the equivalent of $430, money he didn’t have. When given the choice to remain detained or be turned over to Burundian authorities, he chose to return.

“It had never been a problem of this seriousness,” Human Rights Watch Africa's director, Mausi Segun, said in an interview. “We don’t know what the trigger was” but the abductions began to occur around the time that Burundi’s latest election campaigns were heating up late last year, she said.

It is not clear whether the disappearances have continued since the election in May, she added.

The eight refugees who agreed to return to Burundi “chose to go back because the pain was incredible” from the torture they received and because they couldn’t afford the fees being extorted from them, Segun said.

From prison, she said, some described having their faces covered and their hands bound and being driven to the border, then taken to Bujumbura and questioned again by national intelligence authorities.

“They were told they would be freed, but nothing happened,” Segun said.

The woman in Tanzania who described her husband’s disappearance told the AP she was threatened by local police with arrest when she tried to learn his fate. Then she went to the office of the U.N. refugee agency and was told they were monitoring the case.

Eventually, after getting nowhere, “I decided to no longer follow the case because I didn’t want my children to be orphans," she said. "Until now, I don’t know where he is.”

The U.N. refugee agency told Human Rights Watch it has repeatedly expressed concern to Tanzanian authorities over the disappearances, and that the government said a “high-level investigation was underway.” The U.N. agency said it has heard no results.

It’s not clear whether Tanzania’s government at the highest levels is aware of what’s happening, Segun said. “There has been no response from the Tanzanians, which is not surprising.” The rights group in the past has documented pressure by Tanzanian authorities on refugees to go home.

Authorities in Burundi also have not responded to the allegations.

New President Evariste Ndayishimiye has urged the refugees in Tanzania to return. But Segun said his administration looks “more or less the same” as that of the late President Pierre Nkurunziza.

“The same people in office during those horrible years in Burundi remain in office,” Segun said, in part echoing the assessments of other human rights groups in recent months. - AP

 

Kenya regrets Somalia decision to expel envoy

By Oliver Mathenge, NAIROBI Kenya

Kenya's foreign affairs principal secretary Kamau Macharia has expressed regret at Somalia's decision to expel Ambassador Lucas Tumbo.

Macharia said that Nairobi was evaluating Mogadishu's decision and would respond through appropriate channels and in good time.

President Uhuru Kenyatta with his Somali Counterpart Mohamed Abdullahi Farmaajo, during his inauguration ceremony in Mogadishu, Somalia in 2017

"This unexpected and unwarranted behaviour of Somalia leadership is something that requires some digesting before we can speak to it. We will respond officially through the appropriate channels soon," Macharia said.

On Sunday, Somalia said that it was expelling Kenya's Ambassador Lucas Tumbo and recalling its own envoy from Nairobi.

Mogadishu cited what it termed as the Kenyan government's interference in its internal and political affairs.

"The federal government f Somalia expresses it regret in the government of Kenya's overt and blatant interferences in the internal and political affairs of Somalia which has the potential to be a hindrance to stability," a statement from Somalia's foreign ministry said.

This is just the latest of the many diplomatic tiffs that have hit the two East African nations with the major one being the Indian Ocean maritime dispute.

However, Kenya has been working on peacebuilding in the region often seeking to mend and normalise its relationship with Somalia.

Kenya is also host to many Somali refugees who escaped the horn of Africa Nation due to persistent conflict.

Kenya is also part of the AMISOM forces that have been trying to neutralise Al Shabaab militia who have carried out terrorist attacks in both Somalia and Kenya.

Nigeria massacre: number shoots up to at least 110

ABUJA, Nigeria

The number of farm workers killed on a rice farm in north-eastern Nigeria on Saturday has shot to at least 110 people, according to a United Nations report.

The massacre is the deadliest attacks in the region suspected to have been carried out by Boko Haram, locals said.

The victims were buried on Sunday.

"We shall ensure more recruitment of Civilian JTF and more Hunters so that our people will take the fight to all the nooks and crannies of this area", said Borno State Governor, Babagana Umara Zulum.

Earlier, a militia leader Babakura Kolo, who helped the survivors told AFP that ‘’we have recovered 43 dead bodies, all of them slaughtered, along with six others with serious injuries.’’ He added that "it is no doubt the handiwork of Boko Haram who operate in the area and frequently attack farmers."

The victims were laborers from Sokoto state in north-western Nigeria, roughly 1,000 kilometres (600 miles) away. They had travelled to the northeast to find work, another militiaman Ibrahim Liman who gave the same toll said, adding that 8 others were missing, presumed to have been kidnapped by the jihadists.

The UN report did not mention Boko Haram as perpetrators. Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari has condemned the attack. He said "the entire country has been wounded by these senseless killings."

In September, Boko Haram militants slaughtered 22 farmers working on their irrigation fields near Maiduguri in two separate incidents.

The nefarious group and ISWAP, its IS-linked rival, have increasingly targeted loggers, herders and fishermen in their violent campaign. They accused them of spying and passing information to the military and the local militia fighting them.

At least 36,000 people have been killed in the jihadist conflict, which has displaced around two million since 2009. The violence has also spread into neighboring Niger, Chad and Cameroon, prompting a regional military coalition to fight the militants.Chad and Cameroon, prompting a regional military coalition to fight the militants.

International community wakeup as killings in Cabo Delgado province hit 2,000

By Our Correspondent, MAPUTO Mozambique

There is increasing concern about the worsening security situation in Cabo Delgado province in northern Mozambique, which the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights described as “desperate”.

A group of people, having fled violence in several districts of Cabo Delgado, arrive in the provincial capital, Pebma.

According to the United Nations and NGOs, the crisis has already caused, more than 2,000 deaths, over half of them civilians, and 350,000 displaced persons, in a strategic region for the exploitation of huge gas reserves. The southern African nation relies on the gas reserves to increase its income and become one of the world's main exporters.

“It is paramount that State authorities ensure the protection of civilians inside and outside the conflict-affected areas and that humanitarian agencies are guaranteed safe, unhindered access to deliver life-saving assistance and protection,” said UN Human Rights chief, Michelle Bachelet.

“This is particularly crucial given the risk of cholera and the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Since 2017, at least 355,000 people have fled the gas and mineral rich province, where violence has increased in the last two weeks.

In an appeal to all parties, the UN High Commissioner urged all armed actors to take urgent measures to protect civilians.

In their recent resolution, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) has agreed to respond to the Islamist insurgency ravaging areas in northern Mozambique.

Five presidents who attended an extraordinary summit in the Botswana capital Gaborone, have "finalized a comprehensive regional response" to the unrest in Mozambique, according to a SADC communiqué.

The jihadists, who have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group, have been active for three years in the Cabo Delgado region of Mozambique. They attack villages to sow terror and try to establish a caliphate.

Attacks, including the killing of civilians and clashes with security forces in various parts of Cabo Delgado province, have increased in recent weeks.

The presidents of Botswana, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Malawi, South Africa and Zimbabwe attended the meeting. Tanzania was represented by its Vice President and Mozambique by its Minister of Defence.

Last week, Mozambique and neighbouring Tanzania police bosses signed an agreement to fight jihadists locally known as Al-Shabab, meaning the ‘’youth’’ in Arabic.

According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the humanitarian situation in Cabo Delgado province deteriorated in 2020, on the back of an escalating conflict, compounded by a fragile situation of chronic underdevelopment, consecutive climatic shocks and recurrent disease outbreaks 

Increasing number of attacks by non-State armed groups, particularly impacting the northern and eastern districts of the province, have driven massive and multiple displacements, disrupting people’s livelihoods and access to basic services.

The violence, displacements and consequent loss of livelihoods are also increasing food insecurity in Cabo Delgado: over 710,000 people are facing severe hunger, including displaced persons and host communities. - Africa