'I've lost my whole family'

2007-10-31 16:58

Kisoro - Mani Fosten has lost his wife, and his three children are missing, too. The 35-year old was separated from his family amid the surging violence behind the Democratic Republic of Congo's latest refugee crisis.

Now the farmer has only the clothes he wears and a small, battered Bible, where he has scribbled his family's phone numbers - but there is no phone in his refugee camp.

At least 13 000 refugees like Fosten had fled into Uganda in the past 10 days amid one of the worst spates of fighting in the DRC since elections last year.

They were arriving with tales of rape and murder and looking set to stay permanently after years of deadly strife in Eastern DRC linked to the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.

Fasten, looking at the sea of makeshift tents and bonfires at the United Nations-administered refugee camp, said: "The worries can never stop now. Things are just that way now."

Hutus, Tutsis slaughtered

The latest fighting in DRC was pitting government forces and allied militants against forces loyal to a renegade army commander, general Laurent Nkunda, who split from the DRC military after the official 2002 end of a four-year civil war that displaced millions of Congolese.

Nkunda said his fighters were protecting the Tutsi people, who were the main victims in the 1994 Rwandan genocide that saw Hutu extremists slaughtering more that 500 000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

Nkunda said he would drive out the Hutu militants who fled to the DRC after the genocide, but his predominantly Tutsi forces now stand accused of atrocities.

Elections last year overseen by some 17 000 UN peacekeepers were meant to knit the country back together. But President Joseph Kabila's re-elected government had yet to stabilise the east.

In recent weeks, the government had moved forcefully to neutralise Nkunda and fighting had spread, said the refugees in Uganda said. They told of atrocities committed by Nkunda's men.

Fosten said Nkunda's fighters abducted him and 18 other people from their church in the DRC's Nyanzae village. After being badly beaten, the fighters forced their hostages to carry supplies for the dissident forces.

'They don't want Hutus in DRC'

He said fighters killed a boy of 12 years, striking him in the head with a hoe for being too slow. Fosten and his friend decided to attempt an escape -running as soon as the rebels' backs were turned.

His friend was shot in the head. Fosten, a Hutu, made it to the safety of Uganda.

Fosten said: "They don't want any Hutu in the DRC. They want to exterminate us. Nobody can protect us. The Tutsi want the DRC so the Hutu must run."

The rebels had been terrorising his village for two months, killing 47 men, raping girls and committing atrocities such as cutting open the bellies of pregnant women, said Fosten. He last saw his wife and children there.

Nkunda's forces weren't alone in bearing accusations of human rights abuses. New York-based Human Rights Watch said in a recent report that loyal Congolese troops and a Rwandan militant group were operating in the area.

And the refugees were drawn from many of the region's ethnic groups, not only the Hutu. At least 370 000 people had been driven from their homes since late 2006, said Human Rights Watch. Nkunda wasn't immediately reachable for comment.

Along with abductions, beatings and killings, most of the armed groups in eastern the DRC used sexual violence as a weapon of war. Human rights activists said that there had been more rape here than in any other conflict.

- AP