Rebel major prefers death to ‘slavery’ in Rwanda

By AFP

Photo:
Children walk through a transit camp for soldiers of the FDLR

MIRIKI, DR Congo: In a reed hut camp he has called home for 10 years, a Rwandan Hutu rebel major waited defiantly to face government troops determined to drive his militia out of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

“It’s better to die here than to return as a slave to Rwanda,” said Kafa Bimanos, a military leader with the Democratic Force for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) rebel movement.

“Let them come! With their devil, their major power. We are ready to react, we are not afraid!” said the baby-faced major, sporting a thin moustache.

His militia set up camp a decade ago in the village of Miriki, which now lies in the line of fire as a joint Congolese-Rwandan military operation makes way for the region’s remote valleys.

“We don’t want war, we want dialogue,” said Bimanos, whose Abacunguzi Combatant Forces (FOCA) is reputed to be FDLR’s most radical faction.


Rebels nonchalantly kick about the mud-hut village wearing their characteristic black rubber boots and army fatigues, as AK-47s dangle at their sides.


The rebel major claims his fighters do not want to endanger the lives of villagers, calling them “our close friends”, yet in the same breath says bloodshed is inevitable.“But if Rwandan troops attack us, we will shoot back.


We cannot leave without fighting,” said Bimanos, clad in a spotless olive green uniform.“Some of us will die, as well as many innocent Congolese,” he said.Residents of the mud hut village, forced to live alongside the FDLR troops, are visibly worried about lies around the corner.

Thirty kilometres southeast, the joint force has yet to move in on the fief of FDLR rebels, some of whom took refuge in eastern DR Congo after participating in Rwanda’s 1994 genocide that killed some 800,000 people, mainly Tutsis and moderate Hutus.


The UN estimates that Kigali’s Tutsi-dominated government sent at least 5,000 Rwandan soldiers into Nord-Kivu province last week as part of an offensive that marked a striking turnaround in bilateral relations with Kinshasa.

Kigali had previously been accused of supporting ethnic Tutsi rebel leader Laurent Nkunda’s campaign against the Kinshasa government, while the Rwandans in turn accused the Congolese officials of supporting the Hutu rebels.

Bimanos was “not surprised” by the Congolese government’s move to join an operation against the FDLR rebels, while he called the Rwandan operation a “pretext”.“They will start with us, but after a few weeks, their cannons will turn towards Kinshasa,” said Bimanos, insisting his men would not be vanquished.“In 2002, the entire Rwandan army was in Congo.

They never succeeded in crushing us or repatriating us,” he said.“This time, it will be the same thing.”Bimanos, a former teacher now in his early 30s, said he took part in the “resistance” in his country and decided to take up arms in DR Congo after being “wrongly imprisoned and mistreated”.

“Since 1996, the enemy has been attacking us and wants to annihilate us,” said Bimanos.“We are fighting against racial segregation, social inequality, arbitrary arrests,” he said, adding that his rebels would not disarm.“It’s not possible. Those (Hutus) who went back to Rwanda are mistreated,” he said.

Source:
Gulf Times

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