Uvira Territory
Attacks against refugees along the Rusizi River, in Itara I and II camps, Kanganiro, Rubenga, Lubarika villages, [...]
Walungu and Kabare Territories
Attacks against refugees in the camps commonly known as "Bukavu camps", Kashusha camps, ADI-Kivu [...]
Kalehe territory
Massacres of Hutu refugees in the villages of Nyabibwe, Shanje, Numbi camps and Kahuzi-Biega Park [...]
Shabunda territory
Massacres of Hutu refugees in the villages of Ulindi, Kigulube, Mpwe & fate of the Hutu children in the center of Lwiro [...]
After the massacres that occurred in Burundi in late 1993177 and after the FPR took power in Rwanda in 1994, several hundred thousand Burundian and Rwandan Hutu refugees, as well as ex-FAR/Interahamwe units and Burundian CNDD-FDD rebels, had found refuge in the province of South Kivu. In late 1994, ex-FAR/Interahamwe units stepped up their (sometimes deadly) incursions into Rwanda to take back the power by force. From 1995 onwards, the Armée patriotique rwandaise (APR) carried out at least two raids in Zaire to neutralise them.
- On 11 April 1995, around fifty APR soldiers attacked Birava camp in the Kabare territory with heavy weapons, allegedly killing around thirty people and seriously injuring an unknown number of others. During the attack, the ex-FAR/Interahamwe and the refugees did not retaliate. After this incident, the camp’s refugees were transferred to the Chimanga and Kashusha camps.178
Another incident took place in April 1996 at the Burundian and Rwandan refugee camp at Runingu in the Uvira territory.
- In April 1996, Banyamulenge/Tutsi armed units from Burundi reportedly killed between eight and ten refugees in the Runingu camp in the Uvira territory. The assailants then continued their journey towards the Hauts Plateaux and the Moyens Plateaux.179
177 As previously indicated, after the assassination on 21 October 1993 at Bujumbura of the Hutu president Melchior Ndadaye, inter-ethnic violence broke out in Burundi between the Hutus and the Tutsis. Faced with the crackdown organised by the Tutsi-dominated Forces armées burundaises (FAB), several tens of thousands of Hutus took refuge in South Kivu between 1993 and 1995. In their wake, during 1994, the Burundian Hutu movement Centre national pour la défense de la démocratie (CNDD), led by Léonard Nyangoma, and its armed wing, the Forces pour la défense de la démocratie (FDD), moved into the territories of Uvira and Fizi.
178 Interviews with the Mapping Team, North Kivu, December 2008 and South Kivu, January 2009; Report of the Secretary-General’s Investigative Team (S/1998/581), p.57; Witness accounts gathered by the Secretary-General’s Investigative Team in 1997/1998; Groupe Jérémie, press release “Massacres à Birava”, 13 April 1995.
179 Interviews with the Mapping Team, South Kivu, October 2008 and April 2009; Report on the situation of human rights in Zaire (E/CN.4/1997/6), para. 198; Witness statement gathered by the Secretary-General’s Investigative Team in 1997/1998; Voice of America, “Rwanda Denies Attack in Zaire”, 14 October 1997; IRIN, “Weekly Roundup of Main Events in the Great Lakes region”, 14–21 October 1996; CNN, “Zaire Refugee Camps Site of New Ethnic Killing”, 14 October 1997; New York Times, “Refugees Flee Camp In Zaire After Killings”, 14 October 1997; The Independent, “Hutus flee gun raiders”, 14 October 1997.
