Mapping Report > Section I. Most serious violations > CHAPTER IV. Towards Transition > E. South Kivu

During the period under consideration, the RCD-Goma tried to secure a popular base in South Kivu and increase the isolation of the FDLR by organising an inter-Kivu dialogue in September 2001 and offering local Mayi-Mayi groups the opportunity to sign a separate peace agreement. With the exception of the Mudundu 40 group, Mayi-Mayi groups in the province, although encouraged by the Government in Kinshasa, refused to negotiate with the RCD-Goma. The inter-Kivu dialogue was boycotted by most local civil society organisations.

Fighting between the ANC/APR and the Mayi-Mayi groups supported by Kinshasa and collaborating with the FDLR and armed Hutu Burundian groups (the FDD⁸¹¹ and FNL⁸¹²) continued on the ground until 2003. From 2002 onwards, the ANC/APR was also confronted with a real insurgency on the part of the Banyamulenge in the Minembwe area, led by a former ANC commander, Patrick Masunzu. Seen by the ANC/APR as “Tutsi Mayi-Mayi”, Masunzu’s Forces républicaines et fédéralistes (FRF) were allied to two Mayi-Mayi groups operating in the Mwenga, Uvira and Fizi regions and challenged the ANC/APR with the support of the Government in Kinshasa.

From September 2002, the gradual withdrawal of the soldiers of the Rwandan Defence Forces (RDF) allowed the Mayi-Mayi and FDLR to regain control of several villages and broaden their zone of influence in South Kivu.⁸¹³ In light of this situation, the ANC and RDF led several offensives against local Mayi-Mayi groups in order to regain lost ground. In this context, the Mapping Team documented the following alleged incidents.

• On 16 September 2001, Mayi-Mayi elements killed at least 21 civilians in the village of Masanga, 51 kilometres from the centre of the town of Shabunda, in the chiefdom of Bakisi in the Bagabo groupement. The Mayi-Mayi looted and set fire to several homes before they left the village.⁸¹⁴

• In 2001, Mayi-Mayi elements killed at least three civilians, including the village chief and a woman accused of being the partner of an ANC/APR soldier in the village of Nundu, 56 kilometres south of Uvira. Before they killed her, the Mayi-Mayi mutilated the woman’s genital organs.⁸¹⁵

• On 17 January 2002, Mayi-Mayi and FDLR elements killed six civilians, including three women, and set fire to four houses in the Nyakabere II neighbourhood in the town of Sange, 33 kilometres north of Uvira. The attack took place shortly after a member of the local self-defence militias set up by the RCD-Goma had killed a woman in the Nyakabere I neighbourhood in Sange.⁸¹⁶

In January 2002, elements of the ANC/APR killed between 17 and 20 people, including at least one baby and two minors, in the village of Kaboke II in the Tanganyika area of the Fizi region. The killings took place after the end of the fighting between the Mayi-Mayi in the region and the ANC/APR soldiers. Some of the victims were shot dead on their return to the village, others whilst they were hiding in the bush. Others still were burned alive when their houses were set on fire.⁸¹⁷

• During the period under consideration, elements of the ANC/APR committed rapes and acts of pillaging directed at civilian populations living in the villages of Cibanda, Nshesha and Makwale, 40 kilometres to the south-west of Bukavu, in the Walungu region.⁸¹⁸

• Between July and August 2002, as part of the operation known as “Soap” or “Palm oil”, elements of the FDD raped at least 22 men in several villages in the Ubwari peninsula. The victims had been accused of supporting the RCD-Goma.⁸¹⁹

• On 20 July 2002, elements of the FDLR killed seven civilians, raped several women and pillaged the property of several women in the village of Nyabibwe, 95 kilometres north of Bukavu, in the Kalehe region. They also kidnapped children, whom they later forced to carry the property they had pillaged. Some of these children were subsequently enlisted in the FDLR.⁸²⁰

• In October 2002, elements of the Mayi-Mayi and FRF raped and killed an unknown number of civilians in the Uvira region and pillaged their property.⁸²¹

• On 20 October 2002, having regained control of Uvira, ANC soldiers raped and killed an unknown number of civilians in the town and surrounding villages, particularly in Runingu, Kiliba, Sange, Ndunda, Luvungi and Kamanyola.⁸²²

From 22 December 2002 and for the next several months, elements of the Mayi-Mayi launched home-made bombs on Baraka, in the Fizi region, from dugout canoes, killing at least 17 people and destroying at least 40 houses. None of these bombardments was aimed at military targets. The Mayi-Mayi targeted civilian populations in order to force them to leave the area under the control of the RCD-Goma.⁸²³

Towards the end of 2002, senior figures in the RCD-Goma began negotiations with a political wing of the Mudundu 40 Mayi-Mayi movement led by Odilon Kurhenga Muzimu and Patient Mwendanga. The aim of the negotiations was to complete the withdrawal of RDF soldiers from the Walungu region in return for the collaboration of the political wing of the Mudundu 40 in order to annihilate the movement’s military wing, led by Commander Kahasha (Foka Mike) and elements of the Mudundu 40 operating in the region. In December, when the negotiations ended, the RCD-Goma appointed Patient Mwendanga to the post of Governor of South Kivu. The military wing of the Mudundu 40, however, received support from the Padiri Mayi-Mayi and strengthened its positions in the Burhale groupement. In March 2003, as the rapprochement between the RCD-Goma and the political wing of the Mudundu 40 had failed to undo the movement’s military wing, Patient Mwendanga was dismissed from his post and the ANC, with the help of RDF reinforcements, launched an attack on the armed elements of the Mudundu 40 in the Walungu region. In this context, the Mapping Team documented the following alleged incidents.

• Between 5 and 13 April 2003, elements of the ANC/RDF used heavy weapons to attack the headquarters of the Mudundu 40 in Mushinga (the villages of Mwegerera, Lukumbo, Karhundu and Izirangabo) and the surrounding area, in the Burhale groupement, killing several tens of civilians. They also raped at least 27 women and caused the disappearance of six. They systematically pillaged the villages before they left. The bodies of several civilians and soldiers were buried in mass graves in Izirangabo, Butunza and Kibirira, close to the centre of the town of Walungu. To punish the population for its supposed support of the Mudundu 40, ANC soldiers intentionally and systematically destroyed educational institutions and healthcare facilities in the southern part of the centre of the town of Walungu.⁸²⁴

• On 31 January 2003, elements from the FNL Burundian Hutu armed group killed seven civilians, including minors, and pillaged and set fire to 41 houses in the village of Nyamwoma, 28 kilometres north of Uvira, in the Kabunambo groupement of the chiefdom of Bafuliro in the Uvira region. The victims were farmers who had refused to pay the tax demanded by elements of the FNL of Bitagi Umunyu, which controlled the Rukoko forest in Burundi. According to another source, the perpetrators of the crime were FNL deserters.⁸²⁵

• Between 1998 and 2003, over 1,660 cases of rape were recorded in the three areas of the Fizi region. All the armed groups operating in the area committed these acts. Of the 1,660 rapes recorded, 89 were rapes of men, mostly committed by the FDD. These figures naturally underestimate the scale of the phenomenon.⁸²⁶

• Between 1998 and 2003, elements of the FDD killed at least four, raped tens of people and pillaged civilian property in the village of Kalundja, seven kilometres from Baraka, in the Fizi region. Several cases of male rape were recorded in the village, which was ironically nicknamed “Dubai” because of the acts of pillaging committed practically every month against its inhabitants.⁸²⁷

• Between 2000 and 2003, local NGOs documented 2,500 cases of sexual violence in the chiefdom of Bakasi, in the Shabunda region, alone. Most of the violations took place in the villages of Mungembe, Matili, Nyalukungu, Lulingu, Chelamazi, Lugungu, Masanga and Kikamba. The perpetrators of these violations were firstly elements of the Mayi-Mayi and FDLR and to a lesser extent, elements of the ANC/APR.⁸²⁸

• Between 1998 and 2003, elements of the ANC/APR/RDF, Mayi-Mayi groups, and members of the ALiR/FDLR and FNL raped an unknown number of women, often collectively, in the Uvira region, in particular in the Ruzizi plain.⁸²⁹