Sitting in a small courtyard in Goma, in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a Tutsi woman grimly joked that she would be killed if she spoke using her real name.
She fled to the city last week after a militia leader known as General Janvier, an opponent of the Tutsi-led M23 rebel group, arrived in her town of Kitschanga.
“We saw children with machetes and guns saying they were coming to kill Tutsis,” said the woman, in a Goma slum with wooden houses on the Rwandan border.
The M23 has advanced through North Kivu province in recent weeks, scoring victories over the army and other militias and forcing hundreds of thousands of people to flee in their wake.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo accuses its neighbor, Rwanda, of supporting the M23, something that United Nations and United States officials agree with, although Kigali denies it.
Razor-edge tensions have increased pressure on the Congolese Tutsis, whose history is disputed in the Central African nation.
Many assume that the Tutsis support the M23, for example, or perceive them as Rwandan implants rather than native Congolese.
The Kinshasa government has repeatedly argued against tribalism and stressed that only the Rwandan government is to blame for the M23 crisis.
But the reality in the east of the country, some 1,600 kilometers from the capital, is usually different.
AFP interviewed six Congolese Tutsis who had recently arrived in Goma, mostly from Kitschanga, in the Masisi territory of North Kivu.
Five said they had fled death threats from militias.
“It hurts me,” said the Tutsi woman, who explained that all her relatives were Congolese but her children were accused of being Rwandan at school.
“Our children ask us: what is Rwanda?”
The feeling of injustice is widely shared.
A Tutsi mother of two, who had also recently fled to Goma, said she wanted the same rights as everyone else.
She fidgeted with her wedding ring nervously as she described why she left Kitschanga.
“The militiamen notice your nose and threaten to cut it off with a knife,” he said.
Tutsis are often stereotyped as having straight noses.
The woman, who speaks the Kinyarwanda language native to Rwandans as well as many Tutsis and Congolese Hutus, said militias ransacked her home after she fled.
“They say that every Tutsi is an M23,” he said. “It’s terrible.”
The M23 first rose to international prominence in 2012, when it captured Goma, before being driven off and buried.
But the rebels took up arms again late last year, claiming that the Democratic Republic of Congo had not fulfilled its promise to integrate them into the army.
Since then, they have taken over large areas and are 12 km from Goma, a key center of more than a million people.
The M23 advance has also sparked a wave of virulent hate speech against Tutsi on social media, with calls for them to leave for Rwanda and worse.
Emmanuel Runigi Kamanzi, president of a North Kivu ranchers’ association, said his Tutsi ancestors came to the region in the Middle Ages.
“This is our home,” he added, denouncing the extremist attitudes fostered by the Mai-Mai militias and the so-called Nyatura armed groups that claim to represent the Congolese Hutus. Nyatura means “those who strike mercilessly” in Kinyarwanda.
In public statements, the M23 has frequently accused other armed groups, as well as government forces, of targeting Tutsi.
But Lt. Col. Guillaume Ndjike, a spokesman for the Congolese army in North Kivu, said the soldiers have not attacked the Tutsis and that the accusations are “excuses put forward by the Rwandan army.”
M23 fighters themselves have committed alleged atrocities.
Rebels killed 131 civilians and raped 27 women and girls in two neighboring villages in late November, according to a preliminary United Nations investigation.
Congolese Tutsi leaders have also condemned the M23. David Karambi, president of a North Kivu Tutsi association, told reporters in December that the recent massacres couldn’t even be “committed by animals,” for example.
Many Congolese Tutsis said they felt unfairly blamed and in danger.
In a district of Goma where many Tutsis recently fled, a woman said members of the Mai-Mai and Nyatura had threatened to “kill us like they did the Tutsis in Rwanda.”
“This war, it is to uproot us,” he said, eyes downcast. — AFP
