By Alex Mvuka
This article examines the horrific events that occurred in Baraka and the disappearances of Banyamulenge girls in 1996. Drawing on firsthand accounts, including the testimony of a survivor who was only five years old at the time, it sheds light on this tragic chapter in Congolese history.
On October 26, 1995, the administrator of the Uvira area, Shweka Mutabazi, decided to expel the Banyamulenge, Congolese Tutsi from South Kivu, describing them in his letter as “an ethnic group unknown to Zaire and foreign migrants.” He wrote to the local authorities in Uvira to draw up a list of properties and land belonging to the Banyamulenge, stating that all construction work by the Banyamulenge must be stopped and that all abandoned Banyamulenge houses must be identified and listed. In the process of implementing this policy of exclusion, in July 1996, the governor of South Kivu, Mr. Kyembwa wa Lumona, traveled to Minembwe to introduce Mr. Leonard Nyangoma, a Burundian rebel leader, as the representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), who would be able to assist in accompanying the Banyamulenge in the process of their expulsion. Between September 1995 and September 1996, the president of the National Assembly, Anzuluni Bembe Isilonyonyi, and the governor of South Kivu, Kyembwa wa Lumona, made inflammatory speeches supporting the expulsion of the Banyamulenge.
In September 1996, several reports documented human rights violations committed against Zairean Tutsi. Furthermore, the same decision to expel the Banyamulenge was solemnly taken by the DRC government in September 1996, when the Vice-Governor of South Kivu, Mr. Lwabanji Lwassi Ngabo, gave them a six-day ultimatum to leave the country or be burned on the orders of the provincial governor. Following this purge, many Banyamulenge and other Tutsi were violently killed in Kivu, Kinshasa, and other parts of the country.
The first mass and indiscriminate victims were in Baraka, Lweba, Mboko (Fizi territory), Sange and Bwegera (Uvira territory), and Kamanyola (Walungu territory), where more than 500 people, men, women, and children, were hacked, beaten to death with clubs studded with nails, tied up, and thrown into Lake Tanganyika or the Rusizi River to be potential food for crocodiles or simply stabbed to death.
What happened in Baraka?
It all started with mass killings in Bibokoboko at a place called kwa Matare. Families were surrounded in their homes, and many were brutally and cruelly killed, inflicting excruciating pain on them. Others, around 2,000 people, were taken to Baraka, in the towns of Lubondja and Lueba. The killers separated the adults from the children. Children—mostly boys—were literally crushed in mortars, like cassava, corn, or sorghum, or had their heads smashed against the walls of houses or trees.
As in the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda in 1994, the killers used the same methods and means, namely firearms, bladed weapons, including clubs, machetes, knives, stones, the disembowelment of pregnant women who were still alive, and the removal and pounding of babies in mortars. According to the few survivors, with the help of the Zairean armed forces (FAZ), atleast 380 Banyamulenge were killed in Baraka, in the territory of Fizi. The victims, including women and children, were mostly stabbed to death. Many women, including minors, were gang-raped before being killed. In Lueba, a village a few kilometers from Baraka, many women and children were killed with machetes. Others were burned alive in houses set on fire with grenades. Some children begged their killers, “We will never be Tutsi again if you spare us from death!”
As for the Banyamulenge girls, they were shared out like spoils of war. These girls were distributed among Babembe and Barundi Hutu refugee families in Zaire in 1972. They were then taken with them as they fled beyond Lake Tanganyika. These girls were reportedly taken hostage and sent to camps in Nyarugusu, Tanzania.
Subjected to a process of brainwashing and uprooting that involved giving them the worst possible image of their tribe, they became completely alienated and hostile, behaving like the tribes that had taken them away. Most do not know their date of birth or the name of their village, only the region or, at best, the name of the capital. Some of the youngest do not even know their first name. Others are so traumatized by what they have been through that they cannot remember anything at all, while others have lost their mental faculties after being struck on the head with machetes and witnessing the brutal killings of their families. This makes it very difficult to recover them, and those who are identified are completely transformed. The following account is the testimony of a child survivor.
Testimony of a child survivor
“My mother’s name was Milka. I was five years old. I ended up in the family of a widow from the Bembe tribe. This woman had no husband. I asked her where my father was. She told me that my parents had been killed by the Banyamulenge. I remember that this woman moved every two weeks to different locations. Once, when we were attacked by the Mai-Mai in Fizi, I became separated from this Bembe woman. Unfortunately for me, I became a hostage of a Mai-Mai chief named Dunia. His troops made us walk long distances day and night in the mountains overlooking Lake Tanganyika. Along with other children, we were slaves and forced to work for the leader and carry his luggage. We rarely had anything to eat. It was extremely difficult. Once, five other children and I decided to escape. After a few hours, we were spotted by the militia. We were beaten and tortured cruelly. When they realized we had lost consciousness, they dunked us in a river. After a few weeks of torture, we were released to the camps to work. We tried to escape a second time, but unfortunately we didn’t succeed. We ended up back in the hands of the leaders of this armed group. We were subjected to degrading, horrific and unimaginable treatment.
On my last attempt, I escaped alone. I walked only at night. I ate the skins of small animals in decomposition. I arrived at a place called Swima. Here, there were soldiers who did not speak Lingala but Swahili. I told them that I had been separated from my mother during the violence in Fizi and gave them her name. They communicated by radio and managed to find the woman who was sheltering me. She treated my torture wounds. Later, we moved again to Mboko. To survive, I fished. One day, it was raining heavily, and I was late getting back to the woman’s house. I was afraid. I went to a military camp, where there was an Afande named Byichaza. He stared at me, looked at my fingers and my legs. He gave me something to eat and didn’t want me to leave. He asked me in Kibembe if I understood the Kinyamulenge language. I said yes. They asked me who I was. I still remembered my father’s name and my clan. I also remembered that in my village there were lots of cows and there was a one-eyed man. I saw him crying. He told the others that I must be a child who had escaped from Baraka or Abela. I asked them if they were going to kill me. They said no, that wasn’t possible.
They called the woman who was taking me in. She told them that she had found me in Baraka, on the back of a crying girl. It was next to a church, and there were still machetes, clubs, bullet casings, and hundreds of decomposing bodies, some of which may have been her family, scattered across the ground. The woman confirmed that I was Munyamulenge and that my entire family would be killed in Baraka. Afande Byichazainvited my mother’s brother and my grandmother. My grandmother said that before I had forcibly disappeared, I had a large scar on my back and that I no longer used my left hand. These signs matched my physical characteristics. My mother’s brother offered the Bembe woman a cow to thank her. I found myself back home in Bibokoboko. Unfortunately, in the eight years that followed, we experienced more attacks. Today, I live in a refugee camp in a foreign country.”
Children in the Crossfire: The Lasting Impact of Targeted Brutality
In the killings of Congolese Tutsi, children were particularly vulnerable. This cruelty was facilitated by soldiers from the national army but carried out by militias. They specifically targeted children for massacre, either in groups or with their families. Banyamulenge children were mutilated, and girls and young women were raped and taken into forced exile. Children were also victims of manipulation aimed at blurring their identities by showing them that their original identity was murderous. In captivity in Tanzania, some died of starvation or were denied access to medical care. Because they were too young, they were subjected to forced labor and torture and were selected to be shared among the most extremist families, the Bembe.
Today, children from persecuted families in the DRC continue to be martyred, cut up with knives on the orders of armed groups collaborating with the national army (FARDC). Women are disemboweled after being raped by groups of men drunk with blood and tribal and racial hatred. Others are cut up alive or burned alive in tires. Regional actors must put an end to this state crime and human barbarity in the DRC.