Former Rwandan rebels commence new life
KANYABAYONGA, DRC - In a huge hangar covered in white tarp, nearly a hundred rebels from a group linked to the 1994 Rwandan genocide were preparing Saturday for a new start.
Welcomed to the UN's camp in Kanyabayonga, in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, with a bowl of gruel and a promise of help to return home or claim asylum, the men handed over their guns and weaponry.
Hutu members of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), the rebels are remnants of a group accused of participating in the killing of at least 800,000 ethnic Tutsis during the country's genocide, according to the UN.
Some 20 years on from the massacres, 105 men, most of them young, surrendered on Friday at a grammar school in the DRC's North Kivu province.
By Saturday the group were at the UN's hillside camp north of provincial capital, Goma, surrounded by corn fields and eucalyptus trees.
"We arrived a bit late," Major Jean-Pierre Faustin Mugisha, one of the commanders of the rebels, said. "We were put up, and in the morning, given a bowl of gruel and something to drink. We have been well received."
The delay was apparently to do with some last-minute details: the rebels did not want to leave without their families.
"Our dependents should come as well," said Major Mugisha, a fighter in his forties somewhat older than many in his group. "We are going to fulfil (our commitments) but we want our families to join us."
After some negotiations, it was decided their wives and children would join them on Sunday.
After so many years on the run, it was only a minor hold-up.
North Kivu governor Julien Paluku said Friday that the surrender was the first step in a process which should be wound up "within 22 days", with the ex-rebels given a choice to return to Rwanda or ask for political asylum.
The UN mission in DRC (MONUSCO) has welcomed the rebels' surrender, but cautioned that it would take time to see if the movement was serious about disarming.
In the end, only 97 of the 105 men who had handed themselves in on Friday boarded the lorries to take them to the UN camp, but it is hoped that this will be just the "first wave" of defections.
"For the first day, this is a good start, but more can be done," General Abdallah Wafi, MONUSCO's number two, told AFP.
"We are encouraging the process and have mobilised all our [military and logistic] resources but only coming days will tell us if the process is credible and serious."
The FDLR -- whose fighters have been refugees in the east of the DRC since 1994 -- is today much weakened, numbering 1,500 combatants according to the United Nations, although Kigali gives a figure of 4,000.
The rebels are scattered across Kivu province, where they have been accused of widespread violence and rights abuses.
Previous attempts to settle the FDLR problem have failed, but in April the group said it wanted to "devote itself to the political struggle" in Rwanda.
It said it had no intention of starting conflicts or creating insecurity in Rwanda, but the government there has refused to enter into any form of dialogue.
On Saturday, a spokesman for Joseph Kabila, the president of the DRC, called the "voluntary disarmament" of the rebels a sign that the country was "on the right track" in terms of tackling various conflicts in the country.
Kabila, the spokesman said, now "wants to make up for time lost to war, sedition and destruction".
Some locals say that of late, the FDLR have behaved better, living "peacefully" and cohabiting with the local population.
Maskia Espe, who runs a restaurant in Kanyabayonga, says some of the FDLR are "good", but he welcomed a sign that things might be changing.
"Congo is for the Congolese," he said. "We want them to get help to return" to Rwanda.
Major Mugisha says he wants to go home, but he knows it is complicated.
"The return to Rwanda will depend on the government in Kigali. We want to return, but with dignity. If the government in Rwanda commits to real dialogue, we'll return without any problems, and unarmed," he said.
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