Over 300 Rwandan refugees in DR Congo expelled by M23 rebels: Video

More than 300 Rwandan refugees were on Saturday, May 17, forcibly expelled by M23 rebels from Goma, under their control in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

On Monday, May 12, M23’s military spokesperson, Willy Ngoma, presented 181 men to the media at Goma’s main sports stadium, identifying them as “Rwandan subjects” allegedly in the country illegally.

Although the men carried Congolese identification documents, the rebel group claimed the papers were fake and proceeded to burn them publicly on the stadium grounds, according to an AFP journalist on site.

Several hundred women and children—relatives of the detained men—were also brought to the stadium aboard trucks arranged by M23.

One detainee, who identified himself only as Eric, told AFP he was from Karenga in North Kivu, a region known to be a stronghold of the FDLR (Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda), a rebel group formed by former Rwandan Hutu leaders responsible for the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi.

By early Saturday, 360 individuals had been loaded onto buses from Goma, said Eujin Byun, spokesperson for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). The agency emphasised that any repatriation of refugees must be “safe, voluntary, and carried out with dignity,” in accordance with international law.

Back at home, however, the mayor of the Rubavu district in Rwanda, Prosper Mulindwa, expressed his excitement about receiving the returnees and helping them to integrate into the Rwandan way of living.

"We are happy to welcome so many Rwandans. Today we are receiving 360 people, but we have information that in Goma, at the UNHCR centre, more than 2,000 Rwandans are preparing to return home. So we are happy because we will have additional help to accelerate the development of our country," he told AFP.