FDLR Returnees at Kigali International Airport
Photo: J. Mbanda
Jean Sayinzoga, chairman of Rwanda's Demobilization and Reintegration Commission (RDRC), came up Tuesday with a really tall one: 26 of the 58 FDLR combatants recently returned to Rwanda courtesy of the Congolese NGO PAREC [Ecumenical Program for Peace, Conflict Transformation and Peace] of Pastor Daniel Ngoy Mulunda, are actually DRC nationals!
Sayinzoga told The New Times of Kigali the following unbelievable tale:
“We received [on August 19] a total of 58 returnees and we screened them thoroughly only to find that 32 of them were Rwandans. Of the 32, 16 were Rwandan civilians and 16 are former FDLR combatants. The remaining 26 are purely Congolese nationals.”Is this guy kidding me?
Just consider this act of utter idiocy or sheer madness: a Congolese, living in peace and joy in the Katanga Province (this particular group of 26 FDLR combatants were sent to Rwanda from the Katanga where they had been resisting this repatriation), suddenly decides to impersonate an FDLR combatant in order to go to Rwanda... to get what? Diamonds and other minerals that a Katangan could find in Katanga? Is this Sayinzoga guy out of his mind to come up with this stupid lie?
There are zanies, scatterbrains and outright wackos in the DRC, but I don't see any single one of them relinquishing his Congolese nationality for Rwandan nationality and, in so doing, taking on the dubious identity of known killers and rapists!
Sayinzoga then alleged having attempted contacting Congolese officials (including Pastor Mulunda) to have them take back these unwanted African version of the Roma people:
"The problem right now is that the DRC government has rejected them. People have to realise that we have a screening system, we just don’t receive people and take them in just because they say they are Rwandans...
[...]
I have tried to explain to these officials on phone but they refuse to understand. These people don’t have proper names, they don’t know anything about where they lived before they went to Congo. We are looking for a solution but these officials have to know that we screen returnees before integrating them."Well, The New Times doesn't report the fact that Jean Sayinzoga has also claimed that the 26 hardcore FDLR combatants to whom he'd given Congolese nationality "have progressively escaped from the Mutobo camp," near Gisenyi, according to Kinshasa L'Avenir. Sayinzoga further speculated in the L'Avenir report that the 26 FDLR combatants might have "secretly left Mutobo camp by their own means or those provided by their families or friends." A speculation that prompted L'Avenir to pose this rhetorical question to Sayinzoga: "Would these Congolese have families in Rwanda?"
I'm not going to beat about the bush like the recent UN Mapping Project. We are witnessing here a case of the broad daylight "disappearance" by the Rwandan government of 26 Hutu returnees. A case of incremental massacres the Rwandan army is known to have repeatedly perpetrated. It's through these incremental massacres that the Rwandan army "genocided" the Hutus in the Congo... And, mark my words!, if this lie uttered by Jean Sayinzoga is swallowed by the international opinion, then other future "escapes" by Hutu returnees would necessarily ensue...
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