Kinshasa, DR Congo

Monday June 23, 2025

The NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Wednesday accused the Kigali-backed M23 armed group of deporting more than 1,500 civilians from eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to neighboring Rwanda, calling it a “war crime”.

The anti-government group M23, which seized the major cities of Goma in January and Bukavu in February after a lightning offensive, “deported more than 1,500 people” to Rwanda “in violation of the 1949 Geneva Conventions” on international humanitarian law, HRW said in a report published on Wednesday.

In it, the organization calls on the M23 and the Rwandan government to “put an end to forced transfers of Congolese citizens and Rwandan refugees, which constitute war crimes”, in a region marked by thirty years of conflict and tensions between communities.

According to HRW, on May 12 the M23 rounded up nearly 2,000 people in Sake, a town 25 kilometers west of Goma, capital of North Kivu province, “and forcibly transferred them to Goma, from where many were subsequently deported to Rwanda”.

“This appeared to be part of a wider M23 operation against suspected members of the Forces démocratiques de libération du Rwanda (FDLR), a Rwandan armed group with a Hutu majority, some of whose leaders took part in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda,” the organization added.

According to HRW, as well as local and humanitarian sources, many of the civilians expelled to Rwanda were from Karenga, a locality considered to be an FDLR stronghold.

– Burnt documents –

Some of these civilians had previously been detained by the M23 in Goma’s main stadium on May 12.

At the time, the armed group showed 181 men of all ages to the press, presented as “Rwandan subjects in an illegal situation” by the group’s military spokesman, Willy Ngoma.

The detainees were in possession of Congolese identity documents, which the M23 had burned on the lawn, insisting were forgeries.

Several hundred women and children, the families of those arrested, also arrived at the stadium in trucks chartered by the M23.

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) then took charge of these families in Goma, in a transit center usually used for voluntary repatriations, according to HRW.

Five days later, on May 17, over three hundred members of these families had been taken to the border between the DRC and Rwanda, in the presence of M23 authorities. Further convoys crossed the border between May 17 and 19.

The M23 presented these civilians as Rwandan refugees held hostage by the FDLR, which Kinshasa refuted, assuring that they had been identified “in detail” and “reported to the authorities in their country of origin”.

Eight people present in the transit center told HRW “that Congolese citizens and Rwandan refugees were among those deported against their will” and that “many expressed their fear of being abused in Rwanda”.

The UNHCR told Human Rights Watch that it had attempted to check the status of some 1,600 alleged Rwandan refugees brought to the transit center, but that this check “was carried out under pressure” and that return to Rwanda “was the only possible option” for these people, the report adds.

“The forced transfer of civilians to Rwanda, whether Congolese citizens or Rwandan refugees, is a war crime under the Geneva Conventions,” commented HRW researcher Clémentine de Montjoye, quoted in the report.

“Because of its control over the M23 in eastern DR Congo, Rwanda is ultimately responsible for the many abuses committed by this armed group,” she added.

When contacted by AFP, Rwanda’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Olivier Nduhungirehe, condemned a “parody of human rights”, without further comment.
For its part, the Congolese government denounced the alleged “hunt for Congolese citizens assimilated to the FDLR”, in a press release issued on Wednesday.

Humaniterre with AFP