Forces Démocratiques de Liberation du Rwanda

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Forces Démocratiques de Liberation du Rwanda

Flag FDLR.svg

Flag of the FDLR
active 2001 to the present
Country Democratic Republic of Congo
Type Rebel army
Location Kivu provinces
Origin of the soldiers Rwanda and Congo
commander
President 2001–2009 Ignace Murwanashyaka
President 2009- Callixte Mbarushimana

The Forces Démocratiques de Liberation du Rwanda , abbreviated: FDLR ( Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda ) is a Rwandan rebel group that operates on the territory of the Democratic Republic of the Congo . Its members are predominantly of the Hutu ethnic group . The FDLR is a warring party in the Second Congo War and the Third Congo War , its war opponents are the rebel troops of the National Congress for the Defense of the People (until 2009), the March 23 Movement and the Forces de Defense Congoise (all three are believed to have been dated from Rwandan state), as well as the Congolese Army Forces Armées de la République Démocratique du Congo .

The group has been criticized for crimes against humanity and war crimes and was ordered by the United Nations Security Council in 2004 to disarm and leave the country immediately. The UN demobilization program for the FDLR has disarmed nearly 10,000 fighters and brought them back to Rwanda since 2002. In April 2011, estimates of a maximum of 3,000 fighters were considered current. The UN mission MONUSCO reported a number of 2,500 fighters in February 2011, two years earlier it had been 6,000. In November 2012, MONUSCO estimated the number at 3,700.

The high-ranking commanders also include Hutu who were involved in the Rwandan genocide , mostly soldiers and generals of the former Rwandan Army (FAR). The FDLR represents the racist Hutu power ideology.

The former leader is Ignace Murwanashyaka , who lives in Mannheim (died in custody in 2019), who was arrested in Germany on November 19, 2009 together with his deputy Straton Musoni . His successor was Callixte Mbarushimana until his arrest in France . Gaston Iyamuremye then became the interim president of the FDLR.

There are also splinter groups that have FDLR in their name and are to be distinguished from the FDLR.

organization

The group consists of a political wing, the FDLR, and a military wing, the FOCA (Forces Combattants Abacunguzi).

The FDLR is a tightly and strictly hierarchically structured rebel group. It has a constitution: the political wing, similar to a government in exile, has an elected president and two vice-presidents and an executive secretary. There are commissioners who, like ministers in a government, are responsible for various areas of responsibility: for example finance, economics, politics, even gender issues. The President and the two Vice-Presidents are elected every 5 years by an election committee consisting of 30 electors. More than half of the electors come from the military wing, the FOCA. The president is also the commander-in-chief of the armed forces and chairman of the high command.

history

The FDLR emerged from several predecessor organizations:

  1. The former Rwandan army (FAR) and the Hutu militias Interahamwe , who committed genocide in Rwanda in 1994, then fled to Eastern Congo. There, in 1996, the Hutu exile party RDR (Collection for Democracy and Return to Rwanda) was formed in the refugee camps in Goma and Bukavu. Military chief Mudacumura was responsible for the procurement of weapons and ammunition in the RDR. Ignace Murwanashyaka, he was the elected Germany representative of the RDR.
  2. The direct predecessor organization is ALIR (Armée de Liberation du Rwanda) and its political wing PALIR (Peuple Armé de Liberation du Rwanda), which was founded in 1997. As a result of the refugee movement of the ex-FAR from the camps in eastern Congo to the west and south-west, the ALIR / PALIR actually split into two camps over time: the western and the eastern. In ALIR I in Eastern Congo, commanded by Paul Rwarakabije, and ALIR II in Western Congo, partly also in Brazzaville, Republic of the Congo (where many ex-FAR fled to and still live there today). ALIR I opened a front in Northwest Rwanda in 1997. Until 2001 they invaded there several times. ALIR II fought on the side of Laurent Kabila in the 1998 Congo War. Ignace Murwanashyaka in Germany was the commissioner responsible for external relations at PALIR.
  3. After a massacre of British and American tourists in the Ugandan Bwindi National Park in March 1999 , American authorities listed ALIR as a terrorist organization - one reason why the successor organization changed its name in 2000: FDLR / FOCA.
  4. The FDLR officially appeared for the first time in 2001: The PALIR / ALIR II decided on a new name at a meeting in Kinshasa. At that time, on his first trip to Kinshasa in 2001, Ignace Murwanashyaka was unanimously elected President of the FDLR by 30 electors. In 2005 he was re-elected with 24 out of 27 votes in Lubumbashi, southern Congo.

The headquarters of the FDLR has been in Walikal since 2003 (currently October 2010). The Walikal region is located in North Kivu, in the dense jungle. Both headquarters are located there:

  • The HQ of the political wing, the FDLR, is located on the hills near the village of Ntoto. The current interim president Gaston Iyamuremye lives there, and was second vice president until Ignace Murwanashyaka was arrested in Germany. Iyamuremye goes by the war name "Rumuli", he is a civilian and was trained as an engineer in Belgium before 1994.
  • The HQ of the military wing, the FOCA, is not far from Ntoto, on a hill near the village of Kimua. Military chief Sylvestre Mudacumura († 2019) operated from there. Since the most recent elections (January 2011) he was also 1st Vice President of the FDLR and Chairman of the High Command. Mudacumura was considered a hardliner, he was a trained military. Prior to 1994 he was Vice Chief of the FAR Presidential Guard. Mudacumura was trained as a G3 at the military academy in Hamburg, according to statements from close confidants. The German Ministry of Defense denies this.

In 2005, around 400 fighters split off from the FDLR under the name Collection for Unity and Democracy (RUD). The reason given was that the FDLR should separate from the mass murderers in its ranks.

In December 2008, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda agreed to dissolve the FDLR. From January 20, Rwandan troops, in coordination with the government in Kinshasa, advanced on the territory of the Democratic Republic of the Congo to hunt down FDLR fighters.

According to OCHA, members of the FDLR attacked the villages of Ekingi and Busurungi in the Sud-Kivu province on May 9 and 10, 2009 and killed more than 90 people in Ekingi, including 60 civilians . Dozens more were killed in Busurungi. The incident is being investigated by the Mission de l'Organisation des Nations Unies en République Démocratique du Congo and the Congolese armed forces. In the preceding weeks, FDLR fighters attacked several other villages in the region and clashed with regular troops.

For several years the website fdlr.org was operated as a mouthpiece for a provider in Germany. At the request of the taz , the website went offline on August 29, 2009 and is now operated by the Italian provider Register.it.

On November 17, 2009, two alleged leaders of the Forces Démocratiques de Liberation du Rwanda (FDLR) militias (Dr. Ignace Murwanashyaka and his deputy Straton Musoni ) were arrested in Germany. They were accused of commanding the FDLR from Germany, where they had lived for several years. In December 2010 the federal prosecutor charged Murwanashyaka and the 49-year-old Straton Musoni with war crimes and crimes against humanity . She charged them with 26 crimes against humanity and 39 war crimes committed by their militia in 2008 and 2009 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. According to the Federal Prosecutor's Office, more than 200 people were killed, numerous women were raped, numerous villages were plundered and pillaged, innocent people were used as protective shields against military attacks and children were forcibly recruited as child soldiers for the militia. The federal prosecutor responsible for the prosecution of crimes under the International Criminal Code accused the two defendants of failing to prevent crimes under international law committed by the FDLR in 2009 in the Kivu provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, contrary to an obligation incumbent on them as a superior ( superior responsibility according to § 4 VStGB; Section 13 (1) StGB). In September 2015, both defendants were sentenced to long prison terms. Murwanashyaka died in custody on April 16, 2019.

After the arrest of the leaders in Germany, the fighting morale of the rebels sank: never since February, when a joint operation by the Rwandan and Congolese armies was carried out against the Hutu militia, have so many FDLR fighters surrendered as after the arrest: in November alone and the first half of December, according to UN figures, around 240, compared to 1285 in the first ten months of 2009, from a total of around 6000 previously.

Another FDLR leader, Callixte Mbarushimana, lived in France and was arrested there on October 10, 2010. Mbarushimana served as Executive Secretary from Paris. After the arrest of the two leaders in Germany, he temporarily took over the de facto leadership. The formal interim president is Gaston Iyamuremye, stationed in the Congo. Mbarushimana is considered an extreme hardliner within the FDLR. He is a suspected perpetrator of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. At that time he was working as an IT expert for the UN development agency UNDP in Kigali. He was also the leader of the Hutu militia Interahamwe in Kyovu, a district of Kigali. He is said to be responsible for the deaths of several Tutsi who, like him, worked for the UNDP. At the beginning of the year, Mbarushimana was transferred by the French authorities to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, where he now has to answer for war crimes and crimes against humanity. His alleged role in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda is not on the indictment. The last preliminary hearing before the opening of the proceedings will take place on July 4th.

In August 2010, units of the FDLR militia were involved in a mass rape . The rapes took place from July 30th to August 2nd in the Walikal region, more precisely: in the villages of Luvungi, Kembe, Bunyampuli etc., around 30 km from Walikal town. The rape had previously been threatened by threatening letters to the population. According to the investigation by the police commander in Luvungi, 276 women and girls were raped, some several times. The youngest victim is 3 years old, the oldest 80.

On November 26, 2012, the FDLR attacked Rwandan soil. Two FDLR members died and one injured was taken prisoner.

In 2014 the UN mission MONUSCO and the army of the Congo tried to develop a plan for joint action against the FDLR. This failed because Congo's President Joseph Kabila insisted on leading the army. Many of the army commanders were under investigation by the UN for involvement in war crimes; MONUSCO is not allowed to work with them. In mid-February 2015, the Congo Army began its offensive against the FDLR on its own. After two weeks, almost 100 FDLR soldiers were captured or killed. Two FDLR bases could be occupied without a fight. For the first time, there could be trials against those involved in the 2010 mass rape.

In April 2020, FDLR rebels shot and killed around a dozen rangers and five civilians in Virunga National Park .

Movies

Web links

 Wikinews: At least 150 civilians killed in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo  - News
  • Simone Schlindwein: Talking about peace, arming for war. Rwandan Hutu militia FDLR. In: the daily newspaper . April 7, 2011, accessed April 11, 2011 .
  • Dominic Johnson : Hutu militia becomes a company. Expert report on the Congo. In: the daily newspaper. January 2, 2012, accessed January 10, 2012 (Report on the reorientation of the FDLR after the arrests of Ignace Murwanashyaka, Straton Musoni and Callixte Mbarushimana).
  • Simone Schlindwein: "We also attack the population". Ex-military judge on the militia in the Congo. In: the daily newspaper. July 7, 2012, accessed on July 13, 2012 (interview with the former military judge of the Rwandan FDLR, Etienne Mbarushimana).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Simone Schlindwein; in TAZ: http://www.taz.de/1/politik/afrika/artikel/1/reden-von-frieden-aufruesten-fuer-krieg/
  2. ↑ Over 1800 FDLR armed rebels in DR Congo surrender to UN peacekeepers in 2010. MONUSCO , February 3, 2011, accessed December 23, 2012 .
  3. ↑ Simone Schlindwein: The orders come from Germany . In: Die Tageszeitung , October 10, 2009
  4. ↑ https://francegenocidetutsi.org/LeadershipOfRwandeseArmedGroupsInDRC.pdf
  5. ↑ Hans Romkema: Opportunities and Constraints for the Disarmament & Repatriation of Foreign Armed Groups in the Democratic Republic of Congo. ( Memento of November 16, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) The World Bank, Washington 2007 (PDF; 3.98 MB).
  6. ↑ a b c Guerrillas in the fog. ( Memento from January 12, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Pole Institute, published by: Evangelischer Entwicklungsdienst eV Bonn 2010 (PDF; 1.13 MB).
  7. ↑ a b c d e Simone Schlindwein: Terror in the Eastern Congo: The orders come from Germany. In: the daily newspaper . October 9, 2009, accessed September 19, 2019.
  8. ↑ a b Simone Schlindgwein: The rebel war is not over. In: the daily newspaper . October 13, 2010, accessed October 14, 2010 .
  9. ↑ Simone Schlindwein: Rwandan Hutu Militia FDLR: Talking about peace, arming for war. In: the daily newspaper . April 7, 2011, accessed September 19, 2019.
  10. ↑ One of the cruelest war criminals in Africa is dead. In: derstandard.at . September 19, 2019. Retrieved September 19, 2019.
  11. ↑ Mediator says Congo rebel talks make progress (English) , Reuters . December 9, 2008. Retrieved May 15, 2009. 
  12. ^ Rwandan soldiers enter DR Congo (English) , BBC . January 20, 2009. Retrieved May 15, 2009. 
  13. ↑ a b 'Dozens killed' in DR Congo raids (English) , BBC . May 13, 2009. Retrieved May 14, 2009. 
  14. ↑ google.com/hostednews/afp ( Memento from December 9, 2012 in the web archive archive.today )
  15. ^ Hutu militia website shut down , Die Tageszeitung. August 31, 2009. 
  16. ↑ Federal Prosecutor's Office brings charges against Rwandans in: Spiegel Online from December 17, 2010
  17. ↑ Simone Schlindwein: Rebels in the Congo: The morale is destroyed. In: the daily newspaper . December 29, 2009. Retrieved September 19, 2019.
  18. ↑ FAZ No. 280 of December 2, 2009, page 7.
  19. ↑ Dominic Johnson : Rwandan Hutu militia chief arrested. In: the daily newspaper . October 12, 2010, accessed October 12, 2010 .
  20. ↑ Rwandan militia leader arrested: caught up in the blood trail. In: the daily newspaper . October 12, 2010, accessed September 19, 2019.
  21. ↑ a b c Simone Schlindwein: Assaults in Eastern Congo: "Otherwise we will kill you". In: the daily newspaper . August 29, 2010, accessed September 19, 2019.
  22. ^ ICC: Information on the case The Prosecutor v. Callixte Mbarushimana. ( Memento of March 5, 2011 in the Internet Archive ).
  23. ↑ Simone Schlindwein: Militias carry war back home. In: the daily newspaper . December 20, 2012, accessed December 23, 2012 .
  24. ↑ Simone Schlindwein: A little justice. In: the daily newspaper . February 3, 2015, accessed March 3, 2015 .
  25. ^ Simone Schlindwein: Virunga National Park in the Congo: massacre of gorilla protectors . In: The daily newspaper: taz . April 26, 2020, ISSN  0931-9085 ( taz.de [accessed on May 6, 2020]).
  26. ↑ Jason Burke Africa correspondent: Ranger killed weeks after reopening of Virunga national park . In: The Guardian . March 8, 2019, ISSN  0261-3077 ( theguardian.com [accessed May 6, 2020]).