The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
Since this January, over 3700 people have fled to Uganda from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), fleeing violent attacks across the Kivu regions by reportedly Mai Mai militias and lack of food, water and basic services. More than 23000 have arrived across Lake Albert using fishing boats and canoes. / AFP PHOTO / SUMY SADURNI
Sebagoro, Uganda | AFP | A daily flotilla of wooden canoes makes the 10-hour eastward crossing of Lake Albert ferrying hundreds of refugees from DR Congo’s latest spasm of violence to the safety of Uganda.
The repurposed fishing vessels come to Sebagoro beach crammed with the bedraggled and dispossessed survivors of an outbreak of fighting between rival Hema and Lendu communities in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
In recent weeks more than 28,000 have made the passage, according to United Nations figures, most of them women and children, bringing with them tales of horrific violence.
“When they were starting to kill we saw we were going to die, so we ran away. My two sisters were at home and they killed them,” said 25-year-old Dorika Rokorasha who lost track of her husband in the panic.
“I took the boat and escaped.”
The Hema cattle herders and Lendu farmers of Congo’s Ituri region are antagonistic neighbours and outbreaks of low-level violence are common.
But in the late 1990s and early 2000s their fight became a broader, more brutal battle stoked by Rwanda and Uganda which were eager to seize gold, diamond, timber and influence as part of a wider continental war that played out inside Congo’s borders.
– Escape blocked –
In Ituri tens of thousands of civilians were killed between 1999-2003. Eventually some militia leaders were tried at the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
This year’s resurgent violence in Ituri is part of a patchwork of unrest in a country suffering from growing insecurity.
New conflicts are erupting as President Joseph Kabila struggles to maintain his grip on power two years after the legal end of his second presidential term.
The current Ituri killing is centred around Djugu, northeast of the provincial capital Bunia.
Some have drowned during the crossing, but newly-arrived refugees were lucky to make it out as aid workers say armed groups have begun blocking the escape of civilians.
