Faustine Uwimpuhwe stands out among the group of children formerly associated with armed groups – commonly known as child soldiers – currently undergoing a civic education programme. She is among the teenagers undergoing a civic education programme at the Rwanda Demobilisation and Reintegration Commission (RDRC) base in Mutobo, Musanze District. The teenager’s qualities of leadership were at full display when The New Times visited the base on Monday, November 23. She was introduced as the “doyenne,” or student leader. Her group comprises 40 boys and 49 girls, aged between 12 and 19 years. They are part of the hundreds of anti-Rwanda militia fighters captured in the DR Congo, last December, and sent to Rwanda. Their forced repatriation came after the Congolese army stepped up an offensive against illegally armed and disruptive domestic and foreign terror groups in the country’s east, last year. DR Congo President Félix Tshisekedi vowed to tackle the insecurity in his country’s east where a myriad of militia groups have wreaked havoc for decades. Seemingly convinced it was for a common good, Uwimpuhwe became the first to volunteer for an interview. She was eager to tell her story. And, at the end, she had “a special request.” “We lost everything in Congo. War started, and as usual, we just ran for our lives. My parents did not bring anything. I always worry about how we shall cope, with no house, or anything else. I beg that we are helped and given basics such as a house, to start with,” she said. Uwimpuhwe said she is in Mutobo with her parents, also former militia fighters. She had six siblings. Two died during militia skirmishes back in 2011. In 2017, she said, more than 100 other girls and boys were told to go for military training. None summoned the courage to refuse. They all knew it was a must, whether they like it or not. “The old lady, Angeline Mukandutiye, is the one who told us to go for military training. We were about 113 children at a place called Falinga and we trained for about a month,” Uwimpuhwe said. Mukandutiye, a school inspector in Kigali during the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, was a wanted Genocidaire and when she was hoarded in the group that was forced to repatriate, she was identified on arrival and sent to jail. Twenty-six years ago, she was among the women arming and training Interahamwe militia. Falinga, in the DR Congo’s Rutshuru territory in North Kivu Province, is where the FLN, the armed wing of the Conseil National pour la Renaissance et la Démocratie (CNRD), then had a training base. It was their first headquarters before the militia relocated to South Kivu. CNRD – split from FDLR in 2016 - is where Uwimpuhwe’s teenage colleagues and most other adult fighters now in Mutobo belonged. The FLN raided a village in Nyaruguru District in June 2018, terrorised and killed innocent civilians. The same group was also behind another attack in Nyungwe Forest end that year. We were scared of death Unlike Uwimpuhwe, Marthe Tuyizere, a 16-year-old also recruited from Falinga - where her family of nine children lived - in 2018, appeared too timid. She said little, besides noting that she is happy her mother was resettled along with hundreds of other civilians on November 18. Her father is also at Mutobo, she said. “I would like to continue school. I had gone up to primary six in DR Congo but I wish to resume school,” Tuyizere noted while removing her jacket to show scars from fragment injuries suffered during battle last year. “This happened to me during fighting last December. I have scars on my abdomen too. And some fragments are yet to be removed from the arm. It is painful at night when I sleep.” Uwimpuhwe admitted that she would never put her children through what she endured in the jungle. “We were always on the move. I didn’t want to join the militia but it was a necessity, we were made to believe, considering the circumstances. I saw no reason to join the military because I had lost two brothers already,” she said. “Life was very hard after training when we joined the fighters in the jungle.” No child should experience this On seeing bloodshed and dead bodies for the very first time, Uwimpuhwe said, “is scary but you get used to it” as it becomes normal after you have seen more of it. “No child should go through what we did,” Uwimpuhwe said, adding that besides trauma, it shatters their dreams. “So many bad things happened. It is not a good life being born and finding yourself always on the run, hunted and with no hope for education or a normal life, or seeing friends and family killed all the time. These were sad things.” Uwimpuhwe said she knew little about the FLN hierarchy, “because they never wanted to reveal much,” but, she said, “they told us that they wanted to take us back to Rwanda.” “Our leader was Gen Jeva,” she said, explaining that it is all she knew about the militia’s leadership. ‘Brig Gen’ Antoine Hakizimana, alias Jeva, a former senior commander of the FDLR-FOCA headquarters battalion hails from the former Cyangugu prefecture, in the Mururu Sector of Rusizi District. He is the current FLN commander in charge of operations. A horrible life “I have lots of regrets,” Uwimpuhwe said, quickly adding, “But I feel lucky to have come home now.” She has composed a poem about how she, for so long, longed to see her country, and live a normal life. “The people I considered enemies are now friends,” reads part of her poem. Uwimpuhwe wishes all Rwandan children in militia groups’ ranks in DR Congo could come home. But she also knows this is easier said than done. “I know it won’t be easy for them to come because even us, we had no idea what Rwanda is like. And you just can’t simply announce that you want to go to Rwanda. That is taken as wanting to join the enemy.” Eric Hakizimana, 18 and another former child soldier said: “It was a horrible life. We lived in the jungle and most often didn’t have shelter when it rained. Worse was being forced into the army when I was 15.” “We were told we had to fight and return to Rwanda, capture the country and live a better life.” “I never wanted to be a soldier. I was not happy.” “We wasted so much time in Congo. I wish all Rwandan children there would be repatriated,” Hakizimana said. The children are being trained from a designated facility for children. “Before civic education they must first go through a literacy education programme so that they can ably follow civic education,” said Charles Balisa, a Disarmament Demobilization and Reintegration (DDR) expert who is the base manager. They are provided medical treatment, “plus continuous psycho-social support which is done by a team of psychologists here.” A case involving 18 FLN-CNRD fighters including senior political leaders is currently before the Nyanza-based High Court Chamber for International and Cross Border Crimes awaiting trial. Among the accused is Paul Rusesabagina, who was the political head of the group and the charges he faces include conscripting child soldiers.
