Congo refugees prefer hunger in camps rather than being raped by FDLR

{Thousands of Congolese refugees prefer to live in abject poverty in refugee camps rather than risk being raped, killed or robbed by the FDLR rebels who were chased into this blighted part of the vast central African country following the Rwandan genocide two decades ago.}

“I don’t want to go home! What I saw there won’t let me go back,” cried Sakina Okenge, who fled her birthplace in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo three years ago in terror at attacks by Rwandan rebels.

Despite facing hunger, and struggling to put their children through school, many of those sheltering at Lukwangulo and other refugee camps in mineral-rich Katanga province feel the same way.

Fighters of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) have been terrorising their homeland ever since they were driven out of Rwanda in 1994, accused of taking part in the 1994 Genocide against Tutsis.

Murders, looting and the forced recruitment of local youths have not stopped since the FDLR — said to number around 1,500 fighters — set up bases in the troubled eastern provinces of North and South Kivu as well as parts of Katanga, further to the southeast.

Congolese authorities have warned the FDLR to disarm by January 2 or face a joint offensive by the army and an intervention brigade of the large UN mission in the country.

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