Tutsi and Banyamulenge in the DRC: Sixty Years of Persecution

By Tuzafrika · 15 August 2026

Investigation

Since Congo's independence in 1960, the Tutsi and Banyamulenge of the country's east have lived through repeated cycles of legal exclusion, massacre and forced displacement. Drawing on United Nations reports, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, a confidential cable from the US Consulate in Bukavu dated October 1965, and a 1995 memorandum addressed to Marshal Mobutu – two primary documents consulted for this investigation – this account reconstructs six decades of persecution that has been documented but never tried in court: from the Simba rebellion to the Gatumba massacre, whose twenty-second anniversary the community is marking this week, to the destruction of the South Kivu highlands since 2017.

On the night of 13–14 August 2004, armed men surround the Gatumba transit camp in Burundi, a few hundred metres from the Congolese border. Placed under the protection of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the camp shelters Banyamulenge families who had fled the fighting in Bukavu weeks earlier. Within hours, 152 of them – most of them women and children – are killed, many burned alive. Twenty-two years later, this August, the community is once again marking that night. None of the arrest warrants issued against the presumed perpetrators has ever been carried out.

Gatumba was neither the first nor the last episode of its kind. It is one of the best documented in a history that began with Congo's independence in 1960 and that remains, to this day, unresolved. Drawing on the reports of the United Nations, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, as well as the 1995 memorandum consulted for this investigation, one can trace, across six decades, the near-mechanical repetition of the same pattern: a climate of legal or political exclusion, massacres, warnings sent to the authorities – and then, almost always, impunity.

PART IAn Exclusion Takes Hold (1960-1994)

The Banyamulenge are a community of Tutsi-descended herders who, according to their own accounts, have lived for several centuries in the South Kivu highlands (the territories of Fizi, Uvira and Mwenga, around Minembwe). They share the Kinyarwanda language and cultural traits with other Tutsi and Banyarwanda populations of eastern Congo. Since the country's independence in 1960, this community – like other Congolese Tutsi groups, notably in North Kivu – has faced a succession of crises, exclusions and massacres.

The 1960s: the first stirrings of violence

In the 1960s, during the Simba rebellion (1963-1965), ethnic violence already touched Congo's Tutsi population. In and around Bukavu, after a rebel attack failed, government forces carried out summary executions that targeted Tutsi in particular, accused of pro-rebel sympathies. In the Bashali chiefdom, in North Kivu, Banyarwanda were arrested, tortured and thrown into Lake Vert. A confidential cable from the US Consulate in Bukavu, dated 29 October 1965, documented violence in Masisi that left at least 200 dead. The cable attributed the violence to friction between Banyarwanda and Bahunde, with the Banyarwanda labelled as refugees even though they were Congolese citizens; the Nande provincial government, the cable noted, was specifically seeking to present the Banyarwanda as refugees rather than as Congolese citizens. The document already warned that increased repression against them could lead to an explosive situation. Some authors and political figures speak of a 1965 "mini-genocide" aimed at stripping Rwandophone populations of their rights – events that left lasting scars on collective memory.

1970-1980: exclusion by law

The 1970s and 1980s were marked less by mass killing than by a progressive exclusion written into law. Law No. 72-002 of 5 January 1972 first granted collective Congolese nationality to people of Ruanda-Urundi origin established in the country before independence. On 26 May 1981, before the Central Committee of the Popular Movement of the Revolution, Marshal Mobutu himself declared it urgent to determine "who in Zaire is Zairean and who is not"; a month later, Law No. 81-002 of 29 June 1981 reversed the 1972 law and made nationality conditional on proof of ancestry established within the borders fixed in 1885. Many Banyamulenge and Banyarwanda were left in permanent legal limbo, treated at times as Congolese, at times as foreigners. This uncertainty fuelled land and political tensions in Kivu.

The 1990s: a dramatic turning point

The 1990s marked a dramatic turning point. As early as 1991-1992, the Sovereign National Conference, tasked with rebuilding the country's institutions, challenged the nationality of Tutsi and Banyamulenge delegates, who found themselves effectively marginalised in its proceedings. In 1993, in North Kivu, ethnic clashes between Hunde, Nyanga and Banyarwanda communities, in the context of the conflict known as the "MAGRIVI war," left, by some estimates, between 15,000 and 20,000 dead.

Localities affected in 1993, by territory: Masisi – Rwankuba, Bugabo, Mushubangabo, Kinyangutu, Kyamarambo, Kaniro, Masisi-Centre, Buramo, Buguri, Gatoyi, Mahanga, Ntango, Gahongore, Kajagari, Kanyatsi, Nyakariba, Nyamitabo, Gihuma, Gisuma, Kivuye, Mpati, Bibwe, Ronga, Machumbi, Muheto, Busihe, Gahanga, Mukengwa, Rwashi, Rushinga, Gichanga, Burungu, Bukombo, Mweso, Nyabiondo, Misego, Miandja. Bwito (Rutshuru) – Bwuma (early July 1992), Kibirizi, Kojo, Birambizo, Gasesero, Nganga, Kabingo, Kabizo, Tongo, Rusinga, Kanyabayonga, Gashuga, Kalembe, Nyanzale, Gikuku, Singa, Gihondo, Bambo, Birundule, Mirangi, Ihula, Gatsiro, Gishishe, Gatolo, Kibingu, Kirima, Musayi, Munguli, Lushowa, Bulindi. Lubero – Miriki, Luofu, Kayna, Kateku, Bukumbirwa, Pitakongo. Kalehe – Numbi, Ngungu, Shanje, Ziraro. Walikale – Ntoto (market, departed 20 March), Minzenze, Nsanganano, Mera, Malemo.

Thousands of Banyarwanda were killed or driven from their land, and this violence paved the way for growing radicalisation. In 1994, after the genocide committed against the Tutsi in Rwanda, more than two million Rwandan Hutu fled into neighbouring Zaire, including more than 200,000 former FAR soldiers and Interahamwe – the Rwandan militia responsible for that genocide. Once in Zaire, they massacred Congolese Tutsi in North Kivu (Masisi, Rutshuru, Lubero, Walikale, Kalehe, Nyiragongo and Goma): massacres that, according to reports from several international organisations, drove Congolese Tutsi into exile in Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi, Europe, the United States and Canada.

PART II1995, The Warning That Went Unheeded

In April 1995, the publication of the report of the Vangu Commission, at the High Council of the Republic – Transitional Parliament, marked a decisive turning point: the report recommended that Hutu, Tutsi and Banyamulenge in Kivu be treated as foreigners – Rwandan or Burundian – regardless of when they had settled there, and thus deported for lack of individual naturalisation. The report went so far as to accuse the Tutsi of a secret separatist plan, a Bujumbura-Kigali alliance aimed at creating a "Tutsiland" spanning Rwanda, Burundi, part of Uganda and both Kivus.

On 10 July 1995, forty Tutsi and Banyamulenge notables from Kinshasa sent a memorandum to Marshal Mobutu, copied to the UN Secretary-General, denouncing the report as an incitement to ethnic hatred and violence. They recalled that their communities' presence in Kivu was attested by colonial documents dating back to 1911, and that the Belgian immigration programme organised between 1937 and 1954, the Banyarwanda Immigration Mission, had granted full Congolese nationality to the transferred families, who were given their own chiefdom at Gishari as early as 1940.

The signatories also turned Mobutu's own words against the report's authors: received in audience in Goma in August 1993, the Marshal had compared access to Zairean nationality to a "general baptism" – whoever passed through the parish doors before they closed was baptised, whatever time they arrived – to explain that independence, proclaimed on 30 June 1960, had brought all Zaireans into the same nationality, at the same time and under the same conditions. They also cited the case of the Councillor of the Republic Rwakabuba Shinga, elected in the very first elections held for Congolese in 1959 and who had sat without interruption in the country's parliamentary bodies ever since: his nationality, never previously questioned, was suddenly challenged by young members of the Vangu Commission – some of whom, according to the memorandum, had barely been born when he was already sitting in office.

The memorandum also raised the alarm over violence already under way: according to its authors, armed elements of the former FAR and the Rwandan Interahamwe militia moved freely through Kivu, with the passivity or complicity of local authorities, and attacked Tutsi directly. They cited the case of a Tutsi notable, Nyangezi, killed in early May 1995 near Rumangabo, in the Gisigari grouping, and denounced the extermination of livestock belonging to North Kivu's Tutsi herders, attributed both to extremist Hutu refugees and to elements of the Zairean army itself – a situation that was already pushing part of the community to seek refuge in Rwanda.

Their warning went unanswered. Fourteen months later, in September 1996, the pogroms in Uvira and Bukavu formally declared the Banyamulenge "non-citizens" – exactly the risk the July 1995 memorandum had urged the authorities to avert.

PART IIIThe Age of Pogroms and Wars (1996-2003)

1995-1997: pogroms and the First Congo War

In 1995-1996, the situation deteriorated further in South Kivu: local authorities and Mai-Mai militias launched expulsion campaigns against the Banyamulenge, declared "non-citizens." Pogroms broke out in Uvira and Bukavu in September 1996, in which dozens of Banyamulenge were killed during anti-foreigner demonstrations. In October, provincial authorities in South Kivu ordered the Banyamulenge to leave the country within days or be treated as rebels: this ultimatum pushed part of the community into taking up arms. The Mokoto monastery, in Masisi territory in North Kivu, where many Congolese Tutsi had taken refuge, became the site of a particularly deadly massacre. These attacks drove many young Banyamulenge and Rwandophones from North Kivu to arm themselves and join the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo (AFDL) of Laurent-Désiré Kabila, backed by Rwanda and Uganda: the First Congo War (1996-1997) thus began, in part, as a reaction to these massacres and to this ultimatum.

Mudende, Rwanda: two massacres of Congolese Tutsi refugees in 1997

In exile in Rwanda, Congolese Tutsi from North Kivu were not safe either. The Mudende camp, in Gisenyi, near the Congolese border, sheltered several thousand refugees from Masisi and Rutshuru; it was attacked twice in 1997 by armed groups infiltrated from Congo.

On 22 August 1997, at least 130 refugees, mostly Congolese Tutsi, including children, were killed at dawn with machetes and clubs. Death tolls for this first attack range between 131 and 149, depending on the source. On 10 and 11 December 1997, a second attack left at least 231 dead and 227 wounded, according to the UNHCR; Amnesty International, for its part, put the toll at around 300 dead, possibly more. A count carried out by surviving teachers during the burial of the victims in mass graves put the number at 1,641; this count was passed on to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

After these attacks, the Mudende survivors were transferred to the Gihembe camp, in Byumba, far from the border.

Congolese refugee camps in Rwanda since Mudende

From Mudende (1995) and Nkamira (1995) to today, camps for Congolese and Burundian refugees in Rwanda have succeeded one another: Mudende (1995, around 8,000 refugees) → Nkamira transit camp (1995, 27 km from Gisenyi) → Kiziba (1996) → Gihembe (1997, sheltering Mudende survivors) → Nyabiheke (2005) → Kigeme (2012) → Mugombwa (2014, a fifth camp created to relieve pressure on Nkamira). The Mudende I (22 August 1997) and Mudende II (11 December 1997) massacres, along with the Nkamira attack (18 December 1997), mark the starting point of this relocation of camps away from the Congolese border.

Current figures vary depending on UNHCR data: in 2024, UNHCR and the UN in Rwanda reported more than 135,000 registered refugees and asylum-seekers, around 60% of them Congolese, with 90% living across five camps. The most recent UNHCR operational data indicates approximately 120,000 refugees and asylum-seekers, still with 90% living across five camps: Kiziba, Nyabiheke, Kigeme, Mugombwa and Mahama, the latter hosting mainly Burundian refugees. Since 2021, successive rounds of budget shortfalls have led the World Food Programme (WFP) and UNHCR to cut refugee food rations in Rwanda, by as much as 60% during the most severe cuts, owing to recurring funding gaps.

1998-2003: the Second Congo War

The Second Congo War (1998-2003) multiplied the abuses. Congolese Tutsi were hunted down and massacred in Kinshasa, where, according to several sources, the killings are put at 20,000 men and women, at Camp Kokolo, at the GLM, at the Palais du Marbre, at Camp CETA and at Kibomango; other bodies were thrown into the Congo River near Kinsuka and into the Ndjili River.

On 5 August 1998, at the Kamina military base, in Katanga, more than a thousand young recruits had just completed training given by Tanzanian instructors at the officer cadet school – several hundred of them were Tutsi. Forces that had remained loyal to the government in Kinshasa shot dead, in hangars near the ammunition depot, an unknown number of these unarmed young recruits: at least a hundred, according to the UN Mapping Report. Consistent testimonies describe more than 200 other Tutsi cadet-officers locked in a room and executed with grenades on orders from the chain of command, while at Base One, a third group was crammed into a container that was set alight with petrol.

Other massacres were reported in Katanga, in Lubumbashi, Kisangani, Vyura, Kalemie and Mbuji-Mayi, and in other towns, while the east of the country remained a theatre of fighting and reprisals. Villages in Masisi (North Kivu) were repeatedly emptied. Livestock, the main economic asset of Tutsi herders, was systematically looted or slaughtered.

PART IVGatumba, A Massacre Without Culprits (2004)

A night of horror

On 13 August 2004, one of the most symbolic episodes in this history took place outside Congolese territory, but struck the Banyamulenge directly. During the night of 13-14 August, the Gatumba transit camp – in Mutimbuzi commune, Bujumbura Rural province, Burundi, near the border with the DRC – was brutally attacked by a large group of armed men. Assisted by the UNHCR, the camp sheltered Congolese Banyamulenge refugees who had fled the fighting in Bukavu in June 2004.

According to the joint ONUB-MONUC-OHCHR investigation, 152 Congolese refugees from the Tutsi communities of South Kivu, known as Banyamulenge, were killed, 106 were wounded and 8 remained missing. Other sources put the death toll above 160. Most of the victims were women and children, deliberately and systematically killed, many burned alive.

A disputed claim of responsibility

The attack was claimed the very next day by the Party for the Liberation of the Hutu People – National Liberation Forces (PALIPEHUTU-FNL), the only Burundian rebel group to claim it. The UN's joint report concluded that the FNL had probably taken part in the attack, without being able to determine precisely the extent of its role. Testimony and past alliances suggest other groups active in the region may also have played a significant part: sources quickly pointed to a force combining Congolese Mai-Mai elements, Rwandan Interahamwe rebel fighters and FNL members.

The UN concluded that the attack clearly targeted the Banyamulenge and was driven by ethnic and political motives.

Warrants never executed

Arrest warrants were issued against Agathon Rwasa and Pasteur Habimana, but were never carried out. Ten years after the massacre, Human Rights Watch was still demanding justice. Twenty-two years on, in 2026, the community continues to commemorate the event and to demand justice.

PART VThe Long Reign of Impunity (2006-2025)

Since 2017: the destruction of the highlands

Starting in 2017, a new wave of violence swept over the South Kivu highlands. Mai-Mai militias and other armed groups systematically attacked Banyamulenge villages. According to testimony and reports relayed by diplomats and researchers, more than 85% of the Banyamulenge villages in the area were destroyed or abandoned. Hundreds of thousands of head of livestock were stolen or killed, depriving the community of its main economic resource. Thousands of people died, some burned alive. The Minembwe area, which became a symbol of resistance and refuge, has been regularly encircled like a concentration camp. Expulsion ultimatums have been issued, access to water points blocked, civilians abducted and executed. Acts of cannibalism appear in videos collected between 2017 and 2026, held in Tuzafrika's archives and authenticated with the help of verification experts (OSINT and forensic analysis), then translated from Swahili, Lingala, Mashi, Kibembe, Kifuliiru and Kinande; because of their extremely violent nature, these videos are not made public, but are cited here as documentary evidence. The events they depict are attributed to militias allied with government forces or with the FDLR.

On 30 November 2024, herdsman Gakwerre Nsimbyi was killed and more than 200 cows were slaughtered during an armed attack by the FARDC targeting villages where the majority of Banyamulenge live, according to footage filmed by the third-party outlet HO Media TV and collected by Tuzafrika; this case has not been independently corroborated.

North Kivu: a similar cycle of violence

In North Kivu, Tutsi villages in Masisi, such as Nturo, have suffered the same fate: evacuated three times in thirty years, burned, their livestock stolen, their people massacred. Many survivors have sought refuge in Rwanda, Uganda, or areas controlled by the M23, whom they often see as their only protector.

On 9 February 2024, in Masisi territory (North Kivu), a Congolese man of Tutsi origin was beheaded because of his ethnicity, an act attributed to the armed group APCLS (Alliance des patriotes pour un Congo libre et souverain), led by Janvier Karairi. Tuzafrika states it holds original video footage of this incident along with the identity of the alleged perpetrator and the victim; these are not published here out of respect for the dignity of the victim and their family, and have not been independently corroborated. APCLS, active in Masisi since 2006 under Janvier Karairi's leadership, is documented by the United Nations and Human Rights Watch as responsible for repeated abuses against Congolese Tutsi populations.

Throughout this history, two forms of violence recur with particular regularity in the reports of human rights organisations: arbitrary arrests and the lynching of Tutsi and Banyamulenge civilians.

Arbitrary arrests and detentions (1996-2025)

On 20 August 1996, in Lemera, paracommandos of the Zairean Armed Forces (FAZ) arrested five Banyamulenge chiefs, including customary chiefs Kabande and Rugazura, according to Amnesty International.

In Kinshasa, the hunt for Tutsi intensified with the Second Congo War. The Minister of Human Rights himself acknowledged the detention of 800 Tutsi, most of them at the Kokolo military camp, others at secret locations, with no visits from family or a lawyer – some were executed, according to Human Rights Watch. The UN Mapping Report documents detentions at the Palais du Marbre, the GLM, the Palais de la Nation and the CPRK, Makala prison: Tutsi detainees were shot dead there and thrown into the river weighted with stones. Amnesty International also notes that, from mid-1996 onward, waves of arbitrary arrests targeted Tutsi civilians at the hands of the police and Zairean soldiers, while extortion against the Banyamulenge became commonplace.

On 1 May 2006, Bureau II arrested three Banyamulenge in Uvira: two were held at the residence of the commander of the 109th brigade, the third in an underground cell in the mountains east of the city, Grioo reported.

These practices have continued into recent times. In May 2023, Lazare Sebitereko, a prominent member of Banyamulenge civil society, was arrested in South Kivu and then transferred to Kinshasa, where he was held incommunicado by military intelligence, according to Amnesty International's 2023 annual report. In July 2023, Tutsi and Banyamulenge families demanded the release of more than 200 men held in cells and prisons across the DRC, SOS Médias Burundi reported. In September 2024, in Kindu, Banyamulenge who had been illegally arrested were finally released, a decision welcomed by the association UNIPAD, according to Mashariki RDC. On 19 August 2025, the Burundian army arrested two young Banyamulenge in Bijombo, in Uvira territory, RNA News reported, adding that around ten general and senior officers and more than 3,000 Banyamulenge and Rwandophone civilians from North Kivu had also been arrested in Kinshasa, targeted because of their ethnicity and their physical appearance.

Lynchings and burnings (1998-2023)

In Kinshasa, in 1998, unarmed civilians accused of supporting the RCD – including Tutsi – were burned alive by the population, according to Amnesty International, which recorded this testimony:

“We ourselves burned the Tutsi.”

That same year, Yerodia Ndombasi, then chief of staff to Laurent-Désiré Kabila, compared the Tutsi to:

“A virus, vermin, a mosquito and filth to be methodically crushed.”

– a statement that, according to a memorandum from Citizenship Rights Africa, triggered a genuine manhunt against the Tutsi.

Hate speech by public officials (2020-2025)

This kind of rhetoric is not confined to the past. Justin Bitakwira, a former minister and MP, called the Tutsi an "evil race" and "born criminals" during a television broadcast in July 2023; the Congolese broadcasting regulator (CSAC) formally warned him for incitement to racial hatred, while the UN Joint Human Rights Office (BCNUDH) and the European Union condemned his remarks. The European Union placed him on its list of individual restrictive measures for repeatedly inciting violence and discrimination against the Tutsi and Banyamulenge community; his statements are also cited in the report of the UN Group of Experts on the DRC (S/2023/990). Muhindo Nzangi, a state minister who has held several successive portfolios under President Félix Tshisekedi, has pursued a different but similarly documented line, flagged as dangerous by the Congolese press and by academic research: he has publicly denied that a Tutsi or Banyamulenge ethnic group even exists in the DRC, calling any statement to the contrary a "historical error," rhetoric that researchers describe as contributing to the dehumanisation of Congolese Tutsi populations.

A few years later, during the "brassage" operations meant to integrate former combatants into the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo (FARDC), Banyamulenge and Tutsi soldiers who came forward at the Kitona integration centre were savagely lynched by regular units. The National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP) of General Laurent Nkunda denounced what it called a punitive expedition targeting mostly Rwandophone candidates for integration.

A comparable wave of violence resurfaced with the M23, in 2022-2023. On 25 November 2022, a crowd stoned to death a Tutsi man accused of spying for the M23 in Kitchanga; on 1 January 2023, a Tutsi resident was killed in Kilolirwe-Nturo, while dozens of villagers perceived as Tutsi were arrested by the army and accused of collaboration, according to Human Rights Watch. On 9 November 2023, Lieutenant Patrick Gisore Kabongo, 42, a Munyamulenge from South Kivu, was lynched by a group of people who accused him of being an M23 fighter because of his physical appearance – an act Human Rights Watch called a hate crime.

Banyamulenge soldiers killed by their brothers-in-arms (2004-2013)

On 1 July 2004, the UN Mission in the DRC (MONUC) announced it had opened an investigation into allegations that Banyamulenge soldiers in the government army had been killed by fellow soldiers. More than twenty Banyamulenge soldiers were reportedly killed in the east of the country by members of their own army, notably in Walungu, Shabunda and at Camp Sayo, in Bukavu.

Between 2012 and 2013, direct testimony gathered by Tuzafrika from around a dozen witnesses, identified through the Banyamulenge and Tutsi diaspora community and cross-checked between independent witnesses, indicates that at least 112 soldiers of Banyamulenge and Tutsi origin, former CNDP fighters integrated into the FARDC and deployed to Dungu, in Haut-Uélé, as part of operations against the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), were killed because of their physical appearance. Personnel deployed to Kindu were also threatened, and others went missing.

EPILOGUE2026: Memory Without Justice

Today, in 2026, the Banyamulenge and Congolese Tutsi continue to live under threat. The Gatumba commemorations remind the country every year of the absence of justice. Hate speech, mutual accusations of genocide, and political manipulation keep the cycle of violence alive. Voices are calling for international protection, a thorough investigation and recognition of these communities' Congolese citizenship. Others deny that any systematic persecution exists and accuse Tutsi armed groups of similar crimes.

This long history, stretching from 1960 to the present day, shows a minority community caught up in the torments of Congo's wars, regional ethnic tensions and geopolitical rivalries. The massacres of 1965, the pogroms of 1993 and 1996, the Mudende massacres of 1997, the Gatumba carnage of 2004 and the near-systematic destruction of villages since 2017 form so many painful chapters of a tragedy that is still not over.

Every year, on 13 August, the community commemorates Gatumba and demands justice. The arrest warrants issued against the massacre's presumed perpetrators have still not been carried out. Neither for Gatumba, nor for Mudende, nor for any of the episodes recorded in this investigation has justice ever closed the file. That may be the one constant in this history since 1960: the documented crime has never once led to a judged crime.