KINSHASA |
Sat Oct 5, 2013 7:43pm EDT
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| Kadogo, hundred of thousands rwandan children were involved in Kagame wars and most of them have the famous name of Kadogo |
(Reuters) – A third of child soldiers who have escaped from Congolese
rebel group M23 were lured from neighboring Rwanda with promises of
cash, jobs and education, the United Nations said on Saturday.
Some M23 child soldiers
received training from the Rwandan Defence Force for up to two weeks
before being handed over to the rebel group, with some of the children
believing mistakenly that they were joining the Rwandan army, the chief
of child protection at the U.N. peacekeeping mission in the country
said.
U.N. experts have repeatedly accused Rwanda of backing the 18-month-long M23 insurgency in eastern Congo,
a charge the Rwandan government has fiercely rejected. The roots of the
Tutsi-dominated rebellion lie in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, where
Hutu troops killed 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus.
Since the rebellion began, the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Congo – known as MONUSCO – has interviewed 117 boys who were recruited by M23 and found 37 of them were Rwandan.
There
are still a couple of hundred children among the M23 ranks, MONUSCO’s
chief of child protection Dee Brillenburg Wurth told reporters in
Kinshasa during a visit by U.N. Security Council ambassadors to the
Democratic Republic of Congo.
She
said four of the boys said they received military training by the
Rwandan Defence Force in Rwanda at camps in Bigogwe,
Ruhengeri-Nyarubanda and at the former university campus in Mundende
before they were handed over to M23.
“(They
were given) very, very sophisticated training, very serious training,
some of them by Rwandans. They said some of the trainers had Rwandan
uniforms on,” said Brillenburg Wurth.
“Some
of (the children) thought they were being recruited in the Rwandan
Defence Force and they were trained in Rwanda and then they found
themselves … in Congo,” she said, adding that cash rewards, education
and job opportunities were also used to recruit groups of children in
Rwanda.
Brillenburg Wurth said the
ages of the child soldiers ranged from 11 to 17 and most were aged 15,
16 or 17. She said some children told how they had been recruited by a
football coach and a police officer, who were earning $5 per child.
The
United States, which has called on Rwanda to drop its support for the
M23 rebels, stepped up its pressure on Kigali last week by moving to
block military aid over the recruitment of M23 child soldiers in its
territory.
DISOBEY AND DIE
The former M23 child soldiers said they were regularly posted on the frontline and saw many other children killed.
“Within
the group there is an extremely tough hierarchy and discipline. People
who didn’t obey orders were just killed. One child told how he had to
kill two adults who had done some infraction,” Brillenburg Wurth said.
Among
several M23 officers accused by the former child solders of recruiting,
torturing and killing children are Innocent Zimurinda and Baudouin
Ngaruye, who are both subject to a U.N. travel ban and asset freeze.
The United Nations
has said Zimurinda and Ngaruye fled to Rwanda in March with fellow
officers Jean-Marie Runiga and Eric Badege, also under U.N. sanctions,
after M23 suffered a violent internal split. They escaped with warlord
Bosco Ntaganda who was defeated by rival M23 commander Sultani Makenga.
In
July the Congolese government issued international arrest warrants and
extradition requests to the Rwandan government for the four men on
charges of commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity, the
United Nations said.
The U.N.
Security Council delegation, which includes U.S. Ambassador Samantha
Power and British Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant, is due to travel to
Rwanda on Sunday, where they plan to discuss how former M23 combatants
who fled to Rwanda can be dealt with in accordance with relevant
international law.
The United States last week partially blocked military aid to Congo over the issue of child soldiers.
Brillenburg
Wurth expressed surprise at Washington’s decision regarding the
Democratic Republic of Congo, which last year signed an action plan with
the United Nations to stop and prevent recruitment of child soldiers.
“There have been huge results… They don’t recruit children any more. There’s been zero tolerance,” she said.
(Editing by Tom Pfeiffer)
The Truth can be buried and stomped into the ground where none can see, yet eventually it will, like a seed, break through the surface once again far more potent than ever, and Nothing can stop it. Truth can be suppressed for a “time”, yet It cannot be destroyed. ==> Wolverine
