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They shot my neighbour in the head and the world looked away as a lakeside city became a slaughterhouse
One moment he was there. The next, a bullet tore through his skull. A neighbour watched it happen. The killers moved door to door. They were not bandits. They were uniformed fighters. Some wore the insignia of the M23 rebel group. Others, according to witnesses, belonged to the Rwandan military.
Human Rights Watch has now published the first detailed account of what happened in Uvira. The city sits on the shores of Lake Tanganyika in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. For weeks, it was under the control of M23 rebels. By the time they withdrew under international pressure, at least fifty-three civilians were dead. Forty-six men. One woman. Six children. All executed.
Investigators spoke to one hundred and thirty residents. What they heard was chilling. A man watched four members of his family fall. His brother. His brother’s wife. Two children. He ran to the lake and survived. Others were not so lucky.
They shot my neighbour in the head and the bodies kept piling up as mass graves swallowed the dead
The report documents eight cases of rape during the occupation. Women were stripped. Tied up. Assaulted while armed men took turns. One survivor said men in Rwandan uniforms told her she would be killed if she did not comply. Another woman recalled a Congolese fighter telling his Rwandan counterpart not to kill her but to rape her instead. Her husband tried to stop them. He was shot dead.
HRW investigators found three mass graves. One was at a site previously controlled by UN peacekeepers. Children were not spared. A twelve-year-old boy was shot and then stabbed in the leg with a bayonet just to confirm he was dead. He survived anyway.
The M23 captured Uvira days after President Trump brokered a peace deal between Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi and Rwandan President Paul Kagame. The ceasefire was meant to stop the bloodshed. It did not. Tens of thousands fled their homes. The rebels withdrew in January. The damage was already done.
Rwanda has repeatedly denied backing the M23 or deploying its own soldiers. UN experts disagree. They say Rwanda exercises de facto control over the rebel group. Recruits are trained under Rwandan supervision. High-tech Rwandan weaponry supports their operations. HRW sent its findings to both the Rwandan government and M23 leaders in April. Neither responded.
The violence in eastern Congo does not stop. A separate report found over thirty-five thousand cases of sexual violence against children in the first nine months of last year alone. Most happened in North and South Kivu provinces. Nearly two million people in South Kivu have run from their homes. The world debates. The bodies keep piling up.
