Banyamulenge
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The Banyamulenge are a group of Tutsi living in the eastern region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). They are concentrated in the province of South Kivu close to the Burundi-Congo-Rwanda border. The ambiguous political position of the Banyamulenge contributed to the start of the First Congo War in 1996, the Second Congo War in 1998 and continues to a point of contention since 2003, when the Second Congo War officially ended.
The people who became known as the Banyamulenge migrated gradually from Rwanda, Burundi, and western Tanzania over the course of the last few hundred years. Most came at the end of the 19th century, during the political tensions that accompanied Rwandan Mwami Rwabugiri's expansionist campaigns.
In 1996 the Rwandan government used the Banyamulenge citizenship issue as a cover for the Rwandan army's plan to destroy the refugee camps in eastern Congo that had hosted Rwandan Hutu who had fled after the genocide in July 1994.
In response to this perceived threat the Banyamulenge threw their support behind the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo (AFDL) efforts, backed by Rwanda and Uganda, to overthrow the government of Mobutu Sese Seko in Zaire. They formed militia groups to assist the Rwanda Patriotic Army (RPA) and, when popular opinion turned against the foreign occupiers, to defend themselves against Mai-Mai groups fighting the foreign invaders or seeking to expel the Banyamulenge because of their perceived connection to Rwanda. The two Mai-Mai groups most active against the Banyamulenge are the Babembe and Barega militias.
The various Banyamulenge militias and the Rwandan government forces are separate. In early 2002, there was extensive fighting on the Hauts Plateaux of South Kivu after Commandant Patrick Masunzu, an ethnic Munyamulenge in the Rwandan-backed Rally for Congolese Democracy-Goma (RCD-Goma) rebel movement, gathered Banyamulenge support in an uprising against the RCD-Goma leadership.
By 2000, the Banyamulenge were hemmed into the Hauts Plateaux by Congolese Mai-Mai, the Burundian FDD, and the Rwandan Hutu Armée de Libération du Rwanda (ALiR), and were unable to carry out basic economic activities without the security provided through the RCD-Goma. Numerous families fled to the relative safety of the Burundian capital of Bujumbura. Nevertheless, Banyamulenge make up much of the RCD military wing, the Armée Nationale Congolaise (ANC), and control the towns of Fizi, Uvira and Minembwe.
In August 2004, 152 Banyamulenge refugees were massacred at a refugee camp in Gatumba, Burundi by unknown forces. Vice President Azarias Ruberwa, a Munyamulenge, suspended his participation in the transitional government for one week in protest, before being persuaded to return to Kinshasa by South African pressure.
