If Chaza Makiduki is lucky, one day he might forget how he was orphaned.
”I am alone, all my family was killed. I don’t know where we are going, can you help me?” the tearful, frightened 11-year-old asked as he walked with some 1 500 other refugees from Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) bloodsoaked Ituri region into Uganda.
Nobody was holding his hand.
Chaza saw his mother and other members of his family being massacred by a group of men with machetes in Bedu Mandro, in the southeast of Ituri.
”They were Lendus,” he said referring to the region’s majority ethnic group, whose age-old feud with the minority Hema has been fanned into an inferno by the DRC’s wider war, which ushered in vast quantities of guns and spawned a plethora of politico-military groups who were quick to channel the ethnic animosity to their own ends.
Since that war began in 1998, more than 50 000 civilians have been killed in mineral-rich Ituri and about half a million displaced.
After watching his family being cut down before his eyes, Chaza instinctively joined the exodus that trailed in the wake of Ugandan troops who were withdrawing from Ituri under international pressure following their controversial five-year deployment in the DRC.
Some 60 000 civilians are estimated to have fled DRC in recent weeks.
Travelling in the same group as Chaza, and bearing equally horrific memories, were Tovoya (12) and Lembemu (15).
The two brothers were playing in a mango tree when Lendu fighters attacked their home near Bunia, Ituri’s capital and killed all those they found there.
”They killed my mother, mutilated her and removed some body parts, including the heart, before they burnt our house and left,” Wiyewa narrated.
”After they left we came down and started to cry, but when we saw people running, we left our mother’s body unburied and followed them until we came across Ugandan soldiers whom we followed too,” Wiyewa said.
During the walk of some 240 kilometres ”we saw many decomposing bodies,” he added.
Many people didn’t survive the journey, according to Hadija Bamanyisa, a mother of 10.
”The elderly, who could not walk, were abandoned by their helpers, while others were left and killed during attacks,” she said.
Tovoya said he has nightmares of people carrying machetes chasing them and catching up with his mother.
Another 12-old-girl, Panzudu, said she came from a family of 12, but that she did not know whether the others had fled, or if they all were dead.
So what now lies in store for children such as these? Once they reach established UNHCR camps well inside the Ugandan border — the UN refugee agency is averse to giving assistance at the frontier itself — there is a ”special programme for non-accompanied minors,” as the jargon of the aid world puts it.
”This involves protection of these individuals’ rights as refugees and other components include their education and health, but they remain in the refugee camp,” explained Bushira Malik, UNCHR’s Kampala representative.
”We try to encourage communities in the camp to take over responsibility of these children and emphasise to the community the need to get involved in their welfare and protection of their rights,” she added. – Sapa-AFP