The former head of a Rwandan rebel group operating in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and blamed for Rwanda’s 1994 genocide called on Friday on his former companions-in-arms to follow his example and surrender.
”We ask the … combating forces to prepare to come back into the fold,” Paul Rwarakabije told reporters, reading from a text as a Rwandan government spokesperson stood beside him.
Rwarakabije’s surrender last Friday has been hailed as a positive step towards helping restore stability in Central Africa’s war-torn Great Lakes region.
The former Rwandan army general led the Democratic Liberation Forces of Rwanda (FDLR), a force made up of former Rwandan soldiers and members of an extremist Hutu militia known as the Interahamwe and estimated at having up to 20 000 fighters.
But the FDLR’s interim leader, Jean-Marie Vianney Higiro, said on Tuesday that Rwarakabije had acted on ”his own account” by surrendering.
”The FDLR wishes to announce to the entire international community and the Rwandan people that it has nothing to do with these manoeuvers between the Rwandan government and individuals acting on their own account,” Higiro said in a statement.
”The high military command of the FDLR army continues to lead the FDLR forces,” the statement said.
The FDLR fighters, accused of playing a key role in the 1994 genocide of up to a million minority Tutsis and their Hutu sympathisers, fled across the border when mainly Tutsi rebels seized power in Rwanda.
The alleged ringleaders of the genocide are currently being tried at a United Nations court in Tanzania.
Rwarakabije, whose forces conducted incursions against the Rwandan government from bases in the DRC, surrendered last week to the Rwandan army along with about 100 men. — Sapa-AFP