Rwandan military and M23 are committing war crimes in occupied eastern DR Congo: HRW
The report documents mass arrests, forced labor, child soldiers, torture, and summary executions at M23 training camps where uniformed Rwandan military personnel are often guards or instructors.
M23 soldiers in Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo. Photo: AP
The Rwandan military and its proxy, the M23, are committing war crimes in the occupied mineral-rich eastern region of DR Congo, according to a Human Rights Watch (HRW) report published last week.
Titled “Death Was Everywhere,” the report documents mass arrests, forced labor, child soldiers, and torture at M23 training camps where uniformed Rwandan military personnel are often guards or instructors.
The report is based on interviews with 102 former detainees who escaped or were released. They said inmates are regularly beaten, “sometimes fatally, as punishment, or to compel others to enlist” in the M23.
They also reported “summary executions of people who tried to escape the training centers, or who committed minor disciplinary infractions, such as trying to drink water, relieve themselves, or eat food without permission.”
Soon after the Rwandan military and M23 captured the North Kivu province’s capital, Goma, in January 2025, Congolese soldiers, police, and militiamen who had fought on the government’s side were rounded up and sent to training camps in Rumangabo and Tshanzu for “re-education”.
While initial operations mainly targeted the state’s combatants, later operations that continued throughout the year targeted civilians with a “systematic campaign of mass arrests” in Goma, Bukavu, and parts of Nyiragongo, Rutshuru, and Masisi territories.
Thousands were picked up from homes, schools, streets, and churches, and sent to training camps, “where they were held in inhumane conditions for weeks or months and subjected to beatings, severe ill-treatment, and summary executions,” said the report.
Many more have died in these camps from hunger, dehydration, and exhaustion. Estimating the death toll to be in “hundreds, perhaps more,” HRW said an accurate determination will require all mass graves to be found and exhumed.
“The grave abuses by M23 fighters and Rwandan military personnel – including murder, torture and other ill-treatment, corporal punishment, forced unlawful recruitment and abusive labor, and use of child soldiers – are war crimes,” it added.
If these abuses are demonstrated to be widespread and systematic, they “would also amount to crimes against humanity,” it added, calling on the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate.
