Dr. Alexis Ndakize has been detained in the military intelligence cell in Uvira (South Kivu province in eastern DRC) since Sunday, August 25, 2024. He is being prosecuted for transporting medicines to villages inhabited mostly by members of the Banyamulenge community. Some local sources speak of a « conspiracy ».

INFO SOS Médias Burundi

Doctor Alexis Ndakize is the director of Nyakirango Hospital in the Bijombo groupment in the Uvira territory in South Kivu province (eastern Democratic Republic of Congo). He was arrested last Sunday by military intelligence.

Witnesses indicate that he was apprehended at the Kijaga checkpoint.

« He was unjustly accused of supplying the rebels of Gumino and Twirwaneho as he was transporting medicines for the sick. He had on him medicines for women, medicines for children and vaccines, » say residents who were at the place of his arrest and who saw the products that this doctor was moving. Twirwaneho and Gumino are armed groups composed of members of the Banyamulenge community.

Discrimination

Residents speak of discrimination.

« We have a problem of discrimination. They want our women to have died during childbirth. Leaving Nyakirango for Uvira is 60 km on foot, who will save our women in case of emergency? », laments a resident of Nyakirango.

The Banyamulenge say they have been mistreated for some time.

« At the Congolese military roadblocks, we pay more than 25,000 Congolese francs and this concerns the Banyamulenge only. The other tribes are not mistreated, » accuse men from the Banyamulenge community who often travel to Uvira from different villages in the Fizi and Uvira territories particularly.

According to sources that SOS Médias Burundi could not verify, Dr Alexis Ndakize was arrested after being denounced by doctors from the Bafulero tribe in the Katanga health zone « who do not want to see Banyamulenge doctors in the region ».

In 2023, Dr Merci Kimararungu who also worked at Nyakirango hospital was killed while leaving Uvira for Bijombo.

This health facility is supported by the Zion Temple church through the South Kivu provincial health division. The founder of the denomination is a member of the Banyamulenge community from Minembwe in South Kivu.

Several men from the Banyamulenge community are detained in different prisons in the country including that of Makala in the capital Kinshasa, suspected of supporting the armed group Twirwaneho.

Recently on the sidelines of the commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the Gatumba massacres in western Burundi which took the lives of more than 160 Congolese refugees, Azarias Ruberwa, former vice-president of Congo (2003-2006) recalled in Phoenix in the state of Arizona in the southwest of the United States that « the Banyamulenge are targeted by genocide and ethnic cleansing », citing reports from the advisers of the Secretary General of the United Nations.

The former vice-president of the DRC called on the Banyamulenge to « fight for our survival because the world has no pity ». Mr. Ruberwa deplored the illegal imprisonments suffered by members of the Banyamulenge community, which are sometimes accompanied by the deaths of prisoners, recalling the emblematic case of Dr. Lazare Sebitetereko, who has been in detention for almost 15 months. This rector of Ebenezer University in Minembwe in South Kivu has never been brought before a judge since his arrest in early July 2023.

In a letter he wrote from prison, Dr. Sebitetereko denied allegations that he called on young people in the Banyamulenge commune to « join the Twirwaneho armed group » and campaigned to « finance this armed group ».

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Dr. Alexis Ndakize, detained by Congolese military intelligence, DR