In a horrifying escalation of ethnically motivated violence, civilians identified as Tutsi are being publicly lynched and subjected to acts of cannibalism by militiamen in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), an investigation by African Facts has found, with the crimes occurring in plain sight and met with total impunity.
The investigation documents at least four separate cases between June 2022 and August 2024 where victims were not only killed but their bodies were burned, dismembered, and consumed by their attackers and sometimes by cheering onlookers.
“The period we lived through with this escalation of violence surpassed the unimaginable,” said Adeba, a Congolese citizen and former resident of Mugunga, on the outskirts of Goma. “Try to imagine a country where someone can be killed based solely on their appearance because they belong to a certain ethnicity. It is as if this ethnicity does not have the right to life.”
Adeba, who has since fled into exile, was a direct witness to daily persecutions and several lynchings. He described one incident on June 4, 2024, at a crossroads known as Kimachini, where a young man, Gatiyoni Munyabarenzi, was captured, lynched, and burned overnight by militiamen from the FDLR and Nyatura groups.
What followed was even more chilling. “In the morning, the population came to celebrate,” Adeba recounted. “Two gentlemen, one dressed in red, took his charred flesh. And as they ate it, people gave them money and alcohol. Each body part had its price.”
Photographs and videos obtained by African Facts confirm the testimony, showing a dense crowd, including children, gathered around the smoldering remains. A man is seen eviscerating the corpse and skewering organs on wooden sticks, shouting, “I am making kebabs. Who will pay for the ribeye?”
A Pattern of Brutality
The killings follow a clear pattern, targeting individuals accused of being “infiltrators” or collaborators with the M23 rebel group. The documented cases include:
August 16, 2024, Misisi (South Kivu): Manirakiza Seruvumba, a 36-year-old Tutsi meat seller, was captured by CNPSC militia fighters, killed, burned, and eaten. Mobile phone footage shows young men, their arms covered in blood, extracting and consuming pieces of his flesh.
June 4, 2024, Mugunga (North Kivu): Gatiyoni Munyabarenzi was killed and cannibalized by FDLR and Nyatura militiamen at the Kimachini crossroads.
May 30, 2024, Mugunga (North Kivu): Emmanuel Karegeya was lynched after being accused of filming artillery fire for the M23. He was beaten to death, burned, and his heart was cut out, grilled, and eaten in exchange for money from the crowd.
June 18, 2022, Kalima (Maniema): Cattle herder Fidèle Ntayoberwa was chased down, lynched, burned, and eaten by a mob following a rally organized by the ruling UDPS party.
In all instances, the victims were selected for their perceived Tutsi ethnicity. All crimes were committed in public, and to date, no perpetrator has been arrested or punished.
The Context of “Infiltration” and Hate Speech
This wave of extreme violence has intensified since the resurgence of hostilities between the Congolese government and the M23 rebellion in 2021. The government in Kinshasa has mobilized the population against an alleged internal enemy, blaming Rwandophone Congolese—and specifically those identified as Tutsi for the country’s military and political failures.
This rhetoric has imported a racist ideology, born in neighboring Rwanda where it fueled a genocide thirty years ago, into the Congolese mainstream. It is relentlessly propagated in media and on social networks, particularly in the east where armed groups like the FDLR founded by exiled leaders of the Rwandan genocide—have promoted such ideas for decades.
Witnesses in displacement camps around Goma described how Tutsi civilians, fleeing the same conflict as others, were singled out, harassed, and arrested as “infiltrators,” welcomed in neither government-held nor rebel-held areas.
International Indifference
Despite the brutality and the existence of photographic and video evidence, these acts have been met with a deafening silence. No major international media outlet has reported on these specific cannibalistic lynchings.
An ideology of dehumanization has become so hegemonic in parts of Congolese society, the investigation concludes, that its victims can be fetishized and consumed in public without causing widespread outrage. As the conflict continues, those targeted on the basis of their identity remain in peril, their fates sealed not by any action, but by their facies.
