One Year Later: Refugees from DR Congo Shot and Killed in Rwanda

(Nairobi, February 23, 2019) – Rwandan authorities have failed to release their investigations of the fatal shooting of 12 protesting refugees by police in western Rwanda on February 22, 2018, Human Rights Watch said today. A year after the killings, the authorities have not revealed how many people were killed nor have they identified those responsible for using excessive force and held them to account.

Rwandan police fired live ammunition on refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo protesting outside the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) office in Karongi District, Western Province, on February 22, 2018, immediately killing at least eight. Another died later that day from her injuries and two pregnant women who had fled the shooting miscarried. Police sent to guard the Kiziba refugee camp killed three people there as they tried to leave to help the wounded protesters, a witness said.