A Thousand Sisters_ My Journey Into the Worst Place on Earth to Be a Woman - Lisa Shannon [37]
Eric continues his story. “The RCD were in control of the airport as well. They arrested me and the journalists and took us to the airport. We paid six hundred dollars, but they didn’t release us. They kept us in a small room. My wife called a partner in Kigali. The partner called London, who called the embassy in Kinshasa. The embassy called the UN. The next day, the UN came to release us.”
“Has anyone been attacked or killed in the communities you serve?” I ask him.
Eric smiles broadly, presumably at the naiveté of the question, and answers. “Thousands of times.”
In January 2001, Laurent Kabila was assassinated. His son, Joseph Kabila, took over as President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. While the conflict technically ended in 2003, and many countries’ soldiers or their proxy militias returned home, the Interahamwe remain in the park. Appropriately, locals throughout South Kivu still refer to them as the Interahamwe, given their unbroken, fifteen-year campaign of killing together. “Officially—theoretically—the fighting finished,” Eric says. “But behind the scenes, other things are done. Our park rangers were allowed to get back their guns so they could take control of the park like before. At some points, park rangers meet Interahamwe in the park. Park rangers are armed. Interahamwe are armed. They are enemies. So they open fire on each other. It’s a military thing. There’s going to be a fight.”
“How many park guards have been killed by Interahamwe?” I ask.
“Six.”
“Have you ever met Interahamwe?” I press him.
“Two years ago. I was studying for my degree in rural development. I did research on coltan mining in the west highland section of the park in 2005. I had hiked three hours to reach the mining site where the villagers, the miners, have a camp. I had a questionnaire. I was talking to miners, collecting data, when suddenly I saw men coming with guns. They didn’t have soldier uniforms; they were just civilians with guns.
“The miners said, ‘Don’t worry, they are Interahamwe. We have to pay some taxes.’
“I asked them if that was who collects taxes here. They said, ‘Sometimes, yes.’
“The Interahamwe asked the miners about me, saying ‘Who is this one?’
“‘He is a student from Bukavu,’ they answered.
“And the Interahamwe asked me, ‘Are you meeting park rangers here? Are you some kind of official?’
“I said, ‘I’m sorry, I’m a student. I’m confused . . .’
“They said, ‘You don’t need to know, just ask the miners.’
“I was afraid, but fortunately I was presented like a student. They collected money and they went. The Interahamwe were not violent, they were not pressuring the community. It was like it was not the first time, like they have an arrangement. After they went, I asked the Congolese, ‘Why do those people come here? What is the linkage?’
“‘This mining camp belongs to them,’ they told me. ‘We have an arrangement to give them a percentage of income from the mines we dig here.’
“I asked, ‘How do you do that?’
“They said, ‘There are mining sites that are ours and mining sites that are theirs. Their mining sites, we just dig. Say, for example, we have ten kilos. We divide down the middle—they get five, we get five. But at our mining site, we just pay taxes to them.’
“‘How much?’ I asked.
“‘It depends, but we can negotiate.’
“‘How do you negotiate?’
“‘We negotiate like . . . We hide some quantities. For example, if we dig a hundred kilos, we show ten kilos and pay like ten dollars. But we don’t want you to ask us about that.’
“‘Yes,’ I said, ‘But I’m just a student getting information.’
“‘Where will you bring this information?’”
Eric