Livewire - Amnesty International blogging for human rights

Andrew Philip, Amnesty International researcher, blogging from the field.

Back in Mbarara, after a strange sort of day.

We went back to Ishasha this morning. Yesterday many more people had arrived and the camp and the town were jam-packed with people.

Humanitarian agencies there are now overwhelmed, doing their best, trying to organize the evacuation of refugees to other places and refugee camps further inside Uganda where they can receive them.

This morning hundreds and hundreds of people were crossing the border. People carrying what they could, a few belongings, mattresses. Elderly people, children some with their parents or with neighbours, others on their own. We saw a girl, and then an old woman, collapse of exhaustion after the long walk to the Ugandan part of the border.

Around midday we heard a sound of gunfire in the distance on the Congolese side of the border. In the course of the next two hours, the gunfire came closer, at 12.30 it was about 2km from where we were.

Around 1pm, we were standing on the road looking towards the bridge and the stream of refugees suddenly stopped. When the last people up the road had crossed, a police officer told us that they were the last ones and we understood that at that point the CNDP had taken Ishasha on the DRC part of the road, across the bridge.

We stayed there for one more hour. No one else came. It was then clear to us that the CNDP had closed the road border.

It is essential that those fleeing violence and persecution are able to find refuge in neighbouring countries.

We spoke to several human rights defenders and heard more testimonies about killings which had happened towards the end of October. Last night a human rights defender was abducted by the Mayi-Mayi militia on the Congolese border in Ishahsa.

They took his motorbike, they forced him to carry luggage to the other camp further north and he was released by paying $20 US. We have had clear reports of extortions and robbery at gunpoint by Mayi-Mayi and the FDLR.

Apparently, the national army had left the area around 3 weeks ago, and the MONUC had left 2 weeks ago and only about several hundred Mayi-Mayi and FDLR people had remained, and have now moved away.

It is clear from the reports that people fleeing to Uganda had no protection whatsoever inside the DRC.