The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) on Monday expelled hundreds of Burundians accused of staying illegally, an AFP correspondent saw.

The Burundians were taken by police and troops to the port of Goma on Lake Kivu, located on the DRC’s eastern border, and placed aboard two boats, the reporter said.

They were to be repatriated to Burundi via the lake and then by road via the province of South Kivu, officials said.

The interior minister for the province of North Kivu, Jean Bosco Sebishimbo, said local people had reported the presence of the Burundians to the authorities on Friday.

“We found that there are more than 1,400 Burundians whose residence status is not in order,” North Kivu’s governor, Carly Nzanzu Kasivita, said.

“They say they are refugees, but they have never gained refugee status,” he said.

The DRC’s security services identified “among these immigrants… figures who were implicated in a failed coup in Burundi,” President Felix Tshisekedi’s office said in a statement, without elaborating.

They were acting “under the banner of the mystico-religious sect Ezebya, a dissident (faction) of the Burundian Catholic church,” it said.
Burundi is due to stage presidential elections in May.

The incumbent, Pierre Nkurunziza, a hardliner, will not seek a new mandate after his controversial election to a third term in 2015 plunged the country into crisis.

Civil unrest left 1,200 people dead and drove 400,000 from their homes.

AFP