A BRADFORD Council employee wants to raise awareness of ethnic violence in Congo, where his family are at risk of being killed.

Justin Ndagiro, 32, is from the Democratic Republic of Congo and moved to Bradford as a refugee with his wife and two young children in January 2017. He works in the council's Department of Health and Wellbeing.

Justin says his relatives in Congo are being made homeless and are "waiting to be killed" - they are "surrounded" by Mai-Mai rebels who, he says, are carrying out genocide. Justin says the media are "silent", so he wants to raise the issue with his local MPs in Bradford.

"They kill my relatives as if they're animals. They kill us because we're different" - Justin and his family are Tutsi, a minority ethnic group who inhabit several countries. Congolese Tutsis are called Banyamulenge and descend from neighbouring Rwanda. They have a long history of emigration to Congo: a report by the Brookings Institution Press says that estimates for the date of the first settlement of the Banyamulenge in Congo range from the 16th to the 19th century.

Despite having been in Congo for so long, the Banyamulenge, a close-knit community of farmers, often face prejudice - "They call us foreigners, but we've been here for generations", Justin says.

The Banyamulenge mainly live in Congo's South Kivu province. A 2013 report by Rift Valley Institute said they number between 50,000 and 400,000.

Justin lived through the two Congo wars and saw his grandmother killed with a machete before his own eyes when he was a child. His family then fled from their native Katanga to South Kivu – "We were refugees in our own country, can you imagine?", he says.

They then fled to Burundi, where Justin spent 15 years, but persecution remained - in the 2004 Gatumba massacre, over 160 Banyamulenge refugees were killed at a refugee camp: "It was a planned, systematic killing", Justin explains.

He fled to Bradford with his father, wife and children for a better and safer life nearly three years ago. "I thank the UK - they've welcomed us. I work for the council and I want to help - I want to fight homelessness and poverty in the UK. I want to contribute to Britain and my wife also goes to English classes so she can learn the language."

"I call my family in Congo every day", Justin says, as he begins to tear up. "We are not seen as human. If we were, they would never kill us like this.

"Some people have no medicine so we need to get in touch with the Red Cross, and I want to meet with my local MPs to raise awareness for my relatives, if they're willing to help us."