from JEAN KASSONGO in Kinshasa, DRC
KINSHASA, (CAJ News) – INTER-communal violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has sparked fears of genocide tantamount to the one in Rwanda in 1994.
Hundreds of thousands people died in that genocide.
Skirmishes are prevalent among ethnic lines, pitting the Kongo, Luba, Mbala, Songe, Suku, Teke, Yaka and Yansi communities in the West.
An unspecified number of people have been injured and killed, numerous homes looted and burned while the DRC national army (FARDC) has been attacked.
In the East, recurrent violence mainly stems from the refugee crisis that resulted as many individuals involved in the Genocide against the Tutsis in Rwanda fled to the DRC.
They formed armed groups such as the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda/ Forces démocratiques de libération du Rwanda (FDLR), which remains active.
Following her recent official visit to the DRC, Alice Wairimu Nderitu, United Nations Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, is alarmed about the escalation of violence in these above-mentioned areas in the volatile Great Lakes region.
“The current violence is a warning sign of societal fragility and proof of the enduring presence of the conditions that allowed large-scale hatred and violence to erupt into a genocide in the past,” she said.
The envoy stated that the situation in both the East and West was particularly alarming while the DRC was preparing for national elections in 2023.
The DRC government of President Felix Tshisekedi, in office since 2019, has struggled to repel the decades-long insurgency.
Some estimates put the death toll at 800 000 when, between April and July 1994, Hutu militias killed members of the Tutsi minority ethnic group in Rwanda.
– CAJ News