M23 renews call for action against 'DR Congo-backed genocide'

The M23 rebel group has yet again sounded the alarm over what it calls “genocide and targeted killings” in eastern DR Congo. The rebels, who have since May been at war with a coalition of Congolese government forces, FARDC, genocidal FDLR, and Mai-Mai militia, had announced earlier this week that they were ready to disengage and withdraw from their advanced territories in line with last month’s Luanda summit resolutions. However, in a statement released on Wednesday, December 7, the M23 said it condemns in strongest terms the “ongoing genocide and targeted killings perpetrated by the DR Congo government coalition” of the FARDC and irregular armed groups, including FDLR, Nyatura, APCLS and Mai-Mai. “On Tuesday, December 6, the DRC government’s coalition attacked our positions in Bwiza and its surroundings, in total breach of the current ceasefire. The said coalition is on rampage killing innocent civilians, destroying their houses, looting and slaughtering their cows in total sabotage. These ongoing attacks have left many wounded and displaced civilian populations,” the statement reads in part. “It shall be recorded that these targeted killings of Tutsi and those who have rejected the genocide ideology by the said DRC government’s coalition while the international and national community remained tight-lipped, take us back to the time prior to the genocide of 1994 perpetrated against the Tutsi in Rwanda,” it added. The rebel group said in a communiqué last month there was a plan to massacre the Tutsi population in eastern DR Congo. And the latest warning comes just a week after the United Nations Special Advisor on Genocide Prevention also condemned the escalation of violence in eastern DR Congo, calling it was a “warning sign” in a region where genocide happened in the past. Alice Wairimu Nderitu, who visited DR Congo early November, said she was “deeply alarmed about the escalation of violence in the Great Lakes Region where a genocide – the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda – happened.” “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,” said the UN envoy. FDLR is a blacklisted terrorist group controlled by remnants of the former Rwandan government forces and their allied Interahamwe militia, both of which are blamed for the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, which claimed the lives of more than a million people in a space of 100 days. The terrorist group, which, according to a leaked UN experts report, was this year involved in mass recruitment drive and controlled parts of eastern DR Congo. The militia group has been blamed for exporting genocide ideology to DR Congo, particularly targeting Congolese Tutsi communities. “FDLR remained active in Virunga National Park, launched a new recruitment drive and consolidated its cooperation with local armed groups,” reads part of the UN report. FDLR and other foreign armed groups operating in eastern DR Congo had been ordered by regional leaders during last month’s summit in Angola to lay down arms unconditionally and return to their respective countries, but last week’s deadline passed with no sign of the groups heeding the directive. Civil society groups have also called on the international community to act against hate speech and “acts of genocide” committed against Tutsi communities in eastern DR Congo. “We witnessed, with helplessness and fear, in the media the massacres against the Tutsi in the Democratic Republic of Congo because they were live, we saw the acts of cannibalism of the Congolese Tutsi of Kinyarwanda expression, which were spread on social media,” said a foundation set up by Genocide survivor Yolande Mukagasana on November 28. The M23 has called on the United Nations’ Security Council, African Union, East African Community, the European Union and other international organisations to take immediate and concrete action “against the ongoing genocide being perpetrated by the DRC Government Coalition.” It also appealed for humanitarian assistance for over 5000 internally displaced persons it says have fled to areas under their control as a result of deadly attacks by the FARDC-FDLR alliance. “From the foregoing, the M23 Movement will not stand by and watch civilian populations continuously being slaughtered by the said DRC Government coalition, instead it is ready to intervene and stop these horrific massacres,” it added in Wednesday’s statement.

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M23 renews call for action against 'DR Congo-backed genocide'