The shots finally calmed down this Wednesday, January 29 in the morning, in the city of Goma in the extreme east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). His fate is now sealed: the rebels of the M23 (“Movement of March 23”) and their Rwandan allies control the key points of the city. The airport fell, the headquarters of the provincial government was taken, and many Congolese soldiers fled after only two days of the city seat, stuck between Lake Kivu and the Rwanda border. With the violent capture of Goma, the international community has opened its eyes to a conflict that has launched the Kivu region for years, and plunges local populations into a humanitarian crisis of catastrophic magnitude. While leaving their barricaded homes, the inhabitants discover corpses by hundreds in their streets this Wednesday morning, and that hundreds of thousands of people flee in panic the city and its surroundings, the UN was again Emergency reunited. The DRC, it claims sanctions against Rwanda.
The senior M23 officials have warned that they will “continue” to advance beyond Goma, according to a high Rwandan diplomat. Like an aborted mediation in mid-December by Angola, aimed at establishing a ceasefire in the region, the meeting summoned this Wednesday by Kenya between Congolese presidents Félix Tshisekedi and Rwandais Paul Kagame will not have not for. The future of Kivu and its population, stuck between the hammer and the anvil, is uncertain. Clémentine de Montjoye, senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, specialist in the Great Lakes region, details the dynamics of the conflict and its concrete consequences on local populations.
L’Express: What are the Congolese people currently, in Goma and in its surroundings?
Clémentine de Montjoye: Since Monday, January 27, the forces of the M23 have gradually taken control of Goma and its airport. There have been violent fights inside the city, with exchanges of fire, heavy artillery, looting, the inhabitants live globally in great insecurity. Today, the forces of the M23 continue to flock by the western axis and complete taking control of the city. Electricity has been cut for several days, there are water shortages. In reality, the arrival of the conflict in the heart of Goma aggravates a humanitarian situation which was already very bad in and around this city.
This crisis is added to a year of extreme pressure on local populations. A year ago, the M23 had already surrounded the city of Saké, 20 kilometers west of Goma, and gained considerable land in North Kivu. Many Congolese have taken refuge in the nine camps surrounding the city, and which are openly exposed to the conflict. In these camps, refugees are victims of abuses on the part of armed groups of the conflict: executions, rapes, sometimes collective. These are the worst conditions I saw in camps.
When the M23 surrounded Saké a year ago, doctors without borders listed 1,500 cases of rape per month, out of only three of the refugee camps. This new M23 offensive has moved more than 400,000 people since the beginning of January, according to the most recent figure in the UN. The camps are now cut off from humanitarian assistance. Apart from the surroundings of Goma, we are talking about 4 million displaced people in eastern Congo.
What are the actors in this conflict?
On the one hand is the M23, an armed group created from a mutiny within the Congolese army. It is mainly composed of Tutsis, and claims to protect local Tutsi populations. They are supported by Rwanda and reinforced by the Rwandan armed forces, 3,000 or 4,000 depending on the UN. They were already supported by Rwanda during the first taking of Goma twelve years ago. From now on, they sometimes also benefit from the support of Ugandan forces.
On the other side, we have the Congolese armed forces, the FARDC. To defend the Congolese territory, they were combined with an armed group, the Wazalendo, “the patriots” in Swahili. They too have a heavy liability for human rights violation and abuse of the populations they meet. Originally, there was also the “FDLR” in this coalition, an armed group of Rwandans who took refuge in Congo, and managed by flight officials on the run, after the 1994 genocide against the Tutsis in Rwanda. Today, the Congolese army has moved away from it. This coalition was also supported over time by various regional armies, who came from East Africa and Southern Africa, to fight against the M23.
To all this is added Monusco, the mission of the United Nations for stabilization in the Democratic Republic of Congo. She took part in the fighting to defend civilians, and to defend the city of Goma from the M23. Several Uruguayan and South African soldiers of Monusco were killed in these fights.
What is the purpose of these armed groups that compete?
After having conquered a large part of the territories of North Kivu, the M23 now enters the province of South Kivu. According to our reports, they set up forced work and recruitment practices in conquered areas. We have also documented many abuses from their sources on our sources on the Congolese local populations: executions, rapes. The process most of the time consists of accusing the men of the village of being in the Congolese army camp, before executing them or raping their wives.
All this reflects a fight for control of the territory. The M23 has a liability for dismantling the displaced camps, once a territory is completely controlled – they ask local populations to return home, to stabilize the area. If they have not yet done so for the Goma area, we know they have already launched the dismantling in the Masisi area, in North Kivu. The last UN report also details the expansionist ambitions of the M23 supported by Rwanda. The main argument put forward by the M23 is the protection of Congolese Tutsis populations [persécutées au Rwanda pendant le génocide de 1994, NDLR]. The paradox is that we document a greater persecution of the Tutsi populations since the resurgence of the M23 in the region at the end of 2021. Because these populations are accused of being partisan of the M23, and therefore violated by the FARDC.
In the meantime, the civilian population suffers due to both camps: the M23, and the Fardc-Wazalendo coalition. Everyone promises to protect the populations. The reality is that heavy artillery and explosive weapons are used in the conflict – by the FARDC -WAZALENDO and by the M23 and the Rwandan army – without discernment of civilians, in urban or densely populated areas. Civilians are stuck between the hammer and the anvil.
The international community calls on the mediation led by Angola, which has already failed once, for it to resume, and tries to ensure that the cease-fire established by Luanda is respected. In Human Rights Watch, what we mainly ask for is that civilian populations are protected, as are medical and essential infrastructure, and access to humanitarian aid is restored. But also that the reparation of crimes perpetrated against local populations is integrated into the peace process, and that military officials, Rwandan and Congolese, are judged for their crimes committed in the region for the past three decades.
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