DRC: A dozen people killed in a bombing in Mweso

A bomb was dropped in the town of Mweso, about 140km north-west of the city of Goma, in the province of North Kivu, in the east of the DRC, killing several people and injuring others.

"We have just recorded 10 deaths, all civilians. We were hiding in a house belonging to Maman Cyinyia, fearing the ongoing clashes between the M23 and the FARDC", said one of the survivors, speaking on condition of anonymity.

It is difficult at the moment to know the death toll. "The death toll is 19 civilians dead and 17 wounded, following the explosion of bombs dropped from as yet undetermined positions", said a local media source.

Some local media report that it was the M23 that dropped the bomb in its quest to recapture the town of Mweso, which it lost yesterday.

In a statement, the Congolese army said that the M23 had tried to recapture the town of Mweso. "Having established that they had lost control of the town of Mweso, the M23 terrorists, supported by the Rwandan army, in their flight, indiscriminately dropped 120 mm mortar bombs on the town, killing 19 people and wounding 27 innocent civilians," the statement said.

"Considering this terrorist act to be a serious violation of International Humanitarian Law, the FARDC call on the international community to address these blunders and draw all the necessary consequences," adds the DRC army's statement.

The M23 has not yet made any statement on these events.

Akilimali Saleh Chomachoma

We Are Responsible for the Well-being of the Planet

In Italy to promote crowdfunding for the filming of Basandja , the Congolese director spoke to La Svolta about exploitation, indigenous peoples and the relationship between colonialism and the climate crisis.

For Petna Ndaliko Katondolo , award-winning Congolese director, activist, educator, founder and artistic director of the cultural center Yole! Africa of Goma and Congo International Film Festival, the colonization of Africa was not only genocidal occupation, devastation, exploitation, deportation and racism.

She has also "broken the cosmological circle of belonging, interrupted astral connections, separated lineages and imprisoned the imagination."

The European violence that since the mid-1800s has overturned an entire continent, killed and inaugurated a forerunner of the Nazi method that lasted a century and a half and established a permanent Shoah on defenseless populations for which a Nuremberg that delivers justice is still awaited, has infinite faults. What still leaves indelible marks is having introduced an extractive and predatory practice that has in one fell swoop impoverished tens and tens of millions of individuals rich in resources, caused conflicts, dramatically increased external turnover and broken the balance between human beings and nature. which led to the current climate crisis.

«Just as one of the initial actions of the invasion of Africa was to cut down all the biodiversity and build structures for extractivism in the same space – he explained to La Svolta – this practice has today occupied the center of world government. There is therefore a link between colonialism and the climate crisis we are experiencing today."

It is very useful to converse with this Congolese artist with a provocative, Afro-futuristic style, capable of using historical content to address contemporary socio-geo-political and cultural issues, while Cop28 is taking place in Dubai. His messages go in depth but are not limited to principles and evocations, they want to trigger political actions and changes. So, let's start from the beginning, from the primordial environment and delve with Petna into the fascinating concept of Ancestral Ecology.

« Ancestral ecology is a theory, a profound practice that supports a holistic understanding and connection with the Earth. This is not seen simply as a material resource, but as a complex living being, a holobiont that keeps all vital systems in balance. Drawing on multiple indigenous cultural sources, this understanding encourages individuals to recognize the Earth as the custodian of knowledge and the interconnected web of life. A being who deserves care, consideration and noble responsibility. In embracing the Earth as a living entity, a set of bio-spiritual intelligence, Ancestral Ecology emphasizes the responsibility of human beings: as part of the community of living beings, we are responsible for safeguarding the well-being of the Planet, recognizing it as the ultimate repository and source of healing, wisdom and resilience. Our survival as a species called humanity depends on this awareness."

In your opinion, what are the impacts that such a theory can have on a political level?
This shift in perspective can influence environmental policies and identify and support sustainable practices and conservation efforts. We must contextualize our evolving sciences in a way that leads to a much more complete understanding of the impact of human activities on the Planet. for example, when we talk about human rights in Ancestral Ecology, we broaden this vision to include the rights of all living beings, including everything that is considered non-organic. Thus, when governments introduce a new policy, then waters, animals or trees should be taken into consideration as well as humans and things. I'll give you an example: to give life to reconstruction and recovery projects after a war, an environmental disaster or a crisis, paths of reconciliation between enemies are imagined, compensation and subsidies for those who have lost everything, compensation for human and material damage, but you never think about how many trees have been devastated, how much water has been lost and dead or injured animals. They too are victims and the balance must somehow be re-established.

Congo is perhaps the greatest emblem, on a global level, of what exploitation, impoverishment and exclusion of indigenous peoples has meant and continues to mean...

We imagine Congo as a space shared by all peoples and cultures, but in reality the native communities of these geographies have been systematically excluded from decision-making processes that affect their lives. Over the past few generations, Native peoples have fought to have their voices and indigenous understandings of culture and ecosystems taken into account, but their efforts have consistently met with brutal violence and repression by of officials, whether from the colonial regime or current reminiscences. For an early and shocking example of such violence, think of the millions of people who were killed or had their hands cut off by the Belgian king, Leopold II, due to the automobile industry boom in the late 1800s. Second, we remember how the prime minister of the newly independent Congo, Patrice Lumumba, was killed, torn to pieces and dissolved in acid for having asked for the economic autonomy of the Congo. This legacy continues through massive sexual atrocities against women and men used as a war strategy to empty villages of their population so that multinational corporations can access the coltan and cassiterite mines that fuel the digital industry. The systemic practice of post-colonial extraction continues through the proliferation of proxy wars that are enabled to facilitate and respond to the high demand for cobalt for the need to transition to green energy.

In this period you are promoting a crowdfunding to complete your new film Basandja of which you have already shot and edited the first part, which starts precisely from these assumptions you have just outlined. Can you tell us about this new effort of yours?
Basandja is a film that fits exactly into the geopolitical context I spoke about above. It is a work that seeks to be rooted in the theory of "aesthetic recoding", inspired by ancestral ecology and Lobi Ejo practice (a totally different way of understanding temporality based on the notion of reciprocity and interdependence with all living beings, ed.). The aim of the film is on the one hand to recover those forms of indigenous knowledge and wisdom and tell their stories to remember and propose ways to engage the imagination of contemporary political and ecological discourse in order to form a more inclusive and locally informed understanding, on the other, transforming the current mentality of extraction and exploitation of material resources into an interrelational understanding with multiple centers. Basndja aims to promote a vision of the future proposed by indigenous cultures and practices that have developed their understanding through symbiotic relationships with the forests and waters that have supported their communities since time immemorial.

Is yours a proposal for action?
Yes exactly. I propose this to you as an impactful opportunity to engage in deeper inquiry and listening to locally recognized knowledge keepers, whose understanding is born through lifelong lived experience in the ecologies and communities where they live. I ask you to consider the enormous opportunity that is at hand, to be able to engage with indigenous knowledge reservoirs so as to synthesize new possibilities for social adventures tailored to sustainable solutions for a better life for all.

Massacre Survivors Sent to Prison

The victims of the barbarity of 30 August have not seen the last of their misfortune. The North Kivu military court handed down its verdict on Monday 9 October 2023 during a public hearing held at the Munzenze central prison in Goma. Several members of the sect and other passers-by and neighbours were sentenced to nearly 20 years in prison, while the leader of the movement was given life imprisonment.

The military justice system charged them with participation in an insurrectionary movement, criminal conspiracy and murder. Of the 115 defendants, the North Kivu military court convicted 63 and acquitted 52 others.

Major-magistrate Amsini Lazare, president of the Goma military tribunal, handed down a life sentence to eight defendants, including the main defendant, Ephrem Bisimwa, leader of the "Natural Judaic Messianic Faith towards the Nations - Uwezo wa Neno" sect. Several dozen other people, including some of his followers, eight of whom were women, were also sentenced to between 10 and 20 years' imprisonment "for their role in calling for demonstrations to be held on 30 August", according to the military courts.

A look back at the carnage wrought by certain elements of the army

A mystico-religious sect called Foi naturelle judaïque et messianique vers les nations (Natural Judaic and Messianic Faith Towards the Nations) had planned to demonstrate on 30 August to demand that the United Nations Organisation Mission for the Stabilisation of the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUSCO) and the regional force of the East African Community (EAC-RF) leave the country. 

A few hours before the demonstration was due to take place (i.e. 24 hours before), the mayor of the town notified the prophet and his followers that the demonstration was not authorised. BISIMWA retorted and told the public that nothing and no-one was going to stop him. 

In the early hours of Wednesday 30 August (at 4 a.m.), the first Read was launched against the radio installations, reconnaissance drones in the air, and elements in military uniform burst in. At dawn, "6 people were killed, several wounded and the prophet was taken away by the Congolese soldiers", says a member of the church. Another operation was launched between 6am and 8am at the sect's church, and it proved to be the most deadly. In the end, at least 57 unarmed civilians were killed by the army that day, according to civil society sources.

The military governor of North Kivu, Lieutenant General Constant NDIMA, was urgently summoned to the Congolese capital by his superiors for consultation on 04 August. After a few days, Peter Chirimwami was appointed as interim governor.

A highly critical judgement

This decision seems not to have met with the approval of many Goma residents. Espoir Ngalukiye, a former activist with the Lutte pour le Changement - LUCHA movement, denounced the sentences. "While the population was expecting compensation and acquittal for the victims of the carnage of 30 August, military injustice has just condemned the victims of the carnage of 30 August,

Military injustice has just condemned our wazalendo compatriots, including their leader Ephraim Bisimwa. This iniquitous judgement is unacceptable. It was handed down against innocent victims instead of condemning the real executioners, including Mr Constant Ndima, who should be sentenced to death", he said.

Ephraïm Bisimwa has promised to appeal against the ruling to the military court.

By Akilimali Saleh Chomachoma - in Goma

Six-Day War: 23rd Anniversary Report

Six-Day War: 23rd Anniversary Report
By Aïssata Diallo 

This report refers to a sad date for the whole of the Democratic Republic of Congo. On June 5th, 2000, 23 years ago, the Democratic Republic of Congo faced a war that lasted six days from 5 to 10 June 2000 in the city of Kisangani.

Kisangani was the epicentre of an outbreak of violence by the Ugandan and Rwandan armies in support of rival local factions for the management of territories. Kisangani, the martyred city with multiple desires, could not escape the ravages of a war whose after-effects remain.

Located in the centre of the Congo Basin, the city of Kisangani is a river port at the confluence of the Lindi, Tshopo and Congo rivers. Given this strategic position, the authorities had elevated the city to the rank of regional capital, making it a major economic development pole for the country. However, this coveted regional capital has been the object of fighting between militias since the 1990s, which has severely affected the regional economy as well as the living conditions of the local civilian population, leaving the DRC government powerless. 

It was on Monday, June 5th, 2000, that this war broke out. It was a high-intensity war with fighting that had its epicentre in the centre of Kisangani. This abrupt war was marked by the violation of fundamental principles of international law. Indeed, the intervention of Rwanda and Uganda on the territory of the Democratic Republic of Congo by the regular Rwandan military forces, the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA) and the Uganda People's Defence Forces (UPDF) in support of local factions represented an immediate violation of the territorial integrity of Congo and contributed to the intensification of the violence of the fighting.

The occupation of Kisangani by these two foreign countries in support of local factions was strategic and totally self-serving. Their presence in the resource-rich North-East was aimed at controlling the region's mineral wealth. This foreign interference fuelled the second Congo war by destabilising local institutions and accentuating the interests of the two neighbouring states, which took advantage of the situation to institutionalise a stranglehold by these nations on the Congo's natural resources. A six-day war in which direct confrontations and violence were at their peak. This outburst of violence by the regular Rwandan and Ugandan forces to establish a monopoly on the mining management of the territory resulted in numerous war victims, including a significant number of deaths in six days, not to mention the destruction of local homes and institutions. The main victims of this conflict were civilians.

Apart from the violation of the right of states to preserve the territorial integrity of their countries, the Six-Day War resulted in a total absence of care for the civilian population, who were left to their own devices in the chaos of a sudden and unexpected war. The testimonies and investigations relate that there was an illegal occupation of civilian habitations and the conscious use of heavy weapons in urban areas, adding to the toll of human and material losses.

The 10th of June 2000 marked the end of this disastrous war that lasted six days. The toll was heavy, more than a thousand dead and more than five hundred wounded in the bowels of a ravaged city that had become a martyr.

At the international level, the UN Council adopted resolution 13041 on June 16th 2000, which condemned the Ugandan and Rwandan governments to provide reparations for the human and material losses. This condemnation will also open the door to a series of investigations for war crimes.

The United Nations Mapping Exercise report of August 2010 on the most alarming human rights violations between March 1993 and June 2003 on the territory of the Democratic Republic of Congo reported "indiscriminate attacks with heavy weapons in densely populated areas". However, as Rwanda does not recognise the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice, the Court has not been able to pronounce on the role played by the Rwandan capital Kigali. Nevertheless, on December 19th, 2005, Uganda, which recognises this decision-making authority, was condemned by this same body for the damage caused to the Congo "by the armed struggle and the pillaging of natural resources". It should be noted that beyond the Six-Day War, it is also the interference, occupation, and active and official support to local militias since 1998 that led to the condemnation of Uganda. The damage done by Uganda was the subject of reparations which were estimated by the International Court of Justice on February 9th, 2022, 22 years later, at the sum of 325 million dollars. This amount was considered insufficient and disappointing for the victims of Kisangani who lost everything during those six days. The Democratic Republic of Congo had expressly requested the sum of 11 billion dollars from Uganda as compensation.

Where are we today?

Two decades after the events, the main perpetrators of war crimes in the Democratic Republic of Congo have still not been prosecuted. The aftermath of the Six-Day War was marked by the establishment of a sustainable economy for the various criminal networks that plagued the region. This criminalisation of the regional economy to the benefit of trafficking has rooted the region in a security instability to which Kinshasa is struggling to respond.

It is important to remember that under international public law, the damage suffered by private individuals must be compensated by the State of which they are a national. The compensation of victims is therefore the responsibility of the Congolese state. The Congolese government had undertaken to compensate the victims of the conflict. A first payment of more than one million dollars was released in 2020, but the victims' associations point to the absence of payment of the second part, and alert public opinion to the precarious  living conditions of the victims. A first payment from Uganda of nearly $65 million was made in September 2022, but the victims have not yet been able to benefit from it. A deep resentment of abandonment has fuelled the north-eastern region and more particularly the city of Kisangani. Thus, a “mistrust in the proper management of funds” has developed, a pervasive feeling among the local population today. The regional failure of government institutions, in which perverse corruption has become the norm, only increases the sense of injustice felt by the people. Dismas Kitenge, President of the Lotus Group based in Kisangani, calls on the authorities "not to repeat the mistakes of the past, marked by corruption".

On this tragic twenty-third anniversary, the situation is alarming. Victims whose voices are struggling to be heard, forgotten by a government that is supposed to protect them, and numerous requests from victims to the Congolese state remain unanswered. Internationally, the failure to prosecute the Rwandan government for its active involvement in the Six-Day War is increasing the sense of injustice taking hold in the region and disrupting the assumption of regional stability. Moreover, the resumption of arms by the rebel movement of the March 23 Movement (M23) in 2021, a movement officially created to protect the Rwandan Tutsi ethnic group in Congo, shows the consequences of the impunity of the Rwandan government instrumentalising the rebellion. In fact, the links between the M23 and Rwanda, which have been confirmed by both Kinshasa and the UN, maintain national and regional instability and have recently given rise to firm positions on the international scene by the United States and France. For Erik Nyindu, Director of Communications of the DR Congo Presidency, “it is Kigali that holds the key to ending hostilities in the DRC”. However, the belated international position without coercive means against the Rwandan government contributes to the continuing conflicts in the east of the country.

On 21 April, a sit-in gathering victims from Kisangani to Kinshasa was violently dispersed by the police. This method was deemed "degrading" by the spokesperson for the DRC's human rights NGOs. Despite the release of part of the funds and the execution of the  court decision in Uganda, the victims of Kisangani are now faced with the indifference of their own government, which does not seem to be ready to compensate the unfortunate victims.

Bibliography

CHATELOT Christophe, « L’ONU confirme l’implication du Rwanda au côté des rebelles du M23 dans l’est du Congo-Kinshasa », Le Monde Afrique, https://www.lemonde.fr/afrique/article/2022/12/28/l-onu-confirme-l-implication-du- rwandaau-cote-des-rebelles-du-m23-dans-l-est-du-congo-kinshasa_6155882_3212.html, 28

décembre 2022

International Court of Justice, Case concerning armed activities on the territory of the Congo, https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/116/116-20051219-JUD-01-00-FR.pdf, December 19, 2005

International Court of Justice, Armed Activities on the territory (Democratic Republic of the Congo v. Uganda), Judgement, https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/caserelated/116/116- 20220209-JUD-01-00-FR.pdf, 9 February 2022

KAZADI Caleb, MATSIKO Grace, « Que va faire le Congo des millions versés à titre de réparation ? », Justiceinfo.net, https://www.justiceinfo.net/fr/107912-que-va-faire- congomillions-ouganda-reparation.html, 18 octobre 2022

PRICE Ned, Welcoming the African Union Peace and Security Council Communiqué on Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, U.S DEPARTMENT of STATE,

https://www.state.gov/welcoming-the-african-union-peace-and-security-councilcommunique- on-eastern-democratic-republic-of-the-congo/, February 22, 2023

RADIO OKAPI, « Kisangani : les victimes des guerres réclament le paiement restant de leur indemnisation », https://www.radiookapi.net/2023/04/22/actualite/societe/kisangani- lesvictimes-des-guerres-reclament-le-paiement-restant-de, 22 avril 2023

RFI, « En RDC, les victimes de la guerre dite des « six jours », à Kisangani, réclament leur du», https://www.rfi.fr/fr/afrique/20230423-en-rdc-les-victimes-de-la-guerre-de-dite-de-sixjours-

%C3%A0-kisangani-r%C3%A9clament-leur-du, 23 avril 2023

Security      Council      of      United      Nations,      Resolution                   1304,          4159^th                meeting, https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/416322?ln=fr, 16 June 2000

UN. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, “Democratic Republic of the Congo, 1993- 2003: report of the Mapping Exercise documenting the most serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law committed within the territory of the Democratic Republic of the Congo between March 1993 and June 2003”, https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/709895?ln=fr, p.200, 2010

TV5 MONDE, « RD Congo : Paris condamne le soutien de Kigali aux rebelles du M23 », https://information.tv5monde.com/afrique/rd-congo-paris-condamne-le-soutien-de-kigali- auxrebelles-du-m23-1559771, 21 décembre 2022

TV5 MONDE, « RD Congo : un rapport de l’ONU pointe la responsabilité du Rwanda dans le massacre du M23 », https://information.tv5monde.com/afrique/rd-congo-un-rapport-

delonu-pointe-la-responsabilite-du-rwanda-dans-les-massacres-du-m23, 22 décembre 2022

VIRCOULON Thierry, LAGARANCE Marc- André, République démocratique du Congo : à l’Est rien de nouveau, Etudes de l’IFRI, https://www.ifri.org/fr/publications/etudes- delifri/republique-democratique-congo-lest-rien-de-nouveau, décembre 2022