Regional
DRC crisis: MONUSCO evacuating FDLR’s casualties, complicit in mass killings
The UN
mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo, MONUSCO, has been evacuating and
treating casualties of FDLR, a Rwandan terrorist group supporting the Congolese
national army coalition to fight M23 rebels.
Sources
say the Congolese army coalition has lost a large number of soldiers in recent
battles in areas around Sake, Kalehe, Minova, and Bweramana, in North Province.
On
February 27, MONUSCO provided a helicopter that carried 44 soldiers of FDLR and
Congolese army who were wounded in heavy clashes around Sake, for their
treatment in Bukavu, South Kivu Province.
Among
the casualties, 40 soldiers were seriously wounded.
For
more than two years since the M23 retook arms in late 2021, the Congolese army
coalition of the Burundian national army, SADC troops, Eastern European
mercenaries, MONUSCO, Wazalendo militias, and the Rwandan genocidal militia,
FDLR, failed to defeat the rebel group.
In
early November 2023, MONUSCO and Congolese national army launched codenamed
operation springbok allegedly to protect Goma, the capital of North Kivu, from
falling in hands of M23 rebels.
Since
then, the coalition carried out heavy attacks against M23, and the rebel group
accused the coalition of using heavy artilleries while shelling in populated
areas.
Formed
in mid 2000 by remnants of the perpetrators of the 1994 Genocide against the
Tutsi in Rwanda, FDLR spread its genocide ideology in eastern DRC, and has
carried out mass killings targeting Congolese Tutsi.
The
October 2022 report by Human Rights Watch noted that “FDLR fighters have killed
hundreds of civilians over the years in eastern DRC, at times hacked them to
death with machetes or hoes, or burned them in their homes.”
“The
fighters have committed countless rapes and other acts of sexual violence,” HRW
reported.
Evacuating
and treating FDLR’s wounded soldiers and preparing them ready for returning to
the battleground, shows MONUSCO’s complicity in mass killings targeting
Congolese Tutsi in eastern DRC.
The
blue helmets have registered no single achievement in fulfilling their mission
in the volatile mineral-rich country.
With their presence, armed groups in eastern DRC multiplied from about
five to more than 260.
Hundreds
thousands of Congolese have been killed while millions of others are displaced.
The
MONUCO’s failures have angered Congolese citizens, and on different occasions,
they protested asking the mission to leave their country as it failed them.
Civil
societies have been alleging MONUSCO officials of involving in creation of
armed groups, to secure mining sites exploited by Western mining companies. The
mission is more staying in DRC for economic motives, not restoring peace and
security.