Some 7,000 people have died since January in fighting in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, the prime minister of the DRC told a high-level meeting of the Human Rights Council in Geneva on Monday, with combatants and civilians among the dead.
About 3,000 deaths were reported in Goma, Judith Suminwa said.
Since January, the M23 rebel group, which Kinshasa accuses Rwanda of backing, has captured swathes of eastern Congo, including the cities of Goma and Bukavu, and valuable mineral deposits.
The latest fighting, and M23’s advance, are part of a major escalation in eastern Congo in a conflict over power, identity and resources dating back to the Rwandan genocide in the 1990s.
UN chief Antonio Guterres, at the Geneva meeting, said human rights around the world were being “suffocated” and made reference to horrifying abuses in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Allegations of ‘summary executions’
Rwanda rejects allegations from Congo, the United Nations and Western powers that it supports M23 rebels with arms and troops.
Suminwa urged the world to act and to impose “dissuasive sanctions” on Rwanda amid mass displacements and summary executions.
“It is impossible to describe the screams and cries of millions of victims of this conflict,” she said.
Kambale Musavuli, a Ghana-based analyst with the Center for Research on the Congo-Kinshasa, told CBC News Network on Sunday that “every day we are getting reports of summary executions of young Congolese who are refusing to join [M23].”
Musavuli said that a diplomatic situation is needed, and that the international community has a stake in what transpires.
“[Prime Minister Justin] Trudeau should be engaged in this process, holding Canadian companies accountable for pilfering Congo resources,” he said.
In Brussels, European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said the EU will review its agreement with Rwanda over critical raw materials due to the country’s links with M23 rebels in the DRC.
The U.S. Treasury Department last week sanctioned Lawrence Kanyuka Kingston, a spokesperson for M23, but also James Kabarebe, a Rwandan minister of state for regional integration. The U.S. alleges Kabarebe is a liaison to M23 who “orchestrates [Rwandan Defence Forces] support for the armed group.”
Rwanda’s government said it considered the Kabarebe sanction “unjustified and unfounded.”
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Burundi deals with Congolese influx
Suminwa warned that the worsening security situation with M23 and other armed groups could spill over to neighbouring countries, posing a danger to them.
“If this question of the violation of territorial integrity isn’t resolved, the situation could degenerate,” Suminwa told Reuters in a press briefing after her address to the Council.
About 40,000 people have fled to Burundi, one of the nine countries that borders the DRC, in the preceding two weeks to escape the fighting, the UN said on Friday.
Brigitte Mukanga-Eno, representative for the UN Refugee Agency, told CBC’s As It Happens last week that some even used jerrycans as flotation devices to cross via the Ruzizi River between the countries.
“This influx is the biggest that Burundi has seen in so many years,” she said.
The refugees are mostly women and children, she said, with thousands temporarily placed in open-air conditions at Rugombo Stadium in Rubombo, Burundi. Aid groups are scrambling to both get plastic tents for the new arrivals as well as find a more suitable place to shelter them.
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