DRC’s Tshisekedi steps up fight against armed groups
The country’s eastern North-Kivu and Ituri provinces have been subjected to violence by dozens of armed groups, killing thousands of civilians and forcing thousands more to flee their homes.
CAPE TOWN, May 5 (ANA) – Democratic Republic of Congo President Felix Tshisekedi has ordered military and police officers to take over civil authorities in two regions severely affected by violence, news agency AFP reported.
The country’s eastern North-Kivu and Ituri provinces have been subjected to violence carried out by dozens of armed groups, which has killed thousands of civilians and forced thousands more to flee their homes.
These two provinces were declared under siege on Friday, AFP reported on Tuesday.
Last week, Tshisekedi vowed to act against armed groups responsible for human rights violations.
According to the Centre for African Journalists (CAJ), at least 40 people have been killed in the latest outbreak of ethnic clashes in northeastern DRC. The violence has included kidnappings, rape and the burning of homes.
Under the DRC’s constitution, the president can declare a state of either siege or emergency “if severe circumstances immediately threaten the independence or integrity of the national territory, or if they interrupt the regular functioning of institutions”, according to AFP.
In an address broadcast on public television on Monday, Tshisekedi said he had heard the cries of distress of his people “ravaged by barbarity”.
Last week, the United Nations Children’s Fund said conflict in Ituri had led to grave violations against children since January, including their recruitment into armed groups, their maiming and killing, sexual violence and attacks on schools and hospitals.
An estimated 122 armed groups roam the eastern border provinces of the DRC, many of them a legacy of regional wars in the 1990s. The bloodiest is the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a historically Ugandan Islamist group that has carried out massacres in the last 18 months.
According to the Kivu Security Tracker, an NGO that monitors violence in the DRC’s troubled east, the ADF has killed more than 1,200 civilians in the Beni area alone since 2017.
– African News Agency (ANA), Editing by Stella Mapenzauswa