DRC President Under Attack over Support for Regional Security Force

By our Correspondent

Recent related occurences confirm that three prominent Congolese figures, including Nobel laureate winner, Denis Mukwege, have on Monday, accused President Felix Tshisekedi of pushing the country towards breakup by bringing in outside nations to tackle its security crisis.

Categorically, in a sign of mounting pressures on Tshisekedi over DR Congo’s deeply troubled east, the trio said sub-Saharan Africa’s largest country faced “fragmentation” and “Balkanisation.”

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It’s their view that this is “the result of a blatant lack of leadership and governance by an irresponsible and repressive regime,” they said in a communique.

Apart from Mukwege, a gynaecologist who co-won the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize for his work in helping women victims of sexual violence, the statement was signed by politician Martin Fayulu, whom Tshisekedi defeated in controversial elections in 2018, and former prime minister Augustin Matata Ponyo.

For a while, scores of armed groups have been roaming eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, many of them a legacy of two regional wars that raged at the end of the last century.

Of course, the latest emergency is over a resurgent armed group called the M23, which has seized swathes of territory in North Kivu province since from dormancy last year.

And with the DRC’s armed forces floundering, Tshisekedi has called in a seven-nation body, the African Community (EAC), to deploy troops.

In a related:development, Congo: M23 retreats from occupied territory, and says ‘handing Kibumba to military is goodwill gesture.