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October 29, 2008

Church leaders ready to talk to both sides in Congo fighting

by Fredrick Nzwili
Ecumenical News International

NAIROBI — Church leaders from the Great Lakes Region of central Africa are seeking urgent intervention to prevent fresh fighting in the Democratic Republic of Congo, warning a war could easily spill to neighboring countries, and they are seeking to talk to both sides in the conflict.

“Congo is a big country and the crisis can affect in Burundi and Rwanda in a big way. We cannot ignore what is happening there,” Anglican Bishop Pie Ntukamazina of Bujumbura, Burundi, told Ecumenical News International on Oct. 23 after a meeting called to discuss the crisis.

Since August, fighting between the Congolese army and rebels, who are followers of renegade general, Laurent Nkunda, has increased. The DRC accuses neighboring Rwanda of supporting Nkunda. At the same time Rwanda accuses the DRC of supporting Rwandan Hutu rebels. Rwanda in the 1990s twice invaded Congo, which has a population of some 66 million people.

“This development can affect the region. It can also affect the whole continent,” said Ntukamazina.

Churches hoped after elections in the DRC in 2006 that the region would return to normality, but the resurgence of armed conflict in the north has brought new challenges.

“There have been new killings. We can count nearly two million who are displaced from their homes and property. They don't have anything,” said Bishop Mbaya Tshiakany, the president of the Church of Christ in Congo in the province of Kasai Oriental.

Tshiakany, who also serves as president of the Fellowship of Christian Councils and Churches in the Great Lakes and the Horn of Africa, said the church leaders from Congo, Rwanda and Burundi, had decided to visit the heads of State in the region and rebel leader Nkunda.

“We want to meet them and find what the problem is. We want to suggest some solutions. We would like to find the real facts and propose ways out,” said Tshiakany.

Canada’s National Post newspaper on Oct. 23 quoted Jennifer Harold, an aid worker with World Vision Canada, who had returned from the DRC, as saying, “This is a paradise where the people live in hell.” She said the camps were overflowing. “The people there have no support at all.”

In January, the government, Nkunda and Mai Mai militias, signed an agreement which included a ceasefire, the withdrawal of troops from key areas and the creation of a U.N. buffer zone. Under the agreement, militias were to be given amnesty for insurgency or acts of war, but not for war crimes or crimes against humanity. The rebels have since refused to disarm.