***
Anger is growing in the DRC about the negotiations with the M23 outfit
at Kampala, Uganda.
Congolese from all walks of life are questioning the wisdom of the DRC
government to enter into secretive dialogues with insurgent and bandit
outfits without any parliament's mandate or any legal basis.
MP Martin Fayulu, the pro-Tshisekedi opposition firebrand was among
the first Congolese public personalities to slam the Kampala
negotiations.
Answering Kinshasa journos who were wondering why he turned down the
government's invitation to attend the Kampala negotions as an
observer, Fayulu said:
"To go and negotiate, to discuss over an accord whose ins and outs
nobody knows, what does that mean?"
(Fayulu was referring to the March 23, 2009 accord with CNDP, which
spawned its avatar, M23.)
But the sternest warning about those Kampala negotiations came from
the National Conference of Catholic Bishops (CENCO), which held a
3-day extraordinary session in Kinshasa (December 3-5).
At the close of that extraordinary session, CENCO issued a communiqué
that castigated M23 for acts of wanton violence they perpetrated in
North Kivu and warned the government about negotiations that could
result in the "balkanization" of the country.
The communiqué states in part:
"The war in North Kivu has obtained enormous damages [and] degradation
of the situation of human rights caused by M23 and [other] armed
groups, large-scale murders, rapes, kidnappings, conscriptions of
underaged children in the ranks of armed groups, illegal detentions
and taxations, acts of banditry, of destruction, and of pillage of the
national heritage and of private citizens, forced and massive
displacements of populations compelled to wandering in subhuman
conditions. And the fall of Goma had plunged all the Congolese into
consternation."
Pointing to the reports of the UN Group of Experts, the bishops issued
a stern warning to DRC negotiators who are now talking with M23;
insurgents who are "backed by foreign countries, including Rwanda and
Uganda"--an insurgency whose aim is the ''balkanization of the
country."
The bishops warn that the "balkanization" has had the same pattern
over the years:
"Identity and land tenure claims, refusal of the institutional order,
illegal exploitation of natural resources, forced displacement of
populations, recourse to violence with the aim of crumbling the
Democratic Republic of Congo."
Meanwhile in the streets of Kinshasa, "residents of the Republic" have
lost all respect for a government that sits around the same table with
those who have just raped Goma.
"Are people in government bewitched or what?" a Kinois angrily
wondered this evening at a "nganda," a sidewalk bar. "I mean, to go
negotiate in Uganda of all places? A hostile country? These people are
out of their minds, I tell you!"
***
PHOTO CREDITS: John Bompengo /Radio Okapi