A fight broke out between the FARDC and the Mai-Mai since Tuesday, November 22, 2016 in the districts of Butuhe, a town located about three kilometers north of the town of Butembo. The front is by far very hard for the army of the Congolese government of which at least ten bodies, including two captains, have just been evacuated from the battlefield.
This unexpected success allowed Mai-Mai to suddenly extend control over at least twelve villages in the Butuhe region, just about three kilometers north of the town of Butembo. Below are some of the villages now besieged by the Mai-Mai: Kavasumba, Kathembo, Butuhe, Tchikere, Kisungu, Rwahwa, Vurondo, Muhila, Kahamba, Makusa, Kyavisogho and Vumbanda. These villages all belong to the Malio group, in the Bashu chieftainship, territory of Beni at its limits with the northern and northeastern periphery of the town of Butembo.
Negatively, this war without reasonable foundation has repercussions on the local population by causing the total desertion of the environment by the inhabitants who immediately ceased all their routine activities.
The FARDC had just decided to hunt down those militiamen who, having left the positions they had carved out at Furu and Mount Carmel in the town of Butembo, had withdrawn to Vurondo, the classic Mai- Mai of the counties of Butembo.
However, the new phenomenon of a war between Mai-Mai militiamen and the government army that is increasingly blazing the space of Beni and Butembo in recent weeks becomes the subject of suspicion of a new conspiracy strategy against the natives of this territorial space.
Indeed, as many false ADFs or slaughterers were created and launched in action to depopulate the Beni counties, similarly the current Mai-Mai coalition is emerging more and more as emanating from the same plan, but this time for the destabilization and depopulation of Butembo, and even the entire territory of Beni. Moreover, the testimony of the inhabitants of the Butuhe area is overwhelming against the FARDC: the local population say they are fleeing the environment not only for fear of altercations between Mai-Mai and FARDC, but above all because the mass presence of Government soldiers is by no means reassuring; in fact, as soon as they arrived at the scene, they turned to the plundering and extortion of civilians rather than to the hunt for the militia.
The space of Beni-Lubero is surely drained towards a deluge, according to a plan of eviction of the natives of these territories that the regime of Kabila decided to carry out like a royal way through which his campaign would pass to sliding.
It is fitting that the international community represented on the ground by MONUSCO and its forces should assume its responsibilities in order to immediately stop the course of this new tragedy whose conspiracy is currently targeting the town of Butembo and all the territory of Lubero in its parts which were still viable for survivors of terrorism and genocide in the neighboring territory of Beni.
Journal of peasant
Butembo
« It is thus understood the grave danger of any extension to the power of Joseph Kabila. Congolese worthy of the name must reject any form of transition. Indeed, given what is happening in Kivu- Ituri, any transition beyond December 2016 would allow time and resources to the Congolese government which is, obviously, an accomplice of the Rwandan occupation of Kivu-Ituri in progress « (Father Vincent Machozi, March 19, 2016, speech that earned his murder the next day)
©Beni-Lubero Online.
