UNDERSTANDING THE MASSACRE BOTTOM OF ITURI
INTRODUCTION
The phenomenon of human massacres and the destruction of entire villages has resurfaced in Djugu territory in Ituri, with a visible impetus to gradually ignite much of the province. The fire of these new forms of violence had long been brewing, not because it was activated by the ghosts of the old local communal conflict, but rather because of stimuli largely outside the will of the indigenous population, which only surprised the surprise. the actual eruption of a new tragedy since late January / early February 2018.
According to our investigations, a good understanding of the current tragedy of Ituri should relate in particular to the points such as the elements of the genesis of this violence, the position taken by the authorities in power, the denunciations of the active forces and of civil society, the management of the phenomenon by the police and security forces … who seem to better help to perceive « who does what, how, and why? »
GENESIS OF THE PROBLEM
Transfer of immigrants to masked origins
During the year 2010, a movement of migration fueled by « Kinyarwanda » expression subjects was triggered on the North-Kivu-Ituri axis via the Beni-Lubero region. Groups of people, or even families, left the Goma and Bunyakiri radius, passed through Masisi and Rutshuru, before arriving at Butembo and Beni, to land at a final destination signed south of Ituri, specifically at Tchabi. and to Boga.
This movement enjoyed exceptional prosperity during 2012-2013, while the M23 rebellion controlled large portions of entities from the Congolese territories of Rutshuru and Nyiragongo as well as their borders with Rwanda.
It is then that the investigations will identify most of these immigrants as true Rwandan subjects, in this case Hutu refugees of 1994 that the Tanzanian government had decided to return from its territory. In the meantime, those of these immigrants who apparently had the appearance of Congolese Hutu were none other than these genocidaires and Rwandan Interahamwe Hutu that May-May Raia Mutomboki had just driven from the territories of Shabunda and Kalehe (in South Kivu ) and Masisi and Walikale (North Kivu). It is obvious that after 20 years of asylum in DR Congo, these Rwandans know how to camouflage themselves dishonestly under the guise of Congolese nationality, by mastering local languages such as Lingala, Mashi, Kihunde, Kinande and Swahili. as well as the customs and customs of the region until cheating the names of indigenous peoples.
Rwandan Hutu on migration in DR Congo are well encouraged in this adventure by Kigali who persuades them that their reserve lands are in the east of neighboring Congo; and that he will help them settle there for their happy future. However, in doing so, the Rwandan president does not force anything alone; it is in harmony with his Congolese counterpart that Rwandan Hutu immigrants will find their way to the detriment of the natives.
Why does the President risk such treason to the Congolese nation? The reason is simple: a political calculation is necessary for him to be reassured to remain in power beyond the limits hermetically traced by the Constitution of the DR Congo. But it is no longer a question of him to count on the native people who sing aloud their disappointment about him, so that their sanctions (it is here aboriginal) to the next ballot boxes announce ruthlessly.
Therefore, the protection of these foreigners (Rwandan Hutu in migration) has become the top of the preoccupation of the ruling power. At all levels of government, instructions are passed from end to end to coordinate and secure the movement and installation of these immigrants, who are more and more like invaders. Everything is done to ensure the maximum of their security until they arrogate the rights they do not deserve:
– Congolese voter cards were granted to them first and foremost in relation to the natives;
– The provincial administration of Goma gave them road sheets as if they were Congolese;
– When they plunder the fields and the properties of the indigenous people in Tchabi and Boga where they are installed, the provincial authorities of Bunia rather threaten the local population which is a victim when this last expresses its complaints;
– When the local population injured by their invasion and the Ituri deputies claim that these foreigners are identified by the Congolese state, the authorities in power minimize this concern and maintain indifference;
– On the contrary, these invaders are encouraged by the regime to assert itself an autonomous administrative entity at the expense of the natives who offered them their hospitality etc.
Maintenance of the FRPI militia in time and space
In 2004, all armed groups involved in the civil war and inter-ethnic conflicts in Ituri were under control. A remnant of the Ngiti militia known as FRPI had nevertheless entrenched itself in the forest of the south of Irumu beyond the locality of Tcheyi.
However, from then on, there is a paradox according to which this handful of repeat offenders has remained irreducible throughout the ages until these days, despite the heavy deployment of the Congolese army supported by UN troops in this sector. Ituri. Just as the successive arrests by Kinshasa of Cobra Matata, the leader of the FRPI, alternated with his sudden reappearance in the Gethy maquis, remains a perplexed reality.
But, the veil of ambiguity had to fall only when it was provided evidence of support of the Congolese government in arms and money for the FRPI militia. In short, maintaining the FRPI in its maquis is the will of the power in place, as part of its secret plan on Ituri and Kivu.
Sources within the Congolese military hierarchy report that the FRPI has been constantly maintained by the Kabila regime to serve as a « gateway to hell » on Ituri, as much as the pretext of the presence of Ugandan rebels ADF has become the privileged alibi to justify the ordeal imposed on the innocent population of Beni.
Kinshasa fights a reserve army among Hutu immigrants from Tchabi
In 2014, the number of Hutu immigrants in Ituri was close to 60,000. The organization of a self-defense force has been observed in this visiting community. Gradually rumors spread that these immigrants would be arming themselves. This rumor was soon confirmed by the discovery of the air shuttles that were then supplying these Hutu from the airstrip of Zunguluke, south of Irumu, bringing military uniforms and the Congolese National Police as well as weapons to the said immigrants.
And while the massacres ignited in Beni, military training centers are found in the settlements of Hutu immigrants settled south of Irumu.
Kabila regime fails marriage between FRPI and Hutu invaders in Ituri
Sources close to the FRPI have disclosed that they have received requests from the prosecution of the President of the Republic asking Ngiti militiamen from the FRPI to deal with the masked militia within the Hutu immigrants. Follow-up of these contacts was carried out by military authorities such as Colonel Rugahi of the FARDC in Bunia.
The marriage thus solicited became the pledge that could allow the release of Colonel Cobra Matata who is in the hands of the power in Kinshasa until these days. He would be advised to persuade his brothers in the FRPI maquis to co-locate with Hutu immigrants, with a view to being used by the authorities to disrupt security in Ituri as a condition of his release.
However, the militiamen in the field remained adamant to refuse any form of rapprochement with these immigrants. It is this refusal to collaborate with the FRPI that has delayed the passage into action of Hutu genocidaires dropped in Ituri, lack of coverage and cooperation of indigenous people. This hitherto blocked any door to the outbreak of massacres so much wanted as a political strategy of Kinshasa in Ituri and North Kivu.
The obstacle thus encountered on the way to the massacre plan in Ituri has stimulated another palliative strategy: Hutu immigrants wanting to unleash the execution of their mission at any cost, have repeatedly tried to carry out criminal actions (killings of people, looting of livestock, incursions …) against the southern Bahema community, to make believe that the Ngiti would be provoking a war against the Hema, but without success. Indeed, the Hema who understood the trap of power in place preferred to resign themselves, not to give the chance to the ignition of violence. Hence, this message, both charismatic and prophetic, by Chief Yves Kahwa Panga Mandro, of the Bahema-Banywagi Chiefdom, on the occasion of June 30, 2017, which called on the Iturean communities to work for peace and peace. avoid falling into the trap of the Machiavellian regime of Kinshasa.
Then the failure of the massacre strategists to trigger this tragedy through the territory of Irumu will force their attention to turn to the territory of Djugu, relying on the fragility of the coexistence between the Lendu and Northern Hema.
TAKING THE POSITION OF THE AUTHORITIES FACING MASSACRES AND MECHANICAL DESTRUCTIONS IN ITURI
Would it be important to return to the banalities that today serve as a trigger for the violence experienced these days in the territory of Djugu? However, what is likely to strike anyone’s attention would be rather the attitude and position taken by the country’s authorities at both the national and provincial levels in the light of the ongoing tragedy, including after the big descriptive features:
1. A message from the president of the CENI that betrays a hidden plan of the regime in power
– Anticipating all the relevant state institutions of security and administration, the president of the Independent National Electoral Commission distinguished himself by a declaration forcing to apply the occurrence of the tragedy that had just begun on the program of the elections expected to the end of the year 2018. In his message of …. , the president of the CENI makes it clear that there is reason to expect the decline of the electoral calendar on the basis of the events that have just exploded in Djugu.
– This message seems to be the betrayal of a plan obviously unhealthy that hammers the power in place according to its determination not to allow the country to accede to the elections claimed until the price of blood.
– Indeed, it is true that a sad tragedy occurred in Djugu, Ituri, but only at its beginning, which the government and its institutions have no reason to exaggerate from the outset the event to falsely apply it to the electoral calendar in order to justify their machination to postpone the elections indefinitely, at the moment when, officially, no effort could be deployed in the direction of the will to find a solution to the problem that arose.
2. The speech in Bunia by the former Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior, Emmanuel SHADARI
– Staying in Ituri as part of a mission related to the tragedy of Djugu, Mr. Emmanuel SHADARI, as Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior, had time to feel the unfortunate events that permeate the territory of Djugu in terms of mass killings and the destruction of entire villages.
– This representative of the government tried to objectively express its findings, unfortunately against the aspirations of the political system in power. Imprudence or ignorance of the Machiavellian plan in operation?
– Among the salient features of SHADARI’s expression, it is necessary to find, inter alia, the following features:
o According to him, the attackers (killers of innocent civilians and village pests) of Djugu are not yet identified otherwise. But officially, Kinshasa had sounded the trumpet to alert humanity about the resumption of interethnic war between the Lendu and Hema communities in Ituri.
o Mr. SHADARI goes further, even explicitly denying the existence of an inter-ethnic war or conflict in the ongoing tragedy in Djugu.
– Sources close to the power in place testify that these statements alone were enough to seal the end of SHADARI’s career at the post of the Minister of the Interior. The boss of his power and the political system that gave him this privilege felt that he had derailed dangerously. This is what (to believe the indiscretions of the staff of the Congolese presidency) would be the background of his replacement by Mr MOVA just a few days later.
– Why MOVA? Because it has better understood the political game that rests power on the manipulation of militias and armed groups. The DR Congo presidency believes that MOVA would have expertise in this field, after gaining experience when, leading the PPRD youth delegation in Bujumbura, it went alongside the IMBONERAKURE militia on which ‘support the Burundian political authorities.
3. The clues of the involvement of the governor of Ituri in the tragedy of Djugu
– At the provincial level, the personality that arouses more suspicion of the opinions on the responsibility of the regime in place in the Djugu massacres is the provincial governor, Mr. Jefferson ABDALLAH PENEMBAKA. Many facts testify to his direct or indirect responsibility as can be seen in a non-exhaustive way as follows:
– The delay of nearly two months by Governor PENEMBAKA to inform the public explicitly of the tragedy that had just been declared betrays a deliberate will of this authority to keep a complicit silence in order to give free rein to the course of said unfortunate events.
– The protection of criminals captured at the scene of the massacres. Police working in the areas devastated by the massacres managed to intercept forty-one (41) criminals proved to be among the perpetrators of the tragedy: killing innocents and burning villages. These criminals were taken to the provincial capital. Therefore, the public vainly claims the presentation of the interested parties and their breaking in justice. During a meeting of the provincial security committee, the governor PENEMBAKA tried to convince his collaborators that it is not worth to rush to question these criminals, because according to him, they would be quoting people without control. From then on, some people realized that Mr. PENEMBAKA feared that he himself was revealed as part of the accomplices.
– The deliberate misinformation and lies perpetuated by the same governor around the Djugu massacres and their balance sheets. Where applicable, the press point held by that authority on 23 March 2018 in Bunia, during which he stated that no deaths or fires were recorded during an attack on the attackers reported to Maze, a locality of the North Bahema chiefdom in Djugu territory; while civil society and other independent sources have reported at least six people killed and several houses burned. This deliberate tendency to minimize the dreadful toll of the damage would prevent opinions from being able to focus on the tragedy that has already led to an undeniable humanitarian disaster in Djugu territory (more than 200 schools are closed, the internally displaced and / or external face the indescribable food and health crisis, dozens of them have already died of cholera etc.)
– More serious than all the above, the investigations carried out indicate that the materials that serve as weapons for the massacres in Djugu territory were ordered and purchased under the personal supervision of the governor ABDALLAH PENEMBAKA. Benilubero Online’s investigations have unearthed the circuit of this operation, from the purchase to the trajectory of the shipment as well as the unloading. Without immediately giving all the details of this information, it should be noted that this supply consisting of machetes and nails was delivered during the months of August and September 2017, in preparation for the tragedy that was to break out. incessantly.
4. Contradiction in the language of the new Minister of the Interior, Henri MOVA SAKANYI
– Mr. Mova, barely invested in his successor chair of Shadari at the post of the Minister of the Interior, inaugurated this career by an express mission in Ituri last February.
– A bad impression has impregnated the natives of the fact that the descent of Mova to Bunia coincided with the inflammation of the massacres and fires at Djugu, as has been noted in the following places: Katoto, Lonyo, Nyamamba, Maze, Fataki in Bombou Farm, Saikpa, Luna, Luvangira and Bule.
– Contrary to the impression of Shadari, Mova mentions the existence of a war of which he does not specify the nature. Moreover, he prophesies the extension of this war in the region.
– About eleven days later, the Minister of the Interior will deny during a press briefing that he will hold with journalists during his visit to Goma, North Kivu, that there is no interethnic war or intercommunal conflict in Djugu.
– It is really a climate of confusion that the official is trying to maintain in the opinions, so as to keep the reality of the tragedy of Djugu veiled, so that the public remains always in the distraction, while the region is being consumed by violence, so as to take advantage of the ruling power, which will draw every possible pretext from the expected opportunities.
DENUNCIATIONS OF FORCES VIVES AND CIVIL SOCIETY
The « Iturian » community considered the maneuvers and the untruths that both the national and the provincial authorities had around the scourge of massacres which, starting from the territory of Djugu, gradually paralyzed life in the province in general, but especially in its capital, the city of Bunia.
Voices have risen from all social strata to denounce unanimously the machination of the power in place that has rekindled the fire in Djugu with the intention of igniting the entire province or even the entire region beyond the borders of Ituri . Among the salient messages, the following should be noted:
– The denunciation of the Ituri Civil Society
– The message of the Catholic prelate of the Diocese of Bunia
– The denunciations of political opponents
– The denunciations of the Lendu and Hema communities whose regime in power seeks to use the ashes of ancient conflicts buried for about fifteen years as the Trojan horse of its Machiavellian plan on Ituri and the east of the country in general. Indeed, while denouncing the instrumentalization of a handful of opportunists and extremists of these two communities, the Lendu and the Hema do not recognize being currently in conflict with each other. To illustrate this denunciation, the Lendu and Hema youths have come together to demonstrate in front of the provincial governorate in Bunia in order to convince the opinions that there is no war or inter-communal conflict between their communities; they openly accused the country’s authorities of being true sponsors of the scourge.
The two communities, reveal that President Kabila was able to catch in his net some natives to whom he gave means (finance and logistics) to excite their brothers to mutual hatred and war, but without success. Members of both communities were able to identify those Lendu and Hema individuals who betrayed their brothers. These traitors were hunted down by their own community brothers, and some of them decided to find shelter outside Ituri because of remorse.
At the grassroots level, members of both communities remained very faithfully committed to the peace pact signed at the end of the 1999-2004 conflicts. Moreover, Hema and Lendu had been alerted for long periods of the evil plan of the political regime in place ruminating the maintenance of violence in Ituri and North Kivu, according to the message that the Honorable Yves Kahwa Panga Mandro, head of the community Bahema Banywagi, formulated on the occasion of June 30, 2017.
ALREADY ON THE EDGE OF THE EFFECTIVE EXTENSION OF THE TRAGEDY OF DJUGU TO THE TERRITORY OF MAHAGI IN THE NORTH AND TO THAT OF IRUMU SOUTH
Although Djugu territory has already been heavily damaged, the plan to activate the war between the Lendu and the Hema seems to have failed so far. Indeed, the Hema, the party that suffered the most casualties at this time, has consistently opted for restraint and resignation because of its leaders who know the depth of the Kinshasa and Kigali conspiracy against the east of the DR Congo.
The plotters are currently in the phase of strategy change, exporting the same tragedy outside of Djugu, first to the territory of Mahagi, then south in the territory of Irumu.
On April 1, 2018, the FARDC patrol intercepted a group of four ex-M23s in Kadilo, at the level of a Congolese military checkpoint, in the Berunda area, a land joining the Mahagi territories and of Djugu by the Mongbwalu-Mabanga-Mbijo mining region. These Incivists held three AK47 rifles with ammunition. The people thus caught include:
– Mr. Twimana Jean-Paul, from Rutshuru;
– Mr Muvuni Benjamin, from Masisi;
– Mr. Nigigena Asumani, from Masisi;
– Mr. Sirihimana Alfred, from Rutshuru, and their driver by the name of Faustin Wathum.
The latter were going to Berunda as part of the reinforcement and regrouping of ex-M23 and Rwandophones deployed in small groups in this region to prepare the massacres from the Berunda plateau. They use the blanket of Rwandans who have gradually gathered in Berunda under the cover of the farmers. It should be noted that these Rwandans have exactly the same morphology as the Hema, so that many people think they are only Hema.
The objective of the mission of these ex-M23 and Rwandophones is to provoke the Lendu of the Walendu Watsi chiefdom and the Walendu Pitsi chiefdom, to blame the Hema who established their properties (farms, concessions and fields) to Berunda, in order to excite the Lendu of this region to engage, by way of revenge, the war against the Hema of Berunda and its surroundings while destroying all their patrimonies found there.
It should be noted that the ex-M23 have managed to infiltrate the Berunda area in Mahagi territory with the facilitation of both the pro-Kabila military authorities of Ituri, such as General Rugahi, General Bonane , … and residues of former FAPC militiamen of General Jérôme Kakwavu (currently in Kinshasa) that allow the former M23 to extend its networks to Ingbokolo, Ariwara and Kengezi-Base in the Aru territory.
A plan corresponding to the spread of violence towards the territories of Mahagi and Aru is also underway to achieve the same objectives in the territory of Irumu, in order to achieve the total burning of Ituri. But the details of Irumu’s case remain to dig.
ITURI CRISIS COMMITTEE CREATION PROJECT
This is the culmination of the Congolese government’s efforts to maintain the violence in Ituri, to set up a crisis committee for Ituri to make the nation and the world believe that the situation in Ituri is extremely serious and requires a state of emergency. This strategy will bring the head of state himself to leave Kinshasa to settle in Bunia.
President Joseph Kabila has selected by a highly cunning strategy the composition of the military team that will have to chair the crisis committee. The people concerned are exclusively from Ituri, taken just from the communities presented as antagonists, that is to say the Hema, the Lendu and the Ngiti.
Here are the military officers chosen by Kabila for this job:
– General Amuli Bahigwa, a Hema national, who will lead the Crisis Committee team;
– Brigadier General Gode, Ngiti national;
– Colonel Matthieu Ngujolo, a Lendu national (formerly FNI);
– Colonel Justin Lobho, Lendu national (ex-FNI);
– Colonel Dark, national Ngiti (ex-FRPI);
– Colonel Lobho Baraka, national Hema North or Gegere (ex-UPC).
In appearance, this crisis committee will be presented as an instrument of pacification of Ituri. However, the substance of the proceedings thus initiated is aimed solely at using indigenous officers to force Joseph Kabila’s roots into power where he currently seems totally disavowed.
The people of Ituri, like all other citizens of the east of the country, are not ready to accept such a scheme, having understood how much the regime in power has adopted sadism to support its power such as it has already been observed through the tragedy of Beni and that of Kasai, before it now leads to Ituri. Kabila struggles to settle in Bunia by relying on foreign forces, for which the officers from Ituri mentioned above are instructed to open the way.
From the foregoing arise many questions, such as:
– How can military officers from communities supposed to be in antagonism be mandated to extinguish the fire (pacifier) that lights up on the ashes inherited from their own past?
– Why the Ministry of Defense and Justice can not collaborate honestly with the Ministry of the Interior to settle disputes, at least if there is one, while showing a firm will to restore peace in troubled areas, because it is not the means that the state lacks to achieve it?
– Would not there be an agenda hidden behind the decision of the head of state to settle in Bunia? Is this where he plans to start the realization of the Balkanization project of the country he promised to his foreign sponsors?
– What is behind the intensification of arms transfers to Ituri (Bunia) as observed over the past two years, and especially nowadays? What does the regime for transfers of Hutu communities from Rwanda and Tanzania in the province of Ituri hide? Would they be scapegoats that the Raïs in Ituri prepare for the eventual organization of the violence to drive out the population in the Semiliki valley in order to offer the oil company Total the space for the exploitation of the oil in Block 3?
CONCLUSION
– All the events and facts described above prove that Joseph Kabila is determined to prolong as long as possible his stay in power at the head of the country by force and against the backdrop of violence.
– The revelations of the investigations currently being conducted on the specific case of Ituri help to understand more clearly that all the hotbeds of tension and violence that are irreducible across the country are indeed enterprises maintained by the power in place for obvious political reasons. Such are the cases of the massacres of Beni, the recurrent insecurity in Masisi, Rutshuru, Lubero, the massacres of Kasai and, these days, the massacres of Djugu in Ituri.
– The ultimate goal of such a sadistic attitude towards a people that has made him what he has become today is of course the failure of presidential elections as provided for in December 23, 2018.
– In this same logic, the Congolese president would be ready to trigger the balkanization of the country from Ituri where he plans to force the creation of the famous crisis committee for Ituri, involving the native officers in this plan that will carry it. himself to settle soon in Bunia.
Done at Bunia on 15 April 2018
Research conducted by:
TCHELO Justin (Lendu),
Independant Researcher, and
KABAROLE AMOOOTI (Hema)
Evangelist.
©Beni-Lubero Online.
