What we learn from the attack of May 11, 2018 against tourism in Virunga Park …

On Friday, May 11, 2018, a vehicle that was active in tourism in the Virunga National Park, North Kivu, was ambushed by assailants not otherwise identified on the road linking the locality of Kibumba and Rumangabo. . It was confirmed the death of a park guard and the kidnapping of two British tourists, even though the driver of the vehicle was found later.

Already circulating concordant information that the kidnappers of two tourists last Friday claim a ransom of 200,000 US $ (two hundred thousand US dollars). This is the dirty business that has consolidated in North Kivu in recent years under the complacent gaze of the country’s authorities.

When we point to the responsibility of the Congolese state for this kind of scourge in the east of the country in general, and in North Kivu in particular, it is by no means a hollow speculation. For how would one understand that a vehicle is lying in ambush on a road section where the government military monitoring stations are positioned in almost every 500-meter interval? It is urgent to denounce the Kinshasa authorities’ strategy of discouraging international witnesses from crossing the areas where they are implanting the occupying forces on the one hand, while also aiming to deprive the same witnesses of their identity. access to the part of the Virunga Park where the State has engaged in a cold war against the conservation of nature because the latter argues against the plan of the predators to power in Kinshasa to begin the exploitation of oil in the protected area and supervised by UNESCO as World Heritage.

In short, we will finally have in DR Congo a lot of victims like the two UN experts killed some time ago in Kasai. For the national hierarchy of the country would put out of harm’s way anyone resembling the embarrassing witness, both national and international. It is important that the pressure be exerted on the Congolese government in relation to all these tragic events which henceforth spares no one, especially when the regime in place feels aggrieved in its ambitions and interests.

Masumbuko Erneste
Goma.

©Beni-Lubero Online.