People living in Goma on the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s eastern border with Rwanda have spoken of their fear and acute hunger after the M23 rebel group swept into the city earlier this week.
“We are very afraid. This situation feels hopeless,” said Judith Saima, a 28-year-old merchant in Goma, where heavy fighting that cut the city off from the outside world and left bodies piling up in the streets only subsided two days ago.
Access to food is a significant concern, after trade and agricultural supply routes were severed. “If this continues, we will all die, either from stray bullets or starvation,” said 26-year-old Ngise Ngeleka, a 26-year-old student living in the ULPG neighbourhood. Ngeleka said her neighbour had been hit by a bullet at the beginning of the week and that his body was still lying uncollected in the street.
Adeline Tuma, who lives in the city with her four children, said: “We have nothing left to eat. My children cry from hunger. I make porridge without sugar. My shop has been looted. I curse this war. A new, grim chapter of our lives begins.”
Travel by boat, which many people use to carry supplies, has effectively been banned since M23 occupied Minova, a port town along Lake Kivu, last month. Another route across a small border crossing linking Goma to Gisenyi in Rwanda has also been blocked.
Residents lost access to water and electricity on Sunday. On Thursday and Friday, power and mobile data services returned in some districts and the border with Rwanda, a lifeline for the city, was reopened, as M23 tried to show it could restore order and govern. The water supply is expected to return in the coming days. In the meantime, some residents have resorted to filling jerrycans from Lake Kivu.
M23 is the latest in a string of ethnic Tutsi-led insurgent groups that have operated in mineral-rich eastern DRC since a 2003 deal was meant to end wars that had killed 6 million people, mostly from hunger and disease. The group is backed by Rwanda, which says its primary interest is to eradicate fighters linked to the 1994 genocide. The Congolese government and several UN reports say in fact that Rwanda uses the group as a means to extract and then export valuable minerals for use in products such as mobiles phones.
On Friday, the UN voiced alarm at rampant violence in eastern Congo, a day after expressing “deep concern” that the rebels were advancing south from Goma to Bukavu – capital of the neighbouring South Kivu province. The UN rights office said it had documented cases of summary executions and widespread rapes in recent days. “Conflict-related sexual violence has been an appalling feature of armed conflict in eastern DRC for decades,” a spokesperson said.
For many in Goma, M23’s occupation brings back grim memories of the last time the group seized the city, in 2012. At the time it stayed for just 10 days, leaving when Rwanda’s international donors threatened to cut aid. This occupation already feels different.
Elisabeth Sikuli said: “In 2012, they entered in broad daylight. We heard a few bombs, but the clashes didn’t last long. This time, the situation is far worse. We spent three days hiding under our beds, without food.”
Hospitals have been overwhelmed by people injured in the fighting, and relief efforts have been paralysed. Internally displaced people have gone without aid for days, prompting humanitarian organisations to issue urgent pleas for a cessation to the hostilities.
At least 45 people have died and more than 2,000 others have been wounded in and around Goma in the past week, according to the World Health Organization. Uniforms abandoned by exhausted Congolese troops have been picked up and worn by street children, some of whom have looted abandoned shops.
“Although there are signs of reprieve in Goma after days of intense fighting, the need for shelter, food, water, medical supplies, and protection in the city remains overwhelming,” said Rose Tchwenko, Mercy Corps country director for DRC. “We are now in a race against time to save lives.”
On Wednesday, M23 declared its intention to remain in the city and a day later Corneille Nangaa, head of Congo River Alliance, the political coalition backing the M23, asked residents “to go back to normal activities”. He also pledged to get children back in school within 48 hours and open a humanitarian corridor so people displaced by fighting could return home.
At stake is a potential return to the situation that arose in the 1990s and 2000s, when Rwanda and Uganda and their proxy forces occupied and ran DRC’s eastern borderlands, managing trade, communications and transport.
Not all people in Goma oppose the arrival of the Tutsi-led group. A senior UN official told Reuters this week: “A lot of people are sick and tired of the chaos. If they can trade, security improves, their daily lives improve, then M23 could be popular.”
Olakire Senga said he thought the Congolese government had failed to protect its citizens. The doctor said: “I think we need to assess the maturity of those arriving and join them. Personally, I went out to welcome them.”
Source: theguardian.com
