Democratic Republic of the Congo

Police in the Democratic Republic of the Congo killed at least 55 people in April as part of a coordinated crackdown against a separatist religious group, according to a new Human Rights Watch (HRW) report released Tuesday.

In the last two months, the U.N. Refugee Agency reports more than 200,000 people have been forced to flee surging violence between the Lendu and Hema groups in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo’s Ituri Province. The U.N. Refugee Agency says 5 million people have been uprooted in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, including 1.2 million in Ituri province.

[…] 139 civil society organizations based in the Democratic Republic of Congo have called for a complete ceasefire across the whole of the country, which has to contend with the novel coronavirus and Ebola virus in stable regions such as Kinshasa, as well as in provinces affected by conflict, including Ituri, Nord-Kivu and Sud-Kivu.

[…] The new leader of the Cooperative for the Development of the Congo (CODECO), Ngabu Ngawi Olivier, called on the army to enact a ceasefire to allow talks with the government, a potential breakthrough for President Felix Tshisekedi who has promised to bring an end to decades of unrest in the region.

When hundreds of militiamen arrived in January at a government-run demobilisation camp in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s northeastern province of Ituri, there was a flicker of hope that more than two years of conflict might be abating. But a few weeks later, the fighters … deserted the camp … . Now violence is peaking again in a province where more than 1.2 million people have already been displaced by a two-year conflict that has divided communities and revived memories of past wars that rank among Congo’s bloodiest.

The Coronavirus outbreak has adversely affected efforts by the international community to neutralise negative forces in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Suspected Hutu militiamen killed 16 people, including 12 rangers, on Friday in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo’s Virunga National Park, a government official said, in the deadliest such attack in Virunga’s recent history.

The U.N. Human Rights Office reports scores of civilians are being killed, wounded and abducted in worsening Inter-ethnic violence between the Hema and Lendu in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo’s Ituri Province. More than 150 people have been killed in Djugu and Mahagi territories in Ituri province since early March, raising the number of civilian deaths this year to more than 200.

More than two dozen people have been killed in violence this week in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. The attacks by ethnic Lendu farmers in Ituri province have mostly targeted Hema herders.

[…] Vital Kamerhe’s arrest was a blow to President Felix Tshisekedi, who took power in January last year after campaigning on promises to clean up corruption, which watchdog groups said flourished under his long-serving predecessor, Joseph Kabila.