{"id":295973,"date":"2025-05-26T12:00:52","date_gmt":"2025-05-26T11:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=295973"},"modified":"2025-10-06T14:26:41","modified_gmt":"2025-10-06T13:26:41","slug":"fear-in-the-countryside-continued-violence-in-democratic-congo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2025\/05\/fear-in-the-countryside-continued-violence-in-democratic-congo\/","title":{"rendered":"Fear in the Countryside–Continued Violence in Democratic Congo"},"content":{"rendered":"

22 May 2025 – <\/em>The armed conflict in the eastern area of the Democratic Republic of Congo (RDC) – democratic in name only – on the frontier with Rwanda is growing more complicated and is impacting in a negative way the lives of nearly all the people.\u00a0 The current fighting adds to the insecurity of the area with fear being the dominant emotion in the countryside.\u00a0 Cross-frontier economic activities between Rwanda and RDC have largely stopped.<\/p>\n

The current armed conflict is among a Tutsi-led militia, the Mouvement du 23 Mars (M23) against the forces of the RDC government and different ethnic militias fighting for their own interests. It is said that the M23 is aided by the regular Rwanda Defence Force, although the Rwanda government denies this accusation.\u00a0 The M23 is also fighting against the Forces d\u00e9mocratique de liberation du Rwanda (FDLR) a Hutu-led group established in the RDC and hostile to the government of Rwanda.<\/p>\n

Recent attacks by the M23 on populations associated with or presumed to support the FDLR have grown with executions and gang violence as the prisons have closed and all the prisoners released.\u00a0 Many incidents of rape, including gang rape by M23 combatants have been reported, but rape is not limited to the M23.<\/p>\n

The two major cities of eastern Congo have been taken over by the M23: Goma in North Kivu and Bukavu in South Kivu.\u00a0 There has been a massive flow of refugees to neighboring Burundi and Uganda as well as many displaced persons within RDC.\u00a0 Most of the economic structures in this mineral rich area have been broken.<\/p>\n

It is difficult to see how the violence will lessen.\u00a0 The RDC military, that had not been paid in some months, faded from the scene and are not likely to return in the short run.\u00a0 A situation to watch closely.<\/p>\n

______________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> Ren\u00e9 Wadlow is a member of the <\/em>TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment<\/a>. He <\/em>is President of the Association of World Citizens, an international peace organization with consultative status with ECOSOC, the United Nations organ facilitating international cooperation and problem-solving in economic and social issues<\/em>, and <\/em>editor of <\/em>Transnational Perspectives.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

22 May 2025 – The armed conflict in the eastern area of the RDC–democratic in name only–on the frontier with Rwanda, is growing more complicated and is impacting in a negative way the lives of nearly all the people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":244689,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[237,101,1991,100,2015,99,2387,126],"class_list":["post-295973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-transcend-members","tag-africa","tag-cultural-violence","tag-d-r-congo","tag-direct-violence","tag-houthi","tag-structural-violence","tag-tutsis","tag-violence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295973","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=295973"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295973\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":295974,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295973\/revisions\/295974"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/244689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}