The Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) interior minister has told Angola that its mass expulsions of tens of thousands of Congolese is causing mayhem and appealed for cooperation.
”The mass return of our compatriots caught us off guard,” said Interior Minister Theophile Mbemba Mfundu late on Tuesday following talks with Foreign Minister Joao Miranda.
”[The] DRC does not have the necessary logistics to accommodate these people repatriated from Angola,” said Mfundu.
Angolan authorities have rounded up more than 60 000 foreigners, most of them from the DRC, over the past four months during army and police raids launched to clamp down on illegal diamond mining and trading by foreigners.
The expulsions peaked in early April with a daily influx of about 2 500 people into remote regions of the DRC that do not have water, food or housing for the deportees, according to United Nations relief officials.
About 40 000 returnees have been registered in the DRC since the beginning of April, the world body has said.
The DRC is still struggling to emerge from a five-year war, which drew in six other African nations at its height, including Angola, and claimed about 2,5-million lives, either directly in combat or through disease and hunger.
The war, which crippled the vast Central African country’s economy and infrastructure, formally ended in April last year with the signing of a peace pact.
Mfundu ”has come to request our understanding so that these operations take place amid bilateral cooperation to avoid constraints”, said the Angolan foreign minister.
UN emergency relief coordinator Jan Egeland warned on Monday that the mass expulsions could lead to a humanitarian crisis.
”While a state has a legitimate right to control who lives or works within its borders, returns of migrant workers must be done without jeopardising people’s physical safety and dignity,” Egeland said. — Sapa