The fall of the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) town of Bukavu has strained Kinshasa’s relations with neighbouring Rwanda and on Thursday prompted countrywide protests against United Nations peacekeepers that left two people dead in Kinshasa.
Rwanda quickly rejected DRC President Joseph Kabila’s accusation that it masterminded Wednesday’s capture of Bukavu by DRC army officers drawn from the Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD), a former rebel group backed by Kigali.
Together with thousands of people in cities across the DRC, Kabila was also bitter about the failure of Monuc, the UN peacekeeping mission in the country, to intervene in Bukavu.
Rwandan Foreign Minister Charles Murigande described as “baseless” Kabila’s televised claim that the Bukavu takeover was “clearly an attack on our country by Rwandan troops”.
“A new war is being forced on us,” Kabila told Thursday’s edition of the French newspaper Le Monde.
“By this invasion, Rwanda has clearly shown it does not want peace, not in Congo, nor in the Great Lakes region,” he said, adding he plans to declare a state of emergency across his country.
Rwanda has twice deployed troops in DRC, first in 1996 to back rebels who ousted dictator Mobutu Sese Seko and again in 1998 to back the RCD and protect its borders from Rwandan Hutu extremists who fled to the eastern DRC after carrying out Rwanda’s 1994 genocide.
Rwanda repeatedly accused Kinshasa of backing and arming these forces and warned that it reserves the right to send troops back to the DRC if its security concerns are not assuaged.
“We are used to this attitude from DRC authorities. They are always looking for scapegoats instead of facing up to their problems, and Rwanda is their favourite scapegoat,” said Murigande.
General Laurent Nkunda, who led the assault on Bukavu — the capital of the DRC’s Sud-Kivu province, which lies on the Rwandan border — also denied that Kigali backed him and pledged his loyalty to Kabila.
“I did not come to fight Kinshasa, I only wanted to get rid of the bad military authorities in the region,” he said on Thursday, accusing them of “massacring” civilians from his Banyamulenge community, Congolese Tutsis of Rwandan origin who speak the language of the neighbouring country.
Thursday brought demonstrations against Monuc in cities across the vast country.
Even Kabila had harsh words for the force, telling Le Monde: “Despite its arms and its mandate, the UN mission did not avert the fall of Bukavu.”
Monuc had hundreds of troops in Bukavu on Wednesday.
“There are demonstrations against Monuc in Kinshasa, Kisangani, Lubumbashi and Kindu,” said Sebastien Lapierre, Monuc’s spokesperson in Bukavu.
There were unconfirmed reports of similar protests in Goma and Butembo, he said, while residents of Bukavu also gathered to express their anger against the UN, amid widespread looting.
A Monuc spokesperson in Kinshasa said two people were killed there on Thursday when guards at a warehouse used by the peacekeepers opened fire on looters.
“Many protesters arrived at Monuc’s logistics base, forced their way in and looted the premises,” said Monuc spokesperson Hamadoun Toure.
“The site’s security agents opened fire on them. Two people have been killed,” he said.
Thousands of people had gathered earlier outside the UN mission’s headquarters in Kinshasa, and others were marching from all corners of the capital to join them, to demand that Monuc leave the DRC.
Police, who were out in force near Monuc headquarters in Kinshasa, reportedly fired into the air to try to disperse the angry crowd, said by an AFP correspondent to number in the tens of thousands.
Sporadic shooting could still be heard by early afternoon in the centre of Kinshasa, where many shops and government ministries were closed.
The UN force’s commanding officer, Colonel Clive Mantell, said Monuc’s office in the southern city of Lubumbashi “was attacked and had to be abandoned”.
“In Kindu [in the east] our office was attacked and vehicles were damaged, and in Kinshasa a violent crowd outside Monuc’s headquarters had to be repulsed by police,” he said.
In New York on Wednesday night, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan’s spokesperson Fred Eckhard said of Monuc: “The mandate was based on a peace agreement … When war breaks out, the role of peacekeepers ends.” — Sapa-AFP
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