The situation in Bunagana in the DRC’s North Kivu province celebrates its first anniversary today, marking a year of occupation by M23 terrorists backed by the Rwandan Armed Forces (RDF). Since this occupation, commercial exchanges have been disrupted and the population in the region has suffered from the inaccessibility of agricultural areas. Social actors denounce a cohabitation between the insurgents and the Ugandan contingent of the EAC, thus increasing the exasperation of the population.
Civil society in the city of Goma criticized the central government’s inaction in the face of territorial management games. It demands the resignation of the Kinshasa government for not having defended national sovereignty. The misery of the population in the entities under terrorist control is accentuated, and the civil administration installed by the M23 is still at work. All this has led the population to mistrust the forces of the EAC and civil society in the capital of the province of North Kivu.
Civil society calls on the DRC’s defense and security forces, as well as regional and other forces, to launch offensives to free the positions of the M23 and the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) and thus facilitate the return of displaced persons from eastern DRC in their entities.
The President of the Republic, Félix Tshisekedi, celebrates his sixtieth birthday on the same day. The Congolese of Bunagana hope that he will shake up the Prime Minister in order to urgently remedy this situation which has persisted for a year.
There is little hope that the situation can be resolved quickly. This again shows the difficulties that the DRC faces in ending the occupations of terrorists and bringing peace to the east of the country.