The city of Beni, in the province of North Kivu, has seen a series of arrests in recent days of suspected bandits involved in burglaries and armed robberies. The police presented Friday May 12 twenty-two people, including three women, accused of being at the origin of the growing insecurity in the city. Some were arrested in flagrante delicto, in particular with stolen objects. According to Nasson Murara, the Beni police communicator, “we also arrested bandits who have a deposit of goods and who do not know how to explain their source of income”.
This is the second gang of suspected bandits presented by the police in the space of a week. The arrests took place amid rising insecurity in Beni, characterized by a wave of burglaries and armed robberies. The mayor of the city, Nyonyi Masumbuko Bwanakawa, spoke earlier this week of the phenomenon of “road robbers”, who block the main access roads to rob passengers of their belongings.
In a region already hard hit by the violence, this worrying situation risks creating more concern for the population. The Democratic Republic of Congo is currently trying to solve many other challenges, such as the modernization of its ports, the protection of the environment and the prevention of natural disasters.
The government has just announced a national plan to prevent natural disasters, while the authorities seek to better protect populations from the effects of climate change. At the same time, a repatriation program for 80,000 Congolese refugees settled in Rwanda began in order to reintegrate the populations into their communities of origin.
A worrying state of affairs also persists in the east of the country, where violence continues to cause victims and displace populations. While responding to these challenges, the government must address a political crisis that emerged this week in Tanganyika province where the Deputy Prime Minister banned plenary sessions of the Provincial Assembly.
It is time for the Congolese authorities to take the necessary measures to restore the security and stability that are essential for the socio-economic development of the country.