The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights calls to end the fighting in North Kivu where at least 131 people were killed at the end of November by the rebellion of the M23.
MO12345LEMONDE with AFP
Keeping the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) “on the agenda” is the mission that the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, during ‘A press conference in Geneva Friday, December 9. The manager said he was “really horrified” by the massacre of civilians in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where he plans to go next year.
At least 131 civilians, including 17 women and 12 children, were arbitrarily executed by shot or stabbing in late November in two villages in the east of the DRC, according to a preliminary UN investigation, rendered Public Thursday, which accuses the rebellion of the M23.
The authorities of Kinshasa had mentioned on Monday a balance sheet of around 300 dead in the village of Kishishe, in the province of North Kivu.
There is “a real need to end these fights which take place in different parts of the country, especially in North Kivu. It is always the civilians who suffer from it,” said Türk, in Geneva .
More generally, the Austrian, who took the lead of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in mid-October, said he was “deeply concerned about the situation, especially with regard to The exercise of democratic freedoms in the country “.
The troubled role of Rwanda
In a press release, UN secretary general, Antonio Guterres, “firmly condemned” the massacre and “urged M23 and all other armed groups to immediately stop hostilities and disarm without condition”.
The M23 is an old mainly Tutsi rebellion which took up arms at the end of last year and conquered large portions of a territory in northern Goma, the provincial capital of North Kivu.
According to Congolese authorities, UN experts and American diplomacy, M23 is supported by Rwanda. But Kigali disputes, accusing Kinshasa in return for collusion with the democratic forces of Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), a Hutu movement constituted by certain authors of the genocide of the Tutsi in 1994 in Rwanda.