PRETORIA: Hundreds of Congolese nationals protested on Tuesday at the EU offices in South Africa to demand sanctions against Rwanda over its support for rebels in the turbulent eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.
Rwanda-backed armed group M23 seized the major city of Goma last week in a lightning offensive, and has vowed to march across the vast country to the capital Kinshasa.
Fighting has stopped in Goma, a city of more than a million people, but clashes have spread to the neighbouring province of South Kivu and heightened an already dire humanitarian crisis in the mineral-rich region.
About 2,000 protesters, wearing the blue, yellow and red of the DRC, chanted outside the EU embassy in the South African capital Pretoria.
They waved placards reading “Free Congo” and thanking the South African national defence force (SANDF) and the Congolese armed forces who are trying to pacify the region.
“The situation in Congo is similar to that of Ukraine,” said 49-year-old Elie Kalonji Ikasereka, who was protesting with his family.
“We are asking the European Union to apply the same measures to Rwanda and its President Paul Kagame that were applied to Russia,” said the businessman, who has been living in South Africa for two decades.
“We want sanctions.”
The protestors denounced a minerals deal between the EU and Rwanda, accusing Brussels of fuelling the conflict and plundering their country.
The deal, signed in February last year, gives the EU access to raw material sources including tin, tungsten, gold, niobium and rare earth elements.
If the EU needs something in Congo, “it should come in through the main gate, it should stop buying minerals through Rwanda,” charged 50-year-old Monique Mbiya Nkolombo.
The Europe-Central Africa network (EurAC), which brings together about thirty European NGOs specialised in the Great Lakes, including Secours Catholique and Terre Solidaire, also denounced the agreement, saying that the EU “has fuelled the escalation of regional tensions”.
“There is no voice that is threatening Kagame in a pragmatic way. We Congolese are suffering,” said Chriss Zas’s, a 32-year-old Congolese activist.
Eastern DRC has deposits of coltan, the metallic ore that is vital in making telephones and laptops, as well as gold and other minerals.
Rwanda has never admitted to military involvement in support of the M23 group and alleges that the DRC supports and shelters the FDLR, an armed group created by ethnic Hutus who massacred Tutsis during the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
The M23 on Tuesday declared a humanitarian ceasefire ahead of a planned crisis meeting between Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi and Kagame.
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