Democratic Republic of Congo military personnel prepare to go out on patrol in the Kivu province.
Over 4,000 people have fled the mounting violence in the eastern Kivu provinces of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) this week, as local militias known as Mai Mai swept across the Uvira Plateau near the border of Burundi. The lawless Kivu states have been a hotbed for militant activity since the Rwandan Genocide spilled across the border into the DRC (then named Zaire) twenty-seven years ago, triggering a civil war which has still not been fully settled to this day.
Banyamulenge people fleeing from ethnic cleansing in East Congo, Kivu provinces. These photographs were taken by FAI Wire sources in Isaiah 61 ministries.
Video posted to social media showed dozens of civilians from the Banyamulenge tribe fleeing from automatic rifle fire, and FAI Wire sources report several villages burned, dozens dead, and a campaign of ethnic cleansing underway in the region. Representatives of the Banyamulenge tribe in the United States drafted an open letter to the Secretary-General of the United Nations and the President of DRC last Monday, requesting immediate intervention and humanitarian assistance to prevent a full-scale genocide.
After the genocide of 1994 and resulting civil war between Hutu and Tutsi tribes in Rwanda, Hutu militia responsible for the genocide of 800,000 Tutsis fled into exile in the Kivu states in Congo, where they formed a militia known as the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR). The Zairian government subsequently collapsed, leading to the rise of the DRC in 1997. After a quarter-century, the new government has failed to quell the lawlessness and anarchy in its mineral-rich eastern provinces, leading to further tribalization, and providing fertile soil for extremist groups such as the Hutu genocidaires and Islamic radicals to flourish, at the expense of the region’s diverse population. Groups like the FDLR employ local militia (known as Mai Mai) to terrorize and displace the Banyamulenge people, whom they associate with their Tutsi rivals in Rwanda.
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Despite promises from a newly elected government to pacify the Kivu states, the Congolese Army appears unwilling to do so. A military base is located near the site of last week’s violence, but there was no effort to intervene. FAI sources claimed that, in some cases, the military is even complicit with the FDLR and their militias, enabling the commission of war crimes in Africa’s longest-running conflict.
Banyamulenge people fleeing from ethnic cleansing in East Congo, Kivu provinces. These photographs were taken by FAI Wire sources in Isaiah 61 ministries.
Besides the campaign of ethnic cleansing in the Kivu states, there are ongoing tribal conflicts in neighboring Kivu state, and an Islamic militia from Uganda has also entered the fray, pledging allegiance to ISIS and waging jihad in the eastern Congolese provinces.
Please pray with us for the people of eastern Congo, helpless and harassed on every side by jihadists and other militants who are waging genocide against them. Please pray for the international community to intervene, for the schemes and plots of bloodthirsty men to be restrained, and for gospel laborers to be sent into the harvest field, to provide care and hope to those trapped in one of the darkest corners of the world.
You can learn more about FAI friends and sources laboring in Eastern Congo, as well as sow into their relief and gospel ministry, by clicking this link: PREPARING A PLACE MINISTRIES - Preparing A Place Ministries. Click “GIVE” at the top of the home page for donation options.
Maranatha.
