KINSHASA, Sept 4 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The UN representative in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) refused prior amnesty and integration into the regular army of armed groups as a way of establishing peace and stability in the country’s eastern region.
“We don’t owe amnesty,” Leila Zerrougui told a press conference on the failure of so-called “DDR” (disarmament, demobilisation, reintegration) programmes for rebel group fighters in the DRC.
“Amnesty means that the facts never existed”, went on the Algerian diplomat, evoking his experience as a magistrate.
“Did you see how they cut people to pieces in the villages?” he added, referring to the massacres attributed to the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) in North Kivu and to Codeco (Congo Development Cooperative) in Ituri.
Leila Zerrougui drew attention to the victims, stressing that “people who commit serious crimes must be held responsible for their actions” and that, although “society may decide to” forgive, “there must be some form of justice”.
Dozens of armed groups, Congolese but also of Ugandan, Rwandan or Burundian origin, are threatening civilians in the three eastern provinces of the DRC (Ituri, North Kivu and South Kivu).
Just a year ago, the UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, on a visit to Goma, invited the armed groups to lay down their arms, recovering an appeal from the President, Felix Tshisekedi, to the armed groups.
The surrender is, however, complicated due to the lack of resources from the authorities.
“The Congolese government does not have a serious DDR programme to follow up the head of state’s appeal to the various armed groups,” the former M23 rebels lamented in a statement on Aug 29.
The UN representative criticized the “warlords” who claim to defend their community but who think “only amnesty and rank” that they hope to obtain from the regular army in exchange for their demobilisation.
“We cannot continue to reward murderers. We cannot reward crime,” he said. — NNN-AGENCIES
