On Monday, three prominent Congolese figures, including Nobel laureate Denis Mukwege, accused President Felix Tshisekedi of pushing the country towards disintegration by bringing in outside nations to address the country’s security crisis.
In a sign of mounting pressure on Tshisekedi over the DR Congo’s troubled east, the trio said the continent’s largest country was facing “fragmentation” and “Balkanisation.”
This is “the result of an irresponsible and repressive regime’s blatant lack of leadership and governance,” they said in a communique.
The statement was signed by politician Martin Fayulu, whom Tshisekedi defeated in controversial elections in 2018, and former Prime Minister Augustin Matata Ponyo, in addition to Mukwege, a gynaecologist who co-won the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize for his work in assisting women victims of sexual violence.
Hundreds of armed groups roam the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, many of them left over from two regional wars that raged at the turn of the century.
The latest crisis involves a resurgent armed group known as the M23, which has seized large swaths of territory in North Kivu province since resurfacing last year.
With the DRC’s armed forces in disarray, Tshisekedi has requested troops from the African Community (EAC), a seven-nation body.
Members of the EAC include Rwanda and Uganda, which critics have long accused of inciting conflict in the east.
The DRC, in particular, accuses Rwanda of assisting the rebels, which Rwanda denies, despite the fact that the assertion is supported by a new report by independent UN experts.
