National Conference of Catholic Bishops to DRC negotiators at Kampala: "Beware of these negotiations!"

(PHOTO: Mgr Nicolas Djomo, chair of DRC National Conference of Catholic Bishops)



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Anger is growing in the DRC about the negotiations with the M23 outfit

at Kampala, Uganda.



Congolese from all walks of life are questioning the wisdom of the DRC

government to enter into secretive dialogues with insurgent and bandit

outfits without any parliament's mandate or any legal basis.



MP Martin Fayulu, the pro-Tshisekedi opposition firebrand was among

the first Congolese public personalities to slam the Kampala

negotiations.



Answering Kinshasa journos who were wondering why he turned down the

government's invitation to attend the Kampala negotions as an

observer, Fayulu said:



"To go and negotiate, to discuss over an accord whose ins and outs

nobody knows, what does that mean?"



(Fayulu was referring to the March 23, 2009 accord with CNDP, which

spawned its avatar, M23.)



But the sternest warning about those Kampala negotiations came from

the National Conference of Catholic Bishops (CENCO), which held a

3-day extraordinary session in Kinshasa (December 3-5).



At the close of that extraordinary session, CENCO issued a communiqué

that castigated M23 for acts of wanton violence they perpetrated in

North Kivu and warned the government about negotiations that could

result in the "balkanization" of the country.



The communiqué states in part:



"The war in North Kivu has obtained enormous damages [and] degradation

of the situation of human rights caused by M23 and [other] armed

groups, large-scale murders, rapes, kidnappings, conscriptions of

underaged children in the ranks of armed groups, illegal detentions

and taxations, acts of banditry, of destruction, and of pillage of the

national heritage and of private citizens, forced and massive

displacements of populations compelled to wandering in subhuman

conditions. And the fall of Goma had plunged all the Congolese into

consternation."



Pointing to the reports of the UN Group of Experts, the bishops issued

a stern warning to DRC negotiators who are now talking with M23;

insurgents who are "backed by foreign countries, including Rwanda and

Uganda"--an insurgency whose aim is the ''balkanization of the

country."



The bishops warn that the "balkanization" has had the same pattern

over the years:



"Identity and land tenure claims, refusal of the institutional order,

illegal exploitation of natural resources, forced displacement of

populations, recourse to violence with the aim of crumbling the

Democratic Republic of Congo."



Meanwhile in the streets of Kinshasa, "residents of the Republic" have

lost all respect for a government that sits around the same table with

those who have just raped Goma.



"Are people in government bewitched or what?" a Kinois angrily

wondered this evening at a "nganda," a sidewalk bar. "I mean, to go

negotiate in Uganda of all places? A hostile country? These people are

out of their minds, I tell you!"



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PHOTO CREDITS: John Bompengo /Radio Okapi