DR Congo anti-UN protest deaths increase – Media

A coalition of youth organisations reports that the dead had reached 100 after their bodies were found in bushes.

The chairman of a coalition of youth organisations in the country was quoted by the Anadolu Agency as saying that the death toll from anti-United Nations rallies last week in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo has increased to 100.

According to Lucas Pecos, the director of the Collective of Youth Solidarity Organisations in Congo-Kinshasa (COJESKI-RDC), the death toll rose after the bodies of those who were shot while purportedly running from a church were found in the nearby bushes.

In an effort to quell local protests against the UN’s MONUSCO peacekeeping operation, Pecos on Wednesday accused the Congolese army of engaging out a genocide. He added that 57 bodies had been found at the mortuary of the Goma Provincial Hospital.

The Katinda military barracks mortuary currently houses 43 bodies of victims who were killed in the church and its surroundings, increasing the total to 100. A few miles out from Goma is where the barracks are, he continued.

On Thursday, the Congolese government reported 43 fatalities and 56 injuries. According to the authorities, 158 more persons were detained on suspicion of engaging in “actions that undermined public order.”

The UN mission denounced the deaths and urged Kinshasa to conduct a “prompt” and “independent” inquiry.

Locals have long denounced the UN mission’s existence in the nation of East Africa, alleging that it has fallen short of its duty to safeguard them from militia violence.

At least 15 people, including three peacekeepers, were killed in a similar anti-MONUSCO demonstration the previous year when hundreds of unarmed citizens and highly armed UN forces clashed, torching and vandalising the structures of the multinational mission.

For their roles in the murder of two UN specialists in the nation, 51 persons were given the death penalty by a Congolese military court in 2022.

The UN mission expressed its continued concern about violent threats on Thursday and emphasised the “importance of peaceful resolution of disputes and conflicts through inclusive dialogue.”