The Congolese government continues massacring civilians in Minembwe, Uvira, and surrounding areas in eastern DR Congo’s South Kivu Province, using attack drones guided by MONUSCO intelligence, according to AFC/M23 Spokesperson Lawrence Kanyuka.
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Posting on X, on Tuesday, February 25, Kanyuka said: "Blatant complicity in an ignored genocide! How long will the world remain silent?”
Kanyuka’s post came moments after Moise Nyarugabo, a Congolese lawyer from the Banyamulenge community took to X to announce that at 10 a.m, the government, through the Congolese army’s (FARDC) and 3rd defense zone, had "once again sent an attack drone and a Sukhoi Su-25 aircraft over Minembwe, where since Friday there has been no front line, no fighting, and not a single FARDC soldier, as they have withdrawn from the area.”
"The drone preceded the aircraft, which has just bombed the village of Ilundu, specifically Kwabuhimba, and the village of Nyarujoka. The drone is still flying over Minembwe center, seemingly searching for other villages perhaps the most densely populated ones where the Sukhoi will return to kill even more people.”
Nyarugabo said the drone spent the entire day, on February 24, in the skies over Minembwe, most likely capturing images of its targets.
"Two questions haunt me: 1. What is so special, so attractive, or so militarily strategic about Minembwe to justify this relentless persecution by the government, apart from killing, destroying, and exterminating the Banyamulenge population?
"2. Where is the European Union and other world powers? Where is @KarimKhanQC
the Prosecutor of the ICC? Their outrage is always directed elsewhere, never towards us. In any case, they don’t care when it comes to us, they turn a blind eye and a deaf ear. The same goes for all the notable figures from Kivu and public opinion as a whole.”
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The Banyamulenge community has, in the past, petitioned the international community to intervene and stop brutal killings targeting them in Minembwe in South Kivu Province, to no avail.
The Banyamulenge, just like many other Congolese communities, were established on the territory of what was to become the DR Congo far before the demarcation of African colonial boundaries.
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Earlier, on February 15, Nyarugabo had also appealed for the respect of the rights of Congolese Banyamulenge refugees, following what he described as their mass arrests against in neighbouring Burundi.