AFC/M23 political leader Corneille Nangaa has warned of a worsening humanitarian situation in Minembwe, in DR Congo's South Kivu province, saying attacks and a blockade imposed by government-allied forces are threatening the survival of the civilian population.

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Nangaa made the remarks during a press conference in Goma on Wednesday, October 7, where he accused Kinshasa and its coalition of deliberately isolating Minembwe and targeting its population, mainly the Banyamulenge.

He described the situation as a "genocide currently underway” and called for urgent action to protect civilians.

"Congolese people, women, children, and others are dying of starvation and a lack of medicines and basic necessities,” Nangaa said, accusing the coalition of FARDC, Burundian troops, FDLR, Wazalendo and mercenaries of enforcing the blockade.

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He said the restrictions were affecting residents’ ability to access food and healthcare, cultivate land, raise livestock and move in and out of the area.

Nangaa said a humanitarian convoy organised by OCHA, ACTED and Médecins du Monde was blocked on the night of September 23-24 following attacks on Mulenge.

He said the latest restrictions were part of a wider pattern of attacks and displacement that has devastated the area for several months.

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More than 650 villages have been destroyed or burned, according to Nangaa, while more than 7,000 cattle were looted and over 147 schools and 57 health facilities destroyed.

He said more than 80 per cent of the Banyamulenge population had been displaced, with tens of thousands living as refugees in Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya and elsewhere.

"This situation cannot be treated as a mere military or political issue,” Nangaa said. "When a population can no longer feed itself properly, when a child cannot go to school, when the sick face obstacles in receiving care, and when people are forced to leave their land, we are facing a humanitarian crisis that demands an urgent response.”

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‘They are viewed as foreigners’

Nangaa said the humanitarian crisis was inseparable from what he described as the persecution of Banyamulenge and the questioning of their Congolese identity.

"The conflict currently playing out in Minembwe and on the plateau has a single objective: to uproot the remaining members of this community still living in the area, as they are viewed as foreigners,” he said.

He rejected the description of Banyamulenge, Tutsi and Kinyarwanda speakers as foreigners, saying citizenship should not depend on a person's name, language, appearance or community.

"No Congolese person should be considered a foreigner in their own country because of their name, language, background, appearance, or community affiliation,” Nangaa said.

He said the issue went beyond Minembwe to the wider question of citizenship and belonging in DR Congo.

"A republic cannot remain stable in the long term if membership in the nation is determined by variable criteria,” he said. "Citizenship should never be a favour granted to some and denied to others.”

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Nangaa, a former head of the Congolese electoral commission, then linked the ethnic violence to the origins of AFC/M23, rejecting Kinshasa's portrayal of the movement as an instrument of foreign aggression.

"We know that our movement is caricatured, reduced to a label, and portrayed as an act of foreign aggression, specifically Rwandan aggression, to avoid the only question that matters: Why have Congolese people taken up arms against an order that claims to govern them? We did not create the Congolese crisis. We were born of abandonment, exclusion, persecution, and the state’s stubborn refusal to address our root causes,” he said.

Nangaa accused the Kinshasa administration of failing to address exclusion and insecurity while misusing state institutions.

"Our existence is the consequence of a state that has ceased to be impartial, of an army turned into a tool, a judiciary held in thrall, a rudderless diplomacy, a selective approach to citizenship, and a system that tolerates the suspicion of certain Congolese people based on their names, languages, physical features, or communities,” he said.

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He noted that the AFC/M23 was not fighting the Congolese population.

"We are not fighting the Congolese people; we are fighting their destruction,” Nangaa said. "We are not in rebellion against the nation; we are standing up against those who have hijacked the state, humiliated its citizens, and condemned the country to three decades of violence, plunder, displacement, and massacres.”

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Nangaa said the movement’s stated objective was to restore dignity, reform state institutions and create a country where all Congolese could belong equally.

He also called for an end to rhetoric that divides communities, saying no group should have to choose between its security and its national identity.

Call for credible mediation

The conflict has continued despite efforts to resolve it peacefully, especially through the Qatar-mediated Doha peace process and the African Union-backed Washington process. Nangaa spoke two days after he and other rebel leaders met with AU facilitators for the peace efforts in Goma on October 5.

He urged mediators and facilitators involved in peace processes for DR Congo to make civilian protection and the grievances of affected communities central to their efforts.

He called for humanitarian corridors into Minembwe and for affected populations to be heard directly in the peace process.

"Commitments made during the mediation process, particularly those regarding the ceasefire and the protection of civilians, must be accompanied by mechanisms to verify their implementation,” he said.

He called on the mediators to move beyond general declarations and ensure that commitments are monitored and implemented.

"Credible mediation must yield precise, clear, and verifiable commitments,” Nangaa said.

"Minembwe must not become just another name added to the long list of tragedies our country discovers only after the fact,” he said.

"We must act now: protect civilians, open humanitarian corridors, listen to the victims, and treat all communities with equal dignity.”