The mandate of the United Nations peacekeeping primarily focuses on protection of civilians. However, reading yesterday’s statement from MONUSCO on “Kishishe killings”, one quickly realizes how the mission in DRC deliberately disregarded ongoing genocide against Tutsi Congolese by FDLR and its allies and chose to scapegoat M23.
It is quite baffling that the failed UN body in DRC singlehandedly picked M23 as the actual perpetrator of Kishishe killings knowing very well the area was recently a stronghold of FDLR, Mai-Mai groups (Yakutumba, Nyatura and Mazembe) which are notorious genocidal forces known for wreaking terror on Congolese.
For the past four months evidence of the ongoing genocide against Tutsi Congolese or how their livestock have been subjected to harm in DRC have been overwhelming. Yet, nowhere MONUSCO has ever come out to condemn them vehemently like it is doing on M23 over fabricated narratives.
It has further been established that if people are not killed over their ethnicity, they get killed because they refused to lend support to the coalition of killers which in this case are FARDC, FDLR, MAI-MAI, and APCLS. Against all these facts, MONUSCO chose to blame the only group that wishes well for DRC and whose records are clear when it comes to collaborating positively with civilians.
On the 3rd of December, M23 shed lights to the baseless accusations of Kishishe killings. In the statement it said that people whom they claim died were actually members of FDLR and MAI MAI who were shot while fighting and that consequently some civilians (eight of them) were killed by stray bullets. It has since called for impartial and independent verification mechanism which the UN and their allies are yet to respond to.
It is now crystal clear that MONUSCO wants to delegitimize the cause of M23 and lay grounds for unscrupulous judicial recourse against them on propped-up charges. This, understandably for UN, cannot be more emphasized than when the latter announced that it is willing to provide a unilateral ceasefire, disengage and withdraw from the areas it had captured.
MONUSCO once again has proven that it has been relying on hearsays and its statement are nothing else but testament of high-level hypocrisy and deviating from its mission in DRC.