Youth organizations of Tshopo and Ensemble pour la République political party have asked the Congolese government to break diplomatic relations with Rwanda.
This is one of the recommendations contained in the memorandum read on Monday, June 6, at the end of the march in support of the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), engaged in the fighting against the M23 terrorists.
“We demand that the Congolese government sever diplomatic relations with Rwanda, an aggressor country, to urgently carry out productive reforms of our army and other national security services,” Radio Okapi quoted the Provincial Youth Coordinator of Ensemble pour la Republic, Me Freddy Likombe as saying.
The youth on Tuesday marched from the provincial government building to the town hall of Kisangani asking President Felix Tshisekedi to weed out of the army “all foreign infiltrators and national accomplices”.
“[We must] improve the living conditions of the military and provide the army with modern military equipment so that they are truly a deterrent,” Likombe told Okapi.
He called upon the international community to “avoid supporting or even encouraging Rwanda to implement its expansionist policy based on systematic looting”.
The youth rallied all Congolese people to “remain mobilized behind the FARDC in order to bar the road definitively to all the enemies of our country”.
Tshisekedi openly accuses Rwanda
In his speech on Sunday, the Democratic Republic of Congo President said wanting peace, fraternity and solidarity between the peoples of the region [of the Great Lakes] is not in itself a weakness.
He said the current situation cannot be perceived as a window of opportunity by neighboring countries in their desire to destabilize his country.
“Today, there is no doubt, Rwanda has supported the M23 to come and attack the DRC”, said Tshisekedi, during a press briefing organized jointly with his counterpart Denis Sassou, at the Ollombo airport in the People’s Republic of Congo.
He said the resurgence of M23 which defeated in 2013 with the confiscation of its military arsenal can only be due to Rwanda, whose support is no longer an open secret.
The President said he was “very affected” by the alarming security situation prevailing in the east of the DRC, with in particular clashes between the FARDC and the terrorists of the M23 supported by Rwanda.
“The DRC is a haven of peace and wants to remain so. It seeks, by all means, to sweep away the twenty years of violence, abuses and war that it has endured particularly in its eastern part,” he noted.
He thanked his counterparts; Joao Lorenzo from Angola, Macky Sall from Senegal and current President of the African Union as well as Denis Sassou N’Guesso from Congo Brazzaville for trying to resolve the stand-off with Rwanda.
Tshisekedi was optimistic about the Nairobi peace process which he wants to see succeed.
