War in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is taking a dreadful toll on the population.
“Every kind of suffering is there,” said Egide Bandyatuyaga, East Africa ministry director for TWR. “People are dying from bullets. People are running away from their homes. People don’t have food because they can’t go to their farms, they can’t go to the market. … When they get sick, there is no treatment. … Families are being separated because of the war.”
While on a short visit to the United States, Bandyatuyaga is keeping a close eye on the deteriorating situation in the DRC. It’s not only part of the region he’s responsible for; the DRC is also his neighbour. Bandyatuyaga lives in the nation of Bujumbura, Burundi, half an hour by motorboat across Lake Tanganyika from the eastern DRC.
In recent weeks, the rebel army, known as the M23 and said to be backed by Rwanda, has taken two major eastern cities in the DRC: Goma and Bukavu. Bandyatuyaga said he has gotten reports that they now seek to take the much smaller city of Uvira, which is located directly across the lake from Bujumbura, Burundi’s largest city.
Uvira is also the home of a partner station with TWR Burundi, Bandyatuyaga said. It broadcasts a number of programmes in French, Swahili, Kirundi – a major language of Burundi that is also spoken in that part of the DRC – and in Lingala, one of the DRC’s major languages.
TWR also has a station in Kinshasa, the capital city on the far western side of DRC, and has shortwave broadcasts from Eswatini in south-eastern Africa that can be heard throughout the DRC. Both of those are aired in the Lingala language.
The world community largely is blaming the M23 and Rwanda for the violence. The U.S. State and Treasury departments on Thursday 20th February issued sanctions against a Rwandan official and a militant spokesman along with two companies the spokesman controls, saying they were violating the territorial integrity of the DRC.
But the conflict has deep roots, Bandyatuyaga pointed out. The rebels in the east speak a language that is similar to the Rwandan language and feel they are being marginalised by the government in Kinshasa, which is 2,000 kilometers (1,240 miles) west of the eastern cities. A series of uprisings dates back to just after the Rwandan genocide in 1994, he said.
The United Nations Refugee Agency calls the current situation in DRC one of the most complex humanitarian crises in the world, saying that decades of clashes have displaced 7 million people and caused 1 million to seek asylum outside of the DRC’s borders. Thousands of them came to Burundi, Bandyatuyaga said and another 40,000 Congolese have arrived during the recent fighting.
Bandyatuyaga is asking for prayer for the DRC:
• Pray for the end of the war.
• Pray for communities to be reconciled.
• Pray for humanitarian assistance.
• Pray that leaders will come together and find a political solution “because war has never been a solution to any problem.”
“We thank people who are supporting us,” Bandyatuyaga said. “We know somewhere someone is being touched, and his life is being changed for good.”
