Dear brothers and sisters,
Greetings of peace from Kinshasa, DR Congo. We want to share with you what is happening in the east of our country. Surely you have heard that the armed conflict in the provinces of Ituri, Sud Kivu and Nord Kivu has worsened. The M23 movement, which carries out massacres and other war crimes in the area, is receiving more and more military equipment and, as the team of UN experts working in the region proved in their reports, is supported by the Rwandan army. The interests of foreign powers not only concern the strategic minerals in the subsoil of these provinces, but also territorial expansion and occupation.
In this context, we are particularly concerned by the fact that the European Union has signed an agreement with the Rwandan government on the value chain of strategic minerals essential for the development of so-called clean energies and for the production of cutting-edge technological devices, including our smartphones. These minerals, such as coltan, do not exist in the Rwandan subsoil, but in the provinces of Nord and Sud Kivu, systematically occupied and destabilized through practices such as collective rape as a weapon of war and other ways of instilling terror and generating the forced displacement of the people who inhabit this land.
We believe it is important that together we seek truth and justice as the only weapons to fight for a genuine and sustainable peace. The Congolese people are already living a situation of war, of extreme aggression, and this makes them bearers of the mission of the Servant of the Lord. Jesus is alive in the heart of this people: not to make them resign themselves to oppression, but to liberate them as a teacher of nonviolence and Lord of History. For this reason, we invite you to join us in prayer for the Congolese people and to ask the Spirit to inspire us to find ways to make our solidarity ever more effective.
An embrace in the Heart of Mary.
Secretariat of JPIC of the Claretian Missionaries in DRC
Contact. Email: francotorres2@gmail.com Wsp: +243 975 535 711
