Praying for peace in Congo

Yahoo

11-03-2025

GOSHEN — As fights in the Democratic Republic of the Congo escalate, Elkhart County residents are protesting for peace.
Alma and Evra Tshisola, of Elkhart, put together a small protest at the Elkhart County Courthouse in Goshen on Saturday afternoon, with the crowd in attendance sharing information and hymns asking the American people for mercy and support.
'Congo is not in the news as they should be,' Alma said. 'They are facing a genocide for more than 30-plus years. Violence has escalated in the past couple of months and this needs to be known by everybody. We need to stand as fellow humans against this genocide and occupation.'
Since January, Congo's government said that at least 7,000 people have died in the fighting and the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says at least 600,000 have been displaced. Armies across Africa have fought with Congo since the 1990s, but mostly withdrew in 2003 after a peace deal was made.
Small rebel groups continued to clash in North Kivu but M23 remained inactive until 2022 when the full-blown conflict began. Evra said the M23 rebels took control of Goma, a Congo-Rwanda border town of mixed nationalities back in January. Since then, M23 has taken Bukavu in Sout Kivu and expanded to North Kivu, expressing intent to seize power of DRC's capitol, Kinshasa in a coup.
Evra moved to the United States around 10 years ago and most of his family still resides in Congo.
'It's just scary because you don't know where this thing's going to go,' he said. 'Right now, the rebels are just taking city-by-city and approaching the capitol. It's scary having family there because we don't know what's going to happen. They live in fear. Today they can be fine, but they don't know what's going to happen tomorrow.'
Eastern Congo is home to resources including coltan, cobalt, copper and lithium, and according to the Tshisola, the resources are a primary cause of the war and the lack of support the country is receiving.
'Congo has a lot of resources that contribute to the making of phones, computers, electrocars — cobalt is the main one,' Alma said. 'This issue is very complex, because Congo is hugely rich in these resources, everybody wants a piece of it, so Rwanda is carrying out this genocide in Congo so they can get a piece of these resources and they can sell it to all the U.S., the European nations. It's founded in the the baseline of the resources, funding this genocide because everybody wants a piece of it.'
'You know, when there's more resources taken from a country we try to hide it so that other people don't hear about it,' Evra said. 'They try to put it under the table.'
Alma reminded Evra that the governments supporting Rwanda also impact the situation surrounding Congo and its minerals.
'The European countries, America, (are) supporting Rwanda,' Evra explained. 'They are supplying them and making this war going on. When you tell people about this they are just surprised because they don't know about it.'
The M23 rebel group has claimed it has hopes to take over the Congolese government, but Evra said the truth is that the rebel group is also being exploited for its passion.
'I think the other piece of it is because Congo cannot give in an easy way, that's why they're going through, to the Rwandan government, so they can get it easily,' Evra added. 'Since they cannot come straight to Congo to get the resources, they are using Rwanda.'
Alma said the goal is to end the genocide.
'We know that the natural resources, they're going to be used no matter what,' she said. 'But we want the resources to be used in a just and respectable way so the people of Congo can flourish and succeed and be in peace. This genocide it makes no sense.'