In the lead up to Sunday’s (re-)scheduled elections in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), every day brings word of some new large-scale human rights violation or atrocity rattling the conflict-beleaguered nation. Elections have been postponed and a large swath of the Congolese population has been blocked from casting their votes. The electoral commission must rescind this decision to disenfranchise over a million Congolese—largely opposition supporters—to avoid a total meltdown and preserve a modicum of legitimacy for the electoral process.
Originally scheduled for December 23–with the promise of being the country’s first democratic, free, and fair elections since independence from Belgium in 1960—the presidential and parliamentary elections were postponed until Dec 30 by the electoral commission (CENI). CENI cited the suspicious fire in a warehouse containing 70% of Kinshasa’s electronic voting machines as the cause for the delay, making it “technically incapable” of holding elections on the designated date. Jewish World Watch’s partners on the ground attribute the arson to President Joseph Kabila—yet another twisted attempt to surreptitiously subvert the electoral process while maintaining the patina of credibility. Even Dr. Dennis Mukwege, this year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner and a longtime partner of Jewish World Watch, warned, “I fear this fire might be used as a pretext for delaying the elections.”
This past Wednesday, Dec 26, CENI struck again, announcing that the large cities of Beni, Butembo, and Yumbi in the North Kivu region would essentially be excluded from the presidential vote because the Ebola outbreak and protracted violence in the region pose too much risk. CENI postponed the vote in these areas until March, meaning that the presidential tally would be counted without the input of some 1.25 million voters from a 40 million electorate. The inauguration scheduled for January will proceed as planned before the people of North Kivu ever go to the polls.
It is not mere coincidence that this latest ploy of the allegedly Kabila-controlled CENI effectively disenfranchises voters in areas of the DRC showing overwhelming support for opposition candidate Martin Fayulu, an oil-executive-turned-politician and fiery Kabila critic backed by the powerful “Lamuka” coalition that includes Moise Katumbi and Jean-Pierre Bemba, both of whom were banned from running themselves. Notably, Fayulu has become the clear favorite to win the elections—which should have happened over two years ago—with Kabila-backed puppet candidate Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary trailing in third place in recent polls. On Dec. 11, the European Union renewed sanctions against former interior minister Shadary, who was accused last year for orchestrating a crackdown on people protesting the much-delayed elections.
Election-related violence and ethnic conflict has rattled the country in the run up to the elections. This newest wrinkle will most certainly ignite extreme manifestations of outrage. According to Dr. Mukwege, “violence continues — and is worsening — across Congo because impunity for those in power has led to the destruction of the rule of law.” Recent events rocking the nation reaffirm this assessment.
Congolese citizens have come out in droves to express their support for opposition candidates Fayulu and Felix Tshisekedi Tshilombo, who frayed the opposition unity backing Fayulu this past November when he began his own presidential campaign. Massive, energetic swarms of people have come to opposition rallies across the country—those the government has not bloacked—showing the omnipresent dissatisfaction with Kabila’s rule and the desire for genuine change.
These demonstrations have angered Kabila and his cronies, who have used them as an opportunity to turn on the Congolese people through brazen attacks on peaceful opposition protesters. On Dec 11, security forces in Lubumbashi, the second largest city in the DRC, tried to prevent a rally by Fayulu, firing tear gas and live bullets at his supporters, ultimately killing 5 people and injuring many more. This pattern has been repeated through many parts of the Congo in recent weeks. Between Dec 9 and 13 alone, security forces killed at least 7 opposition supporters, wounded more than 50 people, and arbitrarily detained scores of others. Some local officials have blocked opposition candidates from visiting their areas altogether.
After the postponement was announced, on Dec. 20, a violent attack against innocent civilians in Beni took place, killing 8. Jewish World Watch has warned—based on reports from partners on the ground—that the repeated and steadily increasing massacres in Beni and its environs have in fact been orchestrated by Kabila as a means of barring the Nande ethnic group from participating in the elections. The majority-Nande areas of Beni and Butembo, which CENI has strategically excluded from the presidential vote, are bastions of opposition to Kabila. Some even believe them to be the targets of a well-veiled ethnic cleansing campaign to move the prosperous Nande people out of the resource-rich North Kivu area so that Kabila and his allies can more easily exploit the region for their personal gain.
While the mainstream media and even some Congo experts continue to attribute the attacks in the Beni area—which is also the locus of the current Ebola outbreak—to the Islamic militant ADF, people close to the conflict deny this, citing longtime peaceful associations with the ADF as well as the presence of Congolese and Rwandan soldiers at the killing sites. In fact, since I first posted my article on the potential forced deportation of the Nande, many activists and journalists from the region have reached out to me, thanking me for shedding light on this misconstrued and overlooked mass atrocity situation.
It seems that the master plan my sources warned me about is coming to fruition. They predicted that election delays and exclusion of the opposition territories of North Kivu would completely delegitimize the elections, and their premonitions are coming to life. According to numerous local partners, Kabila did everything he could to perpetuate the Ebola crisis in the Beni region by adding in recurring, brutal violence that neither UN peacekeepers nor security forces could find a way to quell. These two crises continued simultaneously until his sham electoral commission said it had “no choice” but to exclude the area from the elections altogether. Their hands were tied….by Kabila himself.
Opposition front-runner Fayulu tweeted, “the pretext of Ebola is fallacious because there has been campaigning in these areas. It’s yet another strategy to hijack the truth of the polls.” The International Crisis Group confers, noting that “the exclusion of the Beni voters from the presidential vote, and delays to provincial elections, is significant not merely because many among them are [opposition] supporters. For several years, the local population has suffered atrocious violence….UN peacekeepers have done littile to protect them. In that sense, Beni already is a symbol of the government’s inability or unwillingness to solve the country’s myriad security problems….the CENI’s decision is therefore particularly combustible: it will heighten Nandes’ fear that they are being excluded from national politics and from holding positions of power in North Kivu province, where they are locked in fierce competition with government-backed Hutu politicians.” Alienating the Nande will only lead to greater instability in these violence-torn areas.
Alienating the people of North Kivu will only lead to greater instability in these violence-torn areas. It will also confirm widespread distrust among the Congolese people in the electoral process and likely fuel post-election protests met with heavy-handed response by security forces.
The United States must join Congolese social and political actors in calling on the CENI to reverse its decision to exclude Beni, Butembo, and Yumbi from the elections this Sunday. The one-week election delay was disappointing but not catastrophic. The CENI’s newest decision to completely exclude the Beni-Butembo region from the presidential election is of a different magnitude. It unquestionably raises the stakes, and, therefore, demands a proportionate response by the international community.
JWW’s field representative sent me a video of a young Congolese male convulsing in tears. He says in French, “I am ready to be killed provided there are free elections in our country.” The Congolese people, besieged by years of unrest, displacement, cleptocracy, and disease, need this elections. They remain hopeful in the face of all of the vicissitudes put in place by Kabila’s regime. They want to be heard, and the world has an obligation to protect and amplify their voices. Despite being heartbroken by the exclusion of opposition areas from the vote, JWW’s field representative says, “I am ready to vote on Sunday Dec 30 and see if y vote, our votes will be respected and not cheated! Our vote on Sunday counts and will build a new DRC.”