Episcopal Press and News
CONGO: Anglicans arrive in Bunia after two-day trek through Equatorial forest
Episcopal News Service. October 10, 2008 [101008-01]
Matthew Davies
Bishop Henri Isingoma and a group of Anglicans from the Diocese of Boga have arrived safely in Bunia after a recent upsurge in rebel activity forced them to travel for two days through the bush in eastern Congo.
The threat of rebel attacks initially left 150 delegates stranded in Boga at the conclusion of their September 30-October 5 diocesan synod following reports that militia were stationed in Bukiringi, a village about 10 miles away.
Isingoma said in an October 9 statement that the synod members traveled in convoy "using an unusual routing which is in the Equatorial forest…because the usual road from Boga to Bunia is still impassable [due] to militia forces."
According to reports, the rebels' motives are to oppose the central Congolese government and to uproot Ugandan rebel leader Joseph Kony, who heads the Lord's Resistance Army, a militia group that has terrorized the region for more than two decades through widespread massacres and child abductions.
Isingoma said that the rebels, identified as being allied to Major General Laurent Nkunda's Congrès National pour la Défense du Peuple (CNDP), "are accusing the government of being unjust and corrupt" and are seeking "to drive out Ugandan rebels that are operating on the Congolese soil causing suffering to Congolese citizens."
The Congolese government, Isingoma said, has failed to demobilize armed militia troops.
During their two-day trek, some synod participants returned to their homes in Tchabi and Bwakadi, while the rest of the group rested at Eringeti, a small town in the Northern Kivu Province, before being advised to move on "because the National Armed Forces were deployed on the road that we were traveling on … so that they could fight against the militia troops that had already occupied a neighboring location called Songolo," Isingoma said.
The bishop reported that a few hours after the group's arrival in Bunia, "the road was closed and fighting was going on" 10 miles away in Kombokabo.
"Commodities prices are getting higher because there is no connection of transport from the rural areas to the town," he said, acknowledging that people fear that the unrest might trigger looting in the region. "We are told that yesterday some trucks carrying goods were shot and looted as they were coming from the rural villages."
The primary challenge, the bishop said, is to support Anglicans whose areas have been affected by the hostilities and to assist those who have been displaced by the upsurge in violence. "Those who are coming to look for safety do not have anything with them," he said. "They need assistance in food, medical care, blankets and plastic sheeting, because of the [current] rainy season."
An October 10 alert for the Episcopal Public Policy Network also notes that the present wave of violence in the Congo "is a product of instability brought on by the Uganda-based Lord's Resistance Army, which has waged a two-decade campaign of war, abduction, and terror in northern Uganda."
The LRA and the Ugandan government "have been in the final stages of peace negotiations for many months, but progress at the moment appears stalled," the alert says, noting that President George W. Bush discussed the LRA conflict with Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni when the two leaders met in September at the United Nations headquarters in New York.
The EPPN is calling on its members to send a message to Bush "urging his Administration to follow up on that meeting by working with the U.N. and regional governments to advance peace negotiations, protect civilians, and develop a strategy for bringing the leaders of the LRA to justice."