"I think that we cannot find peace with armed groups if the local communities are not involved. I have heard a lot about things happening here and this is not the first time. Twenty-three years later, we are back in Bunia for the same problem we already heard about in March 2001. You are killing people for no reason... What is happening here is beyond me. I cannot understand it. You have no respect for life. It wasn't you who created the human beings living in this world. They don't belong to you... But you take lives as if you were the owners of this world," said Jean Pierre Bemba.
He reminded that as a government, the authorities cannot be complicit in what is happening in Ituri. "If nothing is done, one day we could be asked why we, being in the government while these atrocities are being committed, did not act to stop it," he added, promising that these massacres should be stopped "willingly or by force."
After these two days of dialogue, the communities and leaders of the local armed groups have signed an agreement protocol. Representatives of 21 communities and the local armed groups that participated in the dialogue have made a total of 9 commitments and resolutions, particularly to no longer "communalize conflicts".
Dido Nsapu
Bemba lashes out at armed groups in Ituri: "You take lives as if you were the owners of this world"
InternetKinshasaPolitics - The Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of National Defense, Jean-Pierre Bemba Gombo presided over an expanded intercommunity dialogue with local armed groups in Ituri from the 25th to the 26th of April. In his awareness-raising efforts with the representatives of the negative forces, Bemba said he does not understand this propensity to gratuitously take the lives of peaceful citizens.