2023-12-10 22:31:00
President Félix Tshisekedi, on the electoral campaign trail, held a meeting on Sunday in Goma, in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), while the city is almost surrounded by M23 rebels and fighting is taking place in about twenty km to the west.
Thousands of residents of the capital of North Kivu, where a large military force was deployed for the occasion, waited all day in a stadium, including in the rain, to see Félix Tshisekedi who arrived at dusk of the night, noted an AFP team on site.
In power since January 2019, he is seeking a second term in the presidential election scheduled for December 20.
A city of more than a million inhabitants, wedged between the Rwandan border to the east and Lake Kivu to the south, Goma has for several days been once again surrounded to the north and west by the rebels of the M23 (Movement of March 23), supported by the Rwandan army.
The M23 rebellion, whose support from Rwanda was denounced by several Western countries including France and the United States, and which took up arms again at the end of 2021 and seized large swaths of territory, was at the heart of the speech in French lasting around fifteen minutes by Mr. Tshisekedi.
“We are going to rid our country of the M23 terrorists who are brought by their leader Paul Kagame,” the Rwandan president, declared Mr. Tshisekedi.
“Kagame, die!” was chanted by his supporters in Swahili and echoed on the microphone by the president’s supporters on stage.
“There is not much left on our path to definitively defeat our adversary!”, the Congolese president once again proclaimed in front of a cheering crowd.
However, fighting has been taking place for several days in the mountains overlooking the city. The rebels routed the Congolese army – supported by Burundian soldiers and foreign military “instructors” – and seized several localities and a strategic road.
Relative calm had settled in March, but heavy fighting, involving ground troops, artillery and fighter planes, has resumed in recent weeks around Goma and in the mountains further north.
During his last visit to Goma in June 2021, Mr. Tshisekedi met his counterpart Paul Kagame as relations between the two countries were warming up.
Friday, during a campaign meeting in Bukavu, capital of South Kivu, Mr. Tshisekedi compared Paul Kagame to “Adolf Hitler” and denounced “expansionist aims”.
Kigali quickly condemned these comments, calling them a “threat”.
Some presidential candidates among the 22 still in the running have in recent days expressed doubts about the holding of the election on the scheduled date, pointing to the delay in the deployment of electoral materials in this immense Central African country, almost completely devoid of passable roads.
10/12/2023 21:29:34 – Goma (DR Congo) (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
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