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Did you read the headline news about a family of three dying from Russian attack in Ukraine?
But barely reported in the mainstream media is the deadly protests that broke out in Congo which killed 15 people, including three law enforcement officials working with the UN.
The violence broke out in the mineral-rich eastern region of the country. These protesters raided UN bases in Goma, Butembo, and Uvira, demanding that the agency ends its peacekeeping mission that was established in 1999. The Conversation reported that there are more than 16,000 uniformed personnel in the country.
The website said the violence is not only an “expression of the local population’s frustrations about the past and the present, but also the uncertainty of their future.” There is a feeling among some in the country that the peacekeepers in the UN’s Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo are not doing enough to stop killings by the region’s 120 groups of armed rebels. They also call the peacekeepers corrupt.
Hundreds have died over the past few years at the hands of these groups and more than 160,000 have been forced to flee in 2022 alone, according to The New York Times.
The Trends Journal has reported on a recent flare-up between Congo and Rwanda that has the possibility of developing into an all-out war. (See “WHAT UKRAINE WON’T DO” RWANDA AND CONGO CALL FOR CEASEFIRE” and “U.S. CONDEMNS CONGO KILLING OF INNOCENTS.”)
António Guterres, the UN’s secretary-general, said in a statement that he was “outraged” over an incident on Sunday morning at a border checkpoint that involved peacekeepers opening fire “for unexplained reasons.”
Video emerged of the incident that showed people approaching what appeared to be a UN convoy. Gunshots rang out and the people fled. It was not clear how many died in the latest incident.
Guterres also offered his deepest condolences to the affected families, the nation’s people, and the Congolese Government and wished the injured a speedy recovery, the statement read. He promised that there will be “accountability for these events.” Some were already arrested.
3 International Police Officers Killed in Clashes
Two Indian and one Egyptian police officer working for the UN in the country were killed on Tuesday after Congolese protesters managed to take guns from local police and fired on the officers, reports said.
Farhan Haq, a UN spokesman, said these clashes were “fueled by hostile remarks and threats made by individuals and groups against the U.N., particularly on social media.”
The protests have been taking place while fighting has been increasing between troops in Congo and the M23 rebels.
Congo has accused Rwanda of backing these fighters, a claim Kigali denied.
The U.S. State Department announced that its head Antony Blinken will travel to Congo and Rwanda later this month to try and ease tensions. The department said Blinken “will focus on the role the government of Rwanda can play in reducing tensions and ongoing violence in eastern DRC.”
TRENDPOST: Gerald Celente has long asked, “Would the U.S. have invaded Iraq if the country’s chief export was broccoli?
Congo announced last month that it intends to auction rainforest land for oil investments. Its decision was criticized by Western countries who point to the environmental impact of the move. But Congo said the goal is to reduce poverty in the country and generate economic growth, The New York Times reported.
“That’s our priority,” Tosi Mpanu Mpanu, the nation’s lead representative on climate issues, told the paper. “Our priority is not to save the planet.”
TRENDPOST: On 17 January, 1961, the same day U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower gave his farewell address warning the American people that the military industrial complex was in control of the country and robbing it of the genius of the scientists, the sweat of the laborers and the future of the children.
Patrice Lumumba, Congo’s first elected president, was executed in a plot that was allegedly designed by the CIA and its Belgian cohorts.
Lumumba was seized, tortured, and executed in a coup supported by the Belgian gang, the CIA, Jacobin magazine reported. He was replaced by the US-backed dictator Mobutu Sese Seko who the magazine said “laid the foundation for the decades of internal strife, dictatorship, and economic decline that have marked postcolonial Congo.”
The killing occurred while the Cold War was playing out, and the U.S. and its allies could not imagine a world where the raw materials found in the country could somehow end up in the hands of the Soviets.
The Guardian, in a 2011 article, reported that Lumumba’s hope was to use the raw materials to improve the living conditions of its people.
“In Congo, Lumumba’s assassination is rightly viewed as the country’s original sin. Coming less than seven months after independence, it was a stumbling block to the ideals of national unity, economic independence, and pan-African solidarity that Lumumba had championed.”