DR Congo President Under Attack Over Regional Security Force

Three prominent Congolese figures, including Nobel winner Denis Mukwege, on Monday accused President Felix Tshisekedi of pushing the country towards breakup by bringing in outside nations to tackle its security crisis.

In a sign of mounting pressures on Tshisekedi over DR Congo’s deeply troubled east, the trio said sub-Saharan Africa’s largest country faced “fragmentation” and “Balkanisation.”

This is “the result of a blatant lack of leadership and governance by an irresponsible and repressive regime,” they said in a communique.

In addition to Mukwege, a gynaecologist who co-won the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize for his work in helping women victims of sexual violence, the statement was signed by politician Martin Fayulu, whom Tshisekedi defeated in controversial elections in 2018, and former prime minister Augustin Matata Ponyo.

Scores of armed groups roam eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, many of them a legacy of two regional wars that raged at the end of the last century