In the past few weeks more than 100 people have been killed by an Islamic extremist group in a series of attacks in the eastern region of Democratic Republic of Congo. A large number of those killed were Christians.
In late December through January, several separate attacks by the Allied Democratic Forces in various villages throughout DRC left more than 100 dead. One community leader reported that guns and machetes were used.
“These predominantly Christian communities are attacked by an Islamic extremist group with a clear Islamic expansionist agenda,” said Illia Djadi, an Open Doors spokesperson on freedom of religion or belief in sub-Sharan Africa.
Similar attacks are occurring throughout the central Sahel region.
“The ideology, the agenda of establishing a ‘caliphate’ in the region, and the way they operate is the same, and we can see how they [inflict] terrible suffering on innocent people,” Djadi said.
Violence continues to worsen
More than 95% of the population in DRC is Christian, but Islamic extremist violence has soared over the past year and continues to worsen. This is the main reason that DRC is at number 40 on the Open Doors World Watch List 2021, up from number 57 the previous year.
The ADF is a militant Islamic group with a clear mission of attacking, kidnapping and killing Christians, as well as training and sending jihadists to other countries in Africa. The group was formed in 1996, merging several existing rebel groups, and initially focused its destructive action on Uganda. More recently, it has expanded into DRC. In October 2019, the army in DRC started an offensive against the group – and, since then, the ADF has scaled up the number and intensity of its attacks.
A 2020 United Nations report agreed that the DRC situation is dire, suggesting that “widespread, systematic and extremely brutal” human rights abuses by the ADF “could constitute, by their nature and scope, crimes against humanity and war crimes.”
Djadi said, “We need to pay attention to these events because what is happening in eastern DRC, the killing of innocent civilians on an almost daily basis, is an underreported tragedy.
“We want to raise the alarm and we urgently call on the national government and the international community to do everything they can to protect innocent lives and to restore peace in this troubled region.”
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