Brisbane Catholic Simon Chibalonza fears for his family and the lives of millions of innocent people after M23 rebels launched a new offensive in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Source: The Catholic Leader.
Mr Chibalonza said two family members were killed in the fighting and rebels had destroyed his family house.
“This is a bloodbath,” he said. “We are being erased from what belongs to us.”
He is calling upon Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Opposition Leader Peter Dutton to speak up about the bloodshed.
He has also written to the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court demanding action on what he says amounts to genocide.
Mr Chibalonza is the chair of Brisbane’s Congolese Catholic Community and music director for the Mater Dei Choir, which ministers in three parishes on Brisbane’s south side.
He is in touch with people living in DRC and say the situation they are describing is chaotic.
He said Congolese felt abandoned by the international community.
The wars in Ukraine and the Middle East attracted enormous media attention, he said, but few people had heard about the conflict raging in the eastern DRC.
He said many Congolese also felt abandoned by God.
“For nearly three decades, we are alone in this – we are fighting but we are not winning any battle and nobody is siding with us and so sometimes I say, ‘God, where are you? Where are you? Have you abandoned us?’,” he said.
But then, he said, he sometimes feels that perhaps without God there would be no DRC left at all.
Mr Chibalonza said it was the deadliest conflict since the World War II, with an estimated 11 million people killed and millions more displaced.
The decades-old conflict sparked again in January when M23 rebels, backed by Rwanda, launched a new invasion to take over Goma, the largest city in the eastern DRC.
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International community has turned its back on bloodbath in Congo, Brisbane Catholic Simon Chibalonza says (By Joe Higgins, The Catholic Leader)
