by Karen Faulkner, Worthy News Correspondent
(Worthy News) - Soldiers in the Democratic Republic of Congo killed 48 civilians when they opened fire on a peaceful anti-United Nations protest being held at a church in Goma, North Kivu province on Wednesday, the Christian Post (CP) reports.
The victims of Wednesday’s shooting were part of an organization called Wazalendo (Patriots), and had assembled at the church to protest the presence of the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO), CP reports.
MONUSCO is a UN peacekeeping mission that was established by the UN Security Council in 2010 with the aim of bringing stability to the war-torn, unstable DRC. However, critics have accused MONUSCO of failing to protect civilians and maintain peace in the region, CP reports. Ten people, including four UN peacekeepers, were killed in anti-UN protests in eastern Congo last year.
Accusing the DRC military of the church massacre, Lucas Pecos, director of Collective of Youth Solidarity Organizations in Congo-Kinshasa DRC (COJESKI-RDC) said in a statement that 13 of Wednesday’s shooting victims died at the scene, while the others died at or on the way to hospital. A further 75 people were injured during the massacre. “[The victims] were not found in the act of attacking MONUSCO, so there was no need to kill them,” Pecos added.
While local officials attributed the killings to the Cooperative for the Development of the Congo (CODECO) rebel militia group, COJESKI-RDC has called on the DRC army and government for accountability, CP reports.