ICC Note:

According to Crux, religious persecution in the primarily Catholic demographic country of Democratic Republic of Congo is on the values and humanitarian stances the beliefs inspire rather the beliefs themselves. UN Peace-Keeping forces evacuated twenty-five Catholic seminarians from a seminary in Malole in Kananga; the evacuation followed an armed assault on their seminary in late February. Furthermore, seven convents closed after the killing of seven sisters. A Franciscan sister was stabbed to death in December. Cardinal Laurent Monsengwo Pasinya believes the Catholic Church is “being targeted deliberately, in order to sabotage her mission of peace and reconciliation.”

03/15/2017 African Republic (Crux) – Anti-Christian persecution can be a straightforward result of explicitly religious motives, such as Islamic State militants who beheaded 21 Coptic Christians from Egypt in Libya in February 2015, or assassins professing loyalty to ISIS who slit the throat of French Father Jacques Hamel in July 2016.

At times, however, Christians fall prey to complex political, military and cultural movements that may have little to do specifically with religion. New developments in the Democratic Republic of Congo offer a good illustration of the point.

This week, a group of 25 Catholic seminarians was evacuated by helicopter by UN peace-keeping forces from a seminary in Malole in Kananga, located in the Kasai-Central province of the country in the south, near the border with Angola. The evacuation followed an armed assault on their seminary in late February.

That assault was led by troops loyal to the late Kamwina Nsapu, a tribal leader who was killed by the Congolese military in August 2016. The evacuated seminarians were taken to Mbuji-Mayi, a city of at least 1.5 million which serves as the capital of the nearby Kasai-Oriental province.

The seminarians had been blocked from taking a road that leads to Mbuji-Mayi because it was under the control of Nsapu forces, and thus had to be rescued by air.

Since the most recent uprising broke out, hundreds have been killed and thousands displaced in central Congo in recent months in fighting between forces associated with Nsapu and the national security forces.

Nsapu had vowed to rid the Ksaia-Central region of corruption, and his followers suspect a conspiracy to destroy his base of support by elites wishing to extend their grip on power. Observers say the situation appears to be becoming more unstable, with intensified violence a strong possibility.

Catholic leaders have been among the most outspoken elements of civil society denouncing the expansion of violence. For instance, in a mid-February statement Bishop Félicien Mwanama Galumbulula of Luiza complained of “exceptional violence and unimaginable atrocities against the population” committed by Kamwina Nsapu militias.

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