AFRICA/CONGO DR - "The UN report is fine, but we have to take steps in stopping illegal trafficking that finances the war," two missionaries with long experience in the Congo tell Fides

Kinshasa (Agenzia Fides) - "We urge the international community to create a system of tracing illegally extracted minerals from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is good that the UN has issued a report denouncing the mining trafficking that fuels the war in the country,” Fr. Silvio Turazza, Xaverian missionary with a long experience in the east of Congo, tells Fides. Several international publications (including the New York Times) have given ample press time to a recent United Nations report (the text is not yet published) that highlights a vast network of complicity, domestic and international, that fuels the war in North and South Kivu, so as to exploit the mineral resources with impunity.
The UN document reveals in particular the network that allows the FDLR (Democratic Liberation Forces of Rwanda, the guerrilla group formed by Hutu opponents of the government in Kigali, who are hiding in the forests of Kivu) to finance themselves using illegal exports of gold, tin, and coltan. “Surely the FDLR is being financed by the smuggling of minerals, which are however exported through Rwanda" says Fr. Loris Cattani, Xaverian missionary who publishes a newsletter on the situation in eastern Congo. "There is ultimately an ambiguity as officially speaking, the FDLR and the government in Kigali are fighting one another, but then they collaborate in the export of Congolese minerals. As I have not yet read the UN report, I do not know if this is addressed in that document.”
Fr. Cattani continues: "I wonder then, if there is some resistance to publication of the UN report, as it would contain the names of the Western Hemisphere companies involved in illegal trafficking of Congolese minerals. It seems that the international community is living in total inconsistency: on the one hand it condemns the FDLR, and on the other, it cooperates with them under the table in the illegal exploitation of Congolese wealth."
'The problem of the hutu Rwandan refugees in Congo and the FDLR, which consist largely of Rwandan Hutus who were 10 years old in 1994, and therefore can not be accused of taking part in the genocide, must be resolved through dialogue. Military action is not only immoral, but it also fails,” the two missionaries agreed. "If you can not integrate them into Rwandan society, they can be integrated into Congo, with the participation of village leaders."
In the United States and Europe, there are proposals to create a system of tracing Congolese minerals (see Fides 30/4/2009 and 7/11/2009). These initiatives are being carried out by the "Africa-Europe Faith and Justice Network (Aefjn), an organization which consists of some fifty Catholic institutions, religious and missionary, found in Africa and Europe. "The representative of the Network in the United States intends to keep the Obama Administration informed on the actual situation of Congo, to seek a peaceful solution to the war," the missionaries conclude. (L.M.) (Agenzia Fides 25/11/2009)