Death of the Italian ambassador: the DRC further regulates the travel of diplomats
Monusco soldiers on patrol near the place where the attack took place, February 22, 2021. AFP - ALEXIS HUGUET
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In the DRC, the authorities are still in turmoil after the murder of Italian Ambassador Luca Attanasio, his bodyguard and a Congolese driver from the World Food Program (WFP) on Monday north of the city of Goma.
From now on, the supervision of diplomats will be stricter.
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With our correspondents in Kinshasa
,
Pascal Mulegwa and Patient Ligodi
President Félix Tshisekedi chaired a new high-level security meeting at the presidential palace on Tuesday.
It was decided that henceforth, no more ambassador or head of diplomatic mission will be allowed to leave the capital Kinshasa without having informed the head of Congolese diplomacy and the security services.
“
The diplomats, before leaving Kinshasa, must absolutely inform the Ministry of Foreign Affairs which itself will inform the other authorities, the other institutions of the Republic which are concerned by the movements of these diplomats.
And we are certainly going to ask them in particular to point out when they arrive somewhere with the authorities that manage the locality, the city or the province,
”explains Foreign Minister Marie Ntumba Nzenza.
The government still maintains that no service was aware of the Italian ambassador's travels.
An investigation must take place to establish the circumstances of the tragedy.
"
We lost it in circumstances that we are going to clarify because we are going to do everything to be able to understand what happened and we talked about the related problems which are military problems related to that
", adds the Minister.
Italy has also asked the UN to open an investigation and "
clear answers
" after
the death of its ambassador,
the head of Italian diplomacy said Wednesday.
"
We have formally requested the WFP and the UN to open an investigation to shed light on what happened, the reasons justifying the security system put in place and who is responsible for these decisions.
», Declared Luigi Di Maio in front of the deputies.
"A very strong increase in this type of incident for about a year"
This region of eastern DRC
is known for the presence of armed groups.
In 2020, 122 armed groups are rife in North Kivu, South Kivu, Ituri and Tanganyika, according to the Kivu security barometer, a project set up by Human Rights Watch (HRW) and the Study Group on the Congo (GEC) of New York University.
However, "
it is very rare that diplomats are targeted in eastern Congo,
" notes Pierre Boisselet, coordinator of the Kivu Security Barometer.
“
This being the case, if we take the mortgage that it was an attempted kidnapping, which now seems the most probable given the elements that we have.
It must be said that kidnappings are not rare in this territory of North Kivu
”, he adds.
According to the latest report, “We
have even seen a very sharp increase in this type of incident for about a year.
We identified 18 in the Kivu security barometer in 2020, compared with 3 in 2019 and 4 in 2018, so a clear increase
”.
But hardly any of these kidnappings “
targeted humanitarian convoys nor occurred on the precise section of the national road 2
”, adds the expert.
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