DRC: Did the Ebola response finance armed groups?
Beni, the provincial capital of North Kivu where new cases of Ebola have been discovered.
REUTERS / Samuel Mambo
Text by: RFI Follow
6 mins
In the DRC, did the agents of the Ebola response finance the Congolese armed forces and even armed groups to ensure their security?
In any case, this is what the last report of the Study Group on the Congo, a research center at New York University, reveals.
The facts relate to the 10th Ebola outbreak, between 2018 and 2020, in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo.
According to these researchers, by wanting to protect its staff and deal with the pandemic, the Ministry of Health and the World Health Organization have undoubtedly aggravated the conflict.
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With our special correspondent in Kinshasa
,
Sonia Rolley
The response to the 10th Ebola epidemic had aroused much resistance among the population of Beni and Butembo, unaccustomed to such a humanitarian deployment and such debauchery of money.
The epidemic was one of the reasons put forward for not holding the elections in this region of the country, which had linked, in people's minds, the response to the political crisis.
Until December 2018, there were also only a few attacks, notes the GEC.
But they multiply the following year.
According to this New York-based research center, the response had already begun to finance armed escorts, at the instigation of a senior official of the Ministry of Health, himself a candidate for Beni.
A MONUSCO base was attacked in mid-November 2018 and the use of escorts intensified, as did contacts with armed groups.
And from there, a vicious circle is born, point out the researchers of the Group of studies on the Congo.
The response would not only have paid the security forces and armed groups to ensure the safety of its staff, but also to enforce public health rules or even to trace contact persons.
Among the actors cited in this juicy business, there are members of armed groups, agents of the Ministry of Health, the national intelligence agency, the military, police and officials of the World Health Organization. .
It is even the latter who are the most pointed out in the GEC report.
Note that the WHO denies any participation and assures that it was the Ministry of Health that was responsible for the response and management of security issues.
At the Ministry of Health, they say they know nothing about these possible payments to armed groups, neither by the ministry, nor by the agents of the response.
To talk about this affair, Sonia Rolley receives Jason Stearns, the director of the Congo Study Group.
And the first question she asked him was, what evidence does the GEC have?
RD CONGO Q / A EVENING Q / A DOSSIER Jason STEARNS on the GEC report
🎙 # BriefingGEC
Today, the @GEC_CRG offers you the briefing of the report “Rebels, doctors and merchants of violence: how the fight against Ebola became part of the conflict in eastern DRC” #EbolaEnRDC
By @jasonkstearns
↪️ https://t.co/DwmfdYS8Sj
- Congo Study Group (@GEC_CRG) August 6, 2021
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