The Congolese government announced on Saturday the opening of investigations and the implementation of measures to ensure the security of the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Dr Denis Mukwege, targeted by death threats in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) .
The famous Congolese gynecologist, rewarded for the care he provides to women victims of rape in eastern DRC, and his relatives have been the subject of “intimidation, hate correspondence and death threats”, we can say read in the minutes of the Council of Ministers.
Denounce “mass atrocities”
According to the document, the threats came after Dr Mukwege – dubbed “the man who mends women” – called for the creation of an International Criminal Tribunal for the DRC to try the serious crimes committed against civilians in the DRC. Eastern part of the country for over 20 years.
“The President of the Republic has urged the government (…) to take all necessary measures to ensure the safety of Dr Mukwege” – without further details – and requested “the opening of investigations“on these threats, according to the report.
On July 17, on the site of his foundation, Dr Mukwege called for the creation of a special tribunal for the DRC, denouncing the “mass atrocities (…) committed in a climate of generalized impunity” since the beginning of the 1990s in the country, the scene of regional and internal conflicts.
Threats and intimidation
This violence has “caused millions of deaths and displaced people, as well as hundreds of thousands of cases of rape”, he recalled. On July 31, he denounced in a press release threats and intimidation targeting him and his relatives, received from a tweet a few days earlier in which he denounced a new massacre of civilians in the province of South Kivu (East).
“These are the same people who continue to kill in the DRC”, he tweeted, after the death of 18 civilians in Kipupu, a locality in a landlocked region of South Kivu where violence has been opposing Rwandophone Tutsi Congolese, Banyamulenge, and other local communities such as the Babembe for a year. Eastern DRC was the epicenter of two regional wars between 1996 and 2003.
He escaped a terrorist attack in 2012
Since then, it has been the scene of violence and atrocities committed by numerous armed groups and militias, Congolese and foreign, for ethnic or land reasons or for the control of mineral resources, of which civilians are the main victims. Dr Mukwege escaped an attack in October 2012 that targeted his home. His guard had been killed by attackers.
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