CPTnet
15 December 2007
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO: Refugees in flight--excerpts from e-mails

by Jane MacKay Wright and Bob Holmes

[Note: The following e-mails were sent to Doug Pritchard at the Christian
Peacemaker Teams Toronto Office on 13 December 2007 by the CPT exploratory
delegation currently in the DRC.]

We are here in Goma, [Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)] and learned this
morning at a UN meeting of NGOs that the war is raging a matter of thirty
kms outside this city and ten kms from camps for internally displaced
persons (IDPs). We learned that the town of Saki fell to the militia forces
under Laurent Nkunda on Dec. 11 and that there is bloodshed and suffering in
another town called Minova. But all is quiet in Goma so far.

Today a Quaker pastor took us to four camps for internally displaced persons
outside Goma. The pastor and human rights workers in the camps told us that
there are 800,000, (eight hundred thousand!!) to a million people fleeing
the current fighting. The series of camps we visited were really
eye-opening, and people were streaming along the roads with babies,
toddlers, children, belongings, and goats tied with rope, heading for safety
in the camps. In one camp there were hundreds lined up to register, and
rain was beginning.

The Quakers are running Alternative to Violence programs in each of the
camps we visited. We also saw [DRC] government troops all along the roads,
presumably retreating to Goma after the lost battles.