Rebel defector says anti-Rwanda feeling running high

A senior official of the RCD-Goma, Roger Lumbala Tshitenge, has defected from the movement and accused its Rwandan backers of sidelining Congolese people from political, economic and military affairs in their own country. Lumbala, a former ‘Minister for Mobilisation and Propaganda’ in the RCD, told the press in Kampala, to which he had fled, that the majority of Congolese were now willing to wage war to remove Rwanda from eastern DRC, the independent Ugandan ‘Monitor’ newspaper reported on Monday. “We now realise that Rwanda has a different political agenda in the Congo, which does not take into account the well-being of the Congolese people ... Terror reigns in the Rwanda-controlled territory,” the paper quoted Lumbala as saying. The RCD-Mouvement de liberation (RCD-ML) rebel faction had come about as a protest against Rwanda’s excesses in eastern DRC, Lumbala said, adding that Rwandan troops had massacred civilians in Kasika, Makobola, Kamituga and Uvira.