A few weeks away from the presidential elections, the electoral campaign promises have already started taking its toll on Virunga National Park. Since the beginning of the launch of the campaign, environmental activists have been warning political actors to avoid campaign messages that may incite people to the destruction of Virunga National Park (1). Unfortunately, this message was not heard and only five days after the official launch of the campaign the first victim fell: Virunga ranger Kasereka Masumbuko Ezechiel was killed in action after an attack by armed militia at a ranger post on Lake Edward.

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VITSHUMBI, LAKE EDWARD, DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO, MARCH 2012: Scenes from Vitshumbi fishing village on Lake Edward, Virunga National Park, DRC, March 8 2012. There are over 800 registered legal fisherman on Lake Edward, they supply the main food source to over 40 000 people who live around the edges of the lake, the lake is also an important tributary for the Nile. Socco Oil, a UK based oil company, are attempting to prospect for oil in Lake Edward, located in Virunga National Park. This is illegal under Congolese Law and in 2011 the then Minister of the Environment declared that there would be no oil exploration in Virunga, a world heritage site and Africa’s first National Park, the second ever after Yellowstone in the USA. Since then that Minister has lost his seat and Socco has worked hard to obtain partners under suspicious circumstances which will allow them to begin oil exploration in Lake Edward in Virunga National Park. The fisherman of Lake Edward and the vast majority of people living around the Lake are firmly opposed to this, believing that there will be catastrophic damage to the environment from which they make their living and feed the local population. Socco and their local political allies have tried to sell them on the idea that there will be job creation, roads, schools and hospitals but the locals believe that the only people who will benefit will be certain politicians and not their local villages. Socco previously prospected in Selous National Park in Tanzania and created environmental damage there, locals fear the same now for Lake Edward. (Photo by Brent Stirton/Reportage for GEO magazine.)

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On Wednesday November 28, three people were killed, an ICCN eco-guard and two civilians, and another wounded in a confrontation between protesters and elements of the ICCN and FARDC Joint Eco-Guard Force in the Vitshumbi enclave on Lake Edward, in Rutshuru territory (North Kivu), according to local civil society sources.

Protesters, some of them in school uniforms, demanded from ICCN local officials the unconditional entry of building materials into the Vitshumbi fishing enclave, which until then has been strictly regulated by the official authority of Virunga national Par.

But some of these protesters were reportedly armed, which turned the protest into an armed confrontation, local sources said. According to some administrative sources and local civil society, the armed demonstrators were Mai-Mai militias, disguised as students.

These sources mention the fact that in the shooting, an eco-guard of the ICCN was killed, while in the replica, the joint force caused the death of two local civilians.

This incident comes eleven days after the passage in this enclave, the governor of North Kivu, Julien Paluku. In a popular meeting on 17 November, the latter verbally raised ICCN regulations on the entry of building materials into Vitshumbi.

The protesters demanded the ICCN to allow the local population “to implement this measure of the governor”. Some environmental civil society members in Goma fear political manipulation in this incident. They demand that the solution be found quickly to reconcile the population of Vitshumbi and the ICCN and avoid a new incident of this kind in the future.

Source: RadioOkapi