Kinshasa government is extremely shocked by how the European Union has dished out a massive €20million financial support to Rwandan troops in Cabo Delgado, Mozambique.
“Deeply surprised,” the Congolese Association for Access to Justice (ACAJ) said in a statement issued on Saturday.
ACAJ said it believes that “the time frame chosen for this allocation raises questions about the EU’s true intentions in relation to the unjustified aggression of which the DRC is the victim”.
Headed by Georges Kapiamba, ACAJ claims that “this active support for the RDF contrasts with the embargo and the sanctions decreed by the EU against Russia for aggression against Ukraine”.
In 2021, Rwanda airlifted a 1,000-person contingent of the Rwanda Defence Force (RDF) and the Rwanda National Police (RNP) to troubled Cabo Delgado Province.
The Rwandan contingent was deployed to support efforts to restore Mozambican state authority by conducting combat and security operations, as well as stabilisation and security-sector reform (SSR).
Rwanda’s contingent of 1,000 soldiers is the biggest foreign force in resource-rich Cabo Delgado, which is the site of a $20 billion (€17 billion) liquefied natural gas project operated by French energy giant Total. But the area has also seen numerous attacks carried out by Islamist jihadis. The violence has uprooted more than 800,000 people.
