“I wasn’t home when the soldiers and police came to my house. I was terrified by how many of them came just to deliver this letter to my son… I can’t read, but the neighbors say we have 48 hours to leave our land. Where will we go with our children?”
— Marie, resident of Mégé, a village in Watsa territory.
This scene, worthy of a post-apocalyptic film, is not from a movie script—it is the brutal reality faced by the people of Mégé, in the Watsa territory of the Haut-Uélé province. On June 25, 2025, the unthinkable became reality: a final eviction notice signed by the territorial administrator ordered residents to vacate within 48 hours—no trial, no relocation, no compensation. A rapid, forced eviction carried out for the benefit of the powerful mining company KIBALI GOLD MINES, with the blatant complicity of local authorities.
Warnings have been growing on the ground for several weeks. Since May 28, Mégé residents have been reporting threats, intimidation, and harassment—yet no protective measures were taken. Today, it’s no longer a matter of threats, but of planned eradication. Hundreds of Congolese families are being ripped from their land, their history, and their roots. And all of this is happening with near-total silence from the Republic’s institutions.
The facts documented by civil society are damning: torture, arbitrary arrests, inhumane treatment, organized looting, abductions… A campaign of terror that leaves no doubt about the nature of the operation: this is not a routine administrative action—it is a form of community cleansing in the name of mining profits.
In response to this human catastrophe, an official letter has been sent to the Prosecutor General at the Court of Appeal of Haut-Uélé, denouncing an illegal, arbitrary decision that violates fundamental human rights. The allegations are serious: unlawful imposition of authority, ethnically discriminatory treatment, and the use of force in blatant violation of the Congolese Constitution and international humanitarian law.
Article 30 of the Constitution guarantees the right to residence. Article 16 protects physical integrity. Article 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights prohibits all forms of torture. These rights are now being trampled in Mégé. And so far, the Suminwa government remains silent.
This tragedy is not only a matter of law. It is about shattered lives, condemned villages, women and children doomed to wander without shelter or answers. Marie’s case is far from isolated: this is the daily reality for hundreds of residents who, in a matter of hours, have become stateless in their own country.
“This isn’t an eviction—it’s elimination,” says a local activist, speaking anonymously. And he’s right: the predatory extractive logic that dominates some mining zones turns Congolese people into intruders on their own land. What’s called “development” becomes a process of exclusion—a machine that destroys lives to enrich a few powerful, often foreign, economic interests.
Let’s be clear: KIBALI GOLD MINES is not acting alone. It is supported by political allies, local administrative networks, and complicity that enables—or even orders—these actions. The Congolese state, which should protect its citizens’ rights, has become the instrument of their dispossession.
Local defenders from this part of the DRC are making a clear and urgent appeal to the Suminwa government: it cannot remain a spectator to this violence. It must immediately suspend the eviction notice, launch an independent investigation into the abuses committed in Mégé, and protect the population against the mining interests that are crushing them.
The government must understand that protecting its people is more important than guaranteeing mining concessions at any cost. A state of law cannot be built on the ashes of erased villages. We cannot speak of progress when communities are dying in silence.There are 48 hours left.
48 hours to expel.
Or less than 48 hours to resist. It is not the people of Mégé who should leave. It is up to all of us to act so that they can stay. There is still time to prevent a catastrophe. But that time is slipping away, minute by minute, with every second of indifference.
By kilalopress
