In June 2025, KilaloPress traveled to Basankusu to investigate the management of freshwater resources in this vast territory of Équateur Province. What was meant to be a technical inquiry into water access turned into a brutal descent into a largely ignored human tragedy. On the ground, our team uncovered a chilling story—well known to many health actors, both national and international, who are involved yet unwilling to confront the situation publicly. A silent crime. Justice, absent.
In the Bomate grouping—specifically the villages of Lokombo and Ekalankoy, in the heart of Équateur—communities showed us an old, yellowed notebook, trembling in the calloused hands of the village chief. Inside, names, dates, and ages: a handmade death registry. In just two months, between February and March 2025, over 450 deaths were recorded, one by one. Most of the victims were aged between 5 and 45. To date, no official body has come forward to confirm or deny these numbers. None.
Many of the survivors we met did not return to Bomate by choice. Famine, discrimination in host villages, accusations of contamination, the stigmatization of children at school, and daily trauma forced them back to a village that is no longer safe. Upon returning, they found no shelter, no roof. Bandits had looted the empty huts during their absence. The remaining homes are now tombs of memory.
To this day, residents say they have never been informed of the results from water samples taken by the National Institute of Biomedical Research (INRB)—results that reportedly may have been tampered with. A young man was arrested, accused of using witchcraft to cause the crisis by pouring substances into water sources and latrines for unknown reasons. He was transferred to Mbandaka. After being released due to lack of evidence, he disappeared, and no one knows what became of him. At the Mbandaka provincial prosecutor’s office, small plastic bags containing dust that once belonged to the accused are the only trace left of the case—silent witnesses to a justice system abandoned by the state.
A hastily built water fountain and a well constructed by CCP Lisafa in the neighboring village of Lokombo—several kilometers from Ekalankoy—were presented as a solution, to steer the population away from their now-suspect natural water sources.
But to this day, no humanitarian or medical aid has been provided directly to these villages. From the government, it’s radio silence. Locals simply say: “We no longer know what to do.”
Isolated in the equatorial forest, just a few hours by canoe from Basankusu, Bomate is enduring one of the darkest human tragedies of recent years. In just two months, over 450 residents were struck down by a still unidentified, lightning-fast illness. Fever, headaches, muscle pain, exhaustion… followed—in nearly half the cases—by sudden death within 48 hours. Despite the staggering toll, Bomate has yet to receive any official assistance.
Water is at the heart of the tragedy. Once crystal-clear, the local water sources have become cloudy, at times oily. Residents point to a large oil palm plantation: the Compagnie de Commerce et de Plantations (CCP Lisafa), a subsidiary of the Blattner Elwyn Group (GBE), led by the powerful businessman Elwyn Blattner. Surface water wells located downstream from the plantations have gone undrained since January. A report by ACODD mentions the clandestine use of herbicides and industrial fertilizers, while the World Health Organization (WHO) has sounded the alarm, citing an “unknown disease” potentially caused by a toxic agent. In Bomate alone, the WHO recorded 419 cases and 45 deaths in under a week—a mortality rate so high that local health structures have been overwhelmed.
The local chief of Ekalankoy, visibly crushed, told KilaloPress of his despair: motorcycle taxis no longer stop in Bomate, village students are rejected from exams, women are turned away at markets, and mistrust reigns. Fear has turned into isolation. Rumors accuse, and silence condemns.
Meanwhile, the Blattner Elwyn Group’s social projects are widely publicized in other villages near Lisafa. But in Bomate, this momentum seems to have stopped at the riverbank. The factory continues to operate. Shipments of oil leave every week. Profits keep flowing… while Bomate buries its dead. The numbers are there. The names are there. The families are there. But aid—never comes. Bomate’s tragedy is an open wound in the Congolese conscience. A buried pain. A total abandonment.
By Franck Zongwe Lukama