 For more videos and people's struggles, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. Whenever you are in occupying force in another country, because they want to occupy the DRC, and you have the military power, especially when you are backed by the United States, and you still do not address the issue of this militia group, we know in the DRC that this is just a pretext to have military presence in the DRC that's continuous. The ADF for us is our weapons of mass destruction. Never been found, we do not know what they do, yet it's always a pretext for military presence. On March 10th, the United States blacklisted two extremist groups, one in Mozambique and the other in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The US has declared these groups to be foreign terrorist organizations over accusations of having links to the Islamic State or ISIS. In the DRC, the Allied Democratic Forces or ADF for short has been blacklisted, and its leader, Sikamusa Baluku, has been named as a specially designated global terrorist. Actions such as these by the US are seen as being a part of the war on terror. The US, however, has a long history of military intervention in the DRC and across the globe. Press releases and news reports are provided only minimum information in this instance of intervention in the DRC. It's combating terrorism, the only goal. What else is there to the picture? The month of March had quite a few announcements. The US military making the move to have US military presence in the DRC through the State Department declaring that there is a link to ISIS in the DRC. We have an announcement with a new prime minister who's supposed to have his new cabinet release this week. So on the political field, that's what the Congolese are actually looking at at the moment. We all are waiting to see what will happen, but as we know, there won't be much change around that new announcement given the new liberal path that the new president has taken. Back to the ADF question. When you look at the DRC, usually when you're reading news, people get very confused with what is really happening in DRC because they throw these acronyms at that. They will say ADF, they'll say CNDP, they will say M23. So we have become a home of acronyms. And whenever you read the news, there you see a new acronym and you see another acronym. It leaves you with this impression that this is just lawlessness. There is no hope. I don't even have the time to try to understand what is happening in DRC. But to me, it's very simple. The war in the DRC started in 1996. It's a war waged by US allies, Rwanda and Uganda. We invaded the Congo twice in 96 and 98 and continue to support proxy rebel militias. Now to specifically speak about the ADF, the ally democratic forces, those are Ugandan rebels who have been in the DRC since the late 90s. They have some political claim. They believe that the rule of Uganda is not what the Ugandan people believe or fought for. They are somehow connected to a religious group. They say that they are Muslim fighters and so on. And then since the late 90s, even with the invasions of Rwanda and Uganda in the DRC, they have never been stopped. There is another rebel group similarly to that too, the FDLR rebel group. They are connected to the Hutu extremists who participate in the Rwanda genocide. The reason why I'm mentioning that Rwanda and Uganda invaded and still did not stop there is whenever you are in occupying force in another country, because Rwanda and Uganda occupy the DRC, and you have the military power, especially when you are backed by the United States, and you still do not address the issue of this militia group. We know in the DRC that this is just a pretext to have military presence in the DRC that's continuous. The ADF for us is our weapons of mass destruction. Never been found. We do not know what they do. Yet it's always a pretext for military presence. And there have been numerous times where Uganda had military operations in the DRC. They had military operations where they didn't go after the militia groups. The New York Times reported that Ugandan soldiers who were in the Garamba Park in DRC were not going after the ADF rebels. They were going after elephants to get the elephant tusk using helicopters and military logistics provided by the United States. So the New York Times already published that. We had the so-called Coney 2012 when they went after the Lord Resistance Army, which is another pretext of having U.S. military power. One time you had a U.S. youth actually clapping for U.S. imperialism and militarism in Africa to go after another rebel group that never been stopped as well. So for all this time they haven't been stopped. But something very gruesome has been ongoing for at least over the past five years. In the area called North Kivu, in two towns, one is called Beni and the other is Butembo in that area, people in these towns have been killed in a very gruesome way. Cut into pieces, burned to death, beat from babies to adults. People have shared information around this with the proper authorities and so on and they are not being stopped. Each week you hear 10 people dead, 15 people dead, 20 people dead. But in all these attacks when you read the press they always say the ADF committed these crimes. Which is fascinating to me because I'm wondering what type of investigation within 10 minutes, 20 minutes, or 24 hours of the killing, a journalist based in Kenya or Senegal writing an article for different associate press putting on these news wires, which type of investigation have they done to know that those who committed the killing are ADF. But we have information from the United Nations themselves. The United Nations Security Council mandated a group of experts since the early 2000s to provide reports on the situation in the Congo. They provide two yearly reports in June and in December. And the UN group of experts have documented the so-called ADF crimes. In their documentation, they have say things such as the ADF rebel groups in some areas speak Kinyawanda. Kinyawanda is a language spoken mainly in random. So these Muslim terrorists somehow speak a language that comes from Rwanda where Islam is a minority. And it's been documented. You have these ADF rebels who do that. But beyond what's even in this UN group of experts report, even the people that we speak with on the ground for disclosure, my family is from there. I've actually lost family members in their area. Whenever we speak to our contacts in these villages, they clearly tell us the attacks are known when they come. Because the Santa Mesa say we are coming. It's usually close to you Congolese army bases and UN forces who are in the DRC. When the killings take place, there is no military action from these armies. And after the killing, that's when you start seeing officials coming to try to find out what has unfolded. So people in the area are so angry at the UN. There was even a period a few years ago where the people of Benny and Butembo took stones and were throwing it at the UN peacekeeping forces. Because they were saying, why are you here with the largest peacekeeping missions that used to can protect the population where your mandate is to protect the population? So the people in the area are very clear that these forces were killing them constantly are not necessarily the ADF. But it's a right type of rebel groups who for whatever political reasons are not being stopped for over decades are decimating the population. Some may argue because of the wealth that exists in these villages, the land, and the mineral resources. There are evidence that the oil in Lake Albert, which is at the border of Conway, Uganda, extends all the way through Benny going into the Virunga Park. This whole question about do you exploit oil into the UNESCO historical park where the people say you shouldn't be exploiting oil because it's going to destroy the habitats, it's going to destroy the environment. So this is continuous. When we're looking at the situation Benny and Butembo is clear that the attacks to me at least and the people on the ground is that the attacks are happening because of the land, the resources on the land. It's a huge arable land. It has oil from, there's been some studies that have shown that the oil Congo has over 2 billion barrels of oil in one of its lake. The lake is called Lake Albert at the border of Uganda, Randa. There is at least an estimated 2.5 billion barrels of oil and this oil extends from the border all the way to these towns and then going all the way through the park, the Virunga Park, which is a UNESCO protected site. And there's this question around should we exploit oil or not and the people have resisted, we must protect the environment rather than exploiting oil. During a period at least say half a decade in that area massacre has taken place with no accountability to who is committing the crime and actually stopping them. When we know there is a strong military presence in the area to stop them, one being the UN peacekeeping forces of about 22,000 strong UN peacekeepers. You have the Komoli's army and you have had invading occupying forces in the east of Randa and Uganda. All of them have not been able to stop these these ADFs. The second one that now implicates the U.S. much more, U.S. State Department put out a statement saying that there is a link between the DRC and ISIS. It's quite problematic. It's quite problematic because this has been dispelled by Komoli's themselves and other international investigators. The UN group of experts in their reports have written numerous times that there is no such link between the ADF and the DRC with ISIS. This started a few years ago. It was coming usually from Museveni of Uganda, the President of Uganda, where they will have press conferences in Kampala. They'll share with U.S. officials that the ADF has linked to Al Qaeda. The ADF has linked to Al Qaeda. As they did this comment, it was many to get U.S. military support. When they receive the U.S. military support, they usually use it against their own civilians. Look at what unfolded in the past elections. The brutality that took place during the past Uganda elections where Ugandan themselves were brutalized by the military and by the states. As the statement continued to happen, he had to take the UN group of experts to investigate. They've said already numerous times there is no such links. There is a former UN group of experts. His name is Dan Fahy. He wrote an article called Mr. X. This article is very important because it describes his experience as a UN group of experts. In this article, he explained how this person was able to fool officials that he was an ADF soldier and tried to link himself with terrorist groups. He showed how the story was not true, very clearly detailing the article. When you have a former UN group of experts who is providing evidence that, one, these ADF rebel groups do not have a proper narrative, when the current UN group of experts are publishing at least two reports that I've seen, clearly stating that there is no link between the ADF and ISIS, why would the State Department in the United States put out a statement saying that they have a connection? Does the United States have better intel than the UN group of experts and Congolese themselves on the ground? I will argue absolutely not. If they do have this type of level of detail and information, Congolese will question that. Which means that you've known this connection for a while and failed to engage. Why now? We know why now. We are very clear that the United States is trying to implement its military presence in the DRC to counter China. The reason why they are implementing the base is nothing new. They have been wanting to build their base, their camp base in Kisangani as a prime location, which is in the northeastern part of the DRC that allows for any military operation in the area to be able to move from north, south, east, and west of Africa very fast because you are really right at the center of the African continent. There are reasons to believe because of the area where they are, there is huge resources. We are clear that Africa is not on the African continent for humanitarian reasons. We know on March 19th the United States is doing a military operation in Accra, Ghana. My comment with this increased militarization of Africa, particularly the Congo, is can the Congolese also open a U.S. military base in any U.S. cities, do military operations, protect Americans from terrorist groups, and so on? If we don't have this type of bilateral understanding, there is no rationale of having U.S. military. You can't have an arsonist coming as a firefighter to try to put down the fire now as we are very clear of why the war is. But the U.S. is moving along with that plan and why they are moving along with that plan. Right now the President of the DRC is very close to the United States. He is being supported by the United States. He makes it very easy for the United States to be able to achieve his objectives, be it economic or military in the DRC. But for the Congolese, we won't stop shouting and expressing truth of what is unfolding to us. Just this March or March 15th, I mean, imagine last month, actually in February, the Italian ambassador was killed. Still don't see the U.S. investigation to determine who killed the Italian ambassador, but they can find out that ISIS is in the DRC. But after the death of the Italian ambassador, Congolese are still being killed. Just this past March 15th, this Sunday, Congolese were massacred in the same area. Of course, the press stated again that this is ADF. The institutions also that I've said that the ADF community describes. I think the youngest person to be killed in this massacre was two-year-old. Dozens of people were massacred and it's not stopping. And we know this terrorism is not necessarily linked to ISIS. It's to break the spirits of resistance of the Congolese in this area who have said, we are not going to stop fighting for our land and it's happening in total impunity. But the way forward for the DRC is for, as Congolese are fighting, looking at the challenges of the Congo. As you say, Congo's challenges are both internal and external. We knew and we still know today that Congolese will continue to fight for their own liberation. But the challenges that they face is that the external forces have military power that makes it hard for them to address the local challenges. So for the external forces, let's use Krumas' call of putting pressure on negative forces outside of the DRC that's destabilizing the DRC. So for all good people of the world, be it on the African continent or anywhere else, while Congolese people are fighting on the inside, we hope you'll be fighting on the ISA, exposing these lies that the ADF is connected to ISIS, exposing the increased militarization of the Congo and Africa and uniting with the Congolese as the fight to liberate the country in 2021. And very soon, we won't see these lies continuing because people will be clear. What are these acronyms? These so-called praxis supported by Western nations, supported by Congo's neighbors to have a pretext for war. What are Congolese fighting for? We are fighting for liberation and control of our land and resources. And what is our final objective? We want humanity to live in justice, peace, and dignity.