Islamist militias frustrate African church efforts to battle Ebola

  |  Source: Religion News Service

Doctors and health workers march in the eastern Congo town of Butembo after attackers shot and killed an epidemiologist from Cameroon who was working for the World Health Organization. Doctors at the epicenter of Congo's Ebola crisis are threatening to go on strike indefinitely if health workers are attacked again. (AP Photo via RNS/Al-hadji Kudra Maliro)

image_pdfimage_print

NAIROBI, Kenya (RNS)—In Congo, church leaders are stepping up their fight to halt the advance of the 40-month-old Ebola epidemic, even as the Islamic State group increasingly makes its presence felt in the troubled region.

Since August, when Ebola broke out in earnest in the eastern part of the predominantly Christian country, churches and other faith-based organizations have been helping health officials get the word out on prevention methods. They have produced songs on hygiene and hand-washing for local broadcasts, hosted talks and offered pastoral support for those affected. Most churches have imposed bans on exchanging hand greetings during services.

Churches seek to keep Ebola at bay

In Congo, the local church often is the most trusted institution and is a crucial ally in a health crisis in which superstition and rumors are often the enemy.

“We are speaking strongly about it. We are telling our members not to accept any lies and misinformation since disease threatens everyone,” Josue’ Bulambo Lembe-Lembe of the Church of Christ in Congo said in a telephone interview.

Complicating the effort to keep Ebola at bay is an array of militant groups and, more recently, the alleged arrival of the Islamic State group, also known as ISIS.

Forced out of its bases in Iraq and Syria, ISIS has moved agressively into Africa and recently described Congo as its Central Africa province of the caliphate. The group claimed responsibility for the killing of six soldiers on April 19 in an attack in Kamango, on the Congo-Uganda border.

“We have heard about the presence of the terrorist group, but it has not been confirmed. As churches we continue to investigate,” Lembe-Lembe said.

Visiting Congo recently, Francis Kuria Kagema, general secretary of the African Council of Religious Leaders, called the claim of responsibility “probably an empty boast.” But he said if Islamic State fighters have entered the area, “it will be difficult to dislodge them, as we have seen in Nigeria-Cameroon border, where the heavy forest cover provides a hiding area.”

Church leaders alert to threat

Church leaders in Congo have been alert to the growing presence of Islamists and the prospect of local youth being radicalized since at least November, when members of the Allied Democratic Forces, an Islamist group with origins in Uganda, killed two Christian pastors and five others in an attack on two villages in northeastern Congo.


Sign up for our weekly edition and get all our headlines in your inbox on Thursdays


The group has been accused of carrying out kidnappings, looting churches and burning villages since October 2014, killing 1,000 people, according to a November report by the Congo Research Group at the Center on International Cooperation at New York University.

Though the ADF is not as sophisticated as the Islamic State group, the report says ADF recently received financial support from ISIS through a Kenyan facilitator.

The militants have threatened health teams battling the Ebola epidemic in the region. On April 19, armed men also killed Richard Valery Mouzoko Kiboung, a World Health Organization epidemiologist working at a hospital in Butembo in North Kivu, which, along with Beni, another trading hub to the north, has become a hot spot for the disease.

“Rebel groups, especially in Butembo area, are proving a major obstacle,” said Lembe-Lembe. “They are preventing the vaccination of children and the movement of health workers.”

Visiting the area after the doctor’s death, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus pointed to the difficulty of dealing with disease and violence at the same time.

“I am profoundly worried about the situation,” he said. “Cases are increasing because of violent acts that set us back each time.”


We seek to connect God’s story and God’s people around the world. To learn more about God’s story, click here.

Send comments and feedback to Eric Black, our editor. For comments to be published, please specify “letter to the editor.” Maximum length for publication is 300 words.

More from Baptist Standard