Citation
Morgan McGravey
January 12. 2024
The Honorable Linda Thomas-Greenfield
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations
U.S. Mission to the United Nations
799 United Nations Plaza
New York, NY 10017
Dear Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield
As the representative of a large community of Congolese refugees who have made a new home in the United States and Commonwealth of Kentucky, I write today to raise the plight of the Banyamulenge and other Tutsi in the Demucralic Republic of the Congo (DRC). I urge you to work with your United Nations colleagues and the UN Organisation Stabilisation Mission in the DRC (MONUSCO) to address persecution and violence in North and South Kivu and prevent genocide in the region at all costs.
I know you understand how perilous the situation in the eastern DRC is, and I thank you for raising our country's concerns and urging a path of peace in your recent meeting with DRC Foreign Minister Christophe Lutundula. I share your concern with the situation. and I am grateful that you voiced the United States' attention and opposition to the violence in the region, in particular the killings, sexual violence. and hate speech targeting Rwandophone comunities such as the Banyamulenge.
The United States must continue to take steps to protect minority groups in the DRC. I urge you to advocate at the UN for immediate humanitarian support for the Banyamulenge, for the MONUSCO to combat militia and state violence targeting the Banynamulenge and other ethnic minorities and to end DRC state efforts to revoke the citizenship of the Banyamulenge, expel them from the country, and deny their right to remain in their historic homeland. I fear that without United States leadership, this ethnic violence will devolve into a genocide.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Morgan McGarvey
Member of Congress
