United Nations peacekeepers on Wednesday returned to provide protection for Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Congolese doctor, Dr. Denis Mukwege, who has faced death threats after alarmed supporters urged the U.N. to reinstate the security following months without it.
“They will be there as long as necessary,” a spokesman with the peacekeeping mission, Mathias Gillmann, told The Associated Press. He said the U.N. mission is working with Congolese authorities on finding a new security arrangement with the country’s national police, as the mission faces an expected reduction in Congo.
The peacekeepers were withdrawn from Dr. Denis Mukwege’s hospital earlier this year amid the coronavirus pandemic. They have trained Congolese security forces for such protection work in the future.
On Tuesday, the U.N. noted that Congo’s government has pledged to protect the doctor and that the U.N could not provide protection indefinitely. The spokesman for the U.N. secretary-general, Stephane Dujarric, told reporters that “the personal security of Congolese personalities is a responsibility of the national authorities.”
The death threats against Mukwege, famous for his work with survivors of sexual assault at Panzi Hospital in eastern Congo, have drawn condemnation from U.N. human rights chief Michelle Bachelet, Amnesty International and others.
Hundreds of people reportedly marched in support of Mukwege in recent days in Congo’s eastern city of Bukavu, where his hospital is located.
Mukwege has had U.N. protection over the years since he survived an assassination attempt in 2012 while returning to his home.
He has received death threats via text message, and he and his family have received threats on social media, the statement said.
“I have received various hate mail and members of my family have been intimidated and threatened,” Mukwege said in a separate statement posted by the Panzi Foundation.
In a statement to the AP, the director of policy for Physicians for Human Rights, Susannah Sirkin, had said the organization was “dismayed by the inadequate, slow, and bureaucratic response to date by the United Nations in light of the serious threats against our esteemed colleague … The U.N. needs to step up now by restoring the presence of a permanent and around-the-clock (peacekeeping) unit on-site at Panzi Hospital.”
Amnesty International in a statement this month also called on Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi to follow up on his pledges of protection for Mukwege and investigations into the threats.
Mukwege has long been outspoken about the need for accountability for the years of attacks by armed groups in eastern Congo that have killed thousands of people, and he seeks the implementation of recommendations in a years-old U.N. human rights report mapping abuses in the region between 1993 and 2003.
