http://www.france24.com/en/20170916-36-burundi-refugees-killed-clashes-dr-congo-forces
On Saturday, 9/16, the United Nations envoy to the Democratic Republic of Congo confirmed that at least 36 Burundian refugees have been killed by Congolese security forces during a protest due to the expulsion of four refugees out of the Congo. Though the event that has taken place is awful in its own right, a bigger problem emerges in the fact that at least ten that were killed were women, one of them a child. Though the Congolese may have had the right to have seen the protesters as a threat, as rocks were thrown and one soldier was killed, the fact that these soldiers murdered innocent women and children show a lack of discipline and accordance to morality within Congolese government and military. The larger problem in which we can pull from this situation is that the Congolese recognized the protesters as “armed-persons”, not refugees. If more protests turned violent as this one did, and also taking into account the increasing amount of refugees coming in from Burundi, the possibility of the death of more innocent lives could increase. A historical parallel can be drawn through precursors to the American Revolution such as the taking away of basic human rights and the Boston Massacre, where protesters threw rocks and were shot by soldiers just as in this protest. After examining the outcome of these events and the fact that the country has been been home to extreme corruption and violence in the past, it is possible for the Democratic Republic of Congo to become the scene of even more political discord. This doesn’t even take into account of the almost non-existent social services within the Congo, another major factor in future strife.