Goma, DR Congo--"We live in a city... that has no roads, no infrastructure, no schools, no water, no electricity and no jobs," says young democracy activist Tresor Akili of his home town of Goma in the east of Democratic Republic of Congo, where decades of war and a myriad of militias have bled the population dry.
"Our struggle was born of what we've lived through," Akili, 25, adds. "Every part of our daily lives in the Democratic Republic of Congo is disgusting."
But rather than resorting to violence to change that situation, like many other young people in this troubled country, Akili joined the Struggle for Change (known as Lucha in French).
Founded in Goma in 2012 as a "non-political and non-violent citizens' movement", Lucha is pushing not just for peace, but for real democracy and a greater sharing of DR Congo's huge mineral wealth.
"We are adepts of non-violence. We can't stand arms," says Juvin Kombi, who joined Lucha to shake his fellow citizens out of their passive acceptance of the political and economic order of a country the United Nations says is one of the world's least developed.
"The thing we're fighting against is above all injustice -- social injustice," says Kombi, 26, claiming Lucha also defends the "human dignity being smothered here amid the security situation we confront."
Lucha took root three years ago in the blood-soaked soil of eastern DR Congo close to the Rwandan border, whose resource-rich land has been long battled over for the fortunes to be made from mining it.
Akili and Kombi were only children when rebel chief Laurent-Desire Kabila took power and became president in 1997.
They then grew up within the violence of two long wars in the east, and the continued unrest after Kabila was assassinated and his son -- current president Joseph Kabila -- took power.
AFP
