Hellgate student Aiden Latrielle-Marsh is studying abroad in the capital of the Congo, Kinshasa, this year; the same city that has been seeing rioters taking to the streets recently. But Latrielle-Marsh said from what he’s seeing, it’s looking more like a war, specifically in the Congo’s largest city, Goma, than the generalization of riots that Western media is portraying it as.
“There’s one restaurant I go to a lot… it was completely destroyed,” Latrielle-Marsh said.
The Congo is rich in cobalt and tantalum, two metals that are used in abundance when making mobile phones and electric vehicles, specifically Teslas. The Rwandan-backed rebel group M23 is majorly funded by the selling of these metals that they illegally mine on Congolese soil.
Rwanda denies any support or connection to the rebel group, and yet their mineral exports are now making over a billion dollars a year, which is two times more than what they made two years ago.
“From my understanding people are feeling angry… specifically with the president of the DRC, Rwanda, and the Western Countries,” Latrielle-Marsh said.
Though the Rwandan government won’t confirm the suspicion that they have been illegally selling these metals to multiple Western countries, many Congolese people have already drawn their conclusions. On Jan. 28, protesters attacked the Rwandan embassy, as well as the embassies of the countries they believed were engaging in illicit mineral trade with Rwanda, including the United States, France, Belgium, Uganda, and Kenya.
In the fighting, 17 United Nations peacekeepers were killed, around the same time M23 claimed control over the DRC’s largest city, Goma. Nearly 900 have died and over 2,880 are injured, according to the UN. The hospitals are nearing capacity, and many other injured people claim that the streets are too dangerous for them to reach hospitals at all. Latrielle-Marsh said that he has read a few sites online comparing the current danger in the Congo to that of Ukraine.
As of Feb. 3, 2025, the M23 rebels have called for a ceasefire due to ‘humanitarian reasons”, after having captured Goma.
Latrielle-Marsh said they are still waiting to see how everything will unfold, but that school has been canceled for the past two weeks due to the threat.
