- In late April, security forces fired live ammunition to disperse protesters near a mine in the DRC province of Lualaba.
- The protesters were demanding compensation from the mine’s owner, Kamoa, as part of a stalled resettlement process.
- The company says the delay is because the number of people claiming to have been displaced by its operations has ballooned.
LUBUMBASHI, Democratic Republic of Congo — At 4 a.m. on April 27, soldiers shattered the peace of a village in a mining region the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Lualaba province. According to local civil society platform CASMIA, the soldiers fired shots and arrested several residents, including women, in the village of Munjenje, 25 kilometers (15 miles) west of the provincial capital, Kolwezi.
“First, the police intervened,” says Chadrack Mukad, coordinator of CASMIA, which focuses on the impacts of industrial and artisanal mining, when contacted by Mongabay. “Then, the [DRC army] arrived, the Republican Guard. They went after people in their villages, entering houses. One young man was shot in the leg, and another in the neck. The one who was shot in the leg had to have his leg amputated in Lubumbashi.”
According to CASMIA, those arrested were taken to the DRC police headquarters in Kolwezi, the capital of the province of Lualaba. Roy Kaumba, Lualaba province’s interior minister, told Mongabay that the detainees have since appeared in court and found guilty of vandalism and criminal association, some receiving sentences of up to three years in jail.
Their alleged offenses stemmed from protests that began in late April, during which about 60 residents of Munjenje blockaded the road leading to the Kamoa Copper mine. According to a press release from CASMIA, the protesters destroyed property belonging to the company, a joint venture between Canadian group Ivanhoe (which holds a 39.6% stake in Kamoa), China’s Zijin Mining (36.6%), and the DRC state (20%).
In September 2024, Kamoa began expanding the mine, already one of the largest copper mines in the world. It identified 10 villages that would need to be relocated, in line with the DRC’s mining code, and every home or landowner was photographed and received an initial payout.
However, in January 2025, the company was surprised to face an increased number of people holding a token indicating that they were entitled to compensation. Kamoa then asked the farmers to return to their pre-September 2024 activities.
“People were expecting money as compensation. There were a lot of opportunists. They discovered that there were even people who had come from Kinsasha and Lubumbashi who had already been given tokens. We assume that there were fraudulent tokens,” Mukad says.
This situation has led Kamoa to consider developing an underground mine, much to the displeasure of Munjenje’s residents. “Some fields of cassava and other crops were seized by people who claimed that they no longer belonged to the owners, but to Kamoa,” Mukad says. “How are people going to survive today?”
Kaumba, the provincial minister, told Mongabay that “We have restarted the relocation process … We will be monitoring this closely.” Kamoa’s management did not respond to questions in time for publication; this article will be updated once the company replies.
Banner image: Relatives of people injured by army gunfire at Munjenje, Lualaba Province, DRC. Image courtesy of CASMIA.
This story was first published here in French on May 5, 2025.
Impunity and pollution abound in DRC mining along the road to the energy transition
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