
CONGO: A CHRISTIAN “PARADISE” DESTROYED BY ISLAMISTS SLOWLY RETURNS TO LIFE

A village once considered Congo’s “paradise on earth” because of work done there by Christian missionaries is slowly returning to normal after a series of bloody anti-Christian attacks carried out by the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a violent Islamist group, from 2019 to 2021.
According to Voice of the Martyrs Korea Representative Dr. Hyun Sook Foley, no one in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) village of Tchabi expected trouble from Islamists.
“Over the decades, Tchabi had been a peaceful oasis in an unstable region,” says Representative Foley. “The village had a hospital, a Christian school, a church, and a runway for airplanes, all built by missionaries who arrived at the mountaintop location in 1976.” She says Tchabi remained relatively secure throughout various violent conflicts, including a civil war that raged across the DRC in the 1990s.
But Tchabi’s peace was shattered in early 2019 when militants from the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a violent Islamist group, emerged from the jungle to assault and abduct local Christians.
“They took 40 people the first time, including four doctors and two staff,” Lau Babam, Tchabi’s village chief, told Voice of the Martyrs. “They spent two months in the bush, and then they let them go.” But some of those abducted, he said, are still missing.
According to Representative Foley, the ADF was established in the late 1990s as a rebel group fighting to overthrow the Ugandan government. “Over time, the rebels moved across the border into the northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), hiding in the dense jungles along the border. In 2018, the ADF pledged its allegiance to the self-proclaimed Islamic State (ISIS) and openly declared its goal to eradicate Christians and establish Islamic law in the region.”

She says that since that time, ADF militants have regularly emerged from their jungle hideouts to kill and abducted thousands of Congolese, especially Christians.
In 2019, a second ADF attack on Tchabi caused even more death and destruction.
“The second time they came with a vision to destroy things, to kill people, to burn things down,” said Babam, who was away from the village at the time of the attack. “Everything they just destroyed.” Babam told Voice of the Martyrs that the militants killed his wife and six of his grandchildren, vandalized his house and destroyed the baptistry inside the village church.
A doctor working at the village hospital who survived the attacks witnessed some of the final, courageous words of the school’s Christian principal. According to the doctor, the militants told the principal, “We want you to be gone because the Christians are our enemies.” But the doctor said the principal was unmoved. “He said his faith in Christ will never change,” the doctor told Voice of the Martyrs. “That is why they killed him.”
Many people fled Tchabi after the second attack, but not everyone. On the night of May 30, 2021, the ADF launched another assault on the remaining villagers.
“They came in with machetes,” Babam told Voice of the Martyrs. “Some had guns, but a lot just had machetes. They would shoot somebody or cut them, and then they would burn them.”

Most of Tchabi’s residents are beginning to return to the mountaintop village to rebuild their lives. In August 2023, front-line workers delivered a shipment of Bibles to Tchabi. More than 100 villagers received a Bible.
Some of the villagers, including a woman named Gertrude, fled in the darkness. “We heard gunshots in the night,” she told Voice of the Martyrs. “We didn’t know who it was, and we ran into the forest.” She later learned that many of her friends had been killed. “Our things had been carried off, and the homes were burned,” she said. The ADF had killed 10 members of Gertrude’s family, including her parents. In total, 182 people were killed in and around Tchabi.
The militants also took hostages back with them into the jungle. Babam told Voice of the Martyrs that about 30 people are still missing.
Before they disappeared into the jungle, the ADF fighters vandalized Tchabi’s church building, smashing everything inside and covering the walls with excrement. They also destroyed the school, looted the hospital and burned many homes and buildings, according to witnesses.
Although 90% of people in the DRC identify as Christians, church leaders in the country view Islam as a growing threat. “If the church is not strengthened, Islam will be everywhere,” a pastor who trains and sends Congolese missionaries throughout the country told Voice of the Martyrs.
In the aftermath of the attack, the Congolese government and the United Nations (U.N.) deployed soldiers to protect the village, but it remained mostly uninhabited for the next two years. However, Representative Foley says that once the soldiers had sufficiently secured the area, Tchabi’s residents began to return. She says some set up temporary shelters on the primitive runway, since nothing remained but the gutted shells of their burned homes.

In a violent campaign to establish an Islamic caliphate in the region, the ADF has kidnapped and killed many Congolese, destroying their homes and churches.
In August 2023, front-line workers delivered a shipment of Bibles to Tchabi, landing on the rough runway that hadn’t been used in three years. “At one end of the runway was a large camp of U.N. peacekeeping forces, while at the other end was a mass grave where many of the villagers had been buried after the ADF attacks,” says Representative Foley.
Waiting inside the church were 103 villagers who had received two days of spiritual care for grief and emotional wounds caused by the deadly attacks. “Everyone in attendance had lost relatives in the attacks,” says Representative Foley. She says most had also lost nearly all of their material possessions, including their Bibles, when they fled Tchabi.
Before receiving their Bibles, some of the villagers performed a short drama about what had happened to them. In addition to re–enacting the attacks, most survivors drew pictures of what they had experienced. One drew a picture of a pastor being killed inside a church.
“Many are struggling with the fact that when [the attack] took place, they actually saw with their own eyes their parents being killed, being slaughtered,” Hedeli, a Christian counselor, told Voice of the Martyrs. She traveled to Tchabi to minister to those traumatized by the attack. “[They] are finding healing to their heart wounds when they are able to actually draw what has happened.”
Gertrude drew a picture of her family fleeing for their lives. She had stayed in the jungle for days before taking refuge in a neighboring country, but she found no peace there either. “There was anger, there was pain and we weren’t able to speak,” she told Voice of the Martyrs. “There were bad dreams, no appetite. In our dreams we would just dream of running and people being killed, butchered.”

Gertrude and others who endured the attack recently turned their experiences into drawings or theatrical skits. The activities helped them process their trauma and move toward spiritual and emotional restoration.
Gertrude told Voice of the Martyrs that she had been hesitant to return to Tchabi, with even small decisions in her life made difficult by her constant fear. “For example, I really need to buy plates. But if I go and buy these plates, I am constantly thinking, ‘Ah, maybe I will buy them and then [the ADF] will come’,” she said.
She told Voice of the Martyrs that her request is for prayer as she continues the healing process. “Pray that we will be able to forgive and that faith will come, and that we won’t have to worry about something like that happening again,” she said.
Babam said forgiveness has had a great effect on his spiritual healing. “It touched my heart knowing how to forgive our enemies,” he told Voice of the Martyrs.
Another survivor echoed Babam’s gratitude. “The Lord,” he said, “has not forgotten his people.”