Eliezaire Ushindi is a Congolese who was two years old when the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda unfolded.

 

Today he is 30 years old but not living the fullest of his life because of the path he opted to take. He chose justice and that has since not reflected well on his life.

 

His personal situation deteriorated rapidly as a result of denouncing the hunt for members of the Tutsi community and Kinyarwanda speakers who had been living, for decades, in North and South Kivu Provinces after being stigmatized by various radicalized actors from the DRC.

 

But who is he? Ushindi is the founder of Maisha DRC, a platform for Congolese students who denounce hate speech and genocide in the Great Lakes region, and particularly in the DRC. This platform has documented all crimes based on hatred where victims and perpetrators are named. Ushindi received death threats and had no alternative but to flee the DRC to Rwanda to save his life.

 

Maisha DRC was the first to denounce and condemn, in the strongest terms possible, the killing of FARDC officers because of their “Tutsi faces.” In November 2021, Major Joseph Kaminzobe, from the Banyamulenge community was lynched, his body burned and subjected to acts of cannibalism in Lweba. On December 20, 2021, Congolese national police lieutenant Gapasi Munyemanzi was lynched on the Nyiragongo side, just because he had "a Tutsi head" and a Rwandan-sounding name. The killers have a feeling of impunity because the government does almost nothing to prevent the violence, including targeting state agents in their workplaces.

 

Ushindi is from Bashi community who live in South Kivu. He was targeted because of his morphology as he was considered as a Tutsi. Sociologically, the Bashi share certain names with the Congolese Kinyarwanda speakers. Ushindi fled DRC and currently lives in Rwanda.

 

Since 1996, some Bashi citizens had paid the same price, as the Congolese Tutsi, because of their morphology. Those who make politics of hate relate the Bashi community to Congolese Kinyarwanda speakers. The promoters of hate speech, who unfortunately are becoming dominant in the DRC, see Tutsi everywhere and designate them as the enemies of the Congo. They consider them as people who must be driven out or liquidated. This genocide ideology started in eastern DRC in 1963 but it was fueled by the presence of Ex FAR and Interahamwe militia from Rwanda who fled to DRC after committing the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi.

 

Congolese extremists shared a photo of Ushindi on social media with an arrow on his nose, insinuating that he has a Tutsi nose, not a Congolese nose. In the last 28 years, genocide ideology has risen in DRC and Congolese communities who look like Kinyarwanda speakers were subjected to killings and harassment like the Bashi and people from Kasai region, among others

 

 During an interview with Christauphe Rigaud, owner of French blog “Afrikarabia,” Ushindi said that the problems of hate always come with presidential elections.

 

“The  presidential elections in 2006 and in 2011 consolidated the genocidal ideology in the DRC. Almost all the candidates in the campaign held anti-Tutsi, anti-Rwandophone, anti-Rwanda hate speech. We commonly heard ‘if I am elected, I will drive the Tutsi out of your villages, they will return to their homes’.

 

Ushindi spoke about the negative results of hate speech.

 

“June 15, 2022 in Goma there was a demonstration to denounce the M23. La Lucha an active Congolese movement that claims to defend human rights, called on people to demonstrate and made them sing ‘Let Tshisekedi open the doors [the borders] so that the Rwandan Tutsi return home’. Very quickly, the demonstrators looted shops belonging to supposed Tutsi traders, property was destroyed, vehicles were stopped to stare at their occupants, to see if they had Tutsi morphologies. Speeches denouncing the “balkanization” of the DRC by Martin Fayulu, Muhindo Nzangi, Eve Bazaiba, KOPAX, LUCHA RDC, journalists and civil society actors in the DRC and their supporters, targeting the Tutsi, spread at all levels of society. During this demonstration in Goma, people attacked an alleged Tutsi customs officer and lynched him.”

 

Ushindi was a member of LUCHA before the movement became a platform for radicals. He left it in 2020 following its Tutsi hate speeches.

 

“This denunciation made me an ‘accomplice’, following the current phraseology in Rwanda until the genocide against the Tutsi. A person considered as an ‘accomplice’ in the DRC is ‘a Rwandan’, ‘a conspirator’, ‘an infiltrator’, ‘an occupier’, ‘an enemy’, and other qualifiers. She is doomed to the fate reserved for the Tutsi,” he added.

 

From his host country, Ushindi has a message to the international community.

 

“The international community must be very firm in sanctioning hate speech. Their authors must be prosecuted, including in the countries of Europe and North America where they believe they are safe. The demonstrations they organize around the world to call for hatred against the Tutsi must be banned as they are anti-Semitic demonstrations. If so, they must be expelled as preachers who call for hatred of women, racial hatred or inter-religious hatred, or who promote terrorism. If in the DRC the state is failing, this is not the case in other African countries or in the West. What good is so much effort and money from the international community in the name of restoring the rule of law in the DRC, if it is to allow a new genocide to be prepared there?”

 

During his August brief to the media in Kigali, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said: “We noted the resurgence of hate speech, public incitement, and genocidal ideology in DRC, and the need to address this issue.”

 

However, condemning hate speech in words without actions will not stop its spread in DRC as it is used a political tool as a way to have followers.