DRC crisis: International community knows but ignores the truth

Author: Moses Kayinamura

• 2023-02-16 05:38:00

Since the resumption of hostilities between the Democratic Republic of Congo government and the M23 rebels, President Félix Tshisekedi has refused to acknowledge that the crisis in the eastern part of the country is an internal problem, between the Congolese people, that needs to be solved politically - not militarily.

Tshisekedi is instead running up and down telling the world that Rwanda is behind the DRC crisis.

In a recently released US classified cable on DRC dated October 29, 1965, André J Navez – who was the US Consul in Bukavu at the time – informed his country with a detailed account on the killings and discrimination the Rwandophones in North Kivu were facing. The issues back then are almost similar to the current issues under Tshisekedi’s rule.

The difference today, is that the discrimination and killings are escalated by a genocide ideology exported into eastern DRC by the remnants of former Rwandan genocidal government’s soldiers and Interahamwe militia who committed the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi.

The perpetrators of the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda fled and regrouped while preparing to return to Rwanda and finish their genocidal agenda. They have changed names several times in the past three decades. Today, they are called the FDLR.

The US cable written 58 years ago clearly points out that Rwandophones in the DRC are legitimate Congolese citizens.

“For its own political ends, the WaNande-controlled North Kivu Provincial Government seeks to picture the Banyarwanda [Kinyarwanda-speaking Congolese] as refugees (which they are not) and not as Congolese citizens (which they are) …. No attempt has been made by the provincial government to correct or even recognize the grievances of the Banyarwanda [Kinyarwanda-speaking Congolese]. Instead, the North Kivu Government claims that there is a vast conspiracy organized by the ‘Rwandan emigres,” the document reads.

The above statement sheds light on the current attitude by the Kinshasa government towards Rwandophones and the reasons that prompted M23 to take up arms.

As it happened six decades ago, the Congolese government does not recognize Kinyarwanda-speaking Congolese as legitimate citizens. Their rights are being denied, violence against them increases day by day, as well as massacring them. The root causes of the grievances of Congolese Rwandophones remain unresolved.

In 1931, the region had Rwandophone sub-chiefs following the agreement between a Belgian administrator and the Hunde Mwami (King) which provided that all the sub-chiefs in the territory occupied by Rwandophones would be of Kinyarwanda-speaking Congolese. However, like today, the grievances of Rwandophones were not resolved by the then Governor of North Kivu, Paluku Kyavuyirwe, from the Nande tribesmen.

His son, Julien Paluku Kahongya, who also served as the Governor of North Kivu from 2007 to 2019 followed in his father’s footsteps.

He did not listen to Rwandophones’ grievances. He often called them refugees.  

Tshisekedi is now using the anti-Rwanda agenda as an alternative strategy to win the upcoming December 2023 elections. It mirrors a recurrent anti-Rwandophones political rhetoric for political mileage practiced by Congolese politicians since 1965.

Political suppression of the Rwandophones was witnessed by US cables in the 1965 general elections, where their candidacy and voting rights were denied.

The US Consul concluded that if the North Kivu government continued to support the Hunde in their domination of the Rwandophones, the situation would get worse.

This shows that the US government understands the genesis of the crisis in eastern DRC. Belgium which played a key role in destabilizing the great lakes region during the colonial era knows much more in the same way as the entire European Union.

However, they decided to act differently and never speak out on political settlement of the conflict or condemn Congolese authorities for discriminating and killing their own citizens.

Why this behavior? They do not want to antagonize their relationship with the Tshisekedi administration because they are more interested in the mineral resources Kinshasa controls.

Official figures show that by 1960 there were between 210,000 and 280,000 Kinyarwanda-Speaking Congolese in Masisi territory alone. They outnumbered the Hunde whose population was estimated between 10,000 and 30.000.

The long lasting hostilities in North Kivu resulted in the creation of more than 130 armed groups, with Congolese national army cohabitating with them for their support to fight the M23 in return.