Why DRC government pretends ignorance of conflict in east

Author: Lindah Uwase

• 2023-04-23 05:10:00

While addressing journalists during his state visit in Benin, on April 16, Rwandan President Paul Kagame said the M23 question has been mismanaged for over a decade. The group first launched its rebellion in 2012 in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Afterwards, DRC government spokesperson, Patrick Muyaya, tweeted questioning why Kagame did not talk about the origin of the M23 rebel group. Either Muyaya is a selective listener or he deliberately deduced some facts stated by President Kagame for his fallacious intentions of demonising Rwanda.

Although Kagame had detailed the historical perspective of the eastern DRC conflict, which he traced back to the colonial times when borders were demarcated, and some Rwandans were left on the Congolese side, Muyaya still claimed that the President did not address the origin of M23 conflict. Muyaya knows very well the origin of M23, and the persecuted Congolese Tutsi community it is fighting to protect, and has been struggling to repeatedly cover it up for his government

It is befitting to remind him that after the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, the genocide ideologues that planned and executed it fled to DRC. Their plan was to wipe the Tutsi off the world map.  And when they reached DRC, they systematically planned how to continue with the killing. 

This time, they were testing the killing on the Congolese Tutsi.

The architects and implementers of the Genocide formed the FDLR. They did not only attack the Congolese Tutsi but also sustained some attacks on Rwanda, and later forged an alliance with the DRC national army, FARDC.

Kinshasa has an obligation to protect their Kinyarwanda-speaking citizens. Sadly, in the absence of this protection; the Congolese Tutsi picked up arms to protect themselves. 

It is ironic that Kinshasa is still insinuating that Kinyarwanda-speaking Congolese are not real nationals.  It so happens that Tshisekedi defended the FDLR saying that it is weak and poses no threat to Rwanda. Muyaya called the genocidal militia a ‘movement’ despite being a blacklisted terrorist group.

If Kinshasa admitted the existence of FDLR, its real threat and growing strength, it would justify why the M23 exists in the first place.

Tshisekedi wants to impose a false rhetoric that denies the FDLR existence and the crimes it has perpetrated against the Congolese people and instead portrays DRC as “a country under attack by Rwanda”. 

The United Nations Special Advisor on Genocide Prevention, Alice Wairimu Nderitu, who visited DRC earlier in November 2022, condemned the escalation of violence in eastern DRC, saying that it was a “warning sign” in a region where a Genocide happened in the past.

The current violence mainly stems from the refugee crisis that resulted as many individuals involved in the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda fled to eastern DRC, forming armed groups such as the FDLR which is still active in eastern DRC, she warned.

This genocidal outfit has committed crimes against humanity with impunity.

Not so long ago, Human Rights Watch exposed the Congolese army for being the sponsor of the genocidal group. Several senior Congolese military officers gave arms and ammunition to the FDLR. The FDLR spokesperson, Cure Ngoma told BBC a while ago that FDLR is “present and controls territories in North Kivu, and refuted claims by Kinshasa that FDLR no longer exists.

Regional stability needs the good faith of Tshisekedi’s regime. It will be a waste of time to keep investing in propaganda that blames Rwanda for eastern DRC’s endless woes.

Dismantling the genocidal force will pave the way for a pacified eastern DRC. The situation in eastern DRC is only fixable if there is goodwill to address the root causes of the conflict.