The resurgence of the M23 rebellion in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo since late 2021, after nearly a decade of silence following their defeat in 2013 has been given worldwide attention.

 

The M23 is now a hot topic in the international media and for informed as well as so uninformed political commentators.  It has become a subject of debate in international parliaments, and most importantly, a particular scapegoat for Kinshasa.

 

But for many, the big question remains; why is the M23 really fighting?

 

For some, it is not a complicated question to answer. The rebel group is fighting for the rights of its persecuted and disowned community to be recognized as legitimate citizens with full rights as any other Congolese nationals.

 

The rebels are fighting so as to protect the lives of Congolese Tutsi and Rwandophones who are now targets of hate speech and violence orchestrated by their own state or government.

 

Hundreds have, so far, been murdered in various parts of eastern DRC.

 

Taking a look at the historical background of the situation; Rwandophones found themselves in eastern DRC after the 1885 Berlin conference which resulted in Rwandan territories of Rutshuru, Bunyabungo, Masisi, Gishali, Tongo and Idjwi, among others, being given to DRC.

 

In 1960, Kinyarwanda-speaking Congolese were estimated between 210,000 and 280,000 in Masisi territory alone. They outnumbered the Hunde whose population was between 10,000 and 30,000. Many settled there as result of the Belgian administration’s resettlement program of Rwandese in the Congo –movement de l' installation de la population– implemented from 1931.

 

Though they lived in DRC for more than a century, they were never recognized as Congolese citizens. The tide turned when Congolese administrations started referring to them as refugees. This is why they were not allowed to contest and vote in the1965 general elections.

 

Since the 1990s, their Congolese compatriots from other tribes have persecuted them, looted their cattle and massacred hundreds of thousands of Rwandophones with the allegations of the Congolese Tutsi community trying to balkanize eastern DRC, being used as an excuse. Many of them have been fleeing to neighboring countries while others are constantly being internally displaced.

 

Their young men and women eventually realized that their government was not speaking on their behalf or denouncing the violence against them.

 

They had no choice. They took up arms to fight for their rights for citizenship and safety in their home country.

 

 They were tired of endlessly being called unwanted refugees in their own country.

 

The M23 rebellion took up arms to defend themselves against an existential threat. If Kinyarwanda-speaking Congolese don’t fight, they will all be exterminated.

 

Their main threat emanates from the genocide ideology spread in eastern DRC by the remnants of the perpetrators of the genocide against the Tutsi next door, in Rwanda, about three decades ago. When the Rwandan genocidal government was defeated in 1994, Kinshasa welcomed the defeated mass murderers with open arms. Then President Mobutu Sese Seko of the then Zaïre, now DRC, had been an ally to the genocidal regime in Kigali.

 

Mobutu sent his own forces to prop up the genocidal regime in Rwanda.

 

But he was not successful.

 

When the genocidal regime in Rwanda collapsed, the genocidal machinery fled enmass to eastern DRC. They set up camp in Goma, the capital of DRC’s North Kivu province, where Kinshasa coordinated international assistance for them as they reorganised and planned for their never to be forceful return to Rwanda.

 

The genocidal forces kept on changing names so as to hide their genocide agenda from the world. For nearly two decades, they are known as the FDLR. Besides their numerous thwarted attempts to infiltrate and cause havoc in Rwanda, they have especially been a nightmare to Congolese Tutsi communities in eastern DRC.

 

This Rwandan genocidal force is the cause of the racial hate speech - reminiscent of the racist propaganda in Rwanda before the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi -  that is growing in North Kivu and South Kivu provinces.

 

Alice Wairimu Nderitu, the UN's Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, has reported that in eastern DRC, the current violence is mainly the result of the refugee crisis which led to the flight of many individuals involved in the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda to eastern DRC, forming armed groups such as the FDLR “which are still active in eastern DRC."

 

Nderitu's report states: "The abuses currently taking place in eastern DRC, including the targeting of civilians because of their ethnicity or presumed affiliation with warring parties, must stop." 

 

In an interview with a French journalist, just over two months ago, Bernard Maingain, a Belgian lawyer who has, for several years, condemned the anti-Tutsi hate speeches in eastern DRC,  shed more light on the reasons why the M23 decided to take up arms.

 

In the DRC, Maingain noted, the plan to complete the extermination of the Tutsi was never lost sight of by the genocidaires who managed to stay in the country and mingle with the local population. It is under the impulse of these people that the ideology is propagated while in Europe their relays speak of human rights being flouted, he said, stressing that the entire Great Lakes region is now "infested by this Manichean discourse that led to the massive massacres in Rwanda in 1994."

 

"In the Congo, the plan to complete this programme of extermination of the Tutsi was never lost sight of by the genocidaires.’

 

It should be remembered, Maingain said, that this discourse had been formulated and refined in Rwanda since 1959: "The Tutsi are a predatory race, the only solution is to eliminate them, from the child to the old man.”

 

When the genocidaires took refuge in DRC, they immediately attacked the Banyamulenge and the Tutsi herders. And this has hardly ever stopped since.

 

But the DRC government continues to push a different narrative. For Kinshasa, the M23 rebels are terrorists without a cause. The other fabrication is that the rebels are not legitimate Congolese citizens but Rwandans who want to balkanize eastern DRC.  Such allegations have, for long been spread by Congolese politicians whenever there was an end that justifies the means.

 

Instead of solving the root causes of the long-lasting hostilities, and the persecutions and massacres of Congolese Rwandophones, Kinshasa has ignored their grievances and fabricated lies to cover up its failures in addressing issues.

 

Genocide scholars have warned about the looming genocide against Congolese Rwandophones and the international community keeps on turning a blind eye to the ongoing massacres of Congolese Tutsi.

 

Numerous calls were made but it seems no one is caring about M23’s grievances.

 

By totally ignoring the rebellion’s grievances, and scapegoating neighboring countries, President Félix Tshisekedi, analysts say, is buying time as he aims to find a good excuse to disrupt the earlier scheduled December 2023 presidential elections.

 

Tshisekedi knows he is unpopular and cannot win now that he alienated former president Joseph Kabila, the man who stole the first election for him.