Regional
Truths Kinshasa doesn’t want the world to know about M23 rebels
Since
the resurgence of the March 23 Movement in late 2021, Kinshasa has been creating
and spreading lies to confuse the International Community about the real cause
of the conflict between the government and the rebels.
Congolese
leaders first said that the rebels are Rwandan militia who want to balkanize part
of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). They later changed to calling them
terrorists who want to destabilize the volatile eastern part of the country.
Now,
again, the current narrative is that M23 are actually the Rwandan army that
seeks to exploit the country’s minerals.
Scapegoating
Rwanda in the current insecurity crisis in eastern DRC is still being used as a
weapon by President Felix Tshisekedi and his government to evade the reality.
They want the world to believe that he has not failed to protect his people but
Rwanda has weakened him to stop him from delivering on his mandate since
assuming office.
The
conflict between M23 rebels and Kinshasa has nothing to do with Rwanda.
It stems from the long time discrimination
against Rwandophones whose rights to be recognized as Congolese citizens were denied
by their government. The Rwandophones have lived in DRC for centuries but they
are harassed and killed only because they speak Kinyarwanda.
The M23
is not a terrorist movement as Kinshasa says. It is a Congolese rebel group,
which took up arms to fight for a legitimate cause. Among their grievances are
the continued harassment of Congolese Tutsi, lack of security and
discrimination of their community which resulted in thousands of Rwandophones
becoming refugees in Africa and beyond.
Congolese
officials know all of this but do nothing about it. The M23 repeatedly
presented their complaints to Kinshasa, but have been ignored. The world needs
to listen to these rebels otherwise this issue will resurrect over and over.
There
are more than one million Rwandophone refugees and asylum-seekers in countries
bordering DRC who have lived in in exile for more than 20 years. Nearly half of
them are sheltered in Uganda (479,400). Others are scattered in Burundi 87,500;
Tanzania 80,000; Rwanda 72,200; Zambia 52,100; the Republic of the Congo 28,600
and Angola 23,200.
Approximately
9,000 and 17,000 refugees who were in Rwanda and Uganda respectively, were
resettled in Western countries but those refugees were replaced by new ones. In
2022 alone, Rwanda and Uganda received more than 100,000 refugees from eastern
DRC fleeing persecution and a consistent threat to their lives.
These
refugees need a place to call home, but Kinshasa continues to ignore them and
refuse to recognize their rights. If the DRC government doesn’t want to listen
to them, what does it expect from them? To just sit, close their arms and
accept to live in exile forever? Hardly can that happen.
Congolese
leaders needs to pay attention to the real issues at hand including conducive
conditions for the repatriation of all these refugees.
The
international community needs to realize that the United Nations peacekeeping
mission has failed. For more than two decades, MONUSCO has brought no positive
change in DRC but costed millions of dollars. The UN peacekeepers have
consistently failed the Congolese population, with the latter often protesting
against their presence.
The
genocidal militia from Rwanda, FDLR, have killed hundreds of Congolese Tutsi
over the years, at times hacking them to death with machetes or hoes, or
burning them to death in their homes. They have committed countless rapes and
other acts of sexual violence in eastern DRC but
MONUSCO has continuously failed, or refused, to put an end to the militia’s
atrocities.
The M23
has achieved more in less than eight months what the United Nations didn’t manage to do for decades.
They have created a safe environment for DRC citizens. People who live in areas
controlled by M23 are the living proof of how the rebels are a peaceful
movement and a reliable partner now and in future.