Kelly Mutesi
Africa-Press – Rwanda. In 1994, it was RTLM radio shouting “cockroaches.” Today, it’s western media and the DR Congo leaders screaming “infiltrators,” while Kinshasa’s streets echo familiar chants. “No room for Tutsi” becomes “No Rwandophones” – the language evolves, but the divisionism persists.
Empty tins rattle through the EU, UN, TikTok and Twitter alike. The DR Congo’s performances all exemplify a deadly evolution: genocide ideology dressed in diplomatic clothes.
Just this March 1, 2025, AFC/M23 succeeded where MONUSCO’s $26 billion failed – handing over to Rwandan authorities, Brig Gen Ezechiel Gakwerere of the genocidal militia FDLR. Notably, he was dressed in Congolese military uniform.
Gakwerere not only orchestrated the murder of thousands of Tutsi, but directly participated in the atrocious murder of Queen Gicanda, our last monarch, remembered for her loyalty to her people and generosity until the end.
For 30 years, the international community neglected FDLR’s security threat to our region, pretending the militia were simply “old and weak” fighters posing no real threat. Yet still, for those same thirty years, MONUSCO failed to fulfill its mandate to neutralize these genocidaires.
It was the AFC/M23 – Congolese citizens fighting to liberate their country – who are doing the very job the self-righteous international community should have done, instead of labelling the poorly governed country’s liberators as villains and proxies.
Our machete wounds were still fresh when DR Congo welcomed our killers, gave FDLR sanctuary and voice. Now Western powers sanction Rwanda for having the audacity to protect ourselves, wielding false mineral theft narratives as smokescreens while absolving themselves from taking meaningful action towards ensuring that our region enjoys sustainable peace and security.
David Lammy, the UK’s Secretary of State for Commonwealth Affairs, sanctions us, stating, “Rwanda may have security concerns but it is unacceptable to resolve these militarily,” on the same day his PM tweets “We are bolstering national security to keep British people safe and secure for generations to come.”
When increasing their defense spending by 2.5% GDP, they preach ‘peace through strength’ and step up military support for Ukraine to protect European security.
Yet in the same breath, they see fit to punish us for our response to FDLR’s shelling of Rubavu – that killed sixteen civilians in January – for implementing defensive measures along our borders.
They parade through international courts with empty mineral theft claims while Western academics yet again build careers debating whether to call ethnic cleansing by its proper name.
Those who failed to defend Rwandan lives in ’94 now platform denial under the guise of “balanced reporting,” as if we didn’t see history recycling itself in broad daylight.
Blood is not complex – it is red, it is fresh and it flows in DR Congo’s east today like it flowed in Rwanda then. It won’t heal because you won’t let it, won’t rest because you rewrite it; peace and security fail to be realised, because you change the story and paint victims as villains.
Thirty years later, the Tutsi of the great lakes continue unearthing mass graves in swamps and fields. Innocent civilians in Minembwe, Uvira, and surrounding areas, of the South Kivu Province, cry out to ears that refuse to comprehend the tongues they cry in. As if Kinyarwanda were not itself one of the many tongues of diversely rich DR Congo.
We continue counting: 100 days, over 1,074,017 people murdered. 10,740 people murdered daily. 447 people were murdered hourly. Over 7 people were murdered every minute – every minute of every hour of every day for a hundred days.
Yet we are forced to continue to count, as the 100 day killers of Rwanda rinse and repeat their genocide across the border for 30 years now, while the Congolese Tutsi, Banyamulenge and Hema are left by the international community to the mercy of genocidaires.
You debate while people die and call it democracy. You give their killers a license to lie in your sanctuaries that are built on the notion of protecting human rights and a world with peace.
Your democracy sits atop our memorial grounds like thinkers contemplating art, making academic discourse of our dead while we fight to honor and remember those graves hidden to erase us.
The sanctions themselves are empty, ineffective when it comes to helping find peace in our region. They only serve as a microphone, amplifying hate speech that represents liberators and defenders of the persecuted peoples of DR Congo, as infiltrators.
We know a thing or two about this where I am from. You theorize from pedestals built on bones we’re still uncovering, while FDLR preaches from protected pulpits, integrated into the very FARDC forces that claim to protect DR Congo.
What could your empty noise – sanctions – possibly have left to say that matters more than justice? That weighs more than the truth? That counts more than our dead still being found in swamps thirty years later?
Source: The New Times
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