“The manhunt is on”: A new genocide is looming in Congo

“The manhunt is on”
A new genocide is looming in the Congo

By Simone Schlindwein, Kampala
April 9, 2023, 4:10 p.m

29 years after the genocide in Rwanda, Tutsi once again face systematic and targeted persecution, this time in the neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Horrifying photos and videos from Congo are currently circulating on social media: mutilated bodies in the grass, men tied up crammed into a hole. In one video, a man lies naked on the ground, being mutilated by a pack of machetes; in the next video, one of the men stuffs meat into his mouth and says, “We eat the Rwandans with bread.”

The atrocities currently being committed against the Tutsi minority in the Congo are reminiscent of the 1994 Rwanda genocide. anniversary. Almost three decades later, is another genocide against the Tutsi minority looming – only this time in the neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo?

The UN Special Envoy for Genocide Prevention, Alice Wairimu Nderitu, declared in late 2022 after a trip to Congo that she was “deeply concerned”. The current violence is a “warning signal”. David Karambi, leader of the Tutsi community in the eastern Congolese province of North Kivu, where most Tutsi live, says: “The genocide is already in full swing.” He points to a long list of Tutsi names who have been victims of violence in the past year. He has to update his list almost every day, he just can’t keep up. Only the evening before, agents of the military secret service stormed a bar in the provincial capital of Goma in North Kivu, where Tutsi like to drink beer. The day before, 34 Tutsi had been kidnapped and disappeared without a trace. “It’s not just about the sheer number of victims,” ​​he explains. “All of these actions convey the message: We know where you are!” Whether restaurants, bars, churches, supermarkets – wherever Tutsi usually meet, be the “manhunt” opened.

“They have sown hate”

But who are the perpetrators? Belgian human rights lawyer Bernard Maingain, who represents Tutsi victims of violence, has been investigating the incidents in a bid to bring those responsible to justice in Congo. For him, the state organs are directly involved in the crimes. As an example, he cites a police commissioner in eastern Congo who called for mass killings of Tutsi last year and was later even promoted. Maingain has filed a lawsuit against him and warns that if Congo’s judiciary does not take up the case, he will turn to the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

A much greater danger, according to Tutsi representative Karambi, comes from the numerous militias that have been active in the civil war zone for decades. In the past year, the Tutsi-led rebel army M23, the “March 23rd Movement”, once again conquered large parts of North Kivu province. As the M23 advanced on the provincial capital of Goma, the Congo government called on the population to arm themselves for national defence. All local militias were armed by the army. “They deliberately sowed hatred against us in order to incite them against us,” says Karambi. The army is not yet “ready to carry out systematic killings itself”.

Congo’s army enlists the help of the FDLR’s genocidal forces

The systematic attacks against the Tutsi minority coincide with the new campaign of conquest by the M23 rebels. Since November 2021, the militia led by Tutsi generals has seized parts of North Kivu. There are only around 1,000 fighters, but they have routed Congo’s army on numerous occasions. From Congo’s capital it was immediately said that Rwanda’s army had marched in. “You Rwandans, go home!” was the response in hate speech against Tutsi.

Congo’s President Felix Tshisekedi rejects any negotiations with the M23, calling them “terrorists”. Instead, the army is turning to the Rwandan Hutu militia FDLR, the Rwandan Democratic Defense Forces — a group led by perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide and which has been hiding in Congo since 1994 — to fight the Tutsi rebels.

As early as 1994, the FDLR generals wanted to carry out a plan to wipe out the Tutsi in their home country of Rwanda. But they were stopped and expelled by the Tutsi guerrillas under current Rwandan President Paul Kagame. When Rwanda’s Hutu army, which organized the genocide in 1994, fled to the Congo after being defeated by the Rwandan Tutsi guerrillas, they entrenched themselves in the jungles and mountains of the Masisi region to reorganize themselves. Fearing these genocides, Congolese Tutsi families fled to Rwanda. Genocide perpetrators moved into their farms, they reorganized themselves in the FDLR, like a state within a state in exile.

Most M23s grew up in refugee camps in Rwanda

If you ask the M23 about their motivation today, the answer is usually: “I want to go home to our farm, to our cows.” In the M23, sons of farmers from Masisi fight, who once had to leave everything behind. Most M23 fighters grew up in refugee camps in Rwanda, went to school there. Many have Rwandan citizenship or even served in the Rwandan army. But they see themselves as Congolese. Again and again they formed rebel armies to force their return home with weapons. The M23 is the youngest of these.

None of this helped, on the contrary. In 2022, attacks against the last remaining Tutsi in the Masisi mountains increased dramatically. Even the Tutsi farmers’ herds of cattle are not spared. There are also videos of this: calves with their throats cut; Cows that have had their Achilles tendons severed. “The cattle are our financial security,” explains the son of a Tutsi farmer. “Killing our cattle is supposed to destroy us financially in exile if they can’t get hold of us personally.”

To date, around 72,000 refugees from Congo live in Rwanda, almost all Tutsi. Some have been stuck in camps since 1996. A whole generation was born in exile. And the numbers are rising again. According to official Rwandan figures, 4,300 Congolese Tutsi fled to Rwanda between November 2022 and February 2023.

The UN remains passive

Rwanda’s army, which grew out of the Tutsi guerrillas, feels like a “big brother” to the M23 fighters. You know each other, you have the same past, the same education, the same enemies: the genocide perpetrators of 1994, today’s FDLR. Against this background, Rwanda’s support for the M23 is an open secret. As the M23 scrambles to retake their home farms, Rwanda’s army seeks to disable their nemesis in the FDLR.

While the spiral of violence in the Congo continues to turn, the UN mission MONUSCO, which is represented in the Congo with around 13,000 UN blue helmets, remains surprisingly passive. It is their mandate to protect the population. “The UN has shown a high degree of inconsistency in its reaction to the threats against the Congolese Tutsi,” warns Bojana Coulibaly. The linguist from the USA researches the conflict. According to Coulibaly, it is striking that in “all” reports by the UN mission in the Congo since June 2022, “any language” that “refers to targeted violence and hate speech against the Congolese Tutsi” has been “deliberately removed”. This corresponds to “a denial of the genocide, as we saw in Rwanda in 1994”.