President Kagame said that Congo’s problems have been appropriated to Rwanda.
Incumbent President Paul Kagame and Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF-Inkotanyi) candidate on Saturday slammed the United Nations Group of Experts (GoE) for continuously being silent on the alliance between the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and FDLR rebels but go big when it comes to accusing Rwanda.
The incumbent Head of State, who concluded campaign activities ahead of the Monday’s Presidential and Parliamentary elections addressed members of the press on a wide range of issues, spending time to explain the history of the conflict in DRC, which he said should not be looked at in the lenses of what happens in the eastern part but rather the whole country.
President Kagame reiterated his previous stand that those who are hellbent on accusing Rwanda disregard the historical context, especially regarding how the so-called Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) came to be as well as how the first M23 rebellion came about in 2012 and why it recurred 10 years later.
“What it means simply is that the problem actually was not resolved then, otherwise if it had been resolved, they wouldn’t have it again 10 years after the very same problem,” he said, pointing out that the same reasons that led to the conflict still prevail today.
“Eastern Congo problem is twofold; one is that of the Congolese citizens who are persecuted and uprooted from their place and sent outside as refugees, others are killed and others imprisoned, so on so forth, simply because they called Tutsis,”
“In other words, the kind of politics behind it is that maybe these people called Tutsis don’t belong here, they belong to Rwanda,” he said, pointing out that the Kinyarwanda speaking Tutsi communities of DRC have been appropriated to Rwanda yet they legally belong to DRC dating back to when colonial borders were drawn.
President Kagame spoke extensively on the situation in DRC.
He pointed out that what is even more surprising is that Congolese leaders themselves acknowledge that the Congolese Tutsi and Congolese citizens go ahead to persecute and uproot them from their land and also deny them their rights as citizens, many of them living as refugees in neighbouring countries.
“Here in Rwanda we have now 125,000 refugees from Eastern Congo of this kind of people,” he said, adding that many more are refugees in Uganda.
On the other hand, he said FDLR, whose members include individuals who participated in the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, remain active in DRC, propagating tche genocide ideology and fighting alongside DRC government forces and other armed groups, threatening regional security.
The incumbent leader said that while Rwanda repatriated and reintegrated nearly two million Rwanda refugees who had fled the country after the 1994 Genocide, a small percentage of those who remained went on to form the FDLR, which still goes by the same ideology.
He pointed out that the issue of FDLR goes beyond just DRC because the group has enjoyed support from individuals and countries which in one way or another are associated with or linked to the politics of 1994 -including the same countries which backed the genocidal government back in the day.
Local and international journalists asked Kagame a wide range of questions.
President Kagame said that the said groups have been backing FDLR with hope that they can come back to Rwanda and continue where they stopped in 1994. He said today the FDRL is enjoying full support of the DRC government to continue with the mission.
“The government of Congo has armed these people in two forms; one they have integrated them in their Armed Forces, others operate on their own, but alongside these government forces, to fight these persecuted [Tutsi] who I mentioned, associated with the M23 and associated with 125,000 people who are living in camps here in Rwanda,”
“In fact a bigger number by the way lives in the camps in Uganda,” President Kagame said.
UN GoE Report silent on FDLR
President Kagame spoke out on the UN GoE final report released earlier this week, which accused Rwanda of stoking conflict in DRC by supporting M23, pointing out that the accusations are aimed at creating a narrative that Rwanda is the problem, questioning the ‘expertise’ of those behind the report.
“A narrative has been created, now you see Rwanda is involved in Congo, even there are experts, I’m sure you have seen this group of experts’ report. I don’t know what expertise they have but they write about Rwanda’s forces, RDF in Eastern DRC then they are very silent on the government of Congo associating with FDLR and creating it and arming it and growing it to be a bigger force, they are very silent on that, that is how far their expertise go,” Chairman Kagame said.
“So, the narrative is formed to make it sound like Eastern Congo’s problem is actually created by Rwanda. But from these facts, I am telling you, that can be cross-checked as to their veracity, will show you a different story. And again, the narrative has been about turning a perpetrator into a victim and this goes very well and leads to the genocide story and the story of Rwanda and it is not just the region, it goes way beyond,” he added.
President Kagame said there are efforts to paint Rwandan in a bad light, citing an example of a consortium of journalists who came together to publish stories under the “Forbidden Stories” Rwanda Classified Project, all to just put Rwanda in a certain light- where the country is always portrayed as the bad guy everywhere; for itself for the region and for the continent.
He observed that such accusations and attacks don’t happen by accident but rather they happen by design, citing an example where he mentioned ‘why wouldn’t anyone support M23’, given the reasons they are fighting for and it was taken for him admitting Rwanda backing the rebel movement.
The RPF Chairman said that his answer to the journalist was aimed at showing him that the problem was actually not M23 but rather why people are being hounded out of their land.
“Why would somebody who was taken to Congo during the colonial period be shown an exit from that place and sent to Rwanda? What crime has that person committed or what crime has Rwanda committed for that to happen? Who is responsible?” he pondered.
He said it is not Rwanda’s fault that people who speak the same language or are related in one way or another were caught on the other side of the border when the African continent was being partitioned by colonial powers.
President Kagame addressed local and international journalists covering the elections.
“You know it very well in Uganda, in Kisoro, the district has many Ugandans who are associated with Rwanda. In fact, along the border, we have relatives living on one side, others living on the other side. It dates back that time of colonial period but I’ve never heard Uganda disassociate itself, persecute or remove these people from Uganda and send them to Rwanda,”
“Neither would we be saying ‘you know you have relatives across, why don’t you find them there and go and live with them and leave this place? Why does it happen in Eastern Congo and why do people get confused about it, to the point they keep asking questions relating to it,” he said.
President Kagame emphasized that the issue can’t be that Rwanda has forces in Eastern Congo but even if that was true, one has to wonder why that would happen -looking at the cause, which is people being uprooted from their land and sent as refugees to Uganda or to Rwanda.
He said that he has repeated this stand many times during interviews and discussed it with concerned parties but one narrative continues to be peddled- which is accusing Rwanda while disregarding the historical context of things.
