The level of ignorance, confusion, and misinformation, on eastern DR Congo’s crisis, by Lord Collins, UK’s Minister of State for Africa is insulting and unacceptable.

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This was stressed by the Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Amb. Olivier Nduhungirehe, Thursday, February 27, a day after the UK Minister of State for Africa openly showed his unawareness of the reality on the ground as regards the situation in eastern DR Congo.

It all started when David Alton, a member of the UK House of Lords, on Wednesday, raised in Parliament the matter of the brutal massacre by a militia "group reported to be affiliated to ISIS of up to 70 Christians in a church” in eastern DR Congo and called for action to end the culture of impunity and failure to hold those responsible to account.

Lord Collins then told the members of the UK Parliament that: "Certainly, when I met the foreign minister of Rwanda, this morning, in Geneva, he denied all these accusations about things happening and refuted the story that was in The Guardian.”

Nduhungirehe said: "He [Lord Collins] was asked, in the House of Commons, a specific question about 70 Christians who were killed with machetes and hammers by ADF, a Ugandan terrorist organisation affiliated to ISIS, in Kasanga, Lubero territory, North Kivu, and he dares answering that ‘When I met the Foreign Minister of Rwanda this morning, he denied all those crimes happening?’

"The UK government will have to formally answer about it!”

Nduhungirehe on Wednesday called on the UN Human Rights Council not to remain silent in the face of hate speech and targeted killings of Tutsi communities in DR Congo, whose government is implicated in the atrocities.

Speaking during the 58th Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland, he highlighted the plight of the Banyamulenge community in DR Congo’s South Kivu Province, where forces from a government coalition continue to attack and kill civilians, with impunity, as the whole world watches.

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The minister said hate speech and targeted violence against Congolese Tutsi communities "have become distressingly commonplace.”

"Communities continue to be targeted for who they are, how they look or even which language they speak – a grim reminder of the horrors witnessed during the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda.”

In eastern DR Congo, he said "hate speech, persecution, lynching, and even acts of cannibalism against Congolese Tutsi have become distressingly commonplace.”

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He pinned the Congolese government on such crimes against humanity, giving examples of South Kivu province, where the Banyamulenge are bombed by government forces and are subject to persecutions in different cities like Uvira.