In his Monday column this week, Lonzen Rugira pointed to the hypocrisy in the response to Rwanda’s suspension of the BBC’s Kinyarwanda service. Rugira deplores that official reactions ignored the blatant genocide denial at the core of BBC’s “Untold Story” documentary, and the fact that genocide perpetrators have rejoiced at the legitimization of their claims. At the RPF retreat this past weekend, part of the discussion revolved around this issue. Most agreed that there is nothing new or untold about a major media machine deliberately switching victims into villains or expertly re-arranging historical facts in order to retell the story of the Genocide of the Tutsis, in a way that better suits current geopolitics. But here’s the real story: a group of genocidal militias calling itself FDLR continues to thrive in the DRC 21 years after they were defeated in Rwanda. The sophisticated management (or mis-management, depending on where you stand) of the FDLR is a complex web of intrigue worthy of a new John Le Carré trilogy. I cannot count the number of times I have seen jaws drop when I tell people, including journalists, that the current French head of UN Peacekeeping Operations was France’s representative to the UNSC in 1994. He argued for his country’s decision to create a safe zone that ultimately allowed genocide perpetrators to make their way across the border to then Zaire. But please don’t take my word for it, ask Google, it’s an open secret. The 15 year old peacekeeping force now operating in Eastern DRC was necessitated by the entry of this Rwandan militia, and now costs the UN 1.2 billion USD a year to maintain. The laundering, right in front of our eyes, of this mix of Interahamwe and defeated former Rwandan armed forces into the respectable sounding “Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda” is an astounding achievement. As detailed in the work of Genocide scholar Tom Ndahiro, the sanitization project was a decision taken in concert with European political allies to drop MRND (the ruling political party behind the organization of the Genocide) dissociate itself from Rwanda’s former government and create a new platform that would not have stain of genocide. “FDLR” is literally a rebranding. In between, there has been a long list of UN Security Council sanctions, half-hearted condemnations, alliances with DRC government forces, coddling by dodgy Catholic NGOs, UN-operated flights to Rome for their various officers despite travel bans, and shock declarations of support by a regional leader for ideological, or maybe lack of ideological, reasons. There has also been a long criminal trial of the top FDLR leaders in Stuttgart that has largely been ignored by all but one German newspaper. It has taken Rwanda’s diplomacy more than 20 years to begin to forge an international consensus that FDLR is not a legitimate political opposition, but rather the inheritors of genocide ideology. But they are still alive and well right where they have been since 1994. The reason they continue to exist after so many years is because at each moment since 1995, the FDLR in its various forms, has served someone else’s agenda: France, Catholic institutions, DRC and by proxy, other entities in the region and beyond. Essentially, anyone with an axe to grind against the Rwandan project, including those who thought they could use the FDLR lever to pressure Rwanda into abandoning its reconciliation and development agenda. What is clear is FDLR does not exist because of anything that’s wrong with Rwanda. But the episode does help us clarify certain important matters, allowing us, and the world, to see through the confidence trick that has been played all these years. There are no perfect countries, not even the most advanced can claim to have reached their ideals. What would be truly interesting is a point by point comparison of the level of violations and abuse per capita, in every country, based on open data. But that wouldn’t do for places like Rwanda, because apparently we are not countries run by adults. So beware, we are being managed. The real untold story remains just that, untold.
