The world must finally speak up, confront Tshisekedi for what he is doing: Genocide

It’s been a long time since Congolese ruler Felix Tshisekedi embarked on his campaign of pogroms and ethnic cleansing targeting the Tutsi communities of the eastern part of his country. ALSO READ: US congressman warns of ‘possible genocide’ against Rwandophones in DR Congo Tshisekedi’s military, the FARDC, together with the notorious genocidal FDLR militia – an outfit that rose from the remnants of the defeated Interahamwe militia and the former Rwandan military (the ex-FAR), both of which were the main perpetrators of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda – as well as a slew of other Congolese militias under the banner “Wazalendo”, have targeted Congolese Tutsi citizens with unspeakable crimes against humanity. That is no longer news. The Internet is awash with videos, and other gory images of Tshisekedi’s coalition of terror perpetrating massacres of helpless Tutsi civilians, and a number of other heinous atrocities. There are multiple videos of the houses of the Tutsi getting razed to the ground. There are stories of rapes amidst the massacres and looting. There are images of Tutsi-owned livestock that have been hacked around the legs, or mutilated in a variety of other ways, by pro-Tshisekedi militia who eat them. We have seen horror images of pro-Tshisekedi louts even eating flesh of their human victims. In one particularly sickening incident, a member (apparently) of Tshisekedi’s ruling party’s militia was parading the severed head of a Tutsi man in the streets. Such are the deeds of the government of Felix Antoine Tshisekedi Tshilombo. ALSO READ: UN confirms FDLR active in DR Congo, warns of genocide Inevitably, multitudes of Tutsis have fled their homes, becoming either internally displaced refugees, or crossing borders into neighboring countries. At this point, it is quite puzzling that the world hasn’t yet spoken up, to tell Tshisekedi that it sees what he is doing – which is that he, and his government, are engaged in the worst crime known to humanity. What the Congolese ruler, his henchmen, and all the groups complicit in his campaign of terror against Congolese Tutsi citizens, are doing is well-defined in the UN Convention on Genocide. That important document says, “Genocide is a crime committed with the intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, in whole or in part.” The government in Kinshasa is, in word and deed, actively targeting the Tutsi ethnicity for extermination. That is beyond any reasonable doubt at this moment. Whatever reasons Tshisekedi or his allies come up with; whatever they say to try to justify what their military, and allied terror groups, are doing in places like Goma, Masisi, Rutshuru, Sake, Minembwe, and other traditional homelands of Congolese Rwandophones, their atrocious deeds fall under the definition of genocide. It is an inescapable fact. ALSO READ: Calls grow to prevent genocide in DR Congo Tshisekedi and his people have chosen the path of genocide and other crimes against humanity, and there isn’t a thing they will ever do to deny it once the time for reckoning is upon them. The cabal in Kinshasa can scream that they are fighting the M23 rebels – a rebel movement that actually came into being to protect the beleaguered Tutsi communities against the pogroms and ethnic cleansing targeting their communities and to assert their rights as full Congolese citizens – but is Tshisekedi and his henchmen then trying to pass off wholesale massacres of villages full of civilians, the rape, looting and similar crimes, as legitimate means of retaliation against M23? ALSO READ: M23 renews call for action against 'DR Congo-backed genocide' Their accusations against the rebel group obviously would never wash in any international tribunal that were to be set up to try such crimes. Kinshasa, through its mouthpiece Patrick Muyaya for instance, can repeatedly hurl accusations at Rwanda that it (Rwanda) is backing M23. But have they ever paused to ask themselves how they can claim they are fighting Rwanda by raping women, or burning the houses of pastoralist villagers, or using Interahamwe type machete-wielding goons at roadblocks to kill unarmed civilians, and other atrocities? If the time were to come, and they faced an international court to answer for their crimes, how much of a mitigating factor do they think it would be, to claim (with nothing in the form of proof or evidence moreover) that the massacres, looting, rape and other war crimes, happened because “Rwanda was behind M23?!” How would the many crimes captured on video, and now on the Internet, for all to see, showing FARDC, and FDLR, or Wazalendo and similar cutthroat groups in the pay of Kinshasa, not be enough to indict the authors of those crimes? These and similar questions are what SADC (in actual sense South Africa), or Burundi, countries that have thrown in their lot with Kinshasa, need to begin asking themselves too. They are the same questions that Monusco, the UN force that has been in the DR Congo now for a quarter of a century – but never neutralized even one amongst the many criminal armed groups terrorizing Congolese civilians – needs to ask itself. This is especially so amidst reports that Monusco, contrary to its mandate, has taken sides in the DR Congo conflict, and is now fighting M23, de-facto joining Tshisekedi’s coalition. Never Again should mean Never Again, and the evil of the genocide currently going on in DR Congo urgently needs to be called out, together with all the people that side with the perpetrators.

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The world must finally speak up, confront Tshisekedi for what he is doing: Genocide