Apprehension over the increasing proliferation of hate speech and violence against Rwandans and Congolese Tutsi in eastern DR Congo continued Monday, June 20. This was as regional leaders met in Nairobi, Kenya for the third EAC Heads of State Conclave, trying to find a way towards lasting peace. The victimized Congolese and Rwandan communities worry that the stigmatization and torment of Kinyarwanda-speaking Congolese calling on them to return to Rwanda is not ending. Jean Baptiste Gasominari, 48, a Tutsi from North Kivu Province who lives in Rwanda, told The New Times that his community deserves to be treated and protected just like any other Congolese. Gasominari said: “My message to President Tshisekedi is clear: Tutsi community members need to be treated like any other Congolese citizens and have the right to life and well-being like any other citizen.” “And, to the other regional leaders, kindly help restore peace and security in the eastern DRC and bring to book the people responsible for the hate speech and killings of innocent civilians because of their ethnic origin.” What is happening in DR Congo today, Gasominari said, is a continuation of what has happened to the Tutsi community ever since his country got independence. “They were subjected to killings in the 1962 to1963 war that was labelled the Kanyarwanda war. In 1964, during the [Pierre] Mulele rebellion, the Tutsi were subject to killings, torture, and imprisonment and looting of their cattle because they were allegedly considered accomplices of Mulele whom they did not even know.” In 1992 and 1993, a significant number of their members were killed and their cattle looted during another civil conflict opposing Kinyarwanda and non-Kinyarwanda speaking communities in North Kivu province. “In 1994, when the former government of Rwanda forces and Interahamwe militia crossed the border into DRC, the Tutsi in my country were targeted, many were killed, all their cattle looted. The survivors were forced out of their homes and obliged to go into exile in neighbouring countries like Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania and Uganda.” Gasominari and some members of his family fled the DR Congo in 1994 when Rwanda’s former genocidal regime’s defeated forces and Interahamwe militia “attacked our villages, looted our cattle.” The Congolese Tutsi community in Minembwe, South Kivu Province, is also targeted for ethnic cleansing. Genocide scholar Tom Ndahiro, on twitter, noted that he is sure DR Congo president Félix Tshisekedi, the UN Mission in DR Congo (MONUSCO), and other top Congolese government officials, “can’t say they don’t see the involvement of security organs in public incitement & persecution of Rwandans /Tutsi.” Ndahiro indicated that all the leaders who are turning a blind eye to the ongoing persecution of Rwandans and Kinyarwanda-speaking Congolese are responsible. He tweeted a video showing Congolese military and police officers joined by civilians marching in Maniema Province in a demonstration calling for the Tutsi or Rwandans to get out of the Province within 24 hours or be killed. Instead of quickly putting an end to, and condemning the violence and proliferation of hate speech against the Tutsi and Rwandans, there is general denial in Kinshasa. The ruling party in DR Congo, l’Union pour la Démocratie et le Progrès Social (UDPS) distanced itself from videos of its members blandishing machetes and intimidating people, by saying the videos are a “manipulation.”
