President Paul Kagame has reiterated that Rwanda will always prioritize its security over foreign pressure, dismissing threats of sanctions from some Western nations which falsely blame his country for the decades-long instability in eastern DR Congo. ALSO READ: EAC, SADC leaders approve harmonised plan for FDLR neutralisation In an interview with the French magazine, Jeune Afrique, Kagame maintained that the instability, which has seen mounting tensions between the M23 and the Congolese army coalition lies within DR Congo’s governance failures and the continued presence of a Rwandan genocidal militia, FDLR, in eastern DR Congo. The FDLR is a DR Congo-based terrorist militia founded by remnants of the masterminds of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. ALSO READ: M23 warns of military build-up by FARDC, Burundian forces in South Kivu The Head of State pointed out that the Kinshasa continues to invest in fuelling the instability through ethnic persecution and the use of foreign mercenaries targeting the Kinyarwanda-speaking community in the country. Kagame said: “Between dealing with existential threats and dealing with threats to punish Rwanda for one thing or another, without a second thought, I will turn my guns to the existential threat, as if the other one doesn’t exist. “We are not dealing with a situation that is new to us, we have faced existential threats for years. We had the worst tragedy in 1994. You really come to me and start threatening sanctions because I am defending myself? And you think I have any iota of fear for that?” The 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda saw more than one million people killed in three months. In the lead-up to 1994, lists of Tutsi families and individuals to be killed were drawn up, militias were organized, quantities of weapons were imported and distributed to citizens as tools for work while the international community was watching. Kagame added: “You know, I gave an example, during our last 30th commemoration, in my speech. I told people how an old woman, during the Genocide, before they killed her, the killers asked her to choose how she was going to be killed. And the answer to them was; to spit in their face. That's what this old woman did. “So, you can imagine how much I'm going to spit in the face of anyone who tells me to choose between which death I should face.” FDLR an existential threat Kagame also criticized former colonial powers for their role in the region’s instability and denounced Western double standards. Reacting to the double standards and hypocrisy orchestrated by the West, Kagame emphasised that the world at large must acknowledge the deeper realities of the conflict. ALSO READ: Why genocide ideology doesn’t dissolve three decades after dispersion of genocidaires He reiterated that the threat to Rwanda’s security from FDLR, and the public provocations of Tshisekedi and Burundi, which is evident, has been ignored by the West. Pointing at reports and evidence documented by the United Nations, Kagame said that FDLR remains an existential threat to Rwanda. “They share the same ideology and continue to dream of returning to Rwanda to repeat what they did in 1994. They have taken advantage of the total absence of governance in eastern Congo to settle there. I recall discussing this with President [Felix] Tshisekedi. He claimed that the FDLR was nothing more than a myth.” Sympathising with M23 Based on the facts and evidence, President Kagame said, it is necessary to sympathize with M23, a group that represents a large population that is being persecuted, displaced, and killed in eastern DR Congo. He said Rwanda has hundreds of thousands of Congolese refugees who can attest to that. The Kinyarwanda-speaking Congolese in eastern DR Congo are being persecuted by being associated with the people in Rwanda, the President said, asking why they should not be sympathised with. He said: “Actually, I wonder why wouldn’t anybody be sympathetic to them [M23]. If anybody has a sense of judgement, correct judgement, of identifying the problem as it is! would I sympathise with FDLR in eastern Congo? Do you want me to sympathise with the militias; the wazalendo, that the [Congolese] government has put together to fight this ethnic war? “Do you want me to sympathise with Burundi that has entered this conflict on ethnic basis [and] that is also involved with [the Congolese] government in persecuting these people or fighting them or killing them?” President Kagame earlier described the ongoing conflict in DR Congo as an ethnic war, urging regional leaders to urgently address the crisis that has been spilling over into Rwanda.
