A disturbing video is circulating online from DR Congo’s Fizi territory in South Kivu. Seven militiamen recorded themselves committing a brutal sexual assault against a woman. The men who committed the assault, filmed it, and now share it online, were formerly known as Mai-Mai. That is until the Congolese government promoted these Mai-Mai, into the so-called Volontaires pour la Défense de la Patrie, a special military branch. They are better known as VDP Wazalendo - 'patriots' in Swahili. In April 2023, President Tshisekedi's government formally integrated Wazalendo into the national defence framework. The Ministry of Defence of DR Congo, coordinated with provincial governors to organise and recognise these criminal groups to fight M23. On paper, they were civilian volunteers defending territorial integrity. In practice, the state gave impunity and trophy-weapons to Mai-Mai factions with long records of atrocities. President Tshisekedi celebrates their actions as heroic. His spokesperson calls them defenders of the land. Kinshasa backs them politically, militarily, and provides them with the weapons, ammunition, and other logistical support to operate throughout eastern DR Congo. But who are these so-called patriots, and of most dire reflection, are the recent events of Fizi an isolated incident? Blatantly, the answer is no. Before the state armed and celebrated them, it was fully aware of their history. Sexual violence was not their exception – it is their norm. We can confidently state that sexual violence is the Modus Operandi of all Kinshasa-backed militia groups. Many Mai-Mai commanders joined FARDC after 2009 without ever facing accountability. UN reports from 2023 to 2024 document FARDC collusion with these groups, as well as full integration and support for foreign terrorist group FDLR. According to MONUSCO reports, for the period of June-September 2025, DRC State authorities together with its allied Wazalendo militias were responsible for the most human rights violations. UN reports and other human rights gorups have repeatedly documented Wazalendo involvement in rapes, lootings, and executions with no prosecutions. The pattern is clear: impunity became legalization, serving as a green light to more sexual terror. Further north, these militiamen fight M23, a group the Kinshasa regime refers to as unpatriotic and outright non-Congolese. On October 13th, Radio Okapi – a MONUSCO owned media – reported: Violent fighting between the rebels of the AFC-M23 coalition and the Wazalendo fighters continues this Monday, October 13, 2025 in several villages of the Bukombo group, in the territory of Rutshuru in North Kivu. But the details reveal something troubling. The Radio Okapi article singles out fighters under Jean Marie Bonané and the NDC of Guidon Mwisa. The Nduma Defence Force – Mai-Mai Sheka – was indicted by a Congolese military tribunal and sanctioned by the UN Security Council. In 2010, Sheka commanded the mass rape of at least 387 women, men, and children over three days in Walikale. The UN sanctioned him in 2011. His forces kidnapped dozens of women as sex slaves when they withdrew from Pinga in 2013. In 2020, a Congolese military court sentenced Sheka to life for war crimes including murder, sexual slavery, and child soldier recruitment. So when did these convicted mass rapists become state-supported Patriots? Why does Radio Okapi's headline read M23 vs Patriots instead of M23 fighting Congolese-condemned, then Kinshasa-backed, UN-sanctioned rapists? Unless of course, the UN believes any criminal with Kinshasa's backing is automatically patriotic? The parallel to Rwanda's 1994 Interahamwe militia is striking. Interahamwe means those who have come together – a militia formed under the pretext of national self-defense that became the main perpetrator of genocide. Wazalendo means patriots – a label unifying fragmented Mai-Mai militias under national defence. Both use nationalistic vocabularies – “patriot, defender, protector – to mask state-endorsed violence. However, atrocities do not cease to be atrocities even when the state excuses them as defence of the homeland from invaders. The DRC's recognition of Wazalendo echoes Rwanda's 1990s strategy of weaponizing genocidal militias under nationalist rhetoric. This is not about M23 or the UN. It's much more about Kinshasa promoting groups like NDC from Congolese-convicted, UN-sanctioned rapists, to state army reservists. States that back militias like Rwanda's Interahamwe and the DR Congo's Wazalendo, re-package irregular violence, sexual terror, and ethnic persecution into patriotic duty. This promotion is why militiamen like those in Fizi feel safe to record sexual violence and boast about it online. When a state baptizes its rapists as patriots, the line between national defence and national destruction disappears.
