Sanctioning Rwanda has never freed DR Congo. On March 2, 2026, the U.S. Treasury announced sanctions on officers of Rwanda's Defence Force for alleged support to M23. The move was celebrated by Congolese officials. It reminded me of a protest sign from Rwanda's 1962 independence day: Get rid of the Tutsi, not Belgians! Viva Rwanda, Viva Belgium, Viva the UN! Sixty-four years on, the tune is the same: get rid of the Tutsi, embrace the West. Viva DR Congo, Viva Trump, Viva MONUSCO. The bitter irony is that these sanctions endanger Congolese lives – as the genocidal FDLR themselves confirmed. In their official communiqué N°003/FDLR-H/2026, issued from Uvira the very next day, they welcomed the American decision, thanked the Trump administration, and reaffirmed their indéfectible support for the FARDC. When a genocidal armed movement celebrates your foreign policy, something has gone wrong. This is not a new failure. It is a recurring one. I must repeat it: Rwanda has never been the darling of the West. Arrogantly ignorant Western politics have sabotaged the lives of Africans in the Great Lakes Region since they first “discovered” our communities – and that sabotage has yet to cease. The hatred of Tutsi in this region did not occur naturally. The widespread belief, that it stemmed from colonial privileges in Rwanda, then from RPF/RDF invasions for mineral gain, is a fallacy. Swiss 'White Father' André Perraudin, Archbishop of Kabgayi from 1956 to 1989, introduced it. In his 1959 Lenten Pastoral letter Super Omnia Caritas, he preached the Hutu as perennial victims of Tutsi feudal rule, providing theological authority to ethnic division. That letter entered politics, took root, and thirty-five years later, Rwandan churches became slaughterhouses. The script was European. The blood was ours. That same script traveled east. Operation Turquoise – under UN mandate – did not save survivors of the genocide. It escorted the genocidaires into eastern Congo under the banner of humanitarian intervention. Never Again had already become infrastructure for Western guilt management, rather than actual recognition of wrongs and the value of persecuted minority groups, namely the Tutsi. A slogan to invoke, not a principle to act on. The FDLR are the direct continuation of that unfinished business and the truest measure of what arrogant ignorance costs. This is the institution that pioneered systematic rape as a weapon of war so comprehensively it forced the world to recognize sexual violence as a crime against humanity: landmark Akayesu judgment at the ICTR. They did not stop. They transformed eastern DR Congo into the rape capital of the world. President Tshisekedi embedded the guilty into the national army (FARDC) and state reserve force (VDP Wazalendo). He also handed FDLR control of Rubaya's coltan mines, roughly 15% of global tantalum supply, funding years of insurgency until M23 displaced them in April 2024. The FDLR is a genocide in gestation, and the Congolese state is the body sustaining it. Under the UN, armed groups rose from 40 to over 200 in the east. The FDLR taught Mai-Mai to lynch and consume Banyamulenge flesh, CODECO of Ituri to skewer the Hema, all while ‘cockroach’ songs pump through the umbilical cord of the Congolese state spokesperson Muyaya's #PoisonRwandais campaign. To all this, the world is unconcerned. The FDLR did not bring instability to DR Congo despite the international community's efforts. They brought it because of them. The standard cannot be Never Again for some and Never Mind for others. As long as the defense of targeted communities is prosecuted as aggression, DR Congo will never abort the genocide fetus it carries.
