Congolese president Felix Tshisekedi has never kept secret his ambitions of causing violent regime change in Rwanda. He has even more hairbrained schemes, of which it doesn’t take much mental energy to decipher. ALSO READ: Hate speech and incitement in DR Congo; why does world remain indifferent? Start with the fact of Kinshasa officials and propagandists have stepped up assertions that (all) Tutsi communities of DR Congo are “Rwandans and should go back to Rwanda”. Why is this happening with more vehemence, even as they are stepping up the killings in Minembwe, Uvira, and other homelands of Congolese Tutsi populations? ALSO READ: A message to those wishing ill on Rwandan society; you waste only your time In any case, it bears repeating, even a thousand times: the Banyamulenge and other Tutsi groups of the east of the vast country are Congolese because of historical circumstances they had no control over. Colonizing forces came and made their territories part of the so-called ‘Belgian Congo’. Even the Congolese government, from the country’s president downwards, accepts that the Banyamulenge and other Tutsi communities from the Kivus indeed are Congolese. In private. ALSO READ: Genocide ideology was allowed to grow in DR Congo In a revelation in a now famous video from a couple of years back, Kenyan president William Ruto, talking about a behind-the-doors peace mediation session on eastern DR Congo, said: “we asked the Congolese, is M23 Congolese, or not?, The Congolese replied yes, they are Congolese!” Those are the words of a president with absolutely no reason to lie about something like that. But apparently, Tshisekedi and his people like to say one thing behind closed doors, but something else in public, when their audience (masses of Congolese) are listening. ALSO READ: Why Genocide ideology must be fought without mercy In forums where no cameras or recorders are present, they will accept that indeed the Banyamulenge or Hema or other ethnic Tutsi natives of DR Congo indeed are fellow Congolese. But the moment they are talking to Congolese masses they will insist they - Banyamulenge and others - are foreigners! This willingness by Tshisekedists to contradict themselves isn’t surprising though. They are engaged in the logic of genocide. And they know its playbook well: falsely label the targeted group to call them foreigners, then issue them ultimatums to ‘go back where they came from!’ And then afterwards accompany this rhetoric with words that dehumanized the victims: “cockroaches”, “snakes”, “vermin”, similar other things, and voilà! You’ve created the perfect environment for mass killings, rape, looting, and other crimes against humanity. One has to say, Tshisekedi and his people have been very adept at applying the methods of the perpetrators of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. Which is hardly surprising really, given they are in bed with FDLR - the notorious genocidal militia of self-exiled Rwandans bent on carrying forward the mission of their forebears; the extremists that planned, and perpetrated the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. ALSO READ: An open letter to DR Congo’s verbose minister Patrick Muyaya Individuals like Patrick Muyaya, Kinshasa’s minister of information and media, or Justin Bitakwira, a member of the Congolese parliament, or former justice minister Constant Mutamba, to name only a few, are constantly saying things about people like the Banyamulenge that “otherize” them; that inculcate the idea these “are not true Congolese” - of course implying they are Rwandan. They use hate speech at every opportunity, to plant ever more anti-Tutsi hate in the wider Congolese population. ALSO READ: Patrick Muyaya and the politics of hate But then, they use the context of the ongoing conflict with AFC/M23 to inculcate hate not only for the Banyamulenge, but for Rwanda as well. All this is important for Tshisekedi’s twin project of ethnic cleansing in his country, and destabilization of Rwanda. What some fail to see, behind these frequent provocations by the Tshisekedi government, is another important equation in the calculus behind state terrorism against DR Congo’s Tutsi populations. It is a strategy of which the first strand is to harass the Banyamulenge through constant acts of genocide or ethnic cleansing, bombings by drones and fighter aircraft, lynchings, destruction of their property, slaughter and eating of their livestock, and more. And then afterwards when Kinshasa forces; its army, FARDC, as well as their Burundian allies, the genocidal FDLR militia from Rwanda, and other allies succeed in overrunning the AFC/M23 defenses, all these factors would induce a wholesale exodus of terrified Congolese (Tutsi) civilians into Rwanda. Millions of them! The Tshisekedists must be fantasizing what a big social upheaval that would be for Rwanda; probably enough to destabilize the Rwandan government. Tshisekedi after all has never kept secret his ambitions of either exporting violent conflict to Rwanda, or fomenting instability there. He, and his Burundian counterpart are on record, more than once, fantasizing about “regime change in Kigali”. Such are the minds of the kind of leaders that long ago abdicated their responsibilities of governance and instead bet everything on fomenting endless conflict - all the while alleging “Rwanda aggression”. No mirror accusations can be more blatant than this. The writer is a journalist and media consultant.
