In a conversation on the One Nation Radio X platform, on May 3, Congolese lawyer and former minister, and lawmaker Moïse Nyarugabo warned that, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, genocide ideology targeting the Congolese Tutsi is no longer a risk but a reality in motion. From definition to acts of genocide Nyarugabo began our conversation by going back to the legal definition of genocide under the UN Convention, emphasizing that its constituent acts are not cumulative: murder, serious bodily or mental harm, deliberately inflicting conditions of life to bring about destruction, preventing births and transferring children. Any one of these acts, committed with genocidal intent, suffices. ALSO READ: Bisiimwa condemns Kinshasa’s blockade on Minembwe amid Doha talks I asked him if these elements exist today in DR Congo with respect to Congolese Tutsi of North and South Kivu. He answered unequivocally that “there is not only the persistence of genocide ideology against the Tutsi, but there are concrete acts of genocide” and that the ideology is therefore in full action. ALSO READ: DR Congo army blamed for drone attack that killed 20 civilians, injured dozens He pointed to daily killings and repeated bombardments by drones and heavy artillery against villages in the High Plateaus, Masisi and Rutshuru, and to the deliberate blockade of Minembwe by the Congolese army (FARDC), Burundian forces (FDNB), Wazalendo militias, the Kinshasa-backed genocidal FDLR militia from Rwanda and foreign mercenaries. This siege, he argued, cuts off access to fields, markets, hospitals, medicines and even basic items like salt, while crops are destroyed and cattle methodically slaughtered. For him, this is a textbook example of “conditions of existence” designed to destroy a group. ALSO READ: How Burundian troops in South Kivu sparked a distinct humanitarian crisis amid DR Congo’s wider war Classification, symbolization, dehumanization Drawing on historian Gregory H. Stanton’s “ten stages of genocide,” Nyarugabo unpacked how classification, symbolization and dehumanization are now deeply embedded in Congolese political culture. He described a pervasive narrative which claims that “there exist no Congolese Tutsi”; that “every Tutsi is Rwandan”; that “the Rwandan is the enemy”. He explains that “Rwandan” in Congolese political language no longer refers to citizenship but to physical features. ALSO READ: 80-year-old Congolese reflects on lifetime of injustice, attacks in DR Congo “It’s the facies,” he said. “Wherever they come from... it’s their face, to say they are not like us.” Symbolization, he continued, is visible in the media. Only Tutsi‑linked groups are systematically ethnicized: “We say ‘the Tutsi rebellion’, ‘the Banyamulenge rebels’, ‘the Tutsi Banyamulenge rebels’,” while the hundreds of other armed groups are never labeled by tribe, only by their commanders. The result, he noted, is that “when a Tutsi commits an offence... all the Tutsi are being held accountable,” whereas crimes by other groups are never projected onto their entire community. ALSO READ: Belgian lawyer on why genocide ideology doesn’t dissolve three decades after dispersion of genocidaires On dehumanization, Nyarugabo pointed to the repeated use of words such as “vermin,” “cockroach,” “virus” and “snake” to describe Tutsi—terms used by officials and echoed by online activists. This is not just noise on social media, he insisted, but a central “driver of genocide,” shaping imagery, perceptions and emotions that make mass violence thinkable. State involvement and hate speech For genocide to unfold, Nyarugabo stressed, state complicity or leadership is crucial. He accused state media of playing a central role by demonizing Tutsi communities while normalizing military operations that target their villages. He recalled the televised speech on national broadcaster RTNC last December by Gen Sylvain Ekenge, then army spokesperson, who publicly urged Congolese men not to marry Tutsi women, portraying them as manipulative and diabolical. This was not, in his view, “a slip of the tongue” but a written, vetted text read in uniform “and therefore on mission.” “He did not say ‘some Tutsi women’,” Nyarugabo observed. “He said ‘the Tutsi women’, all, without exception.” The “sanction”, which was a temporary suspension, was, he argued, a reward in disguise: “That’s an encouragement... a valiant soldier told to rest at home for the hard work accomplished.” He also highlighted the way the Kinyarwanda word, ubwenge, has been twisted in these discourses. Used by propagandists, including Ekenge, as shorthand for Tutsi malice, it actually means “intelligence.” “Those who are against intelligence have chosen stupidity. Those who attack intelligence have chosen idiocy,” Nyarugabo said. Redefining ubwenge as “malice,” he argued, is part of a broader project of turning excellence itself into a crime. Nationality as a weapon: Being Tutsi is considered a crime Nyarugabo went on to analyze how nationality law and anti‑Rwandophone sentiment are being instrumentalized, taking the case of former president Joseph Kabila as an example. He described Kabila’s recent trial as a “parody of justice,” in which prosecutors spent millions of public dollars promising to prove that Kabila was neither Congolese nor the son of Laurent‑Désiré Kabila, but Rwandan. Yet the final judgment, he noted, explicitly recognized Joseph Kabila as Congolese and as his father’s son. Despite this, the public narrative of “Kabila the Rwandan” persists. “In the mind of ordinary people, being Rwandan is a crime—and it is a crime for which there is no investigation needed, no trial,” he argued. “When they say you are Rwandan, you are already sentenced to death.” Cannibalistic violence against Tutsi in eastern DR Congo, filmed and shared without shame and met with total impunity, is, in his view, one horrific consequence of this logic. Today, he added, the same mechanism is turned against anyone who diverges from the regime’s line: “Anyone who does not respond to the orders of the current regime becomes Rwandan.” In practice, he emphasized, “Rwandan” is understood as “Tutsi,” reinforcing the genocidal framing. Sanctions, death penalty and a peace process undermined Nyarugabo linked the recent U.S. Treasury sanctions against Joseph Kabila to what he sees as a drift toward tyranny in Kinshasa and a selective approach by the international community that will not yield peace. Under Kabila, he recalled, a moratorium on the death penalty was in place. Under President Félix Tshisekedi, it has been lifted, and death sentences have surged at the very moment the regime presents political opponents and presumed “Rwandans” as existential threats. ALSO READ: Kabila says US sanctions ‘unjustified, politically motivated’ In this context, he sees a paradox in sanctioning a former head of state who has already effectively been placed “on death row” by a politicized Congolese trial. Such measures, he argued, “have nothing to do with law or the quest for truth or justice,” but serve primarily to reinforce Tshisekedi’s position. ALSO READ: Who really benefits from the war in eastern DR Congo? He is particularly critical of the fact that Washington, while positioning itself as mediator between Kinshasa and the AFC/M23, has sanctioned only one side - the rebellion, and then Kabila for alleged proximity to it - without any comparable measures against the Congolese government, despite well‑documented abuses, bombardments and alliances with sanctioned armed groups. This asymmetry, he warned, amounts to giving “a blank check” to one party, encouraging hard‑line military options and deepening impunity. One‑sided sanctions, he concluded, cannot credibly support a negotiated settlement or bring lasting peace. Drones, Red Tabara and the ‘axis of evil’ Turning to the High Plateaus, Nyarugabo explained that since 2017 more than 480 Banyamulenge villages have been burned, over 500,000 cattle looted and thousands of civilians killed. Since the assassination of Gen Michel Makanika by drone, bombardments have intensified, with drones and Sukhoi jets targeting villages, churches, local radios, schools, the few remaining health facilities and herds. “There are days when it starts bombing at 10 p.m. until six or seven in the morning... sometimes three to six times a day,” he said. The Banyamulenge, he argued, now face the choice between death by explosives and death by hunger or disease. ALSO READ: What are the motivations of Burundi’s military intervention in South Kivu? He accused the Congolese government of forming an “axis of evil” with Burundi, FDLR combatants, Wazalendo militias and foreign mercenaries, using Congolese territory to wage a de facto war on Tutsi populations under the pretext of fighting the Burundian rebel group Red Tabara. For Nyarugabo, that pretext does not withstand scrutiny. Red Tabara fighters, he stressed, are Burundians, not Congolese, not Rwandans and certainly not Banyamulenge. When they first arrived in the High Plateaus, they operated alongside Mai‑Mai/Wazalendo groups and “together they destroyed Banyamulenge villages and looted their livestock.” After a political realignment, those same Mai‑Mai became allies of the Burundian army and of Kinshasa. Red Tabara fled into the forests of Mwenga and are now absent from Banyamulenge localities. He directly challenged Burundian and Congolese authorities to name a single Banyamulenge village where Red Tabara are present. If Burundi’s true objective were neutralizing Red Tabara, he argued, its forces would not be spread from Rutshuru, Kitchanga and Rubaya to Mushaki, Ngungu, Goma, Bukavu, Mwenga, Kamituga and Lulenge. For him, the breadth and geography of Burundian deployment show that Red Tabara are a cover story. The real common denominator between Presidents Évariste Ndayishimiye and Félix Tshisekedi, he argued, is a shared genocidal ideology against Tutsi, using Congolese soil as the staging ground for a war ostensibly against “Rwanda” but concretely against Congolese Tutsi communities. Gatumba, Ituri and the selective outrage of the international community Situating current violence in a longer regional history, Nyarugabo revisited the 2004 Gatumba massacre of Banyamulenge refugees on Burundian soil, where 166 people were killed in a camp whose Banyamulenge section was the only one attacked. The nearby section hosting other communities and Burundian returnees, only a few dozen metres away, suffered no casualties. Years of legal efforts by survivors, including complaints before Burundian courts and the International Criminal Court, have produced no meaningful accountability, he noted. He drew parallels with Ituri, where Hema communities, who are also perceived as Tutsi, have been repeatedly targeted by CODECO militias despite a state of siege. Referring to a provincial governor’s statement presenting a CODECO assault on a Hema village as mere “reaction,” he argued that official language there, too, normalizes collective punishment of minority groups. For Nyarugabo, the international response is driven more by interests than by principles. Major powers, he said, “do not see Congo as a country with citizens, but as a mineral deposit,” and Congolese lives “do not have the same value” as those of foreigners. He pointed to the global outcry that followed the death of a French citizen in Goma after a drone incident, contrasted with the silence surrounding drone strikes that kill Congolese Tutsi in the High Plateaus. “Either we live together like brothers...” Nyarugabo insisted that coexistence remains both necessary and possible. He recalled telling voters in Uvira: “Either we will accept to live together like brothers, or we will die together like idiots”. Living together in Congo and with neighboring countries, he argued, is “non‑negotiable”. Only the way in which people live together is open to discussion. What is missing, in his view, is a leadership ready to criminalize and punish tribalism, discrimination and hate speech, and to choose dialogue over a “tyrannical and oppressive” war policy. “When the struggle becomes existential, when we fight for survival, no army, no weapon can hold,” he said, citing the failure of thousands of Congolese and Burundian soldiers and mercenaries to capture Minembwe. He ended with a vision of a Congo “without the taste to crush, without the pleasure of killing and inflicting wounds,” led by people who reject revenge and tribalism and accept that every citizen—whatever their name, language or face—has an equal right to live. Dr. Bojana Coulibaly is a conflict discourse researcher and analyst on the Great Lakes.
