Throughout the whole of 2024, I’ve been struck by one thing: the sheer energy of the forces that wish to take us back to the darkness of inter-ethnic strife, upheaval, and genocide. Of course, those bent on dredging differences between our two main ethnicities – Hutu and Tutsi – have never rested, battling the idea of unity and togetherness the RPF has tirelessly worked to promote, right from the first moment it formed a government in Kigali. The tribalists vowed to never give up their fight to restore the rule of rubanda nyamwinshi – a dog whistle of a term for “Hutu supremacy” rule. Even when they fled after perpetrating one of the Twentieth century’s worst crimes, they vowed to come back, to end what they had started. We know how this story unfolded. From then Zaire, where the ex-FAR and Interahamwe militias took over the running of the refugee camps where they, and hundreds of thousands of civilians they had herded before them, were. With the support of the regime in Zaire, they tried to reorganise, to re-invade Rwanda. Long story short, they failed. The army of the new Rwanda wasn’t into games, and it thoroughly routed them. Even then, they had much support, in the European Diaspora mainly. There, the big fish genocidaires were to be found – starting with the wife of former President Juvenal Habyarimana - Agathe Kanziga as well as other fugitives that had served in her husband’s government; fugitives from justice for the worst crimes against humanity. At the vanguard of the plot to bring back ethnic extermination to Rwanda was Ignace Murwanashyaka, new leader of the ex-FAR and Interahamwe – two groups that after a few years had become the FDLR that’s been terrorizing civilian populations in eastern DRC since. FDLR as a group was formed in Kinshasa by the way, in 2000, with Murwanashyaka as “president” and one Straton Musoni as his deputy. The complicity of Kinshasa with these killers isn’t new, only that the current regime there has taken it to a new level. Anyway, the two FDLR leaders eventually were apprehended, with Murwanashyaka ending up in jail in Germany, while Musoni was deported to Kigali, thanks to efforts by teams of dedicated Rwandans and international allies joined in the struggle against the evil they stood for. But others took their place. Also, even when men like Murwanashyaka or Musoni ended up facing trial for their crimes, other genocide fugitives; suspects in unspeakable crimes in Rwanda who hide in various African countries, in Europe, and further afield simply carried on with their agenda. As did Victoire Ingabire, the true “spiritual head of FDLR”. As do the sons of Agathe Kanziga, or the Jambo ASBL, a so-called non-profit association that serves as a front for FDLR in Belgium, to mention only a few that have never stopped in their plotting to bring ethnic cleansing back here. Now, these groups courtesy of Felix Tshisekedi in DRC, have a new lease of life. They have someone that’s ready to lavish money and other resources on them, and push their agenda in ways they would never have imagined. With this big ally in Kinshasa, the forces of darkness have a new intensity in pushing their poison of ethnic hate through various social media, not mentioning those Western-based media that provide an audience for their agenda. The people are determined to keep the lie alive that “Hutus and Tutsis are completely different, and are destined to hate each other forever”. The unspoken idea here is that in a tribal war Hutus would prevail due to superior numbers, which is what the extremists ultimately want – seizing power via a sea of the blood of innocents, Just like their forebears of Parmehutu, or MRND. It’s beyond sad that in this day and age, in the middle of the third decade of the twenty-first century, this is what people have to be worried about, fight, and guard against. This is the existential evil that Rwanda is faced with, and one that all good people (not just Rwandans) must oppose, at every turn. It’s a threat that’s now much invigorated by a regime in DRC that shares the exact same ideology of ethnic hate as the FDLR which it’s closely allied with, no wonder. It’s a threat that in fact has new victims: eastern DR Congo’s Tutsi herder and pastoralist communities that the Tshisekedi regime has designated “Rwandans, and therefore enemies”. This same Tshisekedi has bonded with the president of Burundi, Evariste Ndayishimiye, first to side with him in incessant utterances of threats against Rwanda; in forming a military alliance against Rwanda; and in propagating the evil lie that “Kagame is a vanguard of Tutsi rule over the Hutu” – the latter whom, for good measure, they remind everyone are “Bantu”. And Tshisekedi propagandists have the audacity to claim Rwanda’s decision to take further defensive measures along its borders with DR Congo is “aggression”! The primitive, backward ideas that Tshisekedi and his Burundian sidekick espouse are, if not anything else, a terrible affront to morality and should be completely unacceptable to all people of good conscience everywhere. The Great Lakes Region cannot afford to allow further oxygen to this evil. As we enter 2025, all good people, all morally upstanding individuals can do something, no matter how small, to push back against the lies, the misinformation, the propaganda of the genocidal coalitions, whose morally bankrupt center is to be found in Kinshasa. The least each of us can do is to challenge every bit of misinformation, lie, mischaracterization of facts, or distortion of history, with truth. With facts. And with a determination to not let those that make harmful utterances get away unchallenged.
