Nearly thirty years after the 1994 Rwandan Genocide against the Tutsis, its legacy continues to impact the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The Rwandan government invokes the narrative of preventing further genocide as justification for its interference in Congo, claiming to protect persecuted Congolese Tutsi. However, Rwanda’s involvement has also fueled resentment and backlash against Congolese Tutsi, echoing the situation of the Tutsi population inside Rwanda in the years leading up to the genocide.
The origins of Congo’s enduring troubles can be traced to the massive exodus of over 2 million Hutu refugees into Congo shortly after the 1994 genocide. This influx of genocidal killers, armed soldiers of the former Rwandan Armed Forces (FAR) and innocent civilians fueled unrest. These Hutu refugees reorganized into rebel groups like the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR). Their attacks prompted Rwanda’s first, legitimate cross-border operations.
It is unclear whether the FDLR, now with an estimated 2,000 fighters, still poses a real threat to Rwanda. Over time, Rwanda’s involvement grew into economic exploitation and regional influence, justified by the need to protect Congolese Tutsi from “genocide.” Yet the way it treats survivors at home and Congolese Tutsi refugees tells a different story.
Silencing Genocide Survivors
In Rwanda, the current regime silences and marginalizes any survivor who dares to question the official narrative, which demands unquestioning loyalty. This narrative portrays RPF rebel forces led by current President Paul Kagame as heroic saviors who single-handedly “stopped the genocide” in 1994, ignoring the reality that the genocide reached every inch of Rwanda and that the RPF arrived too late for the more than one million Tutsi already killed. It implies that all Tutsi survivors “owe their lives” to the RPF, along with eternal gratitude and servitude.
Survivors seen as dissenting, or who join a political party of their choice, face intimidation, imprisonment, mysterious deaths, or violent silencing even decades later. Outspoken survivors abroad, like me, face organized online harassment and threats to our families back home for challenging Rwanda’s polished image.
Manipulating Congolese Tutsi for Rwandan Interests
The Rwandan regime uses Congolese Tutsis for its own interests while ignoring their plight. Most of their family members are now scattered across five refugee camps in Rwanda, forced to survive on Rwf 5,700 ($5) per person per month. Over 70,000 Congolese Tutsis have languished in these dire conditions for nearly three decades. While discrimination against Congolese Tutsis is certainly real, Rwanda’s intentions are questionable.
Dissenting Congolese Tutsi refugees who resist forced conscription into Rwanda’s proxy forces or show disloyalty face ruthless suppression both in Rwanda and Congo.
In 2017, Rwanda reportedly provided support for brutal attacks by the rebel group Red Tabara against the Banyamulenge Tutsi community in South Kivu, killing people and burning their villages for alleged collaboration with Rwandan opposition groups, RNC/P-5.
In 2018, Rwandan police opened fire on Congolese Tutsi refugees protesting aid cuts at a UN refugee camp in Kibuye, killing 12 refugees, according to UNHCR. Rwandan authorities have not said how many people were killed, nor have they identified or punished those responsible.
At the same time, Rwanda supports armed Congolese Tutsi groups like M23 to defend them from an “ongoing genocide in eastern Congo.” Rwanda officially denies this, but many countries and all international rights groups have confirmed it. But this support comes at a grave cost.
By directly supporting M23’s actions in Congo and explicitly linking the group to Rwandan power, the Rwandan regime has stoked resentment and hatred toward Congolese Tutsi as a whole. Many Congolese now view their Tutsi compatriots as foreign “puppets” disrupting Congo, their own country, at Rwanda’s behest.
While the roots of the conflict were not originally ethnic in nature, Rwanda’s repeated meddling has fueled anti-Tutsi sentiments, redirecting ordinary Congolese anger from their own dysfunctional government onto their fellow Congolese Tutsi civilians.
Echoes of the Situation of Tutsis Inside Rwanda Before 1994
By using Congolese Tutsi as a justification and demanding their unquestioning loyalty to its political interests, Rwanda puts them at risk. This echoes the RPF rebels’ manipulation of Rwandan Tutsis in the years prior to the 1994 genocide.
In the lead-up to the Rwandan genocide, many Tutsi families within Rwanda provided moral and material support to the RPF rebels, believing the RPF’s convincing pledges to liberate Rwanda and end the persecution of Tutsis. But the RPF shared almost nothing about its military plans and paid little attention to the safety of the Tutsis trapped inside Rwanda. This left the Rwandan Tutsi population unprepared when the genocide erupted.
More than one million Tutsis inside Rwanda were then methodically slaughtered, simply for being Tutsi and as suspected accomplices of the RPF rebels. The RPF ultimately took power out of the genocide’s ashes in July 1994, while we survivors were left to mourn everyone and everything we had lost.
Now, I fear that three decades later, history could repeat itself next door in Congo as some Congolese Tutsi civilians find themselves similarly used as dispensable Rwandan proxies and scapegoats. Just as the RPF callously exploited the trust of Tutsis within Rwanda, it will likely abandon its Congolese allies once their value is depleted. Yet many seem not to heed these warnings.
A fatal mistake
In 1994, we made a similar fatal mistake. We overlooked early warnings about the RPF rebels’ intentions. We heard accounts of young Tutsi recruits from Rwanda being executed by RPF forces soon after joining the rebels’ ranks. Merely being educated or fluent in French spurred suspicion and jealousy among the mostly exiled Ugandan RPF ‘Afandes'( senior rebel soldiers). These youths would be accused of being enemy spies then ruthlessly killed via rebel practice known as “Gufanyiya.”
We may never know how many were killed this way. With a heavy heart, I write this for those brave young people, killed by their own liberation movement, and for justice. It should no longer go unspoken just because it is painful for survivors.
These murders already exposed rifts between the RPF’s inner circle and Rwanda’s Tutsi trapped inside the country. And they foreshadowed greater betrayals to come, as seen in the marginalization of genocide survivors that persists today.
The warning signs were there, but we missed them. Had we seen their hunger for power sooner, perhaps less blood would have paved their way to it.
In retrospect, it has become clear that the RPF rebel leaders from Uganda harbored deep-rooted prejudices and resentment towards Tutsis who did not flee Rwanda as they had after the violent 1959 Hutu Revolution. Today some of those leaders say so openly, or call us “collaborators” of the Habyarimana regime when we do not show the expected allegiance.
Back in 1994, the Tutsis inside Rwanda hoped for an inclusive future, with the equal rights and opportunities they had long been denied. As it turned out, the RPF only wanted absolute control.
Although we allied with and supported the RPF’s cause, we Rwandan Tutsi civilians painfully suffered the consequences when Hutu extremists almost succeeded in annihilating us.
Lessons for Congolese Tutsi
To my Congolese Tutsi brothers and sisters: please don’t repeat our past.
Don’t let yourselves become blind followers or disposable tools of outside forces.
Build ties with your neighbors across ethnic lines, and work for a Congo where everyone has a voice.
Your future is in your own hands. We Rwandans learned that the hardest way possible. Ends.
By Albert Gasake, November 21, 2023.
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