On March 4, according to The New Times Rwanda, hundreds of Congolese refugees residing in Rwandan camps took to the streets in an orchestrated protest march. Brandishing placards, they vehemently condemned the alleged killings of the Tutsi, Banyamulenge, and Hema communities in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The refugees directly accused the Congolese government, rebel groups like the FDLR, as well as Burundian and SADC forces of perpetrating “genocide.”
Their impassioned calls for international intervention to “stop the genocide” seem justified on the surface. After all, these are people who have endured decades of displacement, torn from their homes by the very conflict they now denounce. Over 70,000 Congolese refugees remain confined to Rwandan camps, with over 13,000 newly arrived, fleeing the escalating clashes between Congolese forces and the M23 rebels.
However, those familiar with the iron-fisted regime of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) know that genuine protests and dissent are virtually nonexistent unless sanctioned by the state. Rwanda’s authoritarian grip simply does not allow for democratic protests. Real grievances from these very refugees, like their 2018 protest for a mere $2 increase in their measly $5 monthly food rations from UNHCR, have been met with shocking brutality. That ration protest ended with over 12 refugees killed by Rwandan police firing live ammunition into the crowds.
This latest refugee “protest” looks like carefully staged theater, possibly the Rwandan government’s latest attempt to justify its military forces and allies intervening in the DRC under the guise of stopping an alleged “genocide” of Tutsis. Only pro-government protests are permitted in Rwanda’s tightly controlled sphere.
The irony is hard to miss: the Rwandan regime claims sympathy for Congolese Tutsis allegedly facing genocide, while brutally cracking down on any dissenting Tutsi voices, including genocide survivors, within its own borders. The regime has a long history of using the genocide to silence opposition and fight diplomatic battles.
We have seen this tactic before, in how the government has controlled and co-opted Rwanda’s genocide survivor community and organizations, mobilizing them to protest internationally when it suited the regime’s agenda. Whether it was the controversial arrest of Rose Kabuye in Europe for her alleged role in assassinations, or sanctions imposed on Rwanda for its past interventions in the Congo conflict, the state rallied survivor groups to its defense. Transport, placards and logistics were all provided by the state to create an impression of unified outrage from a traumatized community.
Now the same strategy is being used on vulnerable Congolese Tutsi refugees, in the name of defending them against “genocide.” Disturbingly, reports suggest children as young as 14 in these refugee camps were even recruited as child soldiers to fight in Rwanda’s military campaigns in the DRC, which led to US sanctions against Rwanda last year.
A regime that represses its own people, kills dissenting Tutsi survivors like Kizito Mihigo and denies them basic rights now pretends to be the savior of Tutsis in the DRC.
As the war in eastern Congo goes on, this kind of manipulation only deepens the suffering. By staging protests and using vulnerable refugees, Rwanda draws attention away from its own military role in destabilizing the region.
These refugees have spent decades in camps, robbed of a future in their homeland while the fighting went on around them. Now they are being used as props in Rwanda’s latest campaign, and are likely being pressured to toe the official line.
If this protest showed anything, it is how far Rwanda will go to use the genocide as a weapon: against its own people when they dissent, and now against Congolese Tutsi refugees, behind “stop the genocide” slogans. That kind of manipulation only breeds more division and violence in the region. Ends.
By Albert Gasake, March 5, 2024.
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