FDLR: It isn’t about the numbers, just ONE is enough to keep the genocide ideology alive

 

One man’s speech delivered to a crowd in rural Rwanda 30 years ago became the bible verse for marauding militias in 1994.

The hunted for Tutsis, killed them and dumped their bodies in rivers so that they “went back to their place of origin” – referring to Ethiopia.

Dr Leon Mugesera, currently serving a genocide conviction, was the man behind the microphone. The speech he delivered on that day in November 1992, when read in English, doesn’t strike the shock it does when read and listened to in the original Kinyarwanda language.

Mugesera is a single individual, who used his oratory skills and association to the powers of the time, to reinforce a genocidal agenda. He is not alone. As I will demonstrate here, many such individuals are numerous.

DRC President Felix Tshisekedi gave a speech to the UN General Assembly last week in which he told the world that Rwandan FDLR militia is a “pretext” used by Rwanda to destabilize his country. He said the FDLR had been defeated completely and others repatriated to Rwanda, with none left on Congolese soil.

In the same speech, he made a rather contradictory statement, calling the FDLR “Rwandan opposition”. It is only the second time, a leader of a country is sanitizing the FDLR, after a former Tanzanian president.

The key message of President Tshisekedi’s speech is that FDLR isn’t  a threat whatsoever to the Rwandan state. Instead, that it’s used as a scapegoat for a sinister plan by Rwanda and its backers.

It wasn’t the first time a Congolese official has made such dangerous statements. The genocidal forces in Congo have been a rallying call by politicians seeking power. They have not addressed the internal strife, blaming it on Congo’s neighbor, thereby hoodwinking Congolese to believe the imaginary enemy.

The argument by these Congolese politicians and their foot soldiers is that FDLR has been defeated and therefore poses no significant threat to Rwanda. Or that that youngsters were born in the forests after the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi.

Let us test this misleading and misguided assertion with the available evidence.

British newspaper, The Guardian visited FDLR camps in early 2008. There, journalist Chris McGreal came face to face with genocide ideology from teenagers whose parents had done a rather successful job. The boys were as a young as ten years.

"The Tutsis stole our country and they are killing the Hutus or making them slaves,” said one, adding – “We have to kill them wherever they are. It is the only way to get our country back. When they are defeated I can go home…It's not hard to kill. You shoot."

The commander who was training these toddlers, was called Col Edmund Ngarambe. In his separate interview with the visiting Guardian journalist, he didn’t hold back.

"If they say the genocide was organised, it's not true. It was civil war,” said Ngarambe. “It was something that happened suddenly. It wasn't planned," he says. "Ever since I was young, I didn't know how to hate a Tutsi. I lived in a place with many Tutsis. My friends were Tutsis. Even in the army there was not teaching of hatred of Tutsis."

Notice these last lines? They are typically a messaging toolbox for genocide denial. Basically, portray the historical facts as twisted.

Ngarambe would, some years later, be captured and repatriated to Rwanda. But he was one in thousands.

The genocidal machinery is intent on a single objective; make the 1994 genocide a debatable issue. As a result, it will justify actions of militias including the FDLR and the other Rwandans fighters operating from Congo.

In as long as the basis of the existence of the FDLR is questionability of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi, and thus targeting those left in Rwanda, every other child born in their ranks will live to keep that genocidal flame alive.

It doesn’t matter how many they are, how young they could be, or the nature of their vulnerability, it’s the ideology.