Diverging from the Luanda and Nairobi mechanisms and other regional approaches to bring safety and security in the eastern DRC, the recent US statement on insecurity in DRC that whitewashes the FDLR is a betrayal to the innocents of eastern DRC that are victims of an ongoing genocidal campaign orchestrated from Kinshasa.
In 2005 The US department designated FDLR as a genocidal and terror group, which is why their about-turn is such a stab in the back. The US was expected to enforce sanctions against the genocidal FDLR, but now it seems the opposite is happening. They have downgraded it, to a mere “negative force.”
In a statement dubbed “Escalation of Hostilities in Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo” the US state department could not have appeared more of a propaganda channel and expose its deliberate acts of double standards.
The document signed by spokesperson Mathew miller, the US made a U-turn in the appellation of FDLR, a UN sanctioned group composed perpetrators of the 1994 Genocide against Tutsis and armed men of the defunct FAR (Rwanda Army Forces) and named it a “negative force.” This not only is an insult to Rwandans and specifically victims of the genocide, it pushed one to wonder the US sudden interests in sanctifying a blacklisted terror group as bloody as FDLR.
Sanctifying FDLR as an armed group is as good as calling it a political party, the US cannot have its cake and eat it. Much was expected from them in giving justice to victims of the 1994 Genocide against Tutsis, just as it was expected in sanctioning FDLR supporters in Kinshasa, specificially Tshisekedi government. According to Group of Experts on DRC reports, the FDLR has been thriving under the auspices of FARDC officers. A reality that the US is very much conscious about and deliberately failed to condemn.
Instead of belittling the bloody records of FDLR, the US would care to analyze reports indicating for example that the head of the Maison Militaire of the DRC, General Frank Ntumba, and the Chief of Army Staff, General Christian Tshiwewe Songesha, have been playing a pivotal role in facilitating this unholy alliance between the Congolese army and a genocidal sanctioned foreign armed group. Ignoring these facts is a high level of treachery and imperialism.
Whitewashing FDLR by the US is the actual betrayal of human rights and support of ethnic cleansing of Tutsis minority in DRC and supports continuous regional instability. America will need to choose between plundering of DRC resources and the so called “core values” of democracy and protection of human rights.
ellenkampire