Tshisekedi the corpulent ruler of DRC, is up to his usual skullduggery.
This Wednesday, October 30, military intelligence experts from the DRC and Rwanda will meet in Luanda, to map out a unified strategy to dismantle the FDLR. Yet here lies the truth: Tshisekedi does not want the FDLR neutralized, not a little bit! And so, even his international backers, who have propped him up thus far, are beginning to lose faith.
It’s beginning to dawn on them that the Congolese ruler in fact is (and has been) actively propping up the FDLR.
Tshisekedi has transformed these FDLR killers from perpetrators of ethnic violence into his de facto allies. In fact, he lauds these mass murderers and perpetrators of countless atrocities as “protectors against an invented Tutsi threat!”
Tshisekedi demonizes a section of his country’s population – the Tutsi communities of the Kivus – as a “threat” while sanitizing the FDLR (the very group that grew from the remnants of the ex-FAR and Interahamwe militias that were the main perpetrators of the 1994 Genocide of the Tutsi in Rwanda).
The Congolese ruler justifies his stance with the lie that (“M23 – an indigenous Congolese movement to fight for the rights of eastern Congo Tutsi communities) are Rwandan”! To Tshisekedi, that is justification to mount a campaign of genocide against a whole community.
That Tshisekedi is deeply dishonest, and in bed with criminals, to reach his own criminal ends, is the first thing to keep in mind – by all parties, whenever they engage in discussion in international forums on the Congolese issue.
In fact, under Tshisekedi the FDLR’s reach extends far beyond their military presence (they now are fully integrated im the DRC military, FARDC). Also, they’ve embedded themselves into the economic and social backbone of North and South Kivu, taking over whole aspects of local life.
In the end, if Tshisekedi truly wanted security for his nation and the region, he’d start by rounding up all the known leaders of the FDLR – names and locations he likely has on speed dial.
The International Community ought to pressure him accordingly.
ellenkampire