If the FDLR are “a lie” why does Tshisekedi keep signing deals agreeing to neutralize them?

In the strange world of Congolese politics, logic is a rare currency.

Enter Julien Paluku, DR Congo’s minister of industry and long-time apologist for Tshisekedi’s regime that has mastered the art of scapegoating. According to Paluku, FDLR – the armed group responsible for carrying out ethnically-motivated killings in eastern DRC and which was borne of remnants of the perpetrators of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda – is just a “lie.” Or that it’s a “mere fictional creation of Kigali.”

And yet, the Kinshasa regime that Paluku is part of has signed three separate agreements in recent months pledging to neutralise this same FDLR.

On October 31 and November 25, 2024, in Luanda, under Angolan mediation, the Tshisekedi regime committed in writing to “neutralise all negative forces operating in eastern DRC, including the FDLR.” That language was clear. Again, on June 27, 2025, in Washington DC, a U.S.-brokered peace agreement reaffirmed this same commitment to dismantle and neutralize the FDLR once and for all.

So which is it? If the FDLR don’t exist, why is Tshisekedi’s regime pledging to neutralise them on the international stage? Why sign agreements with Rwanda three times, no less, that make the FDLR central to the problem?

The answer is obvious. The FDLR are real. They’re a genocidal force, long embedded within the Congolese army (FARDC) under Tshisekedi’s direction. They serve a political purpose for the Congolese ruler: as tools to terrorise Congolese Tutsi communities, and as proxies in Tshisekedi’s war of “regime change” against Rwanda. But when faced with international pressure, especially from Angola and the United States, Tshisekedi’s regime does what it always does: lie to the Congolese people, and quietly sign deals abroad acknowledging the truth.

The hypocrisy is clear. You cannot simultaneously claim the FDLR is a fabrication of Rwanda and sign formal peace deals pledging to disarm and neutralise them. That contradiction exposes the moral and strategic bankruptcy of Tshisekedi’s regime, and its regime officials like Julien Paluku.