Addressing lawmakers in parliament, Rwandan Foreign Affairs Minister Olivier Nduhungirehe disclosed yet another aspect in the ongoing exercise of peace agreement with DRC.
The minister disclosed there are Rwandans that have been held hostages in Kinshasa for a while, and Tshisekedi’s government has been acting as if those people are out of the equation in the ongoing exercise of peace agreement.
While there are so many things on the table to be worked on, including the FDLR neutralization, demilitarization, demobilization, and repatriation, not forgetting the hate speech against Congolese Tutsis, Tshisekedi will now have to stretch even harder if he is to prove he’s serious about confidence building.
Obviously, you cannot build confidence by keeping another country’s citizens in your prison cells. The people arrested were not armed rebels, not even political actors. Some of them were embassy staff (not diplomats), tourists, or ordinary Rwandans that just happened to be on the wrong side of the border at the wrong time. Their only crime was their nationality.
Nduhungirehe’s statement is not just about legalities. It’s a subtle but pointed reminder that Rwanda sees everything and remembers everything in the whole process of restoring peace and stability in the region.
If Kinshasa wants this peace agreement to be more than signed papers stored in Washington archives, it must get real. That means stopping the scapegoating, halting the arrests, and releasing people who should never have been jailed in the first place.
Peace is not about paperwork or photo ops. It’s about trust and from the look of things, trust is in short supply.
The FDLR still roams freely, Wazalendo militias are being retrained in Bujumbura and elsewhere in DRC with a subversive agenda towards Rwanda, people are still held hostages, Kinshasa cannot claim it’s business as usual?
Tshisekedi will need more than propaganda and international sympathy to clean this mess. He needs to start with real actions. Free the hostages. Stop the hate. End the double game.
He needs to show some seriousness for once.
ellenkampire