from ALBERT RUDATSIMBURWA in Kigali, Rwanda
Rwanda Bureau
KIGALI, (CAJ News) – FOR three decades, the dominant narrative about Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has been defined less by facts than by denial.
What is widely described as “thirty years of war” is, in reality, thirty years of evasion — a refusal by powerful actors in the international system to confront the genocidal forces that unleashed the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi and have since been sheltered, rearmed, and recycled under new names.
This denial has obstructed justice and allowed cycles of violence to devastate millions in the region.
In 1994, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) was fully aware of preparations for the genocide.
Reports from peacekeepers on the ground warned of escalating hate speech, incitement, and imminent violence. Yet decisive action never came.
When the presidential plane was shot down on April 6, 1994, the genocidal machinery was unleashed.
More than a million Tutsi were slaughtered in 100 days, while the international community stood idle.
Worse still, the genocidaires were never dismantled. With France’s support and Mobutu Sese Seko’s complicity, they found safe haven in Zaire (now DRC), where they regrouped and launched cross-border attacks against a traumatized Rwanda.
Despite two major wars in Congo, successive governments in Kinshasa have tolerated or even collaborated with these forces.
The contrast is stark: the Allies after World War II would never have permitted a surviving Nazi army to reorganize on their borders. Yet, in Africa, what was unthinkable in Europe was allowed to endure.
The failure was not due to ignorance but complicity. Since 1999, the UN has maintained MONUC, later renamed United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO), its largest-ever peacekeeping mission. When it deployed, there were four armed groups in the DRC.
Today, there are over 200. MONUSCO never dismantled the FDLR (Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda); at times, it even cooperated with them. Instead, its reports often blamed Rwanda while exonerating Congolese authorities and shielding UN failures.
President Félix Tshisekedi’s government has deepened the crisis by integrating FDLR elements into national forces, proliferating local militias rebranded as “Wazalendo,” and even hiring foreign mercenaries.
Romania, a NATO member, has deployed troops, and U.S. private military contractor Erik Prince has supplied others — in direct violation of the African Union’s ban on mercenaries.
Yet these actions have drawn little international condemnation, while Rwanda’s defensive measures remain under constant scrutiny.
The narrative has been further distorted by flawed UN reports, including the controversial “Mapping Report” of 1993–2003.
Critics argue it inflated casualty figures, obscured UN failures, and ignored the plight of the Congolese Banyarwanda, who have faced persecution and displacement for decades.
For thirty years, Western governments and UN agencies have tolerated genocidal forces on Rwanda’s borders while shifting blame onto Kigali.
This inversion of victim and perpetrator was evident in recent UNSC and Human Rights Council debates, where Kinshasa deflected responsibility while Rwanda was cast as the aggressor.
It is time to name this for what it is: not thirty years of war, but thirty years of denial — denial that has preserved genocidal networks, protected those who profit from instability, and rewritten history at the expense of justice.
Rwanda’s insistence on exposing this hypocrisy is not aggression; it is a call for accountability in a world that claims to uphold human rights but too often fails to confront uncomfortable truths.
– CAJ News