Rwandans have of late been pervasively brutalized, tortured, maimed and killed, in Goma and Brussels by Congolese security personnel alongside proxies.
I avail this opportunity to issue a query and a recommendation to Rwanda and D R Congo governments.
Has the government of Rwanda circumstanced and duly documented said cases of Rwandan nationals brutalized, tortured, even killed, by the Congolese government?
Has President Paul Kagame not reckoned he must ensure due legal action is stepped up in consistence with his constitutional obligation to protect the Rwandan people?
Are we to reckon President Kagame is presumably taking time to plan action? Such action must be taken in earnest in conformity with the laws and norms governing international relations.
Since said grave matter has come to the attention of the public, national and international thanks to IGIHE, Rwanda Government has the inescapable onus to inform the public of their handling of this issue.
This is not a matter to be left in the hands of journalists and police alone. Nay! This is an international affair of great significance, and it must be treated as such.
UNO induced pretenses of open enmity and unwarranted threats being voiced out loud of late, urbi et orbi, by top executives of the D R C government, namely Ministers Lambert Mende Omalanga and Raymond Tshibanda, have produced their first Rwandan casualties and fatalities.
It is no secret that Africans and their governments are often irresponsible, careless and to a great extent ignorant of the meaning, honor, dignity, value, obligations and rights of their fellow citizens at home and abroad.
African countries’ governments are generally known to care little, or not at all, about their constitutional obligations vis-a-vis nationals of their country.
Does the D R C government have any earthly reason to stick to the deadly anti-constitutional behavior of lynching and murdering Rwandans and Congolese Banyargwanda en masse?
Does President Joseph Kabila recollect that the Congolese government orchestrated genocidal killings of Congolese Hutu and Tutsi folks in D R C?
Joseph Kabila was not yet born when the first round of genocidal killings of Congolese Hutu populations was executed by the Congolese military in the North Kivu province:
1965. Records we have say Joseph Kabila was born in 1972, but the institutional person of the President of the Republic of the Congo did not wait for the birth of Joseph Kabila to exist.
The second such killings of Congolese Hutu occurred between March and September 1993. Why a genocide of Congolese Hutu at this stage?
Precisely because they had just won a legal battle in Kinshasa against a coalition of Nande, Nyanga, Hunde and Tembo representatives led by a certain Mr. Kaseso denying Hutu representatives the right to attend the 1991-1992 Congolese national conference canvasing for democracy, on allegations that they are not Congolese but rather Rwandan nationals.
The only solution left was to kill Hutu communities in Walikale, Masisi and Rutshuru to ensure they do not turn up at the electoral rendez-vous at ballot boxes when elections came.
Tutsi folks were in principle left alone in 1993, for their representatives were denied attendance in the 1991-1992 Kinshasa Congolese national conference, by the same coalition, on claims that they were not Congolese citizens, and they did not put a fight.
Saying they were left alone is of course to a great extent untrue, for you cannot really distinguish a Hutu from a Tutsi, when you embark on a mass killing of Congolese Banyarwanda in Walkale, Masisi and Rutshuru.
In 1993, the governor and vice governor of the North kivu province were respectively Nande and Nyanga tribesmen: Kalumbo and Bamwisho. They used government powers entrusted upon them to run said killings generally known as ‘genocide of hutu’.
Congolese Tutsi were however singled out to be genocidally murdered sporadically between 1994 and 1996; between 1998 and 2002.
Congolese Ministers Didier Mumengi and Yerodia Ndombassi are on record for issuing official statements relayed by media in 1998 to the effect that “D R C must be cleansed of the Tutsi vermin”: clear Congolese government instructions reminiscent of the 1994 Rwanda RTLM radio instructions to kill Tutsi folks were passed and executed in D R C.
The world was aware of that. I recollect in relation to this that the Belgian Government issued an arrest warrant for Congolese minister Yerodia Ndombassi in 1999.
The man never got arrested, for he did not budge from home, when he noted he was sought after by the universal Belgian jurisdiction.
These recurrent killings of Congolese Banyarwanda, engineered and executed by Congo government are glaring acts of genocide.
Let the UN Security Council be informed passim that documents exist that substantiate the commission of the crime of genocide of Congolese Hutu and Tutsi.
Genocide stricken mentalities are immune to such horrors and infamous scandals as having humans tortured, dishonored and degraded in broad daylight, with the youth looking on, as was noted in Germany and Europe in general in the aftermath of the genocide of Jews; as is still noted in Congo and Rwanda, alas! Let us shake off the genocide mentality and re-claim our human honor and dignity.
How else will you be respected if you are not respectable, honorable and dignified?
RECOMMENDATION
The minister of foreign affairs of Rwanda must in principle pass a diplomatic note of protest to the ambassador of D R C and the resident UN representative in Kigali to seek redress.
Rwandans injured and killed in DRC must be granted due legal attention and compensation by relevant authorities in DRC and the UNO.
Rwanda government has the legal obligation to ensure this legal process is initiated and brought to conclusion, on behalf of the Rwandan offended parties, i. e. the injured and their families; the dead and their families.
If they have not done that yet, let them hasten to do so in earnest. Specific notes tailored in diplomatic jargon are in various circumstances drafted, signed, and delivered to resident ambassadors or representatives of international organizations by the minister of foreign affairs of a given country having cause to diplomatically relate and interact with partners, bilateral or multilateral.
Question: Has the Rwandan minister of foreign affairs and cooperation drafted, signed and delivered such a note to the Congolese ambassador and the resident representative of the United Nations Organization in respect of the Rwandans who were tortured, maimed,…, and killed by the Congolese government as reported in media.
If the Rwandan foreign affairs minister has not yet done so, let her get police to brief her on said cases, and then she will without delay proceed to write her Note Verbale to accredited representatives of D R C and the UNO. This is an emergency!
”Et nunc reges intelligite, erudimini qui iudicatis terram” (The Ecclesiat).
Translation : « And now, kings, listen: get yourselves educated, you who have the onus to govern the world”
What have the different civil society organizations of Congo and Rwanda done in respect of the Rwandans that were terrorized, sequestrated, beaten, maimed, tortured, dishonored and killed by Congolese security personnel?
Civil society and private sector organizations of Rwanda and Congo must as of necessity and law step up transnational actions of the sort they are supposed to know to preclude any future debilitating recurrences of the sort we are being served by the Rwanda media through multiple public diplomacy practices.
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