Cross-Border Genocide Ideology: The Case of the Democratic Republic of Congo

By Dr. Aloys Tegera

On June 1^st, 2024, a Kenyan national named Kennedy Kiproo Lilan has nearly escaped being lynched by an angry crowd in Goma because of his physical features commonly attributed to the Tutsi, whom he probably never met in his life. He was going to die for the sole reason that he looks like the Tutsi who are hunted down, killed, lynched, burned alive, and sometimes their flesh eaten, in eastern Congo.

The discrimination of the Tutsi and their qualification as “false Negroes”, “foreign” to the African Great Lakes region, was an invention of the German and Belgian explorers, consolidated and taught to the colonized people by European missionaries. The latter discovered a politically organized kingdom of Rwanda, and they were convinced that such a level of “civilization” and know-how did not fit with the idea they had of the “real African Negro”. They concluded that the structure of the kingdom of Rwanda must have been imported, probably from the Kushitic Nile valley, or perhaps of Caucasian origin. The Hamitic myth, dear to the 19^th century European anthropologists was born and will be stuck with the Tutsi until today. The appropriation of this racialist pattern by local African elites would result in the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda.

Following the independence of Belgian Congo, discrimination against the Tutsi in eastern DR Congo dates back to March 1962, when elected officials of Nande, Hunde, and Nyanga “ethnic groups”, demanded the creation of North Kivu province without having previously discussed it with their Kinyarwanda-speaking counterparts from the territories of Rutshuru, Masisi, and Nyiragongo. The unrest, the massacres, the destruction of Tutsi property which followed, were claimed in the name of local patriotism which sought to drive Kinyarwanda-speakers, perceived as “foreigners”, out of the “national territory”, and send them “back” to what was considered to be their “native homeland”, meaning “Rwanda”, within the borders that were artificially drawn by the colonial powers in the 19^th century.

In July 1994, a metastasis of the Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda occurred in eastern Congo when two million Rwandan refugees landed on the shores of the city of Goma and Bukavu.

Genocidal ideology embedded in the Congolese army and institutions

The massive arrival of Rwandan refugees in July 1994 led by an army of ex-FAR and Interahamwe militias responsible for the Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, the failure of Mobutu government to disarm them like Tanzania was able to do, and the setting up of their camps on the border with Rwanda, marked the beginning of insecurity and violence in South and North Kivu.

There had been clashes in North Kivu since March 1993 between Congolese Hutu, Hunde and Tutsi. A report from Oxfam (August 1993) and Caritas Secours International from Belgium (September 1993) estimated that around 7,000 people were killed in these clashes. However, the alliance between Congolese Hutu militias and the defeated ex-FAR and Interahamwe changed the balance of power on the ground in favor of the Congolese Hutu community. They defeated Hunde militias in Masisi and Rutshuru and pushed Congolese Tutsi who had survived the massacres into exile in Rwanda and Uganda. The local Hunde elite denounced the creation of a “Hutuland” (E. Muhima, “Un génocide pour un Hutuland”, 1996), but the real impact in eastern Congo was the establishment of genocid ideology (Mararo Bucyalimwe, “Interprétation des événements dans la région des Grands Lacs à la lumière du document ‘Les Protocoles de Sion’”, Conférence Rutshuru, 1994).

The first step was to track down Congolese Tutsi considered to be a “fifth column of Rwanda in DR Congo”. Those who could afford it bought their way to Rwanda and Uganda. The last group of Congolese Tutsi who were gathered at the Town Hall of Goma crossed Gisenyi border in May 1996 and settled not far from the “Petite Barrière” before being moved to Karongi and Byumba shortly after the start of the war of Laurent Désiré Kabila.

The second stage was the economic and social control of the territory. The FDLR (Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda), created by the ex-FAR and Interhamwe in exile in DRC, following the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, were now the new masters. They had left Rwanda with all the wealth they could transport, including the national bank, and had enough money to start all types of businesses in collaboration with local Congolese.

The third step was the strengthening of their military forces (J. Pomfret, “Rwandans led revolt in Congo”, The Washington Post, July 1997). The collapse of the alliance between Laurent Désiré Kabila’s AFDL and Rwanda, and the second RCD/Goma rebellion that followed in August 1998, offered the FDLR a golden opportunity for rapprochement and collaboration with successive Congolese governments. They were integrated into the FARDC or used as auxiliary troops and fought side by side with allies supporting successive Congolese governments. They were galvanized by hate speech such as by Yerodia Ndombasi who called the Tutsi “vermin” to exterminate. We heard such hate speech more recently with Benoît Mukambatiya, a Mai-Mai Nande, who said in a video posted on social media, that “a good Tutsi is a dead Tutsi, a Tutsi found in the cemetery”.

Brothers in arms have become brothers in spirit. The genocide ideology previously unknown to Congolese society has now cemented relationships between people, fueling hate speech, and it has taken root in DR Congo. Thirty years after the Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, what the historian Jean-Pierre Chrétien called “tropical Nazism”, has been fully implanted in the region.

Eastern Congo has proven to be a fertile ground for genocide ideology. Although the Banyarwanda community of Rutshuru and Masisi experienced ups and downs, they nevertheless managed to unite and fight a common front, especially in the early 1960s (B. Rukatsi, “L’intégration des immigrés au Zaïre: le cas des personnes originaires du Rwanda”, thèse de doctorat, 1998). In the 1980s, a Hutu association called Mutuelle des Agriculteurs des Virunga (MAGRIVI) in the territories of Rutshuru and Masisi, cultivated anti-Tutsi narratives in close collaboration with certain propaganda machines of the Habyarimana regime such as Kangura, a newspaper broadcasting genocide ideology (Tom Ndahiro, The Friends of Evil: when NGOs support genocidaires, France Genocide Tutsi, 2013).

The main idea was to distance the Hutu from the Tutsi, to claim the uniqueness of the “Muhutu” wherever they came from and wherever they were (Mararo), to nurture and consolidate “Bantu solidarity” with the so-called “ethnic indigenous groups” in order to isolate the Tutsi as the only “foreigners”, seen as wanting to impose a “Hima – Tutsi Empire” (Ndahiro). The latest creation of “Gihutu”, a neologism referring to the language with which the Congolese Hutu would identify, is a logical consequence of this “racial” radicalism sought to distinguish, linguistically and culturally, the Congolese Hutu from the Congolese Tutsi.

The claim of “Gihutu” as the language of the Congolese Hutu was designed and constructed to fully integrate them into the broader indigenous Congolese community following the 1991 Vangu commission meant to identify who is Congolese and who is not. This creation of the “Gihutu” language thus excludes the Congolese Tutsi whose language is Kinyarwanda, identifying them with the Rwandans.

Ruriho Kibambasi’s attempt to rewrite the history of the Hutu of North Kivu (Introduction à l’histoire des Hutu du Nord Kivu (Zaïre), 1992), by seemingly tracing the major stages of Bantu history — with a periodization where the history of the Bantu is reduced to that of the Hutu — is indeed an ideological endeavor. In particular, he claimed that the Hutu of North Kivu are an “ethnic group” in their own right, which shares the same historical trajectory as other “Bantu ethnic groups” of eastern DR Congo. He suggested that they have their own language like other “ethnic groups” of DR Congo — with the glossonym corresponding to the ethnonym — and which is called “Gihutu”, as distinct from “Kinyarwanda”, the language spoken in Rwanda, shared with the Hutu of Masisi and the Tutsi of Rutshuru.

This effort to distance Congolese Hutu from Rwanda does not take into account the historical trajectories of various Hutu clans in North Kivu, such as the Abasinga clan, who passed through Mulera in northern Rwanda before settling definitively in the current territory of Rutshuru. Indeed, clan structures — Ubwoko in Rwanda, Ruganda in Bunyoro, Ebika in Buganda, or Ishanja among the Havu, combining kinship, exogamy, rules of solidarity and symbolic code — constitute an identity reference in the collective consciousness of the populations of the Great Lakes. And according to Chrétien, the geography of these clan structures, combined with the testimonies of the elders, allows us to have an idea of ​​their history over a relatively limited space, but which transcends modern political borders and for a period of three centuries at most (J.P. Chrétien, L’Afrique des Grands Lacs. Deux mille ans d’histoire, Paris: Aubier, 2000, p. 73).

These clan structures integrate Hutu and Tutsi social categories in Rwanda that Ruriho wants at all costs to dissociate in time and space. Almost all of the eighteen clans listed by Marcel D’Hertefelt are found in North Kivu and combine both Hutu and Tutsi with a few exceptions where, for example, the Abungura clan is only composed of Hutu, and the two clans Abasigi and Abagiri not identified by D’Hertefelt, found in Buhumba in the current Nyiragongo territory (Les clans du Rwanda ancien: éléments d’ethnosociologie et d’ethnohistoire, 1971). Be that as it may, what began as Ruriho’s theory of “Gihutu” as the language of the Bahutu, has now been appropriated by North Kivu Congolese Hutu with a heavy hand of FDLR. Genocide ideology contributed enormously to this radicalization.

Local alliances with the FDLR: the Nyatura

FDLR’s strategic collaboration with local Congolese militias not only strengthened its combat capacity, but also implanted and spread the ideology of genocide. Nyatura allies are young people from the Congolese Hutu community who present themselves as defenders of their community. Today, some have become members of provincial and national assemblies, others are integrated into the national army and several institutions of the Republic. Others have chosen to stay in their respective villages, armed, with the aim of defending themselves in the event of a threat against their community. It is these Nyatura armed militias that control the rural areas of Masisi and Rutshuru territories. They benefited from the support of the Rwandan FDLR in training and military equipment, and some of them like Dominique Ndaruhutse Kamanzi, alias Domi, still openly collaborate today with the FDLR in Bwito in Rutshuru territory.

In August 2018, when the Rwandan armed terrorist group in exile FLN (National Liberation Forces) attacked from the southwest in the Nyungwe forest, Dominique Ndaruhutse was part of the Nyatura, mobilized by the FDLR in Virunga national park, to lend them a hand (A. Tegera, “Abazungu: une nouvelle coalition au Masisi”, Pôle Institute, 2021). The continuation of FDLR fighting in Bwito and elsewhere in Masisi territory could explain the alliance between them and Congolese militias which serve as a shield for their operations.

Indeed, local Congolese militias have their own concerns. Some are demobilized former combatants disappointed by promises made but never kept. Others are young people mobilized for land their parents have occupied in a context of population movements since the 1990s, a land issue which has never been clarified nor dealt with. Finally, others are young people from families evicted from concessions that their owners recovered in 2019 in Kibabi and Osso Banyungu in Masisi.

In August 2020, a meeting was held in Katoyi, in Masisi territory, during which some Hutu members of the provincial assembly of North Kivu were present. Participants were encouraged to attack Tutsi properties and farms to force them to flee to Rwanda and thus provide Hutu populations with the opportunity to occupy their land. Thus, the Nyatura of Masisi territory, before the formalization of their official status within the Wazalendo, combined the harassment of military and police positions with systematic attacks against agro-pastoral farms of Tutsi in the hope of driving them out, and possibly occupying their land. The FDLR’s alliances went beyond Kinyarwanda speakers to include other “ethnic-based” groups, namely the Hunde of the “Patriotic Alliance for a Free and Sovereign Congo (APCLS).”

Local alliances with the FDLR: the APCLS

Hunde militias have been fighting the Banyarwanda in Masisi and Bwito since 1993, but the birth of APCLS in 2006 was rather motivated by the presence of the National Congress for the Defense of the People (CNDP) of Laurent Nkunda Mihigo in Bashali Mokoto and Bashali Kayembe in Masisi territory. The latter overshadowed the provincial governor Eugène Serufuli Ngayabaseka whose annoyance was such that he resolved to create a new militia called the Patriots of the Congolese Resistance (PARECO) headed by certain Hutu officers who had just defected from the CNDP. In order to give PARECO an indigenous face, whereas Laurent Nkunda was described as “foreign”, an alliance was made with a Nande fighter, Kakule Sikuli Lafontaine, and a Hunde fighter, Janvier Karairi.

This alliance did not last long. It split into three groups, a Hutu PARECO represented by Colonel Mugabo Hassan, currently a general of the FARDC army who directed the offensives against M23 in Masisi in May 2023, a Nande PARECO represented by Kakule Sikuli Lafontaine, and a Hunde PARECO represented by Janvier Buingo Karairi who subsequently preferred to change the group’s name to APCLS, and settle in deep rural Masisi in Lukweti. With the integration of his militia within the Wazalendo, Karairi was triumphantly welcomed in the spring of 2023 in his town of Kitchanga to fight M23 in Bashali Mokoto and Bwito.

In his early days, APCLS commander Janvier Karairi enjoyed unfailing support from the Bushenge Hunde ethnic mutuality, before cracks appeared within it when Mapenzi Kihule defected to join the renovated Ndume Defense (NDC-R) of Guidon Shimirayi Mwissa with whom he remained until July 2020.

The Nande PARECO of Sikuli Lafontaine also works hand in hand with the FDLR – RUD Urunana branch in the south of Lubero territory, particularly in Bunyatenge. It thus appears that the FDLR have achieved a masterstroke by rallying local Congolese communities who serve as their shield in Lubero, Masisi, and Rutshuru (Tegera).

Human losses of genocide ideology

In the absence of an archival work by a competent authority such as a good police force, the victims of genocide ideology in eastern Congo will never be known. Apart from a few documented massacres such as 180 people killed at the Mokoto monastery on May 12^th, 1996, 149 people killed at the Adventist University of Mudende on August 18^th, 1997, and 1,641 people killed at the same place in Mudende on December 10^th, 1997, other massacres are recounted in individual stories of survivors when they dare narrating their tragedy.

A woman by the name of Dusabe lived in Bashali Kayembe in Masisi territory. She lost 20 family members including her brothers, sisters-in-law, nephews, and nieces. Recording the stories of survivors living in refugee camps in Rwanda and Uganda is imperative to understanding the scope of the issue. Each of these victims has a story of family members killed.

Between 2018 and 2024, Isoko association, which carried out a thorough field research in Masisi territory, estimated the number of Congolese Tutsi killed at 2,500 and the number of people missing at 5,000. A sample of people killed with supporting photos made by this association shows that three quarters were killed by the Nyatura, and the rest by the FARDC. No investigation has been done for missing people, and at this stage most of them are considered dead.

In South Kivu, a committee responsible for taking inventory of human and material losses of the Banyamulenge estimates that between 2017 and 2022, 1,500 people were killed, 2,145 kidnapped, and 6,057 arbitrarily imprisoned. These human losses are attributed to Mai-Mai Biloze Bishabuke and Yakutumba, collaborators of the FDLR.

In Ituri, the Hema, who are abusively associated with the Tutsi, even though the two groups have different trajectories, are hunted down and killed by a Lendu militia called CODECO. A council of Hema elders estimates that between 2017 and 2023 more than 4,000 people have been killed and thousands more have gone missing.

The victims of genocide ideology in eastern Congo are not just Congolese Tutsi or Hema in Ituri. Other communities pay a high price for the presence of FDLR in their traditional strongholds. The FDLR and its allied militias live on the backs of the populations to sustain themselves. In Buramo, a village in Masisi territory, a farmer whose anonymity we are preserving for the safety of his family, was killed by the Nyatura militia for being unable to deliver 15 kgs of beans on time. This is a tax imposed after the harvest season, called “Ndengera buzima”, literally translated as “tax for physical survival”, that is, to sleep and wake up alive. Several hundred people paid with their lives for being unable to pay these taxes imposed by FDLR and its allied militias. The insecurity and its consequences such as hunger and epidemics, brought by FDRL and its partnering militias, have led to about 6 million Internally Displaced Persons (IOM, 2021).

Material losses of genocide ideology

The destruction of residential homes, of the basic infrastructure such as schools and health centers, as well as of the agro-pastoral economies, amounts to millions of U.S. dollars. When the FDLR entered eastern Congo in 1994, North Kivu was considered the country’s breadbasket, supplying food, dairy products, and meat to the country’s major cities of Kinshasa, Kisangani and Lubumbashi. A year later in 1995, the entire cattle herd estimated at more than 25 million had been destroyed to the extent that when AFDL rebellion of Laurent Désiré Kabila took over the country in May 1997, populations suffering from malnutrition were hunting rats as the only source of protein.

 

Thirty years later, the reconstituted cattle and goat farms are once again pillaged and destroyed. Between 2017 and 2022, in South Kivu, Banyamulenge cows that have been looted are estimated at 452,675. In North Kivu, Isoko association, which carried out an inventory county by county between 2018 and 2023, estimated the number of looted cows at 1,478,000. The commander of military operations in Masisi, Major General Mayanga, encouraged the Nyatura militias under the new Wazalendo umbrella to loot Tutsi cows to sustain themselves rather than wait for government assistance or salary. The latter also urged FARDC soldiers to loot the cows of the Tutsi accusing them of “funding M23”.

The genocide ideology implanted by the FDLR in eastern Congo is a weapon of mass destruction intended to wipe out all traces of Tutsi in the region. In a methodical and systematic manner, this genocide ideology uses blood ties within Congolese Hutu, marital ties with other Congolese communities, commercial ties with associates in several economic sectors, and political and military ties with successive Congolese governments.

Genocide ideology has proven to be a formidable machine for the eradication of Tutsi in Congo and elsewhere in the Great Lakes region. The creators of narratives which present the FDLR as a residual force or “a shadow of itself”, seek to knowingly obscure the reality of this radical violence which the FDLR have been carrying out for the last thirty years and likely to continue in the years to come.