Dear Mr Lammy,
As survivors in the UK about to mark the 31st anniversary of Rwanda’s 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, we are troubled by your position on Rwanda and eastern DRC.
You declare military solutions unacceptable. We agree force should be a last resort, but we are alive precisely because of a military intervention the international community opposed.
From 1990 to 1994, the UN dismissed threats against Rwanda’s Tutsi as insignificant. This despite hate media, the training of extremist militia groups and the coordination of massacres where the perpetrators enjoyed impunity for their crimes.
The architects of genocide in Rwanda were encouraged by international apathy toward incitement to violence and drew the conclusion they could get away with murdering a million Tutsis. The genocide they launched on 7th April 1994 ended only when the Rwandan Patriotic Front gained control of the country through military action.
As our families were slaughtered, Britain and other powers stood aside, calling for a ceasefire; an outcome which would have sealed our fate. Thankfully, the RPF ignored UN Security Council demands and rescued us.
The genocidaires then fled to Zaire (now DRC). Over 500 people indicted for genocide still live freely there; an insult to justice which your government should find intolerable.
The seeds of today’s crisis were planted over a century earlier, however, with Britain’s approval. At the 1884 Berlin Conference, Kinyarwanda-speaking people (the Banyarwanda) lived across territories which were divided by European colonial powers. The communities were split down the middle between Rwanda and eastern Congo.
Many claim DRC’s conflict is solely about fallout from the 1994 Genocide, or about mineral extraction. How then did violent anti-Tutsi ideologies flourish both sides of the border before 1994?
By 1981, Banyarwanda in Zaire had been stripped of citizenship. A decade later, authorities declared them non-Congolese, promising state-supported expulsion. Hunde and Nyanga people massacred Tutsi in North Kivu in 1993.
No Tutsi armed group existed then that could be accused of controlling minerals, yet Tutsis were already being killed in Zaire, a year before genocide in Rwanda.
In 1994, some Congolese authorities welcomed fleeing Rwandan genocidaires as allies against Congolese Tutsi. Although the 2005 DRC constitution reinstated citizenship for Congolese Tutsi after 25 years of statelessness, hate propaganda persisted, echoing Rwanda’s pre-genocide rhetoric that Tutsi were not citizens, but interlopers.
Rwandan genocidaires who fled to Zaire rebranded as FDLR, openly planning return to Rwanda to “finish what they started.” Attacking Congolese Tutsis while maintaining their aim to re-invade Rwanda, they have remained an active threat ever since. As you will recall, in 2022 shells landed in northwest Rwanda during the week of the Commonwealth Heads of Government (CHOGM) meeting in Kigali.
The international community spent billions on DRC peacekeeping yet failed to contain groups which have clear genocidal intent. Militias have multiplied on the UN’s watch. Over a hundred now operate in eastern DRC, many with government backing. The threats these represent to Congolese Tutsi are routinely minimized by human rights organisations and the media, just as threats against us were in Rwanda.
Tutsi self-defence groups in DRC formed only after FDLR attacks began and international protection failed. On 23rd March 2009, one such group – the National Congress for Defence of the People (CNDP) – signed a peace agreement.
They integrated into the DRC army in exchange for protection of Tutsi citizens. This opportunity for peace was squandered by the Congolese Government, and by the international community. There was neither accountability for failure to address grievances, nor serious investment in local peacebuilding, despite community groups trying to build reconciliation against a tide of hate.
Three years on, M23 formed to protect Congolese Tutsi where the DRC Government would not. Established to protect a persecuted people, not to oppress or exploit, it is named after the date of the failed peace agreement, as a reminder that peace does not last without fixing the underlying causes.
Escalating anti-Tutsi hatred and calls for genocide against the Tutsi in Congo were documented long before M23’s recent advances, yet media coverage of other armed groups is virtually non-existent. Scapegoating Rwanda has become so mainstream, it even infects your Africa Minister’s thinking.
This February, Allied Democratic Force – an ISIS-affiliated group not connected to Rwanda – murdered 70 Congolese Christians. Questioned on this in Parliament, the ill-informed Lord Collins implicated Rwanda: “When I met the Foreign Minister of Rwanda in Geneva this morning, he denied all these accusations about things happening.”
We are no longer surprised that Rwanda is accused of involvement in everything that goes wrong in the region. However it is disappointing that your government now spreads this misinformation.
Today we survivors assist Congolese Tutsi refugees arriving in Rwanda, recognizing our past trauma in their present: street lynchings, people burnt alive, even cannibalism. As during our own experience, the warning signs barely triggered interest from human rights groups, until it was too late.
In 1994, the UK Government accepted former Rwandan Government narratives. This led the UN Security Council to prevent UN peacekeepers from protecting us as we were slaughtered.
Now commentators promote the idea that the current DRC conflict is all about minerals and overlook decades of anti-Tutsi discrimination, which predates Tutsi armed resistance.
Your advisers shockingly dismiss M23’s legitimacy as a self-defence group and made recommendations in 2018 that you appear to have adopted on how M23 should be defeated.
Armed groups assembled by DRC to attack M23 include forces with a history of anti-Tutsi genocide. While we don’t accuse DRC of planning genocide, some government members incite anti-Tutsi hatred and openly arm the unrepentant FDLR.
While you sanction Rwanda, you have not taken action against those attacking both M23 and Congolese Tutsi civilians, so your opposition to “military solutions” seems to focus only on forces protecting civilians at risk.
The East African Community deployed a ‘protection of civilians’ force in 2022. After one year President Tshisekedi ordered them to leave, in favour of a coalition from South African Development Committee to ‘annihilate its enemies.’
This is the same coalition your 2018 policy paper advised were the regional heavyweights with the best chance to defeat M23. After our tragedy, we helped establish the Responsibility to Protect doctrine that Britain once championed.
The UK’s failure to sanction DRC for arming genocidal groups is bewildering. It gives a green light to groups known for identity-based violence.
As you prepare to commemorate Srebrenica’s 30th anniversary, remember that British policy in 1990s Bosnia prevented one group’s self-defence while leaving adversaries armed. The result was genocide of Bosnian Muslims.
On 7th April, please reflect on these lessons. Prioritizing a nations sovereignty over protection of civilians encourages the very groups that committed genocide.
Britain is diverting money from development aid that could build peace in DRC to defence. We understand the need to fund security due to wars closer to home.
If the UK lacks appetite to provide our brothers and sisters in DRC protection, at least don’t oppose those trying to prevent another tragedy like the one that destroyed our families in 1994, while the world stood by.
{{Signed by }}
Beatha Uwazaninka
Apolinaire Kageruka
Bosco Ngabo
Chantal Uwamahoro
Egide Ruhashya
Eric Murangwa
Jean Claude Mujyambere
Julienne Mukabalisa
Naila Amida
Philomene Uwamaliya
Pierre Rurengatabaro
Stephanie Kayirangwa
Leonard Mutangana
Jimmy Kanyambo
Diocre Rwabutogo
Theo Nzabakirana
