Kagame accuses international community of ignoring the FDLR issue

President Paul Kagame answers questions during a press conference

President Paul Kagame has hit at the international community for trying to forget the bad things that the FDLR (a genocidal force in the jungles of Congo) has done, and focusing on minor issues.

The President made the comments while answering questions from journalists at his periodical press conference he holds at his office in Urugwiro village.

The FDLR militia is largely composed of elements responsible for the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, which claimed the lives of a million people

“The FDLR has wrecked havoc in the Democratic Republic of Congo for long, but all of a sudden it has been forgotten like it never existed and the focus now is on M23,” said the President.

The president reminded that the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO) was sent to Congo with the main mission of stopping the FDLR and other negative forces, but they are now working with them.

The President urged that MONUSCO ought to go back to their main mission and do what it is supposed to do.

He lashed out at people who play around with the FDLR issue saying that those currently fighting are young people who had nothing to with the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi and asked why they were fighting for the same cause as their parents.

He explained that being young does not exonerate anybody as long as they identify themselves with a particular ideology and said that those young people are fighting for the cause of their folks and therefore should be taken as such.

President Kagame’s comments come following the Government of Rwanda severally accusing the newly-deployed Force Intervention Brigade (FIB), under the MONUSCO of backing collaboration between DR Congo-based FDLR and the Congolese army.

The Government of Rwanda has always said that it has reliable information implicating senior UN commanders taking sides among the very armed groups whose military activities they are meant to deter.

The UN intervention brigade in eastern DR Congo was mandated to dismantle the FDLR and other groups causing insecurity in the region.

Kagame accuses international community of ignoring the FDLR issue