Leader of the Tutsi Rebels, General Laurent Nkunda believes that the Tutsis of eastern DR Congo are not safe and have never felt safe.
He has said in a recent interview that the genocide that killed up to a million Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994 has never really ended. He also said that the Congolese army, when the country was still called Zaire, was a strong ally of the genocidal regime in Rwanda and it is for fear of their existence that they fight.
Nkunda claims that many of the Hutu militiamen who perpetrated that 1994 genocide fled into the hills and forests of the area, where they have continued to pursue genocide against the local Tutsi population.
Nkunda said his problem with the Congolese army stems from the fact that when the guilty Hutu men of Rwanda’s killing fields fled into Congo, they were given safe haven and incorporated into the Congolese army.
The situation in Congo is that the Laurent Nkunda led Tutsi rebels want the perpetrators of the genocide returned to Rwanda to face trial but these men are now so integrated into local Congolese military groups and alliances that it is now almost impossible to satisfy this demand.
Gen Nkunda’s Tutsi rebels are unlikely to lay down their arms as long as this perceived threat to their very existence remains.
The UN, the European Union and the US are all trying to find a way to end to the fighting in the Democratic Republic of Congo but the Tutsi rebels don’t trust the United Nations forces.
They claim that the UN provided no protection for them when they were being killed in the genocide of 1994. They also claim the UN international aid agencies rather fed, watered and sheltered the Hutus of Rwanda for two years after the genocide.
