Ethnic hatred in Eastern DRC has reached tragic proportions. As denounced by a UN group of experts, since 2017, a coalition of armed groups in eastern Congo are collaborating with the Congolese army to target Banyamulenge communities. Unlike previous atrocities which took the form of pogroms, today's killings and military operations appear to be carried out to eradicate the Banyamulenge altogether.

In the context of the 2023 general elections, and eager to find scapegoats to justify their failures, the dysfunctional Congolese State tolerates or even supports political elites who demand that Banyamulenge and other “Rwandophones” be sent back to their “home countries”.

The constant support of the international community provides little incentive to change tactics, a stand all the more puzzling given the critical role some of the Congolese government's strongest supporters have played in creating the conditions for ethnic hatred in this region. 

The predicament of the Banyamulenge, who became Congolese nationals due to the arbitrary divide of African borders by colonial powers, is the poisonous legacy of Belgian divide-and-rule colonial theories of ‘race’, manufacturing the stigma against ‘Hamitic’ or ‘Tutsi’ outsiders, among the majority communities in Eastern Congo seen as ‘Bantu’ or indigenous. France, for its part, exported the anti-Tutsi genocide ideology in July 1994, when it helped its allies from the Rwanda genocidal government flee to Zaire, along with millions of perpetrators of the genocide.

Rwanda is worried about the situation of the Congolese Tutsi community:

1. Congolese Tutsi communities continue to be subjected to widespread hate speech, discrimination, and violence rooted in the genocide ideology kept alive by the genocidal militia FDLR and embraced by the Congolese leadership and security apparatus.  None of the perpetrators of these crimes have been held accountable by the DRC government, as detailed in the report of the UN Group of Experts on DRC.   The M23 is, first and foremost, a Congolese movement created in response to internal DRC problems. The fact that M23 members and Congolese Tutsi communities speak Kinyarwanda doesn't mean they are Rwandan - it is the result of the drawing of colonial borders.
2. In November 2022, the UN SG's Special Envoy for the Prevention of Genocide Crimes, Alice Wairimu Nderitu,  raised the alarm and warned the world about the tragic consequences hate speech could have in the country.