On April 7, 2025, in Kigali, on the 31st commemoration of the Tutsi genocide, Paul Kagame stepped up, as usual. But this time, the Rwandan president did not dwell on the memory of his nearly 800,000 compatriots massacred 31 years ago. A large part of his speech focused on the political concerns of the day. "Damn you!" the head of the military principality in power in Rwanda shouted at those who dared to criticize his hegemonic and predatory policies in the region.
On that memorable day, the Rwandan leader and his wife had lit the flame of remembrance at the Gisozi Genocide Memorial. A gesture marking the launch of 100 days of activities in memory of the victims of 1994 genocide, which, this time, was made in the remarkable absence of representatives from Rwanda's friendly countries. The 31st commemoration of the three months of the 1994 mass exterminations took place in a desperately deserted diplomatic garden. A sign of the times. And Kagame's speech was all the more incisive for it. Against his former Western friends. "These people at the UN, in these Western capitals [...] who are allied against Rwanda... I just imagine the world has gone mad," he said, before specifically attacking the Kingdom of Belgium and those member countries of the European Union, authors of recent sanctions against Rwanda. "If someone comes [...] and says: Hey, we're going to sanction you. What? Go to hell! You have your own problems to deal with, go deal with your own problems, let me deal with mine", Kagame continued, clearly beside himself. For his compatriots, the strongman of Kigali... since the genocide, issued an exhortation. "Rwandans, [...] you don't owe your life to anyone else. Have the courage to face the situation [...], don't let anyone dictate how to live your life, because the moment you accept it, that's the day you've lost your life",
Or, adopting a downright belligerent stance: “I can’t beg to live. […] We’ll fight. If I lose, I lose. But there’s a chance […] that if you stand up and fight, you’ll live. And you’ll have lived a dignified life. So, you Rwandans, why not die fighting? Instead of dying anyway. Just die like flies. Why?”, the Rwandan president once again snarled at the thousand people who had come to commemorate the 1994 genocide in a style reminiscent of a certain Adolf Hitler shortly before committing suicide after the triumphant entry of the Red Army of the USSR into Berlin in April 1945…
On Sunday, April 7, 2025, Paul Kagame did not emerge from his performance at the Gisozi Memorial with any positive impact. He only succeeded in transforming "a moment of mourning into a theater of madness", according to Théogène Rudasingwa, his former chief of staff exiled in the United States. In an open letter published on April 10, 2025, this Tutsi academic, who became Rwanda's ambassador to the United States before joining the opposition, had some very harsh words for his former comrade in arms. "Never, even in the darkest hours of our nation's recovery, have I seen you appear so brazenly petty, so disturbed, so publicly worried as during your recent outburst," he wrote.
"Kagame, small and disturbed" (Rudasingwa)
In fact, Kagame has every reason to be "small and disturbed" since the ground seems to be shifting beneath the feet of the empire he dreamed of building through bloodshed, plunder, and denial of the abominable crimes committed both in his own country and in the Great Lakes region, particularly in neighboring DRC. Thirty years of these shameful "exploits," Kigali's friends no longer hide their frustration at such cruelty and cynicism. A few days before the 31st anniversary of the Tutsi genocide, on April 4, 2025, Kigali organized an African summit devoted to Artificial Intelligence with great fanfare. The meeting was ignored by all his fellow heads of state, both Western and African, with the exception of Togolese Faure Gnassingbé Eyadema, who was tasked with taking up the mediation baton in the Rwandan Congolese conflict from Angolan Joao Lourenço. This hasn't happened since 1995, and Kigali is not mistaken about what looks like a complete abandonment, a prelude to diplomatic isolation.
On April 8, 2025, the Rwandan Foreign Affairs Ministry issued a statement deploring "the sabotage of Kwibuka 31" and the behavior of certain members of the international community on this occasion. "This moment of reflection is not a political event. It is a time of remembrance, unity, and renewal of the promise: never again. Yet, some nations have chosen to distance themselves from it, influenced by unfounded narratives implicating Rwanda in regional conflicts—without evidence, and without regard for our history," reads this complaint, rather unusual for the triumphalist in power in Kigali.
In reality, the narrative of victimhood and denial of the serious crimes perpetrated in the region by Rwanda is no longer thriving, even for many of Paul Kagame's compatriots. "You have lost the last straw of any moral mandate to govern this wounded nation. Rwanda does not belong to you. Its pain is not your weapon. The genocide does not belong to you. You were never its sole survivor, nor its sole guardian", Rudasingwa told his country's head of state. He also accused him of declaring war "not against those who planned or denied the genocide, but against your critics, your longtime allies, and the same international community that tolerated, defended, and enabled your reign for nearly thirty years".
So much goes the pitcher to the well...
So much goes the pitcher to the well until it finally breaks. That’s what comes of taking things much for granted. By sending his Western supporters "to hell" and urging his compatriots to continue a fight that seems to have deviated from its original imperatives, Kagame is signing Rwanda's expedition to hell. Or pretending to sign, as a final threat to the international community.
It thus appears that Kigali is exploiting the 1994 genocide to justify the unjustifiable, particularly a dictatorial regime imposed within Rwanda's borders and the expansionist and predatory policies implemented in neighboring DRC. "The Rwandan genocide is an undeniable fact, but nothing justifies today's deaths, any more than those of yesterday", says Yves Stefan Mbele, a French-Cameroonian political scientist. According to him, "just because some innocent people were killed yesterday does not mean that other innocent people should be killed today. Rwandans suffered and today the Congolese are suffering in a conflict that has already left millions dead".
From there to accusing Paul Kagame of criminal exploitation of these unfortunate events is a short step, one that some observers no longer hesitate to take.
It is noted that in Rwanda, only the first commemoration of the genocide, on April 7, 1995, was not subject to political exploitation, respecting the logic of national reconciliation that justified it. "The following year, the logic of reconciliation was shattered. After the collapse of the national unity government in August 1995, the presidential discourse during the commemorations deviated from its original meaning to target the opposition, both internal and international. Since then, nothing has changed", recalls Jean-François Le Drian, author of numerous studies on the subject.
Instrumentalization of the Genocide
On Sunday, April 7, 2025, in Kigali, President Kagame engaged in this instrumentalization, as he has done for three decades, threatening to send the international community "to hell" and the Rwandan people into the hell of a new war with the DRC against a backdrop of transnational ethnic hatred.
The memorial policy implemented by Paul Kagame pursues the only goal of consolidating the legitimacy of his personal power ad vitam aeternam while simultaneously stigmatizing ethnic demonization and justifying whatever seems appropriate to preserve such power, according to observers.
Between December 1995 and January 1996, approximately 20,000 bodies were exhumed by genocide survivor associations to be displayed in memorials on instructions from the authorities. And, in the late 1990s, the Rwandan state forced families to exhume bodies buried in individual graves and transfer them to collective cemeteries. "Since the 2008 law on the organization of memorial sites and cemeteries for victims of the genocide against the Tutsi, the bodies of the victims have become 'state property'", J.F. Le Drian further reveals. Proof, if any were needed, that the machine for victimizing oneself, supporting a diplomacy of guilt, and self-absolving oneself of one's own crimes is well-oiled and operating at full capacity in Kigali.
Jacques Ntshulawith Le Maximum
A propos
Journal d'informations générales paraissant à Kinshasa, en République Démocratique du Congo
