Faced with international sanctions that have been raining down on his regime for several weeks, Rwandan President Paul Kagame is turning to “his” people. Both to ensure their support and to create an illusion of popularity. On Sunday, March 16, 2025, he held his very first major rally in front of several thousand supporters since his re-election in July 2024. To point the finger at the perpetrators of his misfortune and expose them to popular condemnation, thus betraying a panic that was previously unknown. A hint of the end of his reign…
In Rwanda, witnesses report that populations are increasingly compelled to demonstrate their “unwavering support” for the president by responding to the increasingly frequent mass demonstrations. Sunday, March 16, 2025, was a special day. Several thousand men and women had been informed by the authorities that they must wake up at dawn to gather at the Arena stadium in Kigali where president Kagame would speak as part of a brand new program to reach out to citizens, the “Kwegera Abaturage.” The date was not chosen at random. After several warnings, the European Union was preparing to make public its sanctions against Kigali, scheduled for March 18, two days after the Arena meeting.
Challenges launched.
Speaking primarily in Kinyarwanda, Paul Kagame immediately launched a series of challenges, reaffirming his determination to continue what he presents as “protecting the country.” But also, his belligerent intentions toward the DR Congo, and even the rest of the planet if necessary. «There is nothing worse that can happen to us than the tragedy we survived. That is why we must not be afraid to speak out, to fight for ourselves and against those who want to destroy us», he declared to the crowd, alluding to the 1994 Tutsi genocide while falsely suggesting that this tragedy was anything other than the exacerbation of a Rwandan-Rwandan conflict. The regime’s official theory is that the existential threat to a portion of its population stems from the DRC. «I have no problem with the teachings (biblical, editor’s note) according to which when someone slaps me on the left cheek, I must offer him the other… I’m not there. Forgive me and listen to me, but I’m not asking you to do as I do. If you slap me on the cheek, if you’re lucky, you can survive. My doctrine is, if you slap me on the cheek, I’ll slap you back wherever I can reach you»” declared the head of the military principality in place in Rwanda.
Kagame therefore has no shortage of reasons for his army’s bloody military incursions into the DRC. On Sunday at the Kigali Arena, the Rwandan dictator listed a few of them, without much concern for plausibility or contradictions with his previous statements on the same subject. Nor for proven historical certainties. The Rwandan president invoked the shared colonial past of the DRC, Rwanda, and Belgium to justify his repeated attacks on the territory of his vast neighbor. «The territories of Rutshuru and Masisi in the eastern DRC, just like Kisoro in the western region of Uganda, once belonged to Rwanda before being unjustly assigned to these neighboring countries by Belgium», he explained to an attentive audience, before explaining that it was the mistreated Rwandophone populations in Rutshuru and Masisi who were demanding their rights.
Colonial Past
The Rwandan head of state took particular aim at Belgium, which he believes is responsible for implementing international sanctions against his country. “It is the real enemy,” which is waging a global campaign to diplomatically isolate Rwanda, Paul Kagame angrily insisted. «What you see every day, the accusations they make against us, in Kinyarwanda, we call it ‘gukoronga’: constant insults and attacks. They talk about the war in Congo, first presenting it as Rwanda’s war, then claiming that we support it », he explained to the crowd. «Our biggest problem is that we were colonized by a small country, Belgium, which wanted to carve up our country and reduce it to a size similar to its own. And I’m going to warn them», the Rwandan president ranted in a speech that, according to several observers, reflected a certain dismay.
There was no further mention of the “FDLR threat”, the heirs of the 1994 genocidaires, repeatedly rehashed to justify his military campaigns in the Democratic Republic of Congo. In this address, which took on the air of a farewell speech by a king driven mad by the gods as a prelude to his fall, Paul Kagame no longer remembered that it was the hegemonic and predatory warlike adventures of his German-Prussian precursors during the First World War that had thrown Rwanda, along with Burundi, into Belgium’s clutches. And not the other way around.
J.N. with The Maximum