One year ago, in the heart of Goma, the so-called Republican Guards of Tshisekedi’s bandit army, FARDC, turned their guns on unarmed civilians.
More than fifty Congolese many of them Tutsis, who had sought shelter inside a small church in the city center, were gunned down in cold blood. It was a calculated act, not crossfire. A massacre.
Eyewitnesses later saw the bodies being collected like garbage, dumped in military trucks, and driven away to secret graves. The killers thought they could erase evidence with shovels and darkness.
Twelve months later, there has been no justice, no accountability, not even acknowledgment from Kinshasa. Families of the victims have been left with silence, and survivors live with scars that nobody dares to heal. Yet history refuses to be buried.
Today, the city of Goma is no longer under Kinshasa’s command. It is controlled by M23, and with that shift comes hope. Hope that the victims will be given a proper send-off, and hope that justice, real justice, will finally be pursued.
The Goma church massacre was not an isolated crime; it was a rehearsal. Since then, Tshisekedi has made the killings of Tutsis and other minorities the centerpiece of his politics. In Minembwe, Southern Kivu, the Banyamulenge continue to be hunted down. In Ituri, the Hema people remain targets of coordinated violence. In North Kivu, the same story plays out again and again.
What makes it worse is the hypocrisy. Rights groups that should be the first to call out such atrocities have turned themselves into loudspeakers for Kinshasa’s propaganda. Instead of defending victims, they blame them. Instead of condemning the killers, they provide excuses. It is a betrayal not just of the victims, but of the very idea of human rights.
The Goma massacre is a stain that will not wash away. A government that kills its own citizens cannot pretend to be legitimate. An army that shoots unarmed worshippers cannot claim discipline. And a world that looks away is complicit in the crime.
One year on, the victims are still waiting. Whether their justice comes from courts, or from history itself, it will come. And when it does, no amount of propaganda will protect those who ordered and carried out the killings.