It seems in HRW’s world, there are no Congolese Tutsi, Hema, or Swahili speakers.
Dear HRW now, our Banyamulenge sisters and brothers, mothers and fathers, could perish, and your organization, which calls itself a human rights group, wouldn’t even notice. To you, we don’t matter. We don’t exist. We are invisible. If I’m wrong, then explain this.
How is it possible that you are counting graves in Rwanda while our people are being slaughtered in unimaginable ways: lynched, hacked with machetes and pickaxes, burned alive, even cannibalized, while their villages are destroyed, their cows shot point-blank, entire livelihoods erased, yet you say nothing?
Many of these crimes are filmed. You can hear the killers speak, feel their hatred, see their promises to wipe out our people, anyone who stands with us.
Their will to exterminate us is only matched by your will to turn a blind eye to their crimes, while pushing your political agenda. Is it because you fear that acknowledging our suffering would deprive you of your source of bread?
Hundreds of thousands of us have been forced to flee to Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya, Burundi. Have you ever asked why? Do you even want to know?
What monster crossed our borders in 1994 to tear us from our villages, from the land we have always known as ours? For some of us, it’s been nearly thirty years. Our little brothers and sisters have only ever known life in refugee camps: hunger, fear, constant threat of assault, living each day trying to survive. Have you ever wondered how these children go to school under such conditions, survive, live as children at all?
Aid is dwindling. Our host countries, God bless them, have done what they can. But the question remains: why can’t we go home? Because of the monsters you never mention in your reports.
Those monsters, FDLR, now armed by their fellow ideologist Tshisekedi, are wreaking havoc, together with militias CODECO, Wazalendo, as well as your military FARDC wreak havoc. Their crimes are invisible to you. Instead, you speak for them. You speak of “M23’s alleged intent to ethnically cleanse the Hutu”! Why this selective approach to the issue?
You speak of alleged killings reported by unknown witnesses. We speak of killings caught on camera. You speak of alleged abuses by our liberators. We speak of the freezing of entire regions’ bank accounts – a cruel indiscriminate punishment for daring to celebrate the departure of monsters from the Kivus.
And now you want our liberators, our protectors, to leave, and the monsters to return. What have we done to you?
Your name will go down in history as one of the most shameful, in these dreadful times.