Today, opposition leader Martin Fayulu led protests in Kinshasa against President Félix Tshisekedi’s unconstitutional push for a third term. The result was deadly repression. But beyond the familiar crackdown, a more alarming trend is emerging: the increasing militarization of the UDPS youth league.
The evidence is clear. Whenever state security forces engage in repression, the UDPS youth are there, supporting their operations. Today was no exception. Youth activists were actively involved in acts of violence and vandalism against protestors. They were also seen alongside police during the assault on Fayulu’s party headquarters.
This pattern is not new. It carries chilling echoes of recent and past tragedies in the Great Lakes region.
In Burundi in 2015, the youth league of the ruling CNDD-FDD known as “Imbonerakure” was heavily involved in killings, rape, and torture targeting opposition members and their families. The French human rights organization FIDH designated these acts as part of a “genocidal dynamic.” It cannot be ruled out that Tshisekedi is receiving advice from Burundian President Évariste Ndayishimiye, who in 2015 served as Secretary General of the CNDD-FDD and was therefore the nominal commander of the Imbonerakure.
Even more disturbingly, Tshisekedi is allied with the FDLR, whose leadership includes perpetrators of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. Among them former Interahamwe, the youth league of the then ruling party MRND that carried out the genocide against the Tutsi.
In other words, Tshisekedi is not only importing the ideology that drove the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda in 1994 and the genocidal repression in CNDD-FDD-led Burundi in 2015. He is also importing their methods: a youth league blindly loyal to the ruling party, ready to commit all manner of atrocities to protect its leader’s grip on power.
Watch out. If this trend continues, it might get much worse.
