Rwanda doesn’t need Congo’s minerals, it has its own. All countries of the great lakes region have minerals.

Himbaralies
Nov 1 · 3 min read

What do Masaï and Congolese have in common? The Masaï believe that all cows in the world belong to them and any other community that has cows must have stolen them from Masaï- mara. For Congolese it is minerals. The story of Rwanda living off of Congolese minerals dates back when Rwanda invaded the former Zaire between 1998–2003 in pursuit of genocide fugitives that had sought refuge in its Eastern province, and in fact exploiting mines to sustain their military actions against Rwanda.

When Rwandan army went in to repatriate most of the Rwandan refugees, others went deep into the Congo’s forests. Their pursuit eventually led to the fall of former dictator Mobutu Sese Seko who was harboring the FDLR.

The famous story of a mineral heist coined by western NGOs and journalists was the basis of a lawsuit by the subsequent Democratic Republic of Congo to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) against Rwanda and Uganda: ‘Rwanda aggressed its neighbor the DRC, violated its sovereignty and stole its minerals, in violation of international law.’, the accusation read.

‘Rwanda did not violate international law and was in fact justified in its military action against former Zaïre, in the sense that the militia groups in the DRC were not installed at the required distance provided for by international law in spite of several demands in that regard from the government of Rwanda, and as a result posed an effective threat to Rwanda’s national security. There are no evidence to prove that Rwanda stole Congolese minerals’, the ICJ judgement found.

Rwanda was thus found not guilty and sentenced to no damages, whereas the DRC had to settle court fees. Uganda on the other hand wasn’t as lucky and the ICJ found Uganda guilty of invading the DRC and sentenced it to pay USD 10 Billions in reparations.

Here is the link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4541126.stm

In spite of the groundbreaking ICJ judgement, the narrative of Rwanda looting DRC mineral persisted. One Steve Hegues an American stringer based in Eastern DRC sympathized with the FDLR and developed a theory depicting the FDLR as a benevolent liberation movement, no different of the RPF of the early 90s. He concluded his blog by calling the world to isolate Rwanda and put pressure on its government to share power with the FDLR — former genocide perpetrators on UN terrorist list, looting, killing and raping civilians in Eastern DRC.

Hegues was subsequently hired to coordinate a UN panel of experts which as expected wrote a report accusing the government of Rwanda of all ills in Eastern DRC, and leaked it to the media before the report was approved by the UN sanction committee. The UN sanctions committee later poked holes in the biased report and pointed out the cavalier statements in it which had not been substantiated, demanded for them to be removed. The approved version of the report was benign, but the media continued to run with the leaked version — to date.

Seeing the controversy, Rwanda initiated a project of tagging all the minerals exported abroad for their traceability — the first and only country to do it in the region. But this was never taken into consideration and accusations persist.

As for Steve Hegues, he was fired and went into self-isolation and likely depression — to date.

So the wire that Rwanda exploits Congo’s minerals isn’t new, nor is it real. While the DRC has possibly the world’s largest depository of minerals, all countries of the Great-Lakes Region are mineral rich and contrary to Congolese of Massaï belief — contrary to Himbara’s fantasy: minerals, just like cattle know no border.

Himbaralies

Written by

This is a platform to clarify the lies that David Himbara publishes on his blog https://medium.com/@david.himbara_27884 about Rwanda and Paul Kagame

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