During the 32nd commemoration of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, remembrance flames were lit in New York, Washington, and Michigan. Condolences arrived from Israel, Japan, Singapore, New Zealand, Turkey, India, and other countries.
Reflections were held in London, Geneva, Cairo, Seoul, Moscow, Rabat, Lilongwe, and Lusaka. A genocide monument was unveiled on the campus of Ashesi University in Ghana. The world, in its breadth, paused to remember.
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But what of Rwanda’s immediate neighbours–Burundi, DR Congo, Tanzania, and Uganda? Tanzania honoured the occasion on two fronts. The East African Community joined Rwanda in commemoration in Arusha, while the Tanzanian government marked it in Dar es Salaam alongside members of the Rwandan community, diplomats, international organisations, and friends of Rwanda.
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Uganda’s solidarity has been unwavering since 1994. During the genocide, the waters of the Nyabarongo and Akagera rivers carried thousands of bodies into Lake Victoria. The Ugandan government and its people responded with humanity, recovering those bodies and according them dignified burials. Three memorial sites now stand along the lake: Ggolo in Mpigi District with 4,771 bodies, Lambu in Masaka District with 3,337, and Kasensero in Rakai District with 2,875–a total of 10,983 victims of the Genocide against the Tutsi buried on Ugandan soil.
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On Kwibuka 32, survivors and families travelled to Ggolo to pay tribute, joined by Uganda’s state minister Alice Kaboyo, Rwanda’s Ambassador Joseph Rutabana, and members of the diplomatic corps.
While the world lit flames, organised solidarity walks, issued statements, and flew flags at half-staff, the governments of Burundi and DR Congo remained conspicuously silent.
Burundi held its own high-level national ceremony on April 6 to mark the assassination of its former president, Cyprien Ntaryamira, who died in the same plane crash as Rwandan President Habyarimana. At the same time, DR Congo’s Minister of Information, Patrick Muyaya, issued a statement backing Burundi’s position, declaring the families of Habyarimana and Ntaryamira to be victims. The implication was deliberate: that the Tutsi are not the victims deserving remembrance, but rather the families of those who presided over the machinery of genocide. Muyaya went further, describing Jean-Luc Habyarimana, the former Rwandan president’s son, as a man of peace.
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What Burundi and DR Congo are doing amounts to tacit genocide denial. Their decision to invert history–turning victims into perpetrators and perpetrators into victims–is not coincidental. It is political. It is a calculated historical blindness, entirely intentional, serving a clear strategic purpose.
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The foreign policies of both governments are built on declared hostility toward Rwanda’s current leadership, with both regimes openly advocating for regime change in Kigali. President Tshisekedi has publicly vowed to change Rwanda’s government, calling it an enemy of DR Congo. In late 2024, he stated that he needed constitutional reform to secure more time to, in his own words, “liberate the Rwandan people.” That same year, in Kinshasa, President Ndayishimiye declared he would support Rwandan youth in overthrowing President Kagame’s government.
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This shared foreign policy explains both countries’ documented partnership with FDLR, the Kinshasa-backed genocidal militia directly responsible for the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. Their strategy involves reorganising, equipping, and politically empowering FDLR, with Jean-Luc Habyarimana positioned as a figurehead to consolidate anti-Rwanda sentiment.
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Participating in Kwibuka would contradict that agenda entirely. That is why both governments instead choose to reframe historical events in service of their political objectives. It is deliberate revisionism–designed to rehabilitate genocide ideology, construct a false national narrative around the dehumanisation of the Tutsi, and sanctify both FDLR and the Habyarimana legacy.
While the international community has largely looked away from this collaboration, Rwanda has not.
Rwanda Defence Force remains prepared and capable of protecting the Rwandan people, and Kigali maintains the defensive security measures along its borders necessary to counter these existential threats.
Silence from neighbours is never neutral. In this context, it is a statement.
The writer is a media specialist, historian, and playwright.
