Rwanda is a proxy for Western interests in the mineral-rich Great Lakes region. Its military is armed by the United States, United Kingdom, France, the European Union, and supported by other proxies like Uganda. It is closely aligned to Israel and its intelligence and military are equipped with Israeli-made spyware and weapons. Paul Kagame, Rwanda’s president, remains a key ally of the West even as his regime surveils, jails, tortures, disappears and assassinates critics; seizes sovereign territory; and violates the most fundamental norms of international law.
The UN has reported that more than 400,000 people have been forced to flee their homes since the start of the year, adding to the seven million who are already displaced. This is a humanitarian crisis beyond measure.
From Kinshasa to Bukavu, tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets to oppose the incursion, call for an end to the violence, and voice their anger at the imperial powers that sit at its root. Western embassies have been targeted by protestors for their support for Rwanda and its military.
The Congo is one of the world’s wealthiest countries. It is abundant not only in natural resources. From beryl to bauxite, copper to cadmium, gold to germanium, manganese to monazite, Congo holds trillions of dollars in metals and minerals. It produces over 70% of the world's cobalt, a mineral indispensable to the global tech economy.
It is also rich in land. Over 80 million hectares of Congolese land — plateaus, savannas, grasslands, and mountainous terraces — are arable. Its forests are among the lushest in Africa. Its rivers, lakes, swamps, and ocean waters contain vast reserves of fish — and its hydroelectric capacity counts for as much as an eighth of the world total.
This fabulous wealth has long drawn the world's parasites and plunderers.
Belgium's King Leopold II, hungry for rubber and ivory, seized the country as his personal possession in 1885. In the holocaust that followed, 10 million Congolese people were killed in one of many prologues to the genocidal violence that would later engulf Europe.
The United States would soon pick up the mantle. The CIA-backed assassination of Patrice Lumumba in 1961 cemented Western control over the country, installing the kleptocrat Mobutu Sese Seko and ensuring unlimited access to the Congo's wealth for Western corporations.
Today, beneath the polished surfaces of our phones and electric cars lies a chain of suffering that stretches from the toxic pits of the Congo, sometimes worked by children labouring at gunpoint, to the boardrooms of Silicon Valley where minerals like cobalt and coltan, ripped out of the Congo, are plugged into the “green economy”. At the same time, nearly three in four Congolese people live in extreme poverty.
The Mandé Charter, adopted in what is now Mali in 1222, opens by proclaiming that "every human life is a life". But to the imperialist nations, Congolese life, African life, is expendable. The five million people who died in the wars after Mobutu's fall were barely acknowledged in the Western media. And when this catastrophe was mentioned it was, in high colonial fashion, dismissed as a result of “tribalism”.
Today, as Rwandan forces invade the Congo to appropriate and funnel minerals to Western economies, we encounter the same shroud of silence. Even when the crisis is given cursory acknowledgement, it is attributed to “regional instability” — a nebulous and passive category that transmutes the systemic into the innate, obscuring the role of imperialist accumulation as it destroys African land and truncates its peoples’ lives.
That is why we, popular movements, political parties, and unions from around the world, stand with the people of Congo in their pursuit of dignity, sovereignty, and liberation — and vow to block the arteries of imperial plunder wherever we confront them. Rwanda must be isolated and opposed in the same way that Israel must be isolated and opposed. Then, their imperialist backers, who underwrite the violence, must be forced to retreat.
Signatories:
Abahlali baseMjondolo (South Africa) | Abolition Feminism for Ending Sexual Violence (United Kingdom) | Africa Subcommittee of the National Lawyers Guild (United States) | African Stream (Pan-African) | Afro Umoja Political Representation Innovating Silicon Valley (Afro UPRIS) Black Democratic club of Santa Clara County (United States) | Ahel (Jordan) | Akcja Socjalistyczna (Poland) | All India Feminist Alliance (India) | Alliance for International Reforestation (United States) | amandla.mobi (South Africa) | American Peace Information Council (United States) | Anarres Natural Health (Canada) | Anti-Racism Coalition NL (Canada) | Arab Left Forum (Canada) | Associação de Amizade Portugal-Sahara Ocidental (AAPSO) (Portugal) | Associação ILGA Portugal (Portugal) | Backbone Campaign (United States) | Bay Area Muslim Therapists (United States) | Books Against Borders (United Kingdom) | Brainerd Area Coalition for Peace and Brainerd Lakes United Environmentalists (BACP-BLUE) (United States) | Brighton & Hove Palestine Solidarity Campaign (United Kingdom) | Bruxelles Panthères (Belgium) | Calgary Anti-Racist Action (Canada) | Campaign for Truth & Justice (United Kingdom) | Canada Palestine Association - Vancouver (Canada) | Canadian Boat to Gaza (Canada) | Canadian Dimension (Canada) | Canadian Voice of Women for Peace (Canada) | Candidatura d'Unitat Popular (Països Catalans) | CDHMP (Brazil) | Center for Environment (Bosnia and Herzegovina) | Center for Marxist Education (United States) | Center for Youth KVART (Bosnia and Herzegovina) | Centre Congolais pour le Droit du Développement Durable (Democratic Republic of Congo) | Centre Delás (Spain) | Centre Delàs d'Estudis per la Pau (Spain) | CESTA Friends of the Earth El Salvador (El Salvador) | Chile-Palestine Mental Health Network (Chile) | Citizens International (Malaysia) | Claremont Main Road Mosque (South Africa) | Coalition Against Fascism in India (United States) | Coalition Tunisienne Contre la Peine de Mort (Tunisia) | Colossa Foundation (South Africa) | Comité pour une Paix Juste au Proche-Orient (Luxembourg) | Committee of Anti-Imperialists in Solidarity with Iran (CASI) (United States) | Communist Workers League (United States) | Congo River Mission (Democratic Republic of Congo) | Congo Solidarity Campaign (Pan-African) | Conscience International (United States) | Courage Connection Foundation (Zimbabwe) | Cubanismo (Belgium) | Cumberland County Green Party (United States) | Dayenu New Zealand Jews Against Occupation (New Zealand) | Decolonize Hellas (Greece) | Defence for Children International (Palestine) | Democratic Socialists of America (United States) | Deutscher Friedensrat e.V. (Germany) | Diaspora Pa'lante Collective (Puerto Rico) | Dinamismo Juvenil A.C. (México) | Doctors Against Genocide (United States) | DSA International Committee (United States) | Ecostrades vzw (Belgium) | Endorois Indigenous Women Empowerment Network (Kenya) | EqualHealth´s Campaign Against Racism (International) | Ethiopian Human Rights Defenders (Ethiopia) | Faith Strategies, LLC (United States) | Faithfully Sustainable Collective (United States) | Focus on the Global South (International) | Food Sovereignty Alliance (India) | For Mother Earth (Belgium) | Forum Social Congolais (Democratic Republic of Congo) | Foundation Atelier (Bosnia & Herzegovina) | Founding Mothers Movement (United States) | France Palestine Mental Health Network (France) | Freante Antiimperialista Internacionalista (Spain) | Frente Unido America Latina (Germany) | Friedensglockengesellschaft Berlin e.V. (Germany) | Friends of Coldwater (United States) | Friends of the Earth Australia (Australia) | Fundación Chile Sin Ecocidio (Chile) | GAC (United Kingdom) | Gender and Sexuality Alliance Buffalo City (South Africa) | Global Afrikan Congress (United Kingdom) | Global Justice Ecology Project (United States) | Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space (United States) | Grassroots Al-Quds (Palestine) | Green Eco-Socialist Network (United States) | Green Party of Utah (United States) | Groundwork, Friends of the Earth SA (South Africa) | Habitat International Coalition (Argentina) | South African Healthcare Workers For Palestine (South Africa) | Himpunan Mahasiswa Islam (Indonesia) | Hindus for Human Rights (United States) | Honor the Earth (Turtle Island) | Human Agenda (United States) | Human Rights Awareness Center (Nepal) | Humanitas the Africana Ethical Society (United States) | Ibn-E-Sina R&D Organization (Afghanistan) | Ibrahim Jame (Canada) | Instituto Brasil-Palestina IBRASPAL (Brazil) | International Association of People's Lawyers (Australia) | International Board on Books for Young People (Palestine) | International Labour Network (Thailand) | International Organization for the Unification of Arab Peoples (Jordan) | Ireland Palestine Mental Health Network (Ireland) | Islamic Centre of Southwest Ontario (Canada) | Joint Christian Committee (Lebanon) | JOKOCollective (United States) | Justiça Ambiental JA! (Mozambique) | Kashif (United States) | Kenya Social Movement Network (Kenya) | Kiclapoo Peace Circle (United States) | Kumi NOW (Palestine) | Kuwaiti Progressive Movement (Kuwait) | KZN Palestine Solidarity Forum (South Africa) | Lawyers Against Genocide (United States) | Leuvense Actiegroep Palestina (LAP) (Belgium) | Leuvense vredesbeweging (Belgium) | Linear Lines - MENA (International) | M a marvan (United Kingdom) | Madison for World Beyond War (United States) | Maine Green Independent Party (United States) | Maison médicale (Belgium) | Malaysian Consultative Council of Islamic Organisation (Malaysia) | Mashiya Royal Kingdom of the Ba Bembe Nation in South Africa (South Africa) | Mointada Ettajdid (Tunisia) | Montreal for a World Beyond War (Canada) | Mundo sin Guerras y sin Violenncia (Chile) | Black Lives Matter UK (United Kingdom) | Namibian People Youth Empowerment Organisation known as {Youth Power Save Africa} (Namibia) | National Alliance of Peoples Movements (India) | National Lawyers Guild International Committee (United States) | Network of NGOs of Trinidad and Tobago for the Advancement of Women (Trinidad and Tobago) | NorCal Sabeel (United States) | North American Climate, Conservation and Environment (NACCE) (United States) | Oilfields Workers' Trade Union (Trinidad and Tobago) | One Billion Rising (India) | Open Food Network (United Kingdom) | Organisation Contre la Torture en Tunisie (Tunisia) | Orinoco Tribune (Venezuela) | Palestine Solidarity Coalition, University of New Hampshire (United States) | Palestine Speaks (Germany) | Palestinian Labor Struggle Union (Palestine) | Pax Afrika Network (South Africa) | Pax Christi (Canada) | Pax Christi (United States) | Peace Action WI (United States) | Peace Coalition of Southern Illinois (United States) | Peace in DRC (South Africa) | Perserikatan Sosialis (Indonesia) | Peterborough Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Canada)
