By Ronald sserwadda

French President Emmanuel Macron has urged Rwanda to cease its support for the M23 rebels who are causing chaos in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

In a joint press conference with President Felix Tshisekedi of DR Congo, who is visiting Paris, President Macron demanded that Rwanda put an end to its support for M23 and remove its troops from Congolese territory.

The M23 first began operating in 2012 ostensibly to protect the Tutsi population in eastern DR Congo, which had long complained of persecution and discrimination.

The UN, EU and US have said that Rwanda, which is also led by Tutsis, is backing the M23. The government in Kigali has repeatedly denied this.

Last March, when asked to condemn Rwanda’s reported support for the rebels, Mr Macron said he had been “very clear about the condemnation of the M23 and those who support it”.

Among them is a resurgent M23, which the UN says is backed by neighbors Rwanda, a claim Kigali denies. Since 2021, about 1.7 million people have fled fighting  linked to the group in North Kivu, and hundreds of thousands of people are living in overcrowded camps in Goma and the surrounding area.

Mukwege has been critical of the Congolese government’s response to the fighting, denouncing its impunity over war crimes and crimes against humanity, and the “plundering of [the country’s] natural resources”. His comments have brought him enemies and he narrowly survived an  assassination attempt  in 2012. For a time he was under UN protection, but that ended in 2023.

In December, he ran in the  presidential elections. “I wanted to take my responsibility before history,” he says. “And we tried to offer an alternative vision to say that there is no fatality, that there is the possibility of changing things.”

Mukwege took about 1% of the vote and the incumbent, Felix Tshisekedi, won a second term in office  in a vote that nine opposition candidates condemned as a “sham”.

Mukwege, who has been nominated for the   Aurora humanitarian prize announced next month, has campaigned around the world for survivors of gender-based violence, and last month he joined the  Elders, an independent group of global leaders working for peace and human rights, founded by Nelson Mandela.

The DRC, he feels, has been abandoned by the international community. The UN peacekeeping mission, Monusco, which has operated in DRC for more than two decades, is due to leave by the end of  this year. In 2022, more than 30 people died during protests  in eastern provinces calling for the force’s immediate withdrawal for its failure to protect civilians.