Investigations

Buy Rwanda’s 30-Year Assault on Congo by Judi Rever. Baraka Books / Traction, 106 pp., $16.95

There is a particular kind of silence that powerful governments cultivate around their worst crimes - not the silence of ignorance, but of deliberate erasure. Judi Rever has spent three decades refusing that silence. With Rwanda’s 30-Year Assault on Congo, her follow-up to the award-winning In Praise of Blood, she delivers what may be her most urgent work yet: a tight, forensically argued account of how the United States enabled Paul Kagame to wage a generation-long war of conquest on the Democratic Republic of Congo, and how the international community - its courts, its donors, its diplomats, helped him get away with it. In an era when Rwanda is still praised in development circles and Kagame is still received in Western capitals, the book reads less like history than like an indictment that nobody has had the courage to file.

Karine Buisset was a 54-year-old French national and UNICEF Programme Specialist for Protection Against Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (PSEA). She had been working in Goma since at least early 2025, documenting sexual violence by armed actors in eastern DRC. She had planned to return to France in December 2025. Her mission was extended. At approximately 04:00 on 11 March 2026, two drone strikes hit the Himbi district of Goma. Buisset was asleep in the apartment of Christine Guinot, UNICEF's head of security in the DRC, who was absent. The strike destroyed the apartment. Buisset did not survive. Two other people were also killed: an M23 combatant and a private security agent. The existence of these two victims was confirmed by the DRC government communiqué of 13 March 2026; neither has been identified by name in any source reviewed (DRC Government / Ministry of Justice, 2026). The strike was not claimed. No party has issued an official denial

Late last year, the world was alerted to the disturbing news that Russia was recruiting hundreds of young African women, aged 18–22, to go and manufacture drones in a military-industrial compound a thousand km east of Moscow called Alabuga. 

President Paul Kagame’s ongoing military involvement in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is a widely acknowledged reality, extensively documented by independent journalists, human rights organisations and the United Nations. Substantial evidence, including satellite imagery, intelligence reports and testimonies from defectors, confirms Rwanda’s support for the M23 rebel group.1

Over the past two decades, Rwanda has been praised in some circles as an African economic success story often labelled a “miracle.” Western diplomats, international donors, and some media have commended President Paul Kagame for achieving rapid economic growth while maintaining strict governance.

They are going to say that we deny the genocide,” the colleague at Forbidden Stories – the project of fifty journalists and seventeen media that investigated work, life, and death of our Rwandan colleague John Williams Ntwali – had already warned us.

In January 2023, Rwandan journalist John Williams Ntwali was killed in a traffic collision. His relentless work documenting human rights violations, the persecution of political opposition and the suppression of the press had

Investigating the deaths of Rwandan soldiers killed in North Kivu led to one journalist’s exile and possibly the death of another. 

Critics of Paul Kagame’s regime are the target of major transnational repression in Sweden, Netherlands, Belgium, South Africa, Tanzania and elsewhere. Documents and testimonies obtained by Forbidden Stories and its media partners reveal intimidation tactics and troubling disappearances of exiled Rwandans.

In international forums, conferences and showrooms, Rwanda highlights its clean streets, gender equality and favorable business environment. But behind this gleaming image is a hidden army of lobbyists, trolls and agents ready to smear any opposition. Forbidden Stories and its partners investigated Rwanda’s global influence machine as part of the Rwanda Classified project.

Rwandan journalist John Williams Ntwali spent his career holding authorities to account –– and many believe he was killed for it.

Based on current and previous revelations, one might think that the European Union, the United Kingdom, and the West in general would regard Rwanda under Paul Kagame’s regime as akin to North Korea: a place to be rather concerned about.