Kagame admits Rwandan presence in DRC, release of Ugandan activist Sarah Bireete, Venezuela releases more prisoners of conscience.

In a speech, Kagame admitted to misleading CNN’s @LarryMadowo when he claimed to be unaware of the presence of Rwandan troops in eastern DRC, joking and laughing that he did so in fear of prosecution. “How would you prosecute an ignorant man?” Kagame quipped.

The remarks ended years of official denials in the face of overwhelming evidence that Rwandan military forces were aiding and participating in M23 rebel operations. It also followed public admissions of “security coordination” between Rwanda and M23 leaders in a statement from Rwanda’s ambassador to the United States.

Kagame claimed Rwanda’s interests in Congo are limited to security concerns. However, UN experts have long exposed Rwanda’s use of endless and exaggerated security concerns as a cover for military intervention and the plunder of natural resources, revealing the ways in which Kagame’s regime profits from enduring instability and chaos in eastern DRC.

On Dec. 5, 2025, Rwanda and DRC signed the Washington Accords for Peace and Prosperity. Since then, Rwanda and its M23 proxy forces have carried on military expansionism and consolidated administration of mineral-rich eastern DRC territories in violation of the accords.

Mere days after the signing of the Accords, Rwandan forces and M23 — which was not a party to the peace deal but is under Rwanda’s command and control — seized Uvira, a city in the eastern South Kivu province. They only withdrew on Jan. 17 under US pressure and threats of sanctions on Rwanda.

Meanwhile, M23, with the support of Rwanda, has continued to consolidate a parallel administration of occupied Congolese territories. The group boasts it has improved living conditions, but numerous reports document its economic exploitation, extrajudicial killings, forced recruitment, torture, and other gross human rights abuses.

Last week, hundreds of artisanal miners working under M23’s forced exploitation died in a catastrophic collapse at the Rubaya mine, in a grim reminder of the human cost of the intransigence of Rwanda and M23. Rubaya’s output of the coltan is smuggled through Rwanda and fuels both M23’s finances and Rwanda’s exports of the strategic mineral critical to today’s global economy.

Police raided the home of @SarahBireete, a lawyer and head of the Center for Constitutional Governance, on Dec. 30, 2025. She was detained as part of a wave of repression ahead of Uganda’s Jan. 15 general elections.