President Paul Kagame has once again accused the international community of applying “double standards” in addressing security concerns in the region.

The Rwandan leader said failure by the international community to decisively deal with the Rwandan rebels in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) for the past two decades but eliminated M23 rebels “in a very short time” reflects the double standards.

“Imagine the world waking up to an issue that is two or three years old and forgetting the one that has existed for 21 years,” President Kagame said, comparing the existence of M23 and FDLR rebel groups.

The president, at the event to mark 21 years after the Genocide against the Tutsi Tuesday, faulted countries that have accorded genocide fugitives “VIP treatment,” and those that have tagged the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) rebels as ‘freedom fighters’.

FDLR is a Hutu extremist group that has operated in eastern DRC for the past two decades. Its senior cadre is accused of carrying out the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. M23 was a rebel military group, also in eastern Congo, that had been formed in April 2012 but routed late 2013 by a combined Congolese army/United Nations combat force.

Addressing a modest crowd including government officials and diplomats, Kagame accused the international community of making Rwanda a scapegoat over the war in DR Congo instead of holding to account “Kinyarwanda-speaking Congolese,” who he said caused the conflict.

“In 2012, just recently, the whole world converged against Rwanda over the war in the eastern part of our neighbouring country DRC, which we were not supposed to be answerable. Rwanda did not cause the war in eastern DRC.

“The war you all heard about in eastern DRC was caused by Kinyarwanda-speaking Congolese. Whoever wanted to know who caused that war or the reasons should have held those people accountable, not Rwanda. Not at all, but the whole world converged and blamed Rwanda,” he said.

READ: Kagame comes out fighting on Congo accusations

He noted that after victimising Rwanda, the international community expressed interest in pacifying DRC including dealing with FDLR.

“They lied to us that they are going to solve all problems in eastern DRC, from M23 to FDLR, ADF or FNL, all this groups fighting there,” he said.

He said that after the United Nations Force Intervention Brigade defeated M23, attention was supposed to shift to FDLR but that did not happen. Instead, he said, several excuses were given to justify the existence of the Hutu rebel group.

“They started saying that it is no longer FDLR but rather that we are dealing with the grandchildren of genocidaires; we cannot touch them, they are young. At some point, it was said that the FDLR issue was a political one.

“They started looking for reasons to give FDLR political legitimacy, which means that the people we are remembering here today, whose graves are here, actually hundreds of thousands, according to world interpretation, the cause of their death, could be having legitimate political reasons,” Mr Kagame said.

He said that the world recognises the threat posed by FDLR but when it comes to fighting them, the concerned parties drag their feet by justifying the political existence of the group.

READ: Lack of UN support, harsh terrain frustrate clampdown on FDLR rebels

Raps France

The Rwandan leader, without explicitly naming the country, seemingly took a dig at France, accusing the “European country” of acquitting an individual, whose atrocities are known by all, of any wrongdoing.

Last Friday, it was reported that France would release a man accused of involvement in the 1994 Rwandan massacre after the Paris Appeal court ruled in his favour. The ruling angered Rwanda and genocide survivors.

The Parisian court ruled that Claude Muhayimana, who obtained French nationality in 2010 before he was arrested in the northern city of Rouen in April 2014, will be freed and not extradited to Rwanda because the crime of genocide was not on the statute books in Rwanda in 1994.

READ: Genocide suspects to be tried in France

“The judge said, when he committed the alleged crime, it doesn’t matter whether he killed people or not, genocide was not among the crimes in the Rwandan laws at the time. What this means is that he killed people who deserved to die,” President Kagame said.

The Rwandan leader wondered if all the people convicted of genocide crimes should be released since the crime was not among the Rwandan laws at the time.

He said that the genocide was supported by ‘foreigners’ who helped propagated the hate ideology and later on facilitated the killings.

“Some countries are according genocidaires VIP treatment, offering them protection, including those who are conspiring to see a similar genocide happen again in this country,” the Rwandan leader told the gathering.

He added that some are protected under the guise that they are freedom fighters or politicians fighting bad leadership in Rwanda by the same countries lecturing Rwanda about freedoms and democracy.

Mr Kagame vowed that his country “will never be the same” and cannot be taken aback by detractors. He said that Rwanda has regained its dignity and will continue its path to progress.

The President and the First Lady Jeannette Kagame lit a flame of hope at Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre where over 250,000 genocide victims are buried in mass graves, during a sombre ceremony characterised by a light drizzle.

More than two decades after the genocide, President Kagame has been credited for overseeing a successful reconstruction of a country in tatters into a model African economy but his critics accuse him of stifling opposition and being intolerant to dissent.