The lies we’ve been told for a long time. The truth about the Rwandan genocide. What they’ve never said about the real culprits…
A few days before the release of UN report on genocide in Congo, I’m reposting one of my articles on the Rwandan genocide, an article which prompted to severalthreats...RWANDA: “GENOCIDE OF TUTSIS”, THE BIGGEST LIE OF THE CENTURY. ANATOMY OF A UNIVERSALIZED LIE.
On April 6th, 1994, the plane carrying President Juvenal Habyarimana of Rwanda and Cyprien Ntaryamira of Burundi was shot down at Kigali airport while beginning its landing. Following the terrorist attack, a horrible massacre and humanitarian disaster plunged Rwanda into horror and chaos. In three months, some eight hundred thousand Rwandans will die as well. This is what we call the "Rwandan Genocide", that some "enlightened minds" call "genocide of Tutsis", as if to say that the victims of massacres in Rwanda were only the Tutsis, to whom we associate a small Hutu group called "Hutu moderates."
The story conveyed through the media, some "experts" and "historians" is quite simple: the Hutu extremists in Rwanda fomented genocide of Tutsis for several years, rising to acts between April and July 1994. Paul Kagame, leader of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) drove extremists from power and ended the genocide. This story of Paul Kagame, a kind of hero who pulled his people from the clutches of a gang of killers, has justified the many Hutu extermination operations remotely controlled by Kagame in Rwanda and Congo since 1994, under the pretext of pursuing the alleged genocidaires. Today, it isthis same excuse that allows Kagame to occupy part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The toll is heavy: more than six million Congolese killed by the Rwandan Patriotic Army.
The debate on the Rwandan genocide or genocide of Tutsis, depending on which way you want to put it, has raised passions. But before going further, let us ask the following question: Was there genocide against the Tutsis in Rwanda? If there was genocide, who is (are) responsible (s)?
I will answer this question by basing myself on the work of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR).
The main exhibit of "planning the genocide" on which the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) is based is an alleged fax sent by General Dallaire to UN headquarters in New York, January 11th, 1994. It appears that the fax contained information provided by an informant known as "Jean-Pierre" on the preparation by Hutu militiamen, of a plan "carefully prepared" to exterminate the Tutsis to 1000 in twenty minutes. This fax "speaks" also of weapons caches that these militias have hidden throughout the city of Kigali, to carry out their "diabolical plan." What is known about this?
First, it is proven that the famous fax has never existed. The only fax found in the archives of the United Nations speaks of weapons caches and an informant (Jean-Pierre). "The extermination of Tutsis" is not mentioned. Secondly, Jean-Pierre, who worked with the Interahamwe was actually a double agent, he worked closely with the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) of Paul Kagame. His testimony was in fact to demonize the Habyarimana government, accusing it of planning genocide against the Tutsis. A former UNAMIR provided me with a document in which it is clearly stated that "Jean-Pierre" whose real name Turatsinze Abubakar was in constant contact with the liaison officer of the RPF Karenzi Karake and later at the ICTR, his wife confirmed that her husband worked for the RPF in Mulindi before being killed by Kagame’s men.
A year later, a fax appears in an office at the United Nations where it talks about a plan of genocide against the Tutsis. The problem is that the fax is a forgery. It was sent from Britain while Dallaire claims to have sent it from Kigali on January 11th, 1994.This document also contains other handwritten notes after they received it that day. In addition, a note from a UN worker said that "This copy has been lodged in the archives November 28, 1995’’. In fact, the goal was probably to insert the pseudo fax in the archives of the United Nations one year after the tragic events of Rwanda in order to validate the thesis of a ''planned genocide''.
And to measure the degree of deception of General Dallaire, who claims to have sent a fax about a "possible plan of genocide of Tutsis", just watch what he said on his return from Rwanda. Indeed, participating in the program Le Point of Radio-Canada September 14, 1994, a week after his return from Rwanda, Romeo Dallaire has answered the question asked by a Rwandan: “Do you think there was genocide in Rwanda, that is to say, the execution of a plan to eliminate Tutsis in Rwanda?”
The general's reply could not have been clearer: "I would say that there has been national genocide, but genocide of political philosophy, not purely ethnic. Many Hutus as many Tutsis were killed ... I think the overflow we saw was beyond what can be designed. But there was a political moderate destruction process, yes. That after there was a chain of hysteria and basic reactions, and also people who have been inflamed by extremist elements, also yes. But never, I think no one could have planned the amount of overflow."
The theory of the fax had not survived very well in the test of facts and truth, the ICTR has engaged in the search for potential "planners of the genocide of Tutsi." The Prime Minister of the Interim Government of Rwanda, Jean Kambanda will be the first Rwandan personality to be a guinea pig at the ICTR. Upon arrest, he was immediately escorted to a vehicle with tinted windows which vanished in a direction opposite to the detention center. For about nine months, from 27 August to 1 May 1998, former prime minister will be held in the utmost secrecy. He is detained in a house in Dodoma, five hundred kilometers south of Arusha. The ICTR does not authorize him to see a lawyer of his choice. This worries the bodies of human rights including Amnesty International, which in its April 1998 report notes: "The risks associated with maintaining an inmate in an unrecognized detention center were compounded in this case for Jean Kambanda who had no lawyer to advise him throughout his interrogation.’’
The case "Jean Kambanda" is emblematic: the ICTR delegates a Canadian officer to psychologically torture him in order to make him confess to having planned the genocide against the Tutsis! They make him understand that his family would be in danger if he did not cooperate with the court! One would have thought a court case to be worthy of a banana republic, but no, the ICTR. Worse still, the officer responsible for administering a "good dose of torture" to Mr. Kambanda: Pierre Duclos is well known in his country, Canada, he was accused of perjury, fabricating evidence and obstructing justice in relation with the aborted trial of the Matticks brothers, a family involved in organized crime. Yes, the ICTR hires individuals with sulphurous past. In fact, the Canadian prosecutor Louise Arbour has hired Pierre Duclos and it is also she who has stifled the investigation implicating Kagame and his movement (RPF) in the assassination of President Juvenal Habyarimana, considered by United Nations as the trigger for the genocide. "Birds of same feathers" a friend of mine likes to say.
On May 22, 1998, Jean Kambanda pleads guilty to all charges in the indictment, including genocide and conspiracy to commit genocide. It's surprise, the media world are flocking to the news. This is the heyday of the ICTR; nobody resists to have a share of the success. The guilty plea is evidence that genocide was indeed planned by the Hutu government against the Tutsi. Any time after the sentence of life imprisonment of Kambanda, the few members of the prosecutor's office who worked directly on this issue easily confide their unease about how he was treated. From these conversations emerged under the coat a mixture of embarrassment, shame, anger and sarcasm. Not only because he was tortured by the "terrorist cell" of the ICTR, but so many other questions arise as to his participation in the planning of the genocide. Many of these "experts" and "historians" have argued that genocide was planned by the Habyarimana government. So how is it that Kambanda who never worked with this government be accused of having planned the genocide when we know that he took power at the time that genocide was committed already? Was the genocide planned before or after? Those are questions that perplex the ICTR.
The case Kambanda also having shown its limitations, the ICTR does not despair, it is yet to prove that there indeed was a planned genocide against the Tutsis. The court has two big fish: Colonel Bagosora presented as the "mastermind of the genocide" and Zigiranyirazo or "Mr. Z", brother-in-law of President Habyarimana, presented as the godfather of "Akazu", a sort of secret cell of the Hutu government which was used to assassinate opponents and coordinate the genocide of Tutsis in 1994.
After a river paced trial by 409 days of hearings, the statements of 242 witnesses for the prosecution and defense filling 30,000 pages of transcripts, exhibits by 1600, with 4500 pages of findings and 300 written decisions (in the case of Bagosora), the court declared December 18, 2008, Colonel Bagosora not guilty of "conspiracy to commit genocide." It is a blow to the prosecutor, Kigali and friends who see the official account of the Rwandan genocide or "Tutsi" as is, shattered. The evidences presented by the prosecutor to try to prove the planning of the genocide were dismissed by judges as inconclusive. In the case of "Mr. Z", the Appeals Chamber of the ICTR, dated November 16, 2009, dismissed all charges against him calling for his immediate release. The conspiracy theory was therefore rejected, another setback for the theorists of planning the genocide of Tutsis.
Before continuing, I’d like to remind that there has indeed been a massacre of people in Rwanda. My approach is not to deny these facts. If the ICTR has so far not been able to prove that there was a "planned genocide" against Tutsis, this does not prevent the fact that acts of genocide have been well and truly committed against them, but we cannot speak of genocide itself, since it requires careful planning, what the ICTR could not prove. Hutus were also exterminated in the same way as Tutsis. Thus, the reason I prefer to speak of a "Rwandan genocide."
A key question however remains: Who is responsible for the Rwandan genocide?
I will address this issue by attempting to answer two sub-questions that seem important: Who is responsible for the attack against President Habyarimana's plane regarded as the trigger for the genocide? And what is the identity of the killers, those who engaged in the killing of people (hence the "genocidaires")?
The author of the attack
The resolution of the enigma of the attack can change the historical understanding of the sequence that leads to genocide and, where appropriate, the establishment of new political responsibilities in the context of extreme violence and extreme tension in Rwanda in early 1994; the author of the attack could not ignore that thousands of Rwandan Tutsis will pay for their lives. Whoever the author, his cynicism is proven criminal. Although the actions of the RPF had reinforced an anti-Tutsi sentiment in Rwanda before the fateful date of April 6, 1994, it is not at all certain that the forces of extermination could have been released without the death of Habyarimana, thus the importance of this attack in understanding the tragic events that unfolded in Rwanda. All the tragic history of Rwanda is therefore based on this event.
To date, the author (or authors) of the attack is (are) not "officially" known. March1, 2000, the Canadian newspaper the National Post revealed the existence in the boxes of the United Nations, of a confidential investigation report involving the current president of Rwanda in the attack against the Falcon 50 of President Juvenal Habyarimana on April 6, 1994. The same year, a former intelligence officer in the Office of the G2 Rwandan Patriotic Army, Jean-Pierre Mugabe confirmed the responsibility of Paul Kagame in the attack. Later, the French judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere questioned the role played by the current Rwandan president in what constitutes the trigger for the genocide in Rwanda in April 1994.
In 2002, investigative journalist from Cameroon Charles Onana said in his book (Les secrets du genocide rwandais: Enquête sur le mystère d’un président, Paris, Duboiris 2002) that the current Rwandan president was responsible for the attack against President Habyarimana's Falcon 50. The Rwandan government and its president had filed a complaint for defamation against Onana with the Court of First Instance of Paris. After having read the evidence filed by the lawyers of Cameroonian journalist, the Rwandan government withdrew. For Cynthia McKinney, former U.S. Senator from Georgia, Bill Clinton's special envoy to Central Africa, this reversal of the Rwandan authorities was nothing but a guilty plea: "In 2001, I organized as a member of the International Relations Committee U.S. Senate, a panel discussion on the attack. I invited CIA analysts, investigators of the ICTR, a former collaborator of Paul Kagame and several international experts on terrorism. It became clear during this meeting that Paul Kagame and members of his army, the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA), were involved in the attack. When Paul Kagame has waived the trial that he had filed against Charles Onana, I interpreted this as an admission of guilt. “There is therefore a shadow of a doubt that the sponsor of this despicable and evil act is Paul Kagame.”
The killers or “genocidaires”
The attack against President Habyarimana's plane was the kickoff of the bloodshed that would unfold in the months following throughout Rwanda. Nobody is spared. Men, women, elderly, infants and babies succumb to death with machetes, clubs and hoes.
Who are these killers? In international public opinion, these criminals have a name: the Interahamwe. But who are they?
Originally, "Interahamwe" which means "those who are put together," was a group of youths standing by policymakers of the MRND, the ruling Hutu party. This kind of groups, each political party in Rwanda had one. The socio-political explosive created by the RPF before the assassination of Habyarimana would radicalize the Interahamwe. At the announcement of the assassination of their leader (Habyarimana) is the explosion of hatred, young (Interahamwe) will engage in unprecedented massacres against the Tutsi and Hutu supporters. What international opinion fails to see in all these massacres committed by the Interahamwe, is the hidden hand of the RPF!
Yes! Indeed, few people know that the RPF had infiltrated the Hutu militias, particularly the Interahamwe in order to launch provocations to exacerbate tensions and lead to the radicalization of the Hutu. The former RPA officer, Abdul Ruzibiza explains how the RPA "has consisted of small groups of highly trained squadrons infiltration, most of whom had their faces misleading because they resembled the ethnic Hutu [...]. Among the demonstrators, there were soldiers of the RPF infiltrators as Lieutenant Kiyago, Lieutenant Jean-Pierre Gatashya, Captain Hubert Kamugisha, Sergeant Mugisha, aka Interahamwe, and others. The goal was to heat the head, sow chaos and destruction throughout the country. "
More importantly, the Interahamwe militia was founded by Anastase Gasana, a Tutsi. Member of the MRND, he joined the MDR and then became advisor to the Prime Minister Nsengiyaremye before being appointed foreign minister of the government Uwilingiyimana. Then he joined the RPF and became a minister in the first government formed in July 1994 after the military victory of General Kagame. Thus, the founder of the claimed Interahamwe, the "killers of Tutsi", made a brilliant ministerial career under the victorious Tutsi regime. Several other leaders of the militia were Tutsi; it is the first and second vice-president and treasurer. It is unusual, to say the least, to see that Tutsis were able to have such important roles in the creation, organization and operation of a militia prepared and presented as having committed the genocide of Tutsis.
A former Interahamwe Tutsi who requested anonymity told me that most Hutus that have evolved within the Interahamwe had been recruited by the former president of the RPF, Alexis Kanyarengwe (Hutu from Ruhengeri), they were trained in camps in Uganda before being injected into the "Interahamwe". What makes the former Rwandan Prime Minister Jean Kambanda say: “When they saw the Interahamwe committing these massacres, they said:" These are Hutus. "However, among those Hutus, there were those who actually belonged to MRND, and much of which belonged to the RPF.”
One thing that strikes in the course of the massacres during the genocide: The Interahamwe, supposed "enemies" of the RPF, exterminated Rwandans(mostly Tutsis) near areas controlled by Kagame's men! At this point Luc Marshal who commanded the Belgian military mission of the United Nations in Rwanda (UNAMIR) states that "Not once the RPF had tried, despite the numbers they had in place, to secure areas for Tutsis to allow them to find refuge."Ruzibiza then wonders: "why is it that the small bridge near the station Nyabugogo, Gatsyata was barricaded by the Interahamwe who had decimated the people despite the installation of the battalion Bravo by Kagame on Mount Jari? How to understand that people who were killed in Gisozi, Kagugu and Kinyinya were within two kilometers of Inkotanyi (Tutsi fighters)? What distance is there between the CND (Rwandan parliament where were the fighters of the RPF) and Kacyiru, Cymicanga and even between the CND and the Church of the Holy Family so that people perish without anything being done for help? "
Are we facing a case of failure to assist persons in danger? NO. The extermination of the Tutsis was part of the strategy of the RPF in its quest to seize power in Rwanda. Ruzibiza gives many other details which throw an entirely new history of the Rwandan genocide: "On the side of RPF reprisals against Tutsis served its cause well. This was the price to pay. Several examples are there to show how the RPF attacks multiplied in order to encourage the population to attack Tutsis. It could well alert international opinion, which saw in general, only the abuses by those in power. "But the young Tutsi officer does not stop there, he even said that "Kagame has prevented us from saving our families while we had the means and the will."
We therefore have among the Interahamwe, a group of individuals who massacred the Tutsis on behalf of the Hutu regime without realizing they were being manipulated without their knowledge by Kagame, who took great advantage of this situation, and secondly another group of individuals who massacred the Tutsis and Hutus on behalf of the RPF. In both cases, Kagame is the winner. After explaining all this, we come to the conclusion that the Rwandan genocide is the responsibility of Paul Kagame and members of his politico-military movement RPA / RPF. These Tutsi extremists are unquestionably at the heart of the tragedy in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo and cannot, simply because they are Tutsis, pretend to play the victim or become their spokesman.
This article is an excerpt from my upcoming book on the destabilization of the Great Lakes.
By Patrick Mbeko (enfantsducongo@gmail.com)
Translated from French by Fifi Manesa
