Africa Great Lakes Democracy Watch



Welcome to
Africa Great Lakes Democracy Watch Blog. Our objective is to promote the institutions of democracy,social justice,Human Rights,Peace, Freedom of Expression, and Respect to humanity in Rwanda,Uganda,DR Congo, Burundi,Sudan, Tanzania, Kenya,Ethiopia, and Somalia. We strongly believe that Africa will develop if only our presidents stop being rulers of men and become leaders of citizens. We support Breaking the Silence Campaign for DR Congo since we believe the democracy in Rwanda means peace in DRC. Follow this link to learn more about the origin of the war in both Rwanda and DR Congo:http://www.rwandadocumentsproject.net/gsdl/cgi-bin/library


Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Rwanda Crisis Could Expose U.S. Role in Congo Genocide



by BAR executive editor Glen Ford

Left writers have been reporting for years that U.S. allies Rwanda and Uganda bear primary responsibility for the deaths of as many as six million Congolese. Now a leaked United Nations report has confirmed that Rwanda’s crimes in Congo may rise to the level of genocide, since President Paul Kagame’s forces killed Hutu elderly, children and women without regard to nationality. Rwandan President Paul Kagame’s “mentors and funders in the U.S. government…must be held equally accountable.”


Rwanda Crisis Could Expose U.S. Role in Congo Genocide

by BAR executive editor Glen Ford

Millions died while Washington’s allies occupied and looted the eastern regions of the Democratic Republic of Congo.”

A leaked United Nations report documenting Rwandan atrocities that “could be classified as crimes of genocide” in the eastern Congo has created a political crisis that threatens to disrupt Washington’s plans to dominate the continent. Rwanda’s minority Tutsi regime – a close American client that acts as a mercenary for U.S. interests in Africa, along with Uganda – threatens to withdraw its soldiers from United Nations “peace-keeping” missions if the report is not suppressed. The UN missions in Chad, Haiti, Liberia and Sudan are actually extensions of United States foreign policy, just as Ugandan and Burundian troops prop up the U.S.-backed “government” in Somalia under the guise of “African Union” forces.

The Rwanda crisis threatens to reveal the United States’ role as enabler in the deaths of as many as six million people while Washington’s allies occupied and looted the eastern regions of the Democratic Republic of Congo. At stake is not only the reputation of Ugandan President Paul Kagame, an alumnus of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, but the larger American strategy for militarization of Africa and exploitation of her riches.

The 545-page report details crimes committed in Congo by the Rwandan military and its allies between March, 1993, and June, 2003, and reinforces long-standing charges that Kagame’s forces were also aggressors and mass murderers during the Rwandan mass killings of 1994. When Kagame’s Tutsi rebels – previously based in Uganda – gained control of Rwanda after 100 days of fighting and ethnic cleansing, they pursued more than a million Hutu refugees into neighboring Congo. There, they hunted down and killed untold thousands of old men, women and children in 600 documented incidents that are, at the least, war crimes and crimes against humanity. The report’s authors clearly believe the Tutsis engaged in outright genocide – the purposeful eradication of a people – since Kagame’s men made no distinction between Rwandan Hutu refugees and Congolese Hutus; they killed them all. Congolese Tutsis and kinsmen from Burundi joined Kagame’s Rwandan Tutsis in the mass murder – confirming the racial or ethnic nature of the slaughter.

Kagame’s men made no distinction between Rwandan Hutu refugees and Congolese Hutus; they killed them all.”

The Tutsi Rwandan military stayed in eastern Congo to exploit the rare minerals of the region, employing slave labor and selling the booty to multinational corporations. They were joined by the Ugandan military, who also set themselves up as soldier/entrepreneurs on Congolese soil. The Rwandans and Ugandans remain in the region, uniformed African gangsters in league with Euro-American corporations in a killing ground that has swallowed up possibly six million Congolese. Some estimate Congolese “excess deaths” in areas controlled by Rwanda, alone, at three and a half million. Their blood and stolen heritage has made Kigali, the Rwandan capital, a bustling beacon of capitalist enterprise – a “free market” success story.

Carnage on such a scale could not have occurred were it not for the connivance of the United States, which has nurtured Kagame at every juncture. After training him for major operational command, the U.S. funded Kagame’s rebels through its Ugandan client, President Yoweri Museveni. When Kagame’s rebels invaded Rwanda, some of them still dressed in Ugandan uniforms, the Americans dismissed the Hutu president’s complaints. When the plane carrying the Hutu president and his Burundian counterpart was shot down by a missile – almost certainly by Kagame’s men – and mass killing broke out, the US. forced the United Nations to withdraw from the country – a move that could only have been of advantage to Kagame’s well-trained and armed forces, which quickly conquered all of Rwanda. When United Nations reports showed Kagame was killing 10,000 Hutus a month inside Rwanda, even after the opposition had collapsed or fled, the United States halted an investigation. Then Kagame’s men swarmed into Congo, and the larger genocide began.

Carnage on such a scale could not have occurred were it not for the connivance of the United States, which has nurtured Kagame at every juncture.”

The leaked UN report cannot be put back in the bottle. Kagame, who labels all critics “genocidaires” or apologists for genocide, is exposed as “the greatest mass killer on the face of the earth, today,” as described by Edward S. Herman, co-author of The Politics of Genocide. Kagame’s mentors and funders in the U.S. government, who aided and abetted his genocide in Congo, must be held equally accountable – if not more so, since United States corporations derive the greatest benefit from Congo’s blood minerals, and the U.S. military gains the most advantage from Rwandan and Ugandan services as mercenaries at America's beck and call in Africa.

It would be great if Kagame pitched a pathological fit and made good on his threat to withdraw his soldiers from Haiti, Chad, Liberia and Sudan. But that would seriously inconvenience the United States, whose interests the UN “peacekeeping” missions serve. Kagame has no problem killing Hutus by the millions in Congo, but he will not dare upset the superpower to which he owes his bloody career.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.
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BOOKS: Top 10 reading on Rwanda

http://www.alertnet.org/thefacts/reliefresources/10824563964.htm
Let me throw in this one on Eritrea for good measure. It so aptly describe the Western attitude towards Africa. Title, I Didn't Do It for You: How the World Betrayed a Small African Nation
Sound familiar??? WTF do they "do for others?"
http://www.amazon.com/Didnt-Do-You-Betrayed-African/dp/0060780932
Cynical Negro: Check out the bitches er... Susan Rice's review at the amazon link. Dr. Susan Rice, such a waste of humanity, bitch is smart and half-ass fine.
http://www.zimbio.com/pictures/9JQG14t4HnV/Glamour+Magazine+Honors+2009+...
How can these people look at themselves in the mirror. The Rice's and Kagame's of the world, doing the White man's bidding?? Goddamn. Couldn't these people make gravy money without being butchers and ghouls?

Samantha Powers, Susan Rice - Where u at?!

It's time to bring in the "green" environmental quackademics, "population bomb" quackademics, house negroes, and liberal neo-cons...
Bomb bomb bomb Rwanda and bomb bomb bomb Sudan under the guise of human rights violations (that the U.S. played a roll in). Kagame is starting to feel guilty about slavishly implementing the Wall st./London cabals exploitation, genocide, and eugenics agenda (Agenda 21) for Africa. He's veering off from the goal of genocide and starting to think about things like Africa growth/development/infrastructure - and the Bilderberg Group, IMF, club of Rome, Bill&Melinda Gates/Rockefeller foundations, the London/Wall st. banking cabal etc., etc., etc. don't like it.
Here, look:
Tensions emerge between Rwanda and Western backers
By Linda Slattery and Ann Talbot
26 August 2010
Kagame has received extraordinarily high levels of aid from the West since he came to power in 1994 and has previously been virtually immune from criticism in the press. The shift in attitude can best be traced to the welcome that Kagame has extended to China’s growing investment in Africa. A warning is being delivered to Kagame’s regime that the tolerance he has enjoyed to date will not continue if he aligns himself with interests hostile to those of the United States and other Western powers.
Writing in the Financial Times on August 19, Kagame acknowledged the changing attitude that emerged in the course of the election and defended his brand of politics, claiming that it was essential if Rwanda was to be stable:
“Some in the media and the international community seem uninterested in fact-checking, and simply invented stories that play to damaging historic prejudices. It is a shame that some so casually disregard the views of the majority of Rwandans and prefer to elevate the dangerous opinions of fly-by-night individuals, which in turn threaten to reverse our hard-earned stability”.
“Democracy is about more than holding elections”, said Mike Hammer, spokesman for the NSC. “A democracy reflects the will of the people, where minority voices are heard and respected, where opposition candidates run on the issues without threat or intimidation, where freedom of expression and freedom of the press are protected”.
Kagame’s response came in the Financial Times. He rejected the US criticism of his election and insisted that he was pursuing a form of government suited to Rwandan cultural traditions.
“For decades, one-size-fits-all development and democratic prescriptions have been imposed on Africa, with unsatisfactory, sometimes tragic, results”, he wrote. “Yet to break from the cycle of underdevelopment we must seek innovative, home-grown solutions. Rwanda is one of the countries that have chosen to apply unconventional mechanisms to solve daunting challenges. And it is working”.
Hinting at Rwanda’s importance for the export of minerals, Kagame said that those who accepted his methods would reap the economic benefits. He knows that he has the support of the major mining companies and can look to China as an alternative source of aid. In January 2009 Kagame signed a new trade deal with China, and a new Chinese embassy was opened in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda.
Speaking to the German business paper Handelsblatt, Kagame praised the role of China in bringing investment in infrastructure to Africa. He recognised the potential for playing off one potential investor or donor against another. “There are new players, developing countries like China, India, Brazil and Russia”, he said. “That opens new possibilities for new relationships. Suddenly, the Americans and Europeans discover that they don’t want to be left out”.
At the China-Africa summit Kagame pointed out that trade between Rwanda and China had quadrupled over the previous four years.
Kagame has been sharply critical of the new US Dodd-Frank Wall Street and Consumer Protection Act, which contains a clause obliging companies to demonstrate that their minerals have not come from the DRC. Major electronics companies such as IBM, Motorola, Hewlett Packard, Intel and Apple will be hit by this provision. Kagame may hope to bypass this legislation by turning to the Asian market and Asian electronic companies.
Kagame supposedly won 93 percent of the votes in the election on August 9. International observers reported no overt sign of violence or voter intimidation, but all the opposition candidates were former allies of Kagame. Three potential candidates were barred from standing. Leading oppositionist Andre Kagwa Rwisereka of the Democratic Green Party was found dead shortly before the election. The party is linked to Lt. Gen. Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa, who is in intensive care in South Africa after being shot. Nyamwasa fled to South Africa earlier this year after accusing Kagame of using an anti-corruption campaign to frame his political opponents.
Reporters have been subject to intimidation. Jean Leonard Rugambage was gunned down in Kigali after his paper Umuvugizi was closed by the government. Its editor Jean Bosco Gasasira had already fled to Uganda.
In June, American lawyer Peter Erlinder, who is representing defendants at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) on trial for their alleged part in the genocide, was arrested. He was accused of denying the 1994 genocide on the basis of remarks he made at the tribunal, although the defence lawyers are supposed to be protected by diplomatic immunity. Other lawyers at the ICTR responded to Erlinder’s arrest by asking for postponements until their safety could be guaranteed.
These are the “disturbing events” that have caused concern in Washington. But they are hardly new.
In 1995 the journalist Manesse Mugabo disappeared in Kigali, followed in 1996 by the first post-genocide Minister of the Interior Seth Sendashshonga and businessman Augustin Bugirimfura, who was shot dead in Nairobi. In 1998 journalist Emmanuel Munyemanzi disappeared from Kigali, and Theoneste Lizinde, MP and government intelligence chief before the genocide, was assassinated in Nairobi. In the year 2000, first post-genocide President Pasteur Bizimungu’s adviser, Asiel Kabera, was shot dead in Kigali. In 2003 top judge Augustin Cyiza and magistrate Eliezar Runyaruka disappeared from Kigali, as did opposition MP Leonard Hitiman.
The US has been prepared to turn a blind eye to Kagame’s record of repression until now because it has been useful to American interests. The Financial Times Africa editor William Wallis acknowledged the impact that the presence of China has had on Western influence in Rwanda. But he also blamed the West for the lack of democracy in Rwanda.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/aug2010/rwan-a26.shtml

Pretty Damning stuff here...

The US was behind the Rwandan Genocide: Installing a US Protectorate in Central Africa
By Michel Chossudovsky
(This text is in part based on the results of a study conducted by the author together with Belgian economist Pierre Galand on the use of Rwanda's 1990-94 external debt to finance the military and paramilitary.)
Concluding Remarks
The civil war in Rwanda was a brutal struggle for political power between the Hutu-led Habyarimana government supported by France and the Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) backed financially and militarily by Washington. Ethnic rivalries were used deliberately in the pursuit of geopolitical objectives. Both the CIA and French intelligence were involved.
In the words of former Cooperation Minister Bernard Debré in the government of Prime Minister Henri Balladur:
"What one forgets to say is that, if France was on one side, the Americans were on the other, arming the Tutsis who armed the Ugandans. I don't want to portray a showdown between the French and the Anglo-Saxons, but the truth must be told." 43
In addition to military aid to the warring factions, the influx of development loans played an important role in "financing the conflict." In other words, both the Ugandan and Rwanda external debts were diverted into supporting the military and paramilitary. Uganda's external debt increased by more than 2 billion dollars, --i.e. at a significantly faster pace than that of Rwanda (an increase of approximately 250 million dollars from 1990 to 1994). In retrospect, the RPA -- financed by US military aid and Uganda's external debt-- was much better equipped and trained than the Forces Armées du Rwanda (FAR) loyal to President Habyarimana. From the outset, the RPA had a definite military advantage over the FAR.
The civil war in Rwanda and the ethnic massacres were an integral part of US foreign policy, carefully staged in accordance with precise strategic and economic objectives.
Despite the good diplomatic relations between Paris and Washington and the apparent unity of the Western military alliance, it was an undeclared war between France and America. By supporting the build up of Ugandan and Rwandan forces and by directly intervening in the Congolese civil war, Washington also bears a direct responsibility for the ethnic massacres committed in the Eastern Congo including several hundred thousand people who died in refugee camps.
US policy-makers were fully aware that a catastrophe was imminent. In fact four months before the genocide, the CIA had warned the US State Department in a confidential brief that the Arusha Accords would fail and "that if hostilities resumed, then upward of half a million people would die". 45 This information was withheld from the United Nations: "it was not until the genocide was over that information was passed to Maj.-Gen. Dallaire [who was in charge of UN forces in Rwanda]." 46
Washington's objective was to displace France, discredit the French government (which had supported the Habyarimana regime) and install an Anglo-American protectorate in Rwanda under Major General Paul Kagame. Washington deliberately did nothing to prevent the ethnic massacres.
When a UN force was put forth, Major General Paul Kagame sought to delay its implementation stating that he would only accept a peacekeeping force once the RPA was in control of Kigali. Kagame "feared [that] the proposed United Nations force of more than 5,000 troops... [might] intervene to deprive them [the RPA] of victory".47 Meanwhile the Security Council after deliberation and a report from Secretary General Boutros Boutros Ghali decided to postpone its intervention.
The 1994 Rwandan "genocide" served strictly strategic and geopolitical objectives. The ethnic massacres were a stumbling blow to France's credibility which enabled the US to establish a neocolonial foothold in Central Africa. From a distinctly Franco-Belgian colonial setting, the Rwandan capital Kigali has become --under the expatriate Tutsi led RPF government-- distinctly Anglo-American. English has become the dominant language in government and the private sector. Many private businesses owned by Hutus were taken over in 1994 by returning Tutsi expatriates. The latter had been exiled in Anglophone Africa, the US and Britain.
The Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA) functions in English and Kinyarwanda, the University previously linked to France and Belgium functions in English. While English had become an official language alongside French and Kinyarwanda, French political and cultural influence will eventually be erased. Washington has become the new colonial master of a francophone country.
Several other francophone countries in Sub-Saharan Africa have entered into military cooperation agreements with the US. These countries are slated by Washington to follow suit on the pattern set in Rwanda. Meanwhile in francophone West Africa, the US dollar is rapidly displacing the CFA Franc -- which is linked in a currency board arrangement to the French Treasury.
Read full article here:
HTTP://WWW.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=18540

Kagame is human excrement

(His eyes even look like floating turds).
When he is finally passed throw the bowels of the Imperial venture he'll be flushed down the toilet like the rest of the expendable lackeys, heartless ghouls who've carried out American atrocities for their own materialistic and egotistical aims.
He'll likely discover what Africa Americans have known a long time, "justice," means "just us."
Since WWII, I have yet to see an Anglo from a western country be prosecuted in the Hague. Hague prosecutions are generally reserved from brown, and black persons with the occasional Eastern European thrown in.
As we all know, in Exceptional American we don't commit war crimes, we're too good and noble and busy "spreading democracy," and "winning hearts and minds."
http://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/int_war_crime_tribunals/
"Possibly the most powerful argument against war crimes tribunals is that they offer only the victors justice. What was most obviously missing following World War II was not Hitler at Nuremberg, but a trial for Americans, French, British, and Russian individuals who committed acts that would have been considered war crimes had the Allies lost the war. The fire bombing of Dresden and the use of atomic weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki are clear examples of acts for which Allied leaders would have been tried had the war ended in favor of the Germans and Japanese. While it is easy and satisfying to put the enemy in prison for what he or she has done, it does not seem entirely fair if all those who participate in a war are not held to the same standards. In fact, one of the reasons that the United States has so far failed to support an international war crimes tribunal, the International Criminal Court, is fear that U.S. officers would be found guilty by the court."
The Rwanda crisis WOULD expose the US role in Congo genocide if we had something other than a propaganda machine orchestrating as the "media." The organ grinders will keep on churning out their muted tones. Bill Clinton and Kofi Annan would be facing charges of war crimes for the genocide in Rwanda were the full story told.

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