RWANDA: AN RPF GARDEN AND A TUTSI EMPIRE?

Emmanuel Kanyaruhengeri

Iyo FPR yirirwa ivuga amacakubiri iba ishaka kuvuga iki?Ni ukwikubira kw'ishyaka rimwe?Ni ukwikubira k'ubwoko bumwe?Ni iki?

Ubu se ni nde uyobewe ko muri presidence ya repulika hakora abantu bo muri FPR kandi b'abatutsi gusa?Amacakubiri ubanza ari aya!

Ubu se ni nde uyobewe ko Umugaba Mukuru w'Ingabo,Umugaba w'Ingabo zo k'Ubutaka,Umugaba w'Ingabo zirwanira mu Kirere,Umukuru w'Iprereza rya Gisirikare,Umukuru wa Police n'Abamwungirije,Umukuru w'Iprereza muri Police,n'Umugenza cyaha Mukuru muri police,bose ari aba FPR,kandi bakaba bose ari abatutsi bose,ndetse bavuye Uganda.Aho aya siyo macakubiri?

Ni nde se uyobewe ko abantu bakuriye National Security Consoul bose ari aba FPR kandi bose bakaba abatutsi ndetse bavuye Uganda?Aya se niyo macakubiri?

Ubu se ninde uyobewe ko Minisitiri w'Ubutabera,Perezida w'Urukiko rw'Ikirenga,Procureur General mu Rukiko rw'Ikirenga,ari abo muri FPR,kandi bose bakaba abatutsi?Amacakubiri yaba ari aya?

Ubu se kandi ni nde utazi ko Minisitiri w'Imari,Umunyabanga Mukuru we,Umukuru wa Rwanda Revenue Authority,Umukuru wa National Tender Board,Ordonateur Tresorier,bose ari abo muri FPR,bakaba kandi bose ari abatutsi ndetse bavuye Uganda cyangwa bahabaye?Amacakubiri asumba aya wayakurahe?

Ese ubwo uwo bashaka gukiza cyangwa gukenesha byabananira?
Mu by'ukuri ubutegetsi nyakuri ng'ubu ndabuberetse,naho ibindi ni amahamba.Gusa ariko ababugize nabo ngo bagira ukuntu barutana!
Ndabizi ubu hari uza kumbwira ko ngo ubutegetsi busangiwe muri gouvenement no mu Nteko!Nabyo si byo! Ni nde se utazi ko nta bubasha aba ministres batari abo muri FPR bagira?Ububasha barabwambuwe babuha ba Secretaires Generaux,kandi abarenga 85% muri bo ni aba FPR,ububasha buke busigaye bwahawe inama y'aba ministres,ninde muri bo watinyuka imbere ya Afandi Kagame?

Mu nteko se ni nde uyobewe ko President na Vice President wayo bombi ari abatutsi?Ni nde se uyobewe ko plus de 60% by'abagize inteko ari abatutsi?
Ibi nibibereke aho amacakubiri ageze igihugu,mureke guhora mushukwa n'abazobereye ikinyoma.

Dore rero imwe mu mpamvu nyazo zituma u Rwanda rwarananiwe kuva mu bibazo rurimo ni iyi "composition"n'abayitekereje.
Ubu ndabizi bagiye kuvuza urwamo ngo uku kuri mvuze niko macakubiri!Ah'ubwo wenda bazerekane ko ibi mvuze atari ukuri,cyangwa se bavuge ko iyi composition ariyo ibereye u Rwanda,kandi n'abayirimo akaba aribo koko bashoboye iriya mirimo bonyine.Gusa nashatse kwerekana ukuri kw'impamo wa mugani wa Muligande.

Nguwo umuganda mpaye igihugu cyanjye.Reka tucyubake mu kuri kuzira ubaryarya,uburyamirane no kujijisha.Rwose nimumenye ko rubanda ibona kandi yarababajwe bihagije!

 

NB: Ibiri muri iyi nyandiko ntibisobanura ko abatutsi bose cyangwa abanyarwanda batahutse bava Uganda babifitemo inyungu cyangwa babishyigikiye,kuko benshi muri bo bumiwe nk'abandi bose.

 

 

RWANDA:Coalition of Rwandan Community Associations in UK

23rdJune 2011.

Eric Joyce MP Chair

All Party Parliamentary Group on the Great Lakes Region of Africa

House of Commons, 

London, 

SW1A 0AA

 

By email 

 

I am writing to you on behalf of the Coalition of Rwandan Community Association in UK.

The Rwandan regime, distraught by the vigilance of the UK intelligence service in tracking its 

death squads is intent on grooming home grown hit men and women in the UK. Under the 

umbrella of the Rwandan Diaspora Convention Europe 2011, planned for the 22-24 th July 2011,

the regime is sponsoring a 5 day ideological education training for the youth (16-29 years old) “

in what is called

 

Itorero ry’igihugu,  aimed at teaching the history of Rwanda according to “the RPF” ideology” .

The militia training is scheduled to take place at the Apex Centre in Bury St Edmunds in the Suffolk County from the 17th to 24 th July 2011.

 

According to insiders in the Rwandan security apparatus, this will allow the regime’s agents 

to identify candidates suitable for more advanced training as political cum military cadres. 

Once trained ideologically and militarily, the regime would no longer need to send out hit 

squads against critics abroad.  According the official programme, there will be 

“PRESENTATION OF YOUTH AWARDS” from 3:00pm-6:00pm on 22nd July 2011.

 

The president of Paul Kagame is scheduled to address this event.

We believe that such a training falls within the definition of terrorist act under the UK law 

which where the Act "terrorism" means among others the use or threat of action where

 

(a) The use or threat is designed to influence the government or to intimidate the public or a 

section of the public, and

(b) the use or threat is made for the purpose of advancing a political, religious or ideological 

cause.

 

The project should be stopped as means of prevention and suppression of terrorist 

activities.

What everyone should be aware of is that the regime of General Paul Kagame

has developed an instinct of self preservation is not short of imagination to make the 

indoctrination process of RPF political ideology look like a patriotic and very progressive 

enterprise. It has used as in the case of Gacaca courts, a traditional institutions Itorero 

ry’igihugu and Intore who woe the public and deceive the international community.

 

To understand the stratagem one needs to look at the choice of names given to the 

ideological school and granduants, namely Itorero ry’igihugu and intore. 

The word Itorero ry’igihugu, a Kinyarwanda word, was borrowed from the traditional 

educational institution for the aristocracy that mentored and cultivated leadership skills.

 

The lessons included History, Philosophy, Sociology, Oral Literature, Applied Ethics, Theology,

Political and Military Sciences, Law, Patriotism, Regional and International Relations. 

The word Intore is given to famous Rwandan dance “Intore, a “dance of heroes”. It is performed 

by men wearing grass wigs and carrying spears. It was a dance performed by returning 

warriors, celebrating victory in battle. At certain stages the dancers stop, with arms outstretched and make blood-curdling battle cries.The training is therefore to produce warriors to fight any dissenting ideology by force. 

 

In Rwanda, this ideological education has been made compulsory. For example in May 2008 local authorities in Gicumbi district in Northern Province sacked over 100 teachers for reportedly refusing to participate in the training that saw over 40,000 primary and secondary school teachers participate: 

 

Let us recall that the word interahammwe which meant “people working harmoniously 

together for a common purpose” referred to Hutu politicians who worked together and 

braved death threats while fighting to exploitative and oppressive monarchical system of 

government. In its creation, the interahamwe were not meant to kill Tutsi but rather formed 

to propagate and defend the political ideas and values of MRND party.

 

Given the past political and violent history of Rwanda and in consideration the recent 

Rwandan government foiled plan by the MI5 to eliminate physically its critics in the UK,

the Rwandan community in UK is extremely worried of the ideological training of Rwandan 

youth in the UK and therefore requests the UK government to impress upon the Rwandan 

High Commission and its affiliated Rwandan community association to stop the training into 

Rwandan into ideological extremism. 

Regards,

 

Noble Marara

Assistant Coordinator 

Email: noblemarara@yahoo.com This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

BUSH AND OTHER WAR CRIMINALS MEET IN RWANDA : THE GREAT “ RWANDA GENOCIDE”-- COVERUP

BUSH AND OTHER WAR CRIMINALS MEET IN RWANDA : THE GREAT “ RWANDA GENOCIDE”-- COVERUP



Prof. Peter Erlinder, ICTR Lead Defense Counsel

President ADAD, the ICTR Defense Lawyers Association ©

As George Bush begins his much bally-hooed African safari, he has already begun to heap praise on Rwandan President Kagame as a “model for Africa .” But, recently issued French and Spanish international “war-crimes” warrants and new evidence at the UN Rwanda Tribunal have exposed Kagame as the war-criminal who actually touched-off the 1994 “Rwanda Genocide” by assassinating the previous President and who is benefiting from a decades-long U.S.-sponsored “cover-up” of Pentagon complicity in massacres committed by Kagame’s regime, which even Britain’s Economist has called “the most repressive in Africa.” [1]



Multiple “War Crimes” AWarrants Issued for Rwanda ’s Leaders



Just last week, a Spanish Judge issued 40 international warrants for current and former members of Kagame’s government, including senior staff at Rwanda ’s Washington Embassy. The warrants charge Kagame’s clique with war-crimes and crimes against humanity, that may even fit the definition of “genocide.” But, these are not the only international arrest warrants issued for Rwanda’s current leaders.

French Judge Bruguiere (famous for indicting “the Jackal”) has also issued international warrants against nearly a dozen members of Kagame’s inner circle, too. Bruguiere also met with Kofi Annan in late 2006 to personally urge the U.N. Rwanda Tribunal to prosecute Kagame for the assassination of Juvenal Habyarimana, the war-crime that re-ignited the four-year Rwanda War and the massive civilian killings in the war’s final 90-days.

Could it be that no-one in the Bush Administration was aware of these pending charges against their Rwandan hosts….or is it that they just don’t care? In either case, the French and Spanish international arrest warrants have pierced the wall of U.S./UK/Rwandan propaganda about who bears responsible for the massive tragedy that unfolded in Rwanda …but the “official story” has actually been unraveling for some time (although largely un-reported in the U.S. media).



Chief UN Prosecutor del Ponte in 2003: “ Rwanda ’s Leaders Guilty of War Crimes”



In the summer of 2003, Chief Prosecutor for the United Nations International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda (ICTR), Carla del Ponte, publicly announced that she would soon begin prosecuting members of Kagame’s Government for the same kinds of crimes charged in the French and Spanish warrants. But, nearly 5 years later not one case has been filed against one member of Kagame’s government, nor against Kagame himself.


The del Ponte announced prosecutions did not go forward because she was replaced, within 90-days of her announcement, by Abubacar Jallow, a US/UK-approved Prosecutor who pledged not to prosecute on Kagame’s side….no matter what the del Ponte and the European judges’ findings! Prosecutor del Ponte’s long-time press-aide, Florence Hartmann, published a book in Paris in September 2007, that explains exactly how del Ponte was replaced.

Chief UN Prosecutor del Ponte was called to Washington just after her 2003 announcement and threatened with removal from office by Bush’ “war-crimes ambassador”, Pierre Prosper, because of the political quid pro quo between Washington and the Kagame regime that is spelled out in detail in the book. (Ironically, Prosper was a former ICTR prosecutor under del Ponte, and must have had access to the same information motivated her announcement) . When she refused to ignore her UN-mandate, to prosecute all crimes committed during the 1994 Rwanda War, she was sacked by the U.S. and U.K. [2]





ICTR Chief Investigator in 1997:

“ Rwanda ’s Kagame Assassinated Previous President”

But this is not the first time that crimes of Kagame have been “covered-up” at the ICTR. According to sworn affidavits placed in the ICTR record in early 2006, more than 10 years ago, ICTR Lead Investigative Prosecutor, well-respected Australian QC Michael Hourigan, recommended that Kagame, himself, be prosecuted for the assassination of Habyarimana. But, in 1997, then-Chief UN Prosecutor Louise Arbour of Canada ordered him to drop the Kagame investigation; to forget it ever happened; and, to burn his notes ! Hourigan resigned rather than comply and copies of his original notes are now part of the ICTR public record for all to see. [3]



The “ Rwanda Genocide” Cover-up on Clinton ’s Watch

The Hourigan affidavit makes clear that the “Rwanda Genocide”-- Cover-up has been going on for at least a decade…but the reasons for the cover-up did not become clear until late 2007, when a senior Clinton Administration diplomat, Brian Atwood, was confronted with UN documents describing a 1994 “cover-up” meeting with the Rwandan Foreign Minister in Kigali and the UN’s Kofi Annan. According to the UN documents, U.S.-sponsored human rights reports by investigator, Robert Gersony, had documented massive military-style executions of civilians by Kagame’s troops, during and after the final 90-days of the four-year Rwanda War. [4]



The former Rwandan Foreign Minister at the meeting, Jean Marie Ndagiyimana, testified at the ICTR that, rather than participate in the proposed “cover-up,” he resigned and went into exile where he remains today. His ICTR testimony confirmed that Clinton’s USAID Chief for Africa, Brian Atwood, and the chief of the UN Department of Peace Keeping Operations Kofi Annan, were both in his office in late October 1994 urging him to assist in the “cover-up” the war-crimes committed by Kagame’s forces. [5]



The “Inconvenient Truth” Behind the Cover-up :

Pentagon Complicity in the 1994 Rwanda War



The damning “Gersony Report” included first-hand evidence of tens of thousands of civilians being massacred by Kagame’s troops in eastern Rwanda, later confirmed by similar reports by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. The U.N. Document (also in the ICTR record) says that Annan told the Foreign Minister that public knowledge of the Report would be “embarrassing to the UN” and the U.S. Former Clinton-diplomat, Brian Atwood, not only confirmed he was at the meeting, but explained that he had engaged Gersony, and that Gersony’s findings of war-crimes being committed by Kagame were “…an inconvenient truth” for both the United States and the UN.


According to Atwood, unknown to the State Department, “the Pentagon had been supporting Kagame since before the 1990 invasion, when he was the head of Military Intelligence for the Museveni government of Uganda.” The “Gersony Report” tied the Pentagon to the crimes of Kagame’s invading, Pentagon-trained and funded forces. More UN documents in the ICTR record reveal that the State Department was negotiating for a peaceful settlement of the war at the same time the Pentagon was supporting Kagame’s invasion. The Clinton Administration to enlisted Atwood and Kofi Annan in keeping evidence of Kagame’s crimes from ever seeing the light of day, to prevent Pentagon involvement in the “Rwandan Genocide” from ever coming to light. [6]


The existence of a separate Pentagon foreign policy on Rwanda also tallies with the ICTR testimony of former Ambassador Robert Flaten, who testified that he seriously doubted that Habyarimana’s supporters planned to kill civilians on a massive scale because the CIA and other intelligence agencies would have reported it when he was in Rwanda from 1990 to late 93. [7] He said that his requests for Pentagon-DIA spy satellite photographs showing the progress of the war in the countryside were turned down because of “clouds over Rwanda,” during his entire 3-plus years in Rwanda. [8] He also noted that support from Uganda for the 1990 Kagame invasion coincided with increased Ugandan military funding by the U.S./U.K. Flaten also testified that he personally warned Kagame that “he would be responsible for massacres like just happened in Burundi, if Kagame broke the cease-fire and re-started that war.

In short, the evidence that now is in the public record shows that during the 1994 Rwanda Genocide, the Pentagon could have stopped the carnage with a phone call….and the State Department apparently did not know enough about the Pentagon’s close ties to Kagame to ask them to do so, at least until USAID’s Atwood was informed of Pentagon reaction to the “Gersony Report,” in the summer of 1994.

Other de-classified State Department documents show that it was the invading Kagame forces that were the aggressors, and were blocking the State Departments efforts to implement the Arusha Accords, peace agreement. [9] The UN’s General Dallaire has testified that Kagame would not agree to a ceasefire to use troops to stop the massacres because “he was winning the war.” [10] And, now we know what Dallaire may not have known, until later…Kagame was winning with the Pentagon’s help.



The Great “Rwanda Genocide” Cover-up Continues under Bush

The “Rwanda Genocide” – Cover-up of Pentagon complicity in Kagame’s crimes is almost complete, as the U.S. cuts Rwanda Tribunal funding to shut it down by the end of 2008. Carla del Ponte’s replacement, Abubacar Jallow, will be conveniently unable to carry out the prosecutions that del Ponte urged in 2003, or those initiated by Judge Bruguiere in 2006, or Judge Ag____, just last week.

However, the international warrants are still in effect, the del Ponte book and Hourigan’s affidavit have begun to unravel the whole sordid manipulation… .but, unless the “Rwanda Genocide” Cover-up makes it onto Page One in Europe and North America, it may be too late for the ICTR detainees….who are being held responsible for the crimes of the Kagame regime, a bit like the UN holding the Japanese responsible for Hiroshima and the Germans for the fire-bombing of Dresden.

With U.S. and U.K. support, Kagame’s government is actively campaigning to have all ICTR matters transferred to Rwanda and has issued 40,000 warrants for Kagame’s Hutu and Tutsi opponents in the worldwide Rwandan diaspora. (A movement that includes such as figures Paul Rusesabagina, the real hero of the Hotel Rwanda ).


Correcting the Historical Record and Ending the Cover-up


But, I have to disclose my own bias because, under the laws of Rwanda , I too am a criminal “negationist” for writing this essay and President Kagame has personally denounced me as a “genocidaire” for my work as an ICTR defense lawyer. My former investigator is seeking asylum in Europe and the ICTR Prosecutor who replaced Carla del Ponte is now prosecuting defense investigator for asking too many questions in Rwanda, but denounced Judge Bruguiere’s request for the UN to prosecute Kagame and Spanish Judge Abreau, as well.



An ICTR defense lawyer, like me, has to hope that, despite all that is now known about the manipulations of the ICTR by the U.S. and U.K. for their own political purposes, the ICTR Judges will not be influenced by the sacking of del Ponte and that they will carefully evaluate the evidence in my client’s case….but it is hard to be too optimistic.


At least my conscience is clear, now that the Great “Rwanda Genocide”— Cover-up has been exposed. But, I wonder if the Judges, Prosecutors, other UN-ICTR officials (who now know about the manipulation of their best efforts) will be able to say the same, if they allow the ICTR “Rwanda Genocide”- Cover-up to continue?

During the week’s festivities in Rwanda, the Presidents Bush and Kagame are sure to find much in common, as would Tony Blair, who has recently signed-on as an “unpaid”-advisor to Kagame. All three stand accused of war crimes, and are mutually benefiting from the US/UK/Rwandan “cover-up” of their own complicity in the “Rwandan Genocide” tragedy….that should put all three in the dock at the UN-ICTR.



© Prof. Peter Erlinder, Wm. Mitchell College of Law, St. Paul , MN 55105 (651-290-6384) peter.erlinder@ wmitchell. edu . Past- President of the National Lawyers Guild and is Lead Defence Counsel for former Major Aloys Ntabakuze in the Military 1 Trial at the ICTR, the central case in the Tribunal. All of the documents and testimony referenced above are in the court record at the ICTR, except for the interview of Ambassador Brian Atwood, which occurred in December 2007 at his office at the University of Minnesota , Humphrey Institute.


[1]
The Economist , April, 2004

[2] Hartmann, Paix et chatiment: les guerres del la politique (2007 Flammarion, Paris)

[3] See Hourigan Affidavit and related documents in Miltary 1 record at the ICTR.

[4] See, UN documents in the Military 1 trial record at the ICTR.

[5] See ICTR Testimony of Ndagiyimana, November 2006, and related documents

[6] Interview with Dean Brian Atwood, Humphrey Institute, University of Minnesota , December 22, 2007.

[7] See Flaten ICTR testimony, July 2006.

[8] Interview with Robert Flaten in Arusha TZ, July 2006.

[9] See, April 1, 1994 Cable from U.S. Embassy in Kigali to Kampala Uganda in the ICTR Military 1 Trial Record.

[10] See ICTR Testimony of Gen. Romeo Dallaire and associated documents, January 2006.



Global Research Articles by Peter Erlinder

The Hidden Story Behind Rwanda's Tragedy

Editor's Note: The Op-Ed is written by a Canadian attorney who represents a defendant before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in Arusha, Tanzania, on war crimes charges. The attorney offers a counter-view to the one-sided representation of the Rwanda narrative. Readers are encouraged to submit their comments and reactions.


Rwanda before 1990 was considered the Switzerland of Africa, a model of social development.

The result of the 1959 social revolution that deposed the Tutsi monarchy and aristocracy and freed the majority Hutu population from serfdom and a lifetime of humiliation was the establishment of a collective society in which both Hutus, and Tutsis as well as Twas lived together in relative harmony.

Tutsis were members of the government, its administration, present in large numbers in the education system, the judiciary and controlled most of the large private commercial companies in Rwanda.

The Rwandan army was a multiethnic army composed of both Hutus and Tutsis and it stayed a multiethnic force even when the Rwandan Army was forced by the invaders from Uganda to retreat into the Congo forest in July 1994 because it ran out of ammunition due to the Western embargo on arms and supplies.

Rwanda descended into chaos in 1990 when the self-described Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) forces launched a surprise attack on October 1, 1990 from Uganda. In fact, every one of the men and officers of that invasion force were members of the Ugandan national Army.

It was an invasion by Uganda disguised as an independent force of “liberation”. Liberation from what, has never been stated.

Initially the justification put out by the RPF was that of attaining the return of Tutsi “refugees” from Uganda to Rwanda. However, that problem had been resolved by an agreement between the RPF, Uganda, Rwanda, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) and the OAU a few weeks earlier. The Rwandan government had agreed to the return of all those Tutsis in Uganda who wanted to return to Rwanda.

That accord required that Tutsi representatives of the refugees travel to Kigali for a meeting to determine the mechanics of that population movement, and how to accommodate all those people in a small country. They were expected at the end of September 1990. They never arrived.

Instead of civilians returning in peace, Rwanda was viciously attacked on October 1, 1990 by a force that unleashed unbridled savagery. During that invasion the RPF forces of the Ugandan Army slaughtered everyone in their path, Hutu or Tutsi. Tens of thousands of innocent civilians, the majority Hutu, were butchered. These crimes have never been accounted for.

The RPF’s favorite method was the bayonet or knife with which they disembowelled men and women or to tied their hands behind their backs and smashed their skulls with hoes, the farm tool iconic of the Hutu peasantry.

After several weeks of intense fighting, the RPF forces were destroyed by the small Rwandan Army and the remnants fled, on US instructions, back into Uganda to regroup and reorganize.

The RPF still never justified this aggression and the needless slaughter of civilians in a peaceful country. Individual Tutsis had always been allowed to return to Rwanda from the early 1960s and several times the Rwandan government invited them all to return. However the Tutsi aristocracy, jealous of its lost power and which viewed the Hutus as nothing but subhuman, refused to return unless their absolute power was restored. This the people of Rwanda, even the Tutsis who remained in the country, refused.

In the 1960s and early 1970s various Tutsi groups in Uganda and elsewhere had organized terrorist raids into Rwanda in which they murdered without pity anyone they caught. These raids were repelled by Rwanda’s tiny armed forces. The years that followed were a period of development and peace for Rwandans. Even though one of the smallest and poorest countries in the world it had the best road system, healthcare, and education systems in Africa. Until the late 1980s it prospered and received help from both the socialist countries of the USSR, North Korea and China and West Germany, France and Israel and others.

Some Tutsis in Uganda became involved in the civil wars there between the socialist Milton Obote and the US- and UK puppet Yoweri K. Museveni who was supported by the West to get rid of socialism in Uganda. By 1990 Tutsis composed a large section of the Ugandan Army and all the senior officers of the RPF were high officers in the Ugandan Army, the National Resistance Army. Paul Kagame himself was one of the highest-ranking officers in the intelligence services of the Ugandan army and was notorious for enjoying torturing prisoners.

Rwanda until 1990 was a one party socialist state. The ruling party the National Movement For revolutionary Development (MRND) was not considered a party as such but rather a social movement in which everyone in society took part through local elections and the mechanism of consensus much like the system in Cuba.

The fall of the Soviet Union led to pressure from the West, notably the United States and France to dismantle the one party state system and permit multiparty democracy.

The President, Juvenal Habyarimana, instead of resisting, agreed to a change in the constitution and in 1991 Rwanda became a multiparty democracy. The fact the Rwandan government did this in the middle of a war is more than remarkable. It was also an offer of peace. The RPF, since its abject failure in 1990, had changed its strategy from a frontal assault to the tactics of terrorism.

The RPF likes to refer to this phase as the guerrilla. However, it was not the guerrilla of a liberation struggle like the FLMN in Vietnam or the FARC in Colombia. It was instead a mirror image of the Contras campaign of terrorism conducted against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. Its purpose was not to make revolution. Its purpose was to overthrow the 1959 revolution. And, like the contras, the RPF was supported by the United States.

This was clear from the beginning of the war.

When the RPF launched their attack, President Juvenal Habyarimana was in Washington, lured out of the way, by the State Department. The evidence that the US was aware of and supported the October surprise attack was the US Administration’s offer to Habyarimana of asylum in the United States if he surrendered power to the RPF.

Habyarimana refused and immediately flew back home. There was no condemnation of the Ugandan-RPF aggression by the United States, a matter which France raised at the United Nations, or any of its allies despite the big noise they made at the same time about the advance of Iraqi forces into Kuwait. Further, the Rwanda ambassador to the UN, then on the Security Council, filed a protest in the Security Council but the US had it taken off the agenda.

In fact the US and its allies supported the aggression against Rwanda from the beginning and US Special Forces operated with the RPF from the beginning. Recently, while former president Bill Clinton was in Toronto, he denied any involvement in Rwanda--this is one of the big lies of the century. Clinton and George W. Bush are up to their necks in the blood of the Rwandan and Congolese people.

With the arrival of multiparty democracy in 1991, the RPF took full advantage and created several front parties to take away support from the popular MRND. These parties though claiming to represent different political views in fact were, in the main front parties for the RPF.

The press was expanded and many of the new papers were financed by and acted as mouthpieces for the RPF. At the same time as these parties sprang up, criticizing the government, the RPF continued its terror campaign: planting mines on roads that killed Hutu and Tutsi alike; assassinating politicians and officials; and, blaming it, with the help of various NGOs funded by western intelligence agencies, on the government.

In 1992 a coalition government was formed with the RPF or its front parties seizing control of key ministries and appointing the prime minister. Through these agents they also controlled the civilian intelligence services that they then began to dismantle. The RPF engaged in a “talk and fight” strategy. Always agreeing to a ceasefire, pressing for more power, then launching new attacks on civilians. The most egregious was their breaking of the ceasefire and their major offensive in February 1993 in which they seized the major town of Ruhengeri in the process murdering 40,000 civilians most of them Hutu.

The Rwandan Army, even though hamstrung by the civilian ministries that were controlled by the RPF, managed to drive the RPF back. Finally in August 1993 the Arusha Accords were signed under pressure from the United States and its allies in which the RPF obtained major concessions in return to the formation of a broad-based transition government to be followed by general elections.

However, they knew they could not win such elections as the RPF was not only unpopular with the majority Hutu population it did not even enjoy the support of many internal Tutsis whose lives and businesses had been destroyed by the war they did not see a need for.

Instead of preparing for elections the RPF prepared for their final offensive. As far back as December 1993, UN reports document the massive build-up of men and weapons coming in from Uganda. The UN force that was deployed supposedly to ensure a peaceful transition; in fact, it was a cover for the US and its allies to assist in this build up.

General Roméo Dallaire, the Canadian general in charge of the UN force hid this build up from the Rwandan army and the President. The build-up was accompanied by death threats against the president.

According to an account of Habyarimana’s last conversation with president Mobutu Sese Seko of what was then Zaire, just two days before he was murdered, Assistant U.S. Secretary of State for African Affairs Herman Cohen had, in October 1993, told Habyarimana, that unless he ceded all power to the RPF they were going to kill him and drag his body through the streets.

These threats were punctuated by the murder of the first Hutu president of neighboring Burundi, Melchior Ndadaye, by Tutsi officers in October 1993 in which Kagame and the RPF also had a hand; the officers who committed the murder, including Lieutenant Paul Kamana, later fled to Uganda. Ndadaye was in office a mere four months, having won the country’s first free elections. In the aftermath of that murder 250,000 Hutus were massacred by the Tutsi army of Burundi and hundreds of thousands of Hutus fled to Rwanda.

The result of the 1993 offensive was that one million Hutus fled the terror of the RPF in northern Rwanda towards the capital, Kigali, so that by April 1994 over a million refugees were encamped close to the capital and hundreds thousands more in camps in the south all fleeing RPF terror.

The RPF did all it could in 1994 to paralyse the functioning of the government, to exacerbate racial tensions, and prepare for war.

Then on April 6, 1994 they launched their final surprise attack by shooting down the presidential plane returning from a meeting in Tanzania that Uganda’s Museveni had arranged. In fact it is known that Museveni’s half-brother general Salim Saleh was at the final meeting at which the date for the shoot down was agreed.

The missile attack killed Habyarimana, as well as Burundi’s new Hutu president Cyprien Ntayamire, and Rwanda’s military chief of staff, and others on board. This was the first massacre of 1994 and it was a massacre of Hutus by the RPF.

The RPF then immediately launched attacks across Kigali and the north of the country. In the sector of Kigali known as Remera they killed everyone on the night of the 6th and the 7th, wiped out the Gendarme camp there, wiped out the military police camp at Kami and launched a major attack against Camp Kanombe, Camp Kigali and the main gendarme camp at Kacyriu.

The Rwandan government and army called for a ceasefire the same night and next day. The RPF rejected the call. The Rwandan government asked for more UN help to control the situation. Instead, the US arranged that the main UN force be pulled out while flying in men and supplies to the RPF using C130 Hercules aircraft.

The Rwandan Army, short of ammunition and unable to contain the RPF advances even offered an unconditional surrender on April 12th. The RPF rejected even this offer and instead shelled the Nyacyonga refugee camp where the one million Hutu refugees were located provoking their flight into the capital.

The effect of one million people flooding into a small city that itself was under bombardment cannot be described. The RPF used this flood of people to infiltrate its men behind army lines. This created panic among the Hutu population that began killing anyone they did not recognize. It was clear that the RPF was not interested in saving lives, even Tutsis, but in seizing total power and did not want to negotiate at all.

The late Dr. Alison Des Forges, the American who was considered a noted scholar on Rwanda, in her testimony in the Military II trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in 2006 testified that the RPF claim that they attacked to stop a “genocide” was a myth; just propaganda to justify their attempt to seize power by force of arms.

She also testified that the Rwandan government did not plan and execute genocide. This accords with the testimony of General Dallaire who also confirmed an earlier statement that there was no planned genocide by the government as did the deputy head of Belgian Army intelligence, Col. Vincent, who also testified at the ICTR that the idea of a genocide was a fantasy.

The fighting in Kigali was intense. UN officers –confirming what has been said by Rwandan and RPF officers who have testified— state that the RPF was launching hundreds of Katyusha rockets every hour round the clock while the Rwandan Army ran out of hand grenades in the first few days and was reduced to fighting the RPF with hand made explosives.

The vaunted RPF could not take Kigali. The siege of Kigali lasted three months and only ended when the Rwandan Army literally ran out of ammunition and ordered a general retreat into the Congo forest.

RPF officers have stated that the RPF killed up to two million Hutus in those 12 weeks in a deliberate campaign to eliminate the Hutu population. The Akagera River, the length of which was under RPF control throughout, ran red with the blood of the Hutus massacred on its banks.

The RPF claimed these were Tutsis but there were no Tutsis in that area and only the RPF had access to that area. Robert Gersony, of USAID in a report to the UNHCR in October 1994, filed as an exhibit at the ICTR, stated that the RFP carried out a systematic and planned massacre of the Hutu population. Please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Gersony

As the Rwandan Army, including Tutsi officers within that army and men retreated into the Congo forest, the Hutu population, in fear for their lives fled with them in their millions. In local villages, Hutu neighbours attacked Tutsis in revenge for the murder of Hutus or fearing death at their hands. Tutsis also attacked Hutus. It was total war just as the RPF wished. The RPF later pursued the Hutus through the Congo forest between 1996 to 1998 and killed hundreds of thousands and possibly millions. They were shelled, machine gunned, raped, cut to pieces with knives. Accounts of that trek are difficult to bear.

The RPF was assisted in its offensive by the United States. The UN Rwanda Emergency office in Nairobi was in fact manned by US Army officers and acted as the operational headquarters of the RPF and gave them intelligence on Rwandan Army movements and actions and directions.

Prudence Bushnell the U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs telephoned the Rwandan Army chief of staff in May 1994 and told him that unless he surrendered he must know that he was fighting the United States of America and would be defeated. US Special Forces fought with the RPF. There is also evidence that Belgian forces of the UN were involved as an intercepted radio message from Kagame to his forces in the field refers to the help they had received from the Belgians.

There is also evidence that Canadian forces were also involved and Atoine Nyetera a Tutsi prince, who was in Kigali in that period testified for the defense in the Military II trial and stated that not only were there no massacres committed against Tutsis by the Rwandan Army but that it was the RPF that began the massacres after they took Kigali and began killing Hutus.

Nyetera testified that despite the claim by the RPF of being a Tutsi liberation group, when he saw their long columns enter the capital he saw that most of them were Sudanese, Eritreans, Ethiopians, Tanzanians and others speaking Swahili or Sudanese languages, in other words, mercenaries.

Several RPF officers have testified at the ICTR and stated that they fled the Kagame regime as they had been promised that they fought for liberation of the Tutsis. However, when they wanted to take over the streets of Kigali to stop reprisals against Tutsis by Hutu civilians the junior officers were forbidden to do so, putting the lie to Kagame’s claim that he attacked to save Tutsis.

These officers testified that Kagame wanted deaths to justify his war. The RPF could have controlled large parts of Kigali as they had at least 15,000 men in or near the capital opposed to 5,000 Rwandan Army forces. Instead Kagame used his men to ethnically cleanse the rest of the country of the Hutu population.

The Rwanda War was a total war. All means were used to destroy that country and the Hutu people. The ultimate objective, the resources of the Congo. The US agreed to support the RPF in return for the RPF acting as a US proxy force to invade the Congo and seize its resources.

The US now has several military bases in Rwanda and the country is nothing more than a US and UK colony run by thugs who keep control of the majority of the people by intimidation, murder and disinformation.

None of this could have happened if those in the UN such as Kofi Anan, then in charge of the Department of peacekeeping operations, had done his job. None of this could have happened without the connivance of the NATO
countries and Uganda, from where the invasion was launched.

Ultimately, the prime responsibility rests with the United States of America and in particular the regimes of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush and now President Barack Obama. As Boutros Boutros-Ghali, then UN Secretary General, stated to Canadian historian Robin Philpot in 2004: “The United States is one hundred percent responsible for what happened in Rwanda.”


Toronto-based Christopher Black is a Barrister and International Criminal Lawyer. He is Lead Counsel, General Augustin Ndindiliyimana, Chief of Staff, Rwandan Gendarmerie. International Criminal Tribunal For Rwanda (ICTR).

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