State Department War Crimes Chief Stephen Rapp’s cover-up of U.S. War Crimes in Rwanda Genocide

Daya Gamage – Foreign News Desk Asian Tribune Washington, DC. 29April

 

The April 28 report in The New York Times captioned ‘American Lawyer is Barred from Rwanda Tribunal Work’ caught the eye of this Online Daily’s Foreign News Desk which informed the readers that Peter Erlinder, a law professor in an American university, has been barred by the UN from working at the international tribunal for Rwanda based in the Tanzanian city of Arusha. He refused to travel to Arusa for fear of his life.
He said that he is a target of the Rwandan government and has even received threats while on lecture tours in the U.S.
Prof. Erlinder charges the current Paul Kahame regime of Rwanda of targeted assassinations of those who were accusing the Rwandan leader of genocide - 1990 through 1994 - in which one million people were killed. He and others who have given a long list of victims in many worldwide cities attributed those assassinations to the current Rwandan leadership of Paul Kagame.
One of the mysterious deaths known to the Asian Tribune network was a UN professional who worked to unearth the evidence of the Rwandan genocide – a Sri Lankan Shyamlal Rajapaksa who happened to be a first cousin of the present president of Sri Lanka Mahinda Rajapaksa. His killing in August 2009 in the Tanzanian city of Arusha where the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) was headquartered is still a mystery.
Professor Peter Erlinder has come out with an array of evidence and interpretations of the direct culpability of the current Rwandan president Paul Kagame in the Rwandan genocide, how he and his colleagues were given military training in the U.S., how Kagame as the head of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a proxy force of the Pentagon according to Erlinder, invaded Rwanda to unleash a genocide with tacit approval of the United States, and in the following years how the United States took covert and overt steps to cover up its involvement in the Rwandan mass massacre.
It is here that Ambassador-at Large Stephen Rapp’s name emerge. Mr. Rapp is currently the head of the Office of War Crimes Issues of the U.S. Department of State, and in his previous position as the chief prosecutor of the Rwandan genocide, according to Peter Elinder, and many other investigators, Mr. Rapp was one of the main who was involved in the cover up of US involvement in the Rwandan Genocide.
The Asian Tribune readers may recall that Stephen Rapp in his capacity as the State Department’s War Crimes Issues chief who prepared and released a document in October 2009 with ambiguous evidence which accused Sri Lanka of violating international humanitarian laws during the final (Jan-May 2009) stage of the battle with separatist/terrorist Tamil Tigers (LTTE).
In October 1990, the Ugandan army and the Rwandan Patriotic Front/Army (RPF) led by Major General Paul Kagame invaded Rwanda. The guerrillas who violated international laws and committed massive war crimes were backed by Britain, Belgium, the United States and Israel, according to many investigators and researchers. By July 1994, the RPF completed its coup d'etat and consolidated its power in Rwanda.
On April 6, 1994, the governments of Rwanda and Burundi were decapitated when the plane carrying the two presidents and top military staff was shot down over Kigali, Rwanda's capital. The well-planned assassinations of Juvenal Habyarimana and Cyprien Ntaryamira sparked a massive escalation of warfare that is falsely portrayed as the result of meaningless tribal savagery. These assassinations were major war crimes, and the RPF and UPDF were responsible, but almost every attempt to honestly investigate the double presidential assassinations has been blocked by the U.S. and its allies.
A frequent contributor to a think tank called Global Research, Prof. Elinder outlined the United States endeavor in the cover up of its own culpability in the Rwandan genocide.
He wrote: “The July 9, 2009 New York Times reported that the Obama administration had selected Stephen Rapp to replace the Bush administration Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes, Pierre Prosper. Rapp began his international career at the UN Security Council Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in 2001, while Carla Del Ponte was Chief Rwanda Prosecutor. Rapp’s nomination just a few months after Del Ponte’s of her memoir of her years as Chief UN Prosecutor, Madam Prosecutor: Confronting Humanity’s Worst Criminals and the Culture of Impunity was published in English.
“Del Ponte’s book describes in detail the systematic U.S.-initiated cover-up of crimes by the current Rwandan government, a U.S. ally, committed during the Rwanda Genocide, and how she was removed from her ICTR (International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda) position in 2003 by U.S. Ambassador Prosper, himself, when she refused to cooperate with the U.S.-initiated “cover-up.”
According to Del Ponte, her ICTR Office had the evidence to prosecute Kagame for “touching-off” the Rwanda Genocide by ordering the assassination of Rwanda’s former President Juvenal, Habyarimana, long before 2003. She also details the dozens of massacre sites, involving thousands of victims, for which the current Rwandan President, Paul Kagame and his military, should be prosecuted. The well-publicized canard, that “the identity of the assassins of Habyarimana is unknown” is a bald-faced lie, well -known by ICTR Prosecutors, according to Ms. Del Ponte, writes Prof. Elinder in Global Research.
Two years after Del Ponte was removed from office, Stephen Rapp became “Chief” of ICTR Prosecutions with access to all of the evidence known to Ms. Del Ponte, and more that has been made public in the past few years. During his four years at the ICTR, Rapp like Del Ponte, also was in a position to prosecute Kagame and members of the current government of Rwanda but, not ONE member of Kagame’s military has been prosecuted at the ICTR, to date…and the “cover-up” revealed by Del Ponte, continues today. And, unlike, Ms. Del Ponte, who was fired by the U.S., Mr. Rapp was first rewarded with an appointment as Chief Prosecutor at the U.S.-funded Sierra Leone Tribunal and now, a coveted ambassadorship by the Obama administration as the chief of the Office of War Crimes Issues at the State Department.
Mr. Rapp, for reasons known and unknown to the Asian Tribune, used ambiguous and conflicting information and data to accuse Sri Lanka of violating International Humanitarian Laws (IHL) in a report released to the US Congress in October 2009.
Former Chief ICTR Prosecutor Del Ponte Details War Crimes “Cover-up”
According to Del Ponte, in May 2003 she was called to Washington D.C. by Prosper (ironically, also a former ICTR prosecutor with knowledge of Kagame’s crimes) who informed her that the U.S. would remove her UN post, if she carried through with her publicly announced plans to indict Kagame and members of his government and military. According to Del Ponte, when she refused to knuckle-under because “she worked for the UN, - not for the U.S” Prosper told her ICTR career was over. In October Del Ponte was replaced by a US-approved ICTR prosecutor, Hassan Abubacar Jallow, who elevated Rapp to “Chief of Prosecution” two years later.
ICTR Trials: More Evidence of Rwanda Crimes Cover-Up
Del Ponte’s revelations are not the only evidence that a U.S.-initiated “war crimes cover-up” at the ICTR is creating impunity for crimes committed by the Kagame and his military. On September 10, 1994 memo in evidence in the ICTR Military-1 Trial confirms that U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher was informed that Kagame’s troops were killing “10,000 civilians a month” in military-style, according to an investigation funded by US Agency for International Development (USAID). And, as early as January 1997, a team made up of Chief ICTR Investigative Prosecutor and former Australian Crown Prosecutor Michael Hourigan; former FBI Agent James Lyons; and former UN-Chief of Military Intelligence in Rwanda, Amadou Deme; reported Louise Arbour, Ms. Del Ponte’s predecessor, that Kagame should be prosecuted for assassinating the previous president. Arbour scuttled the investigation, suppressed the report and disbanded the investigative team.
Shortly, thereafter, Arbour was elevated to Canada’s Supreme Court and has sunsequently been chosen to head the International Crisis Group.
Louise Arbour as the head of the International Crisis Group released a report in May 2010 accusing Sri Lanka of war crimes said: “Evidence gathered by the International Crisis Group suggests that these months saw tens of thousands of Tamil civilian men, women, children and the elderly killed, countless more wounded, and hundreds of thousands deprived of adequate food and medical care, resulting in more deaths. This evidence also provides reasonable grounds to believe the Sri Lankan security forces committed war crimes with top government and military leaders potentially responsible.”
Former ICTR Prosecutor Rapp Complicit in Cover-up
But, even though Arbour suppressed the “Hourigan Report,” Del Ponte, Rapp and other ICTR prosecutors certainly knew about it, because ICTR judges had ordered Del Ponte’s Office to release the “Hourigan report” to a defense team as early as the year 2000, a year before Rapp began his ICTR work, and three years before Del Ponte was fired by Prosper.
Prof. Peter Elinder says “But….to date, not one indictment has been issued against Kagame by the ICTR Prosecutor.”
Consequences of the ICTR Cover-up of Kagame’s Crimes
The tragic consequence of the failure to prosecute Kagame at the ICTR, from 1994 to date, is that Kagame has been free to invade the Congo in 1996 and 1998, and to occupy part of the eastern Congo many-times larger than Rwanda, to this day. No less than four UN Security Council-commissioned Panel of Experts Report(s) on the Illegal Exploitation of the DR Congo (2001, 2002, 2003 and December 2008) have detailed the massive rape of the Congo’s resources that has brought vast riches to Kagame and his inner circle.
While Rapp was ICTR Senior Trial Attorney in 2003, Kagame was effectively elected President-for-Life with 95% of the vote, after banning opposition parties and jailing opponents, in “a climate of intimidation” according to EU observers.
“Chief of Prosecutions” Rapp Withheld Exculpatory Evidence
In February 2009, the ICTR issued its Judgment the Military-1 case, that main case at the ICTR, in which Mr. Rapp personally appeared for the Prosecution. Although massive violence did occur in Rwanda, the court certainly recognized that blaming only one side WAS a falsehood, when it acquitted all of the “architects of the killing machine” (as Mr. Rapp called the defendants in court) of conspiracy or planning to kill civilians. The highest ranking military-officer was acquitted of all charges.
And, although it is now clear from Ms. Del Ponte’s memoirs that Mr. Rapp had the evidence to clear the ICTR defendants of the assassination charges and only the losing side has been blamed for all crimes committed in Rwanda in 1994. Simply put, Mr. Rapp and other ICTR prosecutors have withheld evidence that would be beneficial to the defense, contrary to Tribunal Rules; have prosecuted defendants for crimes they knew were committed by Kagame’s forces; and, have created a system of “judicial impunity” that has permitted Kagame to kill millions in the eastern Congo.
It is in this context that Prof. Peter Elinder writing to Global Security questioned President Obama’s wisdom in appointing Stephen Rapp as the head of the Office of War Crimes Issue at the State Department in this manner: “This “inconvenient-African-truth,” raises an uncomfortable question regarding President Obama’s nomination of Mr. Rapp, in the first place: Are Obama and his advisors ignorant of the public record regarding Rapp’s complicity in the ICTR Cover-up….or do they just not give a damn?”
The U.S. Culpability in Rwanda Genocide
Aimable Mugara in a piece to OpEdNews put it this way: “In 1990, General Kagame who was the Chief of Military Intelligence of Uganda and head of the Rwandan Patriotic Forces (RPF) led a violent invasion of Rwanda from Uganda, with the approval and support (financial, military and political) of the United States government. This violent war changed the landscape of that region forever. By landscape, I also mean the number of mass graves that dot every of inch of that region now. The two final years of President Bush the father, during which his American government supported the murderous gang of General Kagame and Yoweri Museveni resulted in the deaths of many innocent Rwandan and Ugandan civilians. During those two years, there are thousands who lost their lives at the hands of General Kagame's soldiers and Yoweri Museveni's soldiers. But this was nothing compared to the more than 6 millions of civilians that would later die under Bill Clinton's 8 year reign, with American money, American weapons and American political support.”
In a September 30, 2010 New York Times article titled ‘Dispute Over U.N. Report Evokes Rwandan Déjà Vu’, it is mentioned how in the fall of 1994, a United Nations investigation discovered that General Kagame's forces had killed tens of thousand of innocent civilians that year. That under pressure from Bill Clinton's government, the United Nations was forced not to publish that report. In that New York Times article, they talk about how the 1994 UN report describes General Kagame's soldiers "rounding up civilians and methodically killing unarmed men, women and children."
“Kagame received his military education under the Pentagon’s Joint Combined Exchange Training (JCET) at the Command and General Staff College of Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, beginning in 1990,” wrote John E. Peck of the Association of African Scholars (2002). “His sidekick, Lt. Col. Frank Rusagara, got his JCET schooling at the U.S. Naval Academy in Monterey, California. Both were dispatched to Rwanda in time to oversee the RPF’s takeover in 1994. Far from being an innocent bystander, the Washington Post revealed on July 12, 1998 that the United States not only gave Kagame $75 million in military assistance, but also sent Green Berets to train Kagame’s forces (as well as their Ugandan rebel allies) in low intensity conflict (LIC) tactics. Pentagon subcontractor Ronco, masquerading as a de-mining company, also smuggled more weapons to RPF fighters in flagrant violation of UN sanctions. All of this U.S. largesse was put to lethal effect in the ethnic bloodbath that is still going on.”
In 2009 published Edward S. Herman and David Peterson's investigative/research book The Politics of Genocide said: “The United States and its allies worked hard in the early 1990s to weaken the Rwandan government, forcing the abandonment of many of the economic and social gains from the social revolution of 1959, thereby making the Habyarimana government less popular, and helping to reinforce the Tutsi minority’s economic power.9 Eventually, the RPF was able to achieve a legal military presence inside Rwanda, thanks to a series of ceasefires and other agreements. These agreements led to the Arusha Peace Accords of August 1993, pressed upon the Rwandan government by the United States and its allies, called for the “integration” of the armed forces of Rwanda and the RPF, and for a “transitional,” power-sharing government until national elections could be held in 1995.10 These Peace Accords positioned the RPF for its bloody overthrow of a relatively democratic coalition government, and the takeover of the Rwandan state by a minority dictatorship.”
The U.S. State Department’s Office of War Crimes Issues chief Stephen Rapp knew this entire Rwandan episode, the U.S. interests in Paul Kagame, the UN concealment of the 1994 report at the behest of the Clinton administration, the U.S. military assistance to Kagame’s Rwandan Patriotic Front and the entire exercise of the ‘Rwandan cover up’ to conceal the U.S. culpability in the Rwandan genocide when he focused his attention elsewhere; Sri Lanka.
- Asian Tribune -

Did America Conspire to Cover Up a Genocide in the Congo?

Adapted from the DAILY KOS
Last week, Bernard Ntaganda was sentenced  to four years imprisonment for “endangering state security” and “harboring ethnic divisionism.”  The former charge is all too familiar to human rights activists and is little different from similar politically-motivated prosecutions across the globe.  The crime of “divisionism,” however, codified as “sectarianism” under Rwandese law, is relatively unique.  The closest parallels to these laws are probably most familiar to Americans as “hate speech” laws common to Europe, but prohibited by the First Amendment in the United States.
    International human rights groups, including Amnesty International, have concluded that Mr. Ntaganda was almost certainly targeted for his opposition to the regime of President Paul Kagame.  President Kagame is not well known in the United States, but he owes his prominence to the role he played in ending the 1994 Rwandan genocide as leader of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, or RPF.  The sanitized version of this story was distributed to American audiences briefly in the award winning film Hotel Rwanda.  Unfortunately, the politcally correct version omits several important facts, omissions that help explain the current political climate in Rwanda and the slide toward authoritarianism on the part of Kagame and the rest of the political leadership.

Writing for Foreign Policy magazine last August, former Democratic Senator Robert Krueger, who served as ambassador to Burundi, a neighbor of Rwanda with similar laws and ethnic divisions, offered some personal insight into Kagame that was far from flattering.  He describes a man engaged in a retaliatory, politically-charged campaign of revenge against Rwandan Hutus.  Indeed, the Rwandan genocide and subsequent RPF campaign would ultimately trigger the Second Congo War, an event with a staggering if still disputed death toll.  Although he does not mention Clinton by name, the passing reference to the complicity of the United States speaks volumes.
    Enter Peter Erlinder.  After failing to prevent the genocide or to effectively manage the humanitarian and security crises that followed in its wake, the international community decided to prosecute those responsible.  Security Council Resolution 955, passed in November of 1994, established the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.  China abstained, and Rwanda opposed the resolution as enacted.  Nevertheless, the vote of the Security Council was final, and the ICTR was made manifest. Eventually, Erlinder would join the defense team.
    As a defense attorney, he has been relatively successful.  One of his more high profile clients, General Gratien Kabiligi, was acquitted of all charges two years ago, in a decision that infuriated the Kagame regime in Rwanda.  His success has not been free of controversy. The emerging version of the Rwandan genocide brought out by the publication of the tribunal’s decisions as well as academics, witness accounts and the memoirs of Carla Del Ponte, the former chief prosecutor, conflicts with the prevailing narrative preferred in the United States, a version that first embraced by the Clinton administration in an effort to minimize its complicity with both the onset of the Tutsi mass murders and the retaliatory campaign waged by Kagame against Hutus and “traitorous” Tutsi.  This transnational terror campaign helped provoke the Second Congo War, a mass ball of suffering that has snuffed out the lives of nearly six million Africans by some estimates.
An ICTR exhibit, a memorandum issued by George Moose to U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher, shows that the Clinton administration was aware of this retaliatory campaign by at least September of 1994:

ICTR Military-1 Exhibit, DNT 264, September 10, 1994 Memo from George Moose to Warren Christopher, U.S. Secretary of State:                 A UNCHR investigative team that spent July and August in Rwanda [i.e. Gersony] has reported systematic human rights abuses by the GOR (i.e. RPA/F) forces – including systematic killings – in the south and southeast of the country.  The team has concluded that the GOR is aware of these reprisals against Hutu civilians and may have sanctioned them
                On the basis of interviews with refugees/individuals, the UNCHR team concluded that a pattern of killing had emerged.  The RPA convened meetings of displaced persons to discuss peace and security.  Once the displaced persons were assembled, RPA soldiers moved in and killed them.  In addition to these massacres, the RPA engaged in house to house sweeps and hunted down individuals hiding in camps.  Victims were usually killed with hoes, axes, machetes and with fire. Although males 18-40 were at the highest risk the young and elderly were no spared. The team estimated that the RPA and Tutsi civilian surrogates had killed 10,000 or more Hutu civilians per month, with the RPA accounting for 95% of the killing.
                The UNCHR team speculated that the purpose of the killing was a campaign of ethnic cleansing intended to clear areas in the south of Rwanda for Tutsi habitation.  The killings also served to reduce the population of Hutu males and discouraged refugees from returning to claim their land.

 Defense Exhibit DNT 264
    Why did the United States ignore this humanitarian disaster that was unfolding before its very eyes? There are a variety of reasons, but for the most part it can probably be reduced to political expediency and an unwillingness to further complicate an already complex situation.  It was, in short, a “quick fix,” and because Africans were involved, it was not a pressing matter that would require much deliberation or investigation.  Even before our “first black president” William Jefferson Clinton was embroiled too deeply in his sex scandals, Rwanda was a minor annoyance.  After all, a year and a half into his presidency he was confronted with a genocide that the U.S. and other Western states (most notably France) had failed to prevent, despite our noble but ultimately empty promise of “Never Again.” Or as Gerard Prunier, a French historian, puts it:

“These combined factors-a fatal attraction for what U.S.. National Security Adviser Anthony Lake once called ‘a quick fix solution,’ the lack of a genuine interest at the government level, and the short attention span of the general public-have given us the “Great Lakes crisis” storyboard of the past thirteen years: 1994: Genocide in Rwanda.  Horror.
1995: Festering camps.  Keep feeding them and it will eventually work out.
1996: Refugees have gone home.  It is now all over except in Zaire.
1997: Mobutu has fallen.  Democracy has won.
1998: Another war.  These people are crazy.
1999: Diplomats are negotiating.  It will eventually work out.
2000: Blank.
2001: President Kabila is shot.  But his son seems like a good sort, doesn’t he?
2002: Pretoria Peace Agreement.  We are now back to normal.
2003: These fellows still insist on money.  What is the minimum price?
2004: Do you think Osama bin Laden is still alive?
2005: Three million Africans have died.  This is unfortunate.
2006: Actually it might be four million.  But since the real problem is Al Qaeda, this remains peripheral.
2007: They have had their election, haven’t they? Then everything should be all right.
 The result is rather strange.  A situation of major conflict is reduced to a comic book atmosphere in which absolute horror alternates with periods of almost complete disinterest from the nonspecialists.  Massive levels of physical violence and cultural upheavals are looked upon from a great distance by theoretically powerful international institutions who only dimly understand what is actually happening.  There is great use of stereotyped categories (advance warning, failed state, humanitarian emergency, confidence-building process, national reconciliation, negative forces, national dialogue, African ownership of the peace process) which are more relevant to the Western way of thinking than to the realities they are supposed to address.  The desperate African struggle for survival is bowdlerized beyond recognition, and at times the participant-observer has the feeling of being caught between a Shakespearian tragedy and a hiccuping computer.”
Africa’s World War: Congoa, The Rewandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe, by Gerard Prunier.

      It is against this backdrop that we enter the strange case of Erlinder and the Rwandese crimes of “divisionism” and promotion of “genocide ideology.”  President Kagame, by most accounts, was not interested in slaughtering the Hutus, but he was interested in terrorizing his political opponents, playing the West (including the United States) like a fiddle and discouraging any further investigation into the retaliatory atrocities committed under his leadership.  There is no denying that Kagame was aware of these massacres; he was silent in the face of United Nations documents that reported the retaliatory massacres committed under his watch, although they were submitted to him.  You see dear American reader, in the aftermath of the Hutu campaign against the Tutsi, there was a period of recrimination and finger pointing, the “gutunga agatoki” system of justice.  Thousands were arrested, a mix of genuine killers, victims of property disputes, common criminals, hapless bystanders and the rest.  The RPF, under Kagame’s leadership, was able to do whatever it pleased.  The retaliatory killings were nasty, to be sure, but by February of 1996, an additional 80,000 people were in “detention centers,” facilities that were often makeshift and almost always overcrowded.  In Gitarama, where over six thousand prisoners were stuffed in a jail designed for 600, Medecins San Frontieres recorded a thousand deaths over an eight month span between October 1994 and June of 1995.  These “places of detention” included only sixteen actual jails, according to the Red Cross.  The rest included, inter alia, holes dug into the ground covered with corrugated iron sheets weighted down by cement blocks.  In October of 1994, Judge Gratien Ruhorahoza made the mistake of attempting to free forty people who had no files.  One of the few judges left standing in the chaos (there were 36), he was promptly kidnapped by Kagame’s military and later murdered.  Indeed, 26 magistrates (out of 270 left after the genocide from a previous population of about 800) were arrested as “genocidaires” when they attempted to free detainees they considered innocent.
    Lovely people, the RPF.  They may have had additional reasons for quashing any thorough investigation.  The event that precipitated the Rwandan genocide was the 1994 assassination of Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana and Burundi President Cyprien Ntaryamira.  In 2008, former Chief Prosecutor for the ICTR Carla Del Ponte published her memoirs, Madame Prosecutor: Confrontations with Humanity’s Worst Criminals, and the Culture of Impunity.  In her book, Del Ponte reveals that she was on the brink of indicting Kagame for the 1994 assassinations before Pierre Prosper, the Bush administration’s Ambassador-At-Large for War Crimes, intervened and warned her that she would be fired if she refused to help the U.S. cover-up of Kagame’s crimes.  She refused, and found herself out of a job:

According to Del Ponte, her ICTR Office had the evidence to prosecute Kagame for “touching-off” the Rwanda Genocide by ordering the assassination of Rwanda’s former President Juvenal, Habyarimana, long before 2003. She also details the dozens of massacre sites, involving thousands of victims, for which the current Rwandan President, Paul Kagame and his military, should be prosecuted.   The well-publicized canard, that “the identity of the assassins of Habyarimana is unknown” is a bald-faced lie, well -known by ICTR Prosecutors, according to Ms. Del Ponte. Two years after Del Ponte was removed from office, Stephen Rapp became “Chief” of ICTR Prosecutions with access to all of the evidence known to Ms. Del Ponte, and more that has been made public in the past few years. During his four years at the ICTR,  Rapp like Del Ponte, also  was in a position to prosecute Kagame and members of the current government of Rwanda but, not ONE member of Kagame’s military has been prosecuted at the ICTR, to date…and the “cover-up” revealed by Del Ponte, continues today.  And, unlike, Ms. Del Ponte, who was fired by the U.S., Mr. Rapp was first rewarded with an appointment as Chief  Prosecutor at the U.S.-funded Sierra Leone Tribunal and now, a coveted ambassadorship.

 The Rwandan War Crimes Cover-Up, by Peter Erlinder
    Not to be outdone by the complicity of the Clinton and Bush administrations, President Obama, our first president of African descent, rewarded Rapp with his current job.  Like most U.S. presidents, Obama is hoping that no one will notice, or care...or perhaps he does not even care himself.  This is the periphery, after all, and his administration is too busy following AIPAC’s lead at the UN Security Council     to be bothered with justice for millions of victims in a region that simply does not interest the beltway.
    President Obama and our Rwandan clients have their hands full, however.  Last year,  Le Monde Diplomatique  released a leaked 2010 report of the United Nations’ Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.  This report documents the crimes of the RPF under President Kagame.  It is quite damning, according to  The Guardian:

The Rwandan government reacted angrily to the report today, dismissing it as "amateurish" and "outrageous" after reportedly attempting to pressure the UN not to publish it by threatening to pull out of international peacekeeping missions. Rwanda's Tutsi leaders will be particularly discomforted by the accusation of genocide when they have long claimed the moral high ground for bringing to an end the 1994 genocide in their own country. But the report was welcomed by human rights groups, which called for the prosecution of those responsible for war crimes. The report by the Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights (OHCHR) covers two periods: Rwanda's 1996 invasion of the country then called Zaire in pursuit of Hutu soldiers and others who fled there after carrying out the 1994 genocide of hundreds of thousands of Tutsis, and a second invasion two years later that broadened into a regional war involving eight countries.
Rwanda's attack on Zaire in 1996 was initially aimed at clearing the vast UN refugee camps around Goma and Bukavu, which were being used as cover by Hutu armed forces to continue the war against the new Tutsi-led government in Kigali.
Hundreds of thousands of the more than 1 million Hutus in eastern Zaire were forced back to Rwanda. Many more, including men who carried out the genocide but also large numbers of women and children, fled deeper into Zaire. They were pursued and attacked by the Rwandan army and a Zairean rebel group sponsored by Kigali, the AFDL.
The UN report describes "the systematic, methodical and premeditated nature of the attacks on the Hutus [which] took place in all areas where the refugees had been tracked down".

This leak followed the Rwandan government’s decision to prosecute Peter Erlinder for “genocide ideology” based on his ICTR work.  The Kagame regime also arrested and prosecuted one of his clients, Victoire Ingabire, for the same upon her return from exile in advance of the 2010 elections.  A cosmopolitan, liberal activist who resided in Europe for the better part of the last decade, the regime is not risking Ms. Ingabire’s release.
    Why not? Because the prosecution of defense attorneys and exiled activists fits a much larger pattern of cover-ups by the United Nations, the United States and the Kagame regime.  As Christopher Black, who serves as lead counsel for the Hutu former Gen. Augustin at the ICTR, explained last September when detailing the accidental discovery of an inculpatory 1994 letter by Kagame:

The accidental discovery of this Aug. 10, 1994, letter from Paul Kagame to his “Dear Brother Jean Baptiste Bagaza” was met with an immediate reaction by the prosecution, who accused the defense of fabricating it, pointing out a typo in the letterhead. But this line of criticism failed, as it was shown that there are other letters in existence from the RPF on the same stationary, with the same typo in the letterhead, and these letters are regarded as authentic. That someone regarded the letter as authentic and dangerous is highlighted by the fact that I was followed by a Tanzanian police officer the night after I produced it in court and was forced to complain about this surveillance in court the next day. Yet the prosecution continued its attacks on the letter’s authenticity, even though the document came from the files of the prosecutor. And this important revelation during the Military II trial was never reported in the mass media – though I did send it to many journalists, including the New York Times.
Now that the draft U.N. report on the atrocities committed by the RPF in the Congo has been leaked, the findings of the very first U.N. report of RPF atrocities against the Hutus beginning in 1994 should also be recognized and addressed.
The U.N. must explain why the record of that 1994 presentation by Robert Gersony was marked “confidential” and why the latest draft U.N. report does not refer to it.
The prosecutors at the ICTR must explain why they hid these documents from the defense for nearly 15 years and why, even though they have these documents in their possession, they have never once used these documents to bring charges against a single member of the RPF.
Last, Paul Kagame and his American, Belgian and British collaborators must explain the meaning of the letter – and, in particular, the meaning of the phrase, “plan for Zaire.”

    The letter is very short, but very revealing:

“‘Dear Brother Jean Baptiste Bagaza, we have the greatest honor to extend our sincere gratitude to you both for your financial and technical support in our struggle that has just ended with the taking of Kigali. “‘Rest assured that our plan to continue shall be pursued as we agreed at our last meeting in Kampala. Last week I communicated with our big brother Yoweri Museveni and decided to make some modifications to the plan. Indeed, as you have noted, the taking of Kigali quickly provoked a panic among the Hutus who fled to Goma and Bukavu. We have found that the presence of a large number of Rwandan refugees at Goma and the international community can cause our plan for Zaire to fail. We cannot occupy ourselves with Zaire until after the return of these Hutus. All means are being used for their return as rapidly as possible. In any case, our external intelligence services continue to crisscross the east of Zaire and our Belgian, British and American collaborators the rest of Zaire. The action reports are expected in the next few days.
“‘Concerning the Burundi plan, we are very content with your work to ensure the failure of the policies of FRODEBU. It is necessary to paralyze the power of FRODEBU until the total ruin of the situation in order to justify your action that must not miss its target. Our soldiers will be deployed this time not only in Bujumbura but in the places you judge strategic. Our elements stationed at Bugesera are ready to intervene at any moment. The plan for Burundi must be executed as soon as possible before the Hutus of Rwanda can organize themselves.
“‘In the hope of seeing you next time at Kigali, we ask you to accept, dear brother, our most respectful greetings’.
“Gen. Paul Kagame
“Minister of Defense (signed by his assistant, Mr. Rwego)”

Christopher Black,  U.S./U.N. Cover-Up of Kagame's Genocide in Rwanda and Congo
    The United States House of Representatives and Senate must begin an investigation into the possible complicity of the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations immediately.  Our hands may be soiled with the blood of millions, but we can begin to rinse at a moment’s notice.  As Glen Ford of the Black Agenda Report puts it, in light of the leaked UN OHCHR report:

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. 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.

 Rwanda Crisis Could Expose US Role in Congo Genocide
     My own interest in Peter Erlinder's case began in June of last year, when a friend of mine alerted me to the ICTR’s “Note Verable” to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation of the Government of Rwanda.  This was the second note sent to the Ministry.  As Kate Gibson, an ICTR defense attorney, explained in an American Law Institute article published last year:

The response from the ICTR was neither as swift nor as clear. Despite filings
from defense teams requesting varied forms of relief, such as the
suspension of proceedings and the withdrawal of a defense counsel, the
ICTR took the following steps. On May 31, 2010, the ICTR sent a Note
Verbale to the Rwandan authorities seeking clarification of whether Erlinder’s
arrest was related to his mandate as an ICTR defense counsel. Secondly,
the ICTR spokesman announced that because Erlinder was not on an official
mission in Rwanda as lead counsel for Major Ntabakuze, the ICTR did not
have the “power or the vocation for giving lawyers any immunity in cases that
are not related to the ICTR’s mandate.”Following this announcement, the
Rwandan Prosecutor-General responded to the ICTR Note Verbale,
predictably stating that Erlinder’s arrest was in no way connected to his
assignment at the ICTR, thus clearing the way for his prosecution.
The ICTR’s hands-off approach became more difficult when, contrary to
earlier public statements, the Rwandan authorities continued to link
Erlinder’s arrest to his work as a defense counsel at the ICTR. On June 7,
2010, the High Court of Gasabo rendered a decision denying Erlinder’s
request for provisional release. This decision focused on Erlinder’s academic
writing, parts of which are critical of and impute criminal responsibility to
members of the current regime in Rwanda for crimes committed in 1994.
However, in summarizing the Prosecution’s submissions, the High Court
referred on three occasions to statements made by the Rwandan
prosecutors regarding the link between the alleged genocide denial and
Erlinder’s pleadings as a defense counsel in the Military I case. For
example, according to one statement, “during the Military I Trial at the ICTR,
Carl Peter Erlinder denied and downplayed genocide. He managed to prove
that genocide had not been planned nor executed by the military officials he
was representing.” The Court itself concluded that Erlinder should
“answer for his acts at the ICTR.”
This was the critical link. And one which was reinforced by public statements
made by officials in Rwanda. On June 11, 2010, the Rwandan Minister of
Foreign Affairs and Cooperation was reported as stating, “[i]t is important to
alert the public on [sic] this deliberate confusion by defence lawyers.
Rwandans will not sit back and watch as the history of Genocide is being
distorted. We will prosecute them aggressively.”
Despite the establishment of this link, the ICTR remained without a
consistent position. On June 9, 2010, defense teams were presented with
two irreconcilable statements from the Registrar and Chambers on the
ICTR’s stance. For his part, the Registrar, in response to a request for
withdrawal from another defense counsel, ruled that he was “not persuaded
that Mr. Erlinder’s arrest has anything to do with his work in ICTR, as his
travel to Kigali was not in any way connected in any way to his mandate at
the ICTR.” In a decision rendered on the same day in Niyezimana, Trial
Chamber III held that “it appears from the available information that the
charges against Peter Erlinder are partly related to his submissions before
the Tribunal during the Military I case.”
As such, the situation remained unclear. It was at this point that the United
Nations Office of Legal Affairs in New York “advised the ICTR to formally
assert immunity for Professor Erlinder without delay and request his
immediate release.”[16] Consequently, on June 15, 2010, after Erlinder had
already been imprisoned for nineteen days and hospitalized twice, the ICTR
Registrar reversed his position and sent a Note Verbale to the Rwandan
Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation, notifying Rwandan authorities
that Erlinder enjoys immunity and requesting his immediate release.

    This raises serious questions about the ICTR itself, particularly in light of the refusal to prosecute the Kagame regime for its war crimes, and the apparently substantiated allegations of conspiracy and cover-up that have been raised by defense counsel working in Arusha.  One thing is certain: We need a prompt thorough domestic investigation into these allegations.  If they are substantiated, there are officials within the U.S. government who helped Kagame carry out war crimes in the mid to late 1990s, and have used the United Nations to orchestrate a cover-up of their complicity.
    Defense attorneys, human rights activists and interested watchers have serious questions for our political leadership.  Three presidential administration’s may have played a role in a serious crime and a cover up of the same.
    Does anyone care? Is anyone listening? For now, the answer appears to be no.
 

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DR Congo: UN Report Exposes Grave Crimes

International Efforts Needed to Create Mechanisms to Ensure Justice

October 1, 2010

Refugees carrying all their remaining possessions arrive at Kibumba camp, Goma, after crossing the border out of Rwanda.

© 1994 Tom Stoddart/Getty Images

Related Materials: 

DR Congo: Q & A on the United Nations Human Rights Mapping Report

Tackling Impunity in Congo: Meaningful Follow-up to the UN Mapping Report

Identify the Congo killers and bring them to justice

This detailed and thorough report is a powerful reminder of the scale of the crimes committed in Congo and of the shocking absence of justice. These events can no longer be swept under the carpet. If followed by strong regional and international action, this report could make a major contribution to ending the impunity that lies behind the cycle of atrocities in the Great Lakes region of Africa.

Kenneth Roth, executive director

(New York) - United Nations members should make a concerted international effort to initiate judicial investigations into grave human rights violations in the Democratic Republic of Congo documented by the UN and bring those responsible to justice, Human Rights Watch said today.
On October 1, 2010, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights published the report of its human rights mapping exercise on Congo. The report covers the most serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law committed in Congo between March 1993 and June 2003.
"This detailed and thorough report is a powerful reminder of the scale of the crimes committed in Congo and of the shocking absence of justice," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. "These events can no longer be swept under the carpet. If followed by strong regional and international action, this report could make a major contribution to ending the impunity that lies behind the cycle of atrocities in the Great Lakes region of Africa."
The report documents 617 violent incidents, covering all provinces, and describes the role of all the main Congolese and foreign parties responsible - including military or armed groups from Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi, and Angola.
An earlier version of the report was leaked to the news media in August. The Rwandan government, whose troops are accused of some of the most serious crimes documented in the report, reacted angrily, threatening to pull its peacekeepers out of UN missions if the UN published the report.
"The UN has done the right thing by refusing to give in to these threats and by publishing the report," Roth said. "This information has been stifled for too long. The world has the right to know what happened, and the victims have a right to justice."
The UN had tried to investigate some of the events described in the report, notably in 1997 and 1998, but these investigations were repeatedly blocked by the Congolese government, then headed by Laurent-Désiré Kabila, father of the current president, Joseph Kabila. Despite those efforts, information about massacres, rapes, and other abuses against Rwandan refugees and Congolese citizens in the late 1990s was published at the time by the UN and by human rights organizations. However, no action was taken to hold those responsible to account.
"The time has come to identify and prosecute the people responsible for carrying out and ordering these atrocities, going right up the chain of command," Roth said. "Governments around the world remained silent when hundreds of thousands of unarmed civilians were being slaughtered in Congo. They have a responsibility now to ensure that justice is done."
One of the most controversial passages of the report concerns crimes committed by Rwandan troops. The UN report raises the question of whether some might be classified "crimes of genocide". The possible use of the term "genocide" to describe the conduct of the Rwandan army has dominated media coverage of the leaked report.
"Questions of qualification and terminology are important, but should not overshadow the need to act on the content of the report regardless of how the crimes are characterized," Roth said. "At the very least, Rwandan troops and their Congolese allies committed massive war crimes and crimes against humanity, and large numbers of civilians were killed with total impunity. That is what we must remember, and that is what demands concerted action for justice."
The report has received widespread support from Congolese civil society, with 220 Congolese organizations signing a statement welcoming the report and calling for a range of mechanisms to deliver justice.
The mapping exercise has its origins in the UN's earlier investigations into crimes committed in Congo from 1993 to 1997. In September 2005, the UN peacekeeping mission in Congo, MONUC, discovered three mass graves in Rutshuru, in North Kivu province of eastern Congo, relating to crimes committed in 1996 and 1997. The gruesome discovery acted as a trigger to re-open investigations. The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, with the support of the UN Secretary-General, initiated the mapping exercise and broadened the mandate to include crimes committed during Congo's second war from 1998 to 2003.
The mapping exercise was conducted with the support of the Congolese government. However, the Congolese justice system has neither the capacity nor sufficient guarantees of independence to adequately ensure justice for these crimes, Human Rights Watch said. The report therefore suggests other options, involving a combination of Congolese, foreign, and international jurisdictions.
These could include a court with both Congolese and international personnel as well as prosecution by other states on the basis of universal jurisdiction. Human Rights Watch supports the establishment of a mixed chamber, with jurisdiction over past and current war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Congo. 
Countries in the region whose armies are implicated in the report should carry out their own investigations and initiate action against individuals responsible for crimes, Human Rights Watch said.
The report is both important for highlighting past injustices and relevant to the situation in present-day Congo, Human Rights Watch said.
"This is more than a historical report," Roth said. "Many of the patterns of abuse against civilians documented by the UN team continue in Congo today, fed by a culture of impunity. Creating a justice mechanism to address past and present crimes will be crucial to ending this cycle of impunity and violence."

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DRC: Mapping human rights violations 1993-2003

DRC: Mapping human rights violations 1993-2003

In the wake of the discovery of three mass graves in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in late 2005, the United Nations first announced its intention to send a human rights team to conduct a mapping exercise in DRC in a June 2006 report to the Security Council.

In May 2007, the UN Secretary-General approved the terms of reference of the mapping exercise following a series of consultations among relevant UN agencies and partners and with the Congolese government
The mapping exercise, led by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) had three objectives:

• Conduct a mapping exercise of the most serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law committed within the territory of the DRC between March 1993 and June 2003.
• Assess the existing capacities within the national justice system to deal appropriately with such human rights violations that may be uncovered.
• Formulate a series of options aimed at assisting the Government of the DRC in identifying appropriate transitional justice mechanisms to deal with the legacy of these violations, in terms of truth, justice, reparation and reform, taking into account ongoing efforts by the DRC authorities, as well as the support of the international community.

The mapping exercise began in July 2008. Between October 2008 and May 2009, a total of 33 staff worked on the project in the DRC (including Congolese and international human rights experts). Of these, some 20 human rights officers were deployed across the country, operating out of five field offices, to gather documents and information from witnesses to meet the three objectives defined in the terms of reference. The report was submitted to the High Commissioner for Human Rights in June 2009 for review, comments and finalisation.
The mapping team's 550-page report contains descriptions of 617 alleged violent incidents occurring in the DRC between March 1993 and June 2003. Each of these incidents points to the possible commission of gross violations of human rights and/or international humanitarian law. Each of the incidents listed is backed up by at least two independent sources identified in the report. As serious as they may be, uncorroborated incidents claimed by one single source are not included. Over 1,500 documents relating to human rights violations committed during this period were gathered and analysed with a view to establishing an initial chronology by region of the main violent incidents reported. Only incidents meeting a 'gravity threshold' set out in the methodology were considered. Field mapping teams met with over 1,280 witnesses to corroborate or invalidate the violations listed in the chronology. Information was also collected on previously undocumented crimes

 

.

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Seeking Justice for the DRC Victims: UN Mapping Report of October 1, 2010

Seeking Justice for the Victims: UN Mapping Exercise Report of October 1, 2010 on the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Dear _CONGRESSPERSON__________________

We the undersigned come to you with concerns over the stability, security, justice and peace in ...the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and the Great Lakes region in general. We want to call your attention to the recent UN mapping exercise report.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights’ Mapping Report, released on October 1, 2010, clearly exposes some of the most serious violations of human rights, international humanitarian law, war crimes and crimes against humanity in the DRC from March 1993 to June 2003. This report is not the first report that documents serious crimes in the Congo. These crimes were reported in the Previous UN reports of 2001, 2002, 2003, and 2008. The UN, human rights, humanitarian, advocacy organizations and investigative reporters have written extensively on some of the findings found in the mapping exercise report.
The evidence is overwhelming. The list of crimes is long. The crime scene is wide and every stone has yet to be turned. The raw data in the report describes the extent of the suffering, but does not match the tremendous human suffering of the victims and survivors.
The predominant appeal from the Congolese is the pursuit of Justice. Two hundred and twenty-five Congolese organizations have issued a call for justice based on the report.1 International NGOs have joined in this call for accountability, an end to the impunity and justice. Human Rights Watch says that “If followed up by strong action nationally and internationally, the report could make a critical contribution to ending impunity and breaking the cycle of violence in Congo and the wider Great Lakes region.”2 Justice and reconciliation is at the foundation of stability in the region. If justice is not delivered, there can be no lasting stability.

Unfortunately, very little has been done to stabilize the Congo and hold accountable Congo’s neighbors that have invaded and destabilized the Congo via support of proxy groups inside Congo. As recent as 2008, UN experts reported that “ It has found evidence that the Rwandan authorities have been complicit in the recruitment of soldiers, including children, have facilitated the supply of military equipment, and have sent officers and units from the Rwandan Defense Force (RDF) to the Democratic Republic of the Congo in support of CNDP.”3 Elements of the RDF still are embedded in the Congolese national army (FARDC) due to the integration of some of the rebel forces of the National Congress for the Defense of the People (CNDP). In addition, the Congolese leadership still has not done much to reform its national army, which also has been implicated in previous and the ongoing crimes.

In 2006, the US Congress passed S 2125, Public Law 109-456 which, stipulates in section 105 that “The Secretary of State is authorized to withhold assistance made available under the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 (22 U.S.C. 2125 et seq.), other than humanitarian, peacekeeping, and counterterrorism assistance, for a foreign country if the Secretary determines that the government of the foreign country is taking actions to destabilize the Democratic Republic of the Congo.”4 Regrettably, this instrument which is at the disposal of the Secretary of State, who co-sponosored S.2125, has not been utilized. Meanwhile, countries such as Sweden and Netherlands who do not have such a law (PL 109-456) on their books have withheld aid from Rwanda in an attempt to hold that country’s leaders accountable for their destabilizing of the Congo and the Great Lakes Region. This year Congress passed, as part of the “Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act” (Public Law 111-203), the Conflict Mineral Act (section 1502), which is meant to bring transparency in the international commerce of minerals from the conflict zone in the DRC. Opportunities exist in this law to hold Congo’s neighbors accountable, as they are key beneficiaries of conflict minerals.
Many instruments are at the disposal of the United States and the international community to address the instability in the Great Lakes region. The UN Mapping Exercise Report is one such tool and must not be overlooked and forgotten. Rather, it should be fully investigated with the intent of indicting and prosecuting anyone found to be responsible for any violation of international laws, humanitarian laws, war crimes, crimes against humanity, violence against women, sexual violence, violence against children, ethnic violence, looting of natural resources, and possibly crimes of genocide.
Aware of the weakness of the Congolese judicial system, the UN Mapping Exercise Report in sections III and IV discusses different ways to deliver justice, accountability, and stability for the victims and survivors. Human Rights Watch believes that a "mixed chamber"5 made of Congolese and international staff, African judges and prosecutors with relevant experience is one way to achieve justice for the victims. It is important to pay special attention to the option of transitional justice as well because Congo needs reconciliation for internal cohesion and healing which is a key factor to building a strong democracy rooted in the rule of law and human rights and unity for all.
We recommend that the United States government:
Leverage its position as the chair of the UN Security Council this month of December, to put The Mapping Exercise Report on the agenda.
Implement existing laws relative to Congo, namely the “Democratic Republic of the Congo Relief, Security, and Democracy Promotion Act of 2006”, public law 109-456, specifically appointing a special envoy to the Great Lakes region ( P.L 109-456, sect 207) and “Conflict mineral Act”, public law 111-203, section 1502.
Hold a hearing on the October 1, UN Mapping Exercise Report

Sincerely
Africa Faith and Justice Network
Friends of the Congo
Neema Corporation
Chicago Congo Coalition
Mennonite Central Committee U.S. Washington Office
Foundation for Freedom and Democracy in Rwanda

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Coalition to UN Security Council: Address UN Congo Mapping Report and Enforce Justice for Victims

Coalition to UN Security Council: Address UN Congo Mapping Report and Enforce Justice for Victims

Attention: open in a new window. PrintE-mail
Press Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Friends of the Congo
Phone: +1-202-584-6512
Email: rwandaelections@gmail.com

Wednesday, December 15, 2010 – This month the US and the UN Security Council must choose: will they hold accountable major perpetrators of continued atrocities in the Congo or collaborate with them to put the blame on a few guilty but minor scapegoats and some innocent people who are guilty only of challenging the major offenders?

On December 8, several US-Congolese organizations and numerous individuals sent a letter to Congressman David Wu, asking Congress to seek justice for the victims of an ongoing holocaust in the Congo and specifically asking that the long-suppressed UN “Mapping Report” showing complicity of the current government of Rwanda seriously examined and addressed. [1]

Recently, the Dutch legislature and thousands of people in Brussels as well as some officials put Paul Kagame on notice: that he cannot escape the consequences of his acts. [2]
So far, Paul Kagame, president of Rwanda, has been successful in his efforts to bury reports of his atrocities in the Congo without serious examination.  The Security Council agreed not to look further into the Mapping Exercise Report, and a few days ago, added several individuals and a small militia to its list of people or organizations to be sanctioned for use of child soldiers. However implicitly exempted were Uganda and Rwanda from sanctions for this or for any of the other crimes revealed in the Report and related abuses reported by others, which continue to this day.  [3]

As this month's chair of the Security Council, the US has a moral obligation to take the Mapping Exercise Report off the table and deal with its contents seriously.  The US also has a moral obligation to implement the Democratic Republic of the Congo Relief, Security, and Democracy Promotion Act of 2006, sponsored by then-Senator Barack Obama. [4]

The UN Mapping Exercise Report, released only after it had been leaked, makes it clear that the governments of Uganda and Rwanda are implicated in massive atrocities in the Congo continuing long after they invaded the Congo. Yet, Uganda has not been forced to pay the court-mandated financial penalty, and both invaders are given license to continue their incursions on the pretext of hunting down smaller offenders, such as the LRA, FDLR, and various "mai mai".  [5] [6]

The president of Rwanda, Paul Kagame, reacted to the report with threats and with diversions.  He threatened to withdraw “peacekeeping” forces from Sudan if the UN report was not disavowed or modified. 

The unsuitability of Rwanda as an instrument of peace and stability in the Great Lakes region of Africa is augmented by its president's efforts to divert attention from the Mapping Exercise Report by imprisoning political opponents absurdly charged with conspiring to renew genocide in Rwanda. Within days of the October “Mapping Report” release, he re-arrested Victoire Ingabire, who had been arrested for “genocide denial” last spring to prevent her standing as a 2010 presidential candidate challenging his re-election; now, to divert attention from his documented culpability, he jailed her in life-threatening conditions and introduced the more serious charge of conspiring to overthrow his government by force and perpetuate genocide, naming a bizarre set of co-conspirators. [7]

American lawyer Peter Erlinder went to Rwanda last spring to defend Victoire Ingabire, after her first arrest, and he too was arrested and imprisoned under life-threatening conditions that provoked an outcry from US citizens and legislatures, resulting in an official US request for his release on humanitarian grounds.  He is home and safe, but Rwanda demands his return for trial or “dead or alive.” [8] 

Bizarrely,  Paul Rusesabagina, the hero of "Hotel Rwanda" (who rescued so many Tutsis who might otherwise have been killed in 1994) has been called a "genocider" conspiring with Victoire to attack Rwanda, overthrow the government and kill Tutsis; he would be in a Rwandan jail if he had not already in sought safety in exile. [9 ] [10]

Some call Victoire Ingabire the Aung San Suu Kyi of Africa or the female Mandela, but she is not just a symbol of resistance to oppression by a dictator; she is a real person, a wife and mother whose husband and children plead for people to intervene and free her from a squalid and dangerous prison in which she has been held (without trial) for two months. [11]

We join in their plea, seeking justice for courageous individuals wrongly imprisoned as well as for the millions who have died and the millions who continue to suffer in the Congo, and endorse the letter sent to congress on December 8  providing details, additional documentation, and precise steps the US and UN need to take to bring justice, healing, stability, and a better future for a long-abused people.

REFERENCES:

[1] “Seeking Justice for the Victims: The UN mapping report of October 1, 2010 on the Democratic Republic of the Congo.”  Letter sent to Congressman David Wu on December 8, 2010 by Africa Faith and Justice Network, Friends of the Congo, Neema Corporation, Chicago Congo Coalition, and others.
http://afjn.org/focus-campaigns/promote-peace-d-r-congo/71-policy-objectives/908-seeking-justice-for-the-victims-un-mapping-exercise-report-of-october-1-2010-on-the-democratic-republic-of-the-congo-ngo-letter-to-congressman-david-wu.html

[2 ] “...'The president of Rwanda is a criminal', says Paul Rusesabagina. The famous manager of Hôtel des Mille Collines is one of the demonstrators who are gathered on Albertina square in Brussels... President Kagame didn’t hold his announced speech during the European congress. He left early to Rwanda for more pressing issues. His minister of Foreign Affairs replaces him and thanks Europe for all the support...Ms Mushikwabo says: 'We respect the decision of the Netherlands to stop direct aid for Rwanda. But our relationship with the European Union remains very friendly'...” 
http://www.rnw.nl/africa/article/europe-stays-true-rwanda

[3] Agreed 1 December 2010: "...three FDLR leaders and one individual responsible for targeting children in situations of armed conflict, to be added to the list of individuals and entities subject to a worldwide travel ban and asset freeze..." http://ukun.fco.gov.uk/en/news/?view=News&id=286240682

[4] Despite the conclusion of a peace agreement and subsequent withdrawal of foreign forces in 2003, both the real and perceived presence of armed groups hostile to the Governments of Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi continue to serve as a major source of regional instability and an apparent pretext for continued interference in the Democratic Republic of the Congo by its neighbors."
Democratic Republic of the Congo Relief, Security, and Democracy Promotion Act of 2006 (sponsored by Sen. Barack Obama [D-IL]) http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=s109-2125

[5] INTERNATIONAL COURT OF JUSTICE REPORTS OF JUDGMENTS,ADVISORY OPINIONS AND ORDERS CASE CONCERNING ARMED ACTIVITIES ON THE TERRITORY OF THE CONGO (DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO v. UGANDA)
JUDGMENT OF 19 DECEMBER 2005
EXCERPT: "... the Republic of Uganda, by the conduct of its armed forces, which committed acts of killing, torture and other forms of inhumane treatment of the Congolese civilian population, destroyed villages and civilian buildings, failed to distinguish between civilian and military targets and to protect the civilian population in fighting with other combatants, trained child soldiers, incited ethnic conflict and failed to take measures to put an end to such conflict; as well as by its failure, as an occupying Power, to take measures to respect and ensure respect for human rights and international humanitarian law in Ituri district, violated its obligations under international human rights law and international humanitarian law..."
http://www.icj-cij.org/docket/files/116/10455.pdf

[6]  Oil, African Genocide and the USA's LRA Excuse Dec 6, 2010 ... President Obama seemed either unaware or unconcerned about the UN Mapping Report, released on October 1st, which documents Ugandan President ...
www.blackstarnews.com/news/135/ARTICLE/.../2010-12-06.html

[7]  Rwandan opposition leader Victoire Ingabire arrested.  “...Rwandan government security operatives surrounding her home in Rwanda’s capital, Kigali, had been replaced by police with firearms, and that six of them were visible from inside. Others reported that there were Rwandan troops in her neighborhood and that shops had been ordered to close. ..”
http://sfbayview.com/2010/rwandan-opposition-leader-victoire-ingabire-arrested/
Ingabire trial: Rwanda prosecution fails ‘evidence test’
http://rwandinfo.com/eng/tag/martin-ngoga/

[8] Kagame wants US law professor brought to Rwanda, 'dead or alive' “According to high-level Rwandan officials at a meeting in Kigali in mid-October, President Kagame ordered that IHLI Director and WMCL law professor Peter Erlinder be brought back to Rwanda “dead or alive.”
http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/300669#ixzz17aSQxGSP

[9 ] Rwandan Prosecutor wants to bring “Hotel Rwanda” hero Rusesabagina to justice. "...exiled opposition politician Paul Rusesabagina and jailed Victoire Ingabire have been in constant contact and
fundraising for the FDLR rebels, says the Prosecutor General..."
http://rwandinfo.com/eng/rwandan-prosecutor-wants-to-bring-hotel-rwanda-hero-rusesabagina-to-justice/
Kagame's Rwanda accuses real-life Hotel Rwanda hero of terrorism
http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/291869#ixzz17aSBcfLa

[10 ] Kagame regime demands Professor Peter Erlinder return to Kigali to stand trial. "The Kagame regime continues on the offensive in the wake of the “U.N. Mapping Report on Human Rights Abuse in the Democratic Republic of Congo, 1993-2003,” released on Oct. 1, which documents the Rwandan army’s war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocidal massacres of civilian Rwandan Hutu refugees and Congolese Hutus in Congo..."
http://sfbayview.com/2010/kagame-regime-demands-professor-peter-erlinder-return-to-kigali-to-stand-trial/
KPFA News: Kagame wants Peter Erlinder back in Rwanda 'dead or alive'
http://anngarrison.blogspot.com/2010/11/kpfa-news-professor-peter-erlinder-on.html

[11 ] Meet the daughter of Victoire Ingabire "...Even though it is difficult for me, I would let her leave again, because my mother does what she thinks is just. To prevent her from being involved in politics and fighting for a more just Rwanda would be to destroy a part of my mother..."
http://sfbayview.com/2010/meet-the-daughter-of-victoire-ingabir
KPFA Radio interview with Victoire Ingabire's daughter Raissa, December 12, http://anngarrison.blogspot.com/2010/12/kpfa-news-victoire-ingabires-daughter.html

Related articles

• FACTBOX-Key political risks to watch in Rwanda (reuters.com)
• "Hotel Rwanda" hero implicated with Ingabire: prosecutor (reuters.com)
• 'Hotel Rwanda' hero implicated in terror case (msnbc.msn.com)
• Rwanda terror charge for Ingabire (bbc.co.uk)
• CORRECTED - FACTBOX-Key political risks to watch in Rwanda (reuters.com)
• "Hotel Rwanda" Hero Accused of Terrorism (theroot.com)
• Kigali accuses 'Hotel Rwanda' hero of funding rebels (calgaryherald.com)
• Hotel Rwanda inspiration accused of funding terrorism (telegraph.co.uk)
• Rwanda May See Dutch Aid Cuts (devex.com)