Rwanda: RWANDA’S OPPOSITION LEADERS CRITICIZE TONY BLAIR

From the NGO NEWS AFRICA
In London on July 1, 2011 President Paul Kagame received the Humanitarian award from The Chello Foundation for his work in the areas of children’s education and healthcare and the promotion of women’s rights.  Former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s introduction of President Kagame came via video where he praised the Rwandan President in the above listed areas as well as his leadership of Rwanda.  President Kagame then spoke for just over fourteen minutes thanking The Chello Foundation, Tony Blair and the ongoing support that the UK provides to Rwanda. The Rwandan President emphasized
“meaningful and productive relationship over many years.”   Attenders at the event looked on with admiration, smiles and nods as President Kagame spoke of the progress Rwanda has made in the areas of children’s education, HPV vaccine for girls and sanitary supplies so they do not have to miss school.
While President Kagame receives this prestigious award many are left wondering why his record on humanitarian abuses continues to be ignored by the former UK Prime Minister and the international community as widespread reports continue to circulate regarding President Kagame and the RPF as they systematically create chaos and destabilization within Rwanda and the DRC.
This journalist uncovered a letter addressed to former Prime Minister, Tony Blair from Oppositional Rwandan Leaders requesting peace talks with him regarding his relationship with Rwanda. These leaders asked Mr. Blair to withdraw his support until peace can be established as well as a cease in humanitarian rights abuses.  As of this publication confirmation has been established regarding the former Prime Ministers receipt of this letter.
The letter in its entirety has been published below in its original format with no editing by this writer.
Confidential letter to The Hon. Tony Blair
January 7, 2011.
Hon. Tony Blair
Africa Governance Initiative
London
United Kingdom.
Your Excellency,
Re: Political Situation in Rwanda
An article entitled “‘Tony Blair defends support for Rwandan leader Paul Kagame” that
was published in the December 31, 2010 edition of the Guardian newspaper highlighted
your support for President Kagame and your unequivocal endorsement of his stewardship
of the post—genocide Rwanda state. The article reports that you consider President
Kagame to be a visionary leader, and that allowance ought to be made for the Rwanda
Government’s record on governance and human rights issues on account of the country’s
recent experience of genocide. The article also states that you regard the use of charges
of crimes of ‘divisionism’ and ‘genocide ideology’ to silence critics of the Rwanda
government as legitimate; and, that you share President Kagame’s view that economic
development should take a priority ove1· democracy and respect for human rights and that
you consider Rwanda’s military intervention in the Democratic Republic of Congo
during the 1990s and early 2000s, that has caused immense human suffering and loss of
more than 5 million lives, as justified. We note with deep regret that the article also
reports that you would appear to discount the gravity of the allegations of violations of
international humanitarian law established by the Report of the Mapping Exercise
documenting the violations of human rights and international humanitarian law
committed within the territory of the Democratic Republic of the Congo between March
1993 and June 2003.
The writers of this letter represent Rwandan political and civil society organizations that
have long had concerns about the policies of the United Kingdom government in relation
to Rwanda and your Excellency’s support for President  Kagame’s policies. We
acknowledge that you are entitled to your personal opinion on the situation in Rwanda.
We do not in any way seek to question your good faith or noble intentions in the work
that you do to support Rwanda. We also appreciate the very significant humanitarian and
development assistance that the United Kingdom has provided to Rwanda since 1994.
Nevertheless, we find ourselves compelled to address this letter to you in order to bring to
your attention the views of our respective organizations and members as well as many
other Rwandans on the situation in Rwanda. We seek, in particular, to communicate our
concerns over the damaging impact of your Excellency’s public pronouncements and
unqualified support for President Kagame’s leadership and conduct.
Rwanda is a one party regime governed by one man who controls all organs of the state.
President Kagame does not allow opposition parties to be registered, let alone operate
freely. Media outlets that are critical of the government are either shut down by the
government or forced to close operations as a result of attacks against their journalists.
Civil society organizations independent of the government operate under draconian
restrictions that make the exercise of their role as watchdogs over government all but
impossible. The people of Rwanda have no liberty to discuss, let alone decide, how they
should be governed. The political system marginalizes the majority of the population
from political participation.
President Kagame maintains his grip on power by severe repression, including arbitrary
arrests and detention, enforced disappearances, and extrajudicial executions of political
opponents of the regime. Institutions of the state continue to subject real and imagined
critics of the government to a wide range of human rights violations, including arbitrary
arrests and detentions, involuntary disappearances and extrajudicial killings. President
Kagame does not respect the sanctity of human life. Over the course of the last several
months, several members of opposition parties, civil society groups, independent media
outlets and individuals suspected of being opponents of the regime have been hunted
down, arrested, tortured, imprisoned or killed. Agencies of the Rwandan state have made
multiple attempts to kill opposition leaders such as Col. Patrick Karegeya and Gen.
Kayumba Nyarnwasa. Victims of state sponsored terror who have lost their lives over the
recent past include Andre Rwisereka (Vice President: of the Democratic Green Party of
Rwanda), Jean—Leonard Rugambage (deputy editor of the Umuvugizi newspaper) and
John Rutayisire. As we write, many members and leaders of opposition parties (including
Hon. Charles Ntakirutinka of Ubuyanja Party; Bernard Ntaganda, President of the Social
lmberakuri Party; Victoire lngabire, President of the FDU-Inkingi party and Deo
Mushyayidi of the PDP Imanzi Party) remain in detention, as do some innocent relatives
of opposition leaders. The climate of repression that prevails in Rwanda has made it
impossible for tens of thousands of refugees who remain in exile after the events of 1994
to return to Rwanda. Indeed, the human rights situation in the country continues to force
Rwandese from all levels of society to take the road to exile.
President Kagame’s appalling record on human rights and governance in general is not a
result of the legacy of the genocide. It was not inevitable that Rwanda should end up as a
dictatorship after the genocide. The Arusha Peace Agreement provided a framework that
could have led to a successful transition to democracy under a broad based government.
The RPF, and President Kagame in particular, derailed Rwanda’s transition to democracy
after the genocide by driving other political forces from government in 1995. President
Kagame has used his control of the ruling party (the RPF), the government, and security
institutions to entrench authoritarian rule, The restrictions on the exercise of fundamental
liberties that the Rwanda government has established aim to protect President Kagame’s
monopoly of political power, not to promote peace. Peace and stability in deeply divided
post conflict societies are best protected and promoted by inclusion and genuine power
sharing. Peace maintained by a dictatorship through violent repression is not enduring.
Democracy and respect for human rights are not a luxury that any government is free to
dispense or withhold at its discretion. Nor is development aid necessary to purchase
freedom, an inalienable right for every human being, rich or poor. Your views on
President Kagame’s accountability for human rights abuses is at variance with the values
that the United Kingdom has espoused in its long history, and the positions that it has
always taken on accountability in other post conflict situations, such as Liberia, Sierra
Leone and Iraq. Your stand on the relationship between human rights and development in
the context of Rwanda contradicts the policies and approaches that your own
governments Department for International Development and the international
community have long championed. We are fortified that our organization’s concerns
about the broad human rights situation in Rwanda are shared by all major human rights
organizations, including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and the
Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative.
We firmly believe that the violent conflicts that Rwanda has experienced over the past
half century are rooted in issues revolving around governance. The only path to
sustainable peace in Rwanda is a system of government that has popular legitimacy,
includes all communities of Rwanda and is committed to respect of fundamental human
rights, especially the integrity of the person and the right to political participation.
Economic development in post conflict societies that is not rooted in democratic values,
respect for human rights, and broad inclusion is not sustainable. The tolerance that the
international community has exhibited towards President  Kagame’s excesses continues to
fuel impunity. The endemic impunity that still thrives in Rwanda is an insurmountable
obstacle to lasting peace and sustainable development. We strongly believe that
accountability for violations of human rights and international humanitarian law,
including the crimes disclosed in the Report on the DRC mapping Exercise, is a pre-
requisite for national reconciliation and lasting peace.
Rwanda is in a situation of serious crisis. We are convinced that violent conflict is
virtually certain to return to Rwanda if the present government does not heed calls for
dialogue and agree to a process of peaceful political reform leading to democracy. The
results of the substantial development assistance that your government and others have
extended to Rwanda since the end of the genocide could be very swiftly undone in the
event of such conflict, with grave implications for the whole Great Lakes region and
international peace and security.
The climate of fear and terror that prevails in Rwanda does not permit Rwandan society
to freely discuss the very grave problems facing the country and to find solutions to those
problems. The people of Rwanda count on Rwanda’s development partners, especially
the United Kingdom and the United States (the two countries that are widely perceived as
being Rwanda’s principal allies in the West) to support the promotion of respect for
human rights and advancement of democracy. We believe that Rwanda’s development
partners, especially those who have close relations with the current government such as
Your Excellency, have a unique role, if not responsibility, to advance the cause of
peaceful change in Rwanda by President Kagame on the need for progress in
guaranteeing for fundamental human rights and for national dialogue to resolve the
country’s crisis. It is in this spirit that we write to urge you to keep an open mind about
the situation in Rwanda; to have empathy for the suffering of the victims of past and on-
going human rights abuses for which President Kagame bears personal responsibility; to
put the long—tern1 interests of Rwanda and of the majority of her people above loyalty to a
President you say is a personal friend and to hold him accountable to the values and
V standards of conduct that the international community ought to require of leaders
exercising the responsibility of national leadership, particularly leadership that citizens ,
have not freely chosen and are powerless to change.
We hope and trust that this letter will be the beginning of a necessary engagement
between you (and others in the international community who want to help Rwanda attain
stability and lasting peace but are at the same time still supportive of President Kagame’s
leadership) and individuals and organizations whose views on the situation of Rwanda
and vision of our country’s future can not be freely articulated inside Rwanda on account
of the prevailing climate of repression. We assure Your Excellency of our respective
organizations’ commitment to unconditional dialogue with both the Rwanda Government
and Rwanda’s development partners on the way to avert the crisis that is engulfing our
motherland.  Some of the organizations that are signatories to this letter have already
demonstrated commitment to inter-Rwandan dialogue by establishing a mechanism to
advocate for such a dialogue. We take this opportunity to request Your Excellency to
grant the writers of this letter audience to enable us discuss the issues raised in the letter
with you in person and to brief you on our work in pursuit of peace change in Rwanda.
Accept, Your Excellency, the assurances of our highest considerations.
Dr. Nkiko Nsengimana
Premier Vice President
Comite de Soutien
Forces Democratiques Unifiees
Paul Rusebagina
President
Dialogue inter Rwandias
Hautement Inclusif (DIRHI)
Paul Rusebagina
President
Hotel Rwanda Rusesabagina Foundation
Gen. Habyarimana Emmanuel
Convention Nationale Republicaine-Intwari
Ambassador Jean-Marie V. Ndaguimana
President FEIDAR-Federation Internationale des Associations Rwandaises
President IBUKABOSE-Memoire por tous
Karangwa Semushi Gerard
Vice  President
PDP-Imanzi
Matata Joseph
Centre de Lulle Contre Impunite et L’ Injustice au Rwanda
Dr. Rudasingwa Theogene
Coordinator
Interim Coordination Committee
Rwanda National Congress
BY: Jennifer Fierberg, MSW

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 -

VICTOIRE INGABIRE UMUHOZA AZIYAMAMAZA AHAGARARIYE ISHYAKA FDU INKINGI NIRIMARA KWANDIKWA (23.06.10)

VICTOIRE INGABIRE UMUHOZA AZIYAMAMAZA AHAGARARIYE ISHYAKA FDU INKINGI NIRIMARA KWANDIKWA (23.06.10)

Mu kiganiro uhagarariye akanama k’amatora mu gihugu NEC yagiranye n’abanyamakuru ba radio Rwanda cyatangajwe mu makuru y’uyu munsi mu gitondo, yavuze ko Madame Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza nk’umunyarwanda ashobora gutanga candidature ye k’umwanya w’umukuru w’igihugu. Tuributsa ko Umuyobozi w’ishyaka FDU INKINGI ariho yiyamamaza mw’izina ry’ishyaka rye kandi kugeza ubu Leta ikaba ikomeje kuriburizamo yitwaje ibirego imushinja, ibiramambu ikananga kubishyikiriza inkiko.

FDU-INKINGI ni Ishyaka ry’Abibumbiye hamwe baharanira Demokarasi, tukaba tugamije guha Igihugu ubuyobozi bushingiye kuri demokarasi, ubufatanye no kwishyira kwizana kwa buri munyarwanda wese iyo ava akagera. Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza ntabwo yiyamamaza ku giti cye, cyangwa ku nyungu ze bwite. Agamije gufatanya n’Abanyarwanda gukemura ibibazo byugarije igihugu cyacu. Azamamazwa n’ishyaka FDU Inkingi.

Kuva ku wa 12 Gashyantare 2010 Ishyaka FDU-Inkingi rimaze gusaba inshuro nyinshi uruhusa rwo gukoresha Kongre-remezo iteganywa n’ itegeko N° 19/2007 ryo kuwa 04/05/2007 kandi ryuzuza Itegeko Ngenga n° 16/2003 ryo kuwa 27/06/2003 rigenga Imitwe ya Politiki n’Abanyapolitiki mu Rwanda, kugeza uyu munsi urwo ruhushya ubutegetsi bwa FPR bwanze kurutanga ndetse n’abategetsi bitwaje urutonde rw’ibirego bihimbano kugira ngo ishyaka ritandikwa bityo tubure uburenganzira bwo gukora politiki mu Rwanda ku mugaragaro;

Ubutegetsi bwa FPR bwishe itegeko nshinga ingingo ya 52 na 53 zivuga ko amashyaka menshi yemewe mu Rwanda kandi ko buri Munyarwanda yemerewe kujya mu ishyaka ashatse, none bakaba bakomeje kuvutsa abarwanashyaka ba FDU-Inkingi uburenganzira bwabo bwo kwishyiriraho ishyaka rya politiki ku mugaragaro;

Ishyaka FDU-Inkingi riributsa Abanyarwanda n’inshuti z’u Rwanda ko umuyobozi wa ryo ataziyamamariza umwanya w’umukuru w’igihugu igihe cyose ubutegetsi bwa FPR bukomeje kumuvutsa uburenganzira bwe no gukumira ishyaka ryacu mu ruhando rw’amashyaka. Dutegereje umunsi Leta ya FPR izemerera gukuraho inzitizi zibuza Abanyarwanda gukorera politiki muri FDU Inkingi.

Kubera ibibazo by’ingutu bya politiki ndetse n’ibya gisirikare bikomeje kwigaragaza mu gihugu kandi bikururwa n’ubutegetsi bw’igitugu bwa FPR, Ishyaka FDU-Inkingi riributsa ibihugu by’inshuti z’u Rwanda ko aya matora ari ikinamico ry’amatora ishyaka FPR ryihariye ubutegetsi mu Rwanda ritegura. Turasaba uwo ari we wese wabishobora guharanira ko aya matora asubikwa kugira ngo ategurwe mu buryo bwumvikanyweho, mu bwisanzure nta n’umwe uyahejwemo ndetse akanama k’igihugu k’amatora NEC kakavugururwa kugira ngo n’abatavuga rumwe n’ubutegetsi bakagiremo ijambo. Amatora y’amahugu ntituzayemera.



Ishyaka FDU-Inkingi

Umunyamabanga mukuru

Sylvain Sibomana

Rusesabagina Press Release On Prof.Erlinder's Release

Dear Friends,

I am pleased to report that the work of human rights advocates around the globe, including Hotel Rwanda Rusesabagina Foundation staff and supporters, has helped win the release of American law professor Peter Erlinder.

Erlinder, who was in ill health, was illegitimately jailed by the Rwandan government for the "thought crime" of disagreeing with their official view of the 1994 genocide. The Erlinder case generated massive news coverage worldwide and exposed the Rwandan government's total lack of respect for freedom of speech.

Requests for Professor Erlinder's release from the U.S. State Department, leading human rights organizations, and activists like you helped win his release. We showed that we understand the importance of human rights in Rwanda - and that we are willing to stand up for those rights.

Thank you to those who took the time to learn about the Erlinder case and support his freedom with calls, letters, e-mails and faxes. I deeply appreciate your efforts and look forward to working with you in the future.

Sincerely,

Paul Rusesabagina
President
Hotel Rwanda Rusesabagina Foundation

Please donate now to help the Hotel Rwanda Rusesabagina Foundation continue fighting for human rights!


Phone: (312) 498-9279
Fax: (312) 464-0262
www.HRRFoundation.org
Email us at: info@hrrfoundation.org

Exiled Rwanda general wounded in SA shooting

Exiled Rwanda general wounded in SA shooting
PATRICK MUIRURI

An exiled Rwandan general was shot and wounded in South Africa on Saturday in what his wife called a Rwandan-backed assassination attempt, a charge the Kigali government dismissed as "preposterous".

Lieutenant-General Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa was in the intensive care unit of a Johannesburg hospital after being shot in the stomach, Rosette Kayumba told Reuters Television.

Once a close confidant of President Paul Kagame, Nyamwasa fled to South Africa this year after falling out with the president, later accusing him of using an anti-corruption campaign to frame opponents.

Nyamwasa's wife said she, her husband, their children and a driver had returned home from a shopping trip when an armed man approached their car and shot her husband.

Her husband and the driver got out of the car and scuffled with the gunman before he fled, she said. She said doctors told her her husband would survive.

Kayumba said she believed Kagame was behind the attack, and ruled out an attempted robbery or car hijacking because the gunman targeted only her husband and did not try to steal the car.

"He must be behind this, I don't have proof ... but we've been harassed for such a long time," she said of Kagame.

Louise Mushikiwabo, Rwandan foreign minister and government spokesperson, told Reuters by telephone: "Not only do I deny it, I think it's preposterous for Mrs Nyamwasa to be making that kind of comment."

She added: "The Rwandan government does not go around shooting innocent citizens ...The time when presidents and governments went around assassinating their citizens is over in Rwanda."

CONTINUES BELOW


Top aide
The flight of Nyamwasa, who fought alongside Kagame to end the 1994 genocide in the central African nation, was a sign of a growing rift between the president and some of his top aides.

During and after the war to end the genocide, Nyamwasa held a number of key positions, including army chief of staff and head of the country's intelligence services.

Rwanda is due to hold a presidential election in August, which Kagame is widely expected to win. The United States has toughened its stance on the country, saying it is concerned about democratic freedom there.

In the run-up to elections, Rwanda has suspended two independent newspapers, arrested a high-profile opposition figure and prevented two opposition parties from registering, US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Johnnie Carson told the US Congress this year.

Rwandan authorities link Nyamwasa and another fugitive senior officer in South Africa to a series of deadly grenade attacks in the capital this year, and accuse him of nepotism and unlawful accumulation of wealth.

He has rejected the charges and said the president has used his anti-corruption campaign to frame opponents.

"If accountability is going to be used as a political weapon to frame perceived opponents, then it ceases to be meaningful or useful," Nyamwasa said in a statement printed in the Ugandan newspaper the Monitor in May. - Reuter

Peter Erlinder Released on Medical Bail; Rally Canceled

For Immediate Release -
06/17/2010
Peter Erlinder Released on Medical Bail; Rally Canceled
Contact:
Paige Cram,
Communications Coordinator
communications@nlg.org
212-679-5100, ext. 15
New York:

The National Lawyers Guild has been heartened to learn of the decision to grant our colleague and former president, Peter Erlinder, his “unconditional release” on medical grounds. He could be returning home as early as tomorrow to be reunited with his family.

Under the circumstances, the rally originally scheduled for Friday, June 18 outside the United Nations has been canceled.

Nevertheless, we take this opportunity to renew our call for all charges against Peter Erlinder to be dismissed. The NLG has been joined by worldwide condemnation of Peter’s arrest and prosecution coming from such organizations as the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, ADAD (the Rwanda tribunal’s defense lawyers association), the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, the Society of American Law Teachers, Lawyers Human Rights Watch of Canada and, belatedly, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR).

This outpouring of support for the rights of clients to effective and vigorous representation from their lawyers led to the Rwandan court’s decision. Still, until the charges are dismissed, all the lawyers representing defendants before the ICTR will be constricted and limited, for fear of heavy-handed retaliation from the Kagame regime in Rwanda.

“Peter’s release and, we trust, his return home are victories we will savor, but they will remain incomplete until all charges are dismissed and the Rwandan government provides assurances its unlawful conduct will not be repeated, either against Peter or any other ICTR defense counsel,” said David Gespass, NLG president.

Founded in 1937, the NLG is the oldest and largest human rights bar organization in the country and, as the world shrinks and becomes increasingly interrelated, is engaging human right world wide as a member of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers.
###
Media Inquiries

For general media inquiries or to set up interviews, please contact Communications Coordinator Paige Cram:

By phone: 212-679-5100, ext. 15

By email: communications@nlg.org

Rwandan Of "Hotel Rwanda" Fame Demands American's Release

Paul Rusesabagina, whose life story was the basis for the movie Hotel Rwanda, and President and Founder of Hotel Rwanda Rusesabagina Foundation, said today, “This morning it was reported that Peter Erlinder tried to commit suicide. According to his family and all past behavior this is inconceivable. It is very likely that the Rwandan government is trying to silence him. Professor Peter Erlinder was in Rwanda doing his job as lawyer. In a civil society, that is not grounds for arrest. If President Kagame considers Rwanda a democracy that adheres to the rule of law, he must release Professor Erlinder immediately. The way for President Kagame to show that there is hope for real justice and human rights in Rwanda is to release Professor Erlinder. ”

American law professor C. Peter Erlinder --William and Mitchell College of Law, Minnesota-- was arrested last week over accusations related to negating the Rwandan genocide. The Hotel Rwanda Rusesabagina Foundation deplores this clearly politically motivated arrest, and implores the international community to act quickly and decisively to demand Professor Erlinder's immediate release from custody.

Hotel Rwanda Rusesabagina Foundation has contacted supporters in countries around the globe to ask them to contact their own elected and appointed officials as well as the Rwandan Government directly to ask the Rwandan President to release Peter Erlinder immediately and without condition.

Erlinder, an outspoken critic of the Kagame regime, is frequently criticized by the Rwandan government. His name recently appeared on a publicized list of foreigners who the Rwandan government allegedly wants silenced for their views. Erlinder traveled to Rwanda last week to defend presidential candidate Victoire Ingabire on the charges brought against her by the Rwandan government. Mrs. Ingabire, a political opponent of current President Kagame, was jailed recently and is currently under house arrest for expressing her political views, which are in opposition to official government policies. Erlinder is also a defense lawyer and leader of the association of defense attorneys at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Arusha, Tanzania. His current trip to Rwanda was intended to provide defense counsel in a peaceful legal process, but with this arrest his human rights, liberty and possibly his personal safety are in danger.

Professor Erlinder was reportedly arrested on charges of "genocide negationism," which means that he disagrees with the official version of the 1994 genocide perpetuated by the current Rwandan regime.

This law is frequently applied to silence critics of the regime. In the past it has been applied to Mrs. Ingabire, Human Rights Watch investigators, and even the BBC.

Immediate action is needed to free Professor Erlinder and guarantee his human rights and personal safety.


www.hrrfoundation.org
PO Box 11001 Chicago, IL 60611-0001 Phone: (312) 498-9279 Fax: (312) 464-0262

"Speaking Truth To Empower."

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).

Please feel free to post your comments directly or submit to milton@blackstarnews.com for posting.

The Pro-Democracy Movement in Rwanda Needs our Urgent Support

The Pro-Democracy Movement in Rwanda Needs our Urgent Support

Eleneus Akanga writing for the African Report gives a quick but insightful analysis of the current political tensions brewing up in Rwanda. He sums up his article by stating the following:
As Kagame looks forward to another massive victory that will guarantee his tight grip on Rwanda for another seven years, questions should be asked as to whether sixteen years after the genocide, time has not come to open up the very issues that affect the populace.
Given Mr. Akanga’s current status as an exiled Rwandan journalist, he undisputedly is a victim of the terror he describes. I join Mr. Akanga in arguing that Rwanda and by extension the Great Lakes region, cannot afford another seven years under Kagame’s stalinistic rule. If Kagame was a popular figure and truly interested in Rwanda’s development, then the will of the people would have to prevail.

Unfortunately, this does not seem to be the case. Mr. Kagame has no interest in democracy. His “messianic” call for “African Solutions for African Problems” seems to have no room for political accountability, free elections and independent institutions.
Perhaps due to the “sudden” re-emergence of political violence in what has been touted as the new model for Africa, several high profile individuals and organizations have raised an alarm. Charles Obbo-Anyango, a long time admirer of the regime penned a commentary to the East African Standard. “There’s Something Rotten in the State of Rwanda,” was the title.
A letter to the editor of Wall Street Journal by Hotel Rwanda Hero restates the same warning. Writes Mr. Paul Rusesabagina:
Recent government repression in Rwanda, which has included the brutal beating and jailing of political figures and members of the press, fills me with fear that significant violence will reappear and hope for economic progress will disappear.
Lastly, a letter by William G. O’Neill , a lawyer who led the United Nations Human Rights Field Operation in Rwanda to the New York Times alerts:
Rwanda in the several decades preceding the 1994 genocide was considered a star economic performer by the World Bank and other major donors. With growth rates well above the average for sub-Saharan Africa, little corruption, good roads and a reliable power supply, Rwanda dazzled those looking for a “model” African development narrative.
So we should be very wary of mistaking the surface glitter of Rwanda today — the tall buildings, clean streets and Internet cafes — as signs that all is well. Ethnic divisions and political authoritarianism have not disappeared from Rwanda, nor has a tendency to use violence to resolve differences dissipated.

These are just but a few of the recent fore-warnings. The west, known for playing the “we -did -not –know” card after the end of major cataclysms as happened in Rwanda, has little excuse, if any, for not speaking up given the reemergence of these apocalyptic signs.
When everything is said and done, the greatest contribution to Rwanda that the international community can offer is neither foreign aid nor investment, but the willingness to back the people of Rwanda in their cry out for democracy. Only such grassroots empowerment can keep the government checked and set free the county (and the region) from its haunting past.

L'Interview d'Olivier Nyirubugara et Paul Rusesabagina au Bruxelles 23 Mai,2010

Olivier Nyirubugara. (Bruxelles 23 mai 2010).Paul Rusesabagina a nié en bloc toutes les allégations selon lesquelles il serait parmi les financiers des groupes rebelles Hutu basés en République Démocratique du Congo. Une procédure est en cours dans la capitale rwandaise, Kigali, où un ancien officier des Forces Démocratiques pour le Libération du Rwanda (FDLR), arrêté au Burundi puis emprisonné au Rwanda, a avoués avoir reçu de l’ argent de cet ancien gérant d’hôtel devenu une célébrité mondiale grâce au film Hotel Rwanda.

‘Ca me surprend de voir que le gouvernement rwandais n’ a pas d’ autres témoins que des prisonniers’, m’ a annoncé Rusesabagina dans une interview le samedi 22 mai 2010 à Bruxelles. Selon les médias qui ont relayé l’ information depuis Kigali, l’ officier en question aurai des preuves prouvant les transferts d’ argent envoyé par Rusesabagina. Celui-ci nie ces allégations, les mettant sur le compte du régime qui, depuis quelques années veut souiller son image.

Répondant à la question de savoir s’il connaissait l’ officier qui l’ incrimine, Rusesabagina a répondu : ‘A moins que cette personne ait voyagé et qu’ on se soit rencontré ici en Belgique, sinon, je ne connais personne dans les FRLD’. Néanmoins, il a ajouté que dans sa qualité d’ humanitaire, il se pourrait que il ait rencontré quelqu’un sans toutefois retenir son nom et son identité.

La procédure de Kigali pourrait dans les prochains jours conduire à des poursuites contre Rusesabagina, qui, de toutes les façons, n’ est pas prêt ni à comparaître, ni à témoigner: ‘Je n’ ai pas besoin de témoigner quand une justice est injuste’, a-t-il martelé.

Kagame's Rwanda accuses real-life Hotel Rwanda hero of terrorism

By Annie Garrison

Rwandan President Paul Kagame's government has accused real-life Hotel Rwanda hero Paul Rusesabagina of violent conspiracy, along with arrested and indicted Rwandan presidential candidate Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza.

Rwandan President Paul Kagame has a Global Citizen Award from Bill Clinton, and an International Medal of P.E.A.C.E. from evangelical Pastor Rick Warren, the same award that Warren presented to George Bush in 2008. Bush, however, presented Paul Rusesabagina with a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2005, and Rusesabagina may be the best known man of peace to emerge from the horrific 1994 violence that the world came to know as the Rwanda Genocide.

Outlets like CNN continue to seek out Rusesabagina to speak to war and peace in the Great Lakes region of Africa, despite Kagame's accusations that he, like Ingabire, is guilty not only of violent conspiracy but, of "Double Genocide Theory," a speech crime unique to Rwanda, which means saying that Hutus as well as Tutsis were victims of ethnic violence and crimes against humanity in Rwanda in 1994. Rusesabagina's story of sheltering over 1200 refugees in the four-star Kigali hotel where he was the assistant manager became the film Hotel Rwanda and his autobiography, "An Ordinary Man."

The state-run Rwanda New Times, and thus AllAfrica.com, reported Rwanda's accusations and testimony against both Rusesabagina and Ingabire: "Lt. Col Tharcisse Nditurende and Lt. Col Noel Habiyambere, who were senior commanders of the FDLR (Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda), admitted having worked with Ingabire and Paul Rusesabagina to form rebel groups to launch offensives in the country." Rwanda: Ingabire Co-Accused Arraigned in Court, Rwanda New Times/AllAfrica.com, 04.30.2010