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 -

Rwanda opposition figure calls for poll boycott

KIGALI (Reuters) – A leading opponent of Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame on Friday called for a boycott of next month’s presidential elections because she and a number of would-be candidates have been barred from standing.
Victoire Ingabire, the outspoken head of the unregistered United Democratic Forces party who faces charges of crimes linked to genocide denial, told Reuters Kagame faces little competition and is set to easily secure a second seven-year term.

« I will not vote and I will ask the population ‘don’t vote’ because we know before the election who will win, » she said in an interview.
She said her absence on the ballot paper would render Kagame’s victory illegitimate.
Kagame is widely lauded outside Rwanda with restoring stability and rebuilding the central African nation in the aftermath of the 1994 genocide, and for his bold ambition to transform Rwanda into a middle income country by 2020.
But his critics have frequently accused him of trampling on political and press freedoms. In the run-up to the poll, rights groups have said he is turning the screws on his opponents and showing signs of increasing repression.
« Elections do not mean democracy. If we want to start a democracy we have to allow an opposition to be active, » Ingabire said.
Kagame will compete against Damascene Ntawukuliryayo from the Social Democratic Party (PSD), Prosper Higiro from the Liberal Party (PL) and Alvera Mukabaramba from the smaller Party of Progress and Concord (PPC).
All three registered candidates, Ingabire maintains, are « stooges » of Kagame and head « satellite » parties of Kagame’s Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF).
Ingabire questioned the independence of the National Electoral Commission and said voters would be coerced into which way to vote.
UNLEVEL PLAYING FIELD
« We will have the same scenario like in 2003 because nothing has changed. He has no candidate to compete with him, » Ingabire said. « People vote because authorities push them to go to vote and show who they have to vote for. »
In 2003, Kagame won over 90 percent of the vote.
Kagame has in previous media interviews suggested a Western-style democracy is not automatically appropriate for a nation like Rwanda recovering from a traumatic social upheaval. Instead he points to the considerable progress in health, education and infrastructure.
But the gruesome murder this week of a senior member of another emerging opposition party, an attack on his former army chief and the slaying of a critical journalist have alarmed diplomats.
Rwanda firmly denies being linked to the attacks and says Ingabire broke laws aimed at avoiding a repeat of the genocide, including stoking ethnic hatred.
Official campaigning begins on July 20.

Rwanda:The Genocide that Should Have Remained Secret

by Sabine Grund

(written in March 2008)

Robin Philpot,a Canadiana Journalist

Reprinted with permission by Dr. Sabine Grund, see below

The 1994 genocide in Rwanda, a small country in Central Africa (neighbor to Uganda, Congo, Burundi, Tanzania), killed an estimated one million people in only three months, from April to July. Little is known about the background to that genocide, the preparation of what was in fact a political coup to overthrow the government. Nor is it public knowledge that the killing of millions in the Congo until 2008 is directly related to the political intrigues in Rwanda since 1990. One of the few people who try to spread truth, against much resistance, is the Canadian journalist Robin Philpot. His 2003 book was written in French ("Ca ne s'est pas passé comme ça à Kigali") and published in Canada. Its English translation has still not found a publisher, it is available on the website www.taylor-report.com ("Rwanda 1994 – Colonialism dies hard"), together with other information around the topic. Since this book gives an excellent overview of the sinister schemes behind that genocide, the following text summarizes its main arguments, citing further references where appropriate.

Why should the content of a five year old book be news? Why should an African story be relevant beyond Africa? Because this story remains widely unknown and was meant to be suppressed for the indefinite future. And because the devious mechanisms used to kill millions of people, while keeping the African and international public in the dark, can be repeated anywhere unless they are revealed and will be recognized. What does this mean for democracy, free speech, and a watchful civil society? They are needed more than ever, all over the world – and they have been eroded to a shocking degree in the very western countries that claim to be role models.

The western organizers of genocide against millions of Africans, a group of people from various countries under the leadership of influentials in the Clinton administration (United States of America (US), from 1993), have been able to silence just about all official western media to this day. The only sources of some truthful information have been websites, mainly globalresearch.ca and zmag.org (since 2008: zcommunications.org). What is termed here the 'official version' has been planted by the New York Times, CNN, Economist (UK), TIME and similar media. Philpot summarizes the main points of this falsified 'official version' of the Rwanda genocide as follows:

1. The Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) under its leader Paul Kagame ended the genocide in July 1994 and took power in the country as peace-maker.

2. France as old colonial power in Africa has been a long-time accomplice of Rwanda's ruling dictator Juvenal Habyarimana and his genocidal forces.

3. Rwanda is a country in the African heart of darkness, where Hutu genociders have killed a million defenseless Tutsi after the airplane of the ruling dictator Habyarimana had crashed on 6 April 1994.

4. The United Nations (UN) has failed to respond to the urgent call for assistance, which came from the Canadian general Romeo Dallaire on 11 January 1994 as a request for instructions faxed to UN peacekeeping in New York.

5. Following political pressure from Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), the 'international community' has established an International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in Arusha/Tanzania and brought the major criminals to trial.

6. Dictators of the neighboring countries have taken in Hutu genociders as refugees. That created the war in the Congo, which unfortunately lasts until today. The majority of the Rwandan refugees were able to return home safely, due to the support of the 'international community'.

The text below summarizes Philpot's repudiation of each point. Aside from the false 'official version' about the genocide, there exists mainly a wall of silence in the western media that prevents the constructed version from being critically scrutinized. This enforced silence calls for an explanation, as it conflicts with the stated western democratic values. It is maintained by marginalizing journalists and researchers who speak truth and by excluding relevant African voices from the debate. Their arguments have in some cases been published in French but are refused English translations that would make them more widely available.

1. The RPF as liberator of Rwanda?

The minority Tutsi-RPF government that took power in Rwanda in July 1994 chose 4 July (also: US independence day) as its new national holiday, even though the RPF achieved its military victory over the capital city Kigali on 2 July and the rebel leader Paul Kagame entered the city on 3 July. The genocide only ended around 17 July. Philpot wonders: Should the new holiday possibly honor the international backers of this takeover of power in Rwanda? In any case, it could not have been 1 July, the day of independence in 1962, the first time that the ethnic Hutu majority (85 percent of the population) took over political leadership, following a UN-supervised election. The killing in Rwanda has not ended in 1994, it has just been reduced and become more secretive. Millions more have been killed in neighboring Zaire, which was re-named Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1997, in continued genocide until now (2008).

Philpot considers Kagame as the organizer of the genocide: He was a leading part of the group of around 4000 soldiers and officers of the Ugandan military, that on 28 September 1990 left their headquarters and marched many kilometers (km) southwards to the border with Rwanda. On 1 October they crossed this border and went 70km into Rwanda. Until 4 October they stood 70km north of Kigali. In most countries of the world, this would not be considered a civil war but a military aggression by a foreign country. The historic Nuremburg Tribunal of 1945 considers this as the worst of crimes, a crime against peace. Yet in an article about Rwanda on page 1 of the New York Times, on 15 September 2002, this invasion is not even mentioned; the text only speaks about increased tensions between Hutu and Tutsi ethnic groups, as Philpot points out.

On 28 September 1990, president Juvenal Habyarimana had declared before the Rwandan parliament that all refugees living abroad will be granted Rwandan citizenship and that all those who want to return to Rwanda will be permitted to do so. On 1 October, both Habyarimana and president Yoweri Museveni of Uganda participated in a UNICEF event in New York City. In rare haste, the US government offered political asylum to the Rwandan president whose country had been attacked in his absence. When Habyarimana passed through Brussels on his way back home, he received a second offer for asylum in Belgium. And the Ugandan president, leader of the strongest and most disciplined military in Africa, did not prosecute the attackers of neighboring Rwanda. Nevertheless, Museveni was and is regarded as major US ally and treated as a role model leader by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF). He serves as important ally in the struggle that some factions in US politics have long waged against the Islamic state of Sudan: In 1956 Sudan gained independence, since 1983 it has been destabilized by a civil war between the northern and southern part of the country, and in 1955 the struggle of southern rebel forces against the central government had begun.

In a book that he published in 2000, Museveni contends that the attackers of October 1990 had surprisingly marched all the way into Rwanda, which he presented as 'not so difficult' to do. Yet since Uganda had warned the Rwandan government about plans for a political coup, this 'rebel attack' would in any case have been the problem of the Rwandan government. Philpot wonders if such a denial of responsibility for the invasion of a foreign country by one's national military forces is conceivable anywhere in North America or Europe: Could forces responsible for such a major military mutiny possibly remain unpunished anywhere but in Uganda? Among the mutineers, who re-named themselves Rwandan Patriotic Front in October 1990, were Fred Rwigema, defense minister of Uganda until a few months prior to this invasion, and Paul Kagame, until then head of military intelligence in Uganda, who had been sent by Uganda to receive military training in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas/US, as well as personal bodyguards of Museveni. Over the next three years, Museveni allowed these RPF 'rebels' to return to Uganda frequently in order to obtain more military equipment. During this war of attrition against the Rwandan government, the northern part of Rwanda has been largely depopulated. The population figures dropped from 800,000 to only 1800, the former grain reservoir of the country began to experience famine. One million people were forced to survive in refugee camps around Kigali. Especially among these mostly Hutu refugees the hatred grew against Tutsi in general, which led to revenge killings in the 1994 genocide. These were directed indiscriminately against any Tutsi, as the Hutu population was not aware that the specific group of exile Tutsi from Uganda had been behind the three and a half year war.

In 1990, France supported Habyarimana in pushing the RPF aggressors back across the border to Uganda. Subsequently, around 8000 Tutsi were arrested in Rwanda, suspected of collaborating with the aggressors. A huge outcry from western 'human rights organizations' followed. Alison Des Forges, who has led the propagandistic support of the RPF for the New York City-based Human Rights Watch, stated on 14 September 1995 under oath in Montreal/Canada that these organizations were not interested to find out who was behind the aggression; rather, they were focussing on who committed human rights abuses during the ongoing war. When the military conflict had stalled in November 1990, Belgium, the US and Britain (UK) demanded that the Rwandan government under Habyarimana negotiate with the RPF – thus creating a strategic trap for the Rwandan side that very much suited Museveni. After taking refuge abroad in 2001, the Rwandan businessman Valens Kajeguhakwa reported in his book how the RPF had successfully infiltrated Rwanda and created a large network of informers that prepared its eventual power grab in 1994.

2. Who is complicit with the genociders?

In June 1990, French president François Mitterrand addressed a gathering of African leaders in La Baule, France. He spoke about the need to introduce more democratic conditions in Africa now that the Cold War had ended. One month later, in July, Habyarimana announced before the Rwandan parliament the introduction of a multi-party system. On 10 June 1991 the constitution was amended accordingly and parties were permitted. Nevertheless, the US, UK, and Belgium kept criticizing Rwanda for not changing fast enough. In contrast, the military leader Museveni in neighboring Uganda refused to tolerate political parties, yet nobody criticized him (Museveni is still in power, as of this writing in March 2008, and has been for 22 years, barely surpassed by Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe with 28 years).

The establishment of several opposition parties in Rwanda and their representation in parliament weakened president Habyarimana. At the same time, the RPF continued to terrorize the northern part of the country with its invasion force. Yet Habyarimana was continually pushed by western governments of the US, UK, Belgium as well as Uganda to be more accommodating to the intruding forces.Without the support of these powers, the RPF would have lost its war of aggression against Rwanda by December 1990. The opposition parties in Rwanda recognized the western bias against their government and therefore were ready to meet with the RPF at a conference in Brussels, Belgium, from 29 May to 3 June 1992. Instead of forging an alliance against the aggressor, they finally practiced solidarity with his forces. France continued its support for Habyarimana, yet president Mitterrand himself was weakened by the fact that his Socialist Party contains many supporters of the RPF. Thus the war of attrition against Rwanda lasted for three and a half years, created a million internally displaced people and demoralized the Rwandan society. And the western supporters of the RPF urged Habyarimana to integrate opposition parties into his government – the same parties that had previously declared solidarity with the RPF aggressor at the Brussels conference.

Philpot reports about one of the many RPF attacks inside Rwanda, this one against a school in Taba, east of Kigali in 1993, with 17 dead. After its victory in July 1994, the RPF bragged about it, the organizer had been Ephrem Karengwa, who is registered as "Witness D" against the former Habyarimana regime at the UN Tribunal ICTR in Arusha/Tanzania. It is not without irony that this tribunal still meets in the same city where the Arusha Peace Accords had been signed between the Habyarimana government and the RPF on 4 August 1993. These Arusha Peace Accords and the subsequent UN tribunal in Arusha have in common that neither one served the purposes of peace, truth, and the interests of the Rwandan people.

The Arusha Accords stipulated that an international peacekeeping force will be stationed in Rwanda, that the RPF will be integrated in the national military, and that a batallion of the RPF will be based in Kigali. In 2002 in Brussels, Philpot interviewed Faustin Twagiramungu, the prime minister of the first transitional government from July 1994. Twagiramungu declared that these Arusha Accords were rejected by all parties in Rwanda since they only served the goals of the RPF and had been concluded under enormous pressure from the US, UK and Uganda. The RPF had strongly relied on the UK network of support for Museveni.

The sharing of power between the Rwandan government and the RPF military force of aggression further undermined Habyarimana. In addition, the Accords stipulated that the RPF should be disproportionately represented at all military levels, despite its lack of support among the Rwandan population. After all, this group of former exile Tutsi represented only a small part of what is an ethnic minority group of 14 percent of the population. The Brussels agreement of June 1992 between the opposition parties in Rwanda and the RPF would have given the latter de facto control over the government. With these Arusha Accords, the aggressors of the RPF would have taken over the government and the military of Rwanda, without ever having been elected. Yet the Accords were declared void by the Rwandan people in the September 1993 elections, when they rejected the RPF candidates in the northern region that had been devastated by the RPF war.

Another sign of complicity is the formation of the UN peacekeeping force: This force was supposed to be in place within 37 days after the signing of the Accords, yet it took four months to arrive. It was to comprise 4500 soldiers, yet it never had more than 2500, with leading contingents from Belgium and Bangladesh. The agreed language of operation was English, the language of the RPF, in otherwise francophone Rwanda. The Canadian commander of the force, general Romeo Dallaire, was expected to speak French while strictly distancing himself from any French interests – which he did so provocatively that France called on Canada to withdraw him.

Considering all the aspects that Philpot has described, it becomes evident that the preparations to this huge conspiracy have been conducted in the capitals of various western countries in North America, Europe, and Israel as well as in the aisles of the UN in New York, without ever being picked up by the 'free media', which could have revealed and thus prevented this orchestrated genocide. The Jerusalem Post, on 9 August 2007, carried an article by David Kimche, former director general in the Israeli foreign ministry, that aimed to reassert the 'official version' of the genocide. Readers interested in the topic may want to read the article to get an impression.

3. The shooting down of the presidential plane

The crash of the airplane on 6 April 1994, carrying two African presidents, was not an accident. The plane of Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana, who was travelling with president Cyprien Ntaryamira of Burundi, Rwandan military leaders and advisers on board, was shot down over Kigali and its debris partly landed in the presidential compound. The group had been returning from a one-day meeting in Tanzania where they had discussed the political tensions in Burundi. The destruction of the plane and murder of all people on board led to the eruption of the genocide which had long been in the making, and which lasted over three months from April to July. That such violence was to be expected in case of the president's death, was stated in a memorandum of Prudence Bushnell, adviser to US-Secretary of State Warren Christopher, to her boss a few hours earlier. Philpot mentions that this document was released to the public on 5 May 2000.

The lasting international lack of interest in an investigation of the murder of two African presidents remains noteworthy; one might imagine such disinterest for a murder of two western presidents. It is all the more mysterious as it directly caused the subsequent genocide of about one million people in Rwanda, the worst such killing since the Holocaust (as well-known German journalist Peter Scholl-Latour noted in his Africa book of 2001 which, like most of his work, is not translated to English). Philpot points out that much of the reporting has reduced the event to just a plane crash, which is vaguely attributed to political circles of president Habyarimana. On 8 April 1994, the UN Security Council demanded an international investigation, in November it established the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda (ICTR) in Arusha/Tanzania. Until the end of 1995, Kenya and Zaire (from 1997: DR Congo) had demanded an investigation. Belgian law professor Filip Reyntjens, who has taught in Rwanda early in his career, concluded from the empty declarations that nobody was really interested in the truth.

Someone who seeks the truth is Cameroonian journalist Charles Onana, who in his 2002 book attributes the shooting down of the presidential plane to Paul Kagame, RPF leader from the group of former exiles in Uganda that pushed back into Rwanda in continued military incursions since 1990. Kagame is president of Rwanda since 2000. In contrast to Onana, the former ICTR chief prosecutor Louise Arbour from Canada is not interested in resolving the unanswered questions. In 1997 she suddenly stopped all investigations of Australian Michael Hourigan, whom she herself had ordered to conduct an enquiry into the plane crash in 1996. Her interest in the issue ended abruptly after a conversation with Madeleine Albright, who had become Secretary of State in 1997 at the start of the second Clinton term. Arbour was later called to the highest court in Canada, since 2004 she is UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Hourigan had come to the conclusion that Kagame himself had ordered the shooting down of the presidential plane. The French magistrate Jean-Louis Bruguiere arrived at the same result in his enquiry into the death of the French pilots who had flown the plane, undertaken at the request of one of the widows. Bruguiere's report is still kept confidential in France. In the early stage of the genocide, Belgium lost a group of UN peacekeepers on 7 April 1994 who were brutally murdered. The Belgian justice system has not been able to establish the truth until this point either (2008). One major factor to prevent truth from emerging is the UN headquarters in New York, where the black box of the presidential plane remains locked away and unavailable for further investigations.

In his 2001 book about Africa, German journalist Peter Scholl-Latour mentions the revelations of Jean-Pierre Mugabe, a former intelligence officer of Kagame's RPF, who presented his personal insights on the shooting down of the presidential plane at the International Strategic Studies Association in the US state of Virginia. According to his report, the Russian SAM-16 rocket used to shoot down the plane had reached Kagame's RPF forces through US sources by way of Uganda. After the publication of Philpot's book, the statements under oath by Abdul Joshua Ruzibiza have also confirmed this account of events. Yet documentation available to support this is still being kept confidential, and efforts to put the information out to the public are actively prevented in the major media.

A 'smoking gun' piece in the English-language media on who shot down this airplane should have been the report by Sebastian Rotella, "Rwanda genocide accusation causes an uproar. A French judge says the current leader, Paul Kagame, ordered the killings that set off the genocide", printed in the Los Angeles Times on 17 February 2007. This report has been taken from the internet, the author Rotella has not yet responded to my email question. His writing confirms the brief account given in the paragraphs above. Interested readers might want to send an email to the LATimes and ask for the article. In recent weeks a Spanish judge has publicly made the same claims as French judge Bruguiere, after investigating the death of Spanish citizens.

4. The myth of the UN having failed to prevent genocide

To support the 'official version' of the events around the genocide, Kagame's western supporters have eagerly spread false information about an alleged planning of genocide on the part of the Hutu ethnic majority in Rwanda. A particular example is a fax that journalist Philip Gourevitch of the New Yorker magazine received, seemingly surprisingly, in spring 1998. It contained the response of UN peacekeeping in New York head office, then under the leadership of Kofi Annan, to the request for instructions that UN general Romeo Dallaire had sent from Kigali on 11 January 1994, when confronted with seemingly local rumors about an impending genocide planned by the Hutu side.

This information had been relayed to Dallaire by an informant who called himself "Jean-Pierre", and whose real name was Abubakar Turatsinze. He had been employed by Habyarimana's party as a driver since, as Muslim, he did not drink alcohol. By November 1993 he was suspected of selling information and was dismissed from his job. Shortly thereafter, he went to inform the opposition politician Faustin Twagiramungu that he was the target of an assassination plan. Twagiramungu was politically experienced and suspected a trap behind this information, so he informed the UN. At the request of Dallaire, the Belgien UN colleague Luc Marchal went to meet "Jean-Pierre" on 10 January 1994. Marchal was initially quite alarmed by the information, which caused Dallaire to send a fax requesting instructions from New York head office. Both Dallaire and Marchal had no experience with local politics in Rwanda and had only spent a few months resp. weeks in the country. Dallaire mentioned in his fax that this information might also be a trap. The following day they received a reply from New York, telling them to pass on their information to Habyarimana and to the most important foreign embassies.

"Jean-Pierre", or rather Abubakar Turatsinze, had indicated that there were preparations for political assassinations by the government side. He alleged that Habyarimana's people had created secret weapons caches and were planning a genocide against all Tutsi. These rumors, that had been laboriously spread by the RPF within Rwanda, had been established in writing through that UN fax and could be used by Gourevitch in his article and book of 1998, thus reaching an international audience. Twagiramungu would have quickly recognized the false information, but Luc Marchal had just arrived in Rwanda and was initially deceived by Turatsinze, as he later admitted. The reply fax from New York served Kagame's US supporters to create useful legends: The text is used by Gourevitch to suggest that the UN had known about the genocide that would soon occur and had failed to act. Philpot assumes that Gourevitch has been provided with that fax by his brother-in-law James Rubin, the assistant of Madeleine Albright. Philpot reminds the reader that no proof ever existed of Habyarimana's political circles having pre-planned that genocide, and that it is precisely Gourevitch who admits that by calling that fax the most important document to prove such pre-planning. Informer Turatsinze returned to RPF headquarters shortly after making his revelations and was killed under circumstances not disclosed to his wife.

The fax of 11 January 1994 had remained secret until the newspaper Observer in London made allusions to it in November 1995. In early 1998, strong accusations were raised in the French parliament and the Belgien senate against US policy in Rwanda and Congo; the US House of Representatives also discussed the shameful 'inaction' of the Clinton administration during the 1994 genocide. It was at that critical moment, that the reply fax emerged in Gourevitch's office. The presumed sender, James Rubin, had previously prevented the reelection of Boutros Ghali as UN Secretary General in 1996, at the instructions of Albright, and helped to install Kofi Annan as successor, who had been head of UN peacekeeping during the 1994 genocide. This could now be used, first to shift blame from the US administration to the UN, blaming Annan for inaction in the face of genocide, and second to make Annan more politically compliant for the future, concludes Philpot.

The silence of the UN during the 1994 genocide is only then hard to understand if one is unaware of the political weakness of this world body, which is dominated by a few national governments. Former UN Secretary General Boutros Ghali remarked that Madeleine Albright, UN ambassador of the US at the time of the horrible slaughters in 1994, had objected to any military intervention by the UN, even if it was without participation of US soldiers. Philpot adds that British NGOs also rejected the idea of any military intervention, since only a victory of the RPF would achieve an end to the genocide. He notes the geopolitical involvement of various presumably 'humanitarian' organizations. On 28 May 1994, the British magazine Economist wrote in favor of an RPF victory.

Faced with such positions by influential Anglo-Saxon voices, one must not be surprised at the inaction of the UN. The dominant factions within US politics have clearly promoted the RPF victory, even though it was evident that this group represented only a minority in Rwanda. Philpot refers readers to government documents disclosed at the independent National Security Archive at the George Washington University (www.gwu.edu). During the critical three months, the RPF was able to supply itself with weapons coming from Uganda. Long before 6 April 1994, the RPF had prepared for this military struggle for power and infiltrated Rwanda with around 4000 fighters.

Philpot mentions that he had asked Romeo Dallaire for an interview or at least written a response to some questions, both of which Dallaire refused. The Canadian UN general, who was obliged to honor the neutrality attributed to his position, has been known in Rwanda for being close to the RPF. This became evident on the day of his arrival in the country, 22 October 1993, when he did not deal with the assassination of the Hutu president of neighboring Burundi, Melchior Ndadaye, that had occurred the day before. After this political killing, the people in Rwanda knew that the Tutsi did not want peace but rather aimed to take power. 375,000 Hutu from Burundi sought refuge in Rwanda directly afterwards, further complicating the situation of the Rwandan government, that already had to take care of a million internally displaced people in the camps around the capital city Kigali. These people had been evicted from their homes in the northern part by the Tutsi invaders from Uganda, and they barely survived in very bad, crowded conditions.

The dubious role of Dallaire is also revealed in an interview published by www.zmag.org (since 2008 renamed: zcommunications.org) in June 2007: David Barouski's Rwandan interview partner Jean-Christophe Nizeyimana reports that Dallaire had reveived RPF forces in his UN headquarters in Kigali in the fall of 1993, and that it was known among UN soldiers that Dallaire did not mediate between the government and the rebels, but rather passed on to the RPF confidential information about the Rwandan government. The UN international peacekeeping troops, represented by Dallaire, have thus not been an impartial mediator but a co-conspirator of the RPF. This happened under political pressure from the political circles around Madeleine Albright in the US. A UN intervention to stop the killing in 1994 was never meant to happen.

5. The ICTR and the conviction of the 'usual suspects click here to watch the video'

In his book (2003), Philpot quotes former rebel leader Paul Kagame, who is president of Rwanda since 2000, that there are roughly 140,000 prisoners in Rwandan jails suspected of having participated in the genocide. Many Rwandans perceive Kagame to be using these prisoners to subjugate and intimidate the Hutu majority population (around 85 percent) in the country, like the Tutsi elite used do to until the end of the colonial period in 1962. Not much better than the situation of the prisoners in Rwanda is that of the accused before the international tribunal ICTR in Arusha/Tanzania. This UN tribunal also seeks to convict people according to political expediency, following the expectations of the regime in Rwanda's capital Kigali. Philpot mentions just two particularly odd examples, those of the two previous prime ministers Faustin Twagiramungu and Pierre-Celestin Rwigema. Twagiramungu was a member of the first RPF government in Kigali from 19 July 1994 to 28 August 1995, then he went into exile in Belgium. When he wanted to attend a conference at his old university in Canada, he was denied a visa because he allegedly was involved in the genocide. His successor in office Rwigema remained until February 2000 and tried hard to arrest participants in the genocide. When he finally went into US exile, an international arrest warrant followed him, based on allegations of involvement in the genocide.

The ICTR is shaped by certain US political interests and funding. According to Anglo-Saxon law, the chief prosecutor is responsible for establishing facts on which a trial will be based. As first chief prosecutor, Richard Goldstone from South African had a defining influence on the ICTR. He spent so much time at expensive dinners in New York City and Washington that UN Secretary General Boutros Ghali and members of the UN Security Council complained about his excessive proximity to US interests. In his book of 2000, Goldstone describes how he received important information for his work directly from the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency). Philpot notes that Goldstone writes about the CIA as if it is an official part of the legal system. Goldstone's first written assessment of the situation in Rwanda strictly followed the 'official line', to present the genocide as a sudden event and to avoid any mention of the shooting down of the presidential airplane.

In October 1996 Canadian Louise Arbour became chief prosecutor, chosen by Madeleine Albright. She continued the established practice of not investigating RPF crimes in general or the shooting down of the presidential airplane in particular. Philpot points out that an inclusion of the RPF in the criminal investigation would put the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and the justifications for the subsequent wars in the Congo into a completely different light. He mentions the declaration of the UN World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna 1993, which states that denial of a country's right to self-determination constitutes a violation of human rights.

The ICTR is directed towards an international audience, which had always been central to the RPF strategy. The international perception, as shaped by interested circles, was that there were Hutu perpetrators und Tutsi victims. Nevertheless, discrepancies emerged quickly in this version, e.g. when UN general Dallaire publicly said in September 1994 that there had been not an ethnic but a political genocide, where both Hutu und Tutsi had been killed. In November 2002, Louise Arbour replied to a journalist's question, whether the ICTR would finally indict Tutsi, that this was less an ethnic question and more one of political alliances.

Philpot contrasts the ICTR with the historic Nuremberg Tribunal of 1945: The latter served not only to convict those who lost Word War II, it also strengthened two fundamental legal norms, namely that war of aggression is a crime and that national sovereignty is to be respected. These two norms remain central elements of the UN Charter. Going against these norms, the ICTR does not even deal with the war of aggression that the former Ugandan military officers waged against Rwanda since 1990, nor does it mention the repeated violations of sovereignty that the RPF infiltrators committed from Uganda. The ICTR was created to discredit the previous Rwandan government and to whitewash the true aggressors – and this is a tribunal established by the UN. The process at the ICTR reflects the setup of that international court in Tanzania: The witnesses mostly come from Rwanda; those that the regime in Kigali would not want to testify do not get a travel permit, besides they would not be safe at home any longer if they gave 'unwanted' testimony. Philpot stresses that the ICTR has no option to force people to testify or to grant witness protection. Therefore, on 15 November 2007, 31 people accused or convicted by the ICTR have publicly declared themselves "political prisoners of the UN", in order to draw attention to the perversion of justice practiced at this court.

So who is behind this 'international community' that claims to be so active in revealing the crimes committed against millions of Africans? The term is mostly a synonym for NGOs, whose role in the actual genocide has largely remained undisclosed so far. Former Rwandan prime minister Twagiramungu mentioned in a conversation with book author Philpot that there had not been a single human rights organization in Rwanda prior to October 1990, while after this date they have mushroomed. And the 36 secret RPF cells active in Rwanda to overthrow the government have worked mostly through such human rights organizations, as Philpot quotes researcher William Cyrus Reed. These organizations were supported and funded by US and European NGOs, among them Human Rights Watch (New York), the International Federation of Human Rights (Paris), and African Rights (London).

A particulary shameful report about the "violation of human rights in Rwanda since 1 October 1990" has been presented by NGOs in March 1993. Authors are Jean Carbonare/Paris, Philippe Dahinden/Lausanne, Alison Des Forges/USA, Rene Degni-Segui/Abidjan, Pol Dodinval/Liege, Eric Gillet/Brussels, Rein Odink/Amsterdam, Halidou Ouedraogo/Burkina Faso, Andre Paradis/Montreal, William Schabbas/Montreal. This report does not mention the RPF aggression of 1 October 1990, yet it was used politically to justify an arms embargo against the Habyarimana regime, while the RPF could maintain its uninterrupted supply of arms from Uganda. The report has been quoted as proof of the murderous intentions of the Hutu government. And something else is worth mentioning: The Rwandan Association for Human Rights was founded on 30 September 1990, its first president Alphonse-Marie Nkubito became justice minister of the first RPF government in 1994.

6. War in the Congo and the alleged return of Rwandan refugees

On 8 November 1996, the Canadian prime minister Jean Chretien discovered on CNN the horrors that the Rwandan refugees suffered in Goma/Eastern Congo (called Zaire until 1997), whose refugee camps had been bombed for weeks. He telephoned other heads of government and asked for contributions to an international peacekeeping force under Canadian leadership. On 14 November, the UN Security Council decided to send a contingent of 10,000 soldiers to ensure the safe return of 1.3 million Rwandans. Suddenly, the next day thousands of refugees returned to Rwanda, so the international troops were deemed unnecessary. It was claimed that RPF soldiers had attacked the refugee camps and evicted the militias that had prevented the refugees from returning home. Philpot cites an anonymous NGO member, that the Canadian general Maurice Baril who had put this information out is a liar and murderer. The French daily Liberation criticized Baril on 10 March 1997 for having claimed that there were no more Rwandan refugees in the Congo.

In 2002 Raymond Chretien, nephew of Jean and in 1996 special envoy of the UN Secretary General to the crisis region, admitted the high death toll of over one million that everyone had been unwilling to acknowledge at the time. Instead it had been declared that half a million refugees had returned to Rwanda. Leon Kengo wa Dongo, prime minister of Zaire between 1994 and 1997, talked about the "alleged genociders among the refugees in Zaire", who had simply been used as a pretext for the military attack by Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi on his country; thus Kengo wa Dongo attributed careful pre-planning to this whole attack. Eye witnesses described the forced return of the refugees, and how international journalists had been prepared to report these events differently, or how they have let themselves be used. A particularly negative example was Christiane Amanpour of CNN, whose task it had been to spread lies: Philpot quotes Raymond Chretien that she had deliberately ignored all the dubious aspects of this return, like the refusal of the RPF to supply water to the refugees along the border which caused many to die from dehydration. Philpot adds that, not long after this, Amanpour married James Rubin, Albright's assistant.

In a December 2002 interview with Philpot, Kengo wa Dongo spoke about the systematic bombing of the refugee camps in Eastern Congo over weeks, especially the camps Sake and Mugunga around the city of Goma. He wondered who sent the weapons with which the Congolese army had been so easily defeated when trying to defend the country. Eye witnesses mentioned US planes that allegedly have delivered heavy weapons through Kigali. The conditions in the refugee camps are described in a 2000 book by Marie Beatrice Umutesi.

Philpot blames both Chretiens for playing the game of Madeleine Albright, and of having only given the appearance of supporting peacekeeping troops which in reality would never be considered. This is confirmed by the intense yet futile efforts of two Italians, European Commissioner Emma Bonino and European Special Envoy Aldo Ajello, to get a US agreement for such a peacekeeping mission. Raymond Chretien admits that as UN Special Envoy he had the task to push the two Europeans aside and to serve US interests above all. Philpot quotes, as one exception to the wall of silence around the killings in the Congo, director general of USAID Richard McCall, who testified before the US House of Representatives on 5 May 1998 that Kagame and the RPF are not 'rebels', they are genociders with whom he would never negotiate.

Kengo wa Dondo remembers the UN Security Council resolution of 14 November 1996, according to which the UN peacekeepers should have guaranteed Rwandan refugees a safe return home. And he points out that this was exactly what Paul Kagame did not want to see happen. He wanted chaos, or otherwise he would have had to return the stolen land to the returning refugees, they would have demanded participation in a national reconciliation process and might even have demanded democratic elections! Yet the Tutsi minority RPF government could not win free elections in Rwanda. And with no refugees left in the Congo, there would not have been the pretext for Kagame and others to intervene and continue the war against the big, resource-rich neighbor, the ongoing destabilization and exploitation in Eastern Congo – that has continued until now, 2008. Therefore, an international peacekeeping group had to remain a stillborn idea.The most recent report on the death toll in the Congo conflict has been published by Associated Press on 22 January 2008, by writer Heidi Vogt, titled: 45,000 people dying a month in Congo.

Conclusion: Open questions

How can genocide be planned, implemented and covered up for nearly two decades, given that there claims to be a 'free media' in various countries? The complicity in the coverup, by CNN, TIME, Jerusalem Post, Economist etc. and the determined silence of many others require an explanation. In September and October of 2007, TIME magazine carried articles praising today's Rwanda and its leader Paul Kagame. Not yet mentioned by Philpot is journalist Samantha Power, whose 2002 book on genocide contains a chapter on Rwanda that suits the 'official version' of support for the genocidal RPF. She has received the Pulitzer prize for that book. Power is found on the website of Harvard University as Anna Lindh professor at the Kennedy School of Government, she was "Founding executive director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy" (1998-2002) and has until recently been foreign policy adviser to US presidential candidate Barack Obama.

Representatives of major 'human rights organizations', among them Doctors without Borders (MSF in French), have vehemently opposed UN intervention to save the refugees. Philpot cites the Belgian senator Alair Destexhe, formerly general secretary of Doctors without Borders, who stressed in the French daily Le Monde that these refugees would have to be driven back to Rwanda by hunger. One has to assume that he knew the political context, so he was aware that these refugees had to fear for their life if they returned to Kagame's Rwanda. The killing of thousands of internally displaced people in the camp Kibeho inside Rwanda in 1995 was known to the refugees in Congo as a clear signal.

Philpot mentions that the co-founder of Doctors without Borders, present French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner, has later received the Nobel Peace Prize together with the organization. Evidently, Philpot did not yet know at the time of his writing that Kouchner has been a similarly determined supporter of Kagame as his colleague Destexhe. The French-language website ndagijimana.rmc.fr contains information about Kouchner by Madeleine Raffin, who has lead the charity Caritas in the Rwandan diocese Gikongoro from 1993 to 1997.

It also remains to be explored why Protestant Church circles are among the supporters of the genocide circles, from the Prayer Breakfast network in the US to German church groups that refuse to speak out. Among the academic supporters, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (aaas.org) has to be mentioned, which invited Kagame as guest speaker to its annual conference in Boston from 14 to 18 February 2008. A rare critic of Kagame is social science professor Edward Herman in his article on zmag.org of 26 October 2007, as is law professor Peter Erlinder who also works as defense lawyer at the Arusha tribunal.

Noteworthy is the support in Hollywood for such distorted films as Hotel Rwanda. This explains why the German Oscar-nominated film Sophie Scholl could not get an Oscar in 2005: Those who support false versions about the genocide in Rwanda and Congo could not credibly award a prize to a film about the resistance that young student Sophie Scholl and her friends undertook against the Nazi regime in 1943.

The scandal is not that the people in democracies in North America, Europe are supporting genocide in Africa. The scandal is that, despite the statements in various democratic constitutions and the claims about a 'free media', the general population does not know that dark circles in their countries have supported this genocide in Rwanda and Congo. And the scandal is how many individuals in bureaucracies, the media, universities, politics, churches do know and don't speak out. How can we ensure for the future that democratic values, which people all around the world rightly aspire to, do actually matter into practice?

Dr. Sabine Grund, freelance journalist in Berlin/Germany with background in political science.

Email: sabine.grund@yahoo.com

Permission, May 29, 2010.

Dr. Sabine Grund wrote:

Dear Team of Afroamerica,

you may have seen the information on the web about the genocide in Rwanda-Congo.

Attached is a summary of the very valuable book by Robin Philpot, which I wrote 2 years ago.

Please help spread the knowledge.

Thanks,

Sabina

Berlin, Germany

PADIRI UBALD RUGIRANGOGA YABA YARAHINDUTSE UMUKANGURAMBAGA WA FPR-POWER:Is Fr. Ubald Rugirangoga a Cadre of RPF-Power?)

PADIRI UBALD RUGIRANGOGA YABA YARAHINDUTSE UMUKANGURAMBAGA WA FPR-POWER

Bibaye ngombwa ko mfata ikaramu n’urupapuro, nkandikira Padiri Ubald RUGIRANGOGA kugira ngo mwiyame ku mugaragaro kuko mbona asigaye yarigize umucamanza w’icyamamare, umutegetsi w’icyatwa abandi bagomba guhakwaho kugira ngo baramuke, akaba asigaye afite ububasha bwo kugena abapfa n’ababaho! Tumaze kwitegereza iyo mikorere ye twasanze Padiri Ubald ari umunyakinyoma, umugizi wa nabi ukwiye kwirindwa. Muri iyi nyandiko, nzinduwe no kugaragaza ukuntu uyu mugabo ari umupadiri wo kwitonderwa (dangereux), ukwiye gufatwa uko ari, ntihagire uzongera kumwibeshyaho.

A. Waba uzi Padiri Ubald Rugirangoga?

Padiri Ubald RUGIRANGOGA yavukiye muri Segiteri ya Rwabidege, Komini ya Karengera, Perefegitura ya Cyangugu. Hari taliki ya 26 Mata 1955. Se yitwaga Yakobo, nyina Adela, akaba umwuzukuru wa Bidadaza. Amashuri yisumbuye yayigiye mu iseminari nto yitiriwe Mutagatifu Piyo wa 10 yo ku Nyundo, kugera mu 1973 ubwo yagiye gukomereza i Burundi. Yagarutse mu Rwanda ahitira mu iseminari nkuru ya Nyakibanda, ahabwa ubupadiri taliki ya 22 Nyakanga 1984.

Njye namubonye bwa mbere mu mwaka w’1993, nyuze i Nyamasheke, ni bwo nari ntangiye Seminari nkuru. Aho mariye kuba umupadiri mu w’i 1999, twarakoranye muri Diyosezi yacu ya Cyangugu. By’umwihariko twakoranye muri sekeretariya ya Sinodi ubwo hategurwaga Yubile y’imyaka 100 ivanjiri igeze i Rwanda. Muri ubwo butumwa, twari abapadiri bane n’umulayikikazi umwe. Bose baribuka uko twakoranye neza, ndetse n’iyo byabagaho rimwe na rimwe ko tutumvikana mu bitekerezo, twahagarikaga akazi tukiyambaza Roho Mutagatifu, akaduha kuvuga rumwe nuko tukikomereza akazi. Imyanzuro ya Sinodi ya Cyangugu twashyize ahagaragara ntawigeze ayigaya, uhereye ku mwepiskopi wacu kugera ku bakristu basanzwe. Ubald sinamubonaga gusa nk’umupadiri unkuriye mu myaka, ahubwo nabonaga anihatira kugaragara neza, mu byo yavugaga no mu byo yakoraga, nkabona hari byinshi byiza umupadiri w’umusore nkanjye yamwigiraho.

Nyamara ariko hagati yanjye na we byose ntibyakomeje kuba shyashya. N’ubwo atabyeruraga ngo abivugire ku mugaragaro, ntiyabuze kunyereka ko atishimiraga ubutumwa nakoraga muri Komisiyo ya Diyosezi y’Ubutabera n’Amahoro. Koko rero iyo Komisiyo yakoraga neza, kuko yari yarashinze imizi mu miryangoremezo ya Diyosezi yose. Byaduhaga kumenya amakuru menshi aturutse hasi mu bakristu: twamenyaga ibibazo bafite, akarengane bahura nako, abahohoterwa n’ubutegetsi, abarenganywa n’inkiko gacaca, abagize uruhare mu bwicanyi, n’ibindi. Ayo makuru yose ni yo Padiri Ubald yanyerekaga ko ntakagombye kumenya. Ni bwo bwa mbere numvise ko ibyo byiyumviro atabiterwa n’impamvu z’Iyobokamana ahubwo ko abiterwa no gushaka kurengera izindi nyungu zizwi na we gusa.

Icyo yantekerezagaho cyaje kujya ahabona nsohotse mu gihugu. Koko rero, guhera mu kwezi k’Ukuboza 2005, byabaye ngombwa ko mva mu Rwanda, njya kwikomereza kwiga mu Bufaransa. Ngira ngo guhera ku munsi nagendeyeho, uyu mupadiri yabonye rugari atangira ibyo kuntaramana, mu nzira, mu basirikari, mu bategetsi, mu nshuti…: ngo ntiyumva impamvu ngiye. Bukeye ngo kuki niga filozofiya, ngo kuki ngomba kwiga amategeko mpuzamahanga (droit intenational) ...? Byose narabyumvaga nkicecekera, ngakeka ko ari amagambo y’abantu cyangwa se agashyari gasanzwe mu bavandimwe, ko bitazatinda gushira. We ariko ntiyagohetse, yari ageze n’aho agenda ahagarika abantu mu muhanda, abanzi n’abatarigera bambona, ngo nibareke abasobanururire ukuntu ingengabitekerezo ya jenoside yanyaritse mu mutwe. Ibyo byafashe indi ntera ubwo yiyemezaga kujya kunshinja ingengabitekerezo ya jenocide mu nama y’abapadiri bose ba Cyangugu (Presbyterium) yateranye kuva ku ya 26 kugera ku ya 28 Mata 2010. Ngo yitwaje ko naba naragiye Arusha gutanga ubuhamya bushinjura. Icyakora akirinda kwerekana icyo naba naravuze imbere y’urukiko n’icyo we anenga ubwo buhamya. Amagambo yavugiye muri iyo nama bayantondoreye uko yakabaye ndumirwa, ariko n’abayumvaga ngo ntibabuze kwibaza icyo ibyo bisobanura.

Ntibyaciriye aho kuko muri Kamena 2010 amakuru aturutse mu nzego z’iperereza zo mu Rwanda yangezeho ambwira ko Padiri Ubald amaze igihe akora uko ashoboye kwose ngo njye n’abandi bapadiri yikomye b’i Cyangugu, dushyirwe ku rutonde (hitlist) rw’abagomba kwicirwa mu mahanga.Ubwo ni nabwo namenye ko muri FPR hasigaye harimo ibice bibiri. Ngo hari igice cy’abantu bashaka amahoro, n’igice bita “pawa” (power) ngo kigizwe n’abumva ko Abanyarwanda bagomba gukomeza kwicwa kugeza igihe Nyagasani azahindukirira! Ngo icyo cya “power” ni cyo Ubald na murumuna we Reveriyani bagomba kuba bashyigikiye. Ugira ngo ndashyiramo amakabyankuru azambaze mubwire n’ibirenze ibyo!

B. Ingengabitekerezo ya jenoside

Icyaha cya jenoside kirazwi kandi giteganijwe mu mategeko mpuzamahanga. Ariko icyaha cyitwa “kugira ingengabitekerezo ya jenoside” nta handi kiba mu mategeko y’ibihugu byo kw’isi uretse mu Rwanda rwa nyuma y’1994! Cyateganijwe mu itegeko ryiswe “itegeko N°18/2008 ryo ku wa 23/07/2008 rihana icyaha cy’ingengabitekerezo ya jenoside”. Warisanga mu Igazeti ya Repubulika y’u Rwanda, Umwaka wa 47, n° 19 yo ku wa 01 Ukwakira 2008.

Ingingo ya 2 y’iryo tegeko itanga igisobanuro: “Ingengabitekerezo ya jenoside ni urusobe rw’ibitekerezo bigaragarira mu myifatire, imvugo, inyandiko n’ibindi bikorwa bigamije cyangwa bihamagarira abantu kurimbura abandi hashingiwe ku bwoko, inkomoko, ubwenegihugu, akarere, ibara ry’umubiri, isura, igitsina, ururimi, idini cyangwa ibitekerezo bya politiki, bikozwe mu gihe gisanzwe cyangwa mu gihe cy’intambara”.

Nk’uko bigaragarira buri wese, “kugira ingengabitekerezo ya jenoside” ni icyaha kidasobanutse neza, umuntu yashyira ku wo ashatse wese yaba umuzungu cyangwa umwirabura, yaba umuhutu umutwa cyangwa umututsi, kuko bigoye kwisobanura ko utagifite. Benshi bemeza ko Leta ya FPR yahimbye icyo cyaha kugira ngo yigizeyo, ihutaze, ifunge cyangwa yice abo ikeka ko batavuga rumwe nayo. Ngira ngo Abanyarwanda twese twamaze kwibonera neza uko Leta yacu igenza uwo yahamije icyo cyaha.

Iyo Padiri Ubald wihaye Imana yiyemeje kugishinja nkana bagenzi be b’Abihayimana nka we, bishaka kuvuga ko aba yamaze kubashyira mu rwego rw’“abagamije cyangwa abahamagarira kurimbura abandi”. Bitabaye ibyo byaterwa n’uko yaba abafata nk’abarwanya Leta iriho bityo akaba abasabira igihano kiremereye giteganywa n’ingingo ya 6 y’iryo tegeko :”Iyo ukoze icyaha cy’ingengabitekerezo ya jenoside ari umuyobozi mu nzego z’imirimo ya Leta, mu mitwe ya politiki, mu mirimo y’abikorera, cyangwa umuyobozi mu mirimo itagengwa na Leta, umuyobozi w’idini, cyangwa uwahoze ari umuyobozi muri izo nzego, ahanishwa igifungo kuva ku myaka cumi n’itanu (15) kugeza ku myaka makumyabiri n’itanu (25) n’ihazabu y’amafaranga y’u Rwanda kuva kuri miliyoni ebyiri (2.000.000) kugeza kuri miliyoni eshanu (5.000.000.)”!

Kandi ngira ngo twese tuzi ko iyo umuntu w’igikomerezwa nka Padiri Ubald yaguhagurukiye, biba byarangiye kuko tutayobewe uko inkiko z’iwacu zikora! Kwiregura ntibyoroshye.

None se koko ubu umuntu yabigenza ate, bagabo? Uko biri kose, iyo myitwarire ye yanteye gusubiza amaso inyuma, ndongera nitegereza Padiri Ubald, nsobanuza amateka ye, ibyo yavugaga, n’ibyo yakoraga, numva mbaye nk’usobanukiwe kurushaho.

Ubald we, n’ubwo umusizi yivugiye ngo “burya guceceka si ubucucu, ni ugucengerwa n’ibyo uzi ugacira mu nda ugatuza”, jye ndasanga no guceceka bigira aho bigarukira. Ubu nkaba nanjye niyemeje kugusubiza kugira ngo nkumenyeshe ikintu kimwe gusa: Ibuye ryagaragaye ntiriba ricyishe isuka, tuza tubane! Ese ubona wisararanga, abakristu n’abandi bapadiri b’i Cyangugu bakakwihorera, ukagira ngo ni uko bose ari ibigwari cyangwa se bakaba bagutinyira ko uri Nyirubutungane?

C. Dore uko tukuzi:

1. Padiri Ubald uri umwicanyi.

Iyo ugeze kubo wita abicanyi, usya utanzitse! Sinkubwiye ngo ubahunde ibisingizo, ariko ujye unibuka ko urubanza ari urw’Imana. Igihe ucyitwa umupadiri wa Kiliziya, ni nde wakugize umucamanza wa bagenzi bawe, Ubald we? Nyamara ariko ikibazo gikomeye si icyo. Nagerageje kwibaza ikigutera gukora ibyo ukora, nsanga ari rya rondakoko twamaganaga muri Sinodi! Yewe, ko ubanza nawe ryaragucengeye, rikaguhuma amaso y’umubiri n’ay’umutima. Na we ubwawe uzisuzume neza, uzasanga ari ryo rikuyobora n’ubwo ushobora kwishuka ngo uri mutaraga. Urashaka urugero: abicanyi ni bantu ki kuri wowe? Igisubizo cyawe turakizi, twacyumvise kenshi, tugifata mu mutwe: ni abishe Abatutsi muri 1994. Ni byo koko, abishe Abatutsi ni abicanyi kandi bakwiye kubiryozwa. Ariko n’uwishe umuzungu, umutwa cyangwa umuhutu aba yishe umuntu. Si umwicanyi se? Ndakwibutsa ko wowe ubwawe, padiri Ubald na Murumuna wawe w’umupolisi ari we Superintendent Reveriyani Rugwizangoga mufite ibiganza bijejeta amaraso! Muzabanze musobanurire ubutabera uko mwishe Sindayiheba Yohani taliki ya 2 Nzeri 1995. Reka nkwibutse uko byagenze: muri Mata 1995 wowe n’uwo murumuna wawe mwagiye ku matongo y’iwanyu. Muvuyeyo mugeze i Rwabidege, wowe Ubald wavuye mu modoka ujya gutuka abaturage bari bibereye mu kabari, ubashinja ko bishe umukecuru wanyu. Ni bwo Sindayiheba Yohani akubwiye atuje ko ibyabaye mu 1994 ari ishyano ryagwiririye igihugu cyose. Wowe na murumuna wawe mwahise muva hasi ngo avuze ko umukecuru wanyu ameze nk’abandi bose. Sibwo umufashe mu ijosi ugatangira kumuniga ushaka kumwica! Iyo umubikira mwari kumwe witwa Jean Marie wo kwa Uberiti atamukwamururaho, ntuba waramutsinze aho? Wagize ikimwaro cy’ibyo umaze gukora, ugenda warubiye. Bwarakeye mu gitondo, mugaruka gufata Sindayiheba Yohani, murumuna wawe yirirwa amufungiranye mu nzu i Kamembe, mutegereje ijoro ngo mujye kumwicira i Kigali. Muri uwo mugoroba, abantu barabakomereye, by’umwihariko umugabo w’umukada bitaga Asmani (Imana imuhe iruhuko ridashira) si we wamubakuye mu nzara agasubira iwe mu gicuku? Hanyuma se mwaramuretse aratuza? Taliki ya 2 nzeri 1995, ahagana mu masa mbiri z’umugoroba, ntimwitwikiriye akabwibwi mukagaruka iwe kumukinguza, mugahita mumurasa mukamutsinda aho? Mwibagiwe akantu kamwe gusa: uwububa abonwa n’uhagaze! Hari abaturage babateye imboni.

Abashumba baragwira ra! Ubald we, uri umushumba wica intama, ni ukuri kw’Imana! Nta wakekaga ko wagera aho! Ariko buriya Sindayiheba wamuhoye iki koko? Hari n’uwo wumvise ko hari icyo amushinja? Ni uko rero, n’iyo ubutabera bw’abantu butabikuryoza, Imana uvuga ko wihaye yo ntizabura kubikubaza. Iyo ikaba ari na yo mpamvu ituma ngira nti: Mbere yo kujijisha ngo urabwiriza abicanyi kwemera ibyaha, nawe ubwawe mwigisha, banza utinyuke ujye mu Kiliziya y’i Mwezi, ari ku cyumweru, abakristu bateranye. Aho kubacunaguza nk’uko wabimenyereye, ubatuka ngo ni abicanyi bose uko bangana, uzemere ukubite ibipfukamiro hasi, ubabwize ukuri ku byerekeye abantu bose wicishije hariya uvuka, n’abo washinje ibinyoma. Nibwo ahari uzaba utangiye gusengera mu kuri. Naho ubundi, abantu bose bamaze kumenya ko uri “Bangamwabo”, abaturage b’iwanyu barakubona bagahunga nk’ababonye Rubebe! Wowe ho ukikirigita, ugaseka ngo bose bazi ko wirukana amashitani.

2. Padiri Ubald ushinja inzirakarengane ibinyoma ugatoza n’abandi kubikora

Uribuka se amajoro wararaga ugenda, uva i Mushaka ujya hariya uvuka, ukikijwe n’imbunda n’abasirikari bakurindiye umutekano, ujya gutoza abaturage uko bagomba gushinja ibinyoma bagenzi babo? Harya jenoside yabaye uri muri kariya gace noneho ukaba warajyaga kubabwira amakuru uzi neza? Wiyibagije ko wari uri i Nyamasheke? Hanyuma se uriya mugabo witwa Sinzabakwira Straton, wari warigize Bourgmestre wa Karengera, woheje ngo ajye yirirwa ashinja ibinyoma abo wanga, ukamushukisha kuzamufunguza no kuzarihira abana be amashuri, ubona ko abantu babibonamo ubutungane? We se ko mukorana kandi ari umwicanyi uzwi na bose, ni we muntu ukwiye kwizerwa wabonye i Cyangugu? Cyangwa hari icyo mupfana! Koko ibisa birasabirana! Twese tuzi uko wamurindagije ngo ajye yirirwa afungisha inzirakarengane afatanije na Nyakwigendera depute Kanakuze Yudita. Ni nde wibagiwe ko iyo imodoka y’inshuti yawe Kanakuze Yudita yahingukaga mu karere, abantu bakwirwaga imishwaro, bakarara mu gihuru bihishahisha? Ibintu byarahindutse koko. Hambere aha, iyo umuntu yazamukaga mu ntera, yaharaniraga kuzamura akarere k’iwabo, mbese nk’uriya muminisitiri wagejeje amashanyarazi i Mwezi. Yari umugabo koko.

Hari ikindi cyerekana ko wowe Padiri Ubald, ufite ikibazo gikomeye. Iyaba ari jye wangaga gusa nari kugira ngo nijye nyirabayazana. Harya ngo abagize inama nkuru ya Paruwasi ya Mwezi murapfa iki? Hari ikindi ubahora kitari uko banze guha rugari ubwibone bwawe (la vaine gloire que tu aimes tant!)?

Inama nkuru ya paroisse ya Mwezi yateguraga ibirori by’itangwa ry’ubupadiri bwa ba Fratri Silivani Ayobamvuga na Gilibereti Komezusenge muri 2009. Muri iyo nama koko hari umuntu w’incuti yawe watanze igitekerezo ko, ubwo wujuje imyaka 25 uri umusaserdoti, Paruwasi yagukorera yubile, igahimbazwa muri ubwo bukwe bw’itangwa ry’ubusaserdoti. Abandi bamaze kuvuga icyo batekereza, hafatwa icyemezo cy’uko iminsi mikuru itavangwa, ahubwo biyemeza kuzagushakira undi mwanya ukwiye, nawe bakagukorera ibirori bya yubile! Ngo inkuru ikugereho ko utakiyerekanye mu itangwa ry’ubusaserdoti: yo!yo!yo!yo! Sibwo wishyize ku karubanda, ukisararanga, ukarimbura ibiti n’amabuye, ugatangira gutukanira mu isoko, ku manywa y’ihangu, ukemeza ko inama nkuru ya paruwasi ya Mwezi igizwe n’interahamwe gusa! Sibwo uhuruje ibyo bikomerezwa byawe, maze abantu bagakubitwa, abandi bagafungwa, abashoboye bagatorongera, padiri mukuru agahabuka, agata paruwasi!

Hari aho utageze uvuga ngo abapadiri bose babaye i Mwezi nta kindi bakoze uretse kwigisha ingengabitekerezo ngo ari na byo byateye abaturage b’ i Mwezi kwicana mu w’1994? Wowe se ko wigishije iyo “vanjiri yawe” i Nyamasheke, wahavuye ute? Bo ntabwo bicanye? Aho i Nyamasheke uvuga nanjye nahabaye nyuma yawe. Ishusho wahasize si iy’umupadiri ushyize Iyobokamana imbere, ahubwo ngo wari umupadiri wifitiye inyungu za politiki arengera, yewe n’ishyaka rya politiki warimo ntibararyibagirwa. Uribuka ko utashoboraga kuramutsa umuntu n’umwe mudahuje ishyaka? Harya Inspectrice w’amashuri witwa Nyirarukundo hari ikindi mwapfuye uretse kuba yaranze kuva mu ishyaka rye ngo aze mu ryawe?

Nuko rero ngo warashavuye cyane ko naba naragiye Arusha gutanga ubuhamya bushinjura imfungwa? Koko nagiyeyo nk’uko benshi bajyayo n’ubu. Ikindi rero, nubishaka uzajyeyo ubaze neza, jye navugiye ku mugaragaro, ntagombye kwihisha mu kabati nkawe n’incuti zawe kandi navuze ibyo niboneye n’amaso yanjye. Ubwo rero ngo inka zacitse amabere kuko ntabanje kuza kukureba ngo umpfunyikire ubuhamya njya gutanga Arusha! Iyo ni ya mikorere ya za gacaca ushimagiza? Ujye uyishoramo abandi, njye undeke. Mu bo woshya kubeshyera abandi sindimo. Njye niga amategeko, sindi nkawe utekereza ko abantu bagomba gucibwa imitwe nyuma y’imanza zishingiye ku mpuha gusa. Inkiko nyazo zigira uko zikora. Wowe rero ngo ureba ibyihishe mu mitima, ukaba uzi ukuri kose (ukwabayeho n’ukutarabayeho) , uzajye imbere y’urukiko rw’Arusha umvuguruze. Kandi ibyavugiwe imbere y’umucamanza ntushobora kubivugururiza mu kabari. Fata indege ujye Arusha maze uvugishe ukuri, dore ko wibwira ko nta wundi wavuga ukuri uretse wowe wenyine. Imanza zose z’abantu zizabe ari wowe zeguriwe, mugani wa ya ndirimbo? Nyamara icyakubabaje si impamvu zo gushaka ukuri, ni inyungu za politike uba ushyize imbere.

3. Padiri Ubald uvanga amasaka n’amasakaramentu

Padiri Ubald, intama waragijwe ziri muri paruwasi ya Mushaka (dore ko ari na yo mvukamo) ntizikimenya ijwi ryawe. Uravuga bakikanga. Ngo iyo utangiye inyigisho ku cyumweru, hari abakwihisha munsi y’intebe! Ntibakimenya gutandukanya ijwi ryawe n’iry’Umuyobozi w’akarere cyangwa irya Afande. Nk’iyo ufungira abantu amasakaramentu ngo ni uko inkiko gacaca zabemeje icyaha, iryo kenurabushyo (pastorale) riba ari bwoko ki? Mu mategeko ya Kiliziya (Droit Canon), hari aho waba warabonye ko uwo Inkiko gacaca zishinje icyaha, Kiliziya imuhanisha gufungirwa amasakaramentu? Ko usa n’aho Bibiliya yawe itakiri iyo tuzi? Icyakora Abanyamushaka bo barumiwe pe! Ese ubwo uzi ko hari benshi waciye mu kiliziya kubera ko ngo utacyigisha ijambo ry’Imana, ahubwo ukaba wararisimbuje ibitekerezo bya FPR-pawa? Uzatinyuke ubwire Musenyeri wawe ko wasezeye ku bupadiri, ukaba usigaye warihitiyemo akazi ko kuba umupolisi n’umukangurambaga wa FPR-pawa, nibwo uzaba utagisengera mu kinyoma!

4. Padiri Ubald wigisha tewologiya y’amacakubiri

Umwihariko twese twari twarakurekeye ni uwo kuzenguruka igihugu usengera abarwayi ngo bagakira amashitani. N’ubwo Kiliziya itayobewe ko ubwo bubasha Yezu yabuyihaye, ariko ntijya yibagirwa ko hari n’ibigirwa-ngabire shitani yifashisha ngo igirire nabi roho za benshi. Mu buryo bwawe bwo gusengera abandi, hari byinshi bitera kwibaza. Dore nk’iyo wowe ubwawe wakoresheje ibiterane byo gusabira abarwayi, ntutinya guhagarara ku maguru yombi ngo wemeze ko hari umuntu ukize ibitega abanzi be bari baramutumye! !! Ubwo urumva icuraburindi uba uroshye mu mitwe y’abo banyantegenke bakwizeye? Uba ubemeje ko ibitega bibaho kandi ko hari abantu babituma abandi. Uwishuka ngo uramukijije iyo ageze mu rugo atyaza umuhoro agahita asanga wa muturanyi we bafitanye akantu ati “Imana yampishuriye ko ari wowe undoga ibitega”! Ubwo urugamba rukaba ruraremye. Ntaho uzi byabaye? Nyirabayazana w’ayo makimbirane hari undi utari wowe n’inyigisho zawe z’ubuyobe zikora ishyano?

Diyosezi zose zo mu Rwanda zari zikwiye kukwamagana, ukareka gukomeza kubeshya abantu no kubateranya. Kandi nabyo iyo umuntu abisesenguye neza, asanga atari impamvu z’Iyobokamana zigutera kwihambira kuri iriya baringa yo gukiza amashitani! Harimo inyungu za politiki zizwi nawe, abazi gushishoza bazabisuzume.

5. Padiri Ubald urikuza ukaniyemera

Ushimishwa no kuvuga hose ko uri intungane. Wivugira ubwawe ko usengera mu kuri, ko ukiri isugi, n’ibindi bigwi udahwema kwivuga. Bityo, nk’umufarizayi mwiza, ugahita wemeza ko udasa n’abandi, b’abasambanyi, b’ibisambo, b’abicanyi, bigisha ingengabitekerezo….

Nyamara Yezu ati “mujye mushishoza, abahanuzi beza muzababwirwa n’imbuto bera” (Mt 7,15-20). Paulo mutagatifu na we ataho ati “imbuto za Sekibi (ibikorwa by’umubiri) zirigaragaza:….kwangana, gukurura intonganya, ishyari, uburakari, kwikuza, amakimbirane, amacakubiri…” (Galati 5, 19-20).

None se Padiri Ubaldi, ko tubona wirirwa ushiha abandi bapadiri, ubashinja ibinyoma, ubiba amacakubiri mu bakristu ushinzwe n’abo utatumweho…aho izo mbuto wera ntizerekana neza ko umwanya wawe uri mu bahanuzi b’ibinyoma? Ntakubeshye, hari benshi batakirirwa babishidikanyaho.

Ifaranga umaze kurirunda, imodoka zawe ebyiri z’akataraboneka zirozwa zikabyagira mu gikari cya paruwasi Mushaka, mu gihe bagenzi bawe bajya mu butumwa n’amaguru, ntacyo bikubwiye. Uravuga rikijyana muri Diyosezi, urizimiza ukicyura, nta we ukubaza ibyo ukora. Abategetsi bakomeye n’abasirikari bakuru nibo musangira, warabifatiye, ingoma ikuri mu bitugu! Ahasigaye ugakandagira abatindi ntacyo wishisha kuko ntawe ukopfora ngo utamuhamagarira abamuraza mu munyururu. Ikiri impamo ni uko ukandagira isi igatigita, nawe si ukubigendera ukamena amabuye. Ahari wibagiwe ko ikuzo ry’iyi si ari iry’akanya gato. Reka nkwibutse agakuru uzi neza: mu bihe byashize, iyo bimikaga Papa mushya, bamwambikaga ya ngofero ya zahabu bita “tiare”, abakaridinari bakamuheka kubitugu, bakamutambagirana imbere y’imbaga y’abakristu berekana ko afite ububasha n’ikuzo by’ikirenga; hanyuma ariko bagakora n’ undi muhango uteye ukwawo : barundaga ubwoya bw’intama imbere ye bakabuha inkongi (maze uko umuriro usabira ugahita uzima) bakongeraho aka kajambo gateye amatsiko ngo “sic transit gloria mundi” ( Ng’uku uko ikuzo ry’iyi si riyoyoka bwangu”). Bumva, wumvise?


Umwanzuro(Conclusion)

Padiri Ubald we, ng’uko uko tukuzi, ujye wifora imbere y’abana bato n’Abazungu. Guhera ubu, ujye uvuga ibyo wahagazeho ureke impuha. Nshyira hasi, ntacyo nagutwaye. Unkure mu mubare w’abo wagize akabaho ukanandagizaho ibirenge byawe .Yaba njye cyangwa bariya bapadiri bandi washyirishije kuri “hitlist”, uzagira icyo aba, haba ejo cyangwa ejobundi, impanga ye uzayibazwe! Tanga amahoro muri Cyangugu, induru yawe, n’ukwiyemera kwawe abantu barabihaze. Bakuvanye i Mushaka, abakristu bahumeka: imyaka irenga icumi yose ubamena amatwi, ubaca n’amafaranga ya buri munsi uboshye ikoro, ntibamenye n’irengero ryayo? Jye sinumva impamvu bagombye kukwihanganira igihe kingana gityo! Ntugire ngo ni ikindi bagucaga, mu bushishozi bwabo baribwiraga bati “uhagarikiwe n’ingwe aravoma”. Gusa ariko, umunsi ingwe yaba itagihari, Kamenyero ashobora kuvoma ibirohwa!


Padiri Thomas Nahimana

Bikorewe i Paris, taliki ya 10 Nyakanga 201

COMMENTS FROM EDITOR
It is shameful to read this other side of the story of a Priest who claims to preach a message of healing among the parishioners of Cyangugu as said in the JHWeekly. It is true Fr.Ubald might have lost about 3,000 parishioners but this figure might be more than that considering that the Ubald's figure does not include my father,mother, my siblings, uncles, and other relatives that killed in 1997 when the Tutsi led RPF hunted us down into the DR Congo forest after destroying the refugee camps of Eastern DRC in October 1996. Fr. Ubald should know that the Chrsit's gospel never takes side. I am sorry that Interahamwe killed his family but also he should do the same to me that his RPF soldiers whom he champions for as the liberator killed my family twice. The first group was killed in the Kibeho Refugee Camp in 1995, and the second time my family was exterminated in 1997 when the RPF led by President Kagame and Nyamwasa came and destroyed refugee camps where we were living when I was still 11 years old. This Tutsi led army had a mission of revenge and extermination of any Hutu species starting from the fact that they had killed the two Hutu presidents Habyarimana Juvenal of Rwanda and Ntaryamira Cyprien of Burundi who were downed on April 6,1994 which sparked the mass killing on 1994. I pray that Fr.Ubald Rugirangoga become true to himself and preach a gospel of forgiveness not the one for publicity hunting and RPF propaganda machinery but the one that will reconcile all tribes of the region. I always apologize for his people who were brutally killed in 1994 because I believe that no soul should be sent back to the giver by human brutality. He also should be sorry for his RPF power ideology of accusing all Hutus to be murderer without taking into consideration the agony and feelings I have when I remember how my dad died under my watch when we were in Tingi-Tingi Refugee Camp in DRC.

Gerald Caplan and the politics of genocide

Gerald Caplan and the politics of genocide
Edward S. Herman and David Peterson
2010-07-08, Issue 489
http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/65773

In his June 17 'review' of our book The Politics of Genocide, for Pambazuka News,[i] Gerald Caplan, a Canadian writer who Kigali's New Times described as a 'leading authority on Genocide and its prevention,'[ii] focuses almost exclusively on the section we devote to Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.[iii] Caplan says virtually nothing about the rest of the book: Nothing about the analytic framework that we apply throughout, nothing about the wealth of data that we report about usage of the term 'genocide' for different theatres where atrocities have been committed, nothing about our criticisms of 'responsibility to protect' doctrine and the International Criminal Court, and almost nothing about the many other conflicts that also serve to corroborate our thesis.[iv] Instead, Caplan uses his 'review' to falsely identify the main locus of responsibility for the mass killings known as the 'Rwanda genocide,' falsely deny the central and ongoing US role in the catastrophic events in Rwanda and the DRC from 1990 to the present, and maliciously label anyone who disagrees with him a 'genocide denier' and member of the 'lunatic fringe.' Caplan even defends Paul Kagame's dictatorship, including Kagame's suppression of free elections and free speech. All of this, we believe, makes Caplan not only a genocide denier, but as he helps divert attention from Kagame's mass killings and pillage in the DRC, a genocide facilitator as well.

CAPLAN AS BOOK REVIEWER

Caplan is a careless reviewer. He accuses us of neglecting to cite a lengthy list of 45 authors ('Except for [Alison] Des Forges, plus Linda Melvern,…not a single one of the following authors is cited by Herman and Peterson'), at least seven of whom we actually do cite, four positively: Gérard Prunier on the Gersony affair in Rwanda, Fergal Keane on the Bruguière report, and Alex de Waal and Mahmood Mamdani on the conflicts in the Darfur states of the western Sudan. The fifth and sixth are William Schabas and Philip Gourevitch, both on Rwanda, neither positively. The seventh, Ingvar Carlsson, we mention in passing. (One scholar on Caplan's list who we didn't cite in our book but are more than happy to cite here is René Lemarchand. In a recent letter to Pambazuka News raising doubts about Caplan's 'credentials in commenting on the merits of the Mutsinzi report' [for our treatment of this, see below], Lemarchand writes that 'the misinformation conveyed by [Caplan] is enough to cast the strongest doubts on [the Mutsinzi report's] veracity.'[v])

Indeed, Caplan does not even maintain consistency with his own previous writings, including one work about which he seems especially proud: The 2000 report on behalf of the Organization of African Unity, titled Rwanda: The Preventable Genocide.[vi]

Caplan criticizes us for contending that the Rwandan Patriotic Front's '1990 invasion of Rwanda from Uganda was carried out not by Rwandans but by Ugandan forces under Ugandan President Museveni, the RPF being ‘a wing of the Ugandan army’.'[vii] He adds that 'There is no source given for this assertion, which contradicts almost all other histories of the invasion.' But in reality there are many sources for this assertion – and one of them is Caplan himself. Thus in his OAU report, Caplan wrote that on 'October 1, 1990,…the RPF struck with a large, well-organised force led by former senior officers of Museveni's [National Resistance Army],' with the RPF's leadership to be assumed shortly thereafter by 'Paul Kagame, Museveni's former deputy head of military intelligence….' 'Museveni's Uganda had been the birthplace of the RPF,' Caplan pointed out in the same report, 'and his government had continued to support [the RPF] as they fought their way to victory….'[viii] Taken together, Caplan's assertions go well-beyond ours in claiming RPF-origins within the Ugandan army. Yet when we assert this, Caplan accuses us of an 'extraordinary re-writing of history.'

In a similar vein, Caplan mocks us for asserting that the Rwandan field-work by the US investigator Robert Gersony in1994 belongs to a 'whole body of important but suppressed research'[ix] – 'in fact,' Caplan counters, 'the so-called suppressed research by Gersony has been well-known for years.' But looking once again at Caplan's 2000 report for the OAU, we find Caplan writing that Gersony's team 'apparently gathered the first convincing evidence of widespread, systematic killings by the RPF; the UN, however, for reasons never announced, decided to suppress the information….Gersony was told to write no report and he and his team were instructed to speak with no one about their mission….'[x]

Why Caplan would assail us over what we write about the origins of the RPF as 'a wing of the Ugandan army,' as well as the 'suppression' of Gersony's research into RPF killings, when eleven years ago, this was what Caplan himself was writing, is an intriguing question.

CAPLAN’S VERSUS THE ALTERNATIVE VIEW OF THE RWANDA GENOCIDE

The answer, we believe, is that Caplan's real purpose in writing about The Politics of Genocide is simply to discredit it for rejecting the party-line on which Caplan has staked so much of his reputation. In Caplan's words, this party-line claims that 'The signing of the Arusha agreement in 1993 proved the last straw for the Hutu Power extremists….Just before 8:30 p.m. on April 6, 1994, a private jet carrying President Habyarimana…was blown out of the sky. Logic says the deed was organized by Hutu extremists, afraid the president was selling them out….Over the next 100 days, in a carefully coordinated assault organized from the very top of the Rwandan Hutu hierarchy, at least 600,000 and perhaps closer to a million Tutsi were slaughtered….'[xi]

The counter-theme of the relevant section of our book contends that 'all major sectors of the Western establishment swallowed a propaganda line on Rwanda that turned perpetrator and victim upside-down,'[xii] with the Tutsi Paul Kagame and his Tutsi military force, the RPF, acting as both the initiators and the main perpetrators of 1994's mass blood-letting, and subordinating all else to its seizure of state-power in Rwanda. The consequences of this plan include one million or more deaths in Rwanda, several million more in the DRC, perhaps the worst protracted human crisis on the planet over the past two decades – and a supremely well-entrenched dictatorship that now celebrates its 16th year in power, preparing yet again to stage a fake election in August 2010 to rival the one it put on seven years ago, with opposition Hutu parties and candidates prohibited from running against the incumbent, and Kagame's victory by a landslide guaranteed. (Kagame was awarded 95 per cent of the reported vote in 2003.) But as our account of these real and still-ongoing genocides in Central Africa's Great Lakes region is unacceptable to a Kagame-apologist, Caplan attacks us with no holds barred.

CAPLAN’S VERSUS THE ALTERNATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE GENOCIDE’S 'TRIGGERING EVENT'

One central problem for Caplan and the faction that advocates the Kagame-as-savior party-line[xiii] is the evidence on the responsibility for the April 6, 1994 shoot-down of the Falcon-50 jet carrying the Hutu President of Rwanda, Juvenal Habyarimana, the Hutu president of Burundi, Cyprien Ntaryamira, and ten others. Most observers – including Caplan – agree that this was a 'triggering event' or 'immediate cause' of the sequence of mass killings that followed. For Caplan et al., the Habyarimana assassination was carried out by 'Hutu extremists,' but not only is there no serious evidence for this claim, there is very substantial evidence that the shoot-down was organized by Kagame.

As far back as 1996, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) investigated the assassination, and its chief investigator at the time, the Australian lawyer Michael Hourigan, presented then-ICTR Chief Prosecutor Louise Arbour with evidence that Kagame and his RPF were responsible for it.[xiv] Arbour, apparently after consultation with US officials, quickly terminated the investigation, alleging that responsibility for the assassination was outside the jurisdiction of the ICTR. This was false, as the ICTR's mandate covers events taking place in Rwanda from January 1 through December 31, 1994;[xv] but Arbour's quashing the investigation was consistent with her long-standing service to US power, both in its war against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and its support and protection of the Kagame regime.[xvi] As Hourigan told the Danish newspaper Berlingske Tidende in 2006, 'The only time the prosecutor [Arbour] said it was not within the [ICTR's] mandate was when I implicated Kagame.'[xvii]

Caplan explains-away the Arbour-Hourigan episode on the ground that Hourigan's witnesses were merely 'disaffected RPF soldiers,' who later recanted their testimonies. But Hourigan was an experienced investigator capable of evaluating witness evidence. Furthermore, this does not explain why Chief Prosecutor Arbour dropped the subject in early 1997, long before any witness-recantation had occurred. Nor does it explain why the ICTR never again took-up investigation of this 'triggering event' in the 13 years since – unless it was because credible evidence points to Kagame and the RPF.

The French anti-terrorism Judge Jean-Louis Bruguière's inquiry into these events concluded that Kagame needed the 'physical elimination' of Habyarimana in order to seize state-power within Rwanda before the national elections called for by the Arusha Accords,[xviii] elections that Kagame most certainly would have lost, given that his minority Tutsi were greatly outnumbered by the majority Hutu. Bruguière also noted that the RPF alone in Rwanda in 1994 were a well-organized military force, and ready to strike. And the politically weak but militarily strong Kagame-led RPF did strike, resuming their assault on the government of Rwanda immediately following the Habyarimana assassination. In less than 100 days, the Kagame-RPF controlled Rwanda. On the assumption that the shoot-down was central to the larger plan of Hutu Power and genocide, this would have required a miracle of Hutu incompetence; but it would be entirely understandable if it was carried out by Kagame's force as part of their planned program to seize state-power.

There is also the fact that the RPF launched its final assault on the government of Rwanda within two hours of the shoot-down,[xix] which suggests prior knowledge as well as plans and an organization ready for action, whereas the Hutu planners in Caplan’s mythical construction seem to have been disorganized, overmatched, and quickly overpowered. Allan Stam, a Rwanda scholar and former US Special Forces officer, has called attention to the extent to which the military maneuvers by Kagame's RPF after April 6, 1994 were 'staggeringly like the United States invasion of Iraq in 1991,' which he implies Kagame might well have learned in his stay at Fort Leavenworth.[xx] Caplan of course sneers at Stam's credentials, and pretends that he has 'no idea what this means.' But Caplan never explains how the alleged Hutu planners of the 1994 genocide were routed so quickly, while the US-supported and trained Kagame-RPF drove them from power.

Although Kagame runs a violent totalitarian state, and his regime has jailed, driven into exile, and killed dissidents at home and abroad, Caplan does not question the credibility of the witness recantations that he believes undermine the Hourigan case or the regular production of fresh witnesses that support the official Kagame (and Caplan) line. Caplan also finds the 2009 results of the so-called Independent Committee of Experts (i.e., the Mutsinzi Report[xxi]) that Kagame appointed to investigate the assassination to be 'largely persuasive,' as they (needless to say) 'pin the blame directly and fully on a group of Hutu extremists who were simply not prepared to accept the power-sharing provisions of the Arusha Accords.' Typical for Caplan, he adds that only 'genocide deniers, Hutu extremists and Kagame-haters' would reject the findings of investigators appointed by Kagame.[xxii] But these, again, are the words of a Kagame apologist, and they allow us to understand why a disciplined Kigali newspaper such as The New Times would refer to Caplan as a 'leading authority on Genocide and its prevention.'

Among the 'genocide deniers' and 'Kagame haters' who find the Mutsinzi report completely unpersuasive are René Lemarchand, the distinguished scholar on Rwanda, and Luc Marchal, the former chief of the Kigali Sector of UNAMIR (who was working in Kigali in April 1994). Lemarchand finds Caplan’s understanding of the distribution of benefits of the Arusha Agreement badly off the mark – Arusha was not a 'huge victory' for the RPF, he writes, as it gave the Hutu parties 'an overwhelming majority,' and how the shoot-down of Habyarimana’s jet was 'extremely functional' to Hutu extremists is a logic that 'escapes my grasp.'[xxiii] Luc Marchal’s co-authored 'Analysis of the Mutzinzi Report' is devastating, showing convincingly and in detail the lack of independence and limited expertise of the so-called 'Independent Committee of Experts,' and the fact that the Committee 'postulates that the authorities in post-genocide Rwanda had nothing to do with the attack of 6 April 1994,' which begs the most important question and shows the Committee to be 'motivated by ideology.' And Marchal’s analysis describes in detail the Committee’s carefully biased selection of witnesses and crude management of 'evidence.' It was 'a parody of an investigation, the script of which had been written in advance,' the 'sole intention of which was to demonstrate the total innocence of the RPF and the Machiavellian guilt of the Extremist Hutus.'[xxiv] No scholar or honest journalist could have taken the Mutsinzi Report seriously, but Gerald Caplan does.

CAPLAN’S MINIMIZING THE US ROLE IN CENTRAL AFRICA

Caplan objects to our attempts to show the very important role of US policy in Kagame's ascent to power, his takeover of the Rwandan state, and the mass killings that ensued. Caplan does this partly by flamboyant language ('elaborate American conspiracy,' 'obsessive anti-Americanism') and foolish sarcasm ('since thousands of officers from nations around the world have passed through Fort Leavenworth [as did Kagame], you'd think that the thousands of large-scale invasions they would return home and orchestrate would be better-known to the world than they are'). But mainly he does it by suppressing evidence and failing to tie things together. As noted, we mention that Kagame took instruction at the US military base in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Caplan counters that Kagame's stay there was 'very brief' and that 'it was no secret.' Would Caplan find it politically meaningless if it were 'no secret' that a Canadian youth stayed at an Al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan for even a very brief period?

More important, Caplan does not tie Kagame's Fort Leavenworth stay to a large spectrum of other supportive acts and relationships. The United States was a long-time arms supplier to Uganda and the RPF, and it did nothing in the Security Council or otherwise to interfere with the Uganda-RPF invasion of Rwanda in October 1990. (We even cite former Assistant Secretary of State Herman Cohen, who naively wondered why the first Bush administration didn’t '[inform] Ugandan President Museveni that the invasion of Rwanda by uniformed members of the Ugandan army was totally unacceptable….'[xxv]) Caplan ignores the fact that the Arusha Accords[xxvi] of August 1993 forced the government of Rwanda to allow the RPF invading forces to further penetrate Rwanda and participate in (and subvert) the government, and he fails to see that the US support for a reduction in UNAMIR troop levels in April 1994 was not an unfortunate or even reckless error, but consistent with the US policy of facilitating Kagame’s conquest. The government of Rwanda wanted more UN troops, and we cite Rwanda's UN Ambassador Jean-Damascène Bizimana, who on April 21, 1994 told the Security Council that 'in view of the security situation now prevailing in Rwanda, UNAMIR's members should be increased to enable it to contribute to the re-establishment of the cease-fire and to assist in the establishment of security conditions that could bring an end to the violence.'[xxvii] But Paul Kagame didn’t want more UN troops. Hence, the United States didn’t either. In consequence, the Security Council greatly reduced UNAMIR's troops – a bit hard to reconcile with the standard account that the locus of primary responsibility for the 100 days of killings resides with 'Hutu Power' (and killers) and their genocidal plan.

Caplan makes much of the highly publicized expressions of remorse by high-ranking members of the Clinton administration, who 'shamefacedly admitted abandoning the Tutsi,' he writes, and 'consider it perhaps the greatest regret of his/her time in office.' But expressions of regret are cheap and can cover over policies of seeming neglect that are quite purposeful. (Clinton was noted for his sympathetic 'pain' over suffering he inflicted.[xxviii]) Caplan fails to mention that Kagame and his RPF did not want any military intervention that might derail their plans to overthrow the government of Rwanda, so that what he calls 'abandoning the Tutsi' never really happened – four successive US administrations have supported Kagame and the Tutsi, and therefore the monumental mass killings under him, from the RPF’s invasion of Rwanda in 1990 through its 100 day conquest in 1994, all the way to the present. In fact, 'abandoning the Tutsis' is a form of apologetics for the actual US policy of supporting Kagame and his shoot-down and conquest – he was stopping 'genocide' and the United States should have intervened more aggressively to support this leader who was 'saving' Rwanda from Hutu genocidaires!

In short, the Clinton administration viewed the monumental losses of life from April through July 1994 and beyond in both Rwanda and neighbouring countries to be 'worth it,' in the words Madeleine Albright once used when responding to a question about 'half a million' dead Iraqi children from the US-imposed 'sanctions of mass destruction.'[xxix] As then-Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs (now the US Ambassador to the United Nations) Susan Rice reportedly told her colleagues after visiting Central Africa late in Clinton's second term: 'Museveni and Kagame agree that the basic problem in the Great Lakes is the danger of a resurgence of genocide and they know how to deal with that. The only thing we have to do is look the other way.'[xxx] Look the other way – the long-standing US response to what in The Politics of Genocide we call 'benign' bloodbaths, benign because perpetrated by US allies and clients, and serving US interests. Unmentioned in Caplan's 'review' of our book, but worth emphasizing here, we found that a greater disparity exists between the number of deaths (5.4 million) and the attributions of 'genocide' (17) to the killings in the Democratic Republic of Congo than in any other theatre of atrocity we surveyed. Along with the monumental losses of life suffered by the Iraqi population first during the US-UK sanctions regime (1990-2003) and then the US-UK war of aggression and military occupation (2003-), and the few times the establishment media and intellectuals used the term 'genocide' to describe them, we doubt that three finer examples of the politics of genocide can be found in the contemporary world.[xxxi]

CAPLAN MANAGES THE RWANDA NUMBERS

Caplan derides the 'sensational estimate' by Christian Davenport and Allan Stam that one million deaths occurred from April to July 1994, and that the 'majority of victims are likely Hutu and not Tutsi.' The 'methodology employed to arrive at such an Orwellian assertion has been totally discredited,' Caplan adds. But although the Davenport - Stam methodology has never been discredited, and The Politics of Genocide makes important use of their work,[xxxii] Caplan's preferred numbers and assignment of victims, based on no discernible methodology, have long been institutionalized, and Caplan can routinely regurgitate them without fear of rebuttal.

In their 2009 article for Miller - McCune, Davenport and Stam reported the 'most shocking result' of their research: 'The killings in the zone controlled by the FAR [i.e., the Armed Forces of Rwanda] seemed to escalate as the RPF moved into the country and acquired more territory. When the RPF advanced, large-scale killings escalated. When the RPF stopped, large-scale killings largely decreased.'[xxxiii] When we keep in mind the counter-theme of our treatment of Rwanda, that all of the 'widely-accepted facts' defended by Caplan and the rest of 'serious' scholarship turns perpetrator and victim upside-down, the shock dissipates immediately. As the 'only well-organized killing force within Rwanda in 1994,' whenever the RPF advanced, a lot of Rwandans died; and whenever the RPF halted its advances, fewer Rwandans died.

For Caplan, however, as one of his section-headings states, we are merely taking the 'Hutu genocidaires' and turning them into 'dead Hutu victims.' This is hardly the case. But as Caplan himself reports that the 'lowest estimate by serious scholars of Tutsi killed during the 100 days is 500,000 - 600,000,' with some (Caplan included) who 'believe it could be closer to a million,' skepticism towards the standard model of the 'Rwanda genocide' is unavoidable. Would it not have been incredible for Kagame’s Tutsi forces to conquer Rwanda in 100 days, and yet the number of minority Tutsi deaths be greater than the number of majority Hutu deaths by a ratio of something like three-to-one? Surely then we would have to count Rwanda 1994 as the only country in history where the victims of genocide triumphed over those who committed genocide against them, and wiped the territory clean of its 'genocidaires' at the same time. If ever a prima facie case existed for doubting the collective wisdom of 'academics, human rights activists, [and] journalists' whose opinions the establishment respects, we find it here, with the alleged Hutu perpetrators routed and fleeing for their lives in neighbouring countries, and the alleged Tutsi victims in complete control.

Caplan does acknowledge Tutsi killings of Hutus, but he fails to mention our citation of a memorandum to the US Secretary State from September 1994 that '10,000 or more Hutu civilians per month' were being killed by Tutsi cadres. That is a lot of civilians per month – and these killings continued into 1995 and well beyond, as both Rwandan Hutu refugees and the Congolese Hutu already living in eastern Zaire became targets of cross-border RPF attacks. But this State Department memorandum was never made public (except as part of the defence exhibits at the ICTR),and its content did not in the least affect Clinton administration support of the RPF killers, who were busy at work in the eastern DRC at the very time President Bill Clinton delivered his fraudulent but no less celebrated apology in Rwanda. Also striking, the ICTR has never indicted a single Tutsi for any crime that falls within its mandate. This tells us a great deal about the real role played by the ICTR in securing impunity for the RPF – including its treatment of the Hourigan evidence and the 'triggering event' – while relentlessly pursuing its targets. For Caplan, this role is taken as a given and presumably just.

CAPLAN ON THE ROLE OF THE 1993 HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION

Caplan objects to our comments about the 1993 International Commission of Inquiry into Human Rights Abuses in Rwanda. But he neither quotes nor summarizes the case we make: that this commission participated in a destabilization and regime-change campaign in which the spotlight and accusation-propaganda of the United States and the many NGOs that flock to its side were directed at the Habyarimana government. Despite its name, the commission's actual inquiry was not into human rights abuses inside Rwanda, but rather into human rights abuses allegedly committed by the government of Rwanda, whose national territory had been under assault by the invading RPF for close to two-and-one-half-years. As commission co-chair Alison Des Forges observed (and we quote), the March 8, 1993 release of the commission's report 'put Rwandan [sic] human rights abuses squarely before the international community'[xxxiv] – that is, it put the Habyarimana government's alleged abuses squarely before the 'international community,' the invading RPF's human rights abuses barely mentioned.

We also point out that William Schabas, the Canadian member of the commission, issued a press release in conjunction with the commission's report that bore the title, 'Genocide and War Crimes in Rwanda.' ('[G]enocide is,' Caplan writes elsewhere, 'the crime of crimes.') To quote The Politics of Genocide: '[W]ith the brunt of its findings coming down against the Habyarimana government, the commission's work served to delegitimize the government of Rwanda and enhance the legitimacy of the armed forces of the RPF. As the RPF quickly used the commission's claims to justify a new killing spree, we believe the case can be made that the overall impact of this report…was to underwrite the mass killings to follow….'[xxxv] True, Caplan may not understand our point or, understanding it perfectly well, may reject it and therefore prefer to muddy the waters around it. But the general point we make about the foreign-policy tool of focusing on the alleged human rights abuses committed by a target of US destabilization and regime-change, while ignoring the abuses of the armed forces attacking it, is unmistakable, and cannot be dismissed as claiming a 'great American conspiracy in Rwanda.'

CAPLAN’S ACCOMMODATION TO VIOLATIONS OF FREEDOM OF SPEECH

Caplan finds no serious problem with Kagame's laws criminalizing 'genocide denial' and a litany of similar thought-crimes, [xxxvi] laws which allow someone who defends political targets accused by Kagame of promoting 'genocide ideology' to be charged with exactly the same crimes. US attorney Peter Erlinder was arrested on the basis of these laws in late May, after he flew to Kigali to take up the defense of Victoire Ingabire Umhoza, the leader of the United Democratic Forces - Inkingi party, who herself had been arrested on 'genocidal denial' charges in April.[xxxvii] Caplan justified Erlinder's arrest on the ground that Erlinder entered Rwanda with the full-knowledge that he was guilty of 'questioning the Kagame version of events,' in Erlinder's words.[xxxviii] Caplan ignores the fact that Kagame's 'genocide denial' laws and the arrests of his critics and opponents are the work of a totalitarian regime, but Caplan contends that Ingabire and Erlinder had it coming – Ingabire because 'she [told] reporters she doesn't know whether more Tutsi or more Hutu were killed' in 1994, and Erlinder because '[his] presence is like a sharp slap in the face to all survivors of the genocide.'[xxxix] Caplan shows himself to be completely committed to the version of history embedded in Rwanda's 'genocide denial' laws, and he is willing to see them enforced by state power.

Erlinder has never denied that mass-atrocities and genocide were committed in Rwanda, and that a large number of Tutsi as well as Hutu were slaughtered there. However, Erlinder finds these terrible events centred in Kagame’s RPF invasion and takeover programs and efforts – as we do. Yet as Caplan cannot even allow the possibility of a debate on this subject, Erlinder is simply a 'genocide denier.'

Caplan also takes issue with what he calls Erlinder's 'intellectual dishonesty.' According to Caplan, Erlinder, a lead defence counsel for the Hutu former Major Aloys Ntabakuze in the Military 1 trial, is guilty of falsifying the trial chamber's December 2008 Judgment in this case. As Caplan describes it:

in none of his frequent references to this judgment has Erlinder thought it worth including the following statements from the judgment: 1. ‘Indeed, these preparations [by the accused] are completely consistent with a plan to commit genocide.’ 2. ‘It cannot be excluded that the extended campaign of violence directed against Tutsis, as such, became an added or an altered component of these preparations.’

Both of the sentences to which Caplan gives the numbers 1 and 2 occur in paragraph 2110 of the December 2008 Judgment. In-between these two sentences, however, there appear two other sentences that Caplan himself omits. These sentences read: 'However, [these preparations] are also consistent with preparations for a political or military power struggle. The Chamber recalls that, when confronted with circumstantial evidence, it may only convict where it is the only reasonable inference.'[xl]

Caplan thus omits the reason given by the trial chamber for acquitting the four Hutu defendants in Military 1 of the most serious charge that can be brought against them at the ICTR: Conspiracy to Commit Genocide. As the government of Rwanda's response to the assassination of Habyarimana and the renewed military offensive by the RPF was consistent with both a 'plan to commit genocide' and a 'political or military power struggle' (the defence arguing the latter), the 'conspiracy to commit genocide' charge was rejected by the trial chamber. As we showed at the outset with respect to his carelessness as a reviewer, here Caplan recklessly accuses Erlinder of 'intellectual dishonesty,' when it is Caplan who clearly is guilty of the charge.

CAPLAN, RWANDA, AND MEDIA ACCESS

Caplan wants readers to believe that challenges to the 'Rwanda genocide' model that he guards so zealously are few and far between, that none of them are intellectually serious, and that it is only the 'vast power of the internet [which] makes them seem ubiquitous and forceful.' The 45 authors he says 'agree there was a genocide planned and executed by a cabal of leading Hutu extremists against Rwanda's Tutsi minority' may seem large in number, but Caplan worries that the internet greatly extends the reach of the 'genocide deniers,' and fringe crazies such as Erlinder, Robin Philpot, Christopher Black, Christian Davenport, Allan Stam, and Michael Hourigan (not to mention the two of us) enjoy a 'vastly disproportionate pride of place.'

To test Caplan's claim about the disproportionate coverage of the alleged 'genocide deniers,' we used the Factiva database to assemble a modest media universe, and found that whereas Caplan has had at least 22 bylined articles related to Rwanda within this media universe, not a single article by any of these six critics turned up.

Not only does Caplan himself thus enjoy a disproportionate access to the establishment media, but he has used his access to attack the so-called 'deniers' by name: Robin Philpot in three of his articles, Christian Davenport in two, and Michael Hourigan in two as well.[xli] 'Google Rwanda and you're quite likely get a deniers' rant featuring the tiny band of usual suspects,' Caplan wrote in 2009, disguising himself as a lonely voice in the wilderness, 'French Judge Bruguiere, former UN Rwanda chief Jacques-Roger Booh-Booh, Robin Philpot, former Australian investigator Michael Hourigan, American academic Christian Davenport – each enthusiastically citing the others as their proof that the entire so-called genocide was really an American imperial plot.'[xlii] The data show once again that Gerald Caplan misrepresents reality.

It is also of interest that that the poor victimized Caplan not only dominates the 'deniers' in the establishment Western media, he has access to and is appreciated in The New Times, the Kigali-based English-language newspaper that is friendly with and possibly sponsored by the Kagame dictatorship. As we noted earlier, that paper profiled Caplan as a 'leading authority on Genocide and its prevention.' This all fits our framework of analysis: the United States steadfastly supports Kagame, establishment US and Western media support also flows to Kagame, and Caplan enjoys media access while the 'deniers' are marginalized – and of course Kagame's media appreciate Caplan too. Whether in the Toronto Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, or Kigali's New Times, it is the man who repeats the institutionalized truths about Rwanda whose voice is privileged.

Caplan makes another serious error of fact, claiming that the Rwanda genocide has been given scant attention in the West. Readers of The Politics of Genocide will see the use of the word 'genocide' in the establishment media has been far greater for the Rwanda case than any other arena of mass killing in recent decades – 3,199, as compared with only 17 for the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 80 for the 'sanctions of mass destruction' era in Iraq, and 13 for the period of the US-UK invasion and occupation of Iraq, both of which caused Iraqi deaths in numbers comparable to that in Rwanda 1994.[xliii]

CAPLAN, KAGAME, AND THE DRC

From the very first UN report in 2001 on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and Other Forms of Wealth of the Democratic Republic of Congo,[xliv] the invading Rwanda Patriotic Army as well as Ugandan military commanders and civilians have been identified as leading the mass-scale looting of the DRC, and the bloodshed that accompanied it. As the two major foreign state actors at work inside the DRC, Rwanda and Uganda long had established what the UN calls 'elite networks,' structures parallel to and working in conjunction with Rwandan and Ugandan authorities, and organized to manage the 'mechanisms for revenue generation,…once their troops have departed.'[xlv] At their core, these 'elite networks' are comprised of political, military, business, and even false militia and 'rebel' fronts, and maintain their control of territory through intimidation, threats, and violence. By the late 1990s, they had already 'built up a self-financing war economy centred on mineral exploitation,' with the 'looting that was previously conducted by the armies themselves…replaced with organized systems of embezzlement, tax fraud, extortion, the use of stock options as kickbacks and diversion of State funds….'[xlvi]

The UN rejected the RPF's rationale that its armed forces' continued presence in the Rwanda-controlled area of the eastern DRC was needed to defend Rwanda against hostile Hutu forces terrorizing the border region and threatening to invade it. '[T]o use the term employed by the Congo Desk of the Rwandan Patriotic Army,' the UN's 2002 report countered, the 'real long-term purpose is…to 'secure property'.'[xlvii] By September 2002, the UN was estimating that 3.5 million more people had died in the five eastern provinces of the DRC than would have died, had the wars launched by Rwanda and Uganda for the DRC's mineral wealth never occurred. 'These deaths are a direct result of the occupation [of the DRC] by Rwanda and Uganda,' the UN's 2002 report concluded. 'Extensive mortality, especially mortality among children, is the consequence of a cycle of aggression, the multiplication of armed forces, a high frequency of conflict and its consequences, especially displacement.'[xlviii] In The Politics of Genocide, we cite a later mortality survey that estimated 5.4 million deaths in the eastern DRC through April 2007, but even this estimate is more than three years old.[xlix] Moreover, as we point out, the DRC's 'foreign exploiters are the United States, Britain, France, and other African states allied with the West – most notably Rwanda and Uganda. Hence, it is the Congo's vastly greater death toll over ten years that has been truly ignored….'[l]

Gerald Caplan has long downplayed the catastrophe in the DRC and especially the Kagame regime's role in causing this catastrophe. In his 2004 essay, 'The Genocide Problem: 'Never Again' All Over Again,'[li] Caplan refers to genocide in Rwanda and genocide in Darfur – but never once to genocide in the DRC. Instead, Caplan refers merely to the 'ongoing calamity in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo;' and in a passage that made him no enemies in the Kagame regime, he laments how 'Not a single French politician has been held accountable for allowing the [Hutu] genocidaires to escape from Rwanda to Zaire/Congo, thereby setting in motion the catastrophic wars that have since plagued the African Great Lakes region.'

Of course, in his references to the genocide in Rwanda, Caplan means only the killings attributable to Hutus, not the vast numbers slaughtered by Kagame. (Recall the '10,000 or more Hutu civilians per month' referred to in an internal State Department report.) This stress on Hutu villainy repeats the Kagame regime's rationale for its military presence in the DRC, allegedly chasing down the fugitive genocidaires. But if the UN and other reports are correct, and deaths in the Kagame- (and Museveni-) controlled areas of the eastern DRC have run into the several millions, then Caplan's evasions about their source, and the intellectual cover he provides for whatever Kagame does, make Caplan not merely a genocide denier – they make Caplan a genocide facilitator, who all these years later, is still hard at work providing cover for Kagame.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* This article was originally published by Monthly Review.
* Edward S. Herman is professor emeritus of finance at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, and has written extensively on economics, political economy and the media. David Peterson is an independent journalist and researcher based in Chicago. Together they are co-authors of 'The Politics of Genocide', recently published by Monthly Review Press.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

NOTES

[i] Gerald Caplan, 'The Politics of denialism: The strange case of Rwanda. Review of 'The Politics of Genocide',' Pambazuka News (No. 486), June 17, 2010.
[ii] We take this description of Caplan from Edmund Kagire, 'Author Calls for Upholding 'Never Again' Principle,' The New Times (Kigali), January 8, 2010. Caplan was visiting Rwanda to deliver a lecture before the country's National Commission for the Fight Against Genocide.
[iii] See Edward S. Herman and David Peterson, The Politics of Genocide (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2010), pp. 51-68. For an electronic copy of this section of our book, see 'Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo in the Propaganda System,' Monthly Review 62, no. 1, May, 2010.
[iv] On the analytic framework that we use to explain (largely) US media coverage of different mass atrocities around the world, see Herman and Peterson, The Politics of Genocide, pp. 15-17; and for three tables that represent attributions of 'genocide' to different theaters of atrocities, see p. 35, p. 38, and p. 72. In focusing on our treatment of Rwanda and the DRC, Caplan ignores the fact that we apply the same analytic framework to Iraq, Darfur, Bosnia - Herzegovina, Kosovo, the Israeli - Palestinian conflict, Croatia, Afghanistan, Turkey, East Timor, El Salvador, and Guatemala. In the three paragraphs that Caplan devotes to our book's thesis, he writes that he is 'not at all sure that it's helpful to explore these issues against a frame of genocide.' In fact, we study the actual usage of the term by others, as they apply it (or not) to different theaters of atrocities. But as readers of our book ought to recognize, its content is irrelevant to Caplan's 'review.'
[v] René Lemarchand, 'Doubts on the Veracity of Mutsinzi Report,' Pambazuka News (No. 467), January 28, 2010.
[vi] See Rwanda: The Preventable Genocide, International Panel of Eminent Personalities, Organization of African Unity, 2000.
[vii] Herman and Peterson, The Politics of Genocide, p. 53.
[viii] Rwanda: The Preventable Genocide, para. 6.17, para. 6.12, and para. 20.23.
[ix] See Herman and Peterson, The Politics of Genocide, pp. 57-59, where we assess the work not only of Robert Gersony (including its synopsis by a September 1994 memorandum for US Secretary of State Warren Christopher that reported the RPF was '[killing] 10,000 or more Hutu civilians per month'), but also the valuable work of the US academics Christian Davenport and Allan Stam.
[x] Rwanda: The Preventable Genocide, para. 22.9, para. 22.12, emphasis added.
[xi] Gerald Caplan, 'The Rwandan Genocide,' in The Betrayal of Africa (Toronto: Groundwork Books, 2008), pp. 78-80; here p. 79.
[xii] Herman and Peterson, The Politics of Genocide, p. 51.
[xiii] For one example of what we mean by the Kagame-as-savior party-line, see Philip Gourevitch, 'The Life After,' New Yorker, May 4, 2009. To this day, Kagame is feted in the Western metropolitan centers, but nowhere near as obsequiously as in the United States and Canada.
[xiv] See Affidavit of Michael Andrew Hourigan, International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, November 27, 2006. For other sources that discuss the suppression of the Hourigan memorandum, see Robin Philpot, Rwanda 1994: Colonialism Dies Hard (E-Text as posted to the Taylor Report Website, 2004), esp. Chap. 6, 'It shall be called a plan crash'; Mark Colvin, 'Questions unanswered 10 years after Rwandan genocide,' PM, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, March 30, 2004; Mark Doyle, 'Rwanda 'plane crash probe halted',' BBC News, February 9, 2007; Nick McKenzie, 'UN 'shut down' Rwanda probe,' The Age, February 10, 2007; and Tiphaine Dickson, 'Rwanda's Deadliest Secret: Who Shot Down President Habyarimana's Plane?' Global Research.com, November 24, 2008.
[xv] See Statute of the International Tribunal for Rwanda, Annex, UN Security Council Resolution 955 (S/RES/955), November 8, 1994. Article 1 of the Statute states: 'The International Tribunal for Rwanda shall have the power to prosecute persons responsible for serious violations of international humanitarian law committed in the territory of Rwanda and Rwandan citizens responsible for such violations committed in the territory of neighbouring States, between 1 January 1994 and 31 December 1994,...' The qualification 'in the territory of neighbouring States' ought to be especially troubling for the Kagame-RPF, as many of the Hutu it killed were refugees who had fled Rwanda for what was then eastern Zaire (now the DRC).
[xvi] In 1996, the Canadian Louise Arbour was vetted for the job of Chief Prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia by US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, and in this role, Arbour did everything that could b asked of her to expedite the US-led NATO bloc's war against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. See Michael Mandel, How America Gets Away With Murder: Illegal Wars, Collateral Damage, and Crimes Against Humanity (Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Press, 2004), pp 131-132, citing Carol Off, The Lion, the Fox, and the Eagle (Random House, Canada, 2000), p. 289.
[xvii] Bjørn Willum, 'Terrorattentatet FN ikke vil høre om,' Berlingske Tidende (Denmark), December 10, 2006. (»Det eneste tidspunkt chefanklageren sagde, det ikke var indenfor mandatet var, da jeg implicerede Kagame.«)
[xviii] Judge Jean-Louis Bruguière, Request for the Issuance of International Arrest Warrants, Tribunal de Grande Instance de Paris, November 17, 2006, p. 12 (as archived by the Taylor Report website).
[xix] See Allan C. Stam, 'Coming to a New Understanding of the Rwanda Genocide,' a lecture before the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, University of Michigan, February 18, 2009, shortly after the 22:30 mark.
[xx] Ibid, shortly after the 22:30 mark.
[xxi] See Dr. Jean Mutsinzi et al., Report into the Investigation of the Causes and Circumstances of and Responsibility for the Attack of 06/04/1994 Against the Falcon 50 Rwandan Presidential Aeroplane, Registration Number 9XR-NN (a.k.a. The Mutsinzi Report), Independent Committee of Experts, Republic of Rwanda, 2009.
[xxii] Gerald Caplan, 'Who killed the president of Rwanda?' Pambazuka News (No. 466), January 21, 2010.
[xxiii] Lemarchand, 'Doubts on the Veracity of Mutsinzi Report.'
[xxiv] Luc Marchal et al., 'Analysis of the Mutsinzi Report,' CirqueMinime, February 8, 2010.
[xxv] Herman and Peterson, The Politics of Genocide, p. 53.
[xxvi] See the Peace Agreement between the Government of the Republic of Rwanda and the Rwandese Patriotic Front, signed at Arusha on 4 August 1993 (A/48/824-S/26915), U.N. General Assembly, December 23, 1993. A total of seven documents were gathered together as the 'Arusha Peace Accords,' the earliest the N'Sele Cease-fire Agreement dating from 1991.
[xxvii] 'The situation concerning Rwanda,' UN Security Council (S/PV.3368), April 21, 1994, 6.
[xxviii] 'The international community,' President Bill Clinton said in Kigali, 'together with nations in Africa, must bear its share of responsibility for this tragedy as well. We did not act quickly enough after the killing began. We should not have allowed the refugee camps to become safe haven for the killers. We did not immediately call these crimes by their rightful name: genocide.' ('Clinton's Painful Words Of Sorrow and Chagrin,' New York Times, March 26, 1998.) But from the point of view of genuine contrition, admitting to which ethical and legal lapse is more serious: crimes of omission or crimes of commission? The speaker of these words admitted the former, not the latter. As we note above, Kagame and his RPF did not want any military intervention that might derail their plans to overthrow the government of Rwanda, so that what Caplan calls 'abandoning the Tutsi' never really happened.
[xxix] Lesley Stahl, 'Punishing Saddam,' 60 Minutes, CBS TV, May 12, 1996.
[xxx] In Gérard Prunier, Africa’s World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 339. Note that Prunier himself attributes this quote to an anonymous 'member of [Susan Rice's] staff' (p. 339). The claim that the 'gist of Prunier's anecdote is correct, except that participants have confirmed to me that it was Rice herself who spoke these words,' we take from Howard W. French, 'Kagame's Hidden War in the Congo,' New York Review of Books, September 24, 2009.
[xxxi] Herman and Peterson, The Politics of Genocide, p. 68, and pp. 29-38. Also see esp. Table 1, 'Differential attributions of 'genocide' to different theaters of atrocities,' p. 35.
[xxxii] Herman and Peterson, The Politics of Genocide, pp. 58-59.
[xxxiii] Christian Davenport and Allan C. Stam, 'What Really Happened in Rwanda?' Miller-McCune, October 6, 2009.
[xxxiv] Alison Des Forges, 'Leave None to Tell the Story': Genocide in Rwanda (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1999), p. 93; in Herman and Peterson, The Politics of Genocide, p. 65.
[xxxv] Herman and Peterson, The Politics of Genocide, p. 66.
[xxxvi] See Constitution of the Republic of Rwanda, June 4, 2003, and its Amendments (as posted to the website of the Rwandan Ministry of Defense), specifically Article 13, 'Revisionism, negationism and trivialization of genocide are punishable by the law,' and Article 9, which commits the Rwandan government to 'fighting the ideology of genocide and all its manifestations.' Also see Law Relating to the Punishment of the Crime of Genocide Ideology (No. 18/2008), Codes and Laws of Rwanda, Ministry of Justice, Republic of Rwanda, July 23, 2008.
[xxxvii] See Edward S. Herman and David Peterson, 'Peter Erlinder Jailed by One of the Major Genocidaires of Our Era – Update,' MRZine, June 17, 2010.
[xxxviii] See Peter Erlinder, 'The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda: International Justice or Juridically-Constructed 'Victor’s Impunity'?' May, 2008. As Erlinder also pointed out in the same article: 'The Rwandan Government, with US and UK support, is actively campaigning to have ALL of the ICTR cases transferred to Rwanda. No one at the ICTY is suggesting transferring Croats to Serbia when the ICTY shuts down. The Kagame Regime also wants at ICTR records to be transferred to Kigali and has issued 40,000 warrants for 'genocidaires' in the Rwandan diaspora, both Hutu’s and Tutsi’s, who are making common cause to bring down a regime that the Economist called the 'most repressive in Africa' in April 2004.'
[xxxix] Gerald Caplan, 'The Law Society of Upper Canada and genocide denial In Rwanda,' Toronto Globe and Mail (Web exclusive), June 11, 2010. Also see Caplan, 'The Politics of denialism,' para. 8-12. Caplan's Globe and Mail defense of Kagame's totalitarian laws received a sharp rebuttal by the University of Texas at Austin Professor Alan J. Kuperman, 'Interpreting genocide,' Letter, Toronto Globe and Mail, June 14, 2010.
[xl] Judge Eric Mose et al., Judgment, The Prosecutor v. Theoneste Bagosora et al. (ICTR-98-41-T), International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, December 18, 2008, Sect. 2.1, 'The Conspiracy to Commit Genocide,' para. 2084-2112; here para. 2110.
[xli] Factiva database searches carried out for five sources on July 1, 2010, for all available dates. The five sources were All Africa, Montreal Gazette, Ottawa Citizen, Toronto Globe and Mail, and Toronto Star. The basic search parameters were rst=(afnws or mtlg or otct or glob or tor) and Rwanda and [name]. The results were then checked for items appearing under the individual's byline. Of the seven individuals whose names we used Factiva to check (Gerald Caplan, Christopher Black, Christian Davenport, Peter Erlinder, Michael Hourigan, Robin Philpot, and Allan Stam), the only bylines that we found belonged to Gerald Caplan.
[xlii] Gerald Caplan, 'Memory And Denial – the Genocide Fifteen Years On,' All Africa, April 8, 2009. This same article first appeared in Pambazuka News ('Memory And Denial – the Genocide Fifteen Years On,' No. 426, April 2, 2009), and then The New Times (Kigali), from which All Africa re-circulated it.
[xliii] See Herman and Peterson, The Politics of Genocide, Table 1, 'Differential attributions of 'genocide' to different theaters of atrocities,' p. 35.
[xliv] See Safiatou Ba-N'Daw et al., Report of the Panel of Experts on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and Other Forms of Wealth of the Democratic Republic of Congo (S/2001/357), UN Security Council, April, 2001; Mahmoud Kassem et al., Report of the Panel of Experts on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and Other Forms of Wealth of the Democratic Republic of Congo (S/2002/1146), UN Security Council, October, 2002; Mahmoud Kassem et al., Report of the Panel of Experts on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and Other Forms of Wealth of the Democratic Republic of Congo (S/2003/1027), UN Security Council, October, 2003; and Jason Stearns et al., Final Report of the Group of Experts on the Democratic Republic of Congo (S/2008/773), UN Security Council, November, 2008.
[xlv] Kassem et al., Report of the Panel of Experts on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and Other Forms of Wealth of the Democratic Republic of Congo (S/2002/1146), UN Security Council, October, 2002, para. 13.
[xlvi] Ibid, para. 12 - 21; here para. 21, para. 12, and para. 19.
[xlvii] Ibid, para. 65 - 96; here para. 65. As this 2002 report also states: 'The elite network's operations in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo are managed centrally from the [Rwanda Patriotic Army] Congo Desk, which serves to link the commercial and military activities of the RPA' (para. 70).
[xlviii] Ibid, para. 96.
[xlix] Herman and Peterson, The Politics of Genocide, p. 43, citing Benjamin Coghlan et al., Mortality in the Democratic Republic of Congo: An Ongoing Crisis, International Rescue Committee - Burnet Institute, January, 2008.
[l] Herman and Peterson, The Politics of Genocide, pp. 43-44.
[li] Gerald Caplan, 'The Genocide Problem: 'Never Again' All Over Again,' The Walrus, October, 2004.