More Missing Puzzle Pieces for Inquiring Minds or Possibly Trolls

Recently a guest left a comment that rather than respond to in the comment section, I thought the comment deserved it’s own post. I will be happy to engage you (Ngabo) in actual conversation and discussion, if that is your intent. However, I don’t tolerate trolling. So please, read first, and show your stupidity later. Your “enlightening” post unfortunately displays a very deep hollow where knowlege should be. But I’m more than happy to engage you still.

Ngabo starts off denying documented and historical facts by saying:

Your blog makes some interesting points,however it contains lots of falsehoods. I begin to doubt your sense of reason when you make such conspiratorial statements like “RPF through Uganda with backing from the USA and the UK initiated their 15 year genocidal plan that is ongoing in the Congo today.”–That is just plain bull. You know that, and many intellectuals like you who distort historical facts know that.

And while this blog is not big enough to hold all the documented evidence and information supporting my statements,   I will give you ONE such example. Roger Winter, as Executive Director of the United States Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, gave direct physical and financial support to the RPF during the war in Rwanda. However, his support began years before the 1990 invasion of Rwanda by the RPF began. Keith Snow writes on Roger Winter:

The Association of Banyarwanda in Diaspora USA, assisted by Roger Winter, organized the International Conference on the Status of Banyarwanda [Tutsi] Refugees in Washington, DC in 1988, and this is where a military solution to the Tutsi problem was chosen. The U.S. Committee for Refugees reportedly provided accommodation and transportation.

But don’t take Keith Snow’s word for it. Roger Winter in his own words as described by Eliza Griswald on a profile piece she did on him:

But it was his experience working with Tutsis displaced from Rwanda — before the genocide began — that made him move on to the conflict zones themselves. Soon he was riding on the front lines in Rwanda in 1994 with the Rwandan Patriotic Front led by Paul Kagame. During the genocide, he flew home every few weeks to brief the U.S. government on what he witnessed firsthand. President Clinton’s later statements that he had not been fully aware of what was happening caused Winter, he says, to leave the Democratic Party.

Still not convinced? Maybe this is a bit less “conspiratorial” for you:

During those years, Washington was providing small amounts of training to the Ugandan Army – and to its Tutsi offshoot. One example is widely known: Kagame’s training in 1990 at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. That same October, Fred Rwigyema led a surprise Tutsi attack inside Rwanda, moving to within 60 miles of Kigali, the capital, where the French helped fend them off. Rwigyema died under mysterious circumstances, and Kagame rushed home to take command of Tutsi forces. Did the Americans know by then that Kagame, a senior officer in the Ugandan Army, was also a top Tutsi insurgent? If they did not, someone should be shot – and not just at the Pentagon.

Washington would have gotten some of its best information from nominally independent refugee aid groups, who had a long – and some would say distinguished – history of working closely with both the State Department and Central Intelligence Agency. For the Tutsi refugees, the most visible player in this shadowy, ill-defined world was Roger Winter, now Assistant Administrator at USAID. From the early 1980s, Winter ran the U.S. Committee on Refugees, a private Non-Governmental Organization. Washington provided some 75% of his NGO’s budget, but Winter – unlike overt government officials – was free to help the Tutsis organize a conference in Washington in August 1988. The meeting greatly increased support from exiles outside Uganda to the political wing of the Tutsi army, the Rwandan Patriotic Front.

The RPF, as it was known, played down its Tutsi roots, called itself multi-ethnic, and placed prominent Hutu dissidents in leadership posts. But Kagame and his Tutsi associates kept it – and their army – under firm control, and continued to press for a change in the Hutu government of President Juvenal Habyarimana that would permit the refugees to return to Rwanda. Washington increased its support for Musaveni’s Uganda, which permitted his military to give increasing supplies of munitions, automatic rifles, mortars, artillery, and Soviet-designed Katyusha multiple rocket systems to Kagame’s Tutsi troops. With this support, the Tutsis stepped up their incursions into Rwanda from their Ugandan bases. The escalating attacks caused nearly a million Rwandans to flee their homes, which only strengthened the Hutu hardliners in selling their final solution. The attacks also persuaded the French, who saw an American (and British) hand in the Tutsi effort, to increase their support for the Hutus. Africa was seeing a new kind of proxy war.

How is that for proof of United States support of the RPF? Roger Winter is a very well known “lobbyist” with a lot of influence in US policy in Africa. So it does not take a genius, although in your case, a moderately intelligent person, to deduce that the RPF received backing from the USA through at least, one Roger Winter.

As usual, it did not take long for Ngabo to bring up another typical talking point, which was just disapproved at the ICTR. But I guess Ngabo doesn’t read much these days, or he/she spends his/her time reasserting the same debunked myths regarding the Rwandan Genocide either because he/she doesn’t know any better, or does so purposefully, or both. He/she says:

Its people like you,who masquerade hate speech into some form of intellectual discourse, that are doing an injustice to our people. The majority of Hutus in Rwanda who took part in the senseless massacres were duped by a small group of elites who cared more for their political interests. Indeed Hutus and Tutsi’s were killed during the period of 1990-1994. However the difference–as has been recognized by the international community of impartial intellectuals–is that Tutsi’s were targeted solely because of their ethnicity. That makes it a genocide according to article 2 of the UN convention. There was a deliberate and systematic attempt to destroy an ethnic and national group (based on how you define Tutsi’s)

Ngabo, you must have missed this:

judgments in the Military-I trial completely rejected the Prosecution theory of long-term planning and conspiracy to commit genocide by members of the former Rwandan military leadership. All four defendants were found “not guilty” of all counts charging conspiracy to commit genocide, based on the Chambers ruling that their actions prior to April 6, 1994  were based on war-time conditions, not planning to kill civilians or to carry out a genocide against Tutsi Rwandans.

And this:

This raises the more profound question: if there was no conspiracy and no planning to kill ethnic civilians, can the tragedy that engulfed Rwanda properly be called “a genocide” at all? Or, was it closer to a case of civilians being caught up in war-time violence, like the Eastern Front in WWII, rather than the planned behind-the-lines killings in Nazi death camps? The ICTR judgment found the former.

The Court specifically found that the actions of Rwandan military leaders, both before any after the April 6, 1994 assassination of former Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarima, were consistent with war-time conditions and the massive chaos brought about by the four-year war of invasion from Uganda by Gen. Paul Kagame’s RPF army, which seized power in July 1994.

Although the Chamber did not specifically mention more recent events, it is worth noting that this is the same government that was named in a UN Security Council commissioned report on December 12, 2008 as having invaded the eastern Congo (with Uganda) in 1996 and again in 1998 and have occupied an area 15-times the size of Rwanda since that time. Similar UN Security Council reports in 2001, 2002 and 2003, make clear that Rwanda and Uganda’s economic rape of the eastern Congo, and the resulting 6 million-plus civilian deaths, have long been an “open secret.”

Also, what impartial “international community” is Ngabo referring to? Is it Roger Winter? A well known, self asserting RPF agent? Is it Alison DesForge? A well know RPF agent and opportunist? Who is the “international community” that is so impartial, it’s found Kagame and the RPF guilty of war crimes, and crimes against Humanity? Ngabo is possibly referring to the Spanish and French Judges, or maybe, the December 2008 United Nations Report that found Kagame and his army guilty of ongoing heinous crimes in DRC. Oh…that’s not what Ngabo was referring to, but what he/she omitted from his/her answer.

Then Ngabo continues:

Now, when the rebel attacked Rwanda in 1990,they were attempting to return home–to a country that they had as much a right to inhibit as you did.You call them ‘angry rebels’ and deservedly so. Who wouldn’t be angry at being denied the right to their homeland.

There is no argument here that the socalled rebels or Ugandan army or whatever they were at the time, could or should have returned to their homeland. However, they violated plenty of human rights laws when they disturbed peace, and invaded a sovereign nation. And later, they went on to assassinate two presidents, and still walk around today with impunity.They harbor war criminals within their ranks including such terrorists as Nkunda. It’s a pity.

However, like many before him/her, Ngabo closes off with this little gem right here:

I can’t stop you and others of your intellectual ilk from denying the genocide,indeed,many European and American intellectuals deny that the Jewish holocaust ever occurred. People like you and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have a right to your opinions. However,i am afraid for the millions who fall prey to your slanted and manipulated facts.
If your intellectual convictions do not hold you accountable,history will.

And I am now convinced that Ngabo is purposefully ignorant of the facts, but has the potential to learn. This would not be typical conversation with a sympathizer if one of those gag orders was not exercised, namely, comparison between illumination of facts, and socially reprehensible individuals or assertion of genocide denial. And I just have to stop and laugh, because apparantly, “kagame is a war criminal/RPF guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity” = “genocide denial” AHAHAHAHAHAHA. Wait…wait….ahahahahahahahaha. Woo. Too funny.

Stop being such Kagame apologists people. He’s guilty. He knows it. And the whole world will soon know it too.

And agreed, history will judge.

The Darfur the West Isn’t Recognizing as It Moralizes About the Region

NYT By HOWARD W. FRENCH

For many who survey an African landscape strewn with political wreckage, nowadays merely to raise the subject of European colonialism, which formally ended across most of the continent five decades ago, is to ring alarm bells of excuse making.

Clearly, the African disaster most in view today is Sudan, or more specifically the dirty war that has raged since 2003 in that country’s western region, Darfur.

Rare among African conflicts, it exerts a strong claim on our conscience. By instructive contrast, more than five million people have died as a result of war in Congo since 1998, the rough equivalent at its height of a 2004 Asian tsunami striking every six months, without stirring our diplomats to urgency or generating much civic response.

Mahmood Mamdani, a Ugandan-born scholar at Columbia University and the author of “When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and Genocide in Rwanda,” is one of the most penetrating analysts of African affairs. In “Saviors and Survivors: Darfur, Politics, and the War on Terror,” he has written a learned book that reintroduces history into the discussion of the Darfur crisis and questions the logic and even the good faith of those who seek to place it at the pinnacle of Africa’s recent troubles. It is a brief, he writes, “against those who substitute moral certainty for knowledge, and who feel virtuous even when acting on the basis of total ignorance.”

Mr. Mamdani does not dismiss a record of atrocities in Darfur, where 300,000 have been killed and 2.5 million been made refugees, yet he opposes the label of genocide as a subjective judgment wielded for political reasons against a Sudanese government that is out of favor because of its history of Islamism and its suspected involvement in terror.

At his most provocative Mr. Mamdani questions the distinction between what is often labeled counterinsurgency and genocide, saying the former, even when it kills more people, is deemed “normal violence” while the latter is considered “amoral, evil,” and typically it is the West that does the labeling.

Although he uses the United States war in Iraq as an example, with the International Criminal Court recently issuing an arrest warrant for Sudan’s leader, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, Mr. Mamdani’s most compelling example is the treatment of a crisis in neighboring Uganda.

In Uganda, long one of Washington’s closest African friends, Mr. Mamdani traces the history of ethnically targeted “civilian massacres and other atrocities” against the brutal insurgency known as the Lord’s Resistance Army. In 1996, under President Yoweri Museveni, a second phase of that war began “with a new policy designed to intern practically the entire rural population of the three Acholi districts in northern Uganda,” Mr. Mamdani writes. “It took a government-directed campaign of murder, intimidation, bombing and burning of whole villages to drive the rural population into I.D.P. (internally displaced persons) camps.”

In 2005 Olara Otunnu, a former Ugandan ambassador to the United Nations, denounced the government’s tactics, saying, “An entire society is being systematically destroyed — physically, culturally, socially and economically — in full view of the international community.”

But as elsewhere in Africa, Mr. Mamdani says, the International Criminal Court has brought a case against only the enemy of Washington’s friend, the Lord’s Resistance Army, remaining mute about large-scale atrocities that may have been committed by the Ugandan government. In this pattern the author sees the hand of politics more than any real attachment to justice.

Many argue that what makes Darfur different from other African crises is race, with the conflict there pitting Arabs against people often called “black Africans,” but here again Mr. Mamdani takes on conventional wisdom. “At no point,” he states flatly, “has this been a war between ‘Africans’ and ‘Arabs.’ ”

Much foreign commentary about Sudan speaks of its Arabs as settlers, with the inference that they are somehow less African than people assumed to be of pure black stock. If whites in Kenya and Zimbabwe, not to mention South Africa, vociferously maintain their African-ness, what then to make of the Arab presence in Sudan, whose slow penetration and widespread intermarriage, Mr. Mamdani writes, “commenced in the early decades of Islam” and “reached a climax” from the 8th to the 15th century, “when the Arab tribes overran much of the country”?

More interestingly, the author maintains that much of what we see today as a racial divide in Sudan has its roots in colonial history, when Britain “broke up native society into different ethnicities, and ‘tribalized’ each ethnicity by bringing it under the absolute authority of one or more British-sanctioned ‘native authorities,’ ” balancing “the whole by playing one off against the others.”

Mr. Mamdani calls this British tactic of administratively reinforcing distinctions among colonial subjects “re-identify and rule” and says that it was copied by European powers across the continent, with deadly consequences — as in Rwanda, where Belgium’s intervention hardened distinctions between Hutu and Tutsi.

In Sudan the result was to create a durable sense of land rights rooted in tribal identity that favored the sedentary at the expense of the nomad, or, in the crude shorthand of today, African and Arab.

Other roots of the Darfur crisis lie in catastrophic desertification in the Sahel region, where the cold war left the area awash in cheap weapons at the very moment that pastoralists could no longer survive in their traditional homelands, obliging many to push southward into areas controlled by sedentary farmers.

He also blames regional strife, the violent legacy of proxy warfare by France, Libya and the United States and, most recently, the global extension of the war on terror.

This important book reveals much on all of these themes, yet still may be judged by some as not saying enough about recent violence in Darfur.

Mr. Mamdani’s constant refrain is that the virtuous indignation he thinks he detects in those who shout loudest about Darfur is no substitute for greater understanding, without which outsiders have little hope of achieving real good in Africa’s shattered lands.

Via UgandaGenocide.info

The UN’s Role in Africa Put Into Perspective

Does the United Nations still have a role to play in global politics and ending humanitarian catastrophes and disasters? Or are they simply a for-profit organization that exists and preys on people’s pity for African plight? Considering their level of failure relative to their level of “fund raising” in the past two decades, I would say they UN functions as the latter.

Samuel Olara puts the UN’s role into perspective:

To many outside the hegemony of the dominant Western global powers that call the tunes at the UN, the organisation is fast losing credibility and is increasingly becoming irrelevant. Others regard the UN as nothing more than a bloated, corrupt “not-for-profit” charity organization experiencing acute brand crisis. Its priorities seem to be the comforts of its “disaster tourists” whose approach to catastrophe and genocides has always been to express “deep concern.”

Being a “not-for-profit” organisation whose success relies heavily on constituent perception, the UN is facing a significant challenge on its brand relevance and consideration, particularly in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East. It is no longer perceived as an effective global body whose legitimacy and authority are respected when its actions must go against the strategic interests of the most powerful states on its Security Council.

The United Nations has let down millions of the world’s weakest and most vulnerable people, especially in Africa. The U.N.’s failure to prevent the slaughter of hundreds of thousands in Northern Uganda, 23 years with over 550,000 dead and counting; Rwanda, in 1994, over 800,000 dead; Democratic Republic of Congo, five million dead; Southern Sudan, over 200,000 dead; and, Darfur, 300,000 dead, are shameful episodes that have contributed to cyniscms about the capability and authority of the United Nations to preserve world peace and ensure human rights and global justice for all.

The United Nations has also been plagued with other troubles. It stood aside and watched as the United States, the UK and their coalition illegally invaded a sovereign state, Iraq, toppled the regime and hanged its leaders, on fictitious claims that the country was producing WMDs and was behind 9/11; a move that has proved a costly disaster both to the Iraqis and allied forces. The United Nations has also failed miserably to intervene in the Israel – Palestine onslaught.

It’s not even just the failure of the UN to find relevancy and effectiveness in humanitarian catastrophes, but:

The U.N. credibility crisis has also been compounded by a series of peacekeeping scandals, from Bosnia to Burundi to Sierra Leone. By far the worst instances of abuse have taken place in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC); it has the U.N.’s second largest peacekeeping mission, with over 16,000 peacekeepers.

In the DRC, the UN recently failed to ensure that civilians were protected from a botched “Operation Lightening Thunder” by the armies of Uganda, DRC and Southern Sudan – resulting in over 1,200 deaths. Again this was an operation planned, blessed and monitored by Washington, wherein Uganda sent its army in a failed bid to neutralize the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) under Joseph Kony.

Previously, acts of criminality have been perpetrated by U.N. peacekeepers and civilian personnel entrusted with protecting some of the weakest and most vulnerable women and children in the world.

The crimes involved rape and forced prostitution of women and young girls, including inside a refugee camp in the town of Bunia in north-eastern Congo. The alleged perpetrators include UN military and civilian personnel from Nepal, Morocco, Tunisia, Uruguay, South Africa, Pakistan, and France.

Read the whole thing at BSN.

Another Gift for Kagame

In April of 2008, Keith Harmon Snow released an investigative report about the framing of Vincent Bajinya for genocide crimes in Rwanda 1994. Unfortunately for Kagame, Bajinya is now a free man. Read for yourself. From The Independent:

Four men accused of taking part in the 1994 Rwandan genocide have been freed by a British court after their lawyers said they would not face a fair trial if they were extradited to Africa.

Their release coincided with commemorations in Rwanda to mark the 15th anniversary of the atrocity, which began on 6 April.

Judges in the High Court in London ruled there was “a real risk [the men] would suffer a flagrant denial of justice” if returned to Rwanda for trial. Under UK law, genocide and war crime offences commited before 2001 cannot be prosecuted here.

Vincent Bajinya, who had changed his name to Brown, Celestin Ugirashebuja, Emmanuel Nteziryayo and Charles Munyaneza were arrested in London, Essex, Manchester and Bedford and had been held in custody since December 2006 under a memorandum of understanding in which Rwanda waived the death penalty.

All four are accused of killing, or conspiring with or aiding and abetting others to kill, members of the Tutsi ethnic group “with the intent to destroy in whole, or in part, that group”.

Lord Justice Laws and Lord Justice Sullivan allowed their appeals against the Home Secretary Jacqui Smith’s extradition orders. The judges said there was evidence that defence witnesses were afraid to give evidence.

The judges declared: “We conclude that if [the four] were extradited to face trial in the High Court of Rwanda, the appellants would suffer a real risk of a flagrant denial of justice by reason of their likely inability to adduce the evidence of supporting witnesses.”

The judges also ruled there was a real risk” of [government] interference with the judiciary” in Rwanda.

They refused the Rwandan Government, represented by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), leave to appeal to the House of Lords against the ruling. A spokeswoman for the CPS said the ruling ended the extradition process.

All four cases had been considered by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, based in Tanzania, but the files were given to the Rwandan Government for further investigation in 2005.

Lord Gifford QC, who appeared for Munyaneza, said the case had revealed “an emerging international consensus that there is no fair trial in Rwanda”.

Frank Brazell, a solicitor for Vincent Brown, welcomed the decision: “We are hugely pleased with the result. The central issue they have found is that there is clearly no prospect of these men having a fair trial in Rwanda.”

He said Mr Brown, a British national and qualified doctor who had worked for a charity training nurses, would be released from custody immediately.Mr Brazell said the issue of compensation would be discussed in due course.

People suspected of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity can only be prosecuted in the UK if the acts were committed overseas after 2001, when the International Criminal Court Act was enacted.

The Aegis Trust, which is responsible for the Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre in Rwanda, where 250,000 victims are buried, has been lobbying MPs and Lords to amend the UK law.

Dr James Smith, the chief executive of the trust, said: “For survivors, this verdict couldn’t come at a worse time. It destroys hope. It demonstrates that the suspected killers of their families enjoy freedom in Europe. The impunity of genocide suspects is a denial of justice for the survivors.

“If British courts cannot extradite these men to Rwanda, the British Government should immediately amend UK law to enable the prosecution of suspected mass murderers.”

A CPS spokesman said: “Although the High Court upheld the District Judge’s findings that there was evidentially a prima facie case against each defendant, the finding in relation to the real risk of a flagrant violation meant their extradition could not continue.”

Related articles: BBC, Reuters

Open Letter to Goucher College on the Suspension of Munyakazi

Below is a letter that was written on behalf of Munyakazi the Rwandan Professor of French at Goucher College, who was dismissed for allegations of having taken part in the Rwandan Genocide of 1994. It is addressed to the college’s president, and has very useful information for anyone interested in learning more about the discrepancies in this case, and the handling of the Congolese situation. It raises extremely interesting points for those examining this case. Writers of the letter are encouraging everyone to send this letter to the president of Goucher college (president at goucher dot edu) including name and city/state/country of sender in solidarity.

–

Dear Mr. President,

I am writing this note to express my disappointment with your removal/suspension of Mr. Munyakazi as French professor at Goucher College. Especially disheartening is the fact that Mr. Munyakazi was removed from his professorship based on unsubstantiated allegations. At the same time, I would like to commend your perspicacious views that were expressed in the New York Times article, On Trail of War Criminals, NBC News Is Criticized, regarding the independence and objectivity being applied to this case (1). It is increasingly clear that anyone who expresses any dissenting opinion from that of the Rwandan Government is accused of being a Genocidaire. According to the same New York Times article, allegations against Mr. Munyakazi were written after he made a speech contradictory to that of the Rwandan Government’s version on the genocide of 1994 (1).

In a country that prides itself on freedom of speech especially in erudite institutions, it is surprising that an unsubstantiated accusation leads to the suspension of a professional. This is to an extent, a contradiction to the first Amendment of the American Constitution. Once the truth about this case comes to light, one could effectively avoid a major disaster for involved parties. Like other cases before Mr. Munyakazi, this instance may simply be a matter of the Rwandan Government looking to silence one of its critics.

For instance, in 2005, a former Rwandan Minister, Juvenal Uwilingiyimana experienced a series of disturbing occurrences related to his role in the Rwandan Genocide. While he was not directly accused of having perpetrated genocide crimes, Uwilingiyimana was coerced into providing false testimony against his former colleagues. When he refused, his body was found after a mysterious death (2). Furthermore, in 2006, Dr. Vincent Bajinya was also falsely accused of partaking in genocide crimes in 1994 by a reporter working for the BBC. He was fired from his job, and his life practically ruined. An independent investigation into his indictment discovered a Rwandan Government’s network of people whose purpose is to scout any dissenting opinions abroad and silence them (3). Could Mr. Munyakazi also be a victim of these networks?

More troubling is that even Americans who dare to contradict the Rwandan Government’s storyline are labeled genocidaires. Case in point, Dr. Peter Erlinder an outspoken critic of the Rwandan Government, has been accused by president Kagame of being a Genocidaire (4). Consider also the case of former US Ambassador to Burundi. Mr Krueger has been accused of providing weapons to Rwanda’s opposition rebels. These preposterous claims have never been substantiated (5). Such silencing tactics are employed to prevent the world from learning about the Rwandan Government’s continuing atrocities against Rwandan and Congolese people. It is regrettable that your college has inadvertently become complicit with the Rwandan Government’s punitive quest to suffocate, silence, kill, and torture anyone who may denounce their crimes against humanity.

It is extremely important to note that through two independent investigations, the Rwandan Government was indicted for war crimes, and crimes against humanity by anti terrorist French Judge Bruguière in 2006 (6), as well as Spanish judge Andreu Merelles in 2008 (7). Also in 2008, when Human Rights Watch called for the International Criminal Tribunal of Rwanda to end the culture of impunity, and prosecute Rwandan Government officials’ involvement in the Rwandan Genocide, Human Rights Watch’s top official Alison Des Forge was banned from entering Rwanda (8). Curiously enough, additional testimonies from former Rwandan Patriotic Army officers have surfaced detailing high ranking Rwandan officials’ war crimes during the Rwandan genocide in 1994 (9), (10).

Everyday numerous reports from the likes of the United Nations, Human Rights Watch, and other independent journalists are surfacing detailing the Rwandan Government’s involvement in the on-going genocide against the Congolese people. So far, an estimated six million lives have been lost. Among violent crimes being detailed by UN reports at the hands of Rwandan officials and their proxies are rape as a weapon against countless women, sodomizing teenage boys by forcing them to have sex with their own mothers before they are hacked to death, the use of child soldiers (11), amputations, displacement of millions of Congolese people (12), the destruction of Rwandan refugee camps claiming over 300,000 lives in a matter of several months (13), and committing massacres such as the ones in Kibeho in 1995 (14), just to name a few. Perpetrators of such crimes should not be allowed by the civilized world the moral high ground to judge anyone.

It is disheartening and frankly discouraging to learn that such a government has succeeded in making Goucher College take an action that may be unnecessary and could potentially ruin one’s professional life. Please consider looking into the actual facts surrounding Mr. Munyakazi’s suspension. I strongly believe that you will find him to be a victim of the Rwandan Government’s punitive actions against those whose opinions deviate from their official story line. This government is determined to fight, suppress and better yet, eliminate anyone or anything that would provide light to the world into its own crimes in the Great Lakes region of Africa. It is deplorable that the Rwandan Government has found a way of making your institution a victim in their global attempts to remove any dissenting opinions. However, I am confident that this case will be an opportunity for your institution to understand some additional elements of the Rwandan tragedy. Your reaction to the way this case was handled is commendable and I encourage you to remain impartial in this matter.

Should anyone in your college be interested in learning more, the following links will provide references to a rich documentation from reputable organizations and agencies about the topic.

Thank you.

Sincerely,

Notes:

1. February 10, 2009; New York Times, NBC’S On Trail of War Criminals; by Brian Stelter

2. Former Rwandan Minister Juvenal Uwilingiyimana’s letter to the ICTR prosecutor

3. Rwandan Government sets up networks to scout dissenting voices and silence them

4. The Real Authors of the Congo Crimes. Nkunda has been arrested but who will arrest Kagame? By Dr Peter Erlinder

5. Former US Ambassador to Burundi Mr Krueger Interview

6. French Warrant seeks associates of Rwanda’s Kagame; by Reuters

7. Spain indicts 40 Rwandan officers, Los Angeles Times

8. Rwanda: End Bar on Human Rights Watch Staff Member; by Human Rights Watch

9. Former RPA Officers and President Kagame’s body guard Abdul Ruzibiza’s Testimony

10. Major General Paul Kagame behind the shooting down of late Habyarimana’s plane: an eye witness testimony, 2nd Lt. Aloys Ruyenzi, Press release, 18 January 2005

11. Lasting Wounds, Human Rights Watch

12. December 2008 UN Report

13. Fuir ou Mourir au Zaire: Le vécu d’une réfugiée rwandaise – To Flee or to Die in Zaire: Tales of a Rwandan Refugee; by Beatrice Umutesi

14. Wikipedia on Kibeho Massacres of April 1995

Other references to consider are under the following links from Amnesty International:

- Rwanda: Alarming resurgence of killings

- Rwanda: Ending the silence

-Rwanda: The hidden violence: “disappearances” and killings continue

R.I.P. Alison Des Forges

Alison Des Forges was a victim of the recent plane crash near Buffalo New York. From the New York Daily Mail:

The fireball ignited by Flight 3407’s nose-first crash into a suburban Buffalo home raged and smoldered for more than 12 hours after the plane dropped from the sky without warning Thursday night.

“This is a tragic day in the history of New York,” said Gov. Paterson after meeting with some of the victims’ family members. “This is a difficult hour for the families.”

Among the 44 passengers aboard the flight from Newark was a 9/11 widow flying to Buffalo for a celebration of her late husband’s 58th birthday, officials said.

So was Alison Des Forges, a senior adviser with the Human Rights Watch and an expert on Rwandan affairs, Paterson said.

It is extremely saddening due to the work she was doing. While Alison Des Forge was a victim of the RPF propaganda in the past, she was increasingly an outspoken critic of the Rwandan government, and against all of their human rights violations both in Rwanda and DRC.

UPDATE: Human Rights Watch has released a commemorative press release for Alison Des Forges. A french version can be found here.

Human Rights Watch Mourns Loss of Alison Des Forges

Leading Rwanda Expert Killed in Plane Crash

(New York) – It is with enormous sadness that Human Rights Watch announces the death of our beloved colleague Dr. Alison Des Forges, who was killed in the crash of Flight 3407 from Newark to Buffalo on February 12, 2009. Des Forges, senior adviser to Human Rights Watch’s Africa division for almost two decades, dedicated her life to working on Rwanda and was the world’s leading expert on the 1994 Rwanda genocide and its aftermath.

“Alison’s loss is a devastating blow not only to Human Rights Watch but also to the people of Rwanda and the Great Lakes region,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. “She was truly wonderful, the epitome of the human rights activist – principled, dispassionate, committed to the truth and to using that truth to protect ordinary people. She was among the first to highlight the ethnic tensions that led to the genocide, and when it happened and the world stood by and watched, Alison did everything humanly possible to save people. Then she wrote the definitive account. There was no one who knew more and did more to document the genocide and to help bring the perpetrators to justice.”

Des Forges, born in Schenectady, New York, in 1942, began working on Rwanda as a student and dedicated her life and work to understanding the country, to exposing the serial abuses suffered by its people and helping to bring about change. She was best known for her award-winning account of the genocide, “Leave None to Tell the Story,” and won a MacArthur Award (the “Genius Grant”) in 1999. She appeared as an expert witness in 11 trials for genocide at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, three trials in Belgium, and at trials in Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Canada. She also provided documents and other assistance in judicial proceedings involving genocide in four other national jurisdictions, including the United States.

Clear-eyed and even-handed, Des Forges made herself unpopular in Rwanda by insisting that the rebel Rwandan Patriotic Front forces, which defeated the genocidal regime, should also be held to account for their crimes, including the murder of  30,000 people during and just after the genocide. The Rwandan government banned her from the country in 2008 after Human Rights Watch published an extensive analysis of judicial reform there, drawing attention to problems of inappropriate prosecution and external influence on the judiciary that resulted in trials and verdicts that in several cases failed to conform to facts of the cases.

“She never forgot about the crimes committed by the Rwandan government’s forces, and that was unpopular, especially in the United States and in Britain,” said Roth. “She was really a thorn in everyone’s side, and that’s a testament to her integrity and sense of principle and commitment to the truth.”

Des Forges was not only admired but loved by her colleagues, for her extraordinary commitment to human rights principles and her tremendous generosity as a mentor and friend.

“Alison was the rock within the Africa team, a fount of knowledge, but also a tremendous source of guidance and support to all of us,” said Georgette Gagnon, Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “She was almost a mother to us all, unfailingly wise and reasonable, absolutely honest yet diplomatic. She never seemed to get stressed out, in spite of the extreme violence and horror she had to deal with daily. Alison felt the best way to make things better was to be relentlessly professional and scrupulously fair. She didn’t sensationalize; her style was to let the victims speak for themselves.”

Corinne Dufka, another colleague who worked closely with Des Forges, wrote: “She always found the time to listen and helped me see outside the box. Alison inspired me to be a better researcher, a better colleague, a more giving mentor and a more balanced human being. She was also funny – her sardonic sense of humor, usually accompanied with that sparkle in her eye, lightened our burden.”

An historian by training, Des Forges wrote her PhD thesis on Rwanda and spent most of her adult life working on the Great Lakes region, despite an early stint in China with her husband, Roger, a professor of history and China expert at the University of Buffalo.

Des Forges graduated from Radcliffe College in 1964 and received her PhD from Yale in 1972. She began as a volunteer at Human Rights Watch, but was soon working full-time on Rwanda, trying to draw attention to the genocide she feared was looming. Eventually, Roth had to insist she take a salary. She co-chaired an international commission looking at the rise of ethnic violence in the region and published a report on the findings several months before the genocide. Once the violence began, Des Forges managed to convince diplomats in Kigali to move several Rwandans to safety, including the leading human rights activist Monique Mujawamariya.

As senior adviser to the Africa division at Human Rights Watch since the early 1990s, Des Forges oversaw all research work on the Great Lakes region, but also provided counsel to colleagues across the region and beyond. She also worked very closely with the International Justice Program because of all her involvement with the Rwanda tribunal.

“The office of the prosecutor relied on Alison as an expert witness to bring context and background and detailed knowledge of the genocide,” Roth said. “Her expertise was sought again and again and again by national authorities on cases unfolding in their courts of individuals facing deportation, or on trial for alleged involvement in the genocide.”

Most recently, Des Forges was working on a Human Rights Watch report about killings in eastern Congo.

Des Forges leaves a husband, a daughter, and a son, three grandchildren, a brother and a sister-in-law. The staff of Human Rights Watch expressed their deepest condolences to her family and friends. If you would like to send a message of condolence, please email tribute@hrw.org

We are working to set up a web page to honor Alison Des Forges and her work. Please check http://www.hrw.org/ for details.

Message to Kagame: Stop Dancing Puppet, We Can See Through Your Smoke and Mirrors

In December 2008, a very special occurrence happened that led Kagame into scrambling to do major damage control, distract the world at large from the occurrence, while simultaneously salvaging his progressively deteriorating reputation in “the international community.”

What occurrence is that you might ask? It’s none other than the conviction of the top three major suspects in the Rwandan Genocide. You know, the masterminds of the genocide that Kagame supposedly saved everyone from. You know, this:

The three other defendants were convicted of responsibility for particular acts that the Chambers found were committed by members of the Rwandan military.  Col. Theoneste Bagsosora and Col. Anatole Nsengiumva were found guilty of war crimes, acts of genocide and crimes against humanity committed by Rwandan troops under their command. Major Aloys Ntabakuze, whose command was limited to the Para-Commando Battalion was held responsible for three incidents out of more than 40 that the Chamber found were not proved. Many of the crimes of which all three were convicted do not appear in the indictments under which they were prosecuted.  All three were sentenced to life in prison and have announced plans to appeal.

Yet here is Kagame today desperately scrambling to do major damage control to salvage his growing reputation in the Congo by making shady deals with his former foe, Kabila instead of simply celebrating. Why would the arrest of the three genocide planners and perpetrators cause Kagame to behave in such a manner?And what exactly did he do in the Congo that reeks of desperation and reputation recovery?

It’s not so much that the three were convicted, but what they were not charged with. It turns out that,

judgments in the Military-I trial completely rejected the Prosecution theory of long-term planning and conspiracy to commit genocide by members of the former Rwandan military leadership. All four defendants were found “not guilty” of all counts charging conspiracy to commit genocide, based on the Chambers ruling that their actions prior to April 6, 1994  were based on war-time conditions, not planning to kill civilians or to carry out a genocide against Tutsi Rwandans.

I have bolded, italicized, and underlined that which was found, and which has ripped Kagame from his comfy dictatorial throne in Rwanda and thrown him into the war torn Congo scrambling, where he is desperately trying to influence some positive coverage on his behalf as the cushy world he built around himself with pervasive propaganda slowly but progressively falls to dust and pieces on the ground.

Because if no one planned the genocide, or the people originally believed to have planned the genocide are found innocent of such a plan, then where does that leave Kagame? It leaves him in a pickle I would say,

This raises the more profound question: if there was no conspiracy and no planning to kill ethnic civilians, can the tragedy that engulfed Rwanda properly be called “a genocide” at all? Or, was it closer to a case of civilians being caught up in war-time violence, like the Eastern Front in WWII, rather than the planned behind-the-lines killings in Nazi death camps? The ICTR judgment found the former.

The Court specifically found that the actions of Rwandan military leaders, both before any after the April 6, 1994 assassination of former Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarima, were consistent with war-time conditions and the massive chaos brought about by the four-year war of invasion from Uganda by Gen. Paul Kagame’s RPF army, which seized power in July 1994.

Although the Chamber did not specifically mention more recent events, it is worth noting that this is the same government that was named in a UN Security Council commissioned report on December 12, 2008 as having invaded the eastern Congo (with Uganda) in 1996 and again in 1998 and have occupied an area 15-times the size of Rwanda since that time. Similar UN Security Council reports in 2001, 2002 and 2003, make clear that Rwanda and Uganda’s economic rape of the eastern Congo, and the resulting 6 million-plus civilian deaths, have long been an “open secret.”

It’s no secret that in recent times Kagame was having trouble with some of his former supporters, such as Human Rights Watch’s Alison Des Forge, as she sought to hold him accountable for the atrocities he was committing in the Congo. Instead of just.stopping., Kagame BANNED Alison Des Forge from Rwanda. Yeah…he did. Not just for crimes in the Congo, but Human Rights Watch was also demanding that the ICTR start prosecuting the RPF and their involvement in the Rwandan Genocide; an act so radical it took 14 years to accomplish.

So what would happen if the ICTR investigated the RPF and prosecuted them for their involvement in the Genocide? What would the world learn from this? If they saved everyone from Genocide, wouldn’t that mean that they would get minimal prosecution for the supposed “reprisal killings” they carried out? Or is there something more awaiting them?

Well simply put, if Kagame were to be investigated, indicted, and prosecuted, the world would learn that he initiated a major war crime and crime against humanity towards Rwanda; attacking a peaceful country and throwing it into a war. It would also be discovered that during that whole period, Kagame and the RPF committed massacre after massacre, and multiple crimes against humanity. The RPF shot down Rwanda’s former president Habyarimana’s plane, an act believed to have sparked the carnage that occurred in 1994.  And remember this carnage was not planned since many were responding to war time conditions and defenses as was found by the ICTR. It would be discovered that Kagame and the RPF chased Rwandan citizens from their country and into the Congo. Kagame and the RPF continued their aggression thereby committing another crime against humanity by attacking the Congo, another peaceful country. It would be discovered that in the RPF’s  attempts to exterminate the Refugees, about six million Congolese citizens were caught in the crossfire. (And this list is hardly exhaustive!)

Because it was found that genocide was not planned from inside Rwanda itself, Kagame and the RPF’s insistence that they are after “planners” of the Rwandan genocide by going into the Congo is problematic. In fact it allows Kagame and the RPF to continue committing massacres and killing millions of people with impunity. IF these people did not plan a genocide, and the ICTR prosecutions say they did not, and there was a war initiated and carried out by the RPF against them going on, then what grounds does Kagame have to go after them? Either by removing them or by exterminating them?

True, RPF propaganda is pervasive, and major western media outlets support this propaganda. Which is why many people believe that the FDLR is composed of savage killers who terrorize Congolese citizens. But now, the world must question why these people who fled from a war they were defending themselves against, are now believed to be random and senseless killers for no reason. It does not match. What would lead them to commit massacres against the Congolese people, if they were fleeing from an enemy that ousted them from their homes? They wouldn’t, unless they were blood thirsty murderers who commit murder just to see blood shed. And while Kagame and the RPF would like to you to believe that, it simply is not true.

Kagame can no longer comfortably hold his immunity. Nor can the RPF. It’s becoming increasingly clear that the RPF is responsible for the murders in the Congo, even with the help of western media that insists Kagame is a hero. People still know and see through the painted veils through which he is presented. Kagame’s major lackey, Laurent Nkunda started receiving unprecedented negative media attention, and compounded with everything else that was happening, he needed to be beheaded, figuratively speaking. So, he was arrested. Try as they might, Kagame will have a very difficult time distancing himself from Nkunda.

As his world crumbles, and as the world learns, and increasingly pressure involved parties to hold Kagame and the RPF accountable for their crimes in the Great Lakes Region of Africa, Kagame strikes a very shady deal with Kabila, to once again, oust the FDLR.  These are people who are part of the same refugees that Kagame ousted when he invaded Rwanda and killed its president. They desire nothing more than to go back to their own formerly democratic country.

Does it strike anyone in “the international community” as odd that Kagame and the RPF, indicted by two countries, France and Spain, whose top aid was arrest per the said arrest warrants in Germany, is the peace keeping force in the Congo? How does, Rwanda’s 10+,- years occupation in the Congo resulting in 6 million deaths, conveniently blamed on the FDLR who are part of refugees from Rwanda, qualify Rwanda to REMOVE that which they have not managed in 10 years? Does it make sense?

Put all the pieces together and you will see, that Kagame and the RPF, war criminals, genocide perpetrators are attempting to distract the world away from their bloodshed, while simultaneously continuing the same dirty, and criminal bloodshed.

This has got to stop!

2008 Year in Review and BTMR Quick Reference

A very late 2008 year in review, but still worth mentioning.

There were a lot of developments that occurred in regards to the Rwandan situation/conflict which has now spilled over into a bloody endless war in the Congo, and still the world does not “Scream Bloody Murder” at the genocide being committed by Rwanda against the Congolese. Where is Christiane Amanpour?

2008 was a very good year for progress but not without it’s major setbacks. It is no wonder that Kagame became desperate and is trying by any means necessary to take his new found fame as a genocidaire in the larger and international outcry off of himself as you will note in the follow up blog post.

So what happened in 2008?

Starting in February, Colonel Luc Marchal, who commanded the UN forces in Kigali sector, told the UN courts that a letter by “Jean Pierre” claiming there was a Machiavelli Plan by the then Rwandan President Habyarimana to carry out a planned genocide, was a forgery. And this of course is after Counsel Chris Black at the ICTR has throughoughly dispelled that myth in his excellent article.

And then Spanish Judge Fernando Andreu indicted 40 of Kagame’s top former and current military officers for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The surprising story highlights from the CNN article were as following:

• A Spanish judge has indicted 40 current or former Rwandan military officers
• Men were indicted for several counts of genocide and human rights abuses
• More than 4 million Rwandans died or disappeared during the 1990s
• The majority of the victims were Hutu Rwandan refugees or Congolese civilians

Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney celebrated the indictment of these war criminals and this major step towards carrying out justice.

Amidst all this, various writers came out with articles that attempted to elucidate the convoluted and deliberately misleading propaganda. Andrew G. Marshal wrote a piece titled Western Involvement in the Rwandan Genocide, which is self explanatory. He pointed out major players in the conflict in the Clinton Administration, and how they aided the RPF in successfully taking over power in Rwanda.

And Keith Harmon Snow exposed a network of Rwandan intelligence and other officers whose sole purpose abroad is to destroy Rwandan communities by targeting dissenters of the Rwandan government with various acts of public humiliation, detention, and getting them fired from jobs and other horrondous mistreatments. Snow followed the story of one Bajinya whose life was ruined by the Rwandan intelligence purporting to be refugees in some cases, and embassy workers in others who framed and “exposed” an innocent man of having committed “genocide crimes” in 1994. A chilling report that would leave anyone outraged at the unfortunate miscarriage of justice. Who is publicly humiliating Kagame the initiator of all crimes that have span from the 1990 invasion of Rwanda to today’s millions of deaths in the Congo?

Some heated debates ensued as more people learned about the RPF’s crimes against Rwanda before 1994, and how successful propaganda was concocted in their favor from the very beginning such as the term “moderate hutu.” Of course this was ignoring that when the RPF invaded Rwanda in 1990, they were the enemies. Therefore a “moderate” hutu would not have existed then, nor does one exist today. But such deliberately incorrect information must remain intact if the RPF must remain in power. Kagame’s cheerleaders also came out to oppose my piece warning Rwandans in exiles to beware, as there are many who will attempt to do to them what was done to Bajinya and others. Apparently these cheerleaders do not want anyone being warned of the danger in which Kagame plans to put them in.

A petition was created pleading with then President Elect Obama to intervene in the culture of impunity that exists in regards to the Great Lakes region, and the perpetual miscarriages of justice.

As the western attempted to paint a rose colored Rwandan Democracy, many knowledgeable people spoke up and exposed the fallacies in a democratic and economically upward Rwanda. In a curious move, one of Kagame’s top Aids was arrested and a few people celebrated a short lived victory.

We saw more attempts at dispelling the propaganda myths that are so widespread, as Back To My Root’s new writer extensively wrote on the “Inyenzi” or “cockroach” phenomenon that’s been used to silence RPF critics and put into a very compelling historical context. Khante also brought us news of Rwandan youth who are fleeing to join the FDLR because they are fed up with the lack of democracy in Rwanda. I took on CNN’s documentary, “Scream Bloody Murder” and tried to put back all the facts that Christianne Amanpour deliberately left out in order to maintain the current story line.

And now it’s 2009, and things have never looked more bleak especially for the DRC. Don’t get me wrong, all is not lost.  One of the greatest victories of 2008 was the election of Barack Obama. While he is no savior nor any less imperialistic than his predecessors, at least he does believe and will try to enforce “tough diplomacy.” He has no interest in bloodshed, and he seems to believe in the power of negotiations.

This does not mean that Rwanda and DRC will be released from the yoke of Kagame and other imperialists, but that at least, we can hope, the bloodshed will cease, and lives will be spared. We must remember that Hillary Clinton is in charge of American foreign policy. We should also remember that it was during the Clinton era that every corner of the African Continent found itself in wars and bloodshed. Our consolation is that she is working for Obama and not the other way around.

More and more people are becoming educated about the events in Eastern Congo. It won’t be long before they connect the dots, and see the real culprits aside from the mainstream media’s constant attempts to blame everything on the FDLR while other rebel groups, and specifically Kagame and his army continue their 1990’s planned genocide into the Congo with the aid of western imperialists.

It’s only a matter of time Kagame. Enjoy your impunity while you still can.

President Obama’s Inaugural Address

Transcript:

CNN’s Christian Amanpour and Dallaire Shake Hands With Kagame to Spread Propaganda: Scream BLOODY MURDER!

I recently watched a CNN Special documentary by Chief International Correspondent Christian Amanpour, Scream Blood Murder. The documentary highlighted various genocides that occurred in the 20th century. It also gave Christian Amanpour a forum to lavish praise on various “heroes” within those genocidal contexts, who “screamed bloody murder” and yet their calls went unheeded by the global humanitarian community.

Unfortunately for me, or maybe for her, Amanpour has very little credibility in my eyes as far as her reporting. Therefore, I took everything she said with a grain of salt. My cynicism of her credibility was reaffirmed when she finally reached the section of Rwanda and the Rwandan genocide, and failed to include an ounce of truth in her reporting. To her credit, she did stress that many people died and some in some very cruel ways, while making sure to exploite the genocidal images of dead bodies floating in bodies of water, disconnected limbs, and skulls and bones to make her point.

If you did not know that people died during these genocides, now you know. But don’t take her word for it, WATCH IT. Over, and over, and over again. Hopefully by watching it so much, her purpose will be served. You see, by constantly being exposed to these images, as anyone who watched the documentary was, people will probably be desensitized to these images and might no longer care whether they see floating bodies. The shock value will have diminished, and it will seem like just another day in indigenous people’s lives around the world where the living and the dead coexist, constantly reminded of past traumas and atrocities, unable to heal and move forward. But the point WAS to move forward and past the traumas right Amanpour or were you just “reporting”?

The undertone of her reporting? Indigenous, non European people’s (well except Bosnia) around the world are savages, and through their savagery committed terrible crimes with and against each other, and it took a various western straight white males to notice and call out the horrors. I mean I don’t have to tell you but, EVERYONE knows how straight white males are the paragon of moral and ethical standards and practices. (note the sarcasm)

In each of her profiles except the last one for Darfur, a straight white male was the focus of honorable action, and courageous fight on behalf of indigenous people (a white French priest for Cambodians, a white American for Iraqis, another white American for Bosnians, and a white Canadian soldier for Rwandans) . Each of the people highlighted gave themselves to their causes, taking great risks, and questioning various super powers and demanding action, and often failing. For Rwanda, the featured heroic westerner was Romeo Dallaire, write of the fictitious book Shake Hands With the Devil.

Amanpour starts off the piece on Rwanda by claiming that Dallaire was brought in “to monitor peace agreements between Hutus and Tutsis” thereby creating the falsified framework in which viewers are supposed to understand Dallaire’s role and “why he did what he did.” Amanpour fails to report that the peace agreements were not between Hutus and Tutsis and neither was the conflict that evolved and eventually culminated into the Rwandan genocide. Instead, she simplifies what happened as is typical when reporting on African politics, and fails to inform viewers that the conflict Dallaire was monitoring started when Rwanda was attacked and invaded by a rebel group from neighboring Uganda. She also fails to tell viewers that these rebels terrorized Rwandans for three years, before the arrival of our heroic Dallaire. Was nobody screaming “bloody murder” then when a sovereign nation was attacked by another nation through the rebels, or did Amanpour happen to be off that da…er three years?

After quickly skipping over all these facts, Amanpour brings us to 1994 when the genocide started. But before that, we are told that Dallaire tried to warn “the international community” that there was a genocide being planned through his infamous fax. But Christ Black a lead counsel at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Tanzania already disputed the legitimacy, and credibility of such a fax.

This fax is the single document upon which the claims of a planned genocide rest. It was supposedly sent by General Dallaire to General Baril, another Canadian general at the Dept of Peace Keeping Operations in New York. It sets out the claims of a UN informant named Jean Pierre Turatsinze that the ruling government party planned to exterminate Tutsis, was training civilians for that purpose and that there was a plan to kill Belgian soldiers to provoke the withdrawal of UN forces. This fax has been trumpeted by the ICTR prosecution as the key to the plan to commit genocide. However, all the evidence presented at the Tribunal and elsewhere establishes that, in fact, the fax is a fabrication. (emphasis mine)

In his article Rwanda, “Shake Hands with the Devil”. General Dallaire’s film fails “Reality Check” writer Robin Philpot states the following in Dallaire’s own words about the planning of a genocide:

On September 14, 1994, he [Dallaire] took part in an important French-language television program in Montréal. Dallaire was just back from Rwanda. When asked a question about a plan to exterminate Tutsis, here’s how he answered.

“The plan was more political. The aim was to eliminate the coalition of moderates….. I think that the excesses that we saw were beyond people’s ability to plan and organize. There was a process to destroy the political elements in the moderate camp. There was a breakdown and hysteria absolutely…. But nobody could have foreseen or planned the magnitude of the destruction we saw.” (Note: people who understand French can listen to these excerpts on the Montreal CIBL community radio web site http://cibl1015.com/node/52742

That is how Dallaire spoke when he just got back. “Nobody could have planned it all”.

Yet, Amanpour and Dallaire now both want us to believe that there was a planned genocide by Hutus towards Tutsis.

The misinformation keeps piling up as Amanpour informs viewers of that fateful event that set all the killings into action. She does mention that the Rwandan president’s plane was shot down, but fails to address why that event was significant aside from the fact that, after it happened, savage Hutus went on a killing rampage to exterminate any and all Tutsis they could find, or any moral and upstanding “moderate Hutu” who took a stand against the killing. Instead, Amanpour states the assassination of the two presidents “was the moment Hutus were waiting for” implying that perhaps the Hutus were responsible for killing the president, so that they would have an excuse to carry out their genocidal plans. Writer Robin Philpot points out the following however,

All information, all research and all investigations, and especially Judge Bruguière’s, now point to Paul Kagame and the Rwandan Patriotic Front.

And this information has been around so much so that even a Spanish Judge found similar damning information, and even one of Kagame’s top aid has now been arrested per the arrest warrants issued by the Spanish and French. No mention of any of that from the Amanpour documentary though. Kind of odd but also expected.

After giving Dallaire a forum to answer “tough” questions regarding the horrific events in Rwanda, such as “how did you feel”, she fails to question Dallaire’s allegiance to the RPF and Paul Kagame. In his article Re-writing the History of the Rwandan Genocide, Robin Philpot states this of Dallaire:

In the field, according to Booh-Booh [the Chief of the 1994 United Nations Mission in Rwanda], Dallaire abandoned his military responsibilities to do politics, though that was not his job, and he violated the principle of neutrality by becoming the objective ally of the RPF. Moreover, Dallaire’s “duplicity” was widely known in UN mission circles.

Amanpour  fails to question why Dallaire, a UN worker, helped a rebel group that invaded a sovereign and peaceful country, kill millions of people all for the eventual power grab that they now enjoy.

I was starting to wonder whether there were ANY, and I mean any indigenous person who advocated on behalf of their people when Kagame was brought into the picture as the brave indigenous hero and I almost fell off my chair and died. I was not surprised to see Kagame in the documentary, in fact I would have been surprised not to see him. But to see that even though Dallaire failed, Kagame triumphed anyway left me weak. What are you doing to me Amanpour? Are you an accomplice to the whole Dallaire/Kagame propaganda? Quite transparently so! And I can’t wrap my mind around what parallel universe Dallaire screamed bloody murder on/for.

Really, CNN? Do better.