OBSERVATIONS ON THE BOOK BY ANDRÉ GUICHAOUA, "Rwanda: from War to Genocide"--Open letter from General Augustin Ndindiliyimana (4 August 2010)

OBSERVATIONS ON THE BOOK BY ANDRÉ GUICHAOUA, "Rwanda: from War to Genocide"--Open letter from General Augustin Ndindiliyimana (4 August 2010)

[translated from the French by Christopher Black & Mick Collins]

[I first saw Guichaoua's fat purple tome, “Rwanda: de la guerre au genocide,” on the shelves at FNAC. I knew his name, but nothing distinguished him from the other professional Africa experts, the ICTR Prosecution's private faculty of contractors, who were kept on the UN payroll as long as they kept the Tutsi-Genocide-of-100-days-committed-by-'extremist'-elements-of-the-Rwandan-(Hutu)-governments-and-military out of the chiottes of Historical Waste where it belongs. As General Ndindiliyimana specifies below in this posted PDF, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) demanded the UN set up a Tribunal to try those who committed the crime of genocide on 12 April 1994, that is, six days into the so-called tribal killing spree. So experts like Guichaoua, Alison Des Forges, Colette Braeckman, Gérard Prunier, Samantha Power, Bernard Lugan and Filip Reyntjens, got their mission plan significantly before all the bodies had fallen, been sorted out and counted. And as more evidence has rolled in with each new trial at the ICTR, most of these 'experts'—some more than others—have continued to cling to the 'Genocide Fallacy' that is at the heart of this chapter in Central African history, just as it is the constitutional rationale for the current Rwandan military dictatorship.

Like the ‘Genetic Fallacy’ in logic, the 'Genocide Fallacy' invalidates all arguments or institutions premised on it because of its essential flaw, its original sin, its falsifying bias. But to experts, scholars like Guichaoua et al, the Rwandan Genocide of 800,000 to a million Tutsis and moderate Hutus between 6 April 1994 (the date of the assassinations by the RPF [and no one any longer seriously argues this fact, wetfe The New Yorker readership might think!] of the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi (Juvénal Habyarimana and Cyprien Ntaryamira, resp.), as well as the Chief of Staff of the Rwandan Army (as The General will point out, this position should not be confused or conflated, as it often is by these experts, with the Chief of Staff of the Rwandan Armed Forces [FAR], which was made up of the Army and the Natl. Gendarmerie, and commanded by the President or, in his absense, the Minister of Defense [both civilian positions]), and 16 July 1994, when the RPF had effectively seized power throughout the country, and claimed to have stopped the 100 days of Genocide (which they, in fact, date as far back as the Social Revolution of 1959-1962 that deposed the Tutsi monarchy and instituted, by majority vote and UN recognition, the Rwandan Republic).

But the evolution of the ‘Genocide Fallacy’ is interesting and should be noted here—because The General is far too erudite and refined, far too polite, and far too compassionate toward his torturers, to speak in such crude terms. Being able to take the low rhetorical road is one of the few indulgences allowed a retired Hollywood day-player whom no one need take seriously.

So . . . In the Beginning was the Word. And the Word was with the RPF, and the Word was Genocide. After years of playing with ethnic numbers (and in the final accounting, the real significance of ‘Hutu’ and ‘Tutsi,’ and the reason the current neo-feudal government in Kigali eschews ethnic distinctions, is that ‘Hutu’ means ‘majority’ and ‘Tutsi’ means ‘[tiny, elitist] minority’) and trying to bury all information relevant to the foreign aggression of 1 October 1990, or the four-year RPF reign of terrorist murder and mayhem that culminated with the multiple assassinations of 6 April 1994, a terrorist act in violation of the duly-signed Arusha Peace Accords of 4 August 1993, and the unilateral resumption, again by the RPF, of the war they had started in October 1990—though it had been in pre-production for more than a decade before with infiltration, the planting of mines and other explosives, and the agitation and propaganda for vile ethnic hatred that became the cover for this primal international crime against Peace—the genocide of the Tutsi minority was declared, by the victorious military leaders of that same Tutsi minority, to be over. The perpetrators of the mass killings, the ruthless prosecutors of the war against Rwanda, declared 16 July 1994 to be VG day. And this fallacy became the raison d'être, not only for the Rwandan military dictatorship, but also for a whole new system of International Justice. The Rwandan Genocide became a sort of Holocaust redux.

But, as should have been expected, with the Genocide victims’ actual vanquishing of the genocidaires and driving them all out of their country into neighboring Congo, the 'hapless victim' jacket would start to chafe under the coarse weight of the conquistador's armor. Former-RPF warriors, like Lt Abdul Ruzibiza, in his "Rwanda: L'Histoire secrète," started bragging about his RPF-mates’ mass killing of Rwandan civilians, the seizure of their lands with millions displaced, and the pillaging of their homes and the looting of the goods and livestock, all to be sent back and sold in Uganda.

As with Naser Oric's bragging on German TV about his killing and mutilation of Serb civilians around Srebrenica, Ruzibiza's blood-curdling confessions had little effect on the primary Genocide Fallacy. But with his testimony before the ICTR, as well as to the French anti-terrorist judge, Jean-Louis Bruguière, a sort of 'second genocide' was born: the 'Extremist Hutu' government had committed genocide against the Tutsi minority; but so had the Tutsi RPF committed genocide against the majority Hutu civilian population of Rwanda.

And Ruzibiza had the ICTR disinterred certain independent reports on RPF crimes: Gersony and Hourigan had their reports revived, though, unlike the private academic experts, they were under orders from their government patrons to dummy up and stay that way. Of course, being good guys, they didn’t.

Then Pierre Péan, the formidable French investigative journalist, came out with his "Noire fureurs, blancs menteurs" (a seminal work on Rwanda which, shamefully, is still not translated into English) and uncovered the RPF's vast propaganda network. Again, it became clear that the Genocide Fallacy was instrumental to the cover-up of the imperialist (US/UK) aggression and military occupation of Central Africa; it was the sentimental hook by which the international public was cajoled into accepting the forced conversion of Rwanda into a privatized loading dock for the stolen resources of Congo. After all, those Rwandan Defense Forces were over in Goma and Kivu hunting escaped Hutu genocidaires--and their genocidaire wives and kids. It was just ‘Never Again’ all over again.

But ours is pretty much a monotheistic (mono-genocidal) cosmology. Just as with the one true and living God, the Primal Genocide does not suffer competitors. Yet, there was too much evidence of RPF (Tutsi) mass crimes for the expert witnesses contracted by the ICTR Prosecutor just to continue pretending ignorance. So guys like Prunier and Guichaoua had to start talking about mass crimes on both sides. As they used to say in Yugoslavia: plenty of ethnic atrocities to go around. And though this compromise weakened the One True and Living Genocide theory, there was already too much invested to simply abandon it in favor or irrelevancies like evidence and justice.

And this brings me to the second and last time I saw Guichaoua’s massive volume: During a post-screening discussion of the documentary, “D’Arusha à Arusha,” I was doing my best to compliment the filmmaker, Christophe Gargot, and his well-heeled Human Rights sponsors, on the real effectiveness of their film. But it quickly became clear I was being somewhat less than sincere (you can check out my deconstruction of this doc elsewhere on CM/P at:
http://cirqueminimeparis.blogspot.com/2010/03/reconsideration-of-christophe-gargots.html
because the point I was praising them on was not exactly the point they had intended to make. They had wanted to show how the ICTR was working effectively to end impunity for governments who commit mass crimes like Genocide; I told them their choice of trials and the prominences they gave to the Defense (with great attorneys like Ramsey Clark and Raphael Constant featured), and certain cases, like the Military I trial of Bagosora et al, made a very strong case for the imperialists’ insturmentalization of the Genocide Fallacy—say what?! Their film had cast in doubt almost every premise the Prosecution had.

As if to shut me up by sticking it in my mouth, they whipped out Guichaoua’s book and started talking about how it could answer all the questions they couldn’t—had all the numbers, all the details to demonstrate beyond all doubt that the Tutsis (and ‘moderate’ Hutus) had been genocided by the ‘Extremist Hutus.’ But no one seemed aware of, or could, much less, explain, the outcome of their Star Trial: Military I had acquitted Bagosora et al of ‘conspiracy or planning to commit genocide.’ But, hey, as Don Rumsfeld once mused: Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Just because OJ was acquitted doesn’t mean he didn’t decapitate his wife, while his kids slept nearby. Just because the Genocide is a Fallacy (or at least a paranoid fantasy) does not mean there was no genocide. Right?

But Military I and the almost contemporaneous Military II trial (the Prosecutor v Ndindiliyimana et al) were the straws that drove the last of the hired experts off the sinking USS Genocide—and out of their tiny, pathetically closed minds.

When the judgment was rendered in Military I on 28 December 2008, the Tribunal acquitted the defendants of 'planning or conspiracy to commit genocide'. As legal wonks were quick to point out, this only meant the Prosecution could not prove that Colonel Bagosora et al had planned or conspired to commit genocide—not that THERE WAS NO GENOCIDE! In fact, the same judgment convicted them of genocidal crimes committed by those in their charge, crimes like the killing of the 10 Belgian UN Blue Helmets (some say they saw as many as 13 bodies at the morgue) and the murder while under UN protection of Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana. But there is no more evidence of Bagosora et al having committed these 'genocidal crimes' than there is of their 'planning and conspiracy to commit genocide'. The strong evidence actually points to the RPF’s responsibility for these, like all the other, killings.

This Mil I conviction was based almost entirely on the 16 June 2006 order to the Trial Chamber in Arusha from the ICTR Appeals Chamber in The Hague (the ICTR and ICTY share a single Appeals Chamber—how conveeeeeeeeeeeenient!) to 'Take Judicial Notice' of the Rwandan Genocide. That is to say, that the Genocide Fallacy must be accepted without having to be proved under evidence—like the address of the Courthouse, or who's buried in Grant's Tomb. 

This patently anti-legal manipulation seems to have befuddled Guichaoua and the Genocide Fallacy claque of private scholastic contractors (whose chief concern has always been the demonization—or, at least, the trivialization—of the Rwandan majority [Hutu, MRND] governmental and military institutions), but it has increased their ranks to the tune of one ICTR Defense lawyers association—who saw in the Mil I judgment, and some of the reconsiderations and reversals of legal fortune that came in its wake, a perfect opportunity for a big payday, the kind of career bump that turns an ambulance chaser into Johnny Cochran (i.e., a rich ambulance chaser).

But when the racist and classist arrogance of these Euro-American scholar/shysters led them directly into the maw of the monster conceived by the Genocide Fallacy, and they started waving their well-researched bona fides around Kigali like Cal pennants at Stanford stadium, things went sideways. They wound up (like their ICTR clients, one might consider) in an African jail having to explain how their multi-genocide theory was not Genocide denial or even revision, high crimes in that nation whose very legal existence is based on this primal Genocide. So, then they went all soft-centered, bent over and grabbed their ankles and started singing every song the jailor requested: Of course there was a Genocide, and just One Genocide and, of course, it's existence is so far beyond doubt that it need not be proven. Just get me outta here! Genocide akbar!

But, I digress—comme d’hab. General Ndindiliyimana’s observations on Guichaoua’s massive pavé—which, for those gluttons who just can’t get enough disinformation, is backed up with a web site—makes it abundantly clear that many in the West have badly underestimated the sophistication of African social and political institutions. What was destroyed between October 1990 and April 1994 was nothing less than the Rwandan democratic socialist revolution. The counter-revolution led from Kigali and Kampala is on going, with millions and millions of victims in Rwanda and Congo, and the blood on the hands of these liberal academics, journalists and jurists, will not soon dry or ever be washed away. —mc ]

Attachments:

• (2)Ndiliyimana letter to Guichaoua.pdf (292KB)

Fascism & the Falsification of History - CPs of Greece & the Russian Federation

FASCISM & the Falsification of History--from our Comrades in Greece & the Russian Federation

[With the Fascist rampage against History as a way to terrorize the world public into accepting Exchange Value—in its most mindless, immaterial, and speculative form—which so obviously has sucked all the (Real) Life from anything that anymore resembles Use Value (concentrating the largest part of human [re]productive energies into the creation of pure, and even toxic, Waste, privileging exchanges of Nothing for Nothing, accompanied by unimaginably large brokerage fees, interest charges, back-end point on the distributor’s gross, penalties for early withdrawal and other such forms of financial racketeering, and completely corroding the whole process of life)—the Global Economy finds itself having been turned into a great Human History shredder (sorta, HIGO: human history in, garbage out)—with even its insensate production of destruction—the manufacture of war and needless suffering unto death—not being able to bring it to social and political equilibrium.

At this crucial time, in Europe and elsewhere, the Greek Communist Party (KKE) has sent us (and the CPUSA) a reminder that the illusion of advanced Waste Capitalist progress (the Waste stage developed directly from the Monopoly stage which Lenin described in his 1917 ‘Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism’) is just that, an illusion—or, perhaps, by now it is painful enough to be considered a delusion. The KKE also remind us that the only solution to our recurring agony lies with ‘the working class, the self-employed, the poor farmers, and the youth.’

Because back in 1914, global Monopoly Capitalism resorted to World War to keep itself ahead of the advancing demands of Human Need organized in the popular forces of socialism-communism. Since then, it has become essential to the continuity of this pathological system of false value to invert the historical roles of ‘Aggressor’ and ‘Aggressed,’ of ‘Villain’ and ‘Victim.’ False values falsify History.

At the end of the Monopoly stage, in Italy, was born a philosophical rationale for maintaining a moribund Capitalist production and circulation system (by then totally breathless, by now totally self-consumptive): Fascism. And it is Fascism that has inherited this desperately vile job of altering the Human Historical Record. The chief drive of this effete anti-intellectual intellectual movement (begun by Croce and Gentile, Italian educators, who longed for a return to the lovey courts of the Ceasars) was Anti-Communism. Simply: Fascism is Anti-Communism, hence Communism is Anti-Fascism.

This is from whence comes our preoccupation here at CM/P with Anti-Fascism in the defense of Peace, and Truth and Justice in History. –mc]

{{And as an extra treat, we have added a Communiqué from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation on these very crucial subjects: Fascism and the devaluation of Human History and Human Life. —mc}}

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Communist Party of Greece - [13 May 2010] Message to the National Committee
of CP, USA

Communist Party USA,
National Committee,
New York
Athens, Thursday, 13 May 2010

Dear comrades,

We would like to thank you for the information regarding your 29th party convention and to extend our greetings to the delegates. Our parties have met in the past in common struggles for workers' rights, in the struggle against anti-communism, for the defense of socialism and the Soviet Union, for the unity of the communist movement on the basis of our revolutionary principles and traditions.

We are following as closely as we can the developments in the USA, the escalation of the aggression of US imperialism which lately has become quite obvious. The US is striving to respond to the trend of losing ground within the framework of the imperialist system by inciting regional tensions and conflicts, so that it can take advantage of its political and military supremacy in order to safeguard its interests and maintain its spheres of influence.

In Greece, the working class and the popular strata are facing a barbaric attack, on the pretext of the economic crisis; an attack which has been jointly unleashed by the social democratic PASOK government, the EU and the IMF, with the assistance of the conservative ND party and the open support of the nationalist LAOS party.

The remarkable resistance presented by the labor and popular movements is spearheaded by KKE which continually strives to reveal the real cause of the crisis, the sharpening of the basic contradictions of capitalism. Without the consistent exposure of the compromised and discredited in the eyes of the workers trade union leaderships of GSEE and ADEDY (the national confederations of the private and public sectors, respectively), without the decisive contribution of PAME (All Workers' Militant Front), the national trade union front comprised of class oriented Federations, trade unions,
labor centers and trade unionists, the labor movement in our country would have been disarmed, unprepared, and unable to fight back.

KKE calls upon the working class, the self-employed, the poor farmers, and the youth to engage in even stronger, more massive and organized actions in order to stave off the onslaught and pave the way for a different path ofdevelopment. There can be no way other than the nationalization of the monopolies. The working class must take possession of the concentrated means of production and mobilize them with central planning and popular participation. This presupposes a struggle aiming for people's power, for socialism-communism.

The fightback against anti-communism, the adamant defense of the historical contribution of the Soviet Union and socialist construction in the 20th
century, of the identity and revolutionary traditions of the communist movement, take on particular importance today.

As long as the crisis of the international communist movement persists, as long as the situation does not improve and retreats from ideological and
theoretical principles are not resolutely confronted, as long as the front against opportunist views that hinder the formation of a single revolutionary strategy against imperialism does not become strengthened, the situation will harbor the danger of an even greater backslide.

The existence of strong Communist Parties, steadfast to the principles of Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism, with a revolutionary
program for the overthrow of the rule of monopolies, for building socialism-communism, is the foremost demand of our times.

We look forward to learning the conclusions and the resolutions of your convention.

With comradely greetings

The Central Committee of KKE

**************************

**The Communiqué from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation**


The International Scientific Conference "For historical truth and truthful reflection of the epoch" was held in Moscow.

The participants of the Conference are all convinced that the 65 years that have passed since the Victory Day over Nazi Germany have not dimmed the importance of feat of the world peoples, who managed to defend their freedom and independence, to rebuff the deadly threat to all humanity. Therefore, attempts to distort the history of the Second World War are simply disgusting.

Among manifestations of such efforts are the resolutions of the Council of Europe, of the OSCE, and of European Parliament, in which the socio-political systems of Hitler's Germany and the Soviet Union have been put in the same league. The regime that brought enslavement and death to the population of the planet is announced to be identical with the social system, which, under the historical conditions existing at the time, played main role in the victory over Nazi Germany and its allies. Fascism was born from capitalism and imperialism. This is the truth. School textbooks and manuals, pseudo-historical writings and mass media materials, in every way, exaggerate the importance of the Anglo-American troops in liberating Europe from fascism, and belittle, even deny, the liberative mission of the Red Army. The Resistance Movement is being deliberately forgotten, as is the important role of the communists and anti-fascists in the armed struggle against the occupation forces of the Hitler coalition.

Now, as before, the falsification of history is carried out by imperialism under the pretext of political considerations. Being concerned about the possible political and social consequences of the current economic crisis, the establishments of some countries tend to discredit the socialist alternative, to slander the Soviet Union and the communists around the world, in an attempt to erase the value of their decisive contribution to the victory over the mortal enemy of mankind - fascism.

Protesting against the falsification of history, the Conference participants call for an effective advocacy of the truth about the history of World War II, in schools and universities, in textbooks and other printed publications, in oral presentations in the media and materials that are distributed over the Internet. An intensification of such efforts is needed in order to clear the public consciousness, especially the consciousness of the younger generation, from the poison of false, anti-historical propaganda, to put the world’s people wise to the authentic causes and nature of the Second World War, of those, who were the true winners of the war.

Fifty scientists and politicians from 21 countries, as well as representatives from international organizations like the WPC, FIR and WIDF, took part in the Conference, which was organized and hosted by the CPRF.


International Department of the CPRF Central Committee

The International Committee to Defend ALL NATO/UN Politial Prisoners is LAUNCHED with Chris Blacks's response to Prof Kuzmarov's review of Herman & Pe

The International Committee to Defend ALL NATO/UN Politial Prisoners is LAUNCHED with Chris Blacks's response to Prof Kuzmarov's review of Herman & Peterson's 'The Politics of Genocide"

[We kick off the International Defense Committee for ALL Political Prisoners and POWs of NATO/UN*** with one of its founding members, Chris Black’s response to Professor Jeremy Kuzmarov’s Review of Edward S. Herman and David Peterson's “The Politics of Genocide,” foreword by Noam Chomsky (Monthly Review Press, 2010). As the name of the Committee might suggest, the scope of our concerns and intentions is very—perhaps, even too broad. So we’re hoping Maitre Black’s article will help us focus on the effects of a continuing falsification of History by the forces of Fascism. This manufacture of mass lies has been trying to rid our world of all rational experiments in revolutionary socialism or communism since October 1917. It is this anti-intellectual and anti-social pathology against which the Committee seeks to defend all political prisoners of this global military occupation by Western Waste Capital.

There is hope. Recently in Moscow there was a celebration of the 65th Anniversary of the Red Army’s victory over Fascism in the Great Patriotic War—known in the West as WWII. For the first time in recent memory an official contingent of US Marines marched through Red Square in solidarity with, and commemoration of, the more than 20 million Soviet lives that were given in repelling, then vanquishing, the Nazi invaders.

This recognition of the unimaginable sacrifice made by the Slavic, Jewish, Muslim, Orthodox Christian and other Soviet peoples—of all the partisans on the Eastern Front and in Europe—to guarantee (however partially or temporarily) a world free from neo-feudal enslavement to Waste Capitalist anti-Reality, was foreshadowed by the election in 2008 of Barack Obama (a face that just doesn’t look comfortable in Hugo Boss) to captain the flagship of the Fascist fleet, when he invited to his inauguration representatives of the Tuskegee airmen, those Black flyers who defied the US military’s institutional racism to play a major role in the air wars over the Balkans, Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, itself. Burt Lancaster would never have let us forget, in his sadly neglected ‘The Unknown War,’ that it was the Tuskegees who put the lie to the Nazi’s technological (and racial) superiority when they shot down the first two (of a half dozen) operational jet fighter/bombers (Messerschmitt 262s).

To recognize this History is only the beginning; to get it right is the goal of this Committee. For example, the USSR and then Russia have been cajoled by their Fascist interlocutors into admitting to various crimes committed under Josef Stalin’s leadership, thereby creating a sense of authoritarian equivalence between Fascism and Communism. The April-May 1940 massacre of 11,000 Polish Army officers in the Katyn forest is one of the more popular and ludicrous historical manipulations, as Stalin and Beria are credited only with the liquidation of the Polish pows (at a time when the Red Army was fleeing Eastern Poland with the Wehrmacht chomping at their heels and was forced even to abandon its own Soviet citizens to Nazi predations, why would they take time out to spend 11,000 rounds on Polish pows?), while the rest of the million+ Jewish, Ukrainian and Soviet victims are assigned to the Nazi occupation without debate. And recently, Serbia has had to ‘apologize’ or ‘express regret’ for the mass killing in 1995 Bosnia at Srebrenica—a crime (no longer seriously referred to as a genocide) that has never been established on the evidence and which has had to be stipulated to in a number of dodgy ICTY judgments. And as Chris points out so well, the inability of the ICTR over more than a decade to establish that there was any planning or intention on the part of the 1994 Rwandan state, its Army or any of its allies, to carry out any kind of mass slaughter, has become, itself, a crime against Humanity—and, especially, against that part of Humanity that remains imprisoned, persecuted and prosecuted, for this non-event.

To sample Richard Lovelace outta 1648,

Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage;
Minds innocent and quiet take
That for a hermitage;

But the Fascists’ falsification of History does create a very real Super-Max lock-up that deprives millions—both those who are imprisoned and those who think they are safe at home—of the freedom to pursue their rightful destinies. The false histories—be they of the Katyn massacre, the Ukrainian genocide famine of 1933, of the various post-Cold War mass-murders that called for even more murderous Humanitarian Interventions—all served one principal purpose: to take political power out of the hands of popular political leaders by judicially vilifying them as inhuman killers, while placing their sovereignties under military occupation for private commercial and financial exploitation in the service of Capitalist Wastage.

It is the Political Prisoners under this sort of confinement—deprived not only of their physical freedom, but of their own History, their own lives’ stories—who are the subjects of this Committee’s attention. For only by eventuating their freedom and advancing the liberation of their homelands, can we, ourselves, ever hope, really, to be free. –mc]

***To take part in The Committee, to join its discussions, go to:

http://intlndefcompppows.blogspot.com/2010/05/international-committee-to-defend.html

and post a comment to the blog.

To submit articles for possible posting to The Committee’s site, send them to cirqueminime@gmail.com.


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Kuzmarov Review of The Politcs of Genocide (#142972)

by Christopher Charles Black
May 24, 2010 at 5:29 PM

Professor Kuzmarov's generally positive review of this important book by Ed Herman and David Peterson is marred by a misapprehension of the facts of the history of Rwanda and the war that destroyed the country between 1990 and 1994.

He states that though Herman and Peterson's critique is thought provoking, they should "acknowledge the historical injustice faced by the Tutsi..." but fails to point out what injustice, exactly, he is referring to.

The entire history of Rwanda, from the 11th century on to the present, has been discussed and examined and analysed by expert after expert, by hundreds of witnesses to the events at the war crimes trials at the International War Crimes Tribunal For Rwanda in Arusha, Tanzania. It is in the transcripts of these trials, which have gone on for more than ten years, that one will find the truth, and it is this:

Before the arrival of the Europeans, first the Germans, then the Belgians, in the 1890's, Rwanda was a conglomeration of petty chiefdoms with the Tutsi minority, a cattle-raising people, ruling with an iron fist over the majority Hutu peasants. Over the first decades of the twentieth century, the Tutsis, who were adopted by the European colonisers as the comprador class to rule on their behalf, expanded their control over all the chiefdoms and replaced Hutu leaders with Tutsis. From then until 1959, when the social revolution took place, the Tutsi aristocracy held sway over the Hutu people, by then reduced to serfdom. It was required by law that Hutus work for Tutsi masters several days a week without pay, forced labor. Hutus were not allowed to go to school or to serve in the government administration, and had no political, social or economic power.

In 1959, a small group of Hutus, inspired by the liberation struggles after the second world war, issued a manifesto demanding equal right to education, to serve in the government, for elected democracy, for the abolition of serfdom, abolition of the monarchy, the right to form unions, freedom of the press, freedom of association, freedom from arbitrary arrest and other quite standard democratic ideals. Essentially, it was a call for social, economic and political justice after centuries of minority Tutsi oppression.

The result was a build-up of pressure in the West for democracy in Rwanda, and the Belgians supported this. Elections were held. Hutu candidates swept away the Tutsi bosses, and, for the first time, the majority of Rwandans had control of their destiny. Soon after the elections, a referendum was held on the monarchy, which was abolished by an overwhelming majority. The Tutsi aristocracy, not willing or able to accept a role less than that of overlords, responded by murdering several local mayors, civic officials and other Hutus. The Hutu government called for help, and the Belgians returned with a military force from the Congo to restore order and to pursue and arrest the Tutsis involved. However, as it was the entire Tutsi aristocracy that was involved, instead of facing arrest for murder, they fled the county, most to Uganda. From 1961 until 1973, the Tutsis who had fled staged armed raids into Rwanda, during which they wantonly slaughtered Hutus until they were captured or forced back into Uganda. The UN was called in, and many UN documents at the ICTR as well as press reports fron that time establish beyond question that it was the Tutsis who could not accept the social and democratic revolution and were to blame for the killings and all the violence.

Until 1990, there was no further interference in Rwanda from Uganda. However, the Tutsis were still there, but now as one of the main elements of the Ugandan Army of Yoweri Museveni. Museveni had been picked by the US and UK to oust Milton Obote, the socialist. Many Tutsis joined his forces, and when Museveni took power a third or more of his soldiers were Tutsis and many of them held high rank, as did Paul Kagame.

The collapse of the USSR allowed the US and UK to target two remaining socialist countries, Yugoslavia and Rwanda: Yugoslavia as it was the last strong bastion of working socialism in Europe, and Rwanda as it was a model of socialist development in Africa, even called the "Switzerland of Africa." The US was also tired of Mobutu, as he was beginning to turn towards China, and so they wanted to remove him. Rwandan President Habyarimana had been approached to allow his country to be used as a staging ground for an attack on Zaire (Congo). He refused. This, with their wish to destroy a working example of socialism in Africa, caused the US to look for other agents they could work with and found the Tutsis in Uganda still thirsting for the restoration of their hegemony in Rwanda and, even more, for Hutu blood in revenge. Museveni wanted to be rid of them as he also felt uneasy about the Tutsis in his ranks.

So, with Belgium and the UK, the US supported the invasion of Rwanda by the Ugandan Army on October 1, 1990. One thing must be understood very clearly: This was not an invasion by a Tutsi liberation group, as the RPF has claimed. The RPF was in fact the Ugandan Army operating in Rwanda under that name. All the soldiers in the RPF at that time were, aside from mercenaries, members of the Ugandan Army, carried Ugandan Army id cards, and used Ugandan army equipment, vehicles and communication facilities. The RPF was never a liberation group and was never backed by China. It was, as everyone knows, backed by the United States and Britain, along with Belgium and Canada. The RPF did at one time claim to be a marxist liberation group but that was another of their cynical ploys to sucker in the left in the West to support what was and still is a fascist organisation.

Another thing must be clearly understood: There was no justification for this surprise attack in which thousands of Hutus were slaughtered in the cruelest manner. The RPF claims that it was necessary to solve the refugee problem and that the Habyarimana regime had refused the Tutsi refugees' right of return. This is completely false, a total rewriting of documented history. Before all the judges at the ICTR are all the agreements and minutes of meetings in which the UN, the Rwandan government, the OAU, the RPF and Uganda and Tanzania had all agreed that those Tutsis who wanted to return could do so en masse. Despite what the good profesor says in his review, individual Tutsis had always had the right of return, and many had returned, and the Rwandan government encouraged this, both to reduce the outside threat and to build more harmony. Mass return had been deemed impractical as it was not understood how a small, already densely populated country could take the sudden influx of 500,000 people, when every piece of land was being used, and there were no extra jobs or housing for them. But in September, 1990, a deal was reached between Habyarimana and Museveni, to which the RPF was signatory. The next step was for the RPF to send a team to meet with the Rwandan commission set up to deal with the refugees to discuss logistics. That team was due in Kigali at the end of September. That team never arrived. Instead the RPF wing of the Ugandan Army mounted a surprise attack, thus rupturing the deal for the return of the refugees and revealing that there never was a refugee problem.*

Many witnesses have also described life for Tutsis in Rwanda before 1990. A picture of oppression does not appear; it is, rather, one of privilege. The MRND party (seen as a peoples movement rather than a political party, as such), in charge of the government and and made up of both Hutu and Tutsi members, created an affirmative action program guaranteeing the Tutsis a place in education, government, public service and the army. The RPF claims this was 'a ceiling.' But all witnesses, and I will rely on the Europeans who worked in the systems as being the least biased, confirmed that the percentage guarantees were not a ceiling but a floor, and in the universities, for example, the number of Tutsis often exceeded their 15% (maximum) portion of the population, and in many schools Tutsis exceeded 20% of the total number of students. Outside of the state-owned industries, it was the Tutsis who predominated. The Tutsis were the wealthiest group in Rwanda and controlled most import and export businesses. One has only to read the transcripts of the testimony of the Tutsi prince and son of the last king, Antoine Nyetera, who testified in the Military II trial, where he states that all the RPF claims are pure propaganda and that it was the RPF that committed most of the massacres, both before and during 1994, to see how the world has been taken in by a pretty clumsy propaganda effort by the RPF and the US and its usual allies.

The Professor dares to compare Kagame to Castro and Guevara's acting against Batista. No. You have it completely backwards. Kagame is Batista. With the help of the US et al, he overthrew a democratic, coalition government set up under the Arusha Accords to which, again, the RPF was signatory. The Professor prefers to omit from his review the crucial testimony from 2006 of Dr. Alison Des Forges, also in the Military II trial, in which she stated that there was no plan by the government of Rwanda to commit genocide, as it was impossible for a coalition government composed of Hutus and Tutsis and including the RPF and its allied parties, and in which Habyarimana had been reduced to a figurhead, with real power resting with the pro-RPF prime ministers, to conceive such a thing.

He ignores the fact that it was Habyarimana who first got rid of the one-party socialist government and rewrote the constitution in 1991 and agreed to talks with the RPF to stop the war.

The Belgian and US ambassadors, senior Belgian army officers, Tanzanian and UN diplomats all confirm that every time the Rwandan government agreed to a cease-fire, it was the RPF that violated it with more slaughter using a "fight and talk" strategy, and that it was the RPF who did not want free elections and who prepared for their final solution, their final offensive of 6 April 1994 in which they launched another surprise attack, in breach of the Accords, with the connivance of the UN and the direct military support of the US and others.

It is also clear on the evidence that most of those killed in 1994 were Hutus not Tutsis, as the RPF claims in order to justify its seizure of power. RPF officers have testified and written letters to the UN stating that the RPF killed 2 million Hutus in those 12 weeks and then claimed the victim were Tustis.

It is also established beyond doubt that the first massacre of 1994, the murder of all those on the president's plane on 6 April, was committed by the RPF, which blew it out of the sky with help from its western allies. The Professor fails to mention something he must know: that the first body to determine who shot down the plane was the prosecution service of the ICTR in 1997. Michael Hourigan, the Australian lawyer who headed the team investigating the shoot down, reported to Prosecutor Louise Arbour that it was the RPF, that he had met with three members of the shoot down team and that he had the documents to prove it. Arbour quickly called him to The Hague and ordered him off the file and demanded he burn his notes. His notes lead to the CIA. This was revealed first by the National Post newspaper in 2001 and later by other journals. Hourigan left the UN in disgust. His testimony before the tribunal is recorded. So it is not just a French or a Spanish judge who has likewise determined this to be the case. Further, the intercepted radio message of Kagame telling his troops that President Habyarimana had been killed and that the offensive could go ahead were also filed as an exhibit in several trials. Just last June, this writer filed as an exhibit a letter from Paul Kagame to a Tutsi leader in Burundi, dated August 1994, in which he speaks of the thanks he has for the Americans, Belgians and British, for the taking of Kigali and the plans they have next for Zaire and the overthrow of the Hutu regime in Burundi. I am quite willing to share that letter with anyone who wishes to see it. The testimony of the General Augustin Ndindiliyimana, chief of staff of the Rwandan National Gendarmerie, in the Military II case, that US air force C130 Hercules aircraft dropped men and supplies to the RPF after 6 April, is something else to bear in mind in this regard.

I will not get into the charge of Mssrs Herman and Peterson's being too harsh on NGOs in Rwanda. Well, no, I will--they were not too harsh on NGOs. The role of these organizations was always damaging to peace and, as with Human Rights Watch, almost coincidental with the RPF strategy and the role of the Western mass media, was shameful. A slaughter of perhaps millions, certainly hundreds of thousands, of people was covered up and made to look like its opposite: Ethnic cleansing as a war of liberation; Mass slaughter of innocents as revenge for contrived grievances.

The saddest thing for me is the studied indifference to the war crimes trials that have taken place at the ICTR, and are still taking place there, and the shattering evidence that has been revealed to the world about what really happened to Rwanda and Rwandans and what is happening to them now under the fascist RPF military junta now placed in control of the country by the US and the UK. It is as if the most important criminal and political trials of the past century (I say this with all respect to the Nuremberg process, because they were very short and issues were never examined at any length.) have never taken place. Well, they have. They are still taking place. Anyone who is ignorant of the testimony and evidence in those trials has no claim to academic authority about the war in Rwanda. Anyone who claims he has such expertise, based on old saws from ten years ago, has been sadly left behind by time and events, and, to get back in the game, must go to the trials. There lies the reality.

Christopher Black
Barrister,
International Criminal Lawyer
Lead Counsel, International War Crimes Tribunal For Rwanda
Toronto, Canada

*From the irony file: The fact-finding mission that Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni was to send to Rwanda to look into the mass repatriation of Rwandan Tutsi refugees from Uganda was to be led by Ugandan Army Chief of Staff, Major General Fred Rwigema. But, instead, on 1 October 1990, the Ugandan National Resistance Army sent an invasion force into Rwanda. That invasion was led, however briefly, by Ugandan Army Chief of Staff, Major General Fred Rwigema.

Patrick's Gone Back to the Barracks.

[Patrick was one of my first seriously committed and strongest partners. We did things in Chico and Dublin (Ireland) that I still can't talk about today for fear of being run in for them. The beautiful Dublin girls used to call his mews flat on Baggot Lane, around from the Intercontinental Hotel, 'the Barracks.' But he was a lovely man and will hold a joyous place in my remembrance of things past as long as I live. Love you, man. --mc]

Patrick R. Reilley

SEPTEMBER 16, 1950 ~ MAY 16, 2010

ROCKLAND, MAINE - On Sunday, May 16th,, 2010, Rockland resident Patrick Reilley lost his long struggle against cancer. Patrick and his wife, Susanne Ward, moved from California in 1991, starting Second Read Books & Coffee on Main Street. Much to everyone’s surprise, the business found a loyal following, and in 1999, Reilley and Ward began Rock City Coffee Roasters. Second Read subsequently became Rock City Books & Coffee. Patrick loved his new career as a coffee roaster and prided himself on roasting some of the finest coffees available.

Patrick was born in San Francisco, the grandson of Irish immigrants. He spent part of his early years in school in Ireland and returned again to live there as a young man for a few years. He was pleased to have recently received his dual citizenship for Ireland and the United States.

Patrick had many civic interests. During his nearly twenty years in Rockland, he served on the City Council, the Planning Board and the Rockland Library PLEA board. He was keenly interested in Rockland’s revival and took great joy in being a part of it. His many interests also included art, books, music and old English motorcycles. He was an accomplished painter and spent the first part of his life as an art framer and gallery owner.

Patrick was known as a keenly intelligent, generous and kind man. He was well-loved by people on both coasts. One of his longtime friends said of Patrick, “ I remember his impeccable taste in everything—in clothing, in music and art…. His erudition was formidable, yet he never flaunted it.”

Despite his illness, Patrick was invariably cheerful, optimistic and concerned about other people. He loved his adopted state and found great beauty in this coastal region. He is survived by his wife Susanne Ward; his daughter Siobhan Reilley and her husband Jeff Fletcher; his daughter Quillan Reilley Donnis and her husband Beau Donnis; his grandson Simon Fletcher; and his siblings Larry Reilley, Terry Westlake, Michael Reilley and Bonnie Walker, all of California. He also leaves many, many cousins, nieces and nephews.

Donations in lieu of flowers may be made to the Rockland Library PLEA, P.O. Box 18, Rockland, ME 04841 or the Humane Society of Knox County, P.O. Box 1294, Rockland, ME 04841 . A celebration of his life will be held in mid-June at the family home.

The International Committee to Defend NATO/UN Politial Prisoners and POWs.

[above] Wakefield Prison, England; [below] Somewhere (everywhere?) in Rwanda

The International Committee to Defend NATO/UN Politial Prisoners and POWs.

[CM/P has recently been plotting, with Me Chris Black and some of our other tight comrades, to form a Defense Committee for all those Prisoners who opposed, in some way or another—even if only by association—the growing movement for regime conquest toward the Private Military acquisition and corporate administration of all heretofore Public or Social property and its productive forces. As a way of indicating that time, like money, is not ours in abundance, we received this message from friends in Belgrade:


THE BELGRADE FORUM FOR A WORLD OF EQUALS

82, Kneza Miloša Street

11 000 Belgrade

tel. 011/2644-293

beoforum@gmail.com


Dear friends,

The Belgrade Forum for a World of Equals addresses you on behalf of Ms Tamara Krstić from Belgrade, daughter of General Radislav Krstic who, pursuant to the verdict of the Hague Tribunal, is serving his sentence in the United Kingdom.

Last week, General Krstic was the victim of a brutal physical assault mounted by a group of inmates in the British prison at Wakefield. The immediate consequences include serious injuries (lacerations) to his neck and torso, substantial loss of blood, and coma.

All the circumstances gathered so far indicate that this attack was long-prepared and premeditated. It demonstrates the failure to ensure the safety of General KRSTIC in this or any other prison facility in the United Kingdom. Therefore, we beseech you to facilitate a transfer of General Krstic to another country, one that is willing to and capable of guaranteeing General Krstic’s safety, preferably to Serbia. We are sending pertinent petitions to the President of the Hague Tribunal, Mr. Patrick Robinson, in The Hague, to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, in Geneva, to the Secretary-General of the Council of Europe, in Strasbourg, to the President of European Union and to the mass media.

We would appreciate your earnest engagement and contribution in demanding the transfer, safety, and adequate medical treatment of General Radislav Krstic.


Živadin Jovanović, President

Belgrade Forum for a World of Equals

*************************

The Krstic ‘genocide conviction,’ the first and only such conviction on this squishy charge to be achieved by the ICTY, is based on plea bargained testimony from threatened co-defendant snitches, against an accused whose infirmity (he'd recently lost a leg and was heavily medicated) made it realistically impossible for him effectively to take part in his own trial, and the genocide charge was basically redefined by the Appeals Chamber to conform to the Trial Chamber's (evidence-lite) judgment (then the 61 year old's sentence was cynically reduced from 46 to 35 years)[1]. This finding is as humbug a piece of judicial chicanery as any that this Kangaroo court (that the Kangaroos would despise) has yet come up with.

With the Prosecution totally unable to prove, on the evidence, the actual occurence of the 1995 Bosnian genocide of 8,000 Muslim males or, its prototype, the Rwandan genocide of 800,000+ Tutsi & moderate Hutu in 1994, the ICTY & ICTR, to maintain their raison d'être, have had to resort to 'instructions' from their shared Appeals Chamber in The Hague to the Trial Chambers, ordering them to 'take judicial notice' of these 'genocide-like events'; (i.e, to stipulate to them without proof as ‘Natural Facts of Jesus’). These mass killings were racialist fantasies spun from the dank straw composted in Western stink tanks by the magical dwarves at the US DoD, NATO, the EU & the UN, into golden duvets to cover the grotesquely real mass slaughters these terrorist organizations conspired with their proxies to commit in the execution of their privatized wars to destroy the Yugoslav and Rwandan revolutions.

So, the creation of this International Committee to Defend the NATO/UN Political Prisoners and POWs (which must also include Palestinians, Iraqis, Afghans, Iranians et alia) is a simple act of Resistance to unprovoked military aggressions--crimes against the Peace--other war crimes and crimes against Humanity, and the financial, commercial and cultural occupations, unto the very hijacking of national Histories, that the world has been suffering through (and euphemistically calling a 'global economic crisis') since before the 'end of the Cold War.' And all have been carried out in the interests of private, corporate (i.e., Waste Capitalist) entities—be they decked out as national governments or NGOs.

This Resistance, a moral and legal obligation under national and international laws and conventions, is still, after 20+ years, in a formative stage. It is driven by the abject abandonment of these Prisoners (names like Krstic, Karadzic, Seselj, Milanovic and Markovic in Serbia: and Kambanda, Rutaganda, Bagosora, Bizimungu, and Ndindiliyimana in Rwanda, are just the few which immediately spring to mind), not only by the public conscience on its soporific and mendacious media IV, but by many of their own court-appointed defense counsels and the very ad hoc (and illegal) judicial institutions created by trans-national corporate interests to continue their military aggressions by extra-military—though no less violent—and quazi-judicial means (currently being used as 'career trampolines' by any number of otherwise unemployable professional sentimentalist hacks and self-ordained experts), as well as the abject trivialization unto total denial, by these same aggressors, of the Historical Record, just as the HR is being developed, revised and amended by evidence and information gathered through governmental and non-governmental judicial investigations and the independent research and scholarship of many of our friends and contributors.

David Peterson and Ed Herman are the sort of experienced and respected reporters and scholars who should not be expected to stick their necks out as they have in submitting such definitive work (from the Srebrenica Study Group) on the history of events at Srebrenica in 1995, or their recently (to be) released (in the May 2010 Monthly Review) radical reassessment of the so-called "100-day Rwandan Genocide of 800,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutu." But they have taken this risk for the sake of Historical Truth, International Justice and World Peace, and we very gratefully attach two of these works to this post.

So, when you sign David's petition, copy us here at cirqueminime@club-internet.fr, or leave a comment on this post. We will add you as a founding member of the International Committee to Defend the NATO/UN Political Prisoners and POWs. With national elections coming to Rwanda in August 2010 and the 10th Anniversary of the October coup d'état that overturned the duly-elected democratic government of Serbia/Yugoslavia, and eventually sent its sitting head of state, Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, as a hostage-for-ransom to the old Nazi prison at Scheveningen, only to be iatrogenically terminated 6 years later—a murder of such protracted gruesomeness as to make the near instantaneous dismemberment of his Rwandan counterpart, President Juvénal Habyarimana, in an RPF missile strike against his presidential jet, seem almost merciful—with such momentous events looming near, History tells us that, though it may waste us, we have no time to waste.—mc]

***************************

To all concerned:

Please read the following petition, which is self-explanatory.


Please forward it to all persons you know you might be interested in signing.

If you are willing to sign, please send a message with your name, professional identification, city where you reside or country of citizenship, and email address to:

David Peterson: davidepet@comcast.net

Stating that:

I hereby sign the petition of

Voices of Concern for the Treatment of International Political Prisoners.

Thank you,

Diana Johnstone

****************

Voices of Concern for the Treatment of International Political Prisoners

The vicious May 7 attack on General Radislav Krstic in Wakefield Prison (U.K.) is a dramatic illustration of the failure to ensure the safety of the prisoners of international tribunals.

A Serb native of Bosnia, General Krstic was sentenced to 35 years in prison by the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY) for complicity in 1995 Srebrenica massacres, although it is acknowledged that he was not directly involved in criminal executions. General Krstic repeatedly denied any knowledge of the massacres at the time, and his sentence is regarded as excessive and politically motivated by many informed observers who believe the case should be reopened.

On May 7, General Krstic was physically assaulted by three inmates identified as "Muslims." A 22-year-old ethnic Albanian named Indrit Krasniqi is reported to have slit the throat of General Krstic, narrowly missing the jugular.

Krasniqi, 22, was serving a life sentence under British law for the gang torture and murder of a 16-year-old girl. Wakefield Prison, in the north of England, is reserved especially for criminals serving long sentences for grave sex offenses.

We find it highly irresponsible of British authorities to incarcerate General Krstic, essentially a prisoner of war, in such an environment. Now 62 years old, General Krstic is disabled, having lost a leg in the Bosnian war. There is an obvious risk in imprisoning a Bosnian Serb accused of grave crimes against Muslims in a region of England with a particularly large Muslim population. The claim that the attack was motivated by "Muslim revenge" serves as a smokescreen to cover the responsibility of British authorities.

The near-fatal attack on General Krstic comes in the wake of an extraordinary series of deaths of prisoners held by the International Criminal Tribunals for former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda.


We, the undersigned, demand:


• An official inquiry into the May 7 incident.


• The immediate transfer of General Krstic to a country able to ensure his personal safety, for example to Norway, or to Serbia as requested by Belgrade authorities.


• An end to the indifference of governments, human rights organizations and the media to the fate of prisoners of ad hoc criminal tribunals, often exaggeratedly stigmatized by the media and without the benefits of the protection afforded by judicial process in normal national courts.


[1] Details of the Krstic case can be found here:
http://www.rnw.nl/international-justice/article/krstic-radislav

Attachments:

• YugoTrib.pdf (300KB)
• herman-peterson 4-1-10 May 2010.pdf (250KB)

Reaction of the UN Political Prisoners to the Mutsinzi Report

Reaction of the UN Political Prisoners to the Mutsinzi Report

[Here attached is a PDF of our rendering into English of the analysis of the Rwandan Mutsinzi Committee Report by the UN Political Prisoners & POWs in Arusha—certainly not the first such response to this last desperate act of defiance by a bloody and morally bereft Rwandan State—a national entity that would have to bathe itself in 151-proof battery acid just to clean up enough to qualify as a ‘rogue state.’ But then there are no crimes so heinous, so unspeakably bloodthirsty and venal, that the NATO military/industrial humanists won’t absolve.

A petty irony is that the mainstream narrative—the Rwandan Genocide story as spun by the likes of Philip Gourevitch, Samantha Powers and Gerard Prunier—has had, more and more, to ignore the diabolical details of the developing historical record, while continuing to claim general support from this same evidentiary body, the results of inquiries, investigations and trials by international political and judiciary institutions that, in reality, reduce the glossy magazine history to pure, though grimly cynical, fantasy.

The Mutsinzi Committee Report was a direct response to Judge Jean-Louis Bruguière (http://cirqueminime.blogcollective.com/blog/_archives/2007/9/30/3262522.html), whose investigation into the deaths of the three-man French flight crew of President Habyarimana’s doomed Falcon 50 jet produced a compendium of 8 years of harvested evidence, UN and international NGO reports, witness testimony from various national judicial, parliamentary and military hearings, as well as the trial transcripts and other documents from the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in Arusha. Everything necessary to assign responsibility for the signal terrorist act of 6 April 1994, the consensus trigger for Rwanda’s 100 days of carnage, and, really, Africa’s 911, is in the Bruguière Report. So to impeach this judgment would prove a neat trick, indeed. Mutsinzi was just not up to it—not even close.

And the UN Prisoners have shown just how ridiculous such a pack of mendacious scoundrels, hired to do the bidding of a soulless emperor, can be. –mc]

***************************

Attachments:

• REACTION OF THE DETAINEES OF THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL TRIBUNAL FOR RWANDA.pdf (568KB

Chas ONANA Defends his Friend Déo MUSHAYIDI Against KAGAME's MURDER INC. - by Charles Onana

Chas ONANA Defends his Friend Déo MUSHAYIDI Against KAGAME's MURDER INC. - by Charles Onana

[Our friend and powerful Cameroonian rabbi, Charles Onana, whose DUBOIRIS editions were the principal sources of CM/P's early formation in African issues, especially those concerning Rwanda and Congo, has had to step up and defend his friend and colleague, Déo Mushayidi, from the global rampage of the criminal maniacs in Kigali.

As the truth of what has really been happening in Rwanda and Congo since the early 1990s becomes more widely known—and even more undeniable—, as the international criminal warrants begin to pile up on the Rwandan president's desk, as the Western forces for violent regime change begin to sight-in on some of their old road dogs: bloody Anglo-Saxon-sponsored fascists, like Mikheil Saakhasvili, Yoweri Museveni, Pal Joey Kabila and Pontius Pilate Paul Kagame, begin frantically striking out in all directions to wreak as much havoc, to spill as much innocent blood, to ratchet up terror to the max in hopes of escaping the fates they exacted on the victims whose corpses they elevated themselves upon.

The distinction between Hutu and Tutsi has always been a pure social construct and political instrument, with its tribal antecedents serving merely to obfuscate reason and color political expediency with the hues of savage ethnic blood feuds.

The victimization unto extermination of Rwandans and Congolese has always been quite cynically ecumenical. The case of Tutsi journalist/activist Déo Mushayidi, his recent arrest in Tanzania and 'transfer' (a euphemism for illegal extradition à la Milosevic) to a Kigali court, brought forth this appeal for justice and decency from Charles Onana, one of the most respected (and rightfully feared by the bad guys) investigative journalists in practice today.

For us here at CM/P, it is the greatest honor to render his essential criticism in our special brand of English. –mc]

*************************************


The Exclusive Testimony of Charles Onana on the Case of Déo Mushayidi
(24 March 2010)

My Tutsi friend is in the hands of Africa’s Murder Inc.

Who will stop the criminal cartel that is currently running wild in Kigali? Who will bring an end to the grisly martyrdom of the Tutsi, Hutu and Congolese? Who will find justice for the French, Spanish and Canadians felled by the bullets and missiles of the assassins who seized state power in Rwanda by force of arms in 1994?

For the moment, all is silence. Maybe an uncomfortable silence—but silence nonetheless! Faced with the growing murderousness of the Rwandan authorities, faced with the torrent of Rwandan soldiers and diplomats fleeing into other countries, faced with ever more persecutions of political opponents, faced with arbitrary arrests of Rwandan citizens at home and abroad: the Western powers that support the Kigali regime are keeping their heads down. Yet the lives of many Rwandans, inside and outside the country, are now being threatened more than ever—regardless of whether they are Tutsi or Hutu. Not since the days of the one-party states has Africa experienced such a savage and ruthless dictatorship as the one in Kigali today. This unsustainable situation is unbearable for the victims of the Rwandan tragedy of 1994.

My friend and colleague Déo Mushayidi is one such victim. In the past, he was a member of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF). Today, he is the RPF’s prey. Before, it was the ‘Extremist Hutu’ who slaughtered his family; today, it is the ruling Tutsi Extremists who are plotting his death. Given the gravity of the situation, I cannot just sit on my hands. By writing this now, I mean to support my friend, who has been kidnapped and is about to face a firing squad.

Two weeks ago Déo Mushayidi was arrested in Tanzania and transported to Kigali, Africa’s new capital of state-sanctioned crime. I did not react right away. I wanted to know exactly what he had done and what he was being accused of. After several days, the Kagame regime spat out its venom, accusing Déo Mushayidi of “endangering state security.” This was the charge made against him at his first appearance before a Kigali judge. Then, the indictment metastasized with other charges: “disturbing the peace, forgery, associating with a terrorist group, genocide revisionism and divisionism.” Déo Mushayidi, a Tutsi victim, should not have expected less from these self-appointed spokespeople for the Tutsi. The Rwandan hills are alive with such mountebanks.

What were the circumstances of Déo Mushayidi’s arrest? Who handed down the order to send him to Kigali? Under what international convention was he handed over to Rwandan authorities, or—more exactly—to Paul Kagame?

The minimum that can be said is that nothing is clear in this case. But the highly political decision to send Déo Mushayidi to Rwanda is very much a call by the current Kigali regime for the murder of exiled Rwandan political opponents. This initiative placed in particular jeopardy all those Tutsi who refuse to submit to the bloody authoritarianism of President Paul Kagame.

After actively campaigning for the RPF in Switzerland during the 1990s, my friend Mushayidi indeed became an opponent of the Kagame regime. Until 1994, before Kagame and the RPF had seized state power, Mushayidi was the Front’s representative in Geneva. Upon his arrival in Kigali, he was one of the first Tutsi to understand the reality of this new Rwandan government.

I first met Déo Mushayidi in Washington, DC, in 1999. Careful, measured and critical, he is a professional journalist and an open-minded individual. At the time, he was running a newspaper in Kigali and chairing the Rwandan Journalists Association.

One evening in my Washington hotel room, Déo Mushayidi warned me against the image of Paul Kagame and his regime being presented in the Western media. He knew a lot about this since he had worked with Kagame and seen just what he was capable of. I was in the midst of my investigation of Kagame’s role in the terrorist attack of 6 April 1994 against the plane of the sitting Rwandan President, Juvénal Habyarimana—an international crime against the peace in which the Burundian President, Cyprien Ntaryamira, and the entire French (civilian) flight crew were also killed. Déo Mushayidi had agreed to cooperate in my investigation despite the great risks he’d be running in Kigali. In the course of a dinner in the US he told me at length about the crimes committed by the Tutsi ‘rebels’ during their taking of Kigali and the mass killings of Hutu in 1995, 1996, and 1997. He had also reported on a plan to murder the former president of the Rwandan parliament, Joseph Sebarenzi, a Tutsi, who fought against the arbitrariness of the Rwandan legislature. “Kagame told me he wanted Sebarenzi dead. Because he feared that the speaker of the parliament, widely respected, would overshadow him.” Joseph Sebarenzi fled Rwanda and is now in exile in the United States.

Déo Mushayidi told me of other schemes to murder members of the opposition, like the Tutsi journalist Jean Pierre Mugabe, another refugee in the US today, with whom I had discussed a great deal concerning the history of the terrorist attack of 6 April and the violent methods favored by Paul Kagame. Déo also spoke to me of assassination threats against him. He was calm but concerned. We have stayed in touch, and I have tried to encourage him as much as I can. The atmosphere in Rwanda was ghastly and remains so.

One day the following year, in March 2000, my phone rang. It was Déo calling from the French Embassy in Kigali. With a steady but anxious voice, he said he was in danger. “Do not worry,” he assured. “A French friend has made arrangements to get me to Europe. I gave him your number in case I need something. As soon as I arrive in Europe, I’ll call you,” he concluded. I was indeed reassured to know my friend was in the French Embassy. It was, at that time, the safest place for him. The following days were difficult because I did not know if Déo Mushayidi would be able to get out of Kigali unmolested. But a week later I received another call. It was Déo again. He had finally arrived in Europe and was far from Kagame’s henchmen. I was delighted that my friend was out of danger.

I tell this story today because I think my friend has been delivered into the hands of those who tried to murder him in 2000. Were all these efforts to get him out of Kigali in vain? Could the French official who saved Déo from his executioners get the ear of French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, or President Nicolas Sarkozy, both of whom are well known to be very fond of Paul Kagame? For my part, I thank the French for prolonging Déo Mushayidi’s life and allowing him to fight for Truth and Justice in his country for another ten years. During my 2002 trial in Paris on charges brought against me by Paul Kagame for our book on the terrorist attack of 6 April 1994, Déo Mushayidi came out to support me. He has always supported me against the many attacks of which I was the object for having dared to shine a light on the crimes Kagame committed against the Hutu, Tutsi and Congolese. When he became a refugee in Belgium in 2000, he got out of journalism to be able to continue his political struggles. He still advocates for fairness and justice to all victims of the 1994 Rwandan Genocide (Hutu and Tutsi, alike). In 2008 he joined with former Rwandan Defense Minister, General Emmanuel Habyarimana, once a collaborator of Paul Kagame’s now living in exile in Switzerland, to publish a memorandum that was sent to the UN Security Council. That memo was extensively documented (including many highly classified documents) and explained Paul Kagame’s involvement in the plundering of resources from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), in the terrorist assassination of President Juvénal Habyarimana, and many other crimes. Déo Mushayidi has always advocated for peace and reconciliation among Rwandans—an approach the current government of Rwanda completely rejects.

In the past, Paul Kagame accused the Hutu of having “planned a genocide” against the Tutsi. Now, the same Kagame regime accuses my Tutsi friend of terrorism and denial of the “Tutsi genocide.” However, Déo Mushayidi has never carried a Kalashnikov as has Paul Kagame, he’s never shot down a president’s plane as has Paul Kagame, he’s never killed his own staff as has Paul Kagame, he’s never killed either Hutu or Tutsi as has Paul Kagame, he’s never advocated discrimination against Rwandan citizens as does Paul Kagame. He’s never invaded the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and butchered millions of Congolese as Paul Kagame’s military continues to do. He’s never plundered the DRC as Paul Kagame has for the last nearly thirteen years. Yet, it is Déo Mushayidi who is now in the dock—or should I say, on death row—in Kigali.

And I was struck with a curious hopefulness by the singular lack of enthusiasm shown by the international media in reporting the case of Déo Mushayidi. I’m especially surprised by the pall of silence hanging over Belgium, the country that welcomed my friend and gave him political asylum. And it was thought-provoking to see how little was made of his case by the Human Rights community, which is usually very quick to execute the orders of the Kagame regime by going after so-called ‘Hutu Genocidaires.’ Are they, perhaps, confusing my Tutsi friend with some poor Hutu who deserves to disappear behind jailhouse walls, as did former Rwandan President Pasteur Bizimungu, in order to protect the criminal syndicate currently in power in Kigali? Do they also see Déo Mushayidi as a ‘genocidaire’ or a ‘divisionist’ and a ‘revisionist’? Since the regime said he was all those things and a ‘terrorist’ to boot, maybe there are still some brain-donors out there who believe it. The reality is that my friend is paying for his involvement in my investigation of the terrorist attack on 6 April 1994, for his investigative work that led to the memorandum of 2008, and for his public positions as a Tutsi victim and a former member of the RPF working against the Kagame regime. The charges by the Rwandan military dictatorship against Déo Mushayidi are simply arbitrary and capricious fabrications.

Given the weak consensus within the European Union, the principal contributor of public funds to the repressive autocracy in Kigali, I would like to think that my friend will not remain for long in the hands of Africa’s Murder Inc., which is currently ravaging Rwanda and the DRC.


Charles Onana

Author of:

- The Secrets of the Rwandan Genocide, Paris, Editions Duboiris, 2002 (in collaboration with Déo Mushayidi)

- The Secrets of International Justice, Paris, Editions Duboiris, 2005

- These Tutsi Killers at the Heart of the Congolese Tragedy, Paris, Editions Duboiris, 2009