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***

The cut from the CHRI report below is also lumbered with this flabby notion of Ethnic or Tribal determinism. All the difficulties in proving the crime of genocide withstanding, the Hutu genocide of the Tutsi and the Tutsi genocide of the Hutu just do not stand up to any kind of postmortem.

As they found out with the victims of the Srebrenica ‘genocide’, there is no DNA test to determine ethnicity or nationality--how could they know the bodies they’d recovered (and keep reburying each July) were really Muslim men and boys and not Slavs or Catholics? So it is with Hutus and Tutsis--especially after decades, even centuries, of cohabitation. But don’t worry, there’s plenty enough murder and mayhem to gratify the militarist-humanitarian’s most prurient interests. Deaths for days to be mourned for ages.

But once we have opened up the discussion with the ‘double genocide’ pass key, what do we hope to gain in the name of Truth and Justice? We are quite certain that the evidence that has been accumulated by various courts, including, but not restricted to, the ICTR, the Spanish inquiry into the deaths of a dozen clerics by judge Fernando Andreu Merelles, and the investigation of the deaths of three French nationals by anti-terrorist judge Jean-Louis Bruguière, will topple the scales right out of Lady Justice’s blind hands and onto the side of a thoroughly premeditated, pre-planned and mercilessly executed genocide against the powerless people of Central Africa by the forces of US/UK/EU/Israeli militarism with their Ugandan and Rwandan proxies, like the RPF/RPA/NRA.

To circumvent the Nuremberg Judgement, much is made about a balance of violence, a balance of terror between the invaders and the invaded, the aggressors and the aggressed, the villains and the victims.
 
This balance quickly becomes, first a confusion of the two, then a conflation, and finally an equation, especially a moral equation, of the two warring sides. (e.g., Hannah Arendt’s Fascism=Communism) The attached report is full of this kind of mix and match, and it makes what limited sense it does only because we have so internalized the notion of racial, tribal, religious or ethnic animosities as the primary motor of History.

Never Class Struggle--Never Political Genocide!

What the discussion of the ‘double genocide’ will show is that the real victims in Rwanda and Congo were the powerless majority, and they suffered and died to advance the cruel ,selfish concerns of a powerful minority.

The Hutu represented 85% of the population of Rwanda--and their revolutionary government represented the interests of an even greater percentage of the Rwandan people. The invading Ugandan refugee/rebels, with their longings for the ancient Tutsi monarchy and its droit de cuissage (the Tutsi master’s right to cop the thigh of his Hutu slave’s daughters), had only their own narrow interests--first among them being to serve their Western military masters by offering their lands for AFRICOM bases and as dumps for burning off the maximum possible surplus ordnance while replacing the region’s natural riches with the murdered corpses of its superfluous souls.

Always like to end with an anecdote: What really happened in Central Africa? This is from Gérard Prunier’s ‘Africa’s World War’ (Oxford University Press, 2009), footnote 142 from page 137--as I see it, how the Rwandan refugees got wiped out: [Note: Prunier’s craven parti prix for the Hutu genocide of the Tutsi makes it necessary for him to describe all evidence to the contrary as ‘paradoxical.’]

--In a paradoxical development typical of the general confusion, Brig. Delphin Muland, the Tigers’ commander-in-chief [The Tigers were the former Army of Katanga aka Gendarmes Katangais, backed by Communist Angola to fight against Mobutu in the 1970s], found himself faced with thousands of Hutu refugees streaming down toward the Angolan border as he and his troops were coming up by way of Luachimo.

The refugees were being chased by RPA elements, and because they were obviously harmless civilians, Muland fired on the RPA to let the refugees flee*. This caused him to be imprisoned in Kinshasa after the war was over on orders from the RPA officers who were furious at having lost their quarry. [Interview with Deogratias Symba, Washington, D.C., March 2000]--

{*However, several million didn’t get this pass. cm/p}

The Rwandan experience demonstrates the chief problem with the Human Rights movement: Human Rights are seen as the rights of oppressed minorities and never those of militarily-eradicated majorities. Rwanda was not Hutu v Tutsi. Just like Iraq and Yugoslavia, where popular leaders were also murdered by Western occupiers, Rwanda was another case of the expansion of Western Military Wastage v a small independent majority-ruled nation.

And now Human Rights are sprinkled on this story like perfume on a corpse. --mc]



[See complete CHRI Report attached]

The Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative's (CHRI) report on Rwanda is published in order to assist the Commonwealth Heads of Governments in arriving at a decision as to whether Rwanda should be admitted to Commonwealth membership. The decision would be momentous, as until recently the rules for admission to the Commonwealth restricted membership to those states that have had a close constitutional relationship with a Commonwealth state.

Mozambique was the exception, when it was formally admitted in 1995, because of its intimate links with Southern African Commonwealth states and its role in ending the apartheid era within South Africa. (. . .)

(. . .) The Commonwealth Secretariat has prepared a report on Rwanda's application, which presumably includes an assessment of Rwanda's compliance with Commonwealth standards of human rights and democracy. Unfortunately the report has not been made public. (. . .)

(. . .) CHRI is concerned to ensure that the issues of human rights and democracy are given due consideration in the decision on Rwanda's application. (. . .) After several months of research and preparation, the team visited Rwanda during May 2009, and a report has been published by Professor Yash Ghai, with assistance from Lucy Mathieson. (. . .)

Killings by the Tutsi

But there is another side to the story. Lemarchand talks of the studied disregard of the narratives of the Hutu refugees about the massive persecution and killings inflicted on Hutus by the RPF, "all of these add up to a devastating commentary on the conspiracy of silence surrounding one of the biggest ethnic cleansing operations that followed in the wake of the genocide" (p. 11)[1]. So, briefly, the RPF, closely associated with Museveni's regime in Uganda (having helped him to overthrow Obote's government), planned to capture Rwanda, assisted by Uganda. President Habyarimana's regime in Rwanda was somewhat shaky and was forced into a process of democratisation[2].

Among its new policies was the repatriation of the Rwandese refugees in Uganda, set for November 1990. Gérard Prunier, the distinguished historian of the Great Lakes Region, writes, "this new development augured ill for the RPF militants who were now in danger of losing their support among the refugees if the latter felt that their return to Rwanda could be achieved without fighting. Accordingly, they accelerated their preparations to beat the November deadline"[3].

Prunier says that the RPF was goaded into action for another reason: intellectual circles in Rwanda were busy preparing to launch political parties, as Habyarimana, now under pressure also from the French, "could not long delay the acceptance of a multiparty system— which would deprive the RPF of one its best public relations points, i.e., that it was fighting a totalitarian single-party dictatorship." (p. 91).

The early phase of the RPF's invasion was rather unsuccessful; it lost four of its key leaders to enemy bullets[4], and had to retreat to Uganda (with the help of that country's government) to regroup and reorganise.

On its return, it achieved greater success, and forced the Habyarimana government into peace negotiations and a ceasefire agreement. However, after the agreement on power sharing, and violence by some Hutu groups, the RPF broke the ceasefire and unleashed its own violence, with such success that a large number of Hutus (estimated at over 800,000) began to flee from their homes.

The attack by the RPF alarmed many Hutus who had previously supported it or assumed that it had peaceful intentions. Fulfilment of the Arusha agreement, through consensus decisions, depended on trust among the parties, which was in short supply.

However, it was the murder [21 October 1993] of the [democratically elected] president of Burundi, Melchior Ndadye, the first [majoritarian] Hutu to hold that post, by extremist [minoritarian] Tutsi army officers, that caused a major crisis in Burundi which spilled over into Rwanda. The murder led to anti-Tutsi pogroms and anti-Hutu army killings. About 150,000 Tutsis left their homes and sought protection in army-controlled towns, and some 30,000 Hutus fled, mostly to Rwanda.

These events strengthened the hands of Hutu extremists in Rwanda, and their coming together. RPF sympathisers were murdered, other Tutsis as well as Hutus regarded as untrustworthy were killed. Anti-Tutsi propaganda escalated, and the political situation was compounded by the failure of Habyarimana to implement the Arusha agreement* and hand over power to a government of national unity (despite considerable local and international pressure).

The shooting down of Habyarimana's plane precipitated numerous killings, initially of "moderate" Hutus, followed by massacres of Tutsis, in what seemed a very systematic way that suggested prior planning.

The question whether the genocide was planned in advance, and by whom, is much contested (and can easily be consulted in books and personal narratives). Little purpose would be served by rehearsing it here. The scale and horror of the atrocities against the Tutsi are well documented and well known.

The pertinent question is how one-sided were the atrocities, and in what ways, if any, were the RPF complicit in atrocities against the Hutu. There seems to be credible evidence that the RPF killed Hutus, but there is less agreement on the number killed. Some killings took place in revenge or retribution, others were intended to intimidate the Hutu and force them to submission.

[*''Habyarimana's failure to implement the Arusha agreement' is a highly problematic description of the situation. From the 4 August 1993 signing of the Arush Accords, President Habyarimana worked tirelessly to set up the a broad-based transitional goverment.

So much so, that the RPF faction that fought so hard against the institution of this interim government, which anticipated multi-party elections within 23 months--elections they could never hope to win support from any more than a tiny minority--tried to blame Habyarimana's murder on his own MRND party's, his own wife and family's dissatisfaction with his cooperation with the Tutsi-RPF.--cm/p]

Fate of Hutu Refugees

There is better evidence for the complicity of the RPF in the persecution and killing of Hutu refugees (estimated at 2 million) who fled during and shortly after the genocide to Zaire (now Democratic Republic of the Congo), Burundi and Tanzania for fear that the victorious military wing of the RPF (the RPA) would seek revenge and as a result of intimidation by the leaders who had orchestrated the genocide. Another 1.2 to 1.5 million people fled to the "zone turquoise" in the south-west of Rwanda established by the French government with the approval of the UN and became internally displaced, until the last camp, hosting around 120,000 people, was violently dismantled by the RPA in April 1995, and people forced to return.

More critical was the issue of Rwandese refugee camps in the Congo (1996); there were perhaps as many as 500,000 refugees[5]. They were at risk from armed infiltrators and there was the real danger that thousands would be killed. There were many calls for an international military-humanitarian intervention, to protect the refugees, and to allow those who wanted to return to Rwanda to do so (opening up safe corridors).

While there was considerable support for the protection of refugees within the camps, the RPF government wanted the repatriation of the refugees and threatened to fight any resistance to it. Paul Kagame (at the time Vice-President and Defence Minister) did all he could to prevent the creation of such an international force, including stopping any observers or journalists from entering Goma to ensure that there would be no publicity about the situation.

The refugees were repatriated by force by the Rwandan government, the impression being created that they had returned voluntarily. The international community and the media were prevented from investigating the truth of these claims by the Rwandan government which closed off the area and refused visas.

As Reyntjens says, Kagame declared that most refugees had returned; "just a few scattered refugees" remained in Zaire and he accused the humanitarian agencies of exaggerating the figures[6]. At the same time, the World Food Programme estimated that 700,000 refugees were unaccounted for.

The United States of America and the United Kingdom supported the Rwandan position that there was no need for an international force as only a few thousand refugees remained in the Congo, at the same time as the United Nations High Commission for Refugees put the figure at close to 500,000[7]. To quote Reyntjens again,


--Disinformation, dubbed "Operation Restore Silence" by Oxfam emergencies director Nick Stockton, in which `the US, UK and other governments (…) managed the magical disappearance"[8], was crucial: the cynical numbers game and the manipulation of information have been decisive in a process which proved extremely costly in terms of human lives.--

When, as the gravity of the threat to the large number of refugees became obvious ("condemned to death through starvation, exhaustion, illness or assassination by those who have been chasing them for months")[9], the United Kingdom argued strongly against, and succeeded in frustrating, fresh proposals for an international force, supported by some European Union (EU) members.

The lack of international intervention may be compared to the earlier ineffectiveness of the international community, during the 1994 genocide. On the other hand, there is some evidence of support by the United States of America, Uganda and Britain to the RPF in the invasion of Rwanda and subsequent killing of Hutu[10].

There had been persistent rumours that the RPA killed a large number of Hutus, including those who had taken refuge in other countries. These rumours acquired considerable legitimacy from a report of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees consultant, Robert Gersony, that the RPF had massacred 30,000 Hutus, and that many more were under threat, leading to an exodus of Hutu refugees into neighbouring countries.

The accuracy of Gersony's report has become a matter of controversy between those who say that it was delegitimised or suppressed to save embarrassment to the Kagame regime and the UN[11], and others who deny that there was reliable evidence to support his conclusions (see further below). Roméo Dallaire, the commander of the UN Forces in Rwanda, writes that there were many incidents of revenge murders, looting and rape of Hutus by the RPF, but doubts if these had the backing of the top leaders[12].

It now seems clear that thousands of Hutus were killed by the Rwanda [RPF--cm/p] army and militias supported by it[13]. The matter became so serious that the Office of the Higher Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and the UN Security Council despatched teams to investigate the scale of atrocities.

Rwanda and also, at Uganda's insistence, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, placed every possible obstacle in the way of investigations: Reyntjens mentions, in connection with the Security Council team, "travel restrictions, `spontaneous' demonstrations organised by the government, intimidation of witnesses and physical threats against members of the team"[14].

Nevertheless that team did produce a report, which concluded that the RPA had committed large-scale war crimes and abhorrent crimes against humanity, based on the systematic massacre of Hutu refugees remaining in Zaire[15].

The RPF denied any humanitarian assistance to the refugees (as it had done during the genocide in the areas it controlled), so much so, that the then UN Secretary General, Boutros-Ghali stated that "two years ago, the international community was confronted with the genocide of the Tutsi by weapons.

Today we are faced with the genocide of the Hutu by starvation" (November 1996). Six months later, his successor Kofi Annan said that "it is possible to kill by weapons or by hunger. The killing is done by hunger today".

On 13 July, the Security Council condemned the massacres, other atrocities and violations of international humanitarian law, including crimes against humanity. It requested that the Congolese and Rwandan governments carry out inquiries and punish the guilty[16].

Although well-founded estimates are that nearly 250,000 Hutus (including children and women) were killed, these governments ignored the Security Council resolution (which had also demanded a report on compliance from these governments), and the Council did not revisit the matter. Impunity prevailed yet again.


It is also possible that when it was strategic, the RPF allowed the killing of the Tutsis. Dallaire writes that the deaths of Rwandans can also be laid "at the door of the military genius, Paul Kagame, who did not speed up his campaign when the scale of genocide became clear and even talked candidly with me at several points about the price his fellow Tutsi might have to pay for the cause"[17].

Dallaire reports that, during the killings, he advised Kagame to accept ceasefire and use troops to stop the massacre, but Kagame refused, Dallaire thinks, because Kagame was winning the war. Reyntjens states that Kagame implicitly justified mass killings by the RPF when he said: "People see this in terms of human rights (…), which is a poor analysis. One must understand that every conflict is not bad.

There are conflicts that are a sort of purification. In certain cases, conflicts erupt in order to make a real transformation possible."[18] In these ways, thousands of lives, which could have been saved, including those of Tutsis, were lost.

It will be obvious from the above account that the Rwandan genocide and massacres do not help us to distinguish "good guys" from "bad guys" or, in a simple way, victims from oppressors. [What about majority v minority interests? Or democracy v feudalism? cm/p] The complexity of the great tragedy in Rwanda cannot be analysed in these simple categories, nor in terms of communities as corporate entities.

Judgements have been made at different stages of the unfolding of the tragedy, without access to all the relevant information. The problem has been compounded by considerable, and often skilful, disinformation (particularly by the RPF, and also by some states, including the United States of America).

Professor René Lemarchand provides a useful summary of consensus as well as differences among academics[19]. He cites what he describes as, "Alison Des Forges's landmark investigation", Leave No One to Tell the Story[20], which he describes as "the most wide-ranging, thoroughly researched and reliable source of information on the 1994 genocide…. If any work on the genocide can be called definitive, this is it."

According to her, while Tutsi civilians were the prime target of the génocidaires, a "substantial number of Hutu affiliated to opposition parties were massacred in the south and central regions"[21]. When the RPF captured Kigali, on 4 July 1994, although killing of Tutsis stopped, that of Hutus did not. Des Forges says that many Hutu civilians were "deliberately massacred" by RPF troops[22], including sometimes by holding "public meetings designed to round up and kill Hutu civilians"[23].

It is evident that some Hutus, prominent in their own community, were the victims of the genocide at the hands of their kin group, while some Tutsis sacrificed members of their kin group for the "higher cause". Members of each community provided shelter and protection for their friends, even strangers, of the other community, from the threats and violence of their own community, at great personal risk.

Despite the troubled history of inter-community relations in the pre-colonial and colonial periods, Rwandese had learnt to live together in peace and cooperation, except when goaded into violence by ambitious individuals and groups, intent on their own profit, using ethnicity as the tool. It is therefore unjustified to blame the whole community (in this case the Hutus) for the sins of some members, as is the wont of the RPF. Kagame wants each Hutu to apologise for the atrocities of a limited number, while at the same time denying that Tutsis engaged in any counter-killing. 



[1] The complexity of the violence of genocide is well captured in the memoir of a survivor. Lemarchand says, "One of the most arresting and unbiased of such testimonies, by a survivor of mixed origins, is Edouard Kabagema's Carnage d'une nation : Genocide et massacres au Rwanda, 1994 (2001).

His message comes clear and loud in the first pages: "Not only have I seen the genocide of Tutsi perpetrated by their neighbors and their huts going up in flames... I also saw many Hutu using a thousand tricks to save their Tutsi neighbors... and I saw FPR rebels engaging in a selective and then a large-scale massacre of Hutu, to avenge their own people and consolidate their grip on the country" (State of Research p. 5).

[2] COMMENTARY: FALSE: President Juvénal Habyarimana had begun the process of democratization following the Franco-African Summit at La Baule in June 1990. It is precisely because democratization was instituted in Rwanda, and within a multi-party system, and the RPF could not risk the possibility of remaining forever in the opposition, that the RPF attacked on 1 October 1990 with the support of the Ugandan military.

[3] Prunier, pp. 90-91.

[4] COMMENTARY: FALSE: Major-General Fred Rwigema and Majors Chris Bunyenyezi and Peter Bayingana were assassinated by members of the RPF and the Ugandan National Resistance Army (NRA).

[5] A full account of the politics of the refugee camps and its consequences is Filip Reyntjens, The Great African War (Cambridge University Press, 2009), especially chapter 3. [And better yet--though only in French--is Faustin Ntilikina's 'La prise de Kigali et la chasse aux réfugiés par l'Armée du Général Paul Kagame' on Editions Sources du Nil--cm/p]

[6] While Kagame claimed that the refugees had returned voluntarily, Reyntjens says, "First, the refugees did not have much of a choice, as they were fired upon and the only safe passage opened to them led into Rwanda. Secondly, the fact that the refugees interviewed by the international press upon their arrival in Gisenyi claimed they were "happy to come home" and expressed relief at being "freed from their intimidators" was not convincing for those who know how Rwandans communicate.

For many returnees, declarations of that kind were part of a survival strategy: they said what they felt they had to say in view of the expectations of those who held the power over life and death in their hands; saying the opposite would entail all the unpleasant consequences of being considered interahamwe. Thirdly, observers were struck by the fact that the refugees walked back like sheep, without showing the slightest enthusiasm for being "freed" and returning to their home country at last."

[7] This was not the first time that the US State Department disagreed with the analysis of the UNHCR (even against the US Department of Defence). It tried to discredit Robert Gersony's report (mentioned elsewhere in this report) on the scale of RPF atrocities against the Hutu refugees. As Reyntjens puts it, it is surprising that the US Ambassador in Rwanda, R. E. Gribbin, took this position.

In his memoirs (In the Aftermath of Genocide. The U.S. Role in Rwanda, New York, iUniverse, 2005, pp. 144-145), he states that that "RPF luminaries proved to be masters of spin (…) The RPF played the genocide card shamelessly (correctly so, in my view, because genocide had defined the Rwandan tragedy) and staked out the moral high ground. The claim to righteousness was then misused to shield or justify political decisions" (p. 199, quoted by Reyntjens).

[8] N. Gowing, New challenges and problems…, op. cit., p. 56 (fn. in original).

[9] Le Monde, 12 March 1997, quoting the French Secretary of State for Humanitarian Action, Xavier Emmanuelli (from Reyntjens).

[10] In September 1997, Amnesty International observed that US military assistance to Rwanda had intensified during the months preceding the RPA's operation in Zaire. The report said that a US-supported public information campaign "played a significant role in convincing foreign governments and humanitarian organisations that it was safe for Rwandese refugees to return home, where many of them have subsequently been subjected to human rights violations, including extrajudicial execution and `disappearances'".

The organisation concluded that "the apparently uncritical political support of the USA for the Rwandese government can only be encouraging the Rwandese authorities to believe that they can carry on violating human rights with little fear of criticism from their most important allies".

[11] See below.

[12] Roméo Dallaire, Shake Hands with the Devil (Vintage Canada, 2003), p 479.

[13] A Human Rights Watch report (Des Forges, Leave None to Tell the Story, http://www.hrw.org/legacy/reports/1999/rwanda/Geno15-8-03.htm#P810_253140 in the internet version) states: "In their drive for military victory and a halt to the genocide, the RPF killed thousands, including non-combatants as well as government troops and members of militia. As RPF soldiers sought to establish their control over the local population, they also killed civilians in numerous summary executions and in massacres. They may have slaughtered tens of thousands during the four months of combat from April to July.

The killings diminished in August and were markedly reduced after mid-September when the international community exerted pressure for an end to the carnage. Carried out by soldiers who were part of a highly disciplined military organisation, these killings by the RPF rarely involved civilian participation, except to identify the persons to be slain. In only a few cases, particularly in areas near the border with Burundi, civilian assailants reportedly joined soldiers in attacking other civilians."

[14] Reyntjens also states that the deputy leader of the Security Council team, a Zimbabwean, Andrew Chigovera, resigned, referring to his "great difficulty in believing that an environment favourable to an independent and impartial inquiry on human rights existed in the RDC [DRC] or could present itself " (Reyntjens cites "AFP, Kinshasa, 13 February1997").

[15] UN Security Council, Report of the Investigative Team Charged with Investigating Serious Violations of Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law in the Democratic Republic of Congo, S/1998/581, 29 June 1998, paragraph 96.

[16] According to Reyntjens, after a new war broke out between Rwanda and the DRC, the Congolese government was to recognise the facts, but blamed them on Rwanda. Minister Victor Mpoyo claimed that the AFDL was unaware of the massacres: "The Rwandan army controlled the area and, therefore, the information. (…) We could not imagine that those men who survived a genocide could behave in such a bloodthirsty fashion". Even after coming to power in Kinshasa, "we were gagged by the Rwandans on this subject" (Libération, 17 September 1998)".

[17] Roméo Dallaire, op. cit., p. 515.

[18] Great African War citing "AP, Kigali, 7 June 1997".

[19] State of Research.

[20] See above. But this book has not necessarily been influential on policymakers in the US and the UK. That credit must go to a NY Times journalist, Peter Gourevitch's acclaimed bestseller, We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1998). Of this book Lemarchand writes, "Allusions to the Holocaust as a frame of reference are unconvincing. So is his breathless tribute to Paul Kagame as the hero who brought the genocide to an end … From this uncomplicated tale of woe emerges an image of the Hutu as the collective embodiment of evil.

This is where his narrative carries implications that go beyond the realm of travel writing: it is not unreasonable to assume that this highly naïve and uncritical rendering of the genocide has had a powerful hold on the official thinking of US policymakers towards the new Rwandan state. To this day, the Tutsi-dominated State enjoys the unconditional support of the US government" (p. 8).

[21] Citing des Forges, pp. 555-559.
[22] Citing Des Forges, pp. 726-34.

The Truth can be buried and stomped into the ground where none can see, yet eventually it will, like a seed, break through the surface once again far more potent than ever, and Nothing can stop it. Truth can be suppressed for a "time", yet It cannot be destroyed. ==> Wolverine