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FLASHBACK | The True Story Behind the Rwandan and Congolese Genocides

FLASHBACK | The True Story Behind the Rwandan and Congolese Genocides

13 January 2011

Mayday Magazine

by  Antony Black and Christopher Black

“Propaganda”. What does the word invariably suggest, but that we are above it. Certainly we could never fall for the Big Lie and certainly not one of the largest lies to be perpetrated in modern history. A lie whose grim shadow covers the restive ghosts of some three to six millions souls awaiting the truth.

For the truth is that Paul Kagame, his Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), and their allies are responsible for the Rwandan “genocide” of 1994 and the multiple follow-up genocides in what was then Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) from 1996 to the present. Kagame and the RPF, the very actors who claimed to be the victims and saviours, share this responsibility with those who allegedly came to their “aid”: i.e. the leading political figures in the United States, Britain, Canada, Belgium, Uganda, and Tanzania. The United Nations was also complicit, as were numerous Western NGOs, prominent American journalists and virtually the entirety of the Western corporate press.

The True Story Behind the Rwandan and Congolese Genocides

Below is a story of outrage and woe. A story that would not have been told if not for the efforts of a small group of brave and dogged investigators, writers, lawyers, priests, former soldiers, and others -many of whom have risked, and not a few of whom have lost, their lives in the telling. It is a story that reminds us all that however far “above it” we may feel, we are not.

* * *

[For a breakdown of the key players in this story, see the “Cast of Characters” list at the bottom of this article – editors]

On August 26, 2010 the French newspaper Le Monde revealed the existence of a draft UN report detailing the most serious human rights violations in the Democratic Republic of Congo over an eleven year period (1993 – 2003). The report detailed how, following the Rwandan Patriotic Front’s takeover of Rwanda in 1994, the RPF proceeded to carry out “systematic and widespread attacks” against Hutu refugees who had fled to neighbouring Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). These attacks the report stated “reveal a number of damning elements that, if they were proven before a competent court, could be classified as crimes of genocide.”

The report was leaked to Le Monde by sources within the UN who feared its most damning facts and charges would be edited or expunged prior to its official release. As if confirming this fear, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navanethem Pillay subsequently announced that the official report would be delayed several months “to give concerned states” further time “to comment on the draft” and “publish any comments alongside the report itself.” What this really meant was Rwanda’s leader Paul Kagame was given the opportunity to respond to/ address/ comment on the charges of genocide laid against him in the report before it was published. In short, save for the leak to Le Monde, a cover-up of the report would have been a near certainty.

But, of course, this was hardly the first time a cover-up of a UN report had revealed that the supposed “saviours” of Rwanda had, in fact, not only been responsible for mass murder, but were the ones responsible for the execution of a systematic program of genocide.

As early as October 11, 1994, Robert Gersony, an employee of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), then attached to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, made an oral presentation to the UN Commission of Experts on Rwanda. Gersony had been dispatched to survey the situation inside Rwanda to determine if conditions were right for a return of the Hutu refugees who had fled the RPF. Instead, he found that the RPF had been committing systematic massacres of the Hutu population in Rwanda starting in April 1994 through the date of his presentation. On page four of the UN record of Gersony’s oral presentation, we read:

“Significant areas….have been the scene of systematic and sustained killing and persecution of the civilian Hutu populations by the [Rwandan Patriotic Front]. These activities are reported to have begun, depending on location, between April and July 1994, immediately following the expulsion from each area of former Government military, militia and surrogate forces. These [RPF] actions were consistently reported to be conducted in areas where opposition forces of any kind – armed or unarmed, or resistance of any kind other than attempts by the victims of these actions to escape – were absent. Large scale indiscriminate killings of men, women and children, including the sick and elderly, were consistently reported.”

It is important to note that the killings reported here were not perpetrated by Hutu government troops, but by the Tutsi RPF, the supposed saviours of the country who had invaded from Uganda to ostensibly “stop the genocide”.

No member of the RPF, and certainly not its leader, Paul Kagame, has ever been indicted let alone been brought to trial for these or any other crimes. This while thousands of former Hutu military and political figures have been, and are to this day, in prison. These Hutu prisoners were indicted before what was little more than a kangaroo court set up by the United States to justify post facto the coup d’etat -and genocide- for which the U.S. are responsible.

Further evidence is found in a letter, identifying the Gersony report. The cover-letter, dated October 11, 1994, was sent by one Francois Fouinat to Mrs. B Molina-Abram, the Secretary to the Commission of Experts on Rwanda. In this brief letter Fouinat writes: “As requested by the Commission, we are forwarding herewith a written summary of Mr. Gersony’s oral presentation and copies of some field reports sent to UNHCR Headquarters by UNHCR Field Offices. We are confident that as agreed by the President of the Commission of Experts, these documents will be treated as confidential and only be made available to the members of the Commission.”

The Gersony report was buried. Christopher Black, however, is in possession of copies of both Fouinat’s cover letter and the Gersony report from October 1994. Christopher Black gained access to copies of these two documents because they are part of the evidence-base at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). He serves there as the lead defense counsel for Hutu former General Augustin Ndindiliyimana, once the Chief of Staff of the Rwandan Gendarmerie.
The documents were found by his legal assistant purely by chance while scanning the prosecution’s Electronic Disclosure System (EDS), which contains hundreds-of-thousands of documents that are not indexed in any order. The assistant came across them as part of a package of material organized by Robert Gersony himself while he was assigned to the UNHCR. It must be thought that Mr. Gersony thought the documents relevant, as they affected the fate of the Hutu refugees.

As important as the Gersony report is, a third and even more astonishing document was discovered in the morass of the prosecution’s EDS. This document’s historical significance has been underscored by the recent draft UN report leaked to Le Monde. This third document is a copy of a letter from Paul Kagame to his fellow Tutsi Jean-Baptiste Bagaza of Burundi, dated August 10, 1994.

In it Kagame thanks Bagaza for his help in “taking Kigali”. He then relates his communications with “our big brother Yoweri Museveni” (ruler of Uganda whence originated the RPF forces), and talks of “some modifications to the plan” [emphasis added], noting that,

“We have found that the presence of a large number of Rwandan refugees at Goma and the international community can cause our plan for Zaire [emphasis added] to fail. We cannot occupy ourselves with Zaire until after the return of these Hutus. …..In any case, our external intelligence services continue to crisscross [sic] the east of Zaire and our Belgian, British and American collaborators, the rest of Zaire. The action reports are expected in the next few days.”
Kagame goes on to speak “concerning the Burundi plan”: “The plan for Burundi must be executed as soon as possible before the Hutus of Rwanda can organize themselves.”

As Christopher stated on November 18, 2008 before the Military II trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR): “The importance of this letter, if you have grasped it fully, cannot be overstated. It means the attack on Rwanda from 1990 was not the prime objective of Kagame and his collaborators. Zaire was always the prime objective. That their excuse for the attack on Rwanda [was] about establishing democracy and return of refugees was completely false…
“[T]he invasion from Uganda had only one purpose: to clear the path through Rwanda to Zaire…

[T]he return of refugees, as many witnesses have stated, was not for humanitarian reasons, but to clear the path for the invasion of Zaire.

“[The letter indicates] the American[s and] British -particularly with Kagame and Museveni- planned the invasion of Zaire in 1994, probably before that. It means the excuse given for the invasions of the Congo…to clear the ‘Interahamwe’ or ‘genocidaires’, is completely false. No mention is made of ‘Interahamwe’. No mention is made of ‘genocide’.

“It means, since this was received -it looks like a date stamp of this tribunal, 8th December 1994 -that the Prosecutor of this Tribunal has been hiding information indicating a conspiracy to commit a war of aggression against Congo-Zaire, Zaire and all of the war crimes have flowed from it since and the continuation of those wars in Congo now begun 14 years ago, if not longer…So here you have the smoking gun, the letter, planning the invasion of Zaire with the Americans and British.”

Apart from an appearance in Monthly Review, the unveiling of the letter from Kagame to Bagaza -like many other documents reversing the perspective on Rwanda and the Congo- has been met by an official conspiracy of silence. Nevertheless, that wall of silence has been chipped away at now for over a decade and half and is starting to crumble.
In next month’s issue we will continue the demolition work by investigating more of the documentary evidence. Finally, in Part III, we will stitch the evidence, historical context, and actual events as they happened from 1990 to 1994 into a coherent whole.

Antony C. Black
Antony has been a freelance journalist and political essayist for the past 25 years. Though writing largely for the Indy media, Tony has also regularly skirmished the lines of the corporate media. No quarter given or taken. Antony has also had the privelege of acting as “Global Affairs” editor and as a regular columnist for Mayday Magazine since its inception.
Christopher C. Black
Christopher is an international criminal lawyer who has achieved renown /“infamy” for his legal and politically active roles in the International Criminal Tribunals for Yugoslavia and Rwanda. Throughout his illustrious career on the international scene Chris has been instrumental in demonstrating the “kangaroo” nature of these “victors” courtsserving, as they do, the functional role of “legal” ex post facto justifications of imperial conquest.

 

Cast of Characters

Yoweri Museveni: Tutsi President of Uganda since 26 January 1986. Leader of National Resistance Army (NRA).
Navanethem Pillay: United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights since 2008. She previously served for eight years as a judge of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), including four years as the ICTR’s president.
Jean-Baptiste Bagaza: Bagaza’s Tutsi-dominated military regime took control of Burundi in 1976; he was president from 1984-1987; since 1994 he has led the Party for National Recovery (PARENA) in Burundi.
Francois Fouinet: Chief of Cabinet, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
B. Molina-Abram: Secretary to the Commission of Experts on Rwanda.
Augustin Ndindiliyimana: Former head of Rwanda’s Gendarmerie or National Police Force. Now a defendant before the ICTR; he is alleged to have conspired with other officers to plan the logistics of the Rwandan Genocide.
Paul Kagame: President of the Republic of Rwanda since 2000. Leader of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), composed of mostly Tutsi soldiers. Former member of Museveni’s NRA.
Hutus: The Hutu are the largest of the three ethnic groups in Burundi and Rwanda
Tutsis: They are the second largest population of peoples in Rwanda and Burundi. Also referred to as Watussi or Watusi
Le Monde: a French daily newspaper owned by La Vie-Le Monde Group and edited in Paris.
Monthly Review: an independent socialist journal published 11 times per year in New York City.
Robert Gersony: Employed by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and agency with ties to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. He is a consultant known for his reports on conflict-affected countries, in particular in Africa.
Interahomwe: The Interahamwe is a Hutu paramilitary organization. The militia enjoyed the backing of the Hutu-led government leading up to, during, and after the Rwandan Genocide.
International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR): an international court established in November 1994 by the United Nations Security Council in Resolution 955 in order to judge people responsible for the Rwandan Genocide and other serious violations of the international law in Rwanda, or by Rwandan citizens in nearby states.
Prosecutor of ICTR: Responsible for prosecuting all cases before the Tribunal. Hassan Bubacar Jallow served as Prosecutor of the ICTR since 2003. Previous Prosecutors include Louise Arbour (1996-1999) and Carla Del Ponte (1999-2003).

The True Story Behind The Rwandan And Congolese Genocides (Part II)

February 2, 2011

The True Story Behind  The Rwandan And  Congolese Genocides (Part II)

In last month’s issue we reviewed new evidence indicating the official Western narrative regarding the Rwandan genocide of 1994 is not just a lie, but one of the most successful propaganda coups of all time.

To briefly recapitulate. On August 26, 2010 the French newspaper, Le Monde, revealed a leaked UN document (authored by UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navanethem Pillay) detailing the “most serious human rights abuses in the Democratic Republic of Congo and of Rwanda over an eleven year period (1993 – 2003)”. The document places responsibility for the vast majority of the killings (upwards of five to six million) during that period on the shoulders of Paul Kagame and his Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF, a Tutsi expatriate force based in Uganda though heavily augmented by foreign mercenaries).

Kagame was a client of Washington even before he claimed to have “saved Rwanda from further genocide” by overthrowing the Hutu government of Rwanda in July of 1994. In fact, Kagame had served as the director of Ugandan military intelligence in the 1980s. He had also been trained at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas (the US Army’s elite “commander general staff college” devoted to the planning of high-level invasion scenarios) and had received constant US material and diplomatic support from the moment he had assumed control of the RPF.

We also reviewed a 1994 report by Robert Gersony, an employee of USAID, who was at the time attached to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. Gersony’s report to the UN Commission of Experts on Rwanda questioned the entire “Hutu government genocide conspiracy” by noting that most of the killings were committed, not by the Hutu government of Rwanda, but by the invading Tutsi forces under Paul Kagame, a force that was backed by the United States, Britain, Canada, and a number of neighbouring states in Africa.

A further piece of evidence surfaced just recently when one of us (Christopher Black) discovered a letter (unwittingly handed over to the defence by the prosecution at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) via their vast Electronic Disclosure System). The document appears to implicate Paul Kagame, fellow Burundian Tutsi leader Jean-Baptiste Bagaza, and “our Belgian, British and American collaborators” in a plan to take over Rwanda and eventually secure The Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire).

We further noted that all of these documents had, effectively, been suppressed by Western authorities for years. However, these represent but a small portion of the evidence demonstrating that the official narrative surrounding the tragic train of events in Central Africa since 1990 is propaganda from start to finish.

Who Killed Habyarimana?

The “triggering event” in the Rwandan “genocide” of 1994 is generally agreed to be the shooting down of the plane carrying Juvenal Habyarimana, the Hutu president of Rwanda, and Cyprien Ntaryamira, the Hutu president of Burundi on April 6, 1994. The official story is that unidentified “Hutu rebels”, for unspecified reasons, were the assassins who targeted their own ethnic countrymen in some vague attempt to gain power. No evidence was ever produced to support this threadbare thesis; if this were so, the official murderers spectacularly failed in their objectives. The country quickly fell to invading Tutsi forces leaving a small minority population of Tutsis to rise to their former position of national privilege and dictatorial control. No one in the Western mainstream media has ever commented on the exceeding peculiarity of this bizarre turn of events – events, in fact, never ever witnessed before – where the supposed victims of a “genocide” become the victors.

It makes sense to consider a more logical scenario: the decapitation of the state leadership was the first stage in a planned invasion by RPF forces, intent on a coup d’etat. It makes even more sense when one remembers that the first president of Burundi, Melchior Ndadaye, had been assassinated by Tutsi officers within his own army in October 1993.
Evidence to support this alternative narrative came from a unlikely source. The investigator charged by the ICTR with looking into the destruction of Habyarimana’s plane turned out to be an honest man who actually did his job. Reporting back to the court in 1996 – 1997, Australian lawyer Michael Hourigan not only found evidence pertinent to the crime, but managed to obtain testimony from three RPF informants who claimed “direct involvement in the 1994 fatal rocket attack upon the President’s aircraft”.

When Hourigan presented his findings, the ICTR’s lead prosecutor, Louise Arbour (later, a Canadian Supreme Court Judge), grew aggressive and hostile; Hourigan was told the “investigation was at an end”. The report never saw the light of day – until much later, that is, whence it found it’s way into the hands of Christopher’s defence team at the ICTR.
Hourigan’s report would have its findings further corroborated by French Judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere. Bruguiere had been called in to investigate the deaths of the three French nationals who had been aboard the plane along with Habyarimana and Ntaryamira when it was shot down. His investigation, which spanned eight years, concluded that the plane had indeed been destroyed by the RPF and that the assassination was part and parcel of Kagame’s plan to take over Rwanda by force following Kagame’s rejection of the Arusha power-sharing accords of August 1993 (more on this in part 3). Bruguiere went on to issue nine warrants for the arrest of high-ranking members of the RPF and a request for the ICTR to prosecute Kagame.

The ICTR, however, not only refused this application, but studiously avoided any indictments of RPF officers, or even any mention of RPF involvement in the killings of April – July 1994. Moreover, it became the  policy of the ICTR to limit its mandate solely to the investigation of genocidal intent by Hutu government figures.
This policy continued throughout the trials. When Carla Del Ponte replaced Louise Arbour, she was quickly terminated as Chief Prosecutor after calling for a “Special Investigation” into the actions of the RPF. It is interesting to note that Del Ponte’s request was presented to Kofi Annan, then  Secretary-General of the UN. Annan’s refusal to look into the crimes of the RPF should come as no surprise since he was handpicked by the US to replace Boutros Boutros-Ghali as Secretary-General. Annan’s predecessor had come uncomfortably close to thwarting the US/RPF invasion and overthrow of the Rwandan Hutu government.

In May of 1994, Boutros-Ghali proposed sending 5,500 UN troops to Rwanda (to reinforce the 500 already stationed there) in order to stabilize the country at a time when reports of growing “chaos” were issuing forth daily in the world press. His efforts were categorically rebuffed by the Clinton administration that used its veto power to counter his proposal. Instead, the UN troops already stationed there, far from being reinforced, were withdrawn. The Western media, naturally, remained dutifully silent to this glaring contradiction of reason and action. Later, Boutros-Ghali, in conversation with author and Rwandan expert Robin Philpot, said, “the genocide in Rwanda was 100 percent the responsibility of the Americans.” Hardly any wonder, then, that in 1996 US Ambassador to the UN, Madeleine Albright, would veto his re-election, making Boutros-Ghali the only UN Secretary-General in history not to be granted a second term in office.

More Inconvenient Truths

Early on, evidence surfaced indicating that the official genocide narrative was in sharp disagreement with reality. Since then, independent reports have continued to corroborate this finding. In both a 2004 paper a 2009 report, US academics Christian Davenport and Allan Stam concluded that of the more than one million deaths (possibly as high as two million) that occurred in Rwanda from April through July of 1994, the “majority of victims were likely Hutu and not Tutsi.” It is interesting to note that Davenport and Stam were initially sponsored by the ICTR – that is until their findings contradicted the official narrative causing them to be summarily dismissed by the court.

Davenport and Stam may have uncovered truth regarding the victims, but they did not  go so far as to name Kagame as the man responsible. When it comes to critiquing the official narrative, academics have been content to sit on the fence. An “ordinary”. However, Paul Rusesabagina, the real-life hero of the movie ‘Hotel Rwanda’ – a film unashamedly promoting the official narrative – has himself, in numerous interviews, completely condemned that narrative.

Rusesabagina has repeatedly denounced the RPF as the real genocidaires, and has called Kagame a “war criminal”. According to Rusesabagina, Kagame is a dictator responsible for mass killings not only during the takeover of Rwanda in July 1994, but ever since, both in Rwanda and in his US-backed invasions of the Congo. Indeed, so fervent have the denunciations been that Kagame has been provoked into counter-accusations, labelling Rusesabagina a “terrorist” and “genocide denier” (a punishable crime in Rwanda).

Next month, we will set to fanning the flame by recounting a coherent, alternative narrative of what really happened in Rwanda up to and through 1994.

The True Story Behind the Rwandan and Congolese Genocides (Part III)

March 2, 2012

The 1959 social revolution in Rwanda saw the deposition of the Tutsi monarchy and aristocracy and the freeing of the majority Hutu population from serfdom. Following this, the Rwandan military became a multiethnic army composed of both Hutus and Tutsis.

At the time of the 1959 revolution, however, the Tutsi aristocracy, unable to accept a lesser role, responded by murdering several Hutu local mayors and other Hutu officials. The Hutu government of Rwanda called for help and the Belgians returned with a military force from the Congo to restore order and to pursue the Tutsis involved. Rather than face arrest, the entire Tutsi aristocracy fled the country to Uganda where, from 1961 until 1973, they staged armed raids into Rwanda, slaughtering Hutus until being forced back to their foreign sanctuary.

From 1973 to 1990, there was no further interference in Rwanda from Uganda. But during that time, the Tutsis remaining in Uganda had become one of the main elements of the Ugandan Army of president Yoweri Museveni. Many of these held high office, including Paul Kagame.

Upon the collapse of the USSR in 1989/90, the US and the UK began a general imperialist/militarist expansion, that included the targeting of Yugoslavia and Rwanda. Moreover, the US was also tired of president Mobutu of Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo – DRC), as he was beginning to turn towards China. President Juvenal Habyarimana of Rwanda was approached to allow his country to be used as a staging ground for an attack on Zaire. He refused. This caused the US to look for other agents in furthering their interests, whom they found in the Tutsis residing in Uganda.

On October 1, 1990 the self-described Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) launched a surprise attack from Uganda on Rwanda. The RPF’s initial justification was to attain the return of Tutsi refugees from Uganda to Rwanda. This claim, however, was belied by the fact that Rwanda had, under UN auspices, already agreed a few weeks earlier to the return of all Tutsis in Uganda who wished to do so.

The attack by RPF forces killed tens of thousands of innocent civilians -the majority Hutu. These crimes have never been accounted for and, indeed, there was not even a shred of condemnation of the Ugandan-RPF invasion, despite the noise raised only two months earlier when Iraqi forces advanced into Kuwait. In fact, the US and its allies supported the aggression against Rwanda, and US Special Forces operated with the RPF from the beginning. Despite this support, after several weeks of intense fighting, the RPF forces were eventually defeated by the small Rwandan Army, and the RPF remnants fled, on US instructions, back to Uganda to regroup and reorganize.

Following this attempt to overthrow the state by a proxy force, the United States brought political and economic pressure to bear upon Rwanda’s one party socialist state, the National Republican Movement for Democracy and Development (MRND). Habyarimana, instead of resisting, agreed to a change in the constitution and in 1991, Rwanda became a multi-party democracy. The Rwandan government effected this as an offer of peace. What followed, however, was anything but peace. Rather than work towards reconciliation, the RPF turned from the tactics of open warfare to those of guerrilla terrorism.

In 1992, while RPF forces were busy planting mines and assassinating politicians and blaming it on the MRND, a coalition government was formed with the front parties of the RPF. These agents quickly seized control of key ministries and succeeded in appointing the prime minister. They also gained control of the intelligence services, which they then began to dismantle. The RPF itself, meanwhile, engaged in a “talk and fight” strategy: always agreeing to a ceasefire, then pressing for more power, and launching new attacks on civilians. The most egregious of these assaults was their breaking of the ceasfire and launching of a major offensive in February of 1993, in which they seized the town of Ruhengeri, murdering in the process some 40,000, mostly Hutu, civilians.

The Rwanda Army, even though hamstrung by the civilian ministries, managed, once again, to drive the RPF back. Finally, in August of 1993, the Arusha Accords were signed under pressure from the United States and its allies. The Accords dictated the formation of a broad-based transition government to be followed by general elections. But for the RPF – as, indeed, for the United States – there was a fly in the electoral ointment. The RPF knew that they could not win such elections, because they were not only unpopular with the majority (85%) Hutu population, but were also unpopular with many of Rwanda’s internal Tutsis. Thus, instead of preparing for elections, the RPF prepared, instead, for their final offensive.

UN reports document the massive build-up of men and weapons coming in from Uganda during this period. In fact, the UN force supposedly deployed to ensure a peaceful transition acted, instead, as a cover for the US and its allies to assist the build-up. Indeed, General Romeo Dallaire, the Canadian general in charge of the UN force (UNAMIR), hid this build-up not only from the Rwandan Army and the President, but also from his immediate superiors, Jacques Roger Booh Booh and UN Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali.

The result of the 1993 RPF offensive was that one million Hutus fled from northern Rwanda towards Kigali. By April 1994, over a million refugees were encamped close to the capital and hundreds of thousands more were in camps in the South. The RPF, meanwhile, did all it could in 1994 to paralyze the functioning of the government, to exacerbate racial tensions, and to prepare for war.

Finally, on April 6, 1994 they launched their final surprise attack by shooting down the Rwandan president’s plane as he was returning from a meeting in Tanzania, a meeting which Uganda’s Museveni had arranged. The RPF then simultaneously launched attacks across Kigali (into which they had secreted 15,000 troops under Dallaire’s watch) and the North of the country.

The Rwandan government and army called for a ceasefire the same night and the next day. The RPF rejected the call. The Rwandan government then asked for more UN help to control the situation. Instead, the US arranged that the main UN force be pulled out while flying in men and supplies for the RPF. The Rwandan Army, short of ammunition and unable to contain the RPF advances, offered an unconditional surrender on April 12. The RPF rejected this offer and, instead, shelled the Nyacyonga refugee camp where one million Hutu refugees were located, provoking their flight into the capital.

The effect of one million people flooding into a small city that itself was under bombardment was mayhem and panic. In addition, the RPF used this flood of people to send men behind army lines. This heightened the panic on the Hutu population to a fever pitch, who then began killing anyone they did not recognize. The siege of Kigali lasted three months and only ended when the Rwandan Army literally ran out of ammunition and ordered a general retreat into the Congo forest.

RPF officers (testifying before the ICTR) have stated that the RPF killed up to two million Hutus in those twelve weeks in a deliberate campaign to eliminate the Hutu population. As the Rwandan Army (including its many Tutsi officers) retreated into the Congo forest, the Hutu population, in fear for their lives, joined them in their millions. Meanwhile, in local villages, Hutu neighbours attacked Tutsis either in revenge for the murder of Hutus or fearing death at their hands. It was total war, though a war clearly fuelled and instigated by the RPF invasion.

The RPF later pursued the Hutus through the Congo forest and, between 1996 and 1998, killed hundreds of thousands, possibly millions. All the while the RPF was assisted in its offensive by the United States. The ultimate objective of the war was the Zaire (now the DRC), with its vast cornucopia of vital resources including copper, gold, diamonds, uranium, and the precious metals so necessary for both modern high-tech weaponry and our modern cell phones and computers. The US now has several military bases in Rwanda and the country is little more than a US and UK colony run by dictatorial thugs who rule by intimidation, murder, and disinformation.

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