In his opening statements in a Concord, New Hampshire (USA) courthouse on February 23, 2012, federal prosecutor John Capin launched the U.S. government’s trial against a 41 year-old Rwandan ‘genocide fugitive’ by wielding satellite photographs purportedly showing the road blocks where she “commanded extremist Hutu militia and ordered the rapes and killings of Tutsi” in Rwanda in 1994.

In a remarkable development, this is the first time in the history of the ‘Rwanda genocide’ trials or related Rwanda asylum hearings where Pentagon satellite photographs have been produced as evidence, and the first time that the existence of satellite photographs taken over Rwanda during the so-called ’100 days of genocide’ has ever been revealed.

Later in the trial the U.S. prosecutors produced a ‘Pentagon analyst’ who testified about the satellite photographs.  The name of the Pentagon analyst and the satellite photographs have not been made public. The existence of satellite reconnaissance and intelligence photographs newly implicates the U.S. government in the mass atrocities of 1994, and raises serious new questions about the coverup of the double presidential assassinations of April 6, 1994 and the atrocities committed by the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA) commanded by now President Paul Kagame.

The sudden and unexpected revelation of the existence of satellite imagery shot over Rwanda in 1994 also further corroborates claims and evidence that U.S. and Pentagon officials had plenty of satellite evidence of the numbers and whereabouts of hundreds of thousands of Rwandan refugees massacred by the Kagame war machine in Congo’s forests.

Eighteen years after the so-called ’1994 Rwanda genocide,’ Rwanda is today everywhere peddled as an economic miracle of recovery and freedom, once again ‘the Switzerland of Africa’ and the model homeland for the Tutsi ‘Jews of Africa’ narrative.  All thanks to His Supreme Majesty President Paul Kagame, who is everywhere applauded for rescuing the Tutsis, stopping the genocide, and rebuilding Rwanda in His own image.

Meanwhile, the real situation for ordinary people in Central Africa is everywhere inhumane and unjust.  The average Ugandan citizen suffers under the brutal dictatorship of Yoweri Museveni.  The people in northern Uganda, already subject to genocide as policy under the Museveni government, now have a new threat: the hysterical KONY2012 movement.

The people of Congo continue to suffer under the terrorist government of Hyppolite Kanambe (alias Joseph Kabila), a Tutsi and the nephew of Rwandan Tutsi general James Kabarebe.  Since January 2012 more than 100,000 Congolese have been internally displaced by violence under the occupation of the Kagame regime in the Kivu provinces.

And, as it as been since 1994, both Hutus and Tutsis suffer massive repression under the Kagame regime inside Rwanda.

Million Dollar Munyenyezi Trial

On June 24, 2010, Beatrice Munyenyezi (MOON’-yen-yezi) was arrested in Manchester, New Hampshire (USA) and charged, according to U.S. prosecutors, with “procuring U.S. citizenship unlawfully by misrepresenting her activities during the 1994 Rwandan genocide.”

Munyenyezi is a U.S. citizen falsely accused of Rwanda genocide rape crimes in yet another case adding up to millions of U.S. taxpayers dollars being used to fund fabricated Rwanda genocide and asylum trials — and now genocide tourism expeditions in Rwanda.

The U.S. Department of Justice seeks to deport Beatrice Munyenyezi to face genocide charges in Rwanda. But Ms. Munyenyezi’s will be a milestone case: this is the first ever international legal proceeding in the United States involving a woman accused of rape as a genocide and war crime.

According to the government of Rwanda, Beatrice Munyenyezi, 41, allegedly “participated in, committed, ordered, oversaw, conspired to, aided and abetted, assisted in and directed persecution, kidnapping, rape and murder during the Rwandan genocide of 1994.”

The Kagame regime makes general accusations that you can arrest and charge any Hutu with. These are generic genocide charges used by the Rwandan military regime against all people of the Hutu ethnicity.

The fifteen-day trial of Beatrice Munyenyezi in February and March 2012 was concluded with four additional days of deliberations by an all-white jury. On March 15 the jury delivered a deadlocked decision and the U.S. government declared a ‘mistrial.’ The re-trial is set to begin September 10, 2012.

Mark Howard, one of Beatrice Munyenyezi’s attorneys, revealed to the press the huge sums of money spent by the U.S Judiciary to try Rwandan genocide suspects.

Howard estimated that U.S. taxpayers paid between US$ 2.5 million and $US 3 million for Munyenyezi’s recent prosecution and trial in federal court. Howard estimates that a retrial is likely to cost an additional US$1 million.

Howard’s estimated costs include attorney fees, agent salaries, the “extraordinary expense” of investigating in a foreign country, the costs of bringing some fifteen witnesses to New Hampshire, and the hiring of experts.

Several of the prosecution witnesses brought over from Rwanda in the latest charade staged by the Kagame military regime are described by the U.S. and Rwanda government as “extremist Hutu genocidaires” who were convicted of life in prison. Others are witnesses from a women’s genocide survivor organization in Butare, paid by the U.S. government to travel to New Hampshire, whose profits from the traveling and testifying can be used to support their mission in Butare. Such economic interests play a major role in the official choice and production of ‘genocide witnesses’ and ‘genocide survivors.’

Defense attorneys described the fifteen Rwandan witnesses flown over to the U.S. from Rwanda as “psychopathic killers who never mentioned Munyenyezi in nearly two decades of trials and investigations into the Rwanda genocide.”

The cost of bringing Kagame’s witnesses to the United States and putting them up — some under tight security and others at expensive hotels — for the duration of the trial represents additional massive costs to U.S. taxpayers for what amounts to fraud by the U.S. government.

The credibility of ‘witnesses’ incarcerated in Rwanda is highly suspect. First, there is the problem of coercion: many people in prison in Rwanda or accused by the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda (ICTR) and Gacaca [people's] courts have been framed. Other ‘confessed genocidaires‘ have been tortured, and some have been coerced by the RPA threat of retaliation against their families.

Often enough, ‘witnesses to killings’ and ‘genocide survivors’ are frauds, sometimes they are people who were not even in Rwanda during the 1994 cataclysm. Other government plants and handlers have been coached.

In Munyenyezi’s case, the press apparently decided that the witnesses brought in to accuse Beatrice Munyenyezi were not credible.

First, the claim by the RPA that Munyenyezi commanded soldiers to rape Tutsi women in the basement of the hotel is presented as an absolute. The rape occurred ‘in the context of genocide’ and so it is believable and believed. However, no Rwandan woman in the context of Rwandan culture would ever oversee mass rape of other Rwandan women. In fact, Beatrice Munyenyezi was also pregnant at the time — making the hypothesis of rape even less plausible.

Second, we can imagine that any credible testimony on a genocide rape charge against a woman would have provoked an endless barrage of news stories titled ‘Hutu genocidaire woman ordered rape of innocent Tutsis in hotel’s basement’, stories that would have made their way right up to CNN and the New York Times. But the decision on the rape charges went unmentioned by the New Hampshire press because the credibility of dishonest government witnesses (coached to lie) was easily destroyed.

It is as implausible as the charge by Invisible Children founder Jason Russel that “Joseph Kony forced children to kill their parents and then eat them.”

Some so-called ‘genocidaires‘ may be guilty, but others are not, and the Kagame regime uses all kinds of bribery, subterfuge and threats to pull the wool over the eyes of tourists, researchers and other ‘guests.’ Many people in Rwanda are forced to spy, tattle and inform on others, or else face personal persecution or threats to their families.

Anyone who challenges the officially sanctioned narrative in Rwanda is branded, arrested, exiled, disappeared or — in the case of pesky American academics, like Dr. Christian Davenport, Dr. Alan Stam or Dr. Susan Thomson, who all asked too many questions of the ‘wrong’ kind — barred from Rwanda forever.

International Wars of Aggression

In 1981, Yoweri Museveni and his newly formed National Resistance Army (NRA) launched an invasion of the sovereign country of Uganda.  From 1980 to 1986, the NRA perpetrated massive war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide in the Lowero Triangle and other areas in central and northern Uganda.  These atrocities were universally attributed — and are so attributed to this day — to the government forces, the Uganda National Liberation Army, commanded by then president Milton Obote. (See, for example,  “Notes On the Concealment of Genocide in Uganda,” A. Milton Obote, April 1990.)

The massive atrocities committed by the NRA set the stage for the rise of Joseph Kony, the Ugandan bogey man used by Museveni, Washington, London and Israel to facilitate a permanent state of insecurity in northern Uganda. Under permanent emergency, Museveni was able to justify the forcible displacement of millions of indigenous Acholi people and their internment into concentration camps. Museveni also authored a document attesting to genocidal intent against the Acholis.

One of the 27 guerrillas who took up arms alongside Yoweri Museveni in the illegal NRA invasion of Uganda was Paul Kagame, the future leader of the Rwanda Patriotic Army/Front, the Ugandan guerrilla army that illegally invaded Rwanda on October 1, 1990.

Loyal to Museveni and his bloody guerrilla tactics, Kagame rose through the ranks to become Museveni’s director of military intelligence — a position for which his enemies now claim he was known as ‘the butcher.’

At the time of the October 1990 invasion of Rwanda, Paul Kagame was being trained at the Pentagon’s General Staff and Command College at Fort Leavenworth, in Kansas (USA). Kagame returned and led the four year war that resulted in the deaths of perhaps several hundred thousand Hutu people between October 1990 and April 1994 alone.

A prima facie case can be made that each of the invasions of Uganda, Rwanda and Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) constitute the supreme crime against humanity, that being the illegal war of aggression against a sovereign nation.

The United States, Britain and Israel were the strongest backers behind backed Museveni and Kagame in all three of these illegal wars of aggression.

Involved at the highest level in the RPA/F invasion of Rwanda from 1990 to 1994 were United States intelligence agent Roger Winter and Israeli MOSSAD agent David Kimche.  U.S. defense attaches Lt. Colonel Thomas P. Odom and Richard Skow are two more U.S. military intelligence agents who have deep inside knowledge of the Pentagon- and Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA)-backed invasions of both Rwanda and Congo-Zaire.

The U.S. House of Representative hearings by the Subcommittee on Africa of the Committee on International Relations reveal that the United States knew that the Hutu refugees in Congo-Zaire were being massacred, and it makes clear some of who knew what, where it was happening, and when.

The “Official” Rwanda Genocide Narrative

Just as Yoweri Museveni and his backers conferred victor status on Museveni after the NRA victory in Uganda, and then charged the NRA’s victims and the Obote government with genocide, so too did Museveni and Paul Kagame and their backers confer savior status on Paul Kagame and accuse the Hutu victims of genocide.

The coalition multi-party coalition government of Juvenal Habyarimana was falsely branded with the genocide label as early as 1993.

Contrary to the official narrative that casts Hutus as killers and Tutsis as victims, the RPA/F plan included the sacrificing of hundreds of thousands of Tutsis. Given opportunities to negotiate a ceasefire, and even the unconditional surrender by the national army forces — Habyarimana’s Forces Armées Rwandaises or FAR — soon after the plane was shot down on 6 April 1994, the RPA/F chose to continue the war to achieve absolute military dominance.

The RPA/F leadership was comprised of elite English-speaking Tutsis from Uganda backed by Ugandan generals James Kazini and Salim Saleh, and by Yoweri Museveni himself. The elite RPA/F Tutsis — Major General Paul Kagame, General James Kabarebe, etc. — did not trust French-speaking Tutsis who had stayed behind in Rwanda after the Tutsi guerrilla attacks against the Hutu governments of the 1960′s and early 1970′s provoked retaliatory pogroms against Tutsi.

As the RPA/F invasion continued — prior to April 6, 1994 — Tutsis were also killed, both in revenge killings and because of RPA/F attacks. Claims that the Habyarimana government persecuted Tutsis are highly contested. Evidence suggests that Kagame and Museveni needed to play the ‘homeless and persecuted Tutsi refugee’ card to justify invading Rwanda.

After April 6, 1994, the minority Twa population also suffered massive loss of life in what should also be recognized as acts of genocide, at the very least.

“The continuation of the genocide of the Tutsis was a key part of the [RPA] victory strategy,” writes former Rwandan Patriotic Front official Jean-Marie Ndagijimana, in How General Paul Kagame Sacrificed the Tutsis.  “[A] ceasefire and a halt to the genocide risked strengthening his adversaries [Forces Armées Rwandaises] by freeing them from their police duties.  Furthermore, a halt to the massacres would have taken from Kagame the sole pretext on which he based his legitimacy.  The government [FAR] army had to be made to appear like a genocidal force the defeat of which no one would regret… Why stop the massacres when they were working to legitimize Kagame and weaken his adversaries?”

Here is how the typical U.S. news agency reporting on the Munyenyezi story story describes the Rwanda genocide.  “The genocide in Rwanda began in April 1994,” reads the commentator, in an ominous tone, in a local New Hampshire TV station video clip. “It lasted 100 days.  Up to 800,000 Tutsis were killed by Hutu militias and as many as 10,000 people were killed each day.  The Hutu were defeated three months later.”

However, the genocide against Tutsis during those 100 days of 1994 cannot be understood out of context, and the true context is never provided by the establishment media, by the U.S. or British governments, by Israel, or by the mercenaries working to clean the blood off the Kagame regime.

Former British prime Minister Tony Blair, Canadian academic Gerald Kaplan, New Yorker magazine writer Philip Gourevitch, former USAID agent Timothy Longman, Somalian mouthpiece Rakiya Omaar, and Rwandan mouthpiece Tom Ndahiro are some of the most prominent propagandists whitewashing the Kagame regime.

Timothy Longman, now director of African Studies at Boston University, is the Rwanda genocide ‘expert’ that was brought in to testify against Beatrice Munyenyezi. Longman and Alison Des Forges co-authored the Human Rights Watch (HRW) book on Rwanda Leave None to Tell the Story, and both worked with USAID, the U.S. State Department and the Pentagon; the 790 page tome did not mention a word about Beatrice Munyenyezi.

Kagame has also hired the Racepoint Group, a U.S. lobbying and public relations firm to “build a strong and sustained image campaign communicating the successes of Rwanda with key stakeholders in the political and financial elite communities” and “[o]ffset the negative and factually incorrect information of those parties with vested interests in mis-portraying Rwanda’s advancements.”

Racepoint’s campaign themes include “Rwanda’s Visionary Leader… highlighting President Kagame” and “The Rwandan Miracle: Healing of a Nation.” The company’s fees are listed as US$ 50,000 per month plus 2500 to 3500 pounds Sterling per month for “out of pocket expenses.”

The Pentagon Sacrifices Millions of Africans

The double presidential assassination of April 6, 1994 is defined as the trigger for the massive backlash of Tutsi killings by Hutu people. Since the war began in October 1990, more than 10 million people have died in Central Africa due to Pentagon backed insurgency, with the greatest numbers killed in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Jean-Marie Ndagijimana was the Rwandan Ambassador to Paris under the Habyarimana government from October 1990 to April 1994, before being removed from his post for speaking out against the mass killings of Tutsis and Hutus.

On 19 July 1994, Ndagajimana became Minister of Foreign Affairs in what was called the ‘Broad-Based National Unity Government’ led by Faustin Twagiramungu. In September 1994, he resigned and went into exile after the report by UNHCR investigator Robert Gersony confirmed that scores of thousands of Hutus were killed by the Rwandan Patriotic Army between July and September 1994.

Robert Gersony was the UNHCR contractor whose report on RPA killings of Hutus was massively denounced at the time and later buried by the United Nations never to be seen again. Gersony went on to work for the UNHCR in northern Uganda and other places. Clearly, Gersony’s credentials stood the test, and his silence secured his future employment(s). Indeed, Robert Gersony went on to work for the USAID mission to Kampala, Uganda, where he produced a report detailing the persecution of Acholi people in Northern Uganda. (See, e.g.: The Anguish of Northern Uganda: Results of a Field-Based Assessment of the Civil Conflicts in Northern Uganda, Robert Gersony, USAID Mission to Kampala, 1997).

Jean-Marie Ndagajimana insists that the killings of hundreds of thousands of Tutsis between April 6 and July 1994 was organized, not spontaneous, but that there is no question that there was a double genocide. He claims Tutsis were systematically killed by militias in areas controlled by the interim government of Jean Kambanda, and that the RPA/F systematically killed Hutus in zones under its control.

Based on research for which they were eventually thrown out of Rwanda, U.S. academics Christian Davenport and Alan Stam insist that the numbers of Tutsis killed in Rwanda during the so-called 100 days could not have been as high as the official narrative claims, and that hundreds of thousands of Hutus were killed during this period and these comprise the difference between the official count of 800,000 to 1.2 million Tutsis and the actual count of hundreds of thousands less Tutsis.

Defense attorneys from the ICTR are adamant that the record shows that there was no systematic planification of genocide by the government of Juvenal Habyarimana or its immediate successors, the interim coalition government of Jean Kambanda.

The official Rwanda genocide narrative is founded upon the idea that the Habyarimana government was an extremist Hutu government — which is what extremist purveyors of the official narrative like Paul Kagame and his elite Tutsi collaborators would like people to believe.  The less aggressive assertion that the Habyarimana government was an exclusively Hutu government and was exclusive to Tutsi is also false.

From April 1992 to the middle of July 1993 there was a coalition government led by Prime Minister Dr. Dismas Nsengiyaremye. The members of the coalition represented a diverse political spectrum, including opposition party members from the Mouvement Démocratique Républicain (MDR), Parti Liberal (PL), Parti Social Démocrate (PSD) and Parti Démocratique Chrêtien (PDC). There were also members from Habyarimana’s ruling party Mouvement Républicain National Pour la Démocratie et le Développement (MRND). Opposition parties had ten ministers in addition to the Prime Minister and the MRND had 10 ministers in addition to President Habyarimana. The prominent Tutsi official in this government was Landoald Ndasingwa from the Liberal Party.

From the middle of July 1993 to April 6, 1994, there was a coalition government led by Prime Minister Madam Agathe Uwilingiyimana. The members of the coalition government were from the MDR, PSD, PDC and MRND parties. The MDR party split into two factions after Agathe Uwilingiyimana was appointed Prime Minister by Juvenal Habyariama. PSD, PDC, PL split up later. Some factions were pro-RPF, others were pro-MRND. The pro-MRND factions were later labeled ‘Hutu Power.’ The label came from a speech made by Froduald Karamira, vice-president of the MDR during a public meeting called to condemn the October 1993 assassination of President Melchior Ndadaye of Burundi, the first Hutu elected president of Burundi. (From Karamira’s perspective power belonged to the winners of elections.)

In other words there was no ‘Hutu government of Juvenal Habyarimana.’ Habyariman had been forced by the international community to accept a coalition government, and if there were any extremists in the government, these were the opposition people who believed that the Rwandan Patriotic Front was bringing equality to Rwanda and was genuinely interested in either peace and/or good faith negotiations. Nothing could have been further from the truth.

The ICTR acquitted the so-called ‘genocide masterminds’ of all conspiracy to commit genocide charges, but some were found guilty of ‘acts of genocide’ and other crimes against humanity. The ICTR trials have been politically motivated, one-sided productions, and not one Rwandan Patriotic Army/Front official or soldier has even been indicted.

The ICTR conviction of Hutu president Jean Kambanda, the former interim president during the 1994 genocide, on the charge of conspiracy to commit genocide was a complete sham: even proponents of the official Rwanda genocide narrative have confirmed that Kambanda was not afforded proper legal representation or anything close to a fair trial. (See, e.g., The Sacrifice of Jean Kambanda: A Comparative Analysis of the Right to Counsel in the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and the United States, with emphasis on Prosecutor v. Jean Kambanda, Kelly Xi Huei Lalith Ranasing, California Western School of Law, Summer 2004.)

The ICTR trials have persecuted and further dehumanized Hutu people, and they have dismissed and ignored every chance to explore the role of Paul Kagame and the RPA/F in provoking, prolonging and supporting the Tutsi genocide during the 100 days of 1994.

Meanwhile, in 2008 the high court in Spain issued indictments and international arrest warrants against the top 40 Rwandan Patriotic Army/Front officials for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (Zaire). The court included Paul Kagame in its consideration of egregious crimes, but is prevented from indicting a sitting head of state.

Business is business: directors of Royal/Dutch Shell Corporation with President Paul Kagame in Kigali. Note: The photo on the right to the right and behind shows former President Pasteur Bizimungu, first president under the RPA/F regime, July 19, 1994 to March 23, 2000.

The RPA Genocide against the Hutu People

Beatrice Munyenyezi survived the invasion of Rwanda’s Byumba prefecture by the Ugandan troops calling themselves the Rwanda Patriotic Army in 1990. Munyenyezi then survived the next four years of RPA/F persecution and genocide that saw entire Hutu villages in Byumba razed, massacres of scores of thousands of mostly (but not only) Hutu people, and the internal displacement of some two million Hutus.

Forced into a life-and-death refugee existence inside Rwanda between October 1990 and April 1994, the displaced Hutu people fought back after the plane carrying the Hutu presidents of both Rwanda and Burundi, and other Rwandan high officials, was shot down over Kigali airport on April 6, 1994.

Beatrice Munyenyezi then survived the so-called ’100 days of genocide’ in Rwanda from April 6 to July 15, 1994. She fled Rwanda with family members on July 18, 1994, part of the massive exodus of millions of Rwandans, mostly innocent Hutu women and children to eastern Zaire (now Democratic Republic of Congo).

In Congo-Zaire, Munyenyezi survived the most ruthless and cold-blooded slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Hutu civilians by the RPA, Ugandan People’s Defense Forces and some lesser numbers of Ethiopian, Eritrean, and South African troops. The RPA-led genocide in Congo-Zaire began in August 1996 when the RPA shelled refugee camps in violation of international law.

In Goma, DRC, at this time, a western war correspondent photographed U.S. Special Forces machine-gunning unarmed refugee men, women and children in what he described as “one of the most horrible examples of mass atrocities I have ever seen.”

The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) had been stockpiling World Food Program provisions — that were denied to starving Hutu refugees — and these provisions were used to feed the invading RPA troops.

After the refugee camps were attacked, Beatrice Munyenyezi fled from Congo to Kenya at the advice of her brother, Jean-Marie Vianney Higiro, another U.S. citizen also being hunted by the Kagame regime and its political, military and economic partners.

In Tanzania and Kenya, Beatrice Munyenyezi survived RPF agents hunting refugees and assassinating dissidents, including former RPF official Seth Sendashonga, who was minister of the interior in Rwanda from 1994 to 1998.

Jean Marie Vianney Higiro is the real target of the Kagame regime’s persecution of Beatrice Munyenyezi: the regime has held a vendetta against Higiro since his refusal to accept a post in the Kagame terrorist government in July 1994. Higiro was evacuated from Rwanda by U.S. marines around April 8, 1994.

The security apparatus of the Kagame regime has been hunting refugees in Europe and in North America since 1994, and Rwandan dissidents have been assassinated in Europe and Africa.  The hunting down of Rwandan dissidents is backed by the U.S. Government, Britain and Israel to prop up their client regime: the dictatorship of Paul Kagame.

Rwanda provides a major base for the U.S. Department of Defense military occupation of Africa and for U.S. and allied intelligence and defense operations. While allied operations involve many NATO countries, Britain and Israel are the main intelligence and defense partners for the U.S. in Central Africa; Germany and Belgium are not far behind them.

There is no freedom of speech in Rwanda today. There is no freedom of press. There is no freedom to organize. There is no freedom of assembly. The Kagame regime continues to assassinate and disappear critics, journalists, former business associates, former military and former government officials.

On March 31, 2012, Kagame’s former Chief of Staff Theogene Rudasingwa, a Tutsi in exile, announced that Paul Kagame was the instigator of the January 2001 assassination of Congolese president Laurent Desire Kabila. Former defense minister Theogene Rudasingwa is also the former RPF Secretary General and former Ambassador to Washington.

The most recent assassinations include several Rwandan journalists killed in Uganda earlier this year. Opposition candidate Victoire Ingabire remains imprisoned and subject to a political charade trial because she returned to Rwanda from Belgium and courageously proclaimed the heretical obvious: There was a genocide against Hutus as well as Tutsis.

In July 2010, the body of the deputy leader of the Democratic Green Party was found dumped by a river near the southern town of Butare. Opposition politician Andre Kagwa Rwisereka, a Tutsi politician, was decapitated for his opposition to the Kagame regime.

The RPA/F government routinely rounds up numerous supposed supporters of opposition parties, and people have routinely been disappeared merely for showing some allegiance to the opposition Green Party or the PS-Imberakuri party.

“So many Tutsis are also suffering political repression,” says ‘Ignace,’ a high level Rwandan dissident who fears retaliation from the U.S. government for speaking out. “Tutsis who live in Rwanda are silent because they fear repression. Tutsis who live abroad in exile, like Theogene Rudasingwa and Gerald Gahima and General Kayumba Nyamwasa are also living in fear of assassination.”

Hutus throughout the country are subject to slavery conditions and millions of people — Hutus, Tutsis, Twa — outside the cliques of power are suffering extreme poverty. Most egregious, the RPA/F genocide against Hutu people continues: there is at present a campaign in Rwanda to forcibly sterilize Hutu males.

“The RPF’s reconstruction and reconciliation policies do not represent a sincere attempt to unify and reconcile Rwandans,” writes Dr. Susan Thomson. “Instead, it is a mechanism of state power that presents a self-serving version of history and manipulates the language of ethnicity to justify and maintain policies of exclusion and oppression of ethnic Hutu in maintaining the appearance of peace and security… In practice, the government approaches post-genocide justice through the maximal prosecution of all Hutu.”

A U.S. academic who worked in Rwanda and experienced the indoctrination camps run by the Kagame regime, Dr. Susan Thomson is persona non grata in Rwanda today. (And so is this correspondent.)

The Rwanda Genocide Tourism Industry

After the arrest of Beatrice Munyenyezi in 2010, agents from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) traveled to Rwanda to gather evidence to support the charges against her.

It is unknown which, if any, of the U.S. prosecutors also traveled to Rwanda, but there were two investigative missions sent there for the Munyenyezi ‘discovery’. Because Beatrice Munyenyezi was indigent, both of her defense attorneys traveled to Rwanda all expenses paid by U.S. taxpayers; it is likely that the two primary U.S. prosecutors also traveled there.

While prosecutors John Capin and Aloke Chakravarthy may or may not have traveled to Rwanda, independent investigations in Rwanda are impossible. The U.S. government does not send unbiased investigators to Rwanda: it sends agents intent on collecting the information and documentation provided by their client regime to protect their client regime.

It is especially easy to manipulate tourists or students or researchers who arrive in Rwanda for their first visit to Africa. White people are taken to the genocide memorials and the shock of these staged-managed productions — all these Hutu and Tutsi skeletons piled up and labeled ‘Tutsi victims of genocide’ — strikes deep into the psyche of the spectator. People don’t arrive with clean slates: the mass media has deeply conditioned western news and entertainment consumers to see Africa through a racist and exploitative lens.

The viewing of skeletons and skulls in Rwanda has become a lucrative spectator sport and the conditioning by the white systems of power in western countries has created naive and racially conditioned spectators who are easily fooled. Once they have seen the ‘horrors’ of the genocide memorials the average white and even non-white western spectators (e.g. African Americans) are often horrified into a subconscious shock and disbelief where reason and common sense are no longer accessible.

Foreigners take the skeletons and skulls as the unassailable truth — it does not cross their minds that there might be some other interpretation of the art project they see before them. It doesn’t occur to people that the truth has been distilled down — essentialized — into piles of skeletons, or shoes, or scattered clothing, or machetes that no longer appropriately re-present the original circumstances and context.

However, the fact is that virtually everyone in Rwanda owns a machete. Ditto in Burundi, Congo and rural Tanzania. They are as common a personal item as a wallet or purse or ball point pen is to a western consumer. The entire machete narrative — Hutus butchering Tutsis in 100 days, blah, blah, blah — is deeply problematic, since the RPA routinely killed people with machetes both to disguise (normalize) the means of death such that the perpetrators and the victims could not be distinguished and so that the RPA narrative of ‘bloodthirsty Hutus killing Tutsis with machetes’ could easily be advanced. The RPA also wanted to save on bullets.

There is a genocide economy in Rwanda that serves foreign visitors who spend millions of dollars annually to travel to Rwanda, stay in fancy hotels, eat at restaurants, visit the mountain gorillas in Rwanda’s national parks, hire cars, and drivers, and interpreters, and purchase souvenirs — or ‘free trade’ coffee produced on lands stolen from the Hutu masses. There is a whole industry that revolves around the production and maintenance of the official Rwanda genocide story about Hutus killing Tutsis in 100 days of horror.

The U.S. government pays all the travel and per diem expenses of genocide ‘investigators’, and everything is covered at the expense of U.S. taxpayers. Rwandan ‘victims’ and ‘survivors’ who are brought to the United States are also fully paid.

“This is genocide tourism,” says ‘Ignace’. “They are not investigative. They stay at fancy hotels, they visit some locations, they see the skeletons and skulls at ‘genocide memorials’, they meet President Kagame, and they are assigned government handlers who make sure they get what Kagame and people in Washington want. They drink a lot of wine and swim in the swimming pools. They don’t know anything about Rwanda and everything looks very romantic. Then they come back and accuse innocent people of genocide.”

Pentagon Satellite Photos Exposed

The existence of satellite reconnaissance photographs has not been revealed even during the 18 years of very high profile genocide trials held at the ICTR.

During his entire three-plus years in Rwanda from 1990 to November 1993, former U.S. Ambassador to Rwanda Robert Flatten’s requests for Pentagon-DIA spy satellite photographs showing the progress of the war in the Rwandan countryside were turned down — because of “clouds over Rwanda” they told him.

The authenticity of the satellite images has not been established and there is good reason to assume that the satellite images may be completely fraudulent.

Alternately, the satellite photos may have been produced during a different time period than is claimed by the prosecutors.

There is also substantial reason to believe that the satellite photographs may be exactly what the Pentagon described them as.

If Washington had the capability to monitor events from a satellite platform they certainly were doing so. And Washington had that capacity indeed.

In 1994, the U.S. intelligence and defense establishment was flying two older versions of the LANDSAT remote sensing satellite platforms in outer orbit. LANDSAT-4 and LANDSAT-5 had both exceeded their design lifetimes but were operational and had the capability to capture accurate and detailed imagery of what was happening in Rwanda during the 100 days of genocide.

There was also the NASA Space Shuttle.

One direct witness to events in Rwanda leading up the 1994 genocide was a researcher connected to a foreign NGO who knows something about satellite images collected over Rwanda but who has never gone public. Witness GOR-2 worked closely with the Juvenal Habyarimana regime prior to April 1994 and again closely with the new Kagame government after 1994.

Witness GOR-2 had regular contact with the Rwandan Ministry of Defense, the office of President Kagame, and with former RPA Secretary General Theogene Rudasingwa. According to GOR-2, there were NASA space shuttle flights over Zaire and Rwanda in April and September of 1994, on U.S. government-sponsored research under contract NAS7-1260.

The prosecutors in the Munyenyezi case are claiming that Munyenyezi was present at a road block just outside the Hotel Ihuriro in Butare. This hotel was probably destroyed by the RPA towards the end of June. It seems that the RPF took Butare after June coming from Burundi. Hotel Ihuriro was still standing on May 25, 1994, when Munyenyezi is accused of commanding Hutu extremists to kill Hutu men and rape Hutu women.

According to sources present at the Munyenyezi trial, the satellite pictures are taken over a time period and show clear changes from day to day. For example, the photos showed people and cars moving towards Burundi. “When they zoom in on a given location you can see the buildings, you can see people. It’s not a video, it’s a snapshot.”

“They first showed the hotel, which doesn’t exist any more. They tried to show that somehow there was a road block that [Munyenyezi] was at. The pictures were also supposed to show a mass grave a few feet from the hotel and another mass grave near the Episcopal church nearby The defense attorney was able to prove that there was no road block shown in the pictures, and there were no mass graves.”

While reputed to be photo-shopped photo, Congolese experts insist that this photo is authentic: Hyppolite Kanambe alias Joseph Kabila was a military officer attached to Paul Kagame during the 1996-1997 invasion and conquest of Congo-Zaire.

The Great Lakes Genocide Cover-up

The existence of satellite images raises questions about what the Pentagon knows and what they are hiding. For example, satellite imagery would clearly show the wreckage of the presidential plane crash site, and photos would show who was in control of the crash site immediately after the April 6 assassinations, and who controlled the site over the next weeks and months.

The United States has blocked every bona fide investigation into the double presidential assassinations since 1994. The Kagame regime has produced several reports (e.g., “Mucyo Report”), but these self-interested productions are easily discredited.

Former RPA/F official Theogene Rudasingwa claims that Paul Kagame and an elite RPA hit squad are behind the shooting down of the presidential plane, and thus the RPA sparked the genocide of Tutsis, knowing Tutsis would be massacred everywhere, and these claims are backed up by other former RPA/F soldiers.

It is important to mention that the U.S. was directly involved in the April-July events,” says ICTR defense attorney Christopher Black, “first by being implicated in shooting down the plane, then the presence of Colonel Vukovic in Kigali, just days before the shoot down, and the U.S. was supplying the RPF forces with men and materiel by airdropping them using C130 Hercules after April 6th. General Ndindiliyimana testified that the U.S. Air Force was airdropping men and weapons to the RPF and he was not challenged on this testimony. Also, the UN Rwanda Emegency Office was in reality completely staffed by US army officers and acted as the operational headquarters for the RPF.”

Satellite imagery would also show the locations, strengths and activities of RPA troops, government (FAR) troops and militias. It is well known that the RPA infiltrated the Interahamwe militias, and therefore RPA are believed to have controlled some road blocks, and it is very curious that no satellite photos have previously been produced to show where road blocks and bridges were occupied, and who occupied them.

Probably this is because the RPA was in control of areas like the Kagera National Park, and RPA were dumping dead Hutus (and some French speaking Tutsis) in the Kagera River. The infamous mythology about Tutsi bodies floating down the Kagera River is completely contradicted by the declassified memo from Mark Prutsalis of the NGO Refugees International.

In a May 17, 1994 situation report (“SITREP #10: Rwandan Refugees in Tanzania”) to Refugees International headquarters in Washington D.C., Mark Prutsalis described documented RPA atrocities on the Tanzania-Rwanda border. The document details gruesome and egregious war crimes, crimes against humanity and the indiscriminate killing of both Hutus and Tutsi civilians by RPA soldiers.

For example:

“The following are excerpts from a UNHCR-Ngara protection report on border crossing points from an assessment made on 14 and 15 May:”

At RUSUMO commune, sector KIGARAMA, the RPF came and called for a ‘peace meeting’.  Those, who did not participate voluntarily, were forced to the meeting.  At the school people were tied together, three by three — men/women/children – and stabbed.  The bodies were put on trucks and thrown into the Kagera River, north of Rusumo Bridge…

At RUSUMO commune, sectors NYAMUGARI, GISENYI, NYARUBUJE, the RPF comes at 05h00 waiting for villagers to open their doors.  The villagers are caught and taken away to the river by trucks.  No one has returned.  Refugees from the area have seen people being tied together and thrown into the river.  It seems as if guns are used only if somebody tries to escape…

At RUSUMO commune, sector MUZAZA, village GASARABWAYI (4 kms from the river), the RPF launched several attacks on the village and its population.  On the 13.05 [May 13] 40 RPF soldiers came at 07h00.  They surrounded the village.  Villagers were gathered in houses, which were burned down.  An eyewitness saw 20 people being killed this way.  8 villagers were thrown into a latrine, and the latrine was filled with soil.  Asked by UNHCR field officer refugees said that the RPF did not care whether victims were Hutu or Tutsi villagers.

An IRC [International Rescue Committee] staff person wrote top their office,” the Refugees International SITREP concluded. “Things are getting very bad at the border here… Someone really needs to do something about all of the [RPA] killing and torture on the other [Rwanda] side. Each day there are more and more bodies in the river and most of them without their heads.; the count is between 20 and 30 each 30 minutes.”

“The people of Rwanda have nowhere else to go and we cannot expect them to stay and be slaughtered in their homes,” Mark Prutsalis wrote. “This remote inaccessible part of Tanzania cannot continue to receive thousands of refugees per day. We will soon be overwhelmed here unless someone takes action to end the bloodshed, the atrocities, the massacres in Rwanda.”

The genocide against Tutsis and Hutus continued after 1994 and there has never been a U.S. investigation into the roles of the Pentagon, CIA and DIA in the cataclysms in Rwanda and Congo-Zaire.

Witness GOR-2 described how the RPA/F used the Volcanoes National Park as a military base to launch Congo-Zaire operations after 1994.

GOR-2 said that white soldiers driving tanks were seen inside the park heading to Zaire in September 1996. GOR-2 said that the United Nation’s IRIN report described this as U.S. soldiers going into Goma but that the IRIN report was quickly removed from the Internet. GOR-2 explained how the RPA?F would close the Volcanoes National Park for days at a time while involved in military operations and ‘clean-ups’: “The Rwandan Patriotic Army would just close the park for days at a time and we didn’t know what was going on in there.”

GOR-2 explained how the Volcanoes National Park was flooded with thousands of Rwandan refugees returning from Zaire after the U.S.-backed invasion by Kagame and Museveni forces in 1996, and that the park became an RPA ‘killing zone’.

“We had a massive clean-up operation to remove bodies in 1999,” GOR-2 said, “trying to get out all the dead bodies, and all the rags and pots and pans.”

GOR-2 was always in close personal contact with Major Richard Skow, the U.S. military attache’ from the U.S. Embassy in Kigali, and Robert E. Gribbon, the U.S. Ambassador to Rwanda at the time.

GOR-2 described airborne remote sensing flyovers using a new state-of-the-art technology involving hyper-spectral analysis where flights were made over Rwanda and eastern Congo.

GOR-2 claims that some 22 CDs of raw data were delivered by Claire Richardson, the head of the Dian Fossey Gorrilla Fund, to Theogene Rudasingwa at the Rwandan Ministry of Defense.

GOR-2 said the flyovers were coordinated by the National Geographic Society and DFGF and were supposedly for gorilla conservation — habitat mapping — but were actually meant to locate mineral resources that the RPA could exploit.

Satellite imagery was almost certainly collected over the four years of warfare in Rwanda by the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), one of the 16 U.S. intelligence agencies. The NRO designs, builds and operates U.S. government spy satellites and coordinates the analysis of aerial surveillance and satellite imagery from several intelligence and military agencies, including the Defense Investigative Agency (DIA) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Before April 6, 1994 the RPF occupied the large portions of the prefectures of Byumba and Ruhengeri: American satellite pictures may shed light on the destruction caused by the RPF offensive from 1990 to the 1993 ceasefire.

“I spent 3 months in the demilitarized zone resettling internally displaced people,” says another unnamed Rwandan genocide survivor GOR-3. “Based on what I saw, the RPF policy was to kill people, destroy buildings, destroy houses, destroy archives. Doors, iron sheets and corrugated metal covering the roofs of houses, furniture, toilets — everything had been removed and taken to Uganda to be sold. We need the pictures taken by the Pentagon to show the brutality of the RPA invasion and occupation.”

Hordes of NGO workers and humanitarian relief workers involved in millions of dollars of private profit come and go from Rwanda, always advertising their effectiveness in “peace” and “reconciliation” programs.

Tutsis and Hutus alike inside and outside Rwanda are increasingly speaking about military confrontation as more and more people become alienated and disaffected by the elite Tutsis in the Kagame regime.

Rwanda’s Ongoing Plunder of Congo

The U.S. Department of Defense also oversees and supports plunder and depopulation in the Eastern Congo, where Rwanda and Uganda maintain economic, political and military control.

Under the cover of military operations to capture and kill supposed Rwandan “genocidaires” in Congo (Forces for the Democratic Liberation of Rwanda) and supposed Ugandan terrorists (including Joseph Kony and the Lord’s Resistance Army) western mining companies have been stripping and shipping Congolese minerals without oversight or regulation since the Pentagon-backed invasion of September 1996.

Canadian Banro Corporation is one of the most secretive corporations operating in Congo, and they have established and maintained their control through very tight relations with the Kagame regime. Banro has taken over thousands of hectares of South Kivu province by manipulating the local mwamis (chiefs), by bribing officials and by infiltrating officials onto power who are friendly to Banro and Kagame’s interests.

Banro describes its operations as ‘stable’ and ‘community-aligned’ but local human rights groups paint a very different picture, one of terrorism all over the region.  Banro’s security manager is from the private military company Erinys International, a British mercenary firm ‘registered’ in the British Virgin Islands.  Banro works exclusively with Erinys International, a firm that also operates in Iraq.

The areas around Banro concessions (e.g. Shabunda, Fizi, Walungu) have seen some of the worst bloodshed in all of the Congo, often perpetrated by Rwandan forces connected to Paul Kagame and then blamed on Congolese Mai Mai or the Forces for the Democratic Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR).

The Banro concessions can be seen in the map below, where total territory under Banro exploration is almost as big as the entire countries of Rwanda or Burundi.  This would not be possible without a close military and intelligence alliance between Banro and the Kagame government.

The Supreme Court validated the results published by CENI and dismissed a challenge to the results by the opposition, led by presidential candidate Vital Kamerhe. The opposition categorically rejected the results as fraudulent. Nonetheless, Joseph Kabila was sworn into office on Tuesday, December 20th, where only one head of state (Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe) attended although 12 other African heads of states were expected to attend. Ambassadors from foreign nations, including the United States, were present for Kabila’s swearing-in.

Rejecting the results, Etienne Tshisekedi announced that he would have his own swearing-in among the people at the 80,000 capacity Martyrs Stadium on Friday, December 23rd. Being under virtual house arrest, Tshisekedi was confined to his residence by the Kabila regime. The government also prevented the population from entering the stadium with a heavy show of force from the police, armed forces, and presidential guard. The regime blocked routes leading to the stadium with heavy tanks and artillery. Instead of a swearing-in at the stadium in front of a large audience, Etienne Tshisekedi had to perform the ceremony at home in his garden. In addition to domestic pressure, the government is experiencing intense international pressure; the European Union has said it will re-evaluate its cooperation with the DRC and make judgments based on how the political crisis unfolds, and Mme Christine Lagarde, head of the International Monetary Fund, said she is following the situation in the Congo with a particular focus on the rule of law and the political climate, especially the pre and post-electoral periods.

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is at a critical juncture in its tenuous march towards peace and stability. The Kabila regime suffers from a severe crisis of legitimacy and the future of the democratic project is in the balance. Stability will be fleeting without legitimacy. What is at stake in the Congo is not merely an election but respect for the will of a people and the future of democracy in the heart of Africa.

The Carter Center said the Presidential results announced by the CENI “lacked credibility,” while the Archbishop of Kinshasa, Cardinal Laurent Monsengwo, said that the results announced by the CENI reflects “neither the truth nor justice.” The European Union chimed in, noting that the process evinced a lack of transparency, with its missing polling stations and lost results totaling an estimated 1.6 million votes. South Africa noted that the elections were “generally OK,” while the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the African Union (AU) found little wrong with the elections. Nonetheless, the CENI has ceased the counting of the legislative results and invited an international technical team from the United States and England to help with the counting of the legislative results, which are expected to be announced by January 13th – a constitutional deadline that will be difficult to meet.

Congolese in the diaspora have responded with universal outrage and have taken to the streets throughout the globe. Demonstrations have occurred in London, Brussels, Paris, Berlin, Rome, Johannesburg, Tel Aviv, Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, New York, Washington and numerous other cities around the world. The central demand of the demonstrations is that the will of the Congolese people be respected. Click here to see videos of Congolese demonstrations!

Due to greater access to information, combined with the freedom to express themselves, Congolese in the Diaspora have voiced the frustrations and concerns of their countrymen and women. The Congolese population inside the country has been under a military clamp-down with tanks in the streets, omnipresent security forces, SMS shut down (a major tool of communication for Congolese), and opposition television shuttered. Moreover, the Kabila regime has already demonstrated a willingness to use its armed and security forces to fire on unarmed civilians (see Human Rights Watch Report) and round-up and disappear civilians (see Amnesty International and Voix Sans Voix Statement).

The best option to rescue the country from a descent into a deeper crisis is the activation of a national mediation mechanism supported by the international community (Southern African Development Community (SADC), African Union (AU), European Union, United Nations and United States). However, political will on the part of the political class to prioritize the people’s interests over partisan interests is a necessary prerequisite for this option to be successful.

In 2005, the relatives of nine Spanish nationals killed in Rwanda and the Congo in 1994, 1996, 1997 and 2000, filed a lawsuit against the government of Rwanda resulting in the issuing of Interpol international arrest warrants for 40 Rwandan officials of Kagame’s régime.

On 6 February 2008, the Spanish Investigative Judge Andreu Merelles issued an indictment charging 40 current or former high-ranking Rwandan military officials with serious crimes including genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and terrorism, perpetrated over a period of 12 years, from 1990 to 2002, against the civilian population, and primarily against members of the Hutu ethnic group.

While the investigations were initially based on complaints from families of nine Spaniards who were killed, harmed or disappeared during the period at issue, the indictment was subsequently expanded to include crimes committed against Rwandan and Congolese victims, based on the universal jurisdiction doctrine. The indictment rules out the prosecution of Paul Kagame, arguing that he may not be prosecuted as long as he holds the position of President of Rwanda.

According to Spanish lawyer Jordi Palou Loverdos:

Spain’s Audencia Nacional was only met by silence when it duly and formally asked the U.N. to hand over the evidence of these crimes perpetrated against people in 1996 and 1997 or the evidence of the pillaging of valuable mineral resources conducted in these same years or earlier. The international media which had access to the UN report have made public the fact that the UN High Commissioner responsible for the report  keeps- separately from the latter- a confidential  data bank containing evidence that implicates individual Rwandan and Ugandan military officials.

In spite of threats and intimidation from agents linked to Western governments and from the United Nations, the Spanish High Court authorities are continuing to hear evidence against the Ugandan and Rwandan proxy forces of the United States in Africa.

Keith Harmon Snow has been researching the real facts of the tragedy known to the world as the Rwandan genocide since 1994, and has, along with many other experts, evidence to prove that the United States, Britain and Israel were responsible for the training, financing and covert military and logistic support of Kagame and Museveni’s forces.

On 6 April 1994, the UPDF/RPA proxy forces assassinated the Rwandan and Burundian presidents (Juvenal Habyarimana and Cyprien Ntaryamira), their military chiefs of staff, and the French pilots of the plane they were flying on, thus provoking and participating in the extermination of hundreds of thousands of Hutus and Tutsis in one of the most violent civil wars in modern history.

Snow also presented detailed evidence of the war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity committed by Kagame and Museveni’s proxy forces, after they invaded the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1996, again backed by the Pentagon, Israel and NATO allies. The Congo/Zaire invasion was commanded by generals Paul Kagame and James Kabarebe, and they involved an officer attached to Kabarebe named Hyppolite Kanambe — alias Joseph Kabila, the strongman in Congo today.

The ongoing Rwandan occupation and plunder of eastern Congo has resulted in the deaths of some ten million people, making this the worst war since the Second World War. The Central African holocaust has been largely ignored by the global mass media corporations who are calling for “humanitarian intervention” in Syria, much as they did to justify invading Libya, by the same countries responsible for supporting mass carnage in Africa.

In spite of orders from Laurent Désire Kabila (Congo’s interim president of 1998-2001), to disengage from the Congo, the RPA and UPDF re-invaded the Congo in 1998, resulting in the Second Congolese War. Although the war is said to have ended in 2001, mass killing of the populations in the mineral rich Kivu provinces of Eastern Congo, under the leadership of these US-backed dictators, has continued to this day.

Contrary to its stated “peacekeeping” mission, the United Nations Observers Mission for the Congo (MONUC) and its follow on dependent, Monusco, has been deployed in the Congo since 2000 and has been involved in sexual violence and contraband activities. MONUC has provided cover for the Rwandan, Ugandan and Burundi forces, USAID, the Pentagon’s new Africa Command (AFRICOM), and scores of Western mining corporations who are plundering the Eastern Congo.

Snow gave detailed testimony to the Audencia Nacional of the American, British, Belgian, German, Israeli and Australian mining corporations who have profited from the Pentagon’s holocaust in the Congo.  Banro Corporation, Barrick Gold and many companies run by the Blattner dynasty have profited astronomically from the pillaging of the Congolese people’s resources, as domestic warlords and Western elites enrich themselves while the local people starve.

Snow alleges that these corporations have direct links to the criminal networks run by Paul Kagame, who are plundering the Kivu provinces of the Eastern Congo and massacring the Hutu Rwandan refugees there.

Though the majority of victims have been from the populations of Rwandan Hutus, Rwandan Tutsis and Twa have also been targeted, both in Congo and Rwanda, and many Congolese ethnic groups have been targeted in the Congo. The Kagame regime is determined to eliminate all possible opposition to its rule and to occupy and annex eastern Congo to create a “Republic of the Volcanoes” controlled by Rwanda and populated with satellite US military bases.

Snow told the Spanish court that details collected by the UN Panel of Experts report of 2001 to 2010, detailing the illegal occupation, plunder and war crimes in the Congo, have been watered down by special interest groups linked to Western governments, thus shielding Western corporations and governments from scrutiny by the International Criminal Court and the Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda.

Trained in the notorious Fort Levenworth, Kansas (USA) and advised by former British prime minister Tony Blair, Paul Kagame is without question one of the most evil dictators in modern history. The scale and intensity of his atrocities dwarf those of Pinochet, Suharto and Somoza combined.

In spite of expertise gained on the ground throughout Central Africa spanning 20 years, expert testimony to the US House of Representatives in 2001, extensive work as genocide consultant to the United Nations and numerous meticulously documented reports, Keith Harmon Snow’s work continues to be ignored by the corporate media and many outlets who claim to be ‘progressive’ and ‘independent’ .

According to  Snow:

U.S.-based groups fronted by the intelligence and defense establishment and pretending to be ‘grass roots non-government organizations’ — such as the ENOUGH project, Raise Hope for Congo, Resolve, STAND and Save Darfur — have co-opted the grass roots movement and are whitewashing the issues and controlling the media, academic and public spaces to prevent the true grass roots voices for Central Africa from being heard and to prevent the deeper issues from being understood.¹

In preparation for a documentary film to be released next year on the African holocaust, Keith Harmon Snow has just completed a series of interviews with distinguished scholars, investigative journalists and lawyers from France, Spain, Germany, Camaroun and Rwanda. The film, as yet untitled, is expected to be aired in film festivals throughout the world and will also be available online for mass viewing.

Rwanda and the Congo belong to the ninth circle of global capitalism’s Dantesque inferno. It is the circle of betrayal; betrayal of the high ideals of the United Nations to uphold the rule of law and work towards the goal of international peace and stability; betrayal of the trust ordinary citizens of the world have in media corporations to tell them what is really happening in the world, so that leaders and potentates can be held to account.

Uncovering the truth about the role of Western imperialism in the violence that has beset Central Africa since the fall of the USSR to the present day, is of vital importance, as the obscene and racist myth of an African genocide America “failed to prevent” constitutes the mendacious and  insane basis for the Orwellian “responsibility to protect” doctrine.

Western governments and their pro-Kagame lobbies in the mainstream media are quick to smear as ‘genocide deniers’ those who challenge the lies and distortions of the official genocide narrative of the current Rwandan régime by exposing the inconvenient and politically incorrect facts. In the case of Rwanda and the Congo, it should now be abundantly clear who those genocide-deniers are.

1. E-mail correspondence with Keith Harmon Snow

A slump occurs when “capacity outstrips demand” – that is to say, when people can no longer afford to buy all that is being produced. This is inevitable in a capitalist system, where productive capacity is privately owned, because the global working class as a whole are never paid enough to purchase all that they collectively produce. As a result, unsold goods begin to pile up, and production facilities – factories and the like – are closed down. People are thrown out of work as a result, their incomes decline, and the problem gets worse. This is exactly what we are seeing happen today.

In these circumstances, avenues for profitable investment dry up – the holders of capital can find nowhere safe to invest their money. For them, this is the crisis – not the unemployment, the famine, the poverty etc (which, after all, remain an endemic feature of the global capitalist economy even during the ‘boom times’, albeit on a somewhat reduced scale). The governments under their control – through ownership of the media, currency manipulation and control of the economy – must then set to work creating new profitable investment opportunities.

One way they do this is by killing off public services, and thus creating opportunities for investment in the private companies that replace them. In 1980s Britain, Margaret Thatcher privatised steel, coal, gas, electricity, water, and much else besides. In the short term, this plunged millions into unemployment, as factories and mines were closed down, and in the long term it resulted in massive price rises for basic services. But it had its intended effect – it provided valuable investment opportunities (for those with capital to spare) at a time when such opportunities were scarce, and created a long term source of fabulous profits. This summer, for example, saw the formerly publicly owned gas company Centrica hiking its prices by another 18% to bring in a £1.3billion profit. The raised prices will see many thousands more pensioners than usual die from the cold this winter as a result, but gas – like all commodities in capitalist society – is not there to provide heat, but to increase capital.

In the global South, privatisation was harsher still. Bodies like the IMF and the World Bank used the leverage provided by the debt-extortion mechanism (whereby interest rates were hiked on unpayable loans that had rarely benefited the population, often taken out by corrupt rulers imposed by Western governments in the first place) to force governments across Asia, Africa and Latin America to cut public spending on even basics such as health and education, along with agricultural subsidies. This contributed massively to the staggering rates of infant mortality and deaths from preventable disease, as well as to the AIDS epidemic now raging across Africa. But again the desired end for those imposing the policies was achieved, as new markets were created and holders of giant capital reserves could now invest in private companies to provide the services no longer available from the state. The profit system was given a new lease of life, its collapse staved off once again.

The World Bank’s closure of the Indian government’s grain rationing and distribution service, for example, meant that a scheme providing affordable grain to all Indian citizens was closed down, allowing private companies to come in and sell grain at massively increased prices (sometimes up to ten times higher). Whilst this has led to huge numbers of Indians being priced out of the market, and a resulting 200 million people now facing starvation in India, it has also led to record profits for the giant private companies now holding the world’s grain stocks – which is the whole point.

This round of global privatisation from the 1980s onwards, however, was so thorough that when the 2008 crisis hit, there were few state functions left to privatise. Creating investment opportunities now is much trickier than it was thirty years ago, because so much of what is potentially profitable is already being thoroughly exploited as it is.

In Europe, what is left of public services is hastily being dismantled, as right wing political leaders happily privatise what is left of the public sector, and currency speculators use their firepower to pick off any country that attempts to resist. David Cameron, following the path forced on the global South over recent decades, for example, is busy opening up Britain’s National Health Service to private companies, and massively cutting back on public service provision for vulnerable groups such as the elderly and the jobless.

In the global South, however, there is little left for the West to privatise, as successive IMF policies have long ago forced those countries in their grip to strip their public services to the bone (and beyond) already.

But there is one state function which, if fully privatised across the world, would make the profits made even from essentials such as health care and education look like peanuts. That is the most basic and essential state function of all, indeed the whole raison d’etre for the state: security.

Private security companies are one of the few growth areas during times of global recession, as growing unemployment and poverty leads to increased social unrest and chaos, and those with wealth become more nervous about protecting both themselves, and their assets. Furthermore, as the Chinese economy advances at a rate of knots, military superiority is fast becoming the West’s only “competitive advantage” – the one area in which it’s expertise remains significantly ahead of its rivals. Turning this advantage, therefore, into an opportunity for investment and profit on a large-scale is now one of the chief tasks facing the rulers of Western economies.

A recent article in the Guardian noted that British private security firm Group 4 is now “Europe’s largest private sector employer”, employing 600,000 people – 50% more than make up the total armed forces of Britain and France combined. With growth last year of 9% in their “new markets” division, the company have “already benefited from the unrest in north Africa and the Middle East.” Group 4 are set to make a killing in Libya, following the total breakdown of security, likely to last for decades, resulting from NATO’s incineration of the country’s armed forces and wholesale destruction of its state apparatus. With the rule of law replaced by warfare between rival gangs of rebels, and no realistic prospect of a functioning police force for the foreseeable future, those Libyans able to manoeuvre themselves into positions of wealth and power will likely have to rely on private security for many years to come.

When Philip Hammond, Britain’s new Defence Secretary and a multi-millionaire businessman himself, suggested that British companies “pack their suitcases and head to Libya”, it was not only oil and construction companies he had in mind, but private security companies.

Private military companies are also becoming huge business – most famously, the US company Blackwater, renamed Xe Services after its original name became synonymous with the massacres committed by its forces in Iraq. In the USA, Blackwater has already taken over many of the security functions of the state – charging the Department of Homeland Security $1000 per day per head in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, for example. “When you ship overnight, do you use the postal service or do you use FedEx?” asked Erik Prince, founder and chairman of Blackwater. “Our corporate goal is to do for the national security apparatus what FedEx did to the postal service”. Another Blackwater official commented that “None of us loves the idea that devastation became a business opportunity. It’s a distasteful fact. But that’s what it is. Doctors, lawyers, funeral directors, even newspapers – they all make a living off of bad things happening. So do we, because somebody’s got to handle it.”

The danger comes when the economic climate is such that the world’s most powerful governments feel they must do all they can to create such business opportunities. During the Cold War, the US military acted (as indeed it still does) to keep the global South in a state of poverty by attacking any government that seriously sought to challenge this poverty, and imposing governments that would crush trade unions and keep the population cowed. This created investment opportunities because it kept the majority of the world’s labour force in conditions so desperate they were willing to work for peanuts. But now this is not enough. In slump conditions, it doesn’t matter how cheap your workforce is if nobody is buying your products. To create the requisite business opportunities today – a large global market for its military expertise – Western governments must impose not only poverty, but also devastation. Devastation is the quickest route to converting the West’s military prowess into a genuine business opportunity that can create a huge new avenue for investment when all others are drying up. And this is precisely what is happening.  David Cameron is, for once, telling the truth, when he says “Whatever it takes to help our businesses take on the world – we’ll do it.”

As The Times put it recently, “In Iraq, the postwar business boom is not oil. It is security.” In both Iraq and Afghanistan, a situation of chronic and enduring instability and civil war has been created by a very precise method. Firstly, the existing state power is totally destroyed. Next, the possibility of utilising the country’s domestic expertise to rebuild state capacity is undermined against by barring former officials from working for the new government (a process known in Iraq as “de-Ba’athification”). Linked to this, the former ruling party is banned from playing any part in the political process, effectively ensuring that the largest and most organised political formation in each country has no option but to resort to armed struggle to gain influence, and thereby condemning the country to civil war. Next, vicious sectarianism is encouraged along whatever religious, ethnic and tribal divisions are available, often goaded by the covert actions of Western intelligence services. Finally, the wholesale privatisation of resources ensures chronically destabilising levels of unemployment and inequality.  The whole process is self-perpetuating, as the skilled and professional sections of the workforce – those with the means and connections – emigrate, leaving behind a dire skills shortage and even less chance of a functioning society emerging from the chaos.

This instability is not confined to the borders of the state which has been destroyed. In a masterfully cynical domino effect, for example, the aggression against Iraq has also helped to destabilise Syria. Three quarters of the 2 million Iraqi refugees fleeing the war in their own country have ended up in Syria, thus contributing to the pressure on the Syrian economy which is a major factor in the current unrest there.

The destruction of Libya will also have far reaching destabilising consequences across the region. As the recent United Nations Support Mission in Libya stated, “Libya had accumulated the largest known stockpile of Manpads [surface-to-air missiles] of any non-Manpad-producing country. Although thousands were destroyed during the seven-month Nato operations, there are increasing concerns over the looting and likely proliferation of these portable defence systems, as well as munitions and mines, highlighting the potential risk to local and regional stability.” Furthermore, a large number of volatile African countries are currently experiencing a fragile peace secured by peacekeeping forces in which Libyan troops had been playing a vital role. The withdrawal of these troops may well be damaging to the maintenance of the peace. Similarly, Libya, under Gaddafi’s rule, had contributed generously to African development projects; a policy which will certainly be ended under the NTC – again, with potentially destabilising consequences.

Clearly, a policy of devastation and destabilisation fuels not only the market for private security, but also for arms sales – where, again, the US, Britain and France remain market leaders. And a policy of devastation through blitzkrieg fits in clearly with the big three current long term strategic objectives of Western policy planners:

1. To corner as large a share as possible of the world’s diminishing resources, most importantly oil, gas and water. A government of a devastated country is at the mercy of the occupying country when it comes to contracts. Gaddafi’s Libya, for example, drove a notoriously hard bargain with the Western powers over oil contracts – acting as a key force in the 1973 oil price spike, and still in 2009 being accused by the Financial Times of “resource nationalism”. But the new NTC government in Libya have been hand picked for their subservience to foreign interests – and know that their continued positions depend on their willingness to continue in this role.
2. To prevent the rise of the global South, primarily through the destruction of any independent regional powers (such as Iran, Libya, Syria etc) and the destabilisation, isolation and encirclement of the rising global powers (in particular China and Russia).
3. To overcome or limit the impact of economic collapse by using superior military force to create and conquer new markets through the destruction and rebuilding of infrastructure and the elimination of competition.

This policy of total devastation represents a departure from the Cold War policies of the Western powers. During the Cold War, whilst the major strategic aims remained the same, the methods were different. Independent regional powers in the global South were still destabilised and invaded – and regularly – but generally with the aim of installing ‘compliant dictatorships’. Thus, Lumumba was overthrown and replaced with Mobutu; Sukarno with Suharto; Allende with Pinochet; etc, etc. But the danger with this ‘imposed strongmen’ policy was that strongmen can become defiant. Saddam Hussein illustrated this perfectly. After having been backed for over a decade by the West, he turned on their stooge monarchy in Kuwait. Governments that are in control can easily get out of control. However, for as long as these strongmen were needed for the services provided by their armies (protecting investments, repressing workers struggles, etc), they were supported. The crisis now underway in the economies of the West, however, calls for more drastic measures. And the development of private security and private mercenary companies mean that the armies provided by these strongmen are starting to be deemed no longer necessary.

Congo is a case in point. For three decades, the Western powers had supported Mobutu Sese-Seko’s iron rule of the Congo. But then, in the mid-90s, they allowed him to be overthrown. However, rather than allowing the Congolese resistance forces to take power and establish an effective government, they then sponsored an invasion of the country by Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi. Although these countries have now largely withdrawn their militias, they continue to sponsor proxy militias which have prevented the country seeing a moment’s peace for nearly fifteen years, resulting in the biggest slaughter since the end of the Second World War, with over 5 million killed. One result of this total breakdown of functioning government has been that the Western companies that loot Congo’s resources have been able to do so virtually for free. Despite being the world’s largest supplier of both coltan and copper, amongst many other precious minerals, the total tax revenue on these products in 2006-7 amounted to a puny £32 million. This is surely far less than what even the most useless neo-colonial puppet would have demanded.

This completely changes the meaning of the word ‘government’. In the Congo, the government’s best efforts to stabilise and develop the country have so far proved no match for the destabilisation strategies of the West and its stooges. In Afghanistan, it is well known that the government’s writ has no authority outside of Kabul, if there. But then, that is the point. The role of the governments imposed on Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, like the one they are trying to impose on Syria, is not to govern or provide for the population at all – even that most basic of functions, security. It is simply to provide a fig leaf of legitimacy for the occupation of the country and to award business contracts to the colonial powers. They literally have no other function, as far as their sponsors are concerned.

It goes without saying that this policy of devastation is turning the victimised countries into a living hell. After now more than thirty years of Western destabilisation, and ten years of outright occupation, Afghanistan is at or very hear the bottom of nearly every human development indicator available, with life expectancy at 44 years and an under-five mortality rate of over one in four. Mathew White, a history professor who has recently completed a detailed survey of the humanity’s worst atrocities throughout history, concluded that, without doubt, “chaos is far deadlier than tyranny”. It is a truth to which many Iraqis can testify.

2. How many candidates are running and who are the major candidates?
Eleven candidates will run for President. The major candidates include the incumbent, Joseph Kabila, longtime opposition figure Etienne Tshisekedi, former President of Parliament, Vital Kamhere, current President of the Senate and former Prime Minister in the Mobutu Regime, Leon Kengo Wa Dundo.

3. How many people are registered to vote?
The Independent National Electoral Commission registered 32.5 million people to vote in the November 28th elections.

4. Is the presidential elections the only vote to take place?
No, both the presidential and legislative elections will take place on November 28th. Regarding the Legislative elections, 500 seats are up for grabs and over 19,000 candidates have registered to run for the 500 seats.

5. Will the elections actually take place on the designated date of November 28th?
Although a number of Congolese and international NGOs say that the logistics are not in place for the elections, all indications are that the Independent National Electoral Commission (CENI) will hold the elections on November 28th. The President of the CENI, Daniel Ngoy claims that everything will be fully in place by November 25th in preparation for the vote on November 28th.

6. Many news reports indicate that violence will occur during the elections, is this true?
Almost all indications are that the elections will in fact be violent. During the registration period and since the beginning of the electoral campaign violent clashes have occurred primarily between President Joseph Kabila’s party (PPRD) supporters and the main opposition party supporters (Etienne Tshisekedi’s UDPS). Appeals for a peaceful elections have been made by the religious community, local and international NGOs, the European Union, African Union and the United Nations but violence appears to be certain. The United Nations recently published a report that documented 200 cases of election-related violence.

7. What are some of the logistical challenges faced by the election organizers?
Congo has limited paved roads, therefore most travel from East to West or North to South has to be done by air. The elections require 62,000 polling stations, 180,000 ballot boxes and 64 million ballots, therefore an enormous air lift campaign is required to distribute the ballot boxes and ballots. As soon as China and South Africa complete the printing of the ballots and the construction of the ballot boxes they have to be distributed throughout the country. The first ballot boxes arrived on the week of November 7th, which is well behind the schedule of 2006.

8. Mostly bad news have been reported about the elections, is there any good news?
Yes, there is good news. The fact that the leadership of the country is being contested democratically and that a nationwide consensus exists whereby elections is the legitimate avenue through which leaders will be determined is good news for a country that has experienced decades of dictatorship and conflict. In addition, civil society is fully engaged in making the elections as peaceful and non-violent as possible. They are educating the local population and have issued several reports calling on the political leaders to be responsible in their conduct of their campaigns.

9. When will the election results be announced?
The provisional results for the presidential elections will be announced on December 6th and the final results on December 20th. Regarding the legislative elections, the results are scheduled to be announced on January 13th.

10. We are told this year’s election is Congo’s third democratic one, when did Congo have its first elections?
Congo had its first elections in May 1960, where it elected its first Prime Minister, Patrice Emery Lumumba. Unfortunately, he was overthrown by the United States (Read Chief of Station, Congo by Larry Devlin of the CIA for detailed description of Lumumba’s overthrow by the U.S.) in collaboration with Congolese sycophants within weeks of being inaugurated and later assassinated on January 17, 1961. The Congo has not been the same since, it quickly descended into Chaos and later ruled by US-backed dictator Joseph Desire Mobutu for over 30 years. The second election, held in 2006 was won by Joseph Kabila who is running for a second term this year.

Election Background

Common Cause UK On October 28, 2011 the election campaign began in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The Presidential and Legislative elections will take place on November 28, 2011. Although the electoral campaign officially began on October 28th, for all intents and purposes, the election maneuvering began in January 2011 when President Joseph Kabila and the presidential majority in the Congolese Parliament amended the Congolese constitution. The change in the Constitution called for the Presidential elections to be contested in one round instead of two. Before the amendment, in order to win the presidency, the candidate had to win a majority of the votes. If no candidate acquired a majority in the first round of the elections, there would be a runoff between the two top candidates. Now that the Constitution is amended, there is only one round and whoever wins the highest percentage of the votes will become President. Theoretically, someone can become president with as little as ten percent of the votes.

The constitutional change has shaped the electoral landscape for the past ten months. On November 28, 11 candidates will vie for the presidency and over 18,000 candidates will compete for 500 Parliamentary seats.

Due to the constitutional change by President Kabila and his presidential majority, the onus has been placed on the opposition to unify behind a single candidate so that the opposition vote is not divided among several candidates. Due to the vacuous nature of Congo’s political elite, a consensus candidate has not been selected, therefore President Kabila goes into the November 28th elections with a greater chance of victory.

Thus far the campaign period has been contentious and violent. The main clashes have occurred between the main opposition party, UDPS, led by veteran politician Etienne Tshisekedi and the adherents of President Kabila’s party, PPRD. The specter of violence during the elections has risen to a point where the electoral commission has called upon the international Criminal Court to monitor the electoral process.

A persistent area of concern is the logistics of the elections and the potential of a delay in the polls. The Congo is infamous for its lack of infrastructure (particularly roads and rail). Therefore, it is a logistical nightmare to distribute 180,000 ballot boxes and 64 million ballots from China and South Africa respectively. Once in country, it is the job of the United Nations to distribute them throughout the nation. It was only during the first week of November that the first shipment arrived. The Independent National Electoral Commission (CENI) claims that all the polling stations will be equipped and ready to go by November 25th. Many local and international observers have called for a delay in the polls to assure that all logistical challenges are worked out. President Kabila, the head of the CENI, Daniel Ngoy Mulunda and Etienne Tshisekedi have all called for the elections to be held on the designated date, November 28, 2011.

A delay in the polls risks triggering a constitutional crisis. According to the Congolese constitution, a new government must be installed by December 6th. Should this deadline be missed, it opens up the political arena for greater uncertainty. The leading opposition figure, Etienne Tshisekedi, has vowed not to recognize the current government as the legitimate caretaker of the nation if a President is not elected and installed by December 6th. Congolese civil society, the United Nations and International NGOs have called for a delay in the vote and a contingency plan in case the elections do not take place on November 28th.

In response, each of us submitted separate manuscripts to the Guardian by no later than the following weekend (June 17-19).  But the Guardian found our submissions problematic, and delayed its decision about their status while it purported to check the accuracy of what we had written — something that it clearly had not done for Monbiot’s error-laden and grossly misleading original.

By July 5, the Guardian had rejected both of our manuscripts.²  But, it also invited us to resubmit a single joint-response, with no guarantee of publication, and requested that we observe a strict 550 word limit — or half-the-length of Monbiot’s original.

Soon thereafter we delivered a consolidated manuscript to the Guardian at exactly 550-words; and on July 20, five weeks and a day after it had published Monbiot’s original, the Guardian published an even shorter, 524-word response under our names.  But rather than giving it a title that featured our claims about Monbiot’s errors, ignorance, and crass name-calling, the Guardian gave it a title that was both plaintive and defensive: “We’re Not Genocide Deniers.”³

At least two comments posted to the Guardian Response column’s Web page below our piece by the Canadian media-activist Joe Emersberger provided links to our original responses, which we had posted to ZNet.  But Emersberger’s comments were removed by the Guardian‘s intellectual police, never to be restored; a comment by one of us (Peterson) that linked to these same responses also was removed.  Eventually, this latter comment was restored, “most likely in response to public complaints,” Media Lens believes.⁴

On the other hand, the first comment recorded by the Guardian after it opened its Response column for feedback on July 20 asked us: “If you say you are not denying the genocide in Bosnia and Rwanda, what are you saying?  And please, one sentence will suffice.”⁵    This is, of course, an aggressively hostile question, and impossible to answer in one sentence.  But it is also a question that we had answered at length in The Politics of Genocide ⁶ and in our original submissions that the Guardian had rejected, and to which its Web site moderator was not allowing anyone to post a hyperlink!

Furthering its protection of Monbiot and its enforcement of a one-sided discussion, the Observer (the Guardian‘s sister paper, which appears on Sundays to complement the Guardian‘s Monday through Saturday schedule) published Nick Cohen’s “Decline and Fall of the Puppetmasters”⁷ three days before our response appeared.  This was a diatribe against “west-hating” intellectuals (Noam Chomsky, Tariq Ali, Harold Pinter, Arundhati Roy, and a “cranky writer called Diana Johnstone”) who in Cohen’s words “believe that the lackeys of American imperialism were inventing stories of Serb atrocities to justify the expansion of western power.”  Then six days after it published our response, the Guardian published “To Claim Tutsis Caused Rwanda’s Genocide Is Pure Revisionism“ by James Wizeye, identified as the “first secretary at the Rwanda high commission” or embassy in London.⁸ No offsetting response has since been published by the Guardian that challenged this piece of propaganda from a spokesman for the regime which, we argued, has been the primary mass-killer in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo for the past two decades.⁹

Some Guardian-Observer History¹⁰

The Guardian and the Observer have long been unable to break loose from the standard, politically convenient, Western party-line narratives on both Yugoslavia and Rwanda.  This was made very clear in the case of Yugoslavia when their lead reporter there, Ed Vulliamy, proudly asserted his anti-Serb bias and unwillingness to report in neutral fashion.  “I am one of those reporters who cannot see this as just another story from which I must remain detached and in which I must be neutral,” he wrote in 1993.  “[W]ith Omarska and Trnopolje [in 1992] objective coverage of the war became a rather silly notion. . . .  I am on the side of the Bosnian Muslim people against an historical and military program to obliterate them.”¹¹ On the other hand, hundreds of Bosnian Serbs were killed and raped in the Bosnian Muslim-run prison camps of Celebici, Konjic and Tarcin (to name three major ones);¹² but Vulliamy never wrote about them, though in his voluminous reports for the Guardian, he did mention the existence of Tarcin and Celebici once apiece in passing.¹³ Can anybody imagine his and the Guardian‘s reaction to a Russian journalist who, having visited only Celebici and Tarcin during the wars in Bosnia, declared that these camps make a commitment to the Serb cause a moral imperative, and objective journalism a silly notion?  Or their reaction to this Russian journalist were he to publish this plea under the title: “We Must Fight for the Memory of the Bosnian Muslim Camps”?¹⁴

Vulliamy’s bias, and no doubt his “journalism of attachment”-derived dishonesty in this theater of conflict, ¹⁵ have been demonstrated over many years by his serial misrepresentations in the case of Fikret Alic, whom Vulliamy described as a “young Bosnian whose emaciated torso, behind the barbed wire of Trnopolje concentration camp, became a symbol of the cynical slaughter in Bosnia-Herzegovina.¹⁶ by his refusal to acknowledge Bosnia’s Islamic leader and wartime President Alija Izetbegovic’s rejection of a multiethnic, tolerant, and secular state and espousal of a closed Islamic polity;¹⁷ and by his long-standing commitment to the early inflated Bosnian Muslim death toll in the face of dramatic downward revisions by establishment sources.¹⁸ The same bias and dishonesty were also reflected in Vulliamy’s violent 2009 diatribe at Amnesty International’s invitation to Noam Chomsky to deliver its annual Stand Up for Justice lecture, alleging Chomsky’s unspecified apologetics for Serbian atrocities in the Balkan wars, including “spitting on the graves of the dead.”¹⁹

This Vulliamy perspective and structure of disinformation undoubtedly fed into Emma Brockes’s infamous 2005 interview with Chomsky for the Guardian,²⁰ an affair that the Guardian Reader’s Editor (ombudsman) concluded had misrepresented Chomsky’s expressed beliefs so egregiously that the Guardian expunged the interview from its Web site.²¹   Although Brockes could have asked Chomsky questions about the many issues on which he is well informed, she focused on Yugoslavia and Srebrenica, and on the analyst Diana Johnstone, whose work on Yugoslavia Vulliamy had in the past called “poison.”²² One memorable smear in the Guardian‘s handling of the interview appeared immediately below its title (“The Greatest Intellectual?“), where by way of introducing it, readers found the following sentences:

Q: Do you regret supporting those who say the Srebrenica massacre was exaggerated?
A: My only regret is that I didn’t do it strongly enough.

This question-and-answer sequence was nowhere to be found in the published interview.  In fact, the answer quoted here was given to an entirely different question, in which Brockes asked Chomsky whether he regretted signing an open letter that protested a Swedish publisher’s decision not to bring out a translation of Johnstone’s 2002 book Fools’ Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO and Western Delusions (Monthly Review Press); this letter referred to Fools’ Crusade as “outstanding,” and added that “there are more fundamental issues at stake, namely freedom of expression and the right to express dissenting views.” ²³   Brockes’s and the Guardian‘s language-substitution removed the open letter’s focus on freedom-of-expression issues and its broad defense of Johnstone’s work, and rewrote Chomsky’s actual words into support for “those who say the Srebrenica massacre was exaggerated.”  Thus was Johnstone’s complex and nuanced book pigeonholed by its alleged position on the Srebrenica massacre, which Brockes’s biased and loaded question oversimplified to the point of absurdity.

Another memorable smear was Brockes’s contention that Chomsky uses scare-quotes “to undermine things he disagrees with,” and that he used them around the word “massacre” to suggest that “during the Bosnian war the ‘massacre’ at Srebrenica was probably overstated.”  All of this allowed Brockes to make the dishonest and insulting addition that, “in print at least, it can come across less as academic than as witheringly teenage; like, Srebrenica was so not a massacre.”  But when an external legal investigation pressed Brockes to prove that Chomsky had said what Brockes claimed he did, the audio recording of his verbal exchanges with Brockes was found to have been “partially recorded over” (i.e., erased) some time between the publication of the interview and the Guardian‘s official inquiry into the matter.²⁴

As noted, these kinds of tactics are in the Vulliamy “journalism of attachment” tradition, and it is amusing to see that in her profile of Chomsky, Brockes misspelled Johnstone’s first-name as “Diane” rather than Diana, just as Vulliamy had misspelled it eight months earlier in a commentary for the IWPR Balkan Crisis Report.²⁵   It seems likely that either Brockes and/or her editors had worked from this eight-month-old text while preparing the final draft of the interview, or that Vulliamy himself played a hand in preparing this draft.  In any case, no one at the Guardian caught the misspelling of Johnstone’s first-name prior to publication of Brockes’s interview.

In early December 2005, Ed Vulliamy joined 23 other writers and activists who had long advocated for the Western establishment’s version of Srebrenica — and the “good” versus “evil” portrayal of the wars in Yugoslavia — in protesting the Guardian‘s decision to withdraw Brockes’s mock interview with Chomsky and to issue a “correction” for the original.  The “Guardian has unjustly besmirched Brockes’s reputation,” these 24 figures stated in an open letter, and “bestowed a stamp of legitimacy on revisionist attempts to deny the Bosnian genocide and minimize the Srebrenica massacre.”  Among Vulliamy’s fellow signatories were David Rohde, David Rieff, Marko Attila Hoare, Oliver Kamm, Nick Cohen, and Nerma Jelacic — all veteran maximizers of Serb perfidy and Bosnian Muslim victimhood.²⁶

Common to Vulliamy’s longstanding journalism of attachment and call to “fight for the memory of Bosnia’s camps,” the forgeries in Brockes’s interview with Chomsky, and Monbiot’s attack on “genocide belittlers,” has been the unspoken premise that any challenge to the establishment narrative about Srebrenica is beyond the bounds of respectable journalism.  Disallowed as apologetics or belittling or spitting on graves is anything that invokes historical context regularly suppressed by establishment accounts or questions official claims about the number of persons executed there. ²⁷ The journalism of attachment is a rigid party-line journalism.

And just as there has long existed a Western party-line on the dismantling of Yugoslavia,²⁸ in which the roles of perpetrators and victims were cast early (1991-) and adhered to with passionate intensity and certitude by the Guardian-Observer‘s writers, so a party-line on the 1994 mass killings in Rwanda has guided its coverage of this theater of conflict for almost as many years.

Here, again, the casting of perpetrators and victims was clear: These roles paralleled the long-standing U.S. and British hostility towards Rwanda’s Hutu-majority government under President Juvenal Habyarimana, and their alignment with the armed forces of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF).  But in Rwanda, a third role was cast for the alleged savior of the country from the Hutu “genocidaires,” and assigned to the man who, in the words of the Guardian‘s chief Africa correspondent Chris McGreal, is the “former Tutsi rebel leader who ended the genocide [and] has been heralded as the Abraham Lincoln of Africa”²⁹ — Paul Kagame.

These assigned perpetrator-victim-savior roles, followed closely by the Guardian since the April-July 1994 period, turn the fundamental realities of the Rwandan conflict upside down, a fact that becomes clearer when one examines the atrocities of those four months within the context of the entire 20-year ascent and geographical spread of Kagame’s power. ³⁰

Kagame trained at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas in 1990.  When the RPF invaded Rwanda from Uganda on October 1 of that year, even wearing the uniforms of the Ugandan army, not only did the United States and Britain not protest this act of aggression, they also prevented the UN Security Council from taking any action on Rwanda until March 1993,³¹ following a major RPF offensive that proved its superiority over the Army of the Rwandan government, displaced one million persons, and greatly weakened the Habyarimana government.  Through the start of April 1994, it was crucial to what would become the establishment narrative of the “Rwandan genocide” that the RPF’s aggression and occupation of the northern part of the country, its rapid increase in troop and weapons strength,³² its political penetration of the Rwandan state under Western-imposed power-sharing agreements, its military offensives, and its massacres and large-scale ethnic cleansing of the Hutu population, all be kept as quiet as possible, and that reporting feature instead Hutu perfidy and Tutsi victimhood.  The Guardian (along with the rest of the establishment U.S. and U.K. media) met this challenge.³³

The “triggering event” in the mass killings of 1994 and after was the shooting down of Habyarimana’s jet during its landing approach to the airport in Kigali on April 6.  In standard accounts of the “Rwandan genocide,” responsibility for this incident is assigned to Hutu extremists around Habyarimana, who, facing a loss of power and privileges under the Arusha peace and power-sharing accords of August 1993, assassinated their president rather than accept the implementation of the accords and then launched their plan to exterminate Rwanda’s Tutsi population.³⁴

But a serious problem for this Hutu conspiracy model arose in 1997, when Michael Hourigan, a principal investigator for the Rwanda Tribunal, found RPF informants who attested to the “direct involvement” of Kagame,³⁵ and then in 2006, when French Judge Jean-Louis Bruguière also concluded that Kagame had needed and was responsible for this political assassination.³⁶)

In the face of these awkward facts, the Guardian stood by the party-line.  Despite its passing mentions of Bruguière’s conclusion that “Kagame gave direct orders” to assassinate Habyarimana,³⁷ the Guardian has regularly reported that Habyarimana “probably died at the hand of Hutu extremists opposed to the concessions he had made to the Tutsi rebels,”³⁸ in Chris McGreal’s words; years later, when the trial of Hutu Colonel Theoneste Bagosora began at the Rwanda Tribunal in 2002, McGreal wrote that the shoot-down was “probably on Col. Bagosora’s orders,” and “within hours” Bagasora hosted a meeting at which the “extermination of Tutsis” was discussed.³⁹   More striking yet, Michael Hourigan’s name has been mentioned only once in the history of the Guardian-Observer‘s reporting on Rwanda: By us, in our July 20, 2011 contribution to the Guardian‘s Response column.⁴⁰

Apart from the compelling direct evidence that the shoot-down was Kagame’s handiwork, there are also the facts that Kagame’s RPF mobilized its troops within two hours of the event, and that it was this final RPF offensive that enabled Kagame’s forces to quickly conquer Rwanda, rather than face elections in 1995 that he and his minority Tutsi surely would have lost.⁴¹ Moreover, the government of Rwanda at the time was a coalition government that had several strategically placed Tutsi members; Alison Des Forges, perhaps the most important advocate for the Hutu conspiracy model, admitted at the Rwanda Tribunal that there was little likelihood that the coalition Hutu and Tutsi government could have planned the assassination and the extermination of the Tutsi, without the knowledge of its Tutsi members.⁴²)   But the Guardian never confronts this set of problems.  The Hutu conspiracy model is sacrosanct.

In standard accounts, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) is taken as a genuine judicial enterprise, not as the instrument of victor’s justice and guarantor of RPF immunity that it was and remains.  This parallels the establishment treatment of the Yugoslavia Tribunal, both tribunals creations of NATO and closely reflecting its biases and political demands.  The ICTR’s huge bias has been displayed, first, in the fact that no Tutsi has ever been indicted by it, although vast crimes have been committed by the RPF from 1990 onward.⁴³   In one notable incident, the former ICTR prosecution expert Filip Reyntjens resigned his post in open protest at this unjustified bias and impunity.  “It is precisely because the [RPF] regime in Kigali has been given a sense of impunity that, during the years following 1994, it has committed massive internationally recognized crimes in both Rwanda and the DRC,” Reyntjens wrote in his letter of resignation.⁴⁴ Another dramatic illustration of the ICTR bias and role was chief prosecutor Louise Arbour’s refusal in 1997 to accept Hourigan’s evidence on Kagame’s responsibility for the shoot-down of Habyarimana’s jet, and the ICTR’s failure to address this event to the present.  Nevertheless, the Guardian takes the ICTR as a genuine instrument of justice, with Chris McGreal providing testimony for its prosecution of Hutu defendants, just like Ed Vulliamy testified for the prosecution of Serb defendants at the Yugoslavia Tribunal.⁴⁵

Another parallel with establishment accounts of the former Yugoslavia (and of Srebrenica specifically) is the belief that the U.S. and U.K. governments were guilty of inaction in Rwanda, when a military intervention to protect the Tutsi was in order.  But these governments never just stood idly by.  Instead, they actively stood by Kagame, shielding his 1990 aggression from international action, vastly expanding his RPF into the armed forces that overthrew the Habyarimana government and conquered the Rwandan state, and preventing the ICTR from bringing any indictments against Kagame’s RPF, even firing ICTR chief prosecutor Carla Del Ponte in 2003 to terminate her “Special Investigations” of the RPF.⁴⁶ The United States even used the Security Council to reduce UN forces in Rwanda as the killings escalated in April 1994, in accord with Kagame’s desire for unimpeded war-making and his plans for conquest.  But the Guardian swallowed the big lie of U.S. and U.K. inaction from the very beginning.  “The world said it should never happen again but stood by while genocide took place in Rwanda,” David Beresford wrote.  “Despite being fully aware of the horrors through television coverage, most countries stood by and allowed the slaughter to happen,” Guardian editor Joseph Harker added.⁴⁷) Here again, journalistic nonfeasance has been crucial to protecting both the Kagame regime and U.S. and U.K. support for it.

A central feature of the establishment party-line holds that the victims of the 1994 mass killing were largely Tutsi and “moderate” Hutu, targeted for elimination by Hutu extremists.  ”Rwanda’s civil war saw 800,000 Tutsis slaughtered by the Hutus,” a G2 headline proclaimed over a report by Chris McGreal.⁴⁸ This is not based on serious evidence and is incompatible with the fact that Kagame’s RPF quickly overpowered their Hutu rivals, were soon killing 10,000 Hutu civilians a month to clear the ground for Tutsi resettlement,⁴⁹ and drove a huge mass of Hutu refugees into the Democratic Republic of Congo, where many more were killed in the years ahead.  Christian Davenport’s and Allan Stam’s research found that a “majority of the victims of 1994″ were in fact Hutu,⁵⁰ and census and survivor data also point to majority Hutu deaths.⁵¹

A true picture of the Rwandan genocide would not only acknowledge the predominance of Hutu deaths in 1994, it would recognize that the same pattern of RPF-triggered deaths and displacements stretches from the RPF’s invasion of Rwanda in 1990, straight through its major offensive of February-March 1993, its final offensive and seizure of state power in 1994 (Genocide One), and its series of offensives into the mineral-rich Democratic Republic of Congo from 1994 on, resulting in a death toll several times the scale of Rwanda, and creating the greatest theater of atrocities in the contemporary world (Genocide Two).⁵²) But for the past 17 years, no such picture has emerged on the pages of the Guardian-Observer, which continues to toe the party-line in the summer of 2011 on both Yugoslav and Rwandan history.

The Wacky World of George Monbiot

The image of the “Abraham Lincoln of Africa” may have suffered some downgrades over the years, particularly with the August 2010 leak of the draft UN report accusing Kagame’s RPF of “premeditation and a precise methodology” in its targeted attacks on Hutu in the DRC, resulting in massive losses of life that “could be classified as crimes of genocide.”⁵³ But Kagame’s embrace by Western capitals and the UN officialdom remains firm,⁵⁴ and his minority Tutsi dictatorship relies as much as ever on the myth of his savior role in ending rather than triggering and perpetrating mass atrocities in 1994.  Whenever doubts are raised about the reality of this myth, Kagame’s many advocates in the English-speaking world are quick to reiterate that the myth is the truth.⁵⁵ Meanwhile, in Rwanda, Kagame uses his regime’s laws against “revisionism, negationism and trivialization of genocide” to intimidate his critics and to jail and even silence permanently anyone who challenges his rule.⁵⁶

It is therefore striking that when George Monbiot throws the charges of “revisionism” and “genocide denial” against us for our work on Yugoslavia and Rwanda, or when Ed Vulliamy attacks work more honest than his own for sowing “poison in the water supply of history,” and smears Chomsky for “giving the revisionists his blessing” and “comfort to Messrs. Karadzic and Mladic, and their death squads,”⁵⁷ Vulliamy and Monbiot are employing a technique that they share with Kagame.

“The massacre of Bosnians at Srebrenica in 1995 and the slaughter of Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994 are two of the best-documented acts of genocide in history,” Monbiot writes.⁵⁸ As our belief to the contrary is that both the “Rwandan genocide” and the “Srebrenica massacre” rank among the most misrepresented events on the past 20 years, it is worth examining the basis on which Monbiot thinks their proof rests.

Monbiot believes (as does the Guardian-Observer) that the Yugoslavia and Rwanda tribunals have been trustworthy searchers for truth and unbiased dispensers of justice, and that the narratives of the conflicts each of them codifies are beyond reproach.  The contrast between our view and theirs could not be more stark or clear.  Whereas we believe that these are political institutions, operating with the mandate to deliver guilty verdicts to the Serb targets of the U.S.-led NATO bloc in the former Yugoslavia, guilty verdicts to the Hutu targets of the U.S., U.K., and RPF in Rwanda, and to dramatize all of this with faux-legal performances that stick to these two scripts, Monbiot et al. accept the tribunals’ indictments, judgments, and guilt assignments on an ex cathedra basis.

Monbiot also takes the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) as an unchallengeable authority on the body count at Srebrenica, even though its staff is 90 percent Bosnian Muslim and operates under U.S. sponsorship.⁵⁹ He takes at face value the ICMP’s claim that, “using DNA screening, [it] has so far identified the corpses of 6,595 of the 7,789 Bosnians reported as missing after the siege of Srebrenica,” and adds that the ICMP’s “work suggests that the total number of victims is close to 8,100.”  It never occurs to Monbiot that DNA cannot fix the mode or time of death, so that when those 6,595 or 8,100 individuals died (i.e., in July 1995? or June 1992-March 1993?), and whether they were executed, killed in battle, or perished from natural causes, are legally meaningful differences that in the vast majority of cases remain undetermined.  In The Srebrenica Massacre: Evidence, Context, Politics, one of the two books which Monbiot purports to be criticizing, Michael Mandel shows that, in its foundational 2001 judgment in the trial of the Bosnian Serb General Radislav Krstic, the Yugoslavia Tribunal itself never found evidence of anything like 8,000 executions at Srebrenica, so it stretched what facts it did have as far as it could, and then stretched them even further in this case’s 2004 judgment on appeal  ⁶⁰ — but Monbiot never mentions Mandel’s chapter.  In his independent examination of the Srebrenica-related autopsy reports compiled by the Yugoslavia Tribunal through 2002, the Serb forensic pathologist Ljubiša Simic found that these reports covered between 1,919 and 1,985 individuals in total, and that in only roughly one-in-five did the autopsies “indicate that those persons may have been executed.” ⁶¹   The implication that Monbiot draws for his readers, that the 6,595 persons allegedly identified by DNA equals 6,595 persons executed (i.e., murdered in a criminally meaningful manner, and proof of the “Srebrenica massacre”), is false in the extreme.

As noted, Monbiot also fails to recognize that the staff of the ICMP, which represents one side in a violent conflict, might not be entirely reliable gatherers of evidence, whether in producing a Srebrenica-related list of missing persons, assembling and storing the mortal remains recovered from the Srebrenica-related graves, or interpreting possible matches between the DNA extracted from the bones of these remains and the DNA drawn from the blood donated by living relatives.  Nor does he mention the inconvenient fact that, though the ICMP has been publicizing its claims about DNA identifications since 2001, to date it has refused to disclose to defense teams for their own independent analysis any of its purported DNA profiles and the physical evidence on which these profiles allegedly were developed.⁶² We may also be sure that, like Vulliamy, Monbiot has never mentioned the dramatic downward revision by establishment sources in the estimated death toll from the wars in Bosnia, from 250,000 in 1993 to some 100,000 in 2003-2007,⁶³ or pondered what this might suggest about the unchanging stability of the 8,000-figure in the “Srebrenica massacre,” a figure first broached by the Red Cross in early September 1995 on the basis of persons reported to it as missing, yet remaining immutable ever since.⁶⁴

But it is not at all clear that Monbiot actually read The Srebrenica Massacre.  He writes, for example, that this book “claims that the 8,000 deaths at Srebrenica are ‘an unsupportable exaggeration.  The true figure may be closer to 800′.”  What he doesn’t mention is that he took these 11 words from page 8 of the Foreword to the book, which was contributed by Phillip Corwin,⁶⁵ at one time the UN Civilian Affairs Coordinator in Bosnia and Herzegovina.  Monbiot attributes these 11 words from Corwin’s Foreword to the collection itself, and asserts that “It” — namely, the collection — “claims that the 8,000 deaths at Srebrenica are ‘an unsupportable exaggeration’ . . .” (emphasis added).  As the seven contributors to the book besides Corwin focus on the issue of executions, not simply deaths for which no cause is specified, and as none of them deny the possibility of 8,000 deaths, Monbiot’s attribution of these 11 words from the Foreword to “It” is a lie, and suggests that his reading of the book was even less than cursory.⁶⁶

Monbiot criticizes the British writer Mick Hume for having once said of the May 27, 1992 shelling of a Bosnian Muslim breadline in Sarajevo that “It is quite obvious to anyone objective that Muslims have done it.”  Later, Monbiot extends this criticism to The Srebrenica Massacre: “Like Karadzic,” he writes, “the book claims that the market massacres in Sarajevo were carried out by Bosnian Muslim provocateurs.”  The “Like Karadzic” is deeply dishonest.  Also, it should be noted that there were at least three “market massacres” in Sarajevo during the war: The 1992 incident (15 deaths); the Markale marketplace massacre of February 5, 1994 (66 deaths); and the last on August 28, 1995 (43 deaths).  Different contributors to the collection (particularly George Bogdanich⁶⁷ have assembled a variety of sources to support the claim that the second and third of these incidents were “false flag” operations carried out by the Bosnian Muslims themselves at critical junctures in their negotiations with Western powers to provoke NATO’s intervention on their side.  The sources referred to include UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali (who himself was citing UN Special Representative for Bosnia Yasushi Akashi and U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher) (p. 233); Lord David Owen and the British General Sir Michael Rose (pp. 53-54); U.S. Lieut. Colonel John Sray (p. 57); a U.S. Senate Republican Policy Committee report (p. 35); the then chief Balkans correspondent for the New York Times, David Binder (p. 233); and the Dutch military intelligence expert Cees Wiebes, who interviewed a minimum of 11 NATO military and intelligence figures who told him that both the 1994 and 1995 incidents had been carried out by the Bosnian Muslims, and added that “Even the most important British policy body in the field of intelligence, the Joint Intelligence Committee, . . . came to the conclusion that the shelling of the Sarajevo market was probably not the work of the VRS [the Bosnian Serb army], but of the Bosnian Muslims” (p. 244).  But Monbiot ignores these multiple references, mentions an old statement on the subject by Mick Hume, and likens “the book” to Radovan Karadzic because it disputes this establishment truth!

Monbiot writes that “[The Srebrenica Massacre] insists that the witnesses to the killings are ‘not credible’,” but he immediately drops the matter.  But in the passage where these two words appear,⁶⁸ one of the present writers (Herman) is summarizing the wealth of material collected throughout the book.  Herman notes that, in the entire corpus of the Yugoslavia Tribunal’s work, the “only direct participant witness claim that ran as high as 1,000 [executed] was that of Drazen Erdemovic,” a Bosnian Croat mercenary who at different times during the civil wars in Bosnia served on all three sides, and who in late May 1996, entered the Tribunal’s first-ever guilty plea (for “crimes against humanity,” as it turned out).  Having heard Erdemovic’s plea (May 31, 1996), the trial chamber ordered him to submit to a psychiatric evaluation; the three experts who examined Erdemovic concluded that he was “insufficiently able to stand trial at this moment” (June 27, 1996).  Nevertheless, just eight days later (July 5, 1996), the Office of the Prosecutor called Erdemovic as a witness in the Tribunal’s famous Rule 62, mock-trial-in-absentia of Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic.  Now, it appears, he was sufficiently able to testify that he participated with seven other executioners (all of whom he named, but none of whom has ever been called before the Tribunal) “at a farm that was at a place called Pilica” on July 16, 1995, where 15 to 20 busloads of Bosnian Muslims were delivered, containing between 1,000 and 1,200 persons, all of whom he and his fellow gunmen shot dead in groups of roughly ten at a time.⁶⁹

Herman comments that Erdemovic’s testimony that day “was accepted despite its vagueness and inconsistencies, lack of corroboration, his problematic background and associations, and his suffering from mental problems sufficient to disqualify him from trial — but not from testifying before the Tribunal, free of cross-examination….  This and other witness evidence suffered from serious abuse of the plea-bargaining process whereby witnesses could receive mitigating sentences if they cooperated sufficiently with the prosecution” (p. 281).  George Szamuely shows in his chapter the extent to which Erdemovic is a charlatan and a fraud, but one carefully protected over many years by the Tribunal.  (Matters also developed at length by Germinal Civikov in his book, Srebrenica: The Star Witness.⁷⁰ At one point during the trial of Slobodan Milosevic in 2003, Erdemovic testified that “his unit was paid lavishly to participate in crimes at Srebrenica, but [he] could not say who made the actual payment,” Szamuely writes, and that he once even told ABC News that “his unit had been promised 12 kilograms of gold” (p. 189).⁷¹   In short, not only is Drazen Erdemovic not credible, but as the prosecution’s most important witness in advancing its case for the “Srebrenica massacre” and, ultimately, “genocide,” his long, 16-year career as a plea-bargaining witness-for-the-prosecution reveals the Tribunal’s deeply political and judicially-compromised nature.

Monbiot adds that “[The Srebrenica Massacre] suggests that the Bosnian Muslim soldiers retreated from Srebrenica to ensure that more Bosnians were killed, in order to provoke US intervention.”  In the endnote that accompanies this passage on Monbiot’s website, he laughs off the book’s sources for this “astonishing claim,” and quotes one paragraph from Herman’s “Summary and Conclusions,” and two endnotes.⁷²  Clearly, Monbiot believes that he has discovered a disconnect between the “astonishing claim” and the sources that Herman cites to support it.

In fact, there are two passages in this book where different contributors develop this claim, and where they cite multiple sources to suggest that, as one British Lieut. Colonel assigned to the UN Protection Force for Bosnia told the British military correspondent Tim Ripley: “They [the Bosnian government] knew what was happening in Srebrenica.  I am certain they decided it was worth the sacrifice.”⁷³

As with Monbiot’s treatment of the “market massacres,” here he pretends that the book hasn’t provided adequate sources, and counts on his readers not to check for themselves.  George Bogdanich (pp. 56-59) cites the testimony of the Bosnian Muslim General Sefer Halilovic on Sarajevo’s orders to withdraw 18 top commanders from Srebrenica, including Naser Oric, in the month before Sarajevo handed Srebrenica over to the Bosnian Serbs; although this diminished the combat readiness of the remaining troops of the 28th Division, Halilovic testified that orders continued to be sent to Srebrenica for its troops to step up “militarily meaningless” attacks on Bosnian Serb positions outside the enclave (p. 58).  Herman also points out that, “In his 2004 book, Les Guerriers de la Paix (‘Warriors for Peace’), Bernard Kouchner . . . states that on his death-bed, Bosnia’s wartime President Alija Izetbegovic acknowledged to both Kouchner and Richard Holbrooke that he had exaggerated claims of atrocities by Serbian forces to encourage NATO interventions against the Serbs.”  These included the Bosnian Muslim leadership’s early and very effective claims in the summer of 1992 about “extermination camps” (recall how well the Guardian and Ed Vulliamy took the bait), but the practice belonged to a much larger, ongoing, Western-P.R.-conscious pattern, used many times throughout the wars, and used as late as July 9, 1995, when Izetbegovic started contacting world leaders, warning them about an imminent “genocide” to be carried out by Bosnian Serb forces (pp. 284-285).

Monbiot seems especially troubled by Herman’s contention (also sourced in Bogdanich and Szamuely, a fact unmentioned by Monbiot) that “Bosnian Muslim officials have claimed that their wartime president, Alija Izetbegovic, told them that Bill Clinton had advised him that direct U.S. military intervention could occur only if the Serbs killed at least 5,000 in Srebrenica.”  Indeed, in referring to Herman’s “astonishing claim,” this is what Monbiot had in mind.  In The Srebrenica Massacre, the oldest source cited for this claim is a 1998 interview with Srebrenica’s wartime chief of police Hakija Meholjic, who told the Sarajevo publication Dani that he was a member of a delegation of nine persons from Srebrenica who met personally with Izetbegovic in 1993, at which time Izetbegovic asked them for their thoughts about a possible “swap of Srebrenica for Vogosca [a Sarajevo suburb]?”  “We rejected it without any discussion,” Meholjic told the interviewer.  Then, Izetbegovic added: “You know, I was offered by Clinton in April 1993 . . . that the Chetnik forces enter Srebrenica, carry out a slaughter of 5,000 Muslims, and then there will be a military intervention.”⁷⁴  In the book, the sources provided for this story include Dani (p. 56, p. 189), a Dutch documentary film that was played in court during the Srebrenica-related trial of the Bosnian Serb General Radislav Krstic (p. 56), and the November 15, 1999 UN report, The Fall of Srebrenica, which both Bogdanich and Herman cite (p. 236, p. 284), and for which Monbiot mocks Herman.⁷⁵ Perhaps Monbiot finds the use of this UN report “astonishing” because the UN report adds that “Izetbegovic has flatly denied making such a statement,” and for Monbiot, Izetbegovic’s word more than offsets the other eight witnesses who could confirm Meholjic’s story.

There is also no evidence that Monbiot seriously read the other book that he purports to analyze: The Politics of Genocide.  “Mis-citing a [Yugoslavia] tribunal judgment,” he writes, the book “maintains that the Serb forces ‘incontestably had not killed any but “Bosnian Muslim men of military age”.’”  This time, in an endnote on his website, Monbiot cites nine words from the 2001 judgment in the Krstic case, which he thinks provides a gotcha moment: “In fact the judgment says that ‘only the men of military age were systematically massacred’. . . .  Can you spot the difference?  Herman and Peterson couldn’t.”⁷⁶   But contrary to Monbiot, our quote is exact, and there isn’t any substantive difference between these two quotes.  We should note, however, that Monbiot, a man so sensitive to genocide-related issues, fails to mention that in the same sentence as the one he quotes from our book, we point out that the Bosnian Serbs “had taken the trouble to bus all the women, children, and the elderly men to safety” (p. 47).  Doesn’t his suppression of this kind of information (and we can be sure that Monbiot never picks it up elsewhere) constitute a kind of genocide-inflation?⁷⁷

In this 2009 interview with Michael Hourigan, the Australian former investigator for the Rwanda Tribunal, Hourigan recounts his experiences with Tribunal Chief Prosecutor Louise Arbour, who, in his words, told him that the “investigation has to come to an end” when he reported to her that his team had found RPF informants willing to testify that the April 6, 1994 shoot-down of Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana’s jet had been ordered by Paul Kagame and carried out by agents of the Rwandan Patriotic Front.

Further evidence that Monbiot didn’t read our book is found where he writes that, in 2004, Mick Hume repeated a “long-discredited denier’s claim” that “Paul Kagame’s army ‘shot down’ President Habyarimana’s plane.”  As we also write about the assassination in our book, and contend that the Kagame-led RPF were responsible for it (pp. 59-61), it is revealing that Monbiot didn’t extend his criticism of Mick Hume to us as well.  But our book doesn’t cite Mick Hume — instead, we cite Michael Hourigan and the French Judge Jean-Louis Bruguière (see the previous section).  Although this so-called “denier’s claim” has never been discredited, it has been vehemently rejected by Kagame and his many apologists.⁷⁸ So Monbiot repeats the Kagame party-line, attacks Mick Hume (and some of Hume’s old colleagues) for highlighting this crucial piece of evidence against Kagame’s RPF, and ignores the serious evidence against Kagame that we put forward in our book.⁷⁹

Monbiot takes strong issue with our assertion in The Politics of Genocide that the “great majority of deaths were Hutu, with some estimates as high as two million,” and he calls this “as straightforward an instance of revisionism as [he's] ever seen. . . .”  These objections are laughable.  In the book, we report that the U.S. academics Christian Davenport and Allan Stam, who studied multiple mortality estimates for Rwanda, themselves “estimated that more than one million deaths occurred in Rwanda from April through July 1994″ (p. 58), with the total on all sides falling within a likely range between 800,000 and 1 million (if not slightly higher).  We also write that Davenport-Stam “have been under attack and in retreat since they were expelled from Rwanda in November 2003, when they first reported that that the ‘majority of the victims of 1994 were of the same ethnicity as the government in power’, and have been barred from entering the country ever since” (p. 59).  Anyone who looks at Table 1, “Differential attributions of ‘genocide’ to different theaters of atrocities” (p. 35), sees that we use the lower end estimate of 800,000 deaths in Rwanda, not “two million.”  But Monbiot takes our single mention of the former RPF military officer Christophe Hakizimana’s 1999 letter to the UN, and runs to his readers with the scoop that we are so sloppy in our use of sources, our claims are “comparable in this case only to the claims of the genocidaires themselves”!⁸⁰

Monbiot also objects that, in The Politics of Genocide, we place the “Rwandan genocide in inverted commas throughout the text.”  In fact, we use scare quotes to distinguish between two radically different and incompatible accounts of what happened in Rwanda throughout the period.  Thus the “Rwandan genocide” (i.e., inside scare quotes) refers to what in the previous section (above) we call the Hutu conspiracy model — the false and propagandistic party-line advanced by the U.S., U.K., and Paul Kagame-led RPF, and thereafter enforced by the Rwandan Tribunal, of a “conspiracy” by the majority Hutu around Habyarimana to exterminate the Tutsi minority.  We, on the contrary, treat the vast bloodbaths of 1994 as resulting from a pre-planned conspiracy by the RPF, hatched no later than 1990, to seize state power within Rwanda by using aggression, terrorism, and an eventual military takeover of the country.  The RPF accomplished this plan by July 1994, after launching its final offensive on April 6, when it shot down Habyarimana’s jet and rejected all ceasefire efforts by the remaining Hutu armed forces as impediments to its plan.  Our use of scare quotes is therefore a clarification device: By “Rwandan genocide,” we mean the ideological construct that fills George Monbiot’s (and the Guardian-Observer‘s collective) mind about the relevant events.  Some readers may find it stylistically a turn-off, but this is a separate matter.⁸¹

In both his June 17 and August 4 rejoinders to the Media Lens group, Monbiot urged them to read the reviews of our book published in 2010 by Gerald Caplan and Adam Jones,⁸² which in Monbiot’s words “contain reams of devastating evidence,” make it “hard to see how [Media Lens] could still maintain that Herman and Peterson are not engaging in denial,” and show that “Media Lens is now supporting an attempt to whitewash two great crimes and to excuse and justify the killers.”⁸³ But our analysis of the death tolls was based on serious evidence which we spelled out, but that Monbiot characteristically ignores.  Instead, he latches onto two party-line followers on Rwanda 1994, citing their authority on the subject but never a single detail, and suppressing the fact that, in 2010, we drafted extensive replies to both of them.⁸⁴ Monbiot is a hit-and-run intellectual.

Concluding Note

On first reading George Monbiot’s “Left and Libertarian Right Cohabit in the Weird World of the Genocide Belittlers,” we drew up a list of his errors, misrepresentations, and regurgitations of party-line lies, so as to better equip ourselves to respond to his commentary.  But as the original list kept growing each time we looked at his work, we soon realized that our list might be almost indefinitely expandable, depending on how finely we parsed his errors, and how much time we wanted to devote to the project.  We are also aware that this one commentary only gives a glimmer of the past 20 years’ worth of Guardian-Observer biased treatment of these theaters of war, U.S. and U.K. intervention, and mass atrocities.  But we have made a start.

Still, a few final comments are in order.

The National Security Strategy issued by the Obama administration in 2010 pledged that “in certain instances” the United States would employ “military means to prevent and respond to genocide and mass atrocities.”⁸⁵ From its advocates’ point of view, one of the major selling points of so-called “mass atrocity response operations” (a.k.a. “humanitarian interventions”) is that, “unlike in many other types of military operations, there is the opportunity to harness true unity of purpose between the humanitarian community and military actors”⁸⁶ — more realistically, to compromise the neutrality of humanitarian actors, co-opt their moral credibility, and reduce their ability to counter war and militarism.  We, on the other hand, oppose such “unity of purpose,” and recognize its destructive potential: The ease with which this year’s Western-imperial war on Libya was shepherded through the United Nations under the guise of protecting civilians bears witness to the threat to international peace and security that it poses.⁸⁷)

In The Politics of Genocide, we noted that the “word ‘genocide’ has increased in frequency of use and recklessness of application, so much so that the crime of the twentieth century for which the word originally was coined often appears debased” (p. 103).⁸⁸)

We added that its usage had become 297 percent more frequent in 2008 than it had been in 1990, with the vast majority of this increase fitting the Nefarious category (most notably in Rwanda, Srebrenica, and Darfur),⁸⁹ or those theaters in which the alleged “perpetrator of mass-atrocity crimes is our enemy or states targeted by us for destabilization and attack, … and their victims therefore worthy of our focus, sympathy, public displays of solidarity, and calls for inquiry and punishment” (p. 103).

We also stated that, “when we ourselves commit mass-atrocity crimes,” this principle inverts, and the converse becomes true: then the “atrocities are Constructive, our victims are unworthy of our attention and indignation, and never suffer ‘genocide’ at our hands,” a near-immutable law of the international arena that applies not only to the “Iraqi untermenschen who have died in such grotesque numbers over the past two decades” (p. 103) — but also to the Hutu of Rwanda and the eastern DRC, the peoples of Somalia, Colombia, Turkey, Afghanistan, Yemen, Lebanon, the Israeli Occupied Palestinian Territories, and Pakistan, to name a tragic few.

Just as the evidence indicates that “genocide” is a crime committed by the enemies of the U.S.-led NATO bloc, it also suggests that “genocide denial” and “revisionism” are thought crimes that can be committed only by those who question these rather tidy and convenient political, military, and legal arrangements.

Hence, questioning the number of Bosnian Muslim execution-victims following the fall of Srebrenica is “genocide denial,” but ignoring the Bosnian Serb civilian victims of Naser Oric in the villages outside Srebrenica, where estimates run as high as 2,382,⁹⁰) is neither genocide denial nor genocide belittling — it is keeping everyone focused on the preferred (Nefarious) “genocide.”

Similarly, ignoring the “10,000 or more Hutu civilians [killed] per month” inside Rwanda by Paul Kagame’s forces in 1994,⁹¹ the Hutu and other civilians killed on a scale many times greater in the Democratic Republic of Congo as a “direct result of the occupation of the DRC by Rwanda and Uganda,”⁹² and the perhaps one million Iraqi victims of the “sanctions of mass destruction” imposed by the United States and Britain in the 13 years prior to their invasion of Iraq in 2003 (three of the major Benign and Constructive bloodbaths of the past two decades),⁹³ is not “genocide denial,” much less a willful and complicit apologetics for genocide — it is patriotic eye-aversion in the face of the national pursuit of legitimate economic and political interests.

In these and many other cases we find proof beyond a shadow of a doubt that there really is a politics of genocide.  This is well reflected in George Monbiot’s attack on “genocide denial” and “revisionism.”

• This article first appeared at MRZine.

1. See George Monbiot, “Left and Libertarian Right Cohabit in the Weird World of the Genocide Belittlers,” Guardian, June 14, 2011 (print).  At Monbiot’s own personal Web site, the title that he had chosen for this attack was more direct: “Naming the Genocide Deniers” (June 13).
2. For a copy of the Guardian‘s July 5 rejection notice, see David Peterson, “Boy, Do We Need A Hippocratic Oath For Journalist,” ZNet, July 21, 2011.  For copies of our separate, original responses, see Edward S. Herman, “Reply to George Monbiot on ‘Genocide Belittling’,” unpublished manuscript, June 17, 2011 (as posted to ZNet, July 19, 2011); and David Peterson, “George Monbiot and the anti-’Genocide Deniers’ Brigade,” unpublished manuscript, June 17, 2011 (as posted to ZNet, July 19, 2011).
3. See Edward S. Herman and David Peterson, “We’re Not Genocide Deniers,” Guardian, July 20, 2011 (print).  Somehow, the Guardian neglected to add the phrase “Damn it!” to this title.  As in: “We’re not genocide deniers.  Damn it!”  Or: “We’re not child molesters.  Damn it!”
4. “A ‘Malign Intellectual Subculture’ – George Monbiot Smears Chomsky, Herman, Peterson, Pilger And Media Lens,” Media Lens, August 2, 2011, esp. its “Postscript.”  As the Media Lens group described the Guardian‘s efforts: “Guardian readers posted comments below the truncated response from Herman and Peterson, with the majority in support and several providing links to the fuller rebuttals posted at ZNet.  The [Comment Is Free] moderators swiftly got to work playing ‘whack-a-mole’ to remove these comments whenever they popped up.  Even a comment by Peterson himself, linking to these longer pieces, was removed.  Unusually, this was later restored, most likely in response to public complaints.”  For a copy of the once removed, later restored, comment by Peterson, see Guardian, July 20, 2011, 8:38PM.
5. See the Internet pseudonym, “OopsItsMe,” Guardian, July 20, 2011, 9:24AM.
6. See Edward S. Herman and David Peterson, The Politics of Genocide (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2010).
7. Nick Cohen, “Decline and Fall of the Puppetmasters,” Observer, July 17, 2001 (print).
8. James Wizeye, “To Claim Tutsis Caused Rwanda’s Genocide Is Pure Revisionism,” Guardian, July 26, 2011 (print).
9. For one powerful response to James Wizeye, see the comment posted by Christopher Black, a Canadian attorney and Lead Defense Counsel at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, Guardian, July 26, 2011, 4:25PM.
10. Throughout this manuscript, we will be writing about both the Guardian and the Observer jointly, whether we write the Guardian-Observer explicitly, or simply the Guardian.
11. Ed Vulliamy, “This War Has Changed My Life,” British Journalism Review, Vo. 4, No. 2 (1993); quoted in Peter Brock, Media Cleansing: Dirty Reporting.  Journalism and Tragedy in Yugoslavia (Los Angeles: GM Books, 2005), p. 57.
12. See, e.g., Carl Savich, “Celebici,” Serbianna, November 11, 2003.
13. Here is the totality of Ed Vulliamy’s reporting on the Bosnian Muslim-run camps for Serbs insofar as it turned up on the pages of the Guardian-Observer from the start of 1992 through the end of July, 2011: “The principal camps on the Serb list are at Tarcin, near Sarajevo….”  (“Shame of Camp Omarska,” Guardian, August 7, 1992.)  And: “Who talks now about Bosnian Serb massacres at Zvornik, Vlasenica, Brcko or Bijeljina?  (Or, indeed, sites of Croatian atrocities, such as Ahmici, or the Bosnian Muslim camp at Celebici), “The Edge of Madness,” Guardian, July 23, 2008).
14. Cf. Ed Vulliamy, “We Must Fight for Memory of Bosnia’s Camps,” IWPR Balkan Crisis Report, February 21, 2005.
15. For a critical discussion of the “journalism of attachment,” see Philip Hammond, “Moral Combat: Advocacy Journalists and the New Humanitarianism,” in David Chandler, Ed., Rethinking Human Rights: Critical Approaches to International Politics (London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), p. 176-195, especially Hammond’s discussion of “New humanitarianism,” p. 191-195.  Along with the “explicit rejection of neutrality,” the “journalists of attachment” have also “tended to follow the agenda of powerful Western governments,” and their eagerness to “frame conflicts in terms of a good-versus-evil discourse of abusers and victims and call for ever-greater Western intervention performs a valuable service to governments which, having lost the stable framework of the Cold War, couch their foreign policy in the language of human rights and morality” (p. 191).  According to Hammond, the Guardian‘s Ed Vulliamy once “accuse[d] the entire ‘international community’ of ‘meddling with the truths of the war [in Bosnia-Herzegovina] to stifle intervention and foster appeasement’ and of  ‘spreading … lies and distortions that would equate aggressor and victim’….  Western ‘neutrality’, he charge[d], amounted to de facto support for the Serbs” (p. 182).  We believe that Ed Vulliamy’s journalistic career since roughly the second half of 1992 serves as a very good illustration of everything that is wrong with the “journalism of attachment.”
16. “Ed Vulliamy, “A Destiny Worse Than War,” Guardian, April 10, 1993.  Here we add that in his original, August 7, 1992 report about the Bosnian Serb-run camps Omarska and Trnopolje, which he and the other British reporters for Independent Television News or ITN (Penny Marshall, Ian Williams, and cameraman Jeremy Irvin ) as well as a reporter and a cameraman from Radio Television Serbia visited on August 5, Vulliamy had written: “Trnopolje cannot be called a ‘concentration camp’….  One group has arrived from Kereter[m] that morning, claiming that they had been beaten, but showing no signs of it.  However, says pitifully thin Fikrit Alic: ‘It is worse than here.  There is no food’.  Others in the group looked better fed.  Another boy, Icic Budo, says ‘they killed 200 people’ at Kereter[m] and ‘many more at Omarska’.  He has seen no bodies himself, but another boy had seen one corpse near the main gate” (“Shame of Camp Omarska,” Guardian, August 7, 1992).

    But in a February 2, 1997 report that was published around the same time that the English translation of Thomas Deichmann’s The Picture That Fooled the World (LM97, February, 1997) began to circulate in Britain, Vulliamy wrote: “I was interviewing Fikret Alic while he was filmed.  He had arrived from another camp, Kereterm, where he had witnessed the massacre of 200 prisoners in a single night — a crime confirmed by subsequent investigations” (“I Stand by My Story,” Observer, February 2, 1997).

    Then on March 15, 2000, the day after the jury in Britain had decided ITN’s libel case against LM, the publisher of Deichmann’s debunking of the Fikret Alic photographs, in favor of ITN, Vulliamy wrote: “There were more important matters, such as the emaciated Fikret Alic’s (accurate and vindicated) recollections of the night he had been assigned to load the bodies of 250 men killed in one night at yet another camp” (“Poison in the Well of History,” Guardian, March 15, 2000).

    Finally, on July 27, 2008, shortly after the arrest of the Bosnian Serbs’ wartime leader Radovan Karadzic while riding on a bus in Belgrade, Vulliamy devoted a nearly 3,000-word profile to Fikret Alic.  Now, according to Vulliamy, he first “came across Fikret Alic in 1992 at the Trnopolje concentration camp, . . . where Alic languished behind the wire,” and where he “had arrived that morning . . . from yet another camp, Keraterm, where during a single night 130 men had been massacred in a hangar [and] he had been ordered to help load the bodies on to bulldozers, but, weeping, had his place taken by an older man” (“‘I Am Waiting.  No One Has Ever Said Sorry’,” Observer, July 27, 2008).

    So, here we have an unambiguous case in which Ed Vulliamy’s original descriptions of Fikret Alic and Icic Budo, two different Bosnian Muslim individuals he encountered at the Trnopolje transit camp on August 5, 1992, rapidly merged in Vulliamy’s subsequent reporting into a portrait of the famous Fikret Alic alone, with Budo winding up on the cutting-room floor, and Vulliamy’s original description of Budo’s fuzzy, hearsay allegations (“He has seen no bodies himself”) projected onto Alic, and reported as Alic’s firsthand, eye-witness account: Alic “had witnessed the massacre of 200 prisoners in a single night” at Kereterm (February 2, 1997); Alic “had been assigned to load the bodies of 250 men killed in one night” at Kereterm (March 15, 2000); and Alic “had been ordered to help load the bodies” of “130 men [who] had been massacred in a hangar [during a single night at Keraterm]” (July 27, 2008).

    (For analyses of the early Western propaganda uses of the original, August 5, 1992 images taken of Fikret Alic at Trnopolje, see Thomas Deichmann, “The Picture That Fooled the World,” LM97, February, 1997; and Edward S. Herman and David Peterson, “The Picture That Continues To Fool the World,” ZNet, June 27, 2011).

17. See Alija Izetbegovic, The Islamic Declaration:A Programme for the Islamization of Muslims and of Muslim Peoples, no translator listed, 1970, 1990 (as posted to the website of the Balkan Repository Project).  Expounding on what he called the “incompatibility of Islam with non-Islamic systems,” Izetbegovic explained: “There can be neither peace nor coexistence between the Islamic religion and non-Islamic social and political institutions. . . .  By claiming the right to order its own world itself, Islam obviously excludes the right or possibility of the part of any foreign ideology on that terrain. There is, therefore, no lay principle, and the state should both reflect and support religious moral concepts” (p. 30).  To the best of our knowledge, Vulliamy has never commented on, let alone criticized, this document on the pages of the Guardian-Observer for its avowed ethno-religious intolerance.
18. See Patrick Ball et al., The Bosnian Book of the Dead: Assessment of the Database, Research and Documentation Center, Sarajevo, June 2007.  Ball et al. estimate 96,895 total war-related deaths, of which 56,662 were military or combatants at the time of death (58.5%), and 39,199 were civilians (40.5%), with 1,034 (1.1%) listed as Policemen.  (See Table 23a, “Victims Reported in BBD by Status in War,” p. 30.)  Out of the 64,003 Muslims who perished in these wars, approximately 33,000 were civilians, and 31,000 combatants.  (See Table 19, “Ethnicity of Victims Reported in BBD,” p. 29, as well a some previous work by the Research and Documentation Center.)  A search of the Nexis database for everything published under Ed Vulliamy’s byline on the pages of the Guardian and the Observer reveals no record of Vulliamy ever having mentioned the names of the five principal researchers whose work has revised the total number of deaths from the civil wars in Bosnia-Herzegovina to the 100,000 range: Ewa Tabeau, Jakub Bijak, Mirsad Tokaca, Patrick Ball, or Philip Verwimp (i.e., byline(ed w/2 vulliamy) and [insert name] for all dates).
19. See Ed Vulliamy, “Open Letter from Ed Vulliamy to Amnesty International,” as posted to the Web site of the Congress of North American Bosniaks, October 31, 2009.  For our response to Vulliamy, see Edward S. Herman and David Peterson, “Open Letter To Amnesty International’s London and Belfast Offices, on the Occasion of Noam Chomsky’s Belfast Festival Lecture, October 30, 2009,” MRZine, November 22, 2009.
20. See Emma Brockes, “The Greatest Intellectual?” Guardian, October 31, 2005 (as now posted to the Chomsky.Info website).
21. See “Corrections and Clarifications: The Guardian and Noam Chomsky,” Guardian, November 17, 2005.
22. Vulliamy, “We Must Fight for Memory of Bosnia’s Camps.”  Also see n. 25, below.
23. For a copy of the 2003 open letter, see Al Burke, All Quieted on the Word Front, August 8, 2004, p. 31.
24. See John Willis, “External Ombudsman Report,” Guardian, May 25, 2006, para. 17.
25. Vulliamy, “We Must Fight for Memory of Bosnia’s Camps.”  As Vulliamy had written: “Revisionism over the carnage in Bosnia is rampant and persistent. . . .  Last year, [Ordfront] carried an interview with the author Diane Johnstone, about her book Fools’ Crusade, which expresses doubts over the number of victims of the Srebrenica massacre; the authenticity of the Racak massacre in Kosovo; the use of systematic rape in the war in Bosnia; and the true figure of Bosnian war dead (the official estimate is more than 200,000 — Johnstone claims 50,000).  And just as before, members of the chattering classes, unbelievably, have hailed this poison as ‘outstanding work’, in a letter signed by, among others, Noam Chomsky, Arundhati Roy, Tariq Ali, John Pilger, et. al” (emphasis added).  Also see Diana Johnstone, “Kulturkrieg in Journalism: Using Emotion to Silence Analysis,” CounterPunch, November 14, 2005.
26. See Marko Attila Hoare et al., “Protest to The Guardian Over ‘Correction’ to Noam Chomsky Interview,” Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, December 8, 2005.
27. As George Bogdanich writes: “General Morillon was asked directly by Judge Patrick Robinson at the ICTY: ‘Are you saying, then, General, that what happened in 1995 was a direct reaction to what Naser Oric did to the Serbs two years before’?  Morillon replied: ‘Yes. Yes, Your Honour.  I am convinced of that’.”  See George Bogdanich, Chap. 2, “Prelude to the Capture of Srebrenica,” in Edward S. Herman, Ed., The Srebrenica Massacre: Evidence, Context, Politics (Evergreen Park: Alphabet Soup, 2011), pp. 37-65; here p. 47.  For the Morillon, see Prosecutor v. Slobodan Milosevic (IT-02-54), Trial Transcript, February 12, 2004, p. 31,975.
28. See Edward S. Herman and David Peterson, “The Dismantling of Yugoslavia,” Monthly Review, Vol. 59, No. 5, October 2007.
29. Chris McGreal, “Out of Africa,” Guardian, March 27, 2009. — McGreal was the Guardian-Observer‘s chief Africa correspondent from September 1992 through March 2009.
30. See Herman and Peterson, The Politics of Genocide, “Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo,” pp. 51-68.  (Also published as Edward S. Herman and David Peterson, “Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo in the Propaganda System,” Monthly Review 62, No. 1, May 2010.
31. See UN Security Council Resolution 812 (S/RES/812), March 12, 1993.
32. See Peter Erlinder, “The U.N. Security Council Tribunal for Rwanda: International Justice, or Juridically-Constructed ‘Victor’s Impunity’?” Journal of Social Justice, Vol. 4, No. 1, Fall 2010, pp. 131-214; esp. “RPF Military Superiority Established: January 1991-February 1993,” pp. 171-174.  (For an online copy, click here.)  As Erlinder puts it: “By the time of the RPF’s [February] 1993 assault on Kigali the invading RPF had grown from the 3,000-4,000 Ugandan ‘deserters’ in late 1990, to a light infantry fighting force of at least 20,000 troops with unquestioned military superiority.  By contrast, the defending FAR [Armed Forces of Rwanda] had the 6,000-7,000 ‘real’ troops who had defeated the initial small RPF/Ugandan invasion in late 1990, augmented by some 25-30,000 recent recruits, which the U.N. commander of U.N. troops, U.N. General Dallaire, characterized as ‘rabble’” (pp. 172-173).
33. The name ‘Paul Kagame’ appeared in only two articles in the Guardian-Observer prior to April 6, 1994:  Catharine Watson, “Rebels at the Ready in Fragile Rwanda Truce,” Guardian, September 8, 1992; and Mark Huband, “Voice of the Massacres,” Guardian, January 29, 1994.
34. For three iterations of the standard or what we call the Hutu-conspiracy model of the “Rwandan genocide,” see Bernard A. Muna, The Prosecutor against Theoneste Bagosora, Amended Indictment(ICTR-96-7-I), International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, December 8, 1999; Alison Des Forges et al., “Leave None to Tell the Story”: Genocide in Rwanda (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1999); and Adam Jones, Chap. 9, “Apocalypse in Rwanda,” in Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction (New York: Routledge, 2nd Ed., 2010), pp. 346-368.
35. See the Affidavit of Michael Andrew Hourigan, International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, November 27, 2006 (as posted to the Web site of the Rwanda Documents Project at William Mitchell College of Law, St. Paul, Minnesota).  Also see Tiphaine Dickson, “Rwanda’s Deadliest Secret: Who Shot Down President Habyarimana’s Plane?” GlobalResearch.com, November 24, 2008
36. In Bruguière’s words: “[T]he relationship of political forces, due in large part to the numerical inferiority of the Tutsi electorate, would not permit [Kagame] to win the elections called for in the political process laid out in the Arusha Accords without the support of the opposition parties. . . .  [F]or [Kagame] the physical elimination of President Habyarimana [therefore] had become essential as a means to achieve his political ends from October 1993″ (Jean-Louis Bruguière, Request for the Issuance of International Arrest Warrants, Tribunal de Grande Instance, Paris, France, November 21, 2006, para. 103 and para. 102.
37. Rory Carroll, “Kagame Set Genocide in Motion, Paris Judge Says,” Guardian, March 12, 2004; Chris McGreal, “French Judge Accuses Rwandan President of Assassination,” Guardian, November 22, 2006; and Chris McGreal, “France‘s shame?” Guardian, January 11, 2007.
38. Chris McGreal, “For Rwanda, Read Burundi,” Observer, July 7, 1996.
39. Chris McGreal, “Rwanda‘s ‘murderer in chief’ on trial,” Guardian, April 3, 2002.
40. We base this claim on a search of the Nexis database for mentions of ‘Rwanda’ and ‘Hourigan’ in the pages of the Guardian and the Observer for all dates archived by Nexis.
41. Depending on the relative percentages of Rwanda’s Hutu and Tutsi population on the date of the national elections to be held in 1995 under the 1993 Arusha Accords, ethnic Hutu would have outnumbered ethnic Tutsi by some six- or seven-to-one.  Under these circumstances, the Kagame-RPF-Tutsi stood no chance of prevailing at the polls.  This left the Kagame-led RPF no other realistic option of acquiring state power but to seize it militarily, via the assassination of the Hutu President Juvenal Habyarimana, and the launch of its final and decisive offensive of the April-July 1994 period.  See n. 36, above.
42. See Prosecutor v. Augustin Ndindiliyimana et al. (or Military II) (ICTR-00-56-I), Transcript, September 19, 2006, p. 4, lines 13-22.  (Unavailable online.
43. See the “Status of Cases,” webpage at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (last accessed on August 15, 2011).  All 97 of the individual defendants listed there are ethnic Hutu.
44. Filip Reyntjens’ January 11, 2005 letter of resignation to Hassan Jallow is quoted in John Laughland, A History of Political Trials: From Charles I to Saddam Hussein (New York: Peter Lang Ltd., 2008), p. 211.  The Reyntjens letter continued: “Article 6(2) of the [ICTR's] Statute explicitly rules out immunity, including for Heads of state or government or for responsible government officials.  This principle is contravened when, as is currently the case, a message is sent out that those in power need not fear prosecution” (211-212).  The Guardian‘s Rory Carroll did report Reyntjens’ resignation.  Wrote Carroll: “There has been speculation that President Kagame, who led the rebel sweep through Rwanda, and was behind the subsequent incursions into the Democratic Republic of Congo, might have been indicted himself were it not for his links with Washington and London” (Rory Carroll, “Genocide Tribunal ‘Ignoring Tutsi Crimes’,” Guardian, January 2005).
45. Describing his feelings about Rwanda, McGreal writes: “There is a debate among reporters over whether we should take the stand at international courts, but it seemed difficult to me, after writing of the blood on the hands of western leaders for abandoning the Tutsis, to then refuse to make a small contribution to what little justice there was for the dead and survivors.”  Having witnessed one day the execution by firing squad of the Hutu Froduald Karamira at a stadium in Kigali, McGreal “thought back on the immense suffering caused by Karamira and his cohorts,” and had an epiphany: McGreal’s “long-held view that the death penalty was wrong, no matter what, fell away.  Before Rwanda, I could not have imagined saying this, but I would not have saved Karamira even if it had been in my power.  I looked at him and believed he deserved to die” (McGreal, “Out of Africa”).
46. See Carla Del Ponte, with Chuck Sudetic, Madame Prosecutor: Confrontations with Humanity’s Worst Criminals and the Culture of Impunity: A Memoir (New York: Other Press, 2009), esp. Chap. 9, “Confronting Kigali: 2002 and 2003,” 223-241.
47. David Beresford, “Who Bears the Guilt of Africa’s Horror?” Guardian, July 30, 1994; Joseph Harker, “Holocaust: Just Obeying Orders,” Guardian, January 31, 1995.  (Both unavailable online.
48. Chris McGreal, “France‘s Shame?”  Rwanda’s civil war saw 800,000 Tutsis slaughtered by the Hutus — armed and supported by France,” Guardian, January 11, 2007.
49. See George E. Moose, “Human Rights Abuses in Rwanda,” Information Memorandum to The Secretary, U.S. Department of State, undated though clearly drafted between September 17 and 20, 1994 (as posted to the Web site of the Rwanda Documents Project).
50. See Christian Davenport and Allan Stam, “What Really Happened in Rwanda?” Miller-McCune, October 6, 2009.  As Davenport said in a statement issued through his university in 2009: “A great deal of effort has been extended to make sure the focus stays exclusively on the Francophone Tutsi victims and their Hutu executioners.  But of the estimated one million people killed [in Rwanda], between 300,000 and 500,000 of them were Tutsi, according to best estimates.  What about the other 500,000 to 700,000 people?  Who is responsible for their deaths?” (in Joan Fallon, “Research Sheds New Light on Rwandan Killings,” Notre Dame News, March 24, 2009).
51. See David Peterson, “Rwanda’s 1991 Census,” ZNet, June 17, 2011.
52. The continuity in Kagame power’s targeting of Hutu across both the Rwandan and the DRC theaters is the fundamental lesson of the Democratic Republic of Congo, 1993-2003: Report of the Mapping Exercise documenting the most serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law committed within the territory of the Democratic Republic of the Congo between March 1993 and June 2003, United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights,  August 2010, para. 27-33; para. 500-522.  As the very last paragraph of this report concludes: “In light of the impunity enjoyed by the perpetrators of serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law, and the repetition of crimes within the territory of the DRC, there is a manifest urgency for justice and security service reform.  The members of the Mapping Team were able to observe the constant fear on the part of affected populations that history would repeat itself, especially when yesterday’s attackers are returning in positions that enable them to commit new crimes with complete impunity” (para. 1143).  (Also see the “Statement by the High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay,” UNHCHR, October 1, 2010.
53. Here quoting the final draft: Democratic Republic of Congo, 1993-2003: Report of the Mapping Exercise . . . , para. 515.  For some downgrades to Kagame’s image, consider the unassailable evidence of Kagame’s mass killings in the DRC.  In 2002, it was reported to the UN Security Council that, in the five provinces of the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo that the Rwandan and Ugandan armies had invaded and occupied, “more than 3.5 million excess deaths” probably had occurred up to September 2002, and that these deaths are the “consequence of a cycle of aggression, the multiplication of armed forces, [and] a high frequency of conflict and its consequences, especially displacement,” all of which are a “direct result of the occupation by Rwanda and Uganda” (see Mahmoud Kassem et al., Report of the Panel of Experts on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and Other Forms of Wealth of the Democratic Republic of Congo, S/2002/1146, UN Security Council, October, 2002, para. 96.  Also see n. 52, above).  Additionally, Kagame won landslide victories with 95 percent of the vote in the 2003 presidential election, followed by 93 percent in 2010, and in both elections, his regime arrested, forced into exile, and murdered the Hutu majority’s opposition parties, candidates, and members of the media.
54. See, e.g., “UN Human Rights Office to Delay Release of Congo ‘Genocide’ Report until October,” Associated Press, September 2, 2010; “DR Congo ‘Genocide’ Report Delayed by UN,” BBC News Africa, September 2, 2010.
55. When in the spring of 2010, the Kagame dictatorship arrested, first the Hutu opposition political figure Victorie Ingabire Umuhoza, and then the U.S. attorney Peter Erlinder, who in late May flew to Kigali to take up her defense, the Canadian writer and Kagame apologist Gerald Caplan defended Kagame’s actions and attacked both Ingabire and Erlinder: See Gerald Caplan, “The Law Society of Upper Canada and Genocide Denial in Rwanda,” Toronto Globe and Mail, June 11, 2010 (as posted to Adam Jones’s Genocide Studies Media File Web site).  Later in 2010, when the draft UN “mapping report” on the Democratic Republic of Congo, 1993-2003 was first leaked, an impressive number of U.S. and U.K. commentators were quick to defend Kagame power.  “Rwanda’s President, Paul Kagame, came to power in 1994 at the head of a rebel army that brought the extermination of Rwandan Tutsis by Hutu extremists to a halt,” Philip Gourevitch wrote, hewing to the Kagame-as-savior script (“Rwanda Pushes Back against UN Genocide Charges,” New Yorker, August 27, 2010).  “The UN delegation [to Kigali] would be well aware of the security council’s shameful decision to pull its peacekeepers out of Rwanda in 1994, at the height of the genocide of the Tutsi people.  It was Kagame’s Rwandan Patriotic Front that eventually brought the genocide to an end,” Linda Melvern added, drawing from the same script (“Taking Sides on Genocide,” Guardian, September 16, 2010).
56. See Edward S. Herman and David Peterson, “Peter Erlinder Jailed by One of the Major Genocidaires of Our Era,” MRZine, June 17, 2010.  For the relevant “genocide”-related laws in Rwandan, see Constitution of the Republic of Rwanda, June 4, 2003, Article 13.  Also see Law Relating to the Punishment of the Crime of Genocide Ideology (No. 18/2008), Codes and Laws of Rwanda, Ministry of Justice, Republic of Rwanda, July 23, 2008.  The Rwandan Constitution mentions the word ‘genocide’ no fewer that 18 times (excluding its table of contents), three times in its Preamble alone.  Article 179 even creates a National Commission for the Fight Against Genocide.
57. Ed Vulliamy, “I Stand by My Story,” Observer, February 2, 1997; and Ed Vulliamy, “Open Letter from Ed Vulliamy to Amnesty International,” October 31, 2009.
58. From hereon, we will be working from the longer, footnoted-version of Monbiot’s Guardian commentary as it appears on his personal website: “Naming the Genocide Deniers,” June 13, 2011.  Also see George Monbiot, “Do As We Say, Not As We Do,” June 17, 2011; and Monbiot, “Media Cleanse,” August 4, 2011.
59. In late 2007, the Financial Times reported that the ICMP’s “staff . . . are 93 per cent Bosnian [Muslim]. . .” (Christian Jennings, “Forensics: DNA Fills Gaps of History,” December 11, 2007).
60. See Michael Mandel, Chap. 6, “The ICTY Calls It ‘Genocide’,” pp. 211-223; here pp. 211-212, in Herman, The Srebrenica Massacre: Evidence, Context, Politics.  In Mandel’s words: “Of course the execution of even 4,000 or 2,000 or 200 men would have been a horrible crime, mass murder in fact, so on a purely legal basis it would be hard to understand the Trial Chamber’s stretching of the numbers so far past what had been proved ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’.  It is a lot easier to understand as propaganda, though, because the high-end figure had the benefit of matching the official story both in quantity and, most importantly, in quality, with the horrifying qualification of ‘genocide’” (p. 212).
61. See Ljubiša Simic, “Presentation and Interpretation of Forensic Data (Pattern of Injury Breakdown),” in Stephen Karganovic, Ed., Deconstruction of a Virtual Genocide: An Intelligent Person’s Guide To Srebrenica (Belgrade: Srebrenica Historical Project, 2011), pp. 93-108; esp. pp. 94-104, emphasis added.  And see Simic, “Analysis of Srebrenica Forensic Reports Prepared by ICTY Prosecution Experts,” Ibid, pp. 73-91.  And for a summary of Simic’s conclusions, see David Peterson, “Srebrenica-Related Graves through 2002,” ZNet, July 22, 2011.
62. See Andy Wilcoxson, “Shroud of Secrecy Leaves Room for Doubt on Srebrenica DNA Evidence,” Balkan Report, August 8, 2011.
63. See Ewa Tabeau and Jakub Bijak, “War-related Deaths in the 1992-1995 Armed Conflicts in Bosnia and Herzegovina: A Critique of Previous Estimates and Recent Results,” European Journal of Population, Vol. 21, June, 2005, pp. 187-215. — In section 3.3., “Overall Numbers” (pp. 205-207), they estimated 102,622 total war-related deaths on all sides, of which 55,261 (54%) were civilians at the time of death, and 47,360 (46%) were military or combatants (p. 207).   Also see Ball et al., The Bosnian Book of the Dead: Assessment of the Database, Research and Documentation Center, Sarajevo, June, 2007, Table 23a, “Victims Reported in BBD by Status in War,” p. 30.  And see n. 18, above.
64.  See Edward S. Herman, Preface, in Herman, The Srebrenica Massacre, pp. 13-18.
65. See Phillip Corwin, Foreword, in Herman, The Srebrenica Massacre, pp. 7-12.  In the passage quoted, Corwin’s exact words are: “That there were killings of non-combatants in Srebrenica, as in all war zones, is a certainty.  And those who perpetrated them deserve to be condemned and prosecuted.  And whether it was three or 30 or 300 innocent civilians who were killed, it was a heinous crime.  There can be no equivocation about that.  At the same time, the facts presented in this volume make a very cogent argument that the figure of 8,000 killed, which is often bandied about in the international community, is an unsupportable exaggeration.  The true figure may be closer to 800.  The fact that the figure in question has been so distorted, however, suggests that the issue has been politicized.  There is much more shock value in the death of 8,000 than in the death of 800″ (p. 8).
66. Monbiot repeated this conflation of deaths and executions in his June 17, web-only follow-up to his June 14 commentary in the Guardian.  Attacking the U.K.-based Media Lens group for having once written that “Herman and Peterson were ‘perfectly entitled’” to write something that others don’t like, Monbiot then quoted what he believes we are not “perfectly entitled” to write: “There is a good case to be made that, while there were surely hundreds of executions, and possibly as many as a thousand or more, the 8,000 figure is a political construct and eminently challengeable.”  (This quote derives from our “Milosevic’s Death in the Propaganda System,” Electric Politics, May 14, 2006.)  Next, Monbiot wrote: “Given that 6,500 of the victims have already been exhumed and identified, and that there is very strong evidence (as there has been for years) to suggest that a further 1,500 or so await discovery, this statement is demonstrably wrong and without justification.  To describe it as ‘talking down’ the number of deaths is in fact an understatement: it amounts to the outright disavowal of cast-iron evidence.”  Of course, contrary to Monbiot and the Guardian-Observer, we do not accept the publicized findings of the International Commission on Missing Persons at face value.  But putting aside our concerns about the ICMP’s work and claims, Monbiot’s errors in this instance are so flagrant that they require something beyond a true believer in the Srebrenica party-line to commit them.  Because Monbiot cannot keep the categories of purported identifications and actual executions separate in his mind, he makes the fallacious assumption that whatever number of persons the ICMP claims to have identified, this equals the number of Bosnian Muslim members of the Srebrenica “safe area” population executed by Bosnian Serbs some time after July 11, 1995.  In turn, Monbiot takes the ICMP’s purported identifications as proof of the standard account of the “Srebrenica massacre,” in which the Bosnian Serbs executed (i.e., murdered in a criminally meaningful manner) some 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys after the fall of Srebrenica — or however many Bosnian Muslim persons the ICMP eventually purports to identify, before its Srebrenica-related work is completed.  Because Monbiot is this confused on a topic he knows nothing about, and because his establishment biases are so great that he takes the side of the NATO bloc and its agencies at the Yugoslavia Tribunal and the ICMP, he accuses us of an “outright disavowal of cast-iron evidence” (and worse), even when he quotes us writing about executions, not purported identifications.  As for the Media Lens group, Monbiot adds: “It is this that you say they are ‘perfectly entitled to do’.  I called you out on it, and I was right to do so.”  In fact, through this entire episode, Monbiot has outed no one besides himself.  (See George Monbiot, “Do As We Say, Not As We Do,” June 17, 2011.  For an important analysis by the Media Lens group, the one from which Monbiot took the quote from our 2006 analysis that he is unable to understand, see “Dancing on a Mass Grave — Oliver Kamm of the Times Smears Media Lens,” November 25, 2009.  Also see “Our Response to Monbiot’s June 13, 2011 Article,” Media Lens, June 16, 2011).
67. See George Bogdanich, Chap. 2, “Prelude to the Capture of Srebrenica,” pp. 37-65; and Bogdanich, Chap. 7, “UN Report on Srebrenica — A Distorted Picture of Events,” pp. 224-247, in Herman, The Srebrenica Massacre.
68. See Edward S. Herman, Chap. 10, “Summary and Conclusions,” pp. 278-298; here p. 281, in Herman, The Srebrenica Massacre.
69. For Drazen Erdemovic’s original testimony, see Judge Claude Jorda et al., The Prosecutor of the Tribunal v. Radovan Karadzic (IT-95-18-R61) and Ratko Mladic (IT-95-5-R61), July 5, 1996, pp. 830-855.
70. See Germinal Civikov, Srebrenica: The Star Witness, Trans. John Laughland (Belgrade: NGO Srebrenica Historical Project, 2010).
71. See George Szamuely, Chap. 5, “Securing Verdicts: The Misuse of Witness Testimony at The Hague,” pp. 153-210; here p. 189, in Herman, The Srebrenica Massacre.
72. See Monbiot, “Naming the Genocide Deniers,” n. 17.
73. Tim Ripley, Operation Deliberate Force: The UN and NATO Campaign in Bosnia 1995 (Lancaster: Centre for Defense and International Security, 1999), p. 145.  See Bogdanich, Chap. 2, “Prelude to the Capture of Srebrenica,” pp. 56-59; and Herman, Chap. 10, “Summary and Conclusions,” pp. 284-285, in Herman, The Srebrenica Massacre.
74. See George Bogdanich, Chap. 2, “Prelude to the Capture of Srebrenica,” p. 56, in Herman, The Srebrenica Massacre.
75. See “5,000 Muslim Lives for Military Intervention,” Dani, June 22, 1998; Prosecutor v. Radislav Krstic (IT-98-33-T), Transcript, April 5, 2001, p. 9480; and Kofi Annan et al., The Fall of Srebrenica (A/54/549), Report of the Secretary-General pursuant to General Assembly resolution 53/35, November 15, 1999, para. 115.  Separately, one can even view a YouTube video of a 2010 Norwegian documentary in which Meholjic recounts Izetbegovic’s “astonishing claim” to the Srebrenica delegation that met with him in 1993.  See Ola Flyum and David Hebditch, Srebrenica — A Town Betrayed, (Oslo: Fenris Film, 2010).  Beginning at the 28:18 mark, Hakija Meholjic states: “I will try to tell you exactly what President Izetbegovic said: ‘My dear people of Srebrenica, how are you’?  ‘Fine, how are you, Mister President’?  ‘Clinton has made me a proposal, if the Chetniks enter Srebrenica and slaughter 5,000 Moslems, there will be military intervention by NATO forces on Serb positions throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina.  What do you think about that?’”
76. Monbiot, “Naming the Genocide Deniers,” n. 19.
77. Monbiot’s hair-splitting objection is rubbish for other reasons.  In criticizing our use of the Krstic Judgment, he quotes paragraph 595, and in the passage of The Politics of Genocide that he disputes, we quote paragraph 598.  In No. 598, the trial chamber concluded that the “intent to kill all the Bosnian Muslim men of military age in Srebrenica constitutes an intent to destroy in part the Bosnian Muslim group within the meaning of Article 4 [of the Tribunal's Statute] and therefore must be qualified as a genocide.”  No. 595, on the other hand, opens: “Granted only the men of military age were systematically massacred. . . .” (see Judge Almiro Rodrigues et al., Judgment, Prosecutor versus Radislav Krstic, IT-98-33-T, August 2, 2001.)  Furthermore, in The Politics of Genocide, we write with great disapproval that Krstic “argued that genocide could occur in one ‘small geographical area’ (the town of Srebrenica), even one where the villainous party had taken the trouble to bus all the women, children, and the elderly men to safety — that is, incontestably had not killed any but ‘Bosnian Muslim men of military age’” (p. 47).  But Monbiot quotes only the last 12 words, and suppresses the Tribunal’s recognition that the Bosnian Serbs had bussed well more than half of the population to safety.  To this we then add York University professor of international law Michael Mandel’s observations that Krstic “transformed [genocide] not into mere ethnic cleansing but into the killing of potential military fighters during a war for military advantage,” and that with Krstic, the “concept of genocide, except as pure propaganda, lost all contact with the Holocaust — a program for the extermination of a whole people” (pp. 47-48).  But because this was the Tribunal’s first case to confirm the “genocide” charge in relation to Srebrenica, Monbiot believes that Krstic is intellectually, morally, and legally wonderful, and this is his real objection to what we have written against it — not some non-existent, can-you-spot-the-difference, mis-citation of a few words from one paragraph in the judgment.  In juxtaposing our use of one six-word phrase from the Krstic judgment with his own use of a nine-word phrase the substance of which says the same thing, Monbiot fabricates a distinction out of nothing, while he pretends that it reveals everything.  Of course, it does — but only about Monbiot, and how low he’s willing to stoop to try and score a point.
78. See, e.g., Gerald Caplan, “Who Killed the President of Rwanda?” Pambazuka News (No. 466), January 21, 2010.   But also see the response to Caplan by René Lemarchand, “Doubts on the Veracity of Mutsinzi Report,” Pambazuka News (No. 467), January 28, 2010.
79.  See Rwanda Tribunal Defense Attorney John Philpot’s interview with Michael Hourigan, “Louise Arbour Was Wrong to Stop My Investigation,” in The ICTR Legacy from the Defense Perspective – Two, The Second International Criminal Defense Conference, Brussels, May 21-23, 2010 (as posted to the Vimeo Web site).  (For material archived from its companion conference, also see The ICTR Legacy from the Defense Perspective – One, The First International Criminal Defense Conference, The Hague, November 14-16, 2009.) — As noted, in 1996-1997, Hourigan was working as an investigator for the Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, where the chief prosecutor was the Canadian Louise Arbour.  Hourigan and his team found members of the Rwandan Patriotic Front who volunteered to them the information that it was Paul Kagame’s RPF who shot down the previous president’s jet, assassinating him and the president of Burundi at the same time.  Presented with this evidence in early 1997, Chief Prosecutor Arbour quashed the investigation and buried the evidence.  In the excerpt that follows from Hourigan’s interview during the May 2010 conference in Brussels, Hourigan is recounting a meeting between himself, Rwanda Tribunal Chief Prosecutor Louise Arbour, and two other members of the Tribunal.  We pick up Hourigan’s words at approximately the 12:19 mark of the video, immediately after John Philpot asked Hourigan: “What transpired at that meeting?”

    Michael Hourigan: “We had a meeting early in the morning. . . .  I presented her a memorandum . . . about informants’ information.  She read that.  But her attitude was completely different this one week later.  She was aggressive, very negative, insisted that the information was probably unreliable.  She questioned me as to the sources — of course I couldn’t tell her the names of the informants.  I told her of the investigators on my Tribunal team who had the information.  She was very critical of them.  And, to cut a long story short, she said, in any event, whether the information is accurate or not — inaccurate — it’s outside our mandate, and the investigation has to come to an end.  And as I’ve indicated, . . . no one had ever said that to me in the previous year.  But in any event, I know that in our own Rwanda Statute, there are provisions that cover acts of terrorism, contrary to her direction, it was clearly within our mandate, and I indicated to her that she was wrong.  And she said to me, Are you questioning my authority?  I said, No, I’m just questioning your judgment.  She said, Well, I’m directing you: This investigation is at an end.  She asked me to leave the room, which I did.  I left the room, and subsequently returned to Kigali, and resigned.”

    We regard this episode as one of the more beautiful confirmations of how so-called “international justice” works in the real world — a point with which we deal at some length in The Politics of Genocide.  (See esp. our “Concluding Note,” pp. 103-112.)  Witness also the International Criminal Court’s indictments of the Gaddafi regime earlier year, even as the U.S.-led NATO bloc was bombing Gaddafi’s Libya out of existence.  (See n. 87, below.)

80. On Christophe Hakizimana’s 1999 letter, see Herman and Peterson, The Politics of Genocide, n. 127, p. 132.
81.  On the use of scare quotes, see the powerful letter of rebuttal written by Jonathan Cook to the Media Lens group on June 17, 2001, which Media Lens reproduces in the section titled “The ‘Inverted Commas Problem’,” in “A ‘Malign Intellectual Subculture’ – George Monbiot Smears Chomsky, Herman, Peterson, Pilger And Media Lens.”  In Cook’s words: “It is worth noting that Norman Finkelstein did something identical in his book ‘The Holocaust Industry’.  He states in the Introduction: ‘In the pages that follow, I will argue that ‘The Holocaust’ is an ideological representation of the Nazi holocaust. (p. 3)’  He also says in a footnote on the same page: ‘In this text, Nazi holocaust [his italics] signals the actual historical event, The Holocaust [his italics] its ideological representation’.”  In terms of stylistic usage, the comparison with our use of scare-quotes is perfectly apt.
82. See Gerald Caplan, “The Politics of Denialism: The Strange Case of Rwanda.  Review of ‘The Politics of Genocide’,” Pambazuka News (No. 486), June 17, 2010; Adam Jones, “On Genocide Deniers: Challenging Herman and Peterson,” Pambazuka News (No. 490), July 15, 2010; and Adam Jones, “Denying Rwanda: A Response to Herman & Peterson,” as posted to a webpage associated with the 2nd Edition of Jones’s book, Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction (New York: Routledge, 2011).  We drafted responses to the Caplan as well as to the first of these by Jones (July 15, 2010), but not to the second by Jones, as we were unaware that it existed until early June of this year.  We regard the fact that Jones has posted his latter attack to the Web site that advertises the 2nd edition of his book to be significant, in that it shows the kind of steps that practitioners in the field of “genocide studies” are willing to take when then feel that their turf is threatened, and they need to protect their truths.
83. Monbiot, “Media Cleanse,” August 4, 2011.
84. See Edward S. Herman and David Peterson, “Genocide Denial and Genocide Facilitation: Gerald Caplan and The Politics of Genocide,” MRZine, July 4, 2010; and Edward S. Herman and David Peterson, “Adam Jones on Rwanda and Genocide: A Reply,” MRZine, August 14, 2010.
85. Barack Obama et al., National Security Strategy, President of the United States, May, 2010, p. 48.
86. Sarah Sewall et al., Mass Atrocity Response Operations: A Military Handbook, (Cambridge, MA: The President and Fellows of Harvard College, 2010), p, 13. This document is the product of a collaboration between Harvard University’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy and the U.S. Army Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute; as such, it illustrates the degree to which the substance of human rights has been hollowed out in certain circles, while the empty rhetoric of “human rights” is harnessed for U.S. imperial objectives.
87. See, e.g., Maximilian C. Forte, “The Top Ten Myths in the War Against Libya,” CounterPunch, August 31, 2011; Myth No. 1, “Genocide.” — The March 17, 2001 UN Security Council Resolution 1973 (S/RES/1973) authorized “Member States . . . to take all necessary measures…to protect civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack in [Libya]. . .” (para. 4). Needless to say, this paragraph was immediately exploited by the United States and its allies to launch a sustained military attack on Libyan government targets within 48 hours of its adoption. In 2011, the U.S.-led NATO bloc’s overthrow of the government of Libya was also accompanied by the UN Security Council’s referral of the Libyan government to the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, with the request that he decide whether an investigation of the government’s actions was warranted. (See UN Security Council Resolution 1970 (S/RES/1970), February 26, 2011, para. 4 – 8. This same resolution declared that nationals “from a State outside [Libya] . . . shall be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of that State for all alleged acts or omissions arising out of or related to operations in [Libya] established or authorized by the Council” (para. 6), thereby immunizing the NATO bloc from the ICC’s jurisdiction.) The Prosecutor at the ICC quickly agreed to open an investigation (March 3), and formally wrapped up his investigation by May, when he petitioned the ICC to issue arrest warrants for three long-time leaders of the Libyan government (May 16). In late June, the ICC agreed to issue these arrest warrants for Muammar Gaddafi, his son, Saif, and Gaddafi’s brother-in-law (June 27). During this entire period, a state of armed conflict existed inside Libya, such that the Libyan government found itself under attack, first by armed forces sponsored by individual members of the NATO bloc (from February 15-17 on) and, later, by the leading militaries of the NATO bloc itself (from March 19 on). So, in 2011, NATO attacked Libya militarily, and it was joined in this attack by the International Criminal Court, which, for its part, attacked Libya juridically. (For the Prosecution’s requests for the indictments, see Luis Moreno-Ocampo, Prosecutor’s Application Pursuant to Article 58 as to Muammar Mohammed Abu Minyar Gaddafi, Saif Al-Islam Gaddafi and Abdullah Al-Senussi, ICC-01-11, International Criminal Court, May 16, 2011; “ICC Prosecutor Press Conference on Libya,” May 16, 2011; and “ICC Prosecutor: Gaddafi Used His Absolute Authority to Commit Crimes in Libya,” May 16, 2011. For the ICC’s acceptance of these requests, see Judge Sanji Mmasenono Monageng et al., Decision on the “Prosecutor’s Application Pursuant to Article 58 as to Muammar Mohammed Abu Minyar Gaddafi, Saif Al-Islam Gaddafi and Abdullah Al-Senussi,” ICC-01-11, International Criminal Court, June 27, 2011; and “Pre-Trial Chamber I issues three warrants of arrest for Muammar Gaddafi, Saif Al-Islam Gaddafi and Abdualla Al-Senussi,” June 27, 2011.
88. “New conceptions require new terms. By ‘genocide’ we mean the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group. This new word, coined by the author to denote an old practice in its modern development, . . . is intended . . . to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. . . . Genocide is directed against the national group as an entity, and the actions involved are directed against individuals, not in their individual capacity, but as members of the national group” (Raphael Lemkin, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation, Analysis of Government Proposals for Redress, Washington: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1944, pp. 79-95; here p. 79.
89. See Herman and Peterson, The Politics of Genocide, n. 247, pp. 146-147.
90. See Milivoje Ivanišević, Srebrenica July 1995 — In Search of the Truth, Trans. Zivka Novicic (Belgrade: Hrišćinska misao, 2nd Ed., 2010). Therein, Ivanišević writes that the “list [of the Serb dead in the vicinity of Srebrenica] contains the names of 3,262 Serbian victims. According to the latest evidence, approximately 27%, or about 880, of the people who were killed, were members of military and police organizations. The remaining 73% (2,382 victims) were civilians” (p. 6
91. See Moose, “Human Rights Abuses in Rwanda,” 1994.
92. See Kassem et al., S/2002/1146, para. 96.
93. See Herman and Peterson, “The Iraq Sanctions-Regime Killings,” in The Politics of Genocide, p. 29-33.

It is true that wealthy people throughout the world are in some way involved in philanthropic activities. Gates foundation, the richest charity in the world with an annual income equal to that of a small country, has undoubtedly been helping a lot of people around the world. However, philanthropy on the scale we see now can only exist in a fundamentally unequal society where a small minority of businessmen owns or controls large parts of the productive forces entitling them to staggering profits. According to the 2011 annual report of the business magazine Forbes there are 1210 individuals with a net value of $1 billion dollars (or more). Their total net worth is $4.5 trillion dollars, greater than the combined worth of 4 billion people in the world. The three richest people in the world control more wealth than the combined wealth of the poorest 48 countries. The wealthiest 1% of the global population own 43% of global assets. The richest 10% of the world own 83% of global assets. The current concentration of wealth in a few hands exceeds any previous period in history.

The US has the most billionaires in the world (413). The net worth of Bill Gates is $56 billion and that of Warren Buffet $50 billion. In 1976 the top 1% of Americans held 20% of the total wealth of the US, whereas in 2011 they control 40% of total wealth. 80% of Americans own only 15% of the wealth. That means, 20% of Americans control 85% of total wealth.
India’s high economic growth over the past decade and the upsurge in billionaires upward to 55 by 2011 are linked to the neo-liberal policies of deregulation, privatisation and globalisation, which have concentrated wealth in the hands of a few, undermined small scale producers and dispossessed tens of millions of tribals, poor and small scale farmers. According to the Arjun Sengupta Committee, about 77% of Indians live on less than Rs. 20 a day.

The huge inequality reflects the stark differences in wealth between a handful of rich and the vast struggling masses. Does it mean that the accumulation of unimaginable amounts of wealth is intertwined with the appalling poverty of billions of people? At least this is what the annual budgets of many countries convey. Take, for example, the US budget proposal for 2012 that cuts more than $5.8 trillion in government spending over the next decade, meaning cuts on social spending which affects the poor and the old. The budget also calls for REDUCING the top corporate and individual tax rates to 25%. In his article of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1% Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel-winning American economist, deplores, “…one big part of the reason we have so much inequality is that the top 1 percent want it that way. The most obvious example involves tax policy. Lowering tax rates on capital gains, which is how the rich receive a large portion of their income, has given the wealthiest Americans close to a free ride. Monopolies and near monopolies have always been a source of economic power—from John D. Rockefeller at the beginning of the last century to Bill Gates at the end. Lax enforcement of anti-trust laws… has been a godsend to the top 1 percent. Much of today’s inequality is due to manipulation of the financial system, enabled by changes in the rules that have been bought and paid for by the financial industry itself…The government lent money to financial institutions at close to 0 percent interest and provided generous bailouts on favourable terms when all else failed. Regulators turned a blind eye to a lack of transparency and to conflict of interests.”
What is striking about the fortune of billionaires in the US (and elsewhere) is how dependent their accumulation of wealth is based on pillage of state resources, on neo-liberal policies which led to the take over at bargain prices of privatised public enterprises, deregulation that allows for plunder of the environment to extract natural resources at the highest rate of return, tax-cuts, and elimination of social programmes and labour rights.

It is absolutely clear that the state plays an essential role in facilitating the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few, whether in facilitating the plundering of the state treasury (i.e. public money) and the environment or in heightening the direct or indirect exploitation of labour. It also promotes the interests of the wealthy in other countries. It facilitates the entry of the big corporations into their markets, at times through arm-twisting or wars. WikiLeaks cable revealed that the US sought to retaliate against Europe on Genetically Modified Crops (GM Crops). In the 2007 leaked cable, then US ambassador to France Craig Stapleton wrote, “Europe is moving backwards not forwards on this issue with France playing a leading role, along with Austria, Italy and even the (European) Commission… Moving to retaliation will make clear that the current path has real costs to EU interests and could help strengthen European pro-biotech voice.” Stapleton recommended retaliations that would cause “some pain” across EU. It is evident that the US policy on genetically modified organisms is being influenced by the multinational corporations that profit from genetic engineering and the export-oriented agribusiness. The government has virtually become an agency for promoting the private interests of the Monsanto Corporation.

Monsanto and other biotech corporations have been pushing to find new market footholds in collaboration with USAID, the US State Department and the Gates Foundation Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA). According to Netline: “The collusion of the Gates Foundation with Monsanto Corporation is no accident, as high level officials leading AGRA are former Monsanto executives. The recent purchase by AGRA of $500,000 worth in Monsanto stocks was vivid proof of that close relationship. Despite many words by Gates officials since the inception of the AGRA agenda denying that GMO seeds would be used as part of AGRA, their close relationship with Monsanto has now been revealed to be a key element in their agronomic ‘new green revolution’ strategy.”

Speaking at the Commission in World Farming annual lecture, Samuel Jutzi, director of the animal production and health division of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) bemoaned that powerful, large agri-business and food producing companies are blocking reforms which would improve human health and environment.

US has been waging wars, covertly or overtly, to open countries to US corporate and banking interests. The US economic neoliberalism and the shock doctrine of deconstruction and chaos can be seen around the world. For example, the capacity to control natural resources in Africa is enhanced by spreading terror, uprooting people, destroying families, and sowing distrust and hatred. Armed conflicts are sustained, and at times instigated, through supply of weapons. The armed conflicts in countries cause political chaos, destroy infrastructure and make a huge dent on their economies, which make them vulnerable. This provides an easy access for the transnational companies to their markets and natural resources.
The neighbouring countries of the Democratic Republic of Congo, and transnational companies with the active support of their respective governments, have been deeply involved in the plundering of coltan, a critical raw material in high-tech manufacturing, in the Congo. As a consequence of the pillaging of the natural resources in this country, more than 60 lakh Congolese died since 1996. The United Nations characterised the “resource war” in the Congo as the worst humanitarian crisis since the World War II.

The interconnectedness between wars and control of natural resources and markets is expressed by the former US Marine Smedley Butler, who participated in many wars in the Central and the South America. He said, “I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927, I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.”

Evo Morales, president of Bolivia, rightly said, “Capitalism has twins, the market and war. The market converts life into commodities, it converts land into a commodity. And when capitalists cannot sustain this economic model based on looting, on exploitation, on marginalisation, on exclusion and, above all, on the accumulation of capital, they rely on war, the arms race.” Wealthiest class feels no pinch from higher taxes when the country goes to war. Common citizen bears the cost by paying higher taxes. So the state, as a representative of the wealthy, can undertake any number of military adventures to further the reach of corporations. Corporations and contractors stand only to gain.

The collusion between political and business classes in furthering their self interests at the cost of majority of people has been exposed by the recent scandals in India. The leaked telephone conversations of Niira Radia, a prominent business lobbyist, reveal some of the country’s most powerful tycoons scheming to manipulate government appointments and influence regulatory decisions. On 5 April 2010 writing in the Indian newspaper DNA, activist-artist Mallika Sarabhai lambasted the government for failing to crack down on corruption and collusion, asking the pointed question: “Who will fight the robber barons pillaging India?”

One of the main reasons for the poverty, disease, death and destruction in the Democratic Republic of Congo is the “resource war”. The Congo is a storehouse of important minerals for the functioning of modern society, particularly as it relates to the mining and technology sectors. The key natural resources are: diamonds, gold, coltan, copper, uranium, tin, silver, cobalt, timber, manganese and petroleum. The Congo has a history of being pillaged and the people being used as fodder in a rush for natural resources. During the rule of the Belgian king, Leopold II, from 1885-1908, more than one crore Congolese died as a result of plundering of natural resources. The resources at the root of suffering of the Congolese were ivory and rubber. Today it is coltan, diamonds, gold, copper and tin, to name a few. Bill Gates’ Microsoft Office needs some of these “conflict minerals” such as coltan.

On 7 January 2007 Los Angeles Times published an investigation report on the activities of Gates Foundation in Niger Delta in Africa. Its staff Charles Piller, Edmund Sanders and Robyn Dixon wrote: “The Gates Foundation has poured $218 million into polio and measles immunization and research worldwide, including in the Niger Delta. At the same time that it is paying for inoculations to protect health, it has invested $423 million in Eni, Royal Dutch Shell, Exxon Mobil, Chevron and Total France—the companies responsible for most of the flares blanketing the delta with pollution, beyond anything permitted in the United States or Europe. A sampling of the Gates Foundation’s largest investments between $100 million and $1 billion: Abbott Laboratories, Archer Daniels Midland, British Petroleum, Canadian national Railway, Exxon Mobil, Freddie Mac, French Government, Japanese Government, Merck, Schering Plough, Tyco International, Waste Management… Indeed, local leaders blame oil developments for fostering some of the very afflictions that the foundation combats.”

The report in the LA Times points out, “Oil bore holes fill with stagnant water, which is ideal for mosquitoes that spread malaria, one of the diseases the foundation is fighting. Investigators for Dr. Nonyenim Solomon Enyidah, heath commissioner for Rivers State… cite an oil spill clogging rivers as a cause of cholera, another scourge the foundation is battling. The bright, sooty gas flares—which contain toxic byproducts such as benzene, mercury and chromium—lower immunity, Enyidah said, and make children more susceptible to polio and measles—the diseases that the Gates Foundation has helped to inoculate against.”

The Gates Foundation endowment had major holdings in:

• Companies ranked among the worst US and Canadian polluters, including ConocoPhilips, Dow Chemicals Co., and Tyco International;
• Many of the other major polluters, including companies that own oil refinery that cause sickness in children while the foundation tries to save their parents from AIDS;
• Pharmaceutical companies that price drugs beyond the reach of AIDS patients the foundation is trying to treat;
• This is “the dirty secret” of many large philanthropists, said Paul Hawken, an expert on socially beneficial investing who directs the Natural Capital Institute, an investment research group. “Foundations donate to groups trying to heal the future,” Hawken said in an interview, “but with their investments, they steal from the future.”

This report on Gates Foundation reminds me of Janus, a two-face Roman god. Janus was characterised by the blending of maleficent and beneficent. His one face represents war and the other peace.

It is time to see the OTHER FACE of the headline grabbing initiatives of billionaire philanthropists.

If the wealthy really want to create a better world through philanthropic activities, first they should meet other commitments such as paying more taxes, not pressing on laws and regulations, giving better benefits, job protection and work conditions to their employees, and manufacturing goods using environmentally friendly products and processes.
The billionaire philanthropists should also acknowledge the ineffectiveness of charity. We know that majority of charities, while well intentioned, have not radically impacted world’s greatest challenges. The problems of the deprived masses can not be solved by charity and patronage. Their misery can not be dealt with an economic system that is responsible for the unequal world which makes a small percentage of the people staggeringly rich and throws an overwhelming majority into poverty and despair. Ironically, the wealthy modern day philanthropists are precisely the ones who define the laws of the present system pushing majority into poverty, disease and death.

Over the past four year Harper’s government has been offside with the world community on a whole host of issues. Canada was among a small number of countries that refused to recognize the human right to water or sign the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. On two occasions, Ottawa blocked consensus at the Rotterdam Convention to place chrysotile asbestos, a known toxin, on its list of dangerous products, and in November Finance Minister Jim Flaherty refused to even consider British PM Gordon Brown’s idea of a global tax on international financial transactions.

Close to the companies making huge profits on the Tar Sands, the Conservatives repeatedly sabotaged international climate negotiations. They angered many in the Commonwealth by blocking a resolution calling for a “binding commitment” on rich countries to reduce emissions and at a UN climate conference in Bangkok last year, many delegates from poorer countries left a negotiating session in protest after a Canadian suggestion to scrap the Kyoto Protocol as the basis of negotiations.

The Conservatives extreme “Israel no matter what” position definitely hurt its chance on Tuesday. “It’s hard to find a country friendlier to Israel than Canada these days,” explained Israeli Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, who emigrated from Moldova when he was 20 but still feels fit to call for the expulsion of Palestinian citizens of Israel.

The Conservatives publicly endorsed Israel’s 2006 attack on Lebanon, voted against a host of UN resolutions supporting Palestinian rights and in February Ottawa delighted Israeli hawks by canceling $15 million in funding for the UN agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA). The money was transferred to Palestinian security reform.

For the past three years, Canada has been heavily invested in training a Palestinian security force designed to oversee Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and “to ensure that the PA [Palestinian Authority] maintains control of the West Bank against Hamas,” as Canadian ambassador to Israel Jon Allen was quoted as saying by the Canadian Jewish News. According to deputy Foreign Affairs minister Peter Kent, Operation PROTEUS, Canada’s military training mission in the West Bank, is the country’s “second largest deployment after Afghanistan” and it receives “most of the money” from a five-year $300 million Canadian aid program to the Palestinians.

At the same time as Canadian “aid” strengthens the most compliant Palestinian political factions, the Conservatives have refused any criticism of Israel’s onslaught against the 1.5 million people living in Gaza. Canada was the only country at the UN Human Rights Council to vote against a January 2008 resolution that called for “urgent international action to put an immediate end to Israel’s siege of Gaza.”

Later in 2008 Israel unleashed a 22-day military assault on Gaza that left 1,400 Palestinians dead. In response, many governments condemned the bombing and Venezuela broke off all diplomatic relations. Israel didn’t need to worry since Ottawa was prepared to help out. The Canadian embassy now represents Israel’s diplomatic interests in Caracas.

While Brazil and Turkey tried to dissipate hostility towards Iran, Harper used his pulpit as host of the G8 to pave the way for a possible U.S.-Israeli attack. A February 17 Toronto Star article was headlined: “Military action against Iran still on the table, Kent says.” The junior foreign minister explained that “it’s a matter of timing and it’s a matter of how long we can wait without taking more serious preemptive action.”

“Preemptive action” is a euphemism for a bombing campaign. Canadian naval vessels are already running provocative maneuvers off Iran’s coast and by stating that “an attack on Israel would be considered an attack on Canada,” Kent is trying to create the impression that Iran may attack Israel. But it is Israel that possesses nuclear weapons and threatens to bomb Iran, not the other way around.

While Ottawa considers Iran’s nuclear energy program a major threat, Israel’s atomic bombs have not provoked similar condemnation. The Harper government abstained on a number of near unanimous votes asking Israel to place its nuclear weapons program under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) controls and in September Bloomberg cited Canada as one of three countries that opposed an IAEA probe of Israel’s nuclear facilities as part of an Arab led effort to create a nuclear-weapons-free Middle East.

Not content with taking on Iran, the military-minded Conservatives turned on Russia. Harper referred to Russia as “aggressive” and in a throwback to the Cold War, Defence Minister Peter MacKay added that Ottawa would respond to Russian flights in the Arctic by flying Canadian fighter jets near Russian airspace. Making sure that Moscow got the message, during a July 2007 visit to the Ukraine, MacKay said Canada would help provide a “counterbalance” to Russia.

Ottawa even prioritized the military over aid in the face of the incredible suffering caused by Haiti’s earthquake. Two thousand Canadian troops were deployed while several Heavy Urban Search Rescue Teams were readied but never sent. Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon explained that the teams were not needed because “the government had opted to send Canadian Armed Forces instead.”

Overthrown in February 2004 by a joint U.S./France/Canada destabilization campaign, Haiti’s most popular political party, Fanmi Lavalas, has been barred from participating in elections. The Conservatives supported Fanmi Lavalas’ exclusion, congratulating Haiti’s puppet government for bringing “a period of stabilization” good for “investment and trade.” Ottawa backed up its words with deeds, adding tens of millions of dollars to a Haitian prison and police system that has been massively expanded and militarized since the 2004 coup.

Ottawa gave its tacit support to the Honduran military’s removal of elected president Manuel Zelaya in June 2009. Mexico’s Notimex reported that Canada was the only country in the hemisphere that did not explicitly call for Zelaya’s return to power and Canadian officials repeatedly criticized Zelaya at the Organization of American States (OAS). The ousted government complained that Ottawa failed to suspend aid to Honduras, which is the largest recipient of Canadian assistance in Central America. Nor did Ottawa exclude the Honduran military from its Military Training Assistance Program.

The Harper government opposed Zelaya’s move to join the Hugo Chavez led Alba, the Bolivarian Alliance for the People of Our Americas, which is a response to North American capitalist domination of the region. Canada has actively supported the U.S.-led campaign against the government of Venezuela. In mid-2007 Harper toured South America “to show [the region] that Canada functions and that it can be a better model than Venezuela,” in the words of a high-level foreign affairs official. During the trip, Harper and his entourage made a number of comments critical of the Venezuelan government.

After meeting only members of the opposition during a trip to Venezuela in January, Peter Kent told the media that “democratic space within Venezuela has been shrinking and in this election year, Canada is very concerned about the rights of all Venezuelans to participate in the democratic process.”

Venezuela’s ambassador to the 34-country OAS, Roy Chaderton Matos, responded: “I am talking of a Canada governed by an ultra right that closed its Parliament for various months to (evade) an investigation over the violation of human rights — I am talking about torture and assassinations — by its soldiers in Afghanistan.”

Despite the move to the left among the majority of the region’s governments Harper moved closer to Latin America’s most right-wing state. Colombia’s terrible human rights record did not stop Harper from signing a free-trade agreement that even Washington couldn’t stomach.

The trade agreement as well as the Harper government’s shift of aid from Africa to Latin America was designed to support Canadian corporate interests and the region’s right-wing governments and movements. Barely discussed in the media, the main goal of the shift in aid was to stunt Latin America’s recent rejection of neoliberalism and U.S. dependence.

One issue mentioned in a number of media reports about Canada’s loss last week had to do with the Congo. At the G8 in June the Conservatives pushed for an entire declaration to the final communiqué criticizing the Congo for attempting to gain a greater share of its vast mineral wealth. Months earlier Ottawa began to obstruct international efforts to reschedule the country’s foreign debt, which was mostly accrued during more than three decades of Joseph Mobuto’s dictatorship and the subsequent war.

Canadian officials “have a problem with what’s happened with a Canadian company,” Congolese Information Minister Lambert Mende said referring to the government’s move to revoke a mining concession that Vancouver-based First Quantum acquired under dubious circumstances during the 1998-2003 war. “The Canadian government wants to use the Paris Club [of debtor nations] in order to resolve a particular problem,” explained Mende. “This is unacceptable.”

The mining industry increasingly represents Canada abroad. Canadian miners operate more than 3,000 projects outside this country and many of these mines have displaced communities, destroyed ecosystems and resulted in violence. This doesn’t bother the Harper government, which is close to the most retrograde sectors of the mining industry. Last year they rejected a proposal – agreed to by the Mining Association of Canada under pressure from civil society groups — to make diplomatic and financial support for resource companies operating overseas contingent upon socially responsible conduct. Despite countless horror stories suggesting the contrary, the Conservatives claim that voluntary standards are the best way to improve Canadian mining companies’ social responsibility.

Finally, the Conservatives have knowingly supported torture in Afghanistan and embraced an increasingly violent counterinsurgency war. Apparently, Canadian Joint Task Force 2 commandos regularly take part in nighttime assassination raids, which are highly unpopular with the Afghan population.

Losing the Security Council seat will hopefully cost the Conservatives some votes and temper their more extreme international positions. But, for those of us working to radically transform Canadian foreign policy the consequences of the loss may be much greater. There has probably never been a bigger blow to the carefully crafted image of Canada as a popular international do-gooder, a mythology that blinds so many Canadians to our country’s real role in the world.

Rwanda has responded fiercely to the accusation of genocide and has threatened to withdraw its soldiers from UN peacekeeping efforts in Darfur and elsewhere. The contents of the report are not necessarily new; similar charges were made in the 1997 United Nations led study by Roberto Garreton. The difference is that the United Nations is now poised to put its imprimatur on the charges of genocide, and Rwanda’s primary backers, the United States and Britain, do not appear to have blocked, discouraged or subverted the report as was the case in the late 1990s.

Due in part to pressure from the Rwandan government, the report that was supposed to be released last week has been delayed until October 1st.

Human Rights Watch researcher Anneke Van Woudenberg says the report is of “immense historical importance.” Over 200 Congolese human rights groups, many of which collaborated with the UN investigative team on the report, have called on the United Nations to endorse and publish the report.

The report has the potential to restructure the manner in which Western governments deal with the Congo and the Great Lakes region of Africa. Eyes are on the United States and Britain in particular. Both countries have covered for Rwanda and given Paul Kagame carte blanche, in spite of existing US law (PL 109-456) that would hold Rwanda accountable for its destructive and destabilizing actions in the Congo.

The call from the Congolese people for justice has been consistent for the past fourteen years. Will the world finally listen and act? Today is the world’s Congo moment. The leaked UN report is a call to all justice seekers and fighters against mass atrocities and genocide to break the silence and stand for justice in the heart of Africa.

“If the road would speak, then I wouldn’t be scared, if the birds would sing, then I would vow to never vanish,” wrote Beatrice Munyenyezi, “I wouldn’t be lost in the woods, a place where sound and noise is unheard of, and the sky, the sky is not even there to guide you, to guide me.”

So begins Beatrice Munyenyezi’s personalized account as a refugee who survived the slaughter of millions of people in Rwanda, in Zaire/Congo, and in neighboring countries, between 1990 and 1998—always erroneously defined as “the 1994 Rwanda genocide” where brutality is universally attributed to the Hutu ethnic group and Tutsis are always the only victims.

Ms. Munyenyezi has been transforming her ordeal of unspeakable brutality and terror into a book tentatively titled Life in the Middle of Nowhere: Surviving Genocide in Rwanda and Zaire. It is her version of Surviving the Slaughter: The Ordeal of a Rwandan Refugee in Zaire (2004) a renowned non-fiction book published in Europe and written by Marie Beatrice Umutesi, a Hutu and genocide survivor.

On Thursday June 24, 2010, this project abruptly came to a halt when Federal agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) confiscated all of Ms. Munyenyezi’s texts, notes, documents, computers and other personal items. (ICE is the largest investigative agency in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.) Now her private testimony as a refugee and survivor will likely be used against her in another case of politically motivate genocide charges.

The U.S. Department of Justice has suggested that Beatrice Munyenyezi might be deported to face genocide charges in Rwanda. But Ms. Munyenyezi will be a milestone case: the first international legal proceedings in the United States involving a female of any ethnicity or nationality charged with rape as a genocide and war crime.

On June 24, 2010, Beatrice Munyenyezi (MOON’-yen-yezi) was arrested in Manchester, New Hampshire (USA) and charged, according to U.S. prosecutors, with “procuring U.S. citizenship unlawfully by misrepresenting her activities during the 1994 Rwandan genocide.”

According to the government of Rwanda, Beatrice Munyenyezi, 40, allegedly “participated in, committed, ordered, oversaw, conspired to, aided and abetted, assisted in and directed persecution, kidnapping, rape and murder during the Rwandan genocide of 1994.”

These are generic genocide charges used by the Rwandan military regime against all Hutus.¹

According to U.S. prosecutors, Ms. Munyenyezi allegedly concealed these facts in order to obtain immigration and naturalization benefits and lied about her connection to the genocide when seeking citizenship. Ms. Munyenyezi’s husband and mother-in-law are in custody at the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda (ICTR) in Arusha, Tanzania on genocide charges.²

If convicted of the two counts of procuring U.S. citizenship unlawfully, Munyenyezi faces up to 10 years imprisonment, followed by 3 years of supervised release and a $250,000 fine, along with revocation of her U.S. Citizenship.

Beatrice Munyenyezi survived the invasion of Byumba Prefecture by Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) guerillas in 1990, and the years of RPF persecution and genocide that saw entire Hutu villages in Byumba razed, massacres of scores of thousands of people, and the internal displacement of some 2 million Hutus—forced into a life-and-death refugee existence inside Rwanda between October 1990 and April 1994.

Ms. Munyenyezi then survived the so-called ‘100 days of genocide’ in Rwanda from April to July 1994. She fled Rwanda with family members on July 18, 1994, part of the massive exodus of millions of Rwandans, mostly innocent Hutu women and children, after the RPF won the civil war in Rwanda, to eastern Zaire (Dem. Rep. of Congo), where she survived the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Hutu civilians by the RPF.³

Beatrice Munyenyezi fled from Congo to Kenya at the advice of her brother, Jean-Marie Vianney Higiro, another U.S. citizen also being hunted by the Kagame regime and its political, military and economic partners.⁴ In Tanzania and Kenya she survived RPF agents hunting refugees and assassinating dissidents (including former RPF official Seth Sendashonga).⁵

Evacuated to the United States in March 1998, Beatrice Munyenyezi was first assisted by a Catholic charity in New Hampshire. She later worked for the Manchester Housing and Redevelopment Authority, which owns and manages 1,271 public housing apartments for low-income families, elderly, and adults with disabilities, from March 2001 to March 2005. MHRA spokeswoman Michelle Desmond would not comment on Ms. Munyenyezi’s service record, but Beatrice has regularly worked with other groups to assist refugees of many nationalities. She taught herself English and pursued degrees at a local community college and at the University of New Hampshire.

The Associated Press and other news outlets splashed Ms. Munyenyezi’s arrest across the news on June 24, 2010. “An estimated 800,000 people were murdered during the 1994 Rwandan Genocide, which took place over the course of approximately 100 days,” these outlets universally reported.⁶

The official narrative on ‘genocide’—distilled to the simple sound-bite above—is maintained by the current government of Rwanda and its military, political and economic partners to silence debate and manufacture a version of events that protects the perpetrators and criminalizes victims like Beatrice Munyenyezi and her family members.

President Paul Kagame runs the military dictatorship in Rwanda with his closest military associates from the former Rwandan Patriotic Front/Army (RPF), now known as the Rwanda Defense Forces. In October 1990, the RPF guerrilla army invaded northern Rwanda from neighboring Uganda, backed by the United States and Britain. Over the next four years the RPF terrorized Rwandan civilians as they slowly seized the country and overthrew the Hutu-majority government of President Juvenal Habyarimana.⁷

Predominantly comprised of hardened Uganda guerrillas of the Tutsi ethnicity who fought (1980-1985) to bring Uganda’s strongman Yoweri Museveni to power, these guerrillas, backed by London and Washington, have perpetrated massive genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity on millions of innocent civilians in Uganda, Rwanda and the Dem. Rep. of Congo.

Contrary to popular propaganda, the sound bite claiming that the RPF ‘stopped the genocide against Tutsis’ in Rwanda is a gross mischaracterization of the nature of genocide versus civil war in Rwanda. It is also a sound bite that deflects attention from the RPF role in mass atrocities in Rwanda and Congo. The Kagame regime is able to get away with anything it wants—arrest and torture opponents, persecute refugees everywhere, plunder minerals from Congo —because President Paul Kagame has provided the Pentagon its biggest, centralized base for the Pentagon’s U.S. Africa Command, AFRICOM.

PERSECUTING OPPOSITION AND SURVIVORS

On June 24, 2010, the Kagame regime in Rwanda violently suppressed dissent in Rwanda as the three primary political parties standing in opposition to President Paul Kagame and his Rwandan Patriotic Front saw their members and leaders physically harassed, barred from leaving their residences, and in some cases arrested. Reports were of ‘mobs’ of government supporters—these are often rented crowds—at each location where the harassment occurred.⁸

This follows the June 19, 2010 assassination attempt in South Africa of exiled Rwandan General Faustin Nyamwasa, who fled Rwanda after being accused of opposing the Kagame government.⁹ Nyamwasa is one of over 15 leading military officers and Ambassadors who have been imprisoned or forced into exile in recent months.¹⁰

On June 29, 2010, South African Security Service (SASS) arrested four men for the June 19 attempted murder Nyamwasa and all four men have asylum in South Africa. Three of the four men have already surrendered asylum papers for an investigation.¹¹ South African officials are withholding information about the nationality of these bogus ‘refugees’. However, initial reports have confirmed that these are Rwandan nationals, former RPF soldiers and agents from the Directorate of Military Intelligence (DMI), sent by President Paul Kagame and his chief operative General James Kabarebe. The operation to assassinate Nyamwasa was run by a former soldier of rank Captain while the actual shooter was a soldier who formerly served under General Nyamwasa.

Authentic Rwandan refugees, asylum seekers, and true genocide survivors have claimed for years that Rwandan intelligence agents are infiltrated through the asylum process into foreign countries to assassinate or otherwise neutralize perceived enemies, or anyone who speaks out against the Kagame regime. INTERPOL should have arrested General Nyamwasa and Kabarebe, indicted for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide by the Spanish National Court, along with Paul Kagame, whose diplomatic immunity prevented his indictment.

On June 24, Rwandan journalist Jean-Leonard Rugambage, from an opposition newspaper, was shot dead by assailants when returning to his home in Kigali.¹²

On May 23, U.S. attorney and ICTR defense counsel Peter Erlinder was arrested and illegally detained in Rwanda.¹³ Mr. Erlinder flew to Rwanda to represent his client Victoire Ingabire, a Hutu woman also persecuted by the Kagame regime. Erlinder, charged with ‘genocide denial’ and denied bail twice, was released on medical grounds after 21 days incarceration but faces charges with punishment up to 25 years.¹⁴

Victoire Ingabire arrived in Rwanda in January 2010 to contest the upcoming presidential elections. She and her aides were immediately arrested and she has been charged with genocide denial and other thought crimes.¹⁵

The military and intelligence apparatus directly run by President Paul Kagame maintains elite networks of death squads inside and outside Rwanda. Tasked with hunting and neutralizing any dissidents, critics, intellectuals, writers, human rights activists, or other ‘opposition’ to Kagame’s regime, these agents operate freely throughout Africa, Europe, Canada and the United States. Anyone critical of the Kagame military regime is falsely accused of involvement in genocide, ‘genocide negationism’ or ‘genocide denial’.¹⁶

Young Congolese men falsely accused of being Hutu genocidaires beaten and detained in Eastern Congo. Photo by KHS

RPF agents in the Boston, Massachusetts area, which is very close to Manchester, New Hampshire, include Tufts University ‘law scholar’ Patrick Karuretwa, a current member of the Rwandan Defense Forces, a former RPF guerrilla, and a member of Paul Kagame’s elite and brutal Republican Presidential Guard.¹⁷ Paul Kagame has been a regular guest in Boston at Tufts’ Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy, Boston University and Harvard: his power base in the U.S. is Boston.

Karuretwa has been using the Harvard Law Record, a high profile student newspaper, to advance propaganda favorable to the Kagame regime and to turn public opinion against legitimate Rwandan refugees and portray them as genocidaires or genocide deniers.¹⁸ (The Harvard Law Record claims to be independent but would not respond to inquiries or publish comments contrary to Karuretwa.)

The process of Karuretwa’s admission to the United States and enrollment and funding at Tufts University has not come under scrutiny by the Department of Homeland Security. The Kagame government has infiltrated agents into western countries posing as asylum seekers.¹⁹

“The Kagame government is trying to frame my sister now,” says Professor Jean-Marie Vianney Higiro. “They are trying to get to me. They have tried to accuse me of lying on my immigration forms, but I was evacuated from Rwanda [1994] as a family member of a U.S. citizen. Probably I will be arrested soon.”

Jean-Marie Vianney Higiro is a U.S. citizen who was evacuated by the U.S. Embassy in Rwanda and U.S. marines from Bujumbura, Burundi, on April 9, 1994.

The war in Rwanda was escalated by the Rwandan Patriotic Front on April 6, 1994, after the plane carrying Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana and Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira was shot down by the RPF with surface-to-air missiles, killing both presidents, their chiefs of staff, the French pilots and other top Rwandan and Burundian officials. The United States and its allies, including the United Nations and the Rwanda Tribunal (ICTR), have blocked all investigations into this major act of international terrorism.²⁰

The Rwandan Patriotic Front and Ugandan People’s Defense Forces (UPDF) marched through Byumba Province clearing the land of its people, whether Hutu or Tutsi. Attacks against Byumba began with the RPF invasion of October 1990, another act of international terrorism that remains opaque and unpunished, though it set the stage for the death of more than ten million people in Central Africa since. Ninety-nine percent of Byumba was occupied by the RPF and their scorched earth campaign to clear the land through massacres, rapes, and forced displacement.

In their village in Byumba, the family home of Beatrice Munyenyezi, Prudence Kantengwa and Jean-Marie Vianney Higiro, built by their father with the help of Catholic missionaries in 1957, was destroyed by the RPF in 1991.

“I was born in Northern Rwanda, a province of Byumba, a place that perhaps many of you have never heard of,” the introduction to Ms. Munyenyezi’s book continues. “Yes, it is in the middle of nowhere. It is a place where your cry, echoes and echoes but still is not heard, a place where you cry and the tears refuse to come, a place where you wait for someone, anyone to come and save you, but instead the ghost of your failure, of your misery shows up on your doorstep. No one can hear your cries, your sobs, for you are alone.”

Associate Professor of Communications at Western New England College in Springfield, MA, Dr. Higiro is one of few remaining Hutu intellectuals not arrested or killed by the RPF regime. He has been a constant source of tension to Kagame, who in turn maintains intense pressure on the U.S. government—its leading military and economic partner—to arrest Higiro.

Dr. Higiro was critical of both the Habyarimana and Kagame governments, and he has published articles and given talks about the media climate just prior to the events of April-July 1994, and about the commodification of genocide used to advance the political and economic objectives of the Kagame military regime and to hide the RPF’s organized criminal activities and war crimes in the Democratic Republic of Congo.²¹

Prior to April 1994, Higiro was director of the Rwandan Information Office (ORINFOR). The RPF government has tried to arrest and extradite Higiro since Dr. Higiro’s refusal to accept the RPF government appointment of Minister of Information, in July 1994, after seeing reports of RPF massacres against scores of thousands of Hutus.

“They arrested my sister Prudence Kantengwa in Boston in 2008. Her case resulted in lengthy trials costing U.S. taxpayers a lot of money. Now they have arrested Beatrice. But she [Beatrice] was not a government official in Rwanda, she was not with the Interahamwe [militias], she is just a young Rwandan woman who survived the genocide and made it to America.”

FALSIFICATION OF EVIDENCE

Prudence Kantengwa was arrested in Boston in 2008. Also a Hutu and the sister of Jean-Marie Vianney Higiro and Beatrice Munyenyezi, Ms. Kantengwa applied for asylum in the United States in 2001, but she was initially denied.

U.S. immigration judge Eliza C. Klein granted asylum to Prudence Kantengwa against the U.S. government prosecutor’s wishes. U.S. immigration then appealed to the Immigration Review Board who confirmed Judge Klein’s ruling in June of this year.

But prior to the first favorable asylum ruling by Judge Klein, the U.S. immigration prosecutors saw that the Kantengwa asylum case was not going their way. ICE then arrested and accused Prudence Kantengwa of lying on her visa application. The resulting U.S. Federal Criminal Court case is ongoing.

Jeffrey Auerhahn is a U.S. prosecutor on Prudence Kantengwa’s criminal court case. In a high-profile organized crime murder case in Boston, begun in 1985, U.S. prosecutor Jeffrey Auerhahn engaged in misconduct and when deposed by the court in 2003 he lied about it. Auerhahn went beyond misconduct to criminal behavior, including: [a] coercing a witness into giving false testimony (suborning perjury); [b] falsifying evidence; 
[c] withholding exculpatory evidence from defense; and [d] lying before the court (perjury).²² He is also named in an open citizen’s letter seeking redress from the U.S. prosecutor’s office in Boston for FBI retaliation against Muslims who have refused to work as FBI informants in the Muslim communities around Boston.²³

The case was investigated and reported in detail by Boston’s WBUR News journalists David Boeri, Lisa Tobin, Jesse Costa and Andrew Phelps. “Federal Judge Mark Wolf called the conduct of Jeffrey Auerhahn ‘A fraud upon the court’,” they reported.

U.S. prosecutor Jeffrey Auerhahn is one of two federal prosecutors on the Beatrice Munyenyezi case, also a Federal Criminal Court case because Beatrice Munyenyezi is now a U.S. citizen and the asylum system no longer can be used against her. Auerhahn was never disciplined or disbarred for his unscrupulous actions. The case raised troubling questions from critics—including judges—who worry that withholding evidence has become a tactic of some federal prosecutors.

“Unfortunately, this U.S. prosecutor Mr. Auerhahn is still exhibiting the same misconduct in my case,” says Prudence Kantengwa. “The discovery process, which usually takes no more than 3 months, has taken more than a year and is still going on because prosecutors have refused to share the information they have that contradicts their allegations. And my guess is that they are hiding written information—such as investigation made about me which took 6 months before I was granted a visa to the US in 2001—and plan to bring witnesses in collaboration with the Rwanda government [whom] they have trained on what to fabricate against me.” 

Rwandan asylum hearings in the U.S.,²⁴ Canada and Europe also suppress evidence that would exonerate the accused. Instead, prosecutors and judges rely on disinformation and falsified evidence, including the U.S. State Department’s annual Country Report on Human Rights: Rwanda, which are extraordinary documents that suppress critical facts and information and advance very positive images of the Kagame regime: Not only is the Rwanda Government cleansed of its crimes, it is applauded for its supposed attention to the rule of law and recovery from an untenable political horror story: genocide.²⁵,²⁶

U.S. asylum hearings also rely heavily on testimonies collected by Rwandan military and intelligence officials using intimidation, bribery, torture and the threat of being accused of genocide and tried before the so-called ‘people’s courts’ in Rwanda, the Gacaca courts.²⁷ Communities and family members in Rwanda are also retried for the same offenses at Gacaca trials where intimidation is used to force a verdict that satisfies the Kagame regime. People are also routinely disappeared in Rwanda, and assassinated in other countries.²⁸ Young men and boys are forced to attend “re-education camps” on remote Iwawa Island in Lake Kivu, heavily guarded by RDF soldiers, subject to ‘thought-control’ and psychological intimidation.²⁹

In United States of America vs. Francois Karake et al., a U.S. court dismissed all charges brought by the U.S. and Rwanda governments against three Rwandan defendants, all Hutus, accused of the murder of two U.S. and other tourists in Uganda’s Bwindi National Park in March 1999. The investigation spanned four years and involved the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ascertained that the defendant’s testimonies had been extracted through physical torture with the involvement of U.S. agents. The prisoners were incarcerated and interrogated at Kami Military Barracks, notorious for RPF torture operations, in Rwanda.

Terror is a strong incentive to make people collaborate with Rwandan government officials to produce convincing documentary ‘evidence’. In the fall of 2009, Human Rights Watch documented the case where more than 300 Rwandans fled southern Rwanda to Burundi in fear of being falsely accused or genocide, sent back to Gacaca for retrial, or disappeared.³⁰

“Jeffrey Auerhahn continues to work as a federal prosecutor in Boston,” WBUR News David Boeri reported in February 2010. “He’s been praised by the last U.S. Attorney. There’s never been a public action by the Justice Department to discipline him.”²²

The evidence used by U.S. prosecutor Jeffrey Auerhahn against Prudence Kantengwa was in part marshaled in Rwanda by investigator Thomas Brian Andersen Jr., a special agent with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Boston, MA.

Agent Anderson traveled to Rwanda on U.S. taxpayer’s money to investigate the case of Prudence Kantengwa for the Federal criminal hearing. In his notarized affidavit to the court, Andersen provides facts that seriously discredit his claim to expertise on Rwanda or the case in question.

• Paragraph 12: “The vast majority of the Hutu elite, including the assassinated president, were from Byumba.” President Juvenal Habyarimana was from Gisenyi Prefecture, northwestern Rwanda, not Byumba Prefecture, northeastern Rwanda; the vast majority of the Hutu elite did not come from Byumba either; if anything Byumba was one of the least privileged provinces even though it was considered as President Habyarimana’s fiefdom.

• Paragraph 12: “The prime minister, who was a member of the RPF [Rwandan Patriotic Front] Tutsi party, was murdered.” Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana was a Hutu, never a member of the RPF party, but a member of the MDR, or Mouvement Démocratique Républicain; further, the prime minister’s murder remains shrouded in questions about RPF and United Nations Assistance Mission to Rwanda (UNAMIR) troop involvement as extensive ICTR trial documents make clear; the assumption and allegation that she was murdered by Hutu extremists is another example of the investigator’s prejudice based on news media, falsified stories, and falsified human rights reports, and RPF propaganda;

• Paragraph 12: “[Prudence] Kantengwa was married to Athanse Munyemana, who was a minister in the extremist Hutu government.” Athanse Munyemana was never a Hutu government minister: he was a state intelligence bureau official and a magistrate who could not have belonged to a political party under the Rwandan constitution of 1991.

ICE AGENT THOMAS BRIAN ANDERSEN

In his June 2010 request for a warrant for search and seizure of property belonging to Beatrice Munyenyezi, ICE special agent Thomas Brian Andersen Jr. provided an affidavit that is a travesty of justice.³¹ He does not anywhere discuss his relationship with the Rwandan government, but nonetheless declares his independence from, for example, the Rwandan regime’s Directorate of Military Intelligence: it is impossible to pursue the investigations he claims to have performed independently without the involvement, oversight, or monitoring of the notorious DMI.

Agent Andersen does not elucidate his relationship to Rwandan ‘genocide survivor’ organizations IBUKA (“remember”) and AVEGA (Association des Veuves du Genocide/Association of the Widows of Genocide), both known to be populated with bogus ‘survivors’ coached, paid and protected by the RPF government.³²

Basing his statements from witnesses whom he purportedly interviewed in Rwanda, purportedly without government interference, these being people whom he claims are independent and authentic witnesses, authentic genocide survivors and authentic convicted genocidaires, special agent Thomas Brian Andersen then testified:

I believe these witnesses are reliable because they are eyewitnesses for whom it is a great personal risk to submit to being a witness and because there is no motivation to provide false information, given that many of these witnesses reside in Rwanda and have no contact with Munyenyezi.

The above statement indicates that Andersen has no understanding of events in Rwanda in general, and, in particular, no understanding of: [1] the politics of genocide accusations; [2] motivations such as land, housing and other property disputes; [3] motivations such as personal or economic rivalry; [4] intimidation, accusation and the threat of physical violence used to coerce and fabricate witnesses and testimonies; [5] financial and other incentives used to induce testimonies that suit the Rwandan regime; [6] the motivations of Hutu prisoners accused or already convicted of genocide to produce false testimonies against other Hutus.

The fact that witnesses ‘reside in Rwanda’ is not evidence of their absence of bias, but rather evidence of their propensity toward bias. In particular, thousands of Ugandans currently occupy Rwandan homes and lands taken by force by the RPF from previous landowners of both Hutu and Tutsi ethnicity. (If agent Andersen went to Butembo in North Kivu province in the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo he would find thousands of Rwandan RPF Tutsis occupying homes and lands there; it would be impossible and outrageous to conclude that their presence in Congo substantiated evidence of their veracity as ‘witnesses’ to events that took place in the local geographical areas of their illegal occupation.)

Paragraph 11 of Andersen’s affidavit reveals the real reason that President Paul Kagame seeks to punish and imprison Beatrice Munyenyezi, with ICE support, and why Rwandan officials are pressing the U.S. government to intimidate, arrest and silence her:

“Over the several days in February 2006, Munyenyezi testified in her husband’s and mother-in-law’s trials at the ICTR.”

ICE agent Andersen offers ‘evidence’ of Beatrice Munyenyezi’s alleged criminality primarily based on guilt by association with her husband and mother-in-law, both involved in ongoing trials at the ICTR. Further, he alleges by association that Beatrice Munyenyezi, a witness who testified in her family member’s defense at these ICTR trials in 2006, is complicit in genocide merely because she testified on her sister’s behalf. Icing the cake of injustice, special agent Andersen alleges in his affidavit (paragraph 11) that Beatrice Munyenyezi committed perjury in her ICTR testimony. Finally, the modus operandi of the Kagame regime and RPF military is to arrest, convict, re-educate (through intimidation and terror) or disappear anyone who testifies contrary to the wishes of the Kagame regime or contrary to the established ‘Rwanda genocide’ narrative, as did Munyenyezi.

In paragraph 12, agent Andersen claims that Beatrice Munyenyezi manned roadblocks, organized killings, oversaw rapes, and gave public speeches inciting mass murder and rape and all the standard crimes that the Kagame regimes uses to criminalize Hutu people. On its face, the evidence produced by agent Andersen appears irrefutable. However, Mr. Andersen does not have all the facts, and it seems he has very few of them, and certain facts are being reserved for the defense arguments of Beatrice Munyenyezi in a court of law.

In attempting to make a case that Beatrice Munyenyezi lied on her immigration forms, ICE special agent Thomas Brain Anderson adduced that she was a member of the Rwandan political party Movement Republicain pour le Developpment (MRND), the party of President Juvenal Habyarimana that has been castigated as an extremist Hutu genocide organization, and she did not check the box declaring her membership in ANY organization.

However, everyone in Rwanda was required to be a member of the MRND party for many years, beginning in 1975, soon after President Habyarimana seized power (1973), and lasting until 1991, when the Habyarimana government opened political space for opposition parties. Also, the fact that your brother and father are members of a certain political party does not confirm that you are also a member of that political party, certainly not in Rwanda, certainly not in the years between 1991 and 1994, when allegiances, alliances and memberships were highly in flux and highly politicized.

Is special agent Thomas Brian Andersen a member of the National Rifle Association? Timothy McVeigh was also a member. Does this make agent Andersen an ‘NRA extremist’? Is agent Andersen a democrat? Are his siblings ALL democrats? Is his father a democrat? Of course, there is no automatic inference of guilt attached to being a democrat or republican in the U.S.—not like MRND membership in Rwanda has been criminalized—no matter the involvement of democrats or republicans in advocating, authorizing and supporting atrocities in foreign interventions. Finally, Did David Kaczynski share the ideology of his brother, Dr. Theodore John Kaczynski? Quod erat demonstrandum…

Additionally, any Hutu refugee fleeing the RPF terror apparatus and genocide against Hutus would have been suicidal to identify themselves as MRND members after July 1994. Further, the assumption or suggestion that the U.S. State Department and its immigration and naturalization service agents would be impartial towards Hutus is unreasonable, and the immigration forms clearly take no account of the extreme conditions of mistrust, terror and basic survival that genocide and war crimes survivors (including Beatrice Munyenyezi) were subject to at the time.

In fact, special agent Andersen later confirms the U.S. official who granted Beatrice Munyenyezi her naturalization status would not have done so had he ‘known the truth about’ her statements—supposing she admitted she was a member of the MRND party: he declared he would have denied her application.

Special agent Thomas Brian Andersen also unreasonably concludes that Beatrice Munyenyezi must have lied in answering the question “have you ever committed a crime of moral turpitude”? Here Andersen jumps from being an ICE investigator to judge and jury against Beatrice Munyenyezi with this conclusive statement of absolutes:

“In fact, as described herein, Munyenyezi had participated in the genocide, and had committed a number of individual crimes, including the assistance of murder, rape, assault and theft, against the Tutsi minority.”

An admission by Beatrice Munyenyezi of involvement in genocide is not herein accepted to be amongst the ‘truthful’ statements that Ms. Munyenyezi was mandated to provide.

Perhaps the most outrageous statement of all, and evidence of special agent Thomas Brian Andersen’s extreme psychological and paranoid prejudices, applied herein against Rwandan genocide survivor Beatrice Munyenyezi, is the Paragraph 28:
I

n addition, on or about January 31, 2005, Munyenyezi was interviewed by the New Hampshire affiliate of National Public Radio to discuss the challenges which face African refugees in the Manchester, New Hampshire area. During the interview Munyenyezi said that she escaped a war in Rwanda with her family and husband. Munyenyezi described how there is discrimination against her in New Hampshire as an African refugee, and she also described herself as a ‘fighter’ against adversity.

Now it is a crime to be interviewed on National Public Radio? Or, is it a crime to be interviewed on NPR in New Hampshire only? Clearly it is a crime to ‘escape a war’ when the top officials for the victor’s of that war, the Rwandan Patriotic Front, have been internationally indicted for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. But the coup de grace comes in the possibility that the ‘crime’ or ‘infraction’ or violation that Beatrice Munyenyezi has committed in special agent Thomas Brian Andersen’s mind is to have admitted so shamelessly that “she described herself as a ‘fighter’ against adversity.”³³

The outrageous crimes of Beatrice Munyenyezi—or the absurdities and paranoia of special agent Thomas Brian Andersen’s mind—don’t stop there however. In paragraph 29:

Munyenyezi also appears to use a computer to correspond with others. An Internet search related to Munyenyezi reveals that on or about May 11, 2009 Munyenyezi submitted a story for publication to the National Endowment for the Arts website related to how she is persevering after her experience in Africa. In addition, a public Internet search as of June 21, 2010 reveals that Munyenyezi has a FACEBOOK account and is virtually connected with several on-line friends.

Is it the appearance of using a computer or the actual use of a computer to correspond with others that agent Andersen finds incriminating? Are Africans not supposed to know how to use computers, or is it only Rwandan Hutus (even U.S. citizens) who are not supposed to use computers and/or correspond with others? Is having a FACEBOOK profile one of Beatrice Munyenyezi’s crimes? Or is her crime that she is “virtually connected with several on-line friends?”

Amongst the most egregious examples of the extreme biases of special agent Thomas Brian Andersen—in favor of the current Rwandan Patriotic Front regime, and against Beatrice Munyenyezi, a former Rwandan national and a person of Hutu ethnicity, now a U.S. citizen, comes in Paragraph 35:

Based on my training and experience and my discussions with other agents who have investigated similar offenses, I have reason to believe that people who were active participants in the Rwandan genocide were themselves Hutu extremists and that they have maintained an active Diaspora throughout the world in the hope of returning to Rwanda for the purpose of overthrowing the current government and re-instituting the policy of genocide, ‘to complete the work’ of killing every last Tutsi. To promote that effort and prove their long-term commitment to the cause—i.e., the extermination of the Tutsi race—Hutu extremists, like Munyenyezi, maintain documents, photographs and memorabilia, which link them to their past and their expected role in the future. The documents, photographs and memorabilia are particularly important to Hutu extremists because, to them, the items prove that the extermination of Tutsi is an act of self-defense.

According to the above reasoning, every Hutu is a genocidaire; every Hutu must be denied any memorabilia of their past or hope for the future; and every Hutu dreams of exterminating Tutsis, and is nefariously plotting “the extermination of the Tutsi race.” This is evidence of special agent Thomas Brian Andersen’s psychological projection, conjecture, paranoia, indoctrination and, worst of all, it exemplifies a psychological profile of an individual or group of one ethnicity (white, Anglo-European) harboring a hostile racial categorization and extreme racial prejudice that seeks to dehumanize all members of different ethnic group—the Hutus—comprised of millions of people.

The FBI surveillance visit to the home of Beatrice Munyenyezi and the subsequent ICE fishing expedition—secured through the arrest warrant obtained through agent Andersen’s affidavit—were clearly in search of, for example, “photographs and memorabilia” that could be used to make an Orwellian argument about “Hutu extremists, like Munyenyezi.” Agent Andersen’s belief that any memorabilia found in the home of a Hutu person is by default evidence of their intention to retake Rwanda by force and “overthrow the current government” is paranoid, hysterical and delusional.

Thomas Brian Andersen shows his extreme hatred for ‘Hutu’ people as a group. His prejudice is exhibited throughout the document, beginning with his summary of Rwandan history, e.g. in paragraph 5, where his encapsulation of hundreds of years of complex African history destroys all context of Hutu-Tutsi relations in favor of the ‘Tutsis as victims’ narrative advanced by the RPF and its allies. He demonstrates his lack of knowledge of the simplest discernable facts, such as the October 1, 1990 date of the illegal RPF invasion of Rwanda (in paragraph 6 he states: “In or about the early 1990’s, the RPF invaded Rwanda”). He uses the label ‘Hutu extremist’ to mask his hatred against Hutu instilled in him by the current government of Rwanda and its one-sided historiography.

U.S. AGENT PERJURY, FBI DECEPTION

It appears that it can be reasonably established that Thomas Brian Andersen committed perjury—at least once—in his affidavit signed June 22, 2010, and that the FBI used deception to gain access to Beatrice Munyenyezi’s home, under conditions of her trust and cooperation on an international matter completely unrelated to her asylum status, with the intent of surveillance of both Beatrice Munyenyezi and her sister Prudence Kantengwa.

In paragraph 36 agent Andersen states:

I am aware of the close relationship between Munyenyezi and her sister Prudence Kantengwa. I am also familiar with the ongoing proceedings before the Immigration Court related to Munyenyezi’s sister, Kantengwa, and I know that Munyenyezi had appeared in court during those proceedings and was announced as a witness for her sister. In addition, on January 13, 2010, the FBI visited Munyenyezi at her residence at 73 Goffe Street, Manchester New Hampshire, and they were invited into the home. While present, the FBI noticed that Kantengwa was present at the home, and appeared to be living or at least sleeping there.

To begin with, agent Andersen is more than simply “familiar with the ongoing proceedings before the Immigration Court related to Munyenyezi’s sister, [Prudence] Kantengwa,” but he does not disclose these and instead downplays his vested interests in both cases: He is also the ICE agent who has investigated the Kantengwa case in Rwanda and his investigations, affidavits and testimonies are evidence for the Kantengwa case in Boston. So there is an absence of full disclosure in this affidavit to New Hampshire U.S. Magistrate Judge Daniel J. Lynch, who is likely very unfamiliar with the Boston cases or deeper issues.

Second, special agent Thomas Brian Andersen has added a very curious footnote to his affidavit that begs explanation. From December 18, 2009 to January 10, 2010, Beatrice Munyenyezi was traveling to the ICTR in Arusha (Tanzania), via Kenya, from/to the United States. On her return entry to the U.S. Munyenyezi volunteered information about, apparently, Jamaican Muslim cleric Sheikh Abdullah al-Faisal (Trevor William Forrest), who was detained in Kenya during the same time period (creating a barrage of western mass media stories about his supposed terrorist profile).³⁴ As noted in agent Andersen’s peculiar footnote number 3, Beatrice Munyenyezi was interrogated on her return to Boston Logan Airport on January 10, 2010:

Footnote 3: “At the time of her entry, Munyenyezi told the Customs and Border Protection personnel that she had important information to relate pertaining to someone she believes she saw in Kenya who had been in the news recently as an associate of a contemporary terrorist group. Munyenyezi was told that the FBI would follow up with her on a later date.”

When FBI agents showed up at Beatrice Munyenyezi’s Manchester, NH home on January 13, 2010, it was not in the context of ascertaining her asylum status, as ICE agent Andersen falsely indicates, but rather as the follow-up to Munyenyezi’s volunteered information at Logan airport. The statement that FBI agents were “invited to her home” (paragraph 36) also misrepresents Munyenyezi’s position: she was intimidated by the FBI agents but even so she invited them into her because she felt she had nothing to hide. However, based on the above details, it seems that Beatrice Munyenyezi had long since been under surveillance, and the “invitation to her home” was used as a cover for FBI surveillance of Beatrice Munyenyezi, her sister Prudence Kantengwa, and the 73 Goffe Street dwelling.

It seems that Beatrice Munyenyezi’s attempt to demonstrate her allegiance to the U.S. war on terror backfired and was used against her. More importantly, it is clear that the search warrant of June 22, 2010 was used for an ICE fishing expedition with the hope that something incriminating (a computer, manuscript of surviving genocide, old photographs or other memorabilia) might be discovered and used against either Beatrice Munyenyezi or Prudence Kantengwa or both.

But the surveillance was much more comprehensive. FBI agents were not only watching and photographing the Munyenyezi home, as agent Andersen indicates, but they were also spying on her, she alleges, by planting plain-clothes FBI operatives in her political science classes at the University of New Hampshire, where she was enrolled in an advanced degree program, in the spring of 2010.

Is Beatrice Munyenyezi a suspected terrorist? It appears that all Hutus outside of Rwanda have been designated de facto ‘terrorists’ by the U.S. government in its alliance with the Kagame regime.

Third, the evidence of Thomas Brain Andersen’s perjury in his June 22, 2010 affidavit comes in his paragraph 36 statement: “…and I know that Munyenyezi had appeared in court during those [her sister Prudence Kantengwa’s immigration court] proceedings and was announced as a witness for her sister.”

However, Beatrice Munyenyezi was never a witness at the immigration trial of her sister Prudence Kantengwa. Instead, the trial was interrupted when U.S. prosecutor Mary Kelly noticed Beatrice Munyenyezi sitting in courtroom taking notes. The judge had no problem with note taking by Beatrice Munyenyezi. U.S. prosecutor Mary Kelly then apparently complained that she had planned to call Beatrice Munyenyezi as a witness. After discussions with the defense lawyer for Prudence Kantengwa, and a few questions to Beatrice Munyenyezi in a private chamber, the U.S. prosecutor dropped the issue of Munyenyezi’s presence in the courtroom. Munyenyezi was never registered as a witness by either side, and she never testified.

ICE special agent Thomas Brian Andersen misrepresents the presence of Beatrice Munyenyezi at her sister’s immigration trial to exaggerate a greater sense of collusion and conspiracy between these two ‘Hutu extremists’, no matter that the two women are sisters, or that it is common for someone to testify in behalf of a family member. If special agent Andersen was present in the court on the day that Beatrice Munyenyezi appeared to support her sister Prudence, either he was sleeping through this disturbance in court proceedings or he lied directly. If he was sleeping, he obviously fabricated this ‘evidence’ used as sworn testimony. If he was not present, then he used hearsay—incorrect information related by someone else—as sworn testimony in his affidavit.

An evaluation of the overall methodology employed by special agent Andersen, according to his own affidavit, suggests he has little or no training in international human rights and genocide investigations. Indeed, Mr. Andersen has been with the Boston Bureau of ICE for approximately two years, coming from five years duty with law enforcement in Vermont State. After less than two years with ICE in Boston, Massachusetts, USA, special agent Thomas Brian Andersen, a Vermont State cop, purports to have gained expertise on Rwanda and ‘genocide’ (as related in paragraphs 5-21 of his affidavit) and the operations of the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda that ICTR defense attorneys—trained in human rights law, some having more than ten years full-time and dedicated experience with ICTR trials and the government of Rwanda—would never claim.

All the genocide charges in the Thomas Brian Andersen affidavit signed June 22, 2010 are generic charges that have been leveled over and over, against all Hutus, and the Thomas Brian Andersen is not credible or impartial: he should be rejected as a witness in all Rwanda hearings.

Instead, special agent Thomas Brian Andersen should be deposed under oath and interrogated about his clandestine relationship to RPF officials and RPF intelligence agents, He should be interrogated about his relationship to the Rwanda ‘genocide’ front-organizations IBUKA and IVEGA. And he should be interrogated about ties between ICE, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Directorate of Military Intelligence and other secretive organizations of the state of Rwanda.

PUBLIC BRANDING OF GENOCIDAIRES

As in the 2009 asylum trials of Dr. Vincent Bajinya and three other Rwandan Hutu men in the U.K., and Dr. Leopold Munyakazi, in Maryland, VA, where all defendants are accused of being genocidaires, and similarly for other Rwandan asylum hearings in the U.S., Europe or Canada, anyone traveling to Rwanda on a discovery for the defense would not be able to investigate without government interference. Even cases at the ICTR in neighboring Arusha, Tanzania, have seen serious interference from the Rwanda regime. Similarly, ICE agent Thomas Brian Anderson would not have been able to travel to Rwanda without the direct involvement and highest authorization of the RPF regime, in collaboration with the U.S. State Department, and his actions were monitored from beginning to end.

Usually the RPF regime provides ‘handlers’ that manage investigations and spoon-fed investigators with information fabricated or cleared by the regime. Rwanda experts for the defense at asylum hearings, including ICTR lawyer Peter Erlinder and Filip Reyntjens, a Belgian Rwanda expert, have testified (as experts for the defense) to the problems of asylum cases and the interference by the Kagame regime in court cases in Rwanda, at the ICTR and abroad.

Dr. Vincent Bajinya was arrested in London, many years after he arrived and gained citizenship in England, and was framed by Fergal Keane, a British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) journalist who was also deceived by Rwandan officials.³⁵ Keane traveled to Rwanda and worked with RPF ‘handlers’—agents posing as civilians—to ‘discover’ and interview the ‘witnesses’ to Dr. Vincent Bajinya’s (et al.) supposed crimes.³⁶

Dr. Leopold Munyakazi was a professor employed at Goucher College in Maryland until 2008, when he was arrested by ICE agents after making a public speech decrying the abuses of the Kagame regime, the falsification of genocide charges and the lies of the official RPF genocide narrative.³⁷

Dr. Munyakazi was framed by the Kagame regime and publicly branded as a genocidaire by a short-lived NBC News television program that sought prime-time ratings by tracking down and ‘exposing’ supposed genocidaires. The program was titled The Wanted, and the morality of ‘good versus evil’ was underscored by the choice of the show’s commentator, Scott Tyler, an ex-Navy Seal, while the wanted man, Dr. Leopold Munyakazi, was their embodiment of evil. The zealous NBC News team acted as accuser, judge and jury against Dr. Munyakazi.³⁸

U.S. prosecutors in Rwanda asylum cases are generally very ignorant of the politics of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity in Rwanda, or they have been irreconcilably swayed by the propaganda of the Kagame regime and its partners, which is everywhere in the western media.³⁹

In two related U.S. court cases (where the Rwandan defendants’ hearings are underway and they do not wish to be named) two U.S. prosecutors traveled to Rwanda and later testified in court to that it was very easy to get the information they wanted, they did not need a clearance from the Rwanda government, and that they went to the countryside and met witnesses without government assistance or monitoring. They even went to prisons to talk to prisoners without Rwanda government help, they claimed, and reported to the court that conditions of prisoners were excellent.

While U.S. government prosecutors who have worked in Rwanda under these supposed ‘independent’ conditions have not been deposed under oath, their claims are impossible under the current military regime in Rwanda.

THE GENOCIDE RAPE CHARGE

Beatrice Munyenyezi’s husband, Shalom Ntahobari, and mother-in-law, Pauline Nyiramasuhuko, remain in detention at the ICTR in Arusha, Tanzania. Both have been on trial at the ICTR for more than ten years and are awaiting decisions on genocide and rape charges for more than a year now.

The same ‘Tutsi victims’ of rape who testified in the ICTR hearing against Shalom Ntahobari also allegedly testified in the case of Hutu businessman Désiré Munyaneza, the first alleged Rwanda genocidaire tried in Canada, who was convicted and sentenced to life in prison in October 2009. In Shalom Ntahobari’s case, the women could not even recognize the defendant in court, no matter their allegations of having been repeatedly raped.

Pauline Nyiramasuhuko was the first woman internationally charged with rape as a war crime or act of genocide. The former Minister of Family Affairs, she is accused of ordering Interahamwe militia to rape members of the Tutsi minority.

These rape charges were handed down immediately after then First Lady Hillary Clinton visited the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda (ICTR). When Ms. Clinton pledged $600,000 to be paid after the first ICTR rape conviction was delivered, indictments at the ICTR were modified to include rape charges against most top alleged genocidaires on trial.

The case against Pauline Nyiramasuhuko was sensationalized in an eight-page feature in the New York Times Magazine (September 15, 2002). Penned by Peter Landesman and titled “The Minister of Rape: How Could a Woman Incite Rwanda’s Sex-Crime Genocide?” the magazine ran an unflattering and blurred photo of Ms. Nyiramasuhuko’s bespectacled face on the cover.

“The 1994 genocide, one of the worst mass slaughters in recorded history,” Landesman later wrote in “Out of Madness, A Matriarchy,” another fictional account (also deploying the racist “madness” theme) this time in Mother Jones magazine, “was triggered by the assassination of Rwanda’s Hutu president, after a lengthy civil war between the Hutu-led government and the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front. It was a deliberate effort to eliminate the country’s Tutsi ‘problem’; books about Hitler and the Holocaust, and lists of potential victims, were later discovered in the offices of top government officials. In all, at least 1 million Tutsis and moderate Hutus died… Among the most nefarious tools of the genocide was a planned mass sexual assault on Tutsi women, with Hutu officials encouraging HIV-positive soldiers to take part in gang rapes.”⁴⁰

First, these numbers of Tutsi’s killed are highly disputed, and many of the Tutsis were killed by the RPF. Second, any ‘deliberate effort to eliminate the country’s Tutsi ‘problem’ was more the responsibility of the RPF than any other institution of power in Rwanda in 1994. Third, every western library and most all western human rights and media professionals, and academics, have books about Hitler, just as every western public and university library does. Fourth, these supposed genocide ‘lists’ have never been produced at the ICTR. Fifth, the reference to the Holocaust is part of the overall ‘genocide’ propaganda that defines the Tutsi minority as the sole proprietors of victim-hood in Rwanda and falsely defines them as “the Jews of Africa.”⁴¹

Finally, there was no “planned mass sexual assault on Tutsi women.”

Notwithstanding the fictions, when the allegations against a branded genocidaire are repeated they are often no longer presented as allegations, but as absolute fact.

For example, Emily Heroy, the founder and executive editor of Gender Across Borders—“a global feminist blog—regurgitated the 2002 ‘Minister of Rape’ story in 2009.⁴² “In 2002, Peter Landesman wrote an article in the New York Times about Nyiramasuhuko entitled ‘A Woman’s Work’ about her role in the genocide… Nyiramasuhuko ordered her son and militia to rape and kill thousands of women during the Rwanda genocide.”

The falsification of rape testimonies by Rwandan ‘survivors’ of genocide used to accuse opponents or critics or others targeted by the Kagame government has occurred before. Considering just one very significant example, supposed Tutsi ‘genocide survivors’ and ‘rape victims’ were used as witnesses against Rwandan Catholic Bishop Monsignor Augustin Misago.

Bishop Misago’s female Tutsi accusers cried on the witness stand in an effort to sway the court. They claimed to have been repeatedly raped by Misago over more than one day. When asked to identify a very remarkable physical feature of Bishop Misago’s anatomy, these women were proven to be fakes who falsified testimonies with Rwandan government support.

The London-based ‘non-government organization’ African Rights, co-founded by RPF agent Rakiya Omaar, helped frame Misago, who was subsequently arrested and jailed in 1999, but was cleared by the Rwandan Court of all genocide and rape charges in 2000.

Rakiya Omaar has worked since 1990-1991 as a paid agent of the RPF regime, always casting the Hutus as perpetrators and the Tutsis—especially the RPF Tutsi extremists—as the victims of the violence, creating a positive image for the RPF. She works freely in Rwanda, where she has a special office.⁴³

Rakiya Omaar also fabricated evidence against Beatrice Munyenyezi, Jean-Marie Vianney Higiro and Prudence Kantengwa.⁴⁴ Omaar reportedly traveled to the home village of Dr. Higiro and sisters and then produced documentation used by the western media, United Nations experts, the RPF regime, and by U.S. asylum courts, to accuse Dr. Higiro and Beatrice Munyenyezi of crimes. Family members were also intimidated and threatened in Rwanda.

One of the most suppressed facts about the realities of the RPF Tutsi extremists and their elite networks is the historical and contemporary existence of ubwenge (ou-WEN-gay)—a complex Kinyarwanda language term referring to wisdom, trickery, caution, cleverness, prudence, deceptions, lies, manipulations. It relates to the capacity to gain a clear understanding of situations and the capability to surround oneself with a network of profit generating social relations.

French author Pierre Péan discussed ‘ubwenge’ in his 2005 book Noires Fureurs, Blancs Menteurs (Black Furies, White Liars), noting that Tutsis were affected by a ‘lying culture’ and questioning the historiography of genocide in Rwanda. Péan alleged that Tutsis have systematically resorted to lying, while employing doubtful and fraudulent maneuvers, with the aim of misleading the international community relating to the accuracy of its genocide cause. Péan was immediately sued in French courts by S.O.S Racisme, an ‘anti-racism’ organization that has been very pro-Kagame and pro-RPF in France.

Ubwenge or the culture of deception was highly valued in traditional Rwanda, particularly in Tutsi aristocratic circles. Young Tutsi aristocrats were trained in ubwenge to help insure the Tutsi domination of Rwanda and the enslavement of the Hutu majority. By any name, the extremist RPF Tutsi regime and its leaders excel at ubwenge.

“They will bring into the U.S. court these women from Rwanda,” says Jean-Marie Vianney Higiro. “They will say ‘I was raped’ and they will cry. The jury will think this is spontaneous and the judge and jury will believe them. But the jury will not understand that this is an exercise in ubwenge. Some Hutus will also use ubwenge. In the RPF kingdom ruled by Paul Kagame there are people who train people to lie in court. They are used in different trials to lie and frame and accuse. Westerners and judges in western countries do not grasp this.”

Beatrice Munyenyezi’s case will join those of other Rwandans accused by the Kagame regime that are costing U.S. taxpayers millions of dollars for hearings that have historically involved fraud, disinformation, and U.S. government manipulation. The U.S. government is fighting its own judiciary in its effort to maintain the shiny clean façade masking the terrorism of the Paul Kagame government in Rwanda. This is not a successful entrepreneurial government, but an absolute military dictatorship whose grip of terror extends into the hearts and minds—as with Thomas Brian Andersen—of the United States of America.

1. See, e.g., Dr. Helmut Strizek, Discredit the Hutu Population Forever, Report by Dr. Helmut Strizek, Expert Witness in “The Prosecutor v. Innocent Sagahutu,” Before the International Criminal tribunal For Rwanda, (Case No. ICTR 2000-56-I), entered into ICTR records October 30, 2008.
2. For a singular example of the western press reporting on her arrest, which has some factual errors but no context or balance, see: Joseph C. Cote, “Woman Allegedly took part in Genocide,” Nashua Telegraph, June 25, 2010.
3. The RPF (U.S. & U.K. & Israel backing) war crimes and genocide against Rwandan and Burundian refugees is well documented. In August 1996 there were an estimated 1.5 million refugees in eastern Zaire, and by November the estimated 500,000 to 750,000 Rwandan refugees that did not return to Rwanda under the illegal forced repatriation became the targets of a systematic manhunt by ADFL forces. See, e.g., Roberto Garreton, Special Rapporteur of the U.N. Human Rights Commission, “Report on the Situation of Human Rights in Zaire” No. E/CN.4/1996/66, June 29, 1996; Howard French, A Continent for the Taking: The Tragedy and Hope of Africa, Vintage Books, 2005; and Filip Reyntjens, The Great African War, Cambridge University Press, 2009; Gerard Prunier, Africa’s World War, Oxford University Press, 2009, p. 120-128; Wayne Madsen, Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa, 1993-1999, Edwin Mellen Press, 1999; and “International Non-governmental Commission of Inquiry into the Massive Violations of Human Rights Committed in the Democratic Republic of Congo (Former Zaire) 1996-1997,” Int’l Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development, 1998; DRC: What Kabila is Hiding: Civilian Killings and Impunity in Congo, Human Rights Watch, Vol. 9, No. 5(A), October 1997.
4. See Rwanda state newspaper Rwanda New Times propaganda republished at AllAfrica.com: Kennedy Ndahiro, “Rwanda Genocidaires Should Be Hunted Down and Punished,” February 26, 2010.
5. See: Human Rights Watch World Report 1999, December 1998, p. 62; and “Alleged Murderers of Sendashonga Mysteriously Die One After Another,” AfroAmerica Network, March 3, 2001.
6. “Feds Say NH Woman Involved in Rwandan Genocide,” AP, June 24, 2010.
7. See: Robin Philpot, Rwanda 1994: Colonialism Dies Hard, The Taylor Report and Robin Philpot, 2003.
8. See, e.g.: Ann Garrison, “Erlinder released as Rwanda cracks down on its own,” San Francisco Bay View, June 27, 2010; “Rwanda Repression Rises Ahead of Poll—Watchdog,” Reuters (AlertNet), June 27, 2010; “Rwanda: Stop Attacks on Journalists, Opponents,” Human Rights Watch, June 26, 2010.
9. See, e.g.: Reuters, “Rwanda Repression Rises Ahead of Poll—Watchdog,” AlertNet, June 27, 2010; “Rwanda ex-army chief Nyamwasa shot in Johannesburg,” BBC News, June 19, 2010.
10. “Rwandan Ambassador Flees Post,” The Amsterdam Post, March 19, 2010; Juma Kwayera, “Kagame in Spot as Spate of Killings Hits Rwanda,” The Standard, June 27, 2010.
11. Kristin Van Schie, “Rwandan General Shot by Asylum Seekers,” IOL News South Africa, June 29, 2010.
12. “Murder Stokes Rwanda Crackdown Fear,” AlJazeera, June 26, 2010.
13. Heidi Boghosian, “NLG Demands Immediate Release of Attorney Peter Erlinder,” National Lawyers Guild, May 28, 2010.
14. Josh Kron, “American Lawyer Denied Bail in Rwanda,” New York Times, June 7, 2010; Jeremy Herb and Kevin Diaz, “Rwanda Frees Peter Erlinder on Bail,” Star Tribune, June 17, 2010; Madeleine Baron, “Minn. law professor detained in Rwanda accused of threatening national security,” Minnesota Public Radio, June 1, 2010; Steve Karnowski, “Professor: Rwanda Officials Wanted Me to Disappear,” AP, June 24, 2010.
15. Josephine Whittaker, “Rwandan Opposition Leader Appears in Court,” Open Security, April 22, 2010; “Rwanda’s Election Opposition Leader Demands Protection After Mob attack in Rwanda,” VOA News, February 4, 2010; “Mob attacks Rwandan opposition leader in capital,” Reuters, February 3, 2010, (AlertNet).
16. Keith Harmon Snow, “The Rwanda Hit List: Revisionism, Denial & the Genocide Conspiracy,” 24-31 March 2010, The African Executive.
17. See: Patrick Karuretwa biography, Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy, Tufts University.
18. See: Patrick Karuretwa, “Not up for debate: Rwanda cannot excuse Peter Erlinder’s genocide denial,” Harvard Law Record, June 16, 2010.
19. See Keith Harmon Snow, “The US Sponsored ‘Rwanda Genocide’ and its Aftermath: Psychological Warfare, Embedded Reporters and the Hunting of Refugees,” Global Research, April 12, 2008.
20. Tiphaine Dickson, “Rwanda’s Deadliest Secret: Who Shot Down President Habyarimana’s Plane?: The most under-investigated of political assassinations,” Global Research, November 24, 2008.
21. See: Jean-Marie Vianney Higiro, “Rwandan Private Print Media on the Eve of the Genocide,” in Alan Thomson, Ed., The Media and the Rwanda Genocide, Pluto Press, 2007, and Jean-Marie Vianney Higiro and William Woodward, “The Commodification of Genocide in Ruanda Since 1994,” paper at the Seventeenth Annual ESHHS Conference held at Durham Castle, August 28-September 1, 1998.
22. David Boeri, “Evidence of Misconduct,” WBUR News, February 17, 2010.
23. See, e.g., “Open Letter to U.S. Attorney from Terek Mahana Support Committee,” March 13, 2010.
24. The author has provided expert testimony in two Rwandan asylum hearings in the United States in 2010.
25. The author has analyzed the U.S. State Department country reports on human rights for Rwanda, where the U.S. tolerates and abets violence, from 1993 to 2009, and has compared these to reports from countries that the U.S. does not like, in particular: Cuba, Sudan and Iran.
26. 2009 Country Report on Human Rights: Rwanda, U.S. Department of State, March 11, 2010.
27. Kenneth Roth, “The Power of Horror in Rwanda,” Los Angeles Times, April 11, 2009.
28. There is extensive documentation of assassinations in articles, books or ICTR documents by Jordi Palou Loverdes, Wayne Madsen, Luc de Temmerman, Filip Reyntjens, Dr. Helmut Strizek, Peter Erlinder, Christopher Black, Phil Taylor and others. See, e.g.: Filip Reyntjens, “Rwanda, Ten Years On: From Genocide to Dictatorship,” African Affairs, 2004, 103, 177–210: p. 197. See also: Keith Harmon Snow, “The Rwanda Hit List: Revisionism, Denial, and the Genocide Conspiracy,” The African Executive.
29. “Iwawa Island: Prison Camp or Paradise Vacation Spot?” NGO News Africa, May 1, 2010.
30. “Rwandans Flee into Burundi,” SAPA, October 1, 2009, and “Burundi: Stop Deporting Rwandan Asylum Seekers,” Human Rights Watch, December 1, 2009
31. Find affidavit with article by Joseph C. Cote, “Woman Allegedly took part in Genocide,” Nashua Telegraph, June 25, 2010.
32. See, e.g.: Filip Reyntjens, “Manipulation and Falsification of ICTR Evidence: The Role of the Rwandan Government,” (Excerpts from Expert Report, Prosecutor v. Joseph Kanyabashi, Case No. ICTR-96-15-I); “An Open Letter to the U.S. Congress Regarding HR #1426,” BusinessWire, June 17, 2010; and “The Rwandan Genocide: Result of a Carefully Planned Military Operation.
    “Open Letter to President Kagame,” Global Research, June 3, 2009.
33. Laura Noy, “Finding Refuge in the Queen City,” NHPR, January 31, 2005.
34. See, e.g, “Kenya: Airlines Refuse to Fly Jamaican Home,” AllAfrica.com, January 6, 2010.
35. Fergal Keane, “Rwanda Genocide Suspect in UK,” BBC News. November 6, 2006.
36. keith harmon snow, “The US Sponsored ‘Rwanda Genocide’ and its Aftermath: Psychological Warfare, Embedded Reporters and the Hunting of Refugees,” Global Research, April 12, 2008.
37. While the article and the framework for the article are in many ways flawed, displaying the same tendencies toward a priori assumptions of guilt, please see, e.g.: Andrew Rice, “Doubt: A Professor, A Genocide, and NBC’s Quest for a Prime Time Hit,” The New Republic, August 12, 2009.
38. While the article and the framework for the article are in many ways flawed, displaying the same tendencies toward a priori assumptions of guilt, please see, e.g.: Andrew Rice, “Doubt: A Professor, A Genocide, and NBC’s Quest for a Prime Time Hit,” The New Republic, August 12, 2009.
39. See, e.g., Steven Da Silva, “Revisiting the ‘Rwandan Genocide’: Resurrecting Ghosts, or Exorcising Demons?”, Global Research, June 1, 2007.
40. Kimberley Acquaro and Peter Landesman, “Out of Madness: A Matriarchy,” Mother Jones, January/February 2003.
41. Even New York Times journalist (sic) Bill Berkeley, whose work deep in the pro-RPF, Pro-Tutsi establishment narrative, has criticized the ‘Jews of Africa’ characterization of the Tutsis: “As Stephen Heder was pointing out at lunch when we were talking earlier, the Tutsis were not the Jews of Africa. Philip Gourevitch… got it wrong in that regard. To put it in its crudest, simplest terms historically, the Tutsis were the bad guys.” Speaker series, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, March 6, 2002.
42. Emily Heroy, “International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda: Woman is Accused of Inciting Troops & Militia to Rape 1000s of Women,” Gender Across Borders, April 25, 2009.
43. See, e.g.: [1] Rakiya Omaar and Alex de Waal, “Death, Despair and Defiance,” African Rights, November 1994; [2] Rakiya Omaar, “Rwanda: Insurgency in the Northwest,” African Rights, 1998; [3] Rakiya Omaar, “Letter to Ambassador Mihnea Ioan Motoc, President of the United Nations Security Council,” African Rights, October 19, 2005; [4] Rakiya Omaar, “An Open Letter to His Holiness, Pope John Paul II,” African Rights, May 13, 1998.
44. Rakiya Omaar, Consultant to the Rwanda Demobilization and Reintegration Commission, Report for the RDRC on the Leadership of Rwandese Armed Groups in the DRC, December 2008, p. 215-217.

Fittingly, the author of this report, former USAID mission director for the Congo (2001-04) Anthony Gambino, provides a whitewash of the Congo’s recent history. He notes that since the Congo gained their independence from Belgium in 1960 their history has been “marked by periods of great instability and insecurity accompanied by grave violations of human rights,” but he forgets to mention the how the US facilitated these horrific abuses by assassinating their democratically elected leader Patrice Lumumba in 1961. This is not to say that Gambino is totally uncritical of foreign interventions in the region, as he notes how Mobutu Sese Seko, who “overthrew the elected government” with “heavy support from key Western allies, including the United States” came to power in 1965 and remained their till 1997 acting as a critical “ally of the West.” Yet despite the Congo being “endowed with vast lodes of important minerals, including copper, cobalt, cassiterite, columbite, tantalum, diamonds, gold, and uranium,” Gambino thinks that with the end of the Cold War, the West “lost interest in the Congo.” Evidently there is no more to the story then: the Cold War ends and US corporations are no longer interested in exploiting Africa!

According to Gambino, President’s Mobutu’s successor Laurent Kabila came to power with “large-scale assistance from Rwanda and its then ally Uganda.” Gambino says that at this time “no Western state supported Mobutu,” but he fails to mention that the West had not simply lost interest in the region. Instead, in 1996, with active US-support Kabila had been “plucked out of a bar in Dar es Salaam, where he was owner/manager, and installed as the Congolese figurehead of the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire (ADFL).” This help does not figure in Gambino’s recollection of events, as he considers that the United States only “chose to engage with Laurent Kabila’s government” once it had assumed power, “albeit without providing much in terms of foreign assistance.” He neglects to mention that in the West Kabila had been initially “cheered and canonized for ousting Mobutu” but later, as Keith Harmon Snow points out, he was “declared a ‘dictator’ because he steered Congo on an independent course.” However Gambino does recognize that once Kabila had rejected his foreign backers the situation “changed radically” and the United States “focused its engagement on two activities: helping broker a ceasefire arrangement and providing humanitarian relief.” Thereafter, apparently after “Joseph Kabila, his son, became president in 2001… the West developed an ever-clearer understanding of its role in assisting this process.”

It is not coincidental that Gambino’s report refers to the 5 million Congolese who “have died since 1998” — citing the International Rescue Committee as their source. This is because, as Keith Harmon Snow reminds us, the CIA-linked International Rescue Committee’s work in this area “considers only the period of 1998 to 2007, excluding the first phase of the war, the U.S.-backed overthrow of Zaire and coup d’etat against Mobutu Sese Seko, 1996-1998.” In the International Rescue Committee report — from which the 5 million deaths is derived — “not a word” is made “about the causes of the ongoing strife or the structural factors which have made this holocaust possible, and perpetuate it”; very much like the Center for Preventive Action’s own report. Many more than 5 million people died to enable the West to profit from the Congo’s resources, but for pragmatic reasons it is easier to only consider deaths from 1998 onwards to avoid unnecessary complications. Ignorance is profit.

Moving back to Gambino’s report we are informed that during Mobutu’s dictatorship, “the government existed as a structure for individual enrichment and patronage.” Gambino writes that to this day little has changed, and Congolese officials benefiting from this corruption have “shown little interest in fundamental change.” One might also add, although Gambino doesn’t, that the foreign owned corporations that have profitably operated in the Congo since the 1960s have benefited immensely from this corruption and have no intention of allowing their profitable situation to fundamentally change. But in Gambino’s mind, the West has been reluctant to profit from murderous wars in the Congo. In fact, he says corporations have been wary of investing there because of instability? This of course may be the case for most businesses, but there is no doubt that many Western owned mining corporations have reaped massive financial rewards from the Congo’s instability. Either way, now that the country has a government which is once again amenable to Western interests the time for “stability” has come – a situation that enhances capitalist exploitation, like for instance that seen in Brazil. Likewise in a similar way that formally ending apartheid in South Africa increased foreign profits, by improving stability in the Congo even more Western corporations will be able to grow as a result of environmentally minded destruction (read: sustainable development). Seen in this light, concern with the environment provides a useful fig leaf for economic exploitation, and Gambino writes that US diplomacy “can assist Congo in fostering an environment conducive for continued foreign investment to sustain economic growth.”

Given this economic interest it is appropriate that many of the members of the advisory committee assembled to supervise the production of Gambino’s report should have active financial interests in the “sustainable development” of the Congo. Most notably the committee includes W. Russell King who serves as senior vice president of Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold. That said, most of other representatives on the advisory committee appear to have a commitment to the expansion of the US military-industrial complex and the concomitant multiplication of US investment opportunities. For example, advisory committee member Chester Crocker is the former director of African studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (1976-80), former US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs (1981-89), and former chair the imperialist US Institute of Peace (1992-2004); and he recently led the African Growth and Opportunity Act Coalition Inc that lobbied for the creation of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), an Act that was “created to expand US economic and strategic interests in Africa.” Similarly another advisory committee member is former US Ambassador to the Republic of Burkina Faso (2002-05), J. Anthony Holmes, who helped Burkina Faso accept the “benefits” of AGOA, and presently acts as the Deputy to the Commander for Civil-Military Activities for the US African Command.

Other obvious members of the military establishment who advised Gambino on his report include Joshua Marks, Ambassador Robert Oakley, and Carlton W. Fulford, Jr. — the latter whom previously served as the Deputy Commander in Chief of the US European Command, and is the former head of the National Defense University’s Africa Center. With regard to the backgrounds of the other two military-linked aforementioned advisers, Joshua Marks is a former faculty associate of the Africa Center, and is presently the Central Africa program officer at the infamous National Endowment for Democracy; while Robert Oakley is based at the National Defense University and is a member of the board of overseers of the International Rescue Committee.

It is also worth observing that National Endowment for Democracy board member, Howard Wolpe, sat in on Gambino’s advisory committee having formerly spent ten years serving as the chair of the Subcommittee on Africa of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Moreover, Wolpe’s work has been widely celebrated by the free-market environmental organizations like the National Audubon Society and the Sierra Club. This is fitting given Gambino’s rhetorical commitment to the environment, which meant that the Center for Preventive Action’s advisory committee included one full-time member of the free-market environmental movement, Richard Carroll; who is the managing director for the World Wildlife Fund’s Congo Basin program. According to his WWF biographical note, “Richard considers the formation of the Congo Basin [Forest] Partnership [launched in 2003 by Colin Powell, was] the ‘fulfillment of a 20-year dream,’ or at least one of them.” (For a critique of both WWF’s pro-corporate environmentalism and of the Congo Basin Forest Partnership, see “When Environmentalists Legitimize Plunder”).

Although ideologically speaking it is clear where the priorities of the Center for Preventive Action’s report lie, nevertheless they appear to be committed to well-informed strategizing which perhaps makes their work even more dangerous. Thus the reports advisory committee also includes Herbert Weiss, the author of one of the first in-depth examinations of the Congo in his book, Political Protest in the Congo: The Parti Solidane Africain During the Independence Struggle (Princeton University Press, 1967), which built upon his field research in the region since 1959. Although Professor Weiss continues to write about the Congo for conservative think tanks like the Hoover Institution, a newcomer to the field is Séverine Autesserre who completed her doctorate in 2006, and is publishing the forthcoming book The Trouble with the Congo. Local Violence and the Failure of International Peacebuilding (Cambridge University Press, June 2010). Her research is research is currently being funded by the US Institute of Peace.

Finally, pharmaceutical giant Merck was invited to place an employee (Kay Boulware-Miller) on the Gambino reports advisory committee. Merck has just the right type of experience to engage with such an elite project as Merck’s former head of international organization relations (until 2008), was Susan Crowley, an individual who is counted as a founder of the imperialist Business-Humanitarian Forum and who had served on advisory board of the Global Alliance for Women’s Health – a group’s whose recent treasurer was the former US Ambassador to the Congo, Kenneth Brown (1981-84), who happens to also be a recent board member of Anvil Mining which has mining interests in the Congo. Moreover in 2008, it is significant to note that notorious Israeli diamond mogul Dan Gertler had a 25 per cent stake in Anvil Mining. Although neither Crowley not Gertler were involved in the production of Gambino’s report, these connections do demonstrate the intimate involvement of US and Israeli elites in the Congo. However, given the direct involvement of Freeport-McMoRan with Gambino’s report the following section will briefly outline the current interests of foreign extractive corporations in the region by following a lead from Freeport-McMoRan recent activities in the Congo.

Freeport-McMoRan recently brought there way into the Congo when in 2007 they purchased Phelps Dodge Corporation enabling them to “gain rights to the Tenke Fungurume project in the Congo, one of the world’s largest known copper-cobalt deposits.” This is noteworthy because prior to their acquisition, Phelps Dodge’s CEO, J. Steven Whisler, had been, and still is, a board member of International Paper Company (the “largest forest products company in the world”). For those who are not aware, International Paper is currently harvesting Brazilian and Russian forests, and they are no doubt highly interested in the “sustainable management” of the Congo’s potential paper (I mean trees).² I make this assumption because since 2003 American Enterprise Institute trustee John Faraci³ has managed International Paper’s operations while simultaneously serving as the chair of the logging front-group the American Forest and Paper Association; an association whose commitment to protecting the environment is more than belied by the fact that their president, Donna Harman, is a board member of the American Council for Capital Formation. Harman’s ties to the latter conservative think tank is intriguing as they apparent work to promote “strong capital formation, a balanced regulatory regime, and cost effective environmental policies”; that is, in plain language, environmental “protection” that does not inhibit economic growth. Other board members of this “conservation” outfit include the head of the National Association of Manufacturers, and the notorious former head of President Nixon’s US Environmental Protection Agency, William Ruckelshaus. One might add that the profitable conservation policies catalysed by the American Council for Capital Formation are epitomized by their board member, former US Senator Bill Archer (Republican, Texas), who until recently served as the chair of the International Conservation Caucus Foundation.

The International Conservation Caucus Foundation makes no secret of its commitment to free-market environmentalism, and their advisory council is host to only the largest advocates of green capitalism, these being the World Wildlife Fund, The Nature Conservancy, Conservation International, and the Wildlife Conservation Society (see “The Philanthropic Roots of Corporate Environmentalism”). Individual advisers to the Caucus bring to the fore well-known democracy-manipulators like JPMorgan Chase’s executive vice president, Rick Lazio, and the former House Majority Leader, Dick Gephardt (Democrat, Missouri), who is the chair of the National Endowment for Democracy. Corporate sponsors of the International Conservation Caucus Foundation’s work include Honeywell, ExxonMobil, the American Forest and Paper Association — whose former CEO, Red Cavaney, has served as the head of the American Petroleum Institute (from 1997 until 2008) — and the WILD Foundation. Although the latter group is strictly speaking a not-for-profit corporation, when it comes to the environment they act in much the same way as their corporate counterparts; which explains why the WILD Foundation’s board member, David Barron, is the president of the International Conservation Caucus Foundation.

Although I have critiqued the WILD Foundation elsewhere, it is significant that until recently their board members included Francine Kansteiner, the wife of the former US assistant secretary of state for African affairs, Walter Kansteiner III. As Keith Harmon Snow points out, Walter Kansteiner III is “the son of a coltan trader” (a valuable mineral that can be found beneath the forests of the Congo) and is a board member of Moto Gold (which is “operating in [the] blood-drenched” Ituri province of the Congo). Thus in the context of this article it is appropriate that David Barron should have also played a key role in gathering support and momentum for the US-lead Congo Basin Forest Partnership.

Of course, the Congo Basin Forest Partnership is being advanced by free-market environmental groups with the aid of the American Forest and Paper Association and other logging trade groups like the Society of American Foresters. Here one might add that the latter front-group was previously headed (in 2006) by Marvin Brown, who is a board member of the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (which counts John Faraci as a former board member). As one might guess this group is very interested in sustainable management of the Congo’s forests, and their former chair, John Luke, Jr., is a trustee of the conservative American Enterprise Institute, former chair of the National Association of Manufacturers, and former chair (now board member) of the American Forest and Paper Association. Luke in turn sits alongside Faraci and Ruckelshaus on the corporate council of The Conservation Fund, a group whose long-serving president, John Turner (1993-2001), happens to be a board member of the International Paper Company.

Here the story of corporate intrigue become even more sickening as the current president of The Conservation Fund, Larry Selzer, is the chair of the Sustainable Forestry Initiative, and the vice president of the pro-corporate Natural Resources Council of America. However, the most interesting board member of The Conservation Fund is the world-renowned oceanographer Sylvia Earle; because in addition to Earle being connected to numerous “big green” organizations, from 1999 until 2006 she was a board member of Kerr-McGee — an energy company that was involved in the exploration and production of oil and gas resources (and has now been acquired by Anadarko Petroleum).⁴ Notably, during her years of service at Kerr-McGee, the lead director of the company was William Bradford, a person who had until 2000 served as the chairman of the most influential corporate member of the military-industrial complex, Halliburton. (Halliburton’s former CEO, Dick Cheney, left the company in 2000 to become vice president of the United States.)

Finally one should observe that Patrick Moore, who sits on the board of the Sustainable Forestry Initiative serves on JPMorgan Chase’s national advisory board, and is a board member of Archer Daniels Midland (“one of the world’s largest processors of oilseeds, corn, and wheat”). Here at Archer Daniels Midland, he used to serve alongside the former Prime Minister of Canada (1984-1993), Brian Mulroney, who is a board member of The Blackstone Group, and who, until last year, was a board member of the leading international gold mining company, Barrick Gold. For a detailed review of Barrick Gold’s activities in the Congo, see “Mining in the Ituri Province of the Congo-A Contemporary Profile.” Of particular interest here are the direct connections that Barrick Gold has to the Council on Foreign Relations through current and former board members, Howard Baker Jr., Gustavos Cisneros, William Cohen, and Vernon Jordan Jr., Edward Ney, and former CIA Director Richard Helms. One might also point out Barrick Gold’s connection to the king-pin of “sustainable development,” Maurice Strong, as Paul Melnuk, the former CEO of Barrick Gold, is currently a board member of Strong’s old haunting ground, Petro-Canada. Little wonder that the Center for Preventive Action’s report suggests that the U.S. government should adopt two policies in the Congo: “combating insecurity in the east and promoting sustainable development.”

As this article has demonstrated the Center for Preventive Action provides a useful tool for capitalist elites to enhance the efficient exploitation of foreign countries (in this case the Congo). In the light of this obvious statement it is perhaps controversial to point out that Council on Foreign Relations board member, Peter Ackerman, currently serves on the Center’s advisory board. This is controversial because Ackeman is the founder and primary funder of an organization called the International Center for Nonviolent Conflict, a group that “facilitate[s] the activity of civilian-based, nonviolent movements.” Therefore, in the light of the fact that so many progressive activists have affiliated themselves with the International Center for Nonviolent Conflict, one might only hope that they reevaluate their commitment in the light of the information provided in this article.

1. Richard Haass from foreword to Gambino, Congo: Securing Peace, Sustaining Progress, p.vii. Although the report was sponsored by the Center for Preventive Action, Gambino writes that “the publication was made possible by a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York.” (p.x
2. Archie Dunham who had been a board member of Phelps Dodge from 1998 until 2007, was president of Conoco (since 1996), and after their merger acted as the chair of ConocoPhillips (2002-04). Longstanding head of Phelps Dodge, Douglas Yearley, served as a board member of Lockheed Martin since 1995 until his death in 2007; and likewise, the former chairman of Lockheed Martin, Norman Augustine, is a board member of ConocoPhillips. Clearly the interconnections between mining, oil, and military contractors is intimate to the say the least.
3. In addition, John Faraci is a board member of the major US defense contractor, United Technologies Corporation: two other notable board members of this corporation are the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Richard B. Myers (who is also a board member of Northrop Grumman), and Harold McGraw III (who is also a board member of ConocoPhillips). On the environmental front, Faraci is a board member of the National Park Foundation, a group that was founded in 1967 with an initial $1 million contribution from Laurance Rockefeller. (For more on Rockefeller’s problematic environmental pedigree, see “Laurance Rockefeller and Capitalist Conservation.”)
4. Chairman emeritus of Anadarko Petroleum Corporation, Robert Allison, Jr., is currently a board member of Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold.

Year after successive year, analysis shows more species gone, more preventable cancer rates ascending, more ecological and climatic havoc caused to the planet, etc & c. Here in Vermont one could drink from the mountain streams no more than fifty years ago. These days you’d be a fool to attempt it without some kind of water-purifying mechanism. Unless action is taken to reverse the démodé trend of globalization and latter’s ensuing planetary destruction, the next generations may not even have running water to purify. Apparently.
   
In this postmodern era of globalization (which is really the extenuation of colonialism, or better yet, the management of postcolonial assets perpetrated and secured by the violence of Empire and its omnicidal program euphemized as “civilization”) it’s important to see the concessions for what they really are.
  
Let’s start with the Internet. For example, Google’s search engine isn’t some benevolent ethereal wish-granter. Server plants require tremendous amounts of energy to allow search engines to function. Every Google search, every Yahoo! search – at the click of a mouse, requires the burning of fossil fuels. The amount of CO2 released into the atmosphere by server plants rivals that of the car-manufacturing industry, btw. Too, there are riparian server plants along the Colombia River. Chinook salmon is disappearing from this river. And what about computers? These gadgets use 1500 kg of water and 10X their own mass in fossil fuels and other chemicals, and then some in their manufacturing process. To go paperless is not to ‘Go Green.’
   
Then there’s coltan (columbite tantalite) that, refined to tantalum, is necessary for capacitors, which store an electrical charge in every electronic device imaginable (e.g., laptops, DVD players, cellular telephones [yes, even your iPhone boyz’n’galz], Playstations et al and so on). The mining of coltan along the DRC (= “Democratic” Republic of Congo)/Rwandan border has been behind seemingly endless civil war between tribes, claiming more than 5 million lives. Prepubescent children are handed guns and forced to partake in the raping and murdering of entire village communities. Mining for this mineral is also erasing the Eastern Lowland Gorilla from the planet. All this beautiful life is being lost in exchange for a cheap handset, for another pixel-in-motion PS3 RPG, or for that stupid iPad or something…
   
The construction of undersea cables disrupts the benthic ecosystems of the ocean floors. Cell towers and their wacky EM waves are killing migratory songbirds. Technological advancement requires cheap energy. We are running out of cheap energy. Besides, cheap energy may be a bargain in the pecuniary sense, but it’s costing us real physical life on a grand scale.
   
It’s true that globalization is “making it easy for anyone to do remote development,” rejoices the imbecile Thomas Friedman. But what that really means is corporate CEO’s can now manage their industrial plants in Brazil, Chile, Colombia, China, Indonesia, India, Nicaragua, et al from the comforts of their own homes, offices and conference rooms without having to witness first-hand, the environmental degradation they are causing, or the abject living conditions they are creating: the despoliation of water and air quality, the acidification of ocean waters, the lengthening of the endangered species list, the birth defects of children, the civil unrest and hunger, the wars being fought, women being raped, subsistence and small-scale farmers crying, thousand-year-old trees toppled, chopped – vanished. They don’t see the polar bears drowning in gelid waters, a tragic end to the searching of food in an area rapidly melting on account of this culture’s negligent indulgence in fossil fuels and industrial production.
   
Or on a more domestic front, e.g., King Coal doesn’t notice the tops of mountains missing in Appalachia – their CEO’s too busy teeing-off on the golf courses that replace them. These f***kers only notice the large subsidies the US supplies them; they don’t hear the heavy sobs of distressed mothers piercing the darkest hours of the night as they cradle in their laps children who are coughing incessantly and choking violently on their own spittle, suffering from blue-baby syndrome caused from inhaled coal ash. King Coal execs don’t care about the more-than-750-miles of watershed choking on the detritus of mountaintops, scarring the miraculous matrix of organic processes and symbiotic relationships synecdochically known as the “web-of-life.”
   
Meanwhile, when inundating floods aren’t shuffling toxic coal-slurry everywhere, drought continues to plague the surrounding Appalachian regions, and the water bottle industry persists in extracting copious amounts of groundwater faster than can be replaced by the hydrologic cycle. The bottled water is then sold to exploited miners who work all day, who live in abject poverty, while Texas burns all the coal to power death row, where they hold the record in executions of mentally ill prisoners.
    
Globalization has affluenced the upper hierarchy, while below, people and forests die and disappear. Ninety-five percent of North America’s original forests have been clear-cut. Gone. And every stream and river in the continental US contains carcinogenic material. What once was a population of 60 million “genetically pure” buffalo grazing the Great Plains has been decimated to a federally controlled population of less than 15,000. The rate of species extinction is presumably “10,000 times faster than what has historically been recorded as normal”; and there is a “trash-vortex” the size of the continental US drifting in the Pacific.
   
Essayist and novelist Arundhati Roy reveals that overseas, the Indian government let sixty-three million tons of grain rot while twelve million tons were “exported and sold at a subsidized price the Indian government was not willing to offer the Indian poor.”  Since 1989, police and security forces have killed approximately 80,000 people in Kashmir. Women have been gang-raped by security forces; Muslims and Sikhs have been beaten and murdered; and in the police stations it isn’t rare to see: “people being forced to drink urine to being stripped, humiliated, given electric shocks, burned with cigarette butts, having iron rods put up their anuses to being beaten and kicked to death,” writes A. Roy.

These abovementioned atrocities, all of them, have been employed under the auspices of ambiguous and dubious anti-terrorism acts such as POTA (Prevention of Terrorism Act), the Armed Forces Powers Act and more (similar to the domestic PATRIOT Act and the Homeland Security Act). To paraphrase Roy, such acts allow security forces to charge individuals as “terrorists” (while corporate private enterprises and government back the removal of people by force to dismantle intact fecund landbases, mind you) for: acting out civil disobedience; speaking out against and/or petitioning the establishment; opposition to free trade, privatization, and globalization; alongside other varieties of dissent against the establishment, capitalism, Western ethics, and/or for just being poor. Even young children have been imprisoned and held without bail under POTA.
   
Meanwhile, CEOs, shareholders, developers, and (obviously) private and national security forces inflict massive violence on citizens and land without any accountability (think back to the horrific 1984 incident in Bhopal when poisonous gas leaked from a US-owned pesticide company killing thousands of people), perseverating in the psychopathy of hyper-exploitation to funnel resources back to the epicenters of “culture” and growth.
   
Where’s the justice? It is found in resistance to global corporate privatization and in defense of a rekindled love for the natural world we are a part of. Make every day a damn Earth Day and fight like hell for the future of this planet. Step 1: Start deglobalizing and begin relocalizing.

With the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) engulfed in bloodshed and terrorism due to the secretive occupation and expansion by the Rwandan regime of Paul Kagame, Congo’s President Joseph Kabila has received support from Belgium and the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) to crush a growing rebellion sparked by resistance forces in far Western Congo. But the United Nations Observers Mission in Congo (MONUC) has downplayed the new rebellion and hidden massive military and civilian casualties.

Are Belgian Paratroopers Fighting in Western Congo?

A rising alliance calling themselves “The Resistance Patriots of Dongo” (Patriotes-Résistants de Dongo) spread in western Congo over the past six months after Congolese people learned that Congolese resistance forces tired of the corrupt regime of Joseph Kabila were fighting against Rwandan troops in the little frontier town of Dongo.

Sources in Congo’s capital Kinshasa reported that an emergency “crisis” meeting was convened in Brussels on Nov. 28, 2009, after a distress call was sent by Congo-Kinshasa President Hypolitté Kanambe, known to the Western world by his alias, Joseph Kabila Kabange, and the Belgian military attaché in Kinshasa was instructed to deploy a detachment of elite Belgian Armed Forces (BAF) paratroopers to Congo.¹

Sources in DRC claimed that Belgian troops joined the Kabila COALITION forces, backed by AFRICOM and allied with Rwanda, and engaged the RESISTANCE forces in Equateur province in January.

Interests competing with President Joseph Kabila’s Congo (including U.S. and Israeli minerals cartels, weapons dealers and money-laundering operations) support the new western Congo RESISTANCE forces. These interests operate through regional power brokers, e.g., in Gabon, Angola, Congo-Brazzaville, Rwanda, Uganda, and South Africa.

In mid-November President Joseph Kabila secretly airlifted a battalion of Rwandan Defense Forces (RDF) across Congo to crush the rebellion. Comprised of former Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) rebels who overthrew the government of Juvenal Habyarimana in Rwanda (1990-1994), the RDF joined Kabila’s COALITION, which includes MONUC troops from the international “peacekeeping” mission and Tutsi Rwandan soldiers infiltrated by Rwanda, with the Kabila government’s support, into Congo’s national army, the FARDC. RDF forces, moved to Congo from Rwanda exclusively for the operation, were uniformed as Armed Forces of the DRC (FARDC).²

Thus western Congo is awash in bloodshed involving COALITION forces backed by AFRICOM, Belgium and Israel Amongst the biggest Kabila supporters are the U.S.-Israeli Dan Gertler, Moshe Schnitzer and Benny Steinmetz families, also holders to Congo’s most lucrative (copper/cobalt) mines.

MONUC Hides Equateur Conflict

The Tutsi forces in the FARDC include infiltrated Rwandan Defense Forces (RDF, formerly Rwandan Patriotic Front/Army) and “ex-”CNDP forces from the National Congress for the Defense of the People (CNDP), the extremist terrorist militia that sprouted out of the Kivu Provinces but is heavily backed by Rwanda and infiltrated with thousands of extremist Tutsis.

The secret infiltration and official integration of Rwandan forces into Congo was a strategic maneuver championed by Rwandan general James Kabarebe and Paul Kagame, both wanted for war crimes by the Spanish and French courts. Rwanda’s Kagame is the primary cause of the massive destabilization of Eastern Congo.

The leaders of the rebellion in western Equateur Province have reportedly forged an alliance with General Dunia, a Mai Mai leader operating against the joint operations of the Kabila COALITION in South Kivu, eastern Congo, and site of Canadian BANRO Gold Corporation’s massive illegal gold concessions. Mai-Mai forces in Congo are highly nationalist Congolese. In late 2009, Mai-Mai leaders issued a communiqué and declaration of war against Joseph Kabila and his foreign and corporate allies.

South Kivu human rights groups have documented BANRO’s links to local terrorism, yet not one mainstream western media source has reported or even named the pivotal western mining interests—including BANRO, Moto Gold (Walter Kansteiner), Mwana Africa, Heritage Oil & Gas—behind the war and plunder in blood-drenched eastern Congo.

Many Congolese people have long since known that the president of their country has supported a secret extremist “Tutsi” alliance that seeks to dominate Central Africa. His real name is Hypolitté Kanambe, formerly a junior Rwanda Patriotic Front/Army (RPF/A) officer plucked from the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire (AFDL) forces.

It is widely supported that Joseph Kabila reported directly to RPF/A commanders James Kabarebe and Paul Kagame in the Pentagon-backed AFDL “rebellion” that overthrew President Joseph Mobutu in Zaire (Congo); there are also claims that Kabila was a soldier in the RPF/A during the multiple genocides orchestrated by Kagame’s extremist Tutsi RPF/A in Rwanda (1990-1994).

The term “extremist Tutsi” applies only to the elite secretive organization, formerly the Rwandan Patriotic Front/Army (RPF/A), which exists in parallel with the parliamentary government of Rwanda.³,⁴,⁵,⁶ RDF are not exclusively Tutsi, but are controlled by the extremist Tutsi network maintained by Paul Kagame, General James Kabarebe and others of the 40 top war criminals indicted by the Spanish court on Feb. 6, 2008.

After seizing power in July of 1994, the extremist Tutsi network continued to perpetrate atrocities, including massacres, assassinations, tortures and disappearances, and the network moved into Congo-Zaire in 1996. The modus operandi of the Kagame terrorist network is to perpetrate crimes and blame them on victim populations (Hutus, FDLR, Mai Mai, Congolese civilians, even Tutsi dissidents). The western media plays along.

A major source of ongoing conflict in the DRC’s Kivu provinces, Rwandan Gen. Bosco Ntaganda, was rewarded in January 2009 for playing along with the Kabila COALITION charade of “arresting” Rwandan war criminal Gen. Laurent Nkunda, another perpetrator of war crimes who received Washington’s blessings for several years. One of few points to their credit, the U.N. Panel of Experts, in their report of November 2009, exposed the appointment of Gen. Bosco Ntaganda as CNDP-FARDC commander, which Kagame and Kabila officially denied.

The International Criminal Court indicted General Bosco Ntaganda for war crimes committed in DRC in May 2008. The ICC is a political instrument used to selectively target certain individuals and militias, while ignoring more substantial state sanctioned actors like Paul Kagame, James Kabarebe, Yoweri Museveni, Maurice Templesman, or former U.S. National Security Council member Walter Kansteiner, all deeply behind the war and plunder in DRC.

Gen. Ntaganda commanded CNDP-FARDC units responsible for massive war crimes under the joint “Kimia” operations launched with MONUC backing in eastern Congo in January 2009. Ntaganda’s role is to work from the inside to destabilize eastern Congo in exchange for Kabila and Kagame protecting him from the ICC.

The current death toll in the eastern provinces of Congo alone stands at some 1,000 people per day, with at least ten million dead in Congo since the U.S. invasion of 1996, with millions of refugees in the Great Lakes member states. Rwandan allied forces in DRC are perpetrating genocide at present in North Kivu, and the western media and “humanitarian” agencies have remained silent. More than 15,000 IDPs were registered between December 2009 and January 2010, with thousands more IDPs reported hiding in North Kivu forests.

Violence in eastern Congo is universally and falsely blamed on the Forces for the Democratic Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), but in fact violence is primarily due to Rwandan allied forces. Additionally, more than 168,000 people have been uprooted due to recent fighting in Western Congo.⁷

Congo-Brazzaville has harbored the ex-Forces Armées Zaïroises (ex-FAZ) since the overthrow of President Mobutu in 1997, and it harbors Rwandans that fled the AFDL genocide against Hutu refugees in Congo-Zaire (1996-1997).⁸ There may be some 300 ex-MLC (Movement for the Liberation of Congo) rebels and more than 10,000 ex-FAZ involved in the western rebellion.

Equateur Province is the site of major untapped petroleum reserves. Belgian, French, Portuguese, German and U.S. families and corporations control vast tracts under attack by industrial logging. There are also Western-owned plantations with modern day slavery involving tens of thousands of Congolese people subject to terrorism by state paramilitary services.⁹

Resistance Patriots of Dongo

In March 2009 the Western press reported a “tribal dispute” and “ethnic clash over fishing rights” in the little Western Congo outback town of Dongo. The dispute reportedly began between two different ethnic groups. However, the “Resistance Patriots of Dongo” claim that government agents manipulated the parties of the dispute and escalated armed hostilities.

In October 2009 President Kabila and top military adviser John Numbi dispatched FARDC troops under the command of Gen. Benjamin Alongaboni to Dongo to negotiate peace with resistance forces. Gen. Alongaboni, a Congolese son hailing from Equateur Province and the first FARDC officer on the scene, secured a negotiated peace with Dongo area combatants.

Soon after, however, President Kabila sent RDF forces—in FARDC uniforms—who enraged Congolese in the region and provoked hostilities by killing some local people and undermining peace negotiations. The Resistance Patriots of Dongo retaliated and Congolese FARDC troops under the command of Gen. Alongaboni defected.

Meanwhile, the “Dongo Crisis” blossomed into a full-blown Congolese rebellion against international occupation forces and the powerful Kabila-Kagame clique. Hundreds of Congolese Armed Forces (FARDC)—of ethnic Congolese origin—reportedly deserted and joined rebellion ranks with Congolese civilians and various military elements of past rebellions.

Bound for the Dongo rebellion in mid-November, Rwandan Defense Forces (RDF) crossed Lake Kivu from Gisenyi to Goma, DRC, and were then flown from Goma to Kamina Air Base in Katanga, a military transport hub used for the Belgo-American-U.N. mercenary occupations during the Katanga secession (1960-63) and “Congo Crises” (1964–67). The RDF battalion was next flown to Bandundu Province.

The RDF troops were reportedly next moved onto the 42-acre campus of the U.S. Embassy-affiliated American School in Kinshasa (TASOK), near the notorious Camp Tshatshi military base, and then flown to Gemena airport in Equateur. The Colonel Tshatshi Military Camp in Kinshasa is the FARDC military command headquarters. The TASOK campus was used for RDF troops because Rwandans would not be welcome amongst Congolese-FARDC at Camp Tshatshi.

There were at least three round trips in some legs of the RDF flight plan reportedly using both MONUC and Hewa Bora Airlines, an airline 70 percent owned by Belgian arms trafficker Philippe de Moerloose. In the “leaked” November 2009 U.N. Panel of Experts Report on Illegal Exploitation in the Congo, Philippe De Moerloose and Hewa Bora Airlines were named for weapons shipments from Sudan to Congo in violation of the International Arms Embargo on the DRC.¹⁰ De Moerloose supplies Kabila with presidential jets and other war toys.

Attempting to discredit the High Court in Spain for its issuing of international war crimes indictments against 40 top Rwandan military officials, the U.N. Panel of Experts Report also falsely accused Spanish non-government organizations affiliated with the judicial war crimes investigations of backing “terrorist” groups in eastern Congo.

The Resistance Patriots of Dongo have inflicted high casualties on the Kabila Coalition forces dispatched to Equateur. MONUC issued one tiny press report on Nov. 26, after resistance forces shot up a MONUC helicopter that flew to Dongo to resupply the Coalition ground troops. Some 2000 of the coalition troops were reported killed in February and March.

A short Western media propaganda blurb titled “Armed group claims firing at UN chopper in DRC,” Agence France-Presse attempted to discredit the rebellion and cover for MONUC’s involvement in open military aggression against Congolese people.

The AFP described the conflict as purely tribal and framed it as ruthless savage Africans killing with machetes. The MONUC chopper apparently was attacked on Nov. 26.¹¹

Dongo War Not Connected to Eastern Congo?

“The fighting is not related to the simmering conflict in the mineral-rich eastern borderlands,” Reuters wrote, “where the army – backed by thousands of peacekeepers – are attempting to stamp out local, Rwandan, and Ugandan rebels.”¹²

On Dec. 3, 2009, Belgian newspapers La Libre Belgique and RTLM reported that Belgium’s Foreign Minister Steven Vanackere and Defense Minister Pieter De Crem had responded to the communiqué of the Resistance Patriots of Dongo, circulated on the Internet on Dec. 1, which warned Belgium and Kinshasa that the resistance knew of the secret plan to dispatch paratroopers to Kisangani. The two Belgian ministries issued a joint communiqué denying denying the secret plan.¹³

According to Kinshasa sources, the MONUC-uniformed Belgians would be flown from Kisangani, Orientale Province, to Equateur Province’s northwestern frontier city of Gbadolite — the stronghold of former President Mobutu and rebel warlord Jean Pierre Bemba — and then to Gemena airport near Dongo.¹⁴

Soon after the Resistance Patriots of Dongo forces occupied the frontier city of Libenge, President Kabila dispatched 600 elite FARDC commandos trained by 60 Belgian Armed Forces instructors at Kamina Air base.

Sources in Kinshasa on Dec. 5 reported: “massive violent fighting in Libenge and Gemena areas,” involving 1,000 Congolese National Police (PNC) and 100 Ghanaian MONUC troops and two MONUC helicopter gunships.¹⁵

The MONUC “peacekeeping” enterprise in Congo is a $1 billion a year operation involving contracts with Lockheed Martin subsidiary Pacific Architects and Engineers (PAE).

On December 14, 2009, the Spanish Press Agency SAPA and Agence France-Presse reported that DRC government troops fighting against ‘tribal forces’ had taken back the town of Dongo, with the tribal forces being “led by the animist priest Udjani.”¹⁶ The article maintained the ongoing silence about high casualties.

The international news media was completely silent after government forces that had reentered Dongo by December 14 suffered a crushing defeat when resistance forces sprang a trap: scores of Kabila Coalition troops (allegedly including ‘white’ mercenaries) were massacred.

On December 16, 2009, the MONUC spokesman in Kinshasa DRC announced that MONUC troops were deployed in Dongo in Equateur province “to sustain the joint PNC/FARDC operations aimed at re-establishing order [sic] and state authority…”¹⁷

MONUC transferred some 500 regular MONUC Ghanaian, Tunisian and Egyptian “peacekeepers” to Equateur province from the eastern Congo’s conflict areas in Orientale and the Kivus, along with Armored Personnel Carriers, weapons, and transport and combat helicopters. MONUC also deployed Guatemalan Special Forces to the Equateur region.

On December 22, New York’s Bloomberg News reported with a news brief deepening the racist mythology portraying this as African savagery and superstition.

“The Enyele leader is a mystic named Udjani,” wrote Michael J. Kavanagh, reporting for Bloomberg from Kinshasa (DRC) and Impfondo (Republic of Congo), referring to the Enyele tribe, “who claims to have a magical sword that can poison people and pass its powers to the curved machetes wielded by many of his followers, witnesses said.”¹⁸

Sources working for MONUC in Kisangani confirm that there are Belgian troops in Kisangani, with “one or two” Hercules C-130 Belgian military aircraft.

Resistance forces and Kabila’s Coalition forces engaged in major battles since January with many top military officers of the Kabila Coalition killed. Sources claim that Kabila Coalition forces have used incendiary bombs causing huge civilian casualties. A key intelligence source in Kinshasa insists that Belgian paratroopers were on the ground in Equateur and, unprepared for the organized resistance they encountered, were forced to retreat after some (unknown) number were wounded and killed. MONUC troops have also been engaged in the fighting, in continued violation of the U.N. “peacekeeping” mandate.

Election Slogans and Empty Promises (Sound Familiar?)

In the beginning, many Congolese supported President Kanambe, alias Kabila, ignoring his origins, hoping that he would share power, that he would develop the Congo, build roads and schools and, especially, that he would forestall and evict Ugandan and Rwandan agents, provocateurs, mining cartels and war criminals from the 1996-2001 war years. They were the usual empty promises made by the usual empty politicians.

The plan has all along been to colonize Congo through Rwanda. This involves eliminating as many Congolese people as possible to control their land, balkanizing the Congo and creating a “Republic of the Volcanoes” (Republique des Volcans) as Clinton-Bush official Herman Cohen has repeatedly called for since the U.S.-backed invasion of 1996.

For years now several high visibility Western intelligence organizations, in particular the groups ENOUGH, STAND, Genocide Intervention Network, and the RAISE HOPE FOR CONGO—created and funded by the International Crisis Group and Center for American Progress—have lobbied college students and Western governments to action. Legislation backed by these intelligence fronts includes the “LRA Disarmament Act” (Lord’s Resistance Army), the so-called ‘Blood Minerals’ legislation, and the “Violence Against Women Act” (Resolution 1888). The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) is blamed for all terrorism in the northern Uganda region, which is awash in oil, thus shielding the organized war crimes of Ugandan President Museveni and his western allies, just as the Forces for the Democratic Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) are blamed to shield the Kagame terror networks.

William Jefferson Clinton’s former national security insider John Prendergast is the leading cheerleader for these groups, with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s help, and with John Podesta, Tom Daschle and Madeleine Albright, behind the scenes. John Prendergast was the expert of choice for CBS 60 Minutes’ “Blood Minerals” broadcast, nationally televised in the United States on Nov. 29, 2009, which was an advertisement for ENOUGH, the International Rescue Committee and so-called “humanitarian” organizations. These lobby and flak entities are working to displace and neutralize all true international grassroots efforts to help the Congolese people take control of their own resources and future, and they cover for hidden Western interests; they also advance military solutions over diplomatic or other peaceful solutions.

The Western media perpetually broadcasts the suffering in Congo, but the propaganda is simplistic disinformation, and the Western “news”-consuming public eats it up and dismisses the Congo, abandoning the people whose lives are determined in part by the raw materials stolen from them in a state of war and organized crime. These include diamonds, gold, columbium-tantalite, cobalt, copper, petroleum, germanium, tin, tungsten, palm oil, coffee and chocolate (sold in Whole Foods groceries stores). But the value of Congo’s greatest natural “resource” exceeds the value of all the above resources combined: the biggest western moneymaker in Congo is humanitarian aid, charity and international relief—Save the Children, CARE, UNICEF, UNHCR—a.k.a., and the misery industry.

In mid-March actorvist Ben Affleck launched yet the latest western “humanitarian” enterprise in eastern Congo. Affleck’s ‘humanitarianism’ operates behind the western disinformation campaign that charges Congolese men with using ‘rape as a weapon of war’—an agenda also pushed by Eve Ensler (of Vagina Monologues fame)—but fails to address the true perpetrators of crimes, including the many mining, private military, intelligence and other military interests involved in bloodshed and plunder. The ‘rape as a weapon of war’ framework facilitates western ignorance of the true perpetrators of war, including western agents, weapons brokers, mercenary companies, proxy forces, NATO and AFRICOM, and U.S. brokered military hardware (AK-47s, rockets, armored personnel carriers, tanks, grenades, surface-to-air missiles). Hillary Clinton’s denunciation of “rape as a weapon of war” in July 2009 covered up her negotiations with Joseph Kabila regarding the Clinton aligned diamond interests in DRC.

Affleck’s new Congo initiative is funded by Howard Buffet, whose powerful holding company, Berkshire Hathaway, has diverse business interests involved in the Great Lakes. Berkshire Hathaway has an 18.2% stake in the Washington Post and the Buffet’s agribusinesses in Africa are entrenching Monsanto’s genetically modified (GMO) crops. The Buffets are tight with Bill and Melinda Gates, all close business partners with the Clinton’s in Rwanda and Uganda. In September 2008, Bill Gates, Howard Buffet, Paul Kagame and Yoweri Museveni met at the United Nations headquarters to launch their GMO partnership “Purchase for Progress” with the UN’s World Food Program. Affleck also has his own private business interests facilitated by the Kagame regime in Kigali, and like Gates and Buffet he comes and goes from Kigali on a private jet. Washington Post reportage on Congo, Rwanda, Uganda and Sudan is a complete whitewash of western interests.

Rwanda has become the Pentagon’s main base and center of military operations in Africa, and this partnership involves Israel.

On January 28, 2009, sources in Congo reported that Joseph Kabila narrowly survived another assassination attempt, the third this year, with his bodyguard taking the bullet. Meanwhile, violent fighting continued in Equateur province into March, with Kabila coalition troops allegedly arresting and torturing civilians and accusing them of being rebels, including boys as young as 10, and widely committing summary executions. This is a massive violation of international law; AFRICOM and MONUC officials know it is happening; United Nations officials in New York know it is happening;¹⁹ and the western press is silent.

In Mid-March, at an exclusive United States Institute for Peace meeting in Washington, DC, AFRICOM spokesman Mark Swayne dismissed any AFRICOM involvement in these covert operations by responding that such reports are “irrelevant.” The USIP has funded pro-Kagame disinformation campaigns since the early 1990’s, shielding U.S. involvement in Central African war crimes and genocide. AFRICOM information campaigns exclusively project an image of U.S. troops being only involved in humanitarian and peacekeeping operations.

Curiously, at the same USIP meeting, Mark Swayne reportedly “apologized” for AFRICOM’s use of Ugandans in building the new AFRICOM base under construction in Kisangani, Congo. Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni—through his wife and brother Salim Saleh’s organized crime networks and the Ugandan military—are hated for more than a decade of plunder and terror in Congo. The Pentagon’s own web site identifies the elite U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) as ‘training’ Congolese troops in Kisangani, DRC, and Swayne did not reveal that the Ugandans are mercenaries likely affiliated to the western mercenary-linked oil companies (Heritage Oil & Gas, Hardman Resources, H Oil) operating in the Lake Albert basin on the DRC-Uganda border.

AFRICOM, NATO and private military companies Dyncorp and PAE (Pacific Architect & Engineers, a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin) have also been training and flying Ugandan and Rwandan troops to the U.S.-European-Israeli wars in Somalia and Sudan (Darfur). There are some 300 Ugandans backing the US in Afghanistan and more than 10,000 Ugandans in Iraq, with more than 3000 Rwandans in Darfur.

In December 2009, a group of Congolese chiefs sent an open letter to U.S. President Barrack Obama proclaiming a “categorical refusal of your AFRICOM Project in the Congo.”

AFRICOM, NATO and private military companies Dyncorp and PAE (Pacific Architect & Engineers, a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin) have been ‘training’ and flying Ugandan and Rwandan troops to the US-European-Israeli wars in Somalia and Sudan (Darfur). There are some 300 Ugandans backing the US in Afghanistan and more than 10,000 Ugandans in Iraq, with more than 3000 Rwandans reported to be in Darfur. An unknown number of Rwandan soldiers are also in Iraq and Afghanistan, and there are allegations that “peacekeeping” sorties sent to Darfur, Sudan, may actually serve as cover for military personnel and hardware actually bound from Rwanda to the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. However, Sudan is exploding as you read this, and the huge Rwandan deployments might be behind new violence. These are Rwandan and Ugandan troops responsible for the most egregious war crimes in all the Great Lakes countries.

On April 4, 2010, rebellion insurgents crossed the Congo river and attacked the provincial capital of Mbandaka. Two MONUC troops were killed, and many more wounded after insurgents attacked the governor’s residence and took the Mbandaka airport. By April 9 the government FARDC forces and MONUC had regained the airport leaving three MONUC troops dead. The story finally broke onto the pages of the BBC, New York Times, Washington Post and other mainstream press, but all continue to hide deeper interests and distort the realities. The heavily populated city of Mbandaka was described as a “ghost town” and reporting ignored civilian casualties.²⁰,²¹,²²

1. See Keith Harmon Snow, “Congo’s President Kabila: Dynasty or Travesty?” Toward Freedom, Nov. 13, 2007.
2. For this report these RDF-disguised troops will be designated “RDF” (Rwandan Defense Forces) to separate them from other FARDC troops with Rwandan allegiances.
3. See, e.g., Spain’s Feb. 6, 2008, indictments issued by High Court Judge Andreu Merelles charging 40 current or former high-ranking Rwandan military officials with serious crimes, including genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and terrorism, perpetrated over a period of 12 years, from 1990 to 2002, against the civilian population and primarily against members of the Hutu ethnic group.
4. See, e.g., Davenport and Stam, “What Really Happened in Rwanda?” Miller-McCune, Oct. 6, 2009.
5. See, e.g., Keith Harmon Snow, “The Rwanda Genocide Fabrications,” Dissident Voice, April 13, 2009.
6. See, e.g., Christopher Black, “The Truth About Rwanda,” SaveRwanda.org, December 29, 2010.
7. United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) and OCHA.
8. Private investigations, Democratic Republic of Congo, July-August 2006 and February-March 2007.
9. The Elwyn Blattner Groupe plantation holdings are revealed in the 2008 documentary film Episode III: Enjoy Poverty by Dutch filmmaker Renzo Martens.
10. United Nations: Letter dated Nov. 9, 2009, from the Group of Experts on the Democratic Republic of the Congo addressed to the chairman of the Security Council Committee established pursuant to Resolution 1533 (2004), “leaked” November 2009.
11. Unsigned, “Armed group claims firing at U.N. chopper in DR Congo,” AFP, Nov. 26, 2009.
12. Joe Bavier, “Congo gunmen fire at U.N. helicopter, five wounded,” Reuters, Nov. 26, 2009.
13. Belga, “La Belgique dément tout projet d’envoi de troupes en RDC,” RTBF, Dec. 3, 2009. ["Belgium denies all project of sending of troops to DRC."]
14. Bemba Saolona’s company, Scibe CMMJ, was implicated by the U.N. in smuggling weapons to UNITA during the Angolan Civil War: Johan Peleman, “The logistics of sanctions busting: the airborne component,” (PDF file), p. 303.
15. In 2006-07, Police Nationale Congolaise were outfitted with high-tech radio communications, funded by the United Nations Development Program, purchased from New Zealand.
16. “DR Congo troops take back town from tribal forces: Govt.” SAPA-AFP, December 14, 2009.
17. “Equateur [DRC]: An extra 500 MONUC troops being deployed to Dongo,” MONUC Press Briefing, December 16,2009.
18. Michael J. Kavanagh, “Thousands Flee Northern Congo Insurgency Inspired by Mystic,” Blomberg.com.
19. Direct communications with high-level United Nations officials in New York confirmed in late January 2010 that UN officials in New York were discussing the Equateur conflict, but that there were (paraphrased) “conflicting interpretations of the facts.”
20. Unsigned, “Troops Retake Mbandaka Airport,” BBC, April 5, 2010.
21. Reuters, “Fighters Kill Peacekeeper in North Congo Attack,” Washington Post, April 4, 2010.
22. Katrina Mansen & David Lewis, “UN Failed Civilians During Rebel Attack,” Washington Post, April 9, 2010.

In relation, the Democratic Republic of Congo’s UN supported armed assault against rebels in the eastern Congo has promoted widespread death, rape and other forms of brutality. Indeed, the decade long war has claimed at least 5.4 million lives — the most in any conflict since WWII. At the same time, hundreds of thousands of women and girls, including babies, have suffered rapes and sexual mutilation, often with weapons and tools used in the process. Further, it is thought that, in eastern portions of the Congo, up to seventy percent of Congolese women, along with children of all ages, have been sexually attacked, according to the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, a research center at Harvard University.

Moreover, some relief workers have estimated that up to twenty percent of new rapes have been instigated by police and civilians in urban rather than rural areas in that a culture of violence has set into much of the nation due to the long, drawn out conflict. At the same time, the attacks are so extremely violent that they have been described as sexual terrorism by medical workers at the Panzi Hospital in Bukavu at which thousands of survivors have been treated each year.

Overall, it has emerged that all major groups involved in the warfare have committed these and other serious war crimes, including looting peasants, purposefully destroying homes and forcing the mass dislocations of more than a million terrorized people from their neighborhoods. On account, countless families and whole communities have been forced to live with constant fear, repeated migrations and insurmountable social turmoil.

In a country with an annual income of $110 per capita and a life expectancy rate of 54.4 years, life is difficult enough as it is. However, individuals on the run can’t even have the assurance of this modest sum to support existence. As a result, massive food, medical and displacement aid is needed in the country at the very time that it is most dangerous to be there as an aid worker. Simultaneously, a shortage of donations negatively impact the quality of care delivered by various assistance organizations, including U.N. sponsored relief programs.

Meanwhile, a callous society ostracizes the victims, regardless of their ages, while showing leniency towards the rapists. Indeed, wounded sufferers are generally shunned by their spouses, other family members and former friends, particularly so if they have any children that resulted from periods of long term bondage accompanied by repeated rapes.

Simultaneously, assailants rarely receive proper trials. Therefore, the lack of punishment has increasingly emboldened Congolese men to find pleasure through physically violating women and children on a routine basis. Consequently, the number of assaults on women and children are increasing and spreading into new regions so as to include ever new groups, such as the Pigmies.

Even as the International Criminal Tribunal recognizes rape as a crime of genocide under international law, there is little by way of meaningful deterrence to the escalating aggression. In relation, this “pandemic of sexual violence,” indicates Stephen Lewis, the former United Nations special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, is “obscene,” “insanely savage,” and is nothing short of “femicide.”¹

Despite that social stigma is prevalent, the abandoned women and girls, of whom some are pictured at Congo/Women,² do sometimes receive substantial help. For example, it comes from groups like SOS AIDS, an organization that works with other relief agencies to get in touch with rural survivors so as to take them to treatment centers for psychological counseling and medical support.

The assistance often includes the successful repair of fistulas, debilitating ruptures of the urinary-genital tract that leave females incontinent and prone to infections for life. The helpers, also, try to provide housing, including for those in need of anti-retroviral and other drug treatments due to the attackers having infected their victims with assorted serious diseases. (The HIV prevalence includes approximately 4.2 percent of the population.) Meanwhile, the high number of injured women and girls makes it impossible to treat them all, aside from the fact that the majority of the assaults, apparently, go unreported.

Thankfully, there are a number of dedicated groups like SOS AIDS taking a stand for justice and human welfare even when it is dangerous for their staff to do so. Tragically, others try to increase the very same kinds of turmoil SOS AIDS is striving to remedy. They are doing so in order to gain control of four main minerals: tin, tantalum, tungsten, and gold that garner an estimated $180 million in revenues each year.

The main reason that these minerals are in such high demand is because they are critical in the fabrication of digital cameras, laptops, cell phones, portable musical devices and video games. Yet, some of these battlefield minerals are not widely found over much of the world. Therefore, there is great competition for them in the Congo and some individuals will stop at nothing to get them.

All considered, people interested in supporting the necessary reforms in this war torn land can phone or write letters to Congressional representatives to urge them to ratify the Congo Conflict Minerals Act (S. 891) and the Conflict Minerals Trade Act (H.R. 4128), which are currently undergoing legislative review.³ They can, also, sign petitions directed to members of Congress.⁴ Additionally, they can contact their respective mobile phone manufacturers to indicate that they want the companies to ensure that cell phones are only made from certified conflict-free materials.

The women and girls of the Congo are our sisters and daughters in the larger sense of our all being part of one human family. Therefore, our love and concern for them, as it would be for any other cherished human being, must be present. In relation, I sort of decided to adopt the rest of the world as my family due to my having been orphaned at an early age. Besides, Congolese people deserve unreserved justice and compassion as much as any other people do, as our common welfare is inexorably linked. In fact, only a huge outpouring of care from around the world will help to bring about the kind of changes so desperately needed in this tragically destroyed nation.

Due to a shortage of funds and critical care supplies, the crisis in the Congo is inadequately addressed. Yet many charitable groups are striving their best to provide relief.

Thankfully, several of these agencies have excellent track records. A few of them that come highly recommended are the Women and Girls of the World, Stephen Lewis Foundation, SOS Medical Centres and Women for Women International in the event that any support of their projects might like to be undertaken.⁵ As Margaret Mead suggested, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

1. Ensler E, Lewis S (2008) The never ending war. Huffington Post. The Stephen Lewis Foundation (2007 September 13) Stephen Lewis calls for a new UN initiative to end sexual violence in the eastern region of the DRC.
2. Congo/Women, an exhibition featuring photographs by Lynsey Addario, Marcus Bleasdale, Ron Haviv and James Nachtwey.
3. GovTrack.us, 111th Congress, 2009-2010, S. 891: Congo Conflict Minerals Act of 2009. GovTrack.us, 111th Congress, 2009-2010,HR 4128: Conflict Minerals Trade Act.
4. Urge Your Senators to Cosponsor the Congo Conflict Minerals Act of 2009 (Raise Hope for Congo). Urge Your Representative to Cosponsor the Conflict Minerals Trade Act (Raise Hope for Congo).
5. Humanitarian relief organizations: Women and Girls of the World, Stephen Lewis Foundation, Medical Centres in Congo — SOS Medical Centres, and Women for Women International’s Congo initiative at Congo Women Need Your Help | Women For Women International.

A rising alliance calling themselves ‘The Resistance Patriots of Dongo’ (Patriotes-Résistants de Dongo) has gained currency and recruits after Congolese people learned that the Dongo resistance forces were fighting against Rwandan Tutsi troops in the little frontier town of Dongo.

Sources in Congo’s capital Kinshasa report that an emergency ‘crises’ meeting was convened in Brussels on Friday, November 28, 2009, after a distress call was sent by Congo-Kinshasa President Hypolitté Kanambe, known to the western world by his alias, Joseph Kabila Kabange. According to intelligence sources, the Belgian military attaché in Kinshasa has been instructed to lay the groundwork for the arrival of a detachment of elite Belgian Armed Forces (BAF) paratroopers as soon as possible, before mid-December.

Sources in Kinshasa report that in mid-November President Joseph Kabila secretly airlifted a battalion of Rwandan Defense Forces (RDF) across Congo to put down the small rebellion. The operation involved multiple flights in November and was supported by the United Nations Observes Mission in Congo (MONUC) and the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM). The RDF forces, moved to Congo from Rwanda exclusively for the operation, were uniformed as FARDC troops.¹

Pitched battles involving RDF occurred in past weeks on November 22-24 and November 26-28 in the Dongo region. Along with RDF regulars, MONUC troops from the supposed international ‘peacekeeping’ mission have been fighting alongside Tutsi Rwandan soldiers infiltrated by Rwanda, with the Kabila government’s support, into the national army, the Armed Forces of the DRC (FARDC).

Equateur Province achieved a relative peace by 2004 and the majority of United Nations Observers Mission to Congo (MONUC) troops pulled out by 2005. Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), the humanitarian organization that had worked in Equateur Province from 1992, disregarded their own reports about the state of the health emergency and mortality in Equateur and abandoned the population in 2006.²

On December 2, 2009 the remote strategic airport town of Libenge, near the Central African Republic, fell to the new rebellion, which is expanding and spreading with foreign backing. Towns in Equateur Province have been falling one by one to the rebellion, sending Kinshasa’s elites into a scramble on December 3 and President Kabila into a security panic.

Now the entire Congo has been launched into a state of massive fear, warfare and insecurity—and the house of cards—propped up by western corporations and military—comes tumbling down.

The international media has completely blacked out this story, reporting only an ethnic conflict over fishing rights. Faced with almost two months of suppressing information about the Dongo crisis in Equateur, MONUC is faced with the prospect of full disclosure—or launching another massive campaign of damage control and disinformation.

MONUC HIDES EQUATEUR CONFLICT

The Tutsi forces in the FARDC include infiltrated RDF and ‘ex’-CNDP forces from the National Congress for the Defense of the People (CNDP), the extremist terrorist militia that sprouted out of the Kivu Provinces, but is heavily backed by Rwanda and infiltrated with thousands of extremist Tutsis.

Thousands of CNDP militia forces were integrated into the FARDC military in 2009, in a strategic maneuver championed by James Kabarebe and Paul Kagame and their U.S. and U.K. backers. These ‘ex’-CNDP wear FARDC uniforms, with some units commanded by FARDC officers—whose loyalty might first be to Congo, and not Kabila—while others are commanded by ‘ex’-CNDP officers serving Kabila but loyal to Rwanda.

The CNDP is one of the pivotal causes of the massive destabilization of eastern Congo, along with the many other Rwandan and Ugandan interests maintained by the organized crime networks run out of Rwanda (Paul Kagame) and Uganda (Yoweri Museveni). The formal military integration process involving so-called ‘ex’-CNDP forces is resented by many Congolese and Rwandan people as a logical step in the secret plan by Tutsi extremist forces to dominate both the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Great Lakes region.

Rwandan Defense Forces are not exclusively Tutsis, but are controlled and highly regulated by the secret extremist Tutsi network maintained by Paul Kagame, James Kabarebe, and others of the 40 top war criminals indicted by the Spanish court on February 6, 2008. Much ado is made in the international press, based on propaganda cranked out by the Kigame regime and its supporters that Rwanda’s is a power-sharing government, that Hutu-Tutsi reconciliation has been a huge and lasting success, and that the RDF and intelligence services are comprised of non-Tutsi.

Anyone who remotely steps out of line, in or out of Rwanda, will immediately be targeted, accused of genocide revisionism, negationism or participation in ‘the genocide’ itself.

President Kabila reportedly asked Central Africa Republic (C.A.R.) president Francois Bozizé to intervene and flank the resistance forces through the remote frontier town of Zongo, DRC, also in Equateur Province, across the border from Bangui, the C.A.R. capital. The two presidents share a common enemy, Jean-Pierre Bemba and ex-forces of the Movement for the Liberation of Congo (MLC). Jean-Pierre Bemba is under arrest at the International Criminal Court, thanks to Bozizé and Kabila, charged with war crimes in C.A.R.

Bozizé is occupied with his own insurrections and guerilla insurgencies in C.A.R., having come to power by force in March 2003 coup d’etat against Ange-Félix Patassé, C.A.R. president from 1993-2003. Patassé, in exile in Togo, will clearly be an interested party in the Dongo rebellion, given Kabila’s relations with Bozizé. Military and intelligence from France, U.S. and Chad all meddle in C.A.R.

Kabila is reportedly furious at Congo-Brazzaville and its President Sassou-Nguesso for allowing veteran rebel guerrillas to attack Congo-Kinshasa on its western Oubangi River frontier (see map).

AN ALLIANCE ACROSS THE VAST CONGO

The very first military intervention by U.N. Blue Helmets, anywhere, occurred in the Democratic Republic of Congo during the secession of Katanga Province (1960-63). The U.N. occupied Congo again in the ‘Congo Crises’ (1964-66). Both occupations involved Belgian paratroopers and other western mercenaries. The Congolese people were shafted.

These illegal foreign occupations by the ‘international community’—under the guise of the United Nations—served to insure western control of the diamond, copper, uranium and cobalt mines of Katanga and Kasai. Billed as ‘peacekeeping’ operations, this misnomer set the stage for present day misunderstanding of the true MONUC role as an armed combatant protecting the corporate interests or predatory western capitalism.

Now, fifty years later, following more than a century of Belgian-Anglo-American-Franco-Israeli big business profits and slavery in Congo—with ten million deaths under King Leopold (1885-1908), with a brutal Apartheid dispossession and military occupation under Belgian colonial rule (1908-1960), with countless deaths under the U.N. occupations of 1960 to 1965, with tens of millions of deaths under the U.S. client state regime of Joseph Mobutu (1965-1996), with more than ten million deaths since the Pentagon-backed invasion of 1996—the Belgians are reportedly again planning to rescue their military client-partnership in Congo-Kinshasa.

The elite Belgian paratroopers would be deployed first to Bangaboka Airport in Kisangani, in Congo’s eastern Orientale Province.

Kisangani is the site for the V.S. Naipal novel A Bend in the River and the proverbial ‘heart-of-darkness’ outpost where Henry Morton Stanley organized the genocidal red-rubber and ivory pillage for Belgium’s King Leopold. Today, western-owned plantations and logging companies reap their high profits through mass slavery of Congolese people in the Kisangani region.

To conceal President Kabila’s illegal Belgian intervention from international public opinion, Brussels, Kinshasa and MONUC plan to dress Belgian paratroopers as ‘peacekeepers’ to be deployed out of Kisangani as MONUC ‘Blue Helmets’ bound for Equateur and Dongo.

The leaders of the rebellion in western Equateur Province have reportedly forged an alliance with other disaffected Congo-Kinshasa forces in the eastern Kivu provinces. This alliance is united against the Kabila regime and its allies, including MONUC and AFRICOM.

Sources in Kinshasa report that the Patriotic Resistance Forces of Dongo are now aligned with General Dunia, a Mai Mai leader operating against the joint operations of the RDF-FARDC-MONUC nexus in the Fizi and Barako areas of South Kivu.

Joseph Kabila is a black pawn in the great game by white foreigners and multinational corporations to control and plunder Central Africa. Like Congo’s historic leaders Patrice Lumumba (1925-1961) and his paternal namesake, the former President Laurent Desiré Kabila (1939-2001), Joseph Kabila would quickly be assassinated if he diverged from the hidden agenda of western capital.

Now however, internal hatreds and domestic disaffections threaten Joseph Kabila’s regime.

“What is happening now in Dongo [Equateur] is the beginning of something that no one will stop,” said one Congolese intelligence insider on November 25. “For sure, Kabila and his friends are sending Rwandan troops to kill people but the resistance movement says that Dongo will be the tomb of Rwandan troops and the beginning of the end of Kabila and his supporters. At this time, thousands of people—young Congolese men, ex-Mobutu fighters, Congolese FARDC—have joined the movement. I’m very sure that this Dongo movement was prepared for a long time.”

EXTREMIST TUTSIS BLEEDING CONGO DRY

Many Congolese people have long since known that the president of their country has supported a secret extremist ‘Tutsi’ alliance that seeks to dominate Central Africa. His real name is Hypolitté Kanambe, formerly a junior Rwanda Patriotic Front/Army (RPF/A) officer plucked from the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire (AFDL) forces.

It is widely supported that Joseph Kabila reported directly to RPF/A commanders James Kabarebe and Paul Kagame in the Pentagon-backed AFDL ‘rebellion’ that overthrew President Joseph Mobutu in Zaire (Congo-Kinshasa); there are also claims that Kabila was a soldier in the RPF/A during the multiple genocides orchestrated by Kagame’s extremist Tutsi RPF/A in Rwanda (1990-1994).

“For us Congolese-Zairians, the boy is Rwandan Tutsi,” explains Congolese intellectual Yaa-Lengi Ngemi. “Yes, [the assassinated president] Laurent Kabila lived in Dar es Salaam and had a business there. Hypollite Kanambe’s Tutsi father was a close friend and business partner of Laurent Kabila.” 

The term ‘extremist Tutsi’ applies only to the elite secretive organization, formerly the Rwandan Patriotic Front/Army (RPF/A) that exists in parallel with the parliamentary government of Rwanda. While some of the same people occupy both, the extremist Tutsis came to power through war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide in Rwanda from 1990 to 1994, operating a secret terrorist network.³ ,⁴ ,⁵

The RPF/A killed everyone in its path, no matter their ethnicity: Hutu, Tutsi, or minority indigenous Twa people. The so-called ‘Tutsi’ RPF/A killed Tutsis in Rwanda during their four year invasion, and afterwards, because Major General Paul Kagame and General James Kabarebe and their ‘exiled’ Tutsi conspirators in Diaspora—dubbed the ‘Jews of Africa’, a ‘people without a homeland’—did not trust any Tutsis that stayed behind in Rwanda after Hutu President Juvenal Habyarimana came to power in 1973.

The RPF/A also killed everyone in their path because their plan from the start was to eliminate as many people as possible, to depopulate Rwanda of the soon-to-be problematic landowners, businessmen, farmers and peasants—mostly the majority Hutu population, but also Tutsis—and repopulate Rwanda with Ugandans and Tutsis who had been living comfortably in Western countries. It was about big business, corruption and greed.

Now, after more than fifteen years of massive western propaganda proclaiming an organized, systematic elimination of the Tutsi people by the Hutu leaders of the former Rwandan government, the official Rwanda genocide story has finally collapsed. A genocide revisioning is imperative and, given the recent acquittals at the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda (ICTR), between December 2008 and December 2009, it is well under way.

In sharp contradistinction to the tired establishment refrain, the entrenched sacred narrative accusing the ‘Hutu leadership’ of an ‘organized’ and ‘planned’ genocide in the so-called 100 days of slaughter between April 6 and July 1994—a narrative defined by victor’s justice—were the countless acts of genocide committed through a spontaneous uprising of the Hutu masses.

These were Hutu people who had been brutalized, disenfranchised, uprooted and forced from homes; people who had witnessed massacres and rapes of family members; people who were themselves the victims of brutal atrocities; people who knew of crematoriums and mass graves filled with their friends, families, and neighbors who were both Hutu and Tutsi.

These were reportedly more than one million internally displaced Rwandan Hutus, people who had been terrorized by the RPF/A from October 1990 to April 1994, as it butchered its way into Rwanda; and possibly over one million Burundian refugees, Hutus who suffered massive reprisals in Burundi after the first civilian President, Melchior Ndadaye, a democratically elected Hutu, was assassinated by the Tutsi military in October 1993, and his successor, President Cyprien Ntaryamira, was assassinated on April 6, 1994.

On April 6, 1994, they responded to the extremist Tutsi onslaught with a vengeance. There was killing on all sides, that is not in dispute. This was a war, a bloody conflagration of horrors. But the numbers don’t add up, the dead don’t compute, the labels ‘Tutsi’ and ‘Hutu’ become circumspect. The propaganda story is quite different than the facts, and no one has yet to write a true and comprehensive account not biased by fear, interests, imperial arrogance or whiteness.

After seizing power in July of 1994, the extremist Tutsi network continued to perpetrate atrocities, including massacres, assassinations, tortures and disappearances, and the network moved into Congo-Zaire in 1996 and persists in Rwanda and Congo to this day. The modus operandi of this terrorist structure is to perpetrate crimes and blames them on the victim populations.

ELECTIONS SLOGANS & EMPTY PROMISES

In the beginning, many Congolese supported President Kanambe, alias Kabila, ignoring his origins, hoping that he would share power, that he would develop the Congo, build roads and schools and, especially, that he would forestall and evict Ugandan and Rwandan agents, provocateurs, mining cartels and war criminals from the 1996-2001 war years.

In July of 2006, prior to the presidential elections, I traveled on the campaign trail with President Kabila’s sister alias Janet Kabila, around Kinshasa and into bush towns nearby. The Kabilas doled out cash and propaganda (t-shirts, caps, flyers, buttons, food, alcohol) and they rallied entire villages with a five-piece marching band. To the uneducated and impoverished masses of the interior the Kabilas pledged roads and schools within next three years.

Janet Kabila on the campaign trail in Bas Congo promises roads and schools to impoverished villages. Photo by Keith Harmon Snow.

They were the usual empty promises made by the usual empty politicians. The Congolese people have seen nothing but misery and death delivered from within and without the vast Congo.

The western media broadcasts the suffering in Congo, but the propaganda is simplistic disinformation, and the western news [sic] consuming public eats it up and dismisses the Congo, abandoning the people whose lives are determined in part by the raw materials stolen from them in a state of war and organized crime.

High visibility western organizations, in particular the ENOUGH and Raise Hope For Congo projects and their wealthy backers the International Crisis Group and Center for American Progress [sic], have lobbied college students and western governments to action, always pushing for legislation, and licensed by capitalism and the major mass media to speak as the only bona fide experts on the Congo, Rwanda, Sudan and Uganda. They also advance military solutions over diplomatic or other peaceful solutions.

William Jefferson Clinton’s former national security insider John Prendergast is their leading cheerleader. There’s a reason Prendergast is all over the news, appearing at colleges where ENOUGH and Raise Hope’s advance publicity includes expensive color brochures and posters.

“Already the Enough Project, an anti-genocide group based in Washington, and Eve Ensler, an American playwright who has been supporting Congolese women’s projects for years through the organization V-Day, among others,” wrote Jeffrey Gentleman in the recent New York Times article slamming the Congolese people for their own suffering, “have been urging Congress to pass legislation that would bar American companies from buying Congo’s ‘conflict minerals’, which include gold, tin and coltan, a metallic ore used in many cellphones and laptop computers. Several bills have been proposed.”⁶

John Prendergast was the expert of choice for CBS 60 Minutes’ ‘Blood Minerals’ broadcast, nationally televised in the United States on November 29, 2009, which was an advertisement for ENOUGH, the IRC and so-called ‘humanitarian’ organizations. These lobby and flak entities are working to displace and neutralize all true international grass roots efforts to help the Congolese people take control of their own resources and future, and they cover for hidden western interests.

Beholden to powerful western corporate interests, the most powerful originating from Belgium, the United States, Israel, Canada, Britain and Germany, but also including Australian, Japanese, South African and Dutch interests, the Kabila regime, backed by the MONUC military occupation and the U.N. Security Council, has delivered to the Congolese people one disappointment and outrage after another.

EASTERN CONGO ABOUT TO EXPLODE TOO?

A major source of ongoing conflict in the Kivus, General Bosco Ntaganda was rewarded in January 2009 for playing along with the Kabila-Kagame-MONUC charade of ‘arresting’ CNDP-RDF war criminal General Laurent Nkunda. To their credit, the U.N. Panel of Experts, in their recently ‘leaked’ report of November 2009, exposed the appointment of General Bosco Ntaganda as CNDP-FARDC commander, which Kagame and Kabila officially denied.

General Ntanganda commanded CNDP-FARDC units responsible for massive war crimes under the joint ‘Kimia’ operations in the Kivus launched with MONUC backing in January 2009. Ntanganda is an insider and—if arrested and sent to the supposedly neutral ICC—he is purportedly a huge risk to Paul Kagame, James Kabarebe, Laurent Nkunda and Joseph Kabila.

The International Criminal Court indicted General Bosco Ntanganda for war crimes committed in DRC in May 2008. The ICC is a political instrument used to selectively target certain individuals and militias, while ignoring more substantial state sanctioned actors like Paul Kagame, James Kabarebe, Yoweri Museveni or former U.S. national security council member Walter Kansteiner.

Sources on Kinshasa report that General Ntanganda may imminently trigger a new war between CNDP and FARDC forces in the Kivus, with the blessing of Joseph Kabila and Paul Kagame, who seek to protect Ntanganda from the ICC.

Given the recent secret infiltrations and sanctioned integrations of CNDP and RDF into FARDC units during 2008 and 2009, this would create havoc and trigger immense suffering, on top of the already unprecedented depopulation of the Great Lakes’ people.

General Ntanganda will likely create a new military faction, sources report, yet another acronym to confuse obtuse western foreign policy experts—yet another militia licensed to kill civilians in the soup of bloodshed, depopulation and impunity.

REGIONAL ALLIANCES AND HATREDS

In the DRC’s ‘historic’ rigged national elections of 2006, formalizing Joseph Kabila’s ‘presidency’, millions of Congolese people supported MLC rebel leader Jean-Pierre Bemba, ignoring his murderous tryst with Ugandan strongman Yoweri Museveni, because they knew Kanambe—alias Joseph Kabila—was Rwandan.⁷

“During the [presidential] election the majority of the Congolese voted for Bemba,” says Congolese human rights activist Yaa-Lengi Ngemi, “even though Congolese people knew that Bemba also killed Congolese as a stooge of Uganda. The choice was between a Congolese criminal and a foreigner, a Rwandan criminal.  So they voted for the Congolese criminal, or ‘mwana mboka’ (native son)…”

The elections rigging in Congo was multi-faceted, with all kinds of irregularities, and manipulations on all sides.⁸ The ‘international community’ backed the Kabila win.

Bemba and Kabila unleashed their troops in deadly battles, also targeting civilians, in Kinshasa in March 2007.⁹

Since 1996 more than 10 million Congolese people have died across the vast country, with the current death toll in the eastern provinces alone at some 1000 people per day. There are millions of refugees in the Great Lakes member states, and now more than 92,000 people are uprooted in western Congo due to recent fighting.

During his brief tenure as president, Joseph Kabila tried to balance out power interests through a combination of bribery and brute force. He gave Paul Kagame’s gang carte blanche over mining and land in the Kivu provinces. Extortion, racketeering, open occupations and secret infiltrations of Rwandan forces became the norm, and persisted in this pattern, to this day.

In western Congo, home to Kinshasa, Kabila gave President Eduardo Dos Santos and Angola carte blanche over oil concessions in Bas Congo province in exchange for providing presidential security forces and to counterbalance extremist Tutsi expansionism out of Rwanda. In March 2009, DRC’s oil minister Rene Isekemanga Nkeka accused Angola of stealing Congo’s oil. Many Congolese parliamentarians resent Kabila’s foreign alliances and can no longer be bribed into submission.

The Angolans hate Kagame and the Rwandan Defense Forces (former RPF/A), and vise versa. The RPF/A teamed up with Angolan UNITA rebels fighting against President Dos Santos after the Angolans cornered and shamed RPF/A troops in Bas Congo during the war; the two armies also fought on opposing sides in Congo (1998-2001).

Angola’s Eduardo Dos Santos and Gabon’s General Ali Bongo also cooperate with Congo-Brazzaville President Dennis Sassou-Nguesso.¹⁰ (Gabon’s recently deceased dictator Omar Bongo was Sassou-Nguesso’s son-in-law.)

Next door to the vast Congo-Kinshasa, President Dennis Sassou-Nguesso in Congo-Brazzaville is one of Joseph Kabila’s most enduring enemies. The Congo River separates the two presidents in Brazzaville and Kinshasa, and one of the Congo’s largest tributaries, the Oubangi River, separates DRC’s Equateur province, running its course northeast along the border of Congo-Brazzaville and then the Central African Republic.

President Sassou-Nguesso was a close ally of Rwanda’s former Hutu President Juvenal Habyarimana, apparently assassinated by the Tutsi extremist RPF/A ‘Zero Network’ on April 6, 1994, and he was friend and ally of Joseph Mobutu.

MOBUTU SESE SEKO’S GHOSTS

Brazzaville has harbored Mobutu’s ex-Forces Armées Zaïroises (ex-FAZ) since 1996-1997, and it harbors Rwandan elements that fled the AFDL genocide against Hutu refugees in Congo-Zaire (1996-1997). Sources suggest there are at least 300 ex-MLC and more than 10,000 ex-FAZ troops available for the Dongo rebellion.

Rwandan refugees in Congo-Brazza include civilian survivors of the 1994 exodus from Rwanda and the subsequent international war crimes committed by the Paul Kagame and James Kabarebe and their troops in DRC from 1996-1998. Uganda People’s Defense Forces also helped hunt and massacre Hutu refugees.

Congo-Brazzaville also supports the ex-Rwandan Armed Forces (ex-FAR) and their allies, the Forces for the Democratic Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), providing a distant rear base for Congo operations directed at liberating Rwanda from the extremist Tutsis and the Kagame dictatorship. ¹¹

Thus many Rwandan refugees in Brazzaville are former liberation fighters hostile to the terrorist Kagame regime for its ‘blame-the-victims’ inversion of the Rwanda ‘genocide’ story and the mass murder of millions of Hutu people from 1990 to the present.

As of 2005, the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) counted some 59,000 Congo-Kinshasa refugees in Congo-Brazzaville and more than 4000 Congo-Kinshasa refugees in C.A.R.

Sassou-Nguesso, Dos Santos, Ali Bongo and his father Omar, Mobutu, Habyarimana—all of these current and former Central African regimes align(ed) themselves with French and Israeli security and intelligence interests¹² —and all seek to counter balance and limit Tutsi extremist expansionism in Central Africa backed by the Anglo-American alliance.

Equateur Province is the site of major untapped petroleum reserves. Belgian, French, Portuguese, German and U.S. families and corporations control vast tracts of land being denuded by rapacious industrial logging. There are also western-owned plantations with modern day plantation slavery involving tens of thousands of Congolese people subject to terrorism by state paramilitary services.

The outside world hears little or nothing about the western-owned logging and plantation concessions producing timber, coffee, cocoa, palm oil, and rubber through modern day slavery. Similarly, the immense untapped petroleum reserves beneath the Congo River basin and its rainforests in Equateur province remain undisclosed by western institutions—including World Wildlife Fund (WWF), USAID, and Care International—involved in possessing and depopulating these rainforest lands for western corporate interests that benefit through the Kabila regime.

According to Congo researcher David Barouski, cassiterite (tin) mined from the bloody Kivu provinces in eastern Congo also passes through the networks of the plantations and logging interests in Equateur and Orientale.

“Outside of Asia, Belgium is the primary importer of Congolese cassiterite. Sodexmines sells to SDE, located in Brussels and directed by Mr. Edwin Raes. SDE is a subsidiary of the U.S.-based Elwyn Blattner Group. Mr. Elwyn Blattner, who hails from Bayonne, N.J, owns several businesses in the Congo through his firm, African Holding Company of America. They include logging concessions, transportation, and palm oil plantations. The products [from] these businesses are also imported by SDE.”¹³

The Elwyn Blattner Groupe has supported all sides in Congo’s wars, bankrolling combatants, police, governors and officials who control the geographical areas where his interests are. The Blattner family—James, Elwyn, Daniel, David—began and expanded under Mobutu and are entrenched with the Kabila regime.¹⁴

ASSASSINS TARGET JOSEPH KABILA KANAMBE

Recognizing the growing disaffection amongst his own military and intelligence services, President Kabila is surrounded by trusted elite Angolan Special Forces.

Since Joseph Kabila came to power in 2001, the elite Guard Républicaine (GR) controlled directly by the President outside the military chain of command or any civilian or judicial oversight, has been expanded to some 15,000 elite, heavily armed forces deployed at all strategic locations around the country. Sources in the intelligence sector in Congo-Kinshasa claim that the GR is predominantly comprised of elite Angolan Special Forces, with a token number of Congolese to put a proper face on things.

In 2005, it was reported that Kabila’s closest security detail in the Presidential Guards was a detachment of 50 elite Zimbabwe Defense Forces under the command of Lt. Colonel Richard Sauta, a 5th dan (rank) Tae Kwan Do expert trained in North Korea.¹⁵

Kabila has also reportedly moved all ammunitions depots off Congolese FARDC military bases in Kinshasa, though Rwandan FARDC (‘ex’-CNDP) and Angolan troops remain heavily armed and supplied.

Angolan troops backed Kabila during the deadly battle for Kinshasa against Jean-Pierre Bemba and MLC loyalists in March 2007. Enraged by MLC attacks that claimed some 23 Angolans, including a senior officer, the Angolan forces ruthlessly retaliated, causing massive civilian casualties thousands of bodies were collected and dumped in mass graves and in the Congo River.⁹ At the time, President Dos Santos convinced Congo-Brazzaville president Dennis Sassou-Nguesso to block ex-FAZ troops in Brazzaville from crossing the Congo River to join the MLC fight.

This time, Sassou-Nguesso has allowed ex-FAZ and ex-MLC to cross the border and join the Dongo rebellion.

Since March 2007, MLC forces that were captured or surrendered to MONUC after the deadly battle were detained by MONUC in Kinshasa ‘for their own safety.’ In past weeks, Kabila’s loyalist forces in Kinshasa seized some of the MLC captives in military operations described by Kinshasa intelligence insiders as ‘staged assaults.’

Sources claim that MONUC has collaborated with the Kabila security apparatus in their efforts to seize and eliminate MLC captives. These captives included some 150 former combatants, along with their wives and children. Reports from Kinshasa suggest that these MLC are being systematically eliminated in what amount to extrajudicial executions.

“MONUC tried to get these MLC soldiers ‘integrated’ into the FARDC because they [MONUC] knew that Kabila would have them [MLC] killed,” says an insider in Kinshasa. “In June, officers from MONUC wanted to transfer the Bemba MLC men in secret to Kabila. Bemba’s men refused and took MONUC soldiers hostage and MONUC had to negotiate for their release. Now, Kabila’s Presidential militia have forced the door and arrested Bemba soldiers. MONUC seemed to pretend not to know what was happening. We know that between 80 and 103 people from MLC have been arrested by the Presidential Guard.”

There have been massive arrests and illegal detentions of young men in Kinshasa and outlying areas in the past month. In the past week, Congolese newspapers reported that escaped prisoners had been shot. However, sources indicate that these ‘escapees’ were killed in prison.

Such actions are routine for the Kinshasa security apparatus. Any time that Kabila suspects or discovers a coup, street children and young men are rounded up and detained, often involving intimidation and beatings, by the Presidential Guard.

Sources in Kinshasa also say that Kabila’s forces rounded up scores and possibly hundreds of young civilian men in Maluku, a former Jean-Pierre Bemba MLC stronghold some 70 kilometers from Kinshasa. Kabila is worried that an insurgency against him will come from Maluku.

Kabila has good reason to be alarmed. There have been at least four serious coup attempts against Kabila over the past two years; two of these occurred in 2009.

One recent unreported coup attempt occurred in Kinshasa on May 18, 2009 at 7:30 pm when Kabila was returning from Mbakana, reported to be the Kabila clan’s privately fortified ‘farm’ security compound also some 70 kilometers from Kinshasa.

When the presidential procession set off down the Boulevard de 30 Juin, Kinshasa’s central artery, on May 18 a sniper, lying in ambush, opened fire on the presidential Mercedes Jeep at the intersection of Wangata Avenue. Kabila had switched vehicles and was riding in a Nissan Patrol like those used by members of parliament. Following the attack, Kabila ordered the systematic destruction of all the public kiosks and pavilions along the Boulevard de 30 Juin, and the indiscriminate round up and arrest of young men in Kinshasa. The attack reportedly involved five commandos.

All media inside Congo were forbidden from reporting on the May coup attempt, reportedly on the personal orders of President Kabila. Several media outlets of the Congolese Diaspora reported the events. It is also true that ‘coups’ and ‘attacks’ in Kinshasa have been staged by the Kabila government and by opposition as devices to manipulate public opinion or justify retaliatory action.

In October 12, 2009, Colonel Floribert Bofate Lihamba was arrested in Lubumbashi, Katanga Province, the heart of Congo’s most lucrative western mining operations, and transferred to a prison in Kinshasa. A top security agent in President Kabila’s Presidential Guard Républicaine (GR), and a former member of the Special Presidential Security Group (GSSP) under President Laurent Kabila, Col. Lihamba is accused of planning a coup d’etat.

On October 21, 2009, President Kabila survived the second most recent attempted coup d’etat, another recent pivotal event in Congo unreported by the western press or Congolese media. Informed in advance of the impending attempt on his life, President Kabila had curtailed all public appearances and was reportedly again holed up with Angolan troops on his ‘farm’ security compound outside Kinshasa.

According to Congolese intelligence sources, ex-Forces Armées Zaïroises (ex-FAZ) commandoes crossed the Congo River seeking to assassinate Kabila. The commandoes all reportedly originate from the Mobutu and Jean-Pierre Bemba strongholds around Gbadolite , in northwestern Equateur.

The arrested officers include: four Majors (Yogo, Zwafunda, Mokwesa, Ngombo); five captains (Koli, Nzale, Gbaka, Kongawi, and Salakoso); nine lieutenants (Libanza, Masisi, Gerembaya, Mbuyi, Ndongala, Ngani, Kpdobere, Nzanzu and Sido); and four sergeants (Kongo, Dondo, Lisala, and Lite).

“President Kabila is afraid of the ex-FAZ,” says one Congolese source. “He is afraid of Ngbanda.”

One of the former President Mobutu’s closest advisers, Honoré Ngbanda—the ‘Terminator’—is also rumored to back the uprising in Dongo. Ngbanda held various positions under Mobutu, including Minster of the Interior, Ambassador to Israel and Head of the Mobutu’s notorious SNIP, the National Intelligence and Protection Service (Service National d’Intelligence et de Protection).

Honoré Ngbanda’s ties to other Mobutu era big men likely include the Bongo family (Gabon) and Jewish-American diamond kingpin Maurice Templesman (United States), whose De Beers-affiliated diamond interests were partially displaced when the Kabila regime partnered with Israeli businessmen Dan Gertler and Benny Steinmetz. Gertler and Steinmetz cemented their interests in Congo-Kinshasa through former U.S. President G.W. Bush and former U.S. State Department official Jendayi Frazer.

South Africa is home to several former high commanders from the former Mobutu regime of Zaire. Former Security Police Chief General Kpama Baramoto, former Special Forces Commander General Ngabale Nzimbi and former Zairean Defense Minister Admiral Mudima all now reside in South Africa and are clearly interested in overthrowing Joseph Kabila.

In past weeks, Kabila has attempted to replace Congolese intelligence agents with Rwandans drawn from the CNDP, the extremist Tutsi terrorist network out of Rwanda. This has stirred further anger amongst the Congolese members of the FARDC and the National Intelligence Agency (ANR), Congo-Kinshasa’s secret service.

“The CNDP is a rebellion that Kagame used, and Kabila allowed, to infiltrate Rwandan soldiers into the Congolese [FARDC] army,” reports an intelligence insider in Kinshasa. “These CNDP are described as Congolese Tutsis but they are Rwandans. The fact that Kabila tried to replace some members of secret services and [FARDC] army by people who came from CNDP [provoked] the anger of many in the Congolese army and intelligence services. Kabila will be captured or killed very soon. TRUST ME.”

RESISTANCE PATRIOTS OF DONGO

In March 2009 the western press reported a ‘tribal dispute’ and ‘ethnic clash over fishing rights’ in the little western Congo outback town of Dongo. The dispute reportedly began between two different ethnic groups. However, the newly announced “Resistance Patriots of Dongo” claim that President Kabila’s agents manipulated the parties of the dispute and thereby escalated armed hostilities.

In October 2009 President Kabila and John Numbi—one of his top military advisers—dispatched FARDC troops under the command of General Benjamin Alongaboni to Dongo to negotiate peace with resistance forces. General Alongaboni, a Congolese son hailing from Equateur Province, and the first FARDC officer on the scene, secured a negotiated peace with Dongo area combatants.

Soon after however, President Kabila sent RDF forces—in FARDC uniforms—who enraged Congolese in the region and provoked hostilities by killing some local people and destroying the possibilities of peace negotiations.

The Resistance Patriots of Dongo retaliated and FARDC under the command of General Alongaboni began defecting.

Now President Kabila is uncertain who is with him and who is against him. All FARDC troops in the Democratic Republic of Congo are on full security alert, prevent from leaving the country or taking leaves of absence.

General Benjamin Alongaboni and the few troops that did not defect to the resistance were moved to nearby Gemena military center where he is currently under surveillance by President Kabila’s security and intelligence operatives. General Alongaboni is an Adjutant General to Kabila’s trusted FARDC insider John Numbi, formerly the head of FARDC Air Forces and now Inspector General of the Police National Congolaise (CNP).

Meanwhile, the ‘Dongo Crises’ has blossomed into a full-blown Congolese rebellion against international occupation forces and the powerful Kabila-Kagame clique. Over the past three weeks civilians and former combatants have been flooding into the remote Dongo region to join a growing rebellion against the now hated military regime of President Joseph Kabila and his western corporate business and military partners.

Hundreds of Congolese Armed Forces (FARDC)—of ethnic Congolese origin—have deserted and joined rebellion ranks with Congolese civilians and various military elements of past rebellions. The Resistance Patriots of Dongo is reportedly comprised of Congolese-FARDC deserters, former Forces Armées Zaïroises (ex-FAZ), and former MLC rebels.

Thousands of ex-FAZ and elite troops of Mobutu’s former Special Presidential Division (DSP) fled Congo-Kinshasa to Congo-Brazzaville between 1996 and 1998 when the Pentagon-backed insurgency led by Rwanda and Uganda swept across the Congo (Zaire) and drove out Zaire’s long-time strongman Joseph Desire Mobutu.

Sources in Kinshasa say that President Kabila seeks to frame and accuse Mobutu’s former intelligence chief Honoré Ngbanda and ex-MLC leader Jean-Pierre Bemba, who is already under arrest for war crimes at the International Criminal Court, in a propaganda ruse to justify the international intervention in Equateur and legitimize further military aggression by the Kabila-Kagame-MONUC nexus.

Kabila hopes for strategic gain by claiming that the Dongo uprising is purely an MLC uprising. By convincing his white international patrons that the MLC is the problem, Kabila hopes to further purge his government and the country of MLC supporters.

In September 2009, armed assailants shot up the residences of DRC Minister of Foreign Affairs Alexis Tambwe Mwamba and another minister, Olivier Kamitatu, both ex-MLC supporters who have joined Kabila, in a drive by shooting; other assassination attempts have also been reported.

Sources in Kinshasa say Kabila’s security apparatus staged these assassination attempts to create further international sympathy for Kabila, to discredit the MLC and manipulate the ICC proceedings against Jean-Pierre Bemba. Officials in Kinshasa have been threatened in response to fears that Jean-Pierre Bemba will wiggle and bribe his way out of the ICC war crimes charges and return to Congo. Given the highly political nature of the already corrupted ICC, the fear is not unfounded.

President Kagame and President Yoweri Museveni have a long history of ‘pseudo-operations’ and ‘false-flag operations’ that blame and punish the victims after secret operations and atrocities that are actually committed by disguised RDF and UPDF soldiers.

Joseph Kabila’s goal might be to follow the example of his allies, Paul Kagame and the extremist Tutsis in Rwanda, by blaming all exactions, tortures, assassinations, massacres and organized plunder of Congo on the Dongo forces who are today fighting against western imperialism and its agents in Central Africa—in the person of Joseph Kabila. President Paul Kagame’s success in this conspiracy is evident in the many awards he has received, for his absolute terrorism in service to western interests, with the coup de grâce being Rwanda’s acceptance into the Commonwealth of Nations last week.¹⁶

Congolese people everywhere were outraged by the eastern Congo FARDC military operations with RDF and UPDF forces early in 2009, but Kabila and partners heaped one insult on top of another by airlifting RDF across Congo to the far western Equateur to attempt to crush the Dongo resistance.

MONUC and AFRICOM supported the RDF airlift operations.

The Kabila government has reportedly agreed to base AFRICOM out of the remote east-central Congo River city of Kisangani, also the site of a secret U.S. military-intelligence ‘fusion cell’ linking Uganda, Rwanda, Congo-K in a tripartite cooperation agreement focused on minerals and mining. The details of the ‘base’ are unknown, but Kisangani will likely be one of AFRICOM’s many ‘lily-pad’ bases.

AFRICOM LURKING IN THE WINGS

AFRICOM currently has cooperative security location agreements, commonly known as ‘lily pad’ operating agreements with a dozen African nations stretching from Algeria on the Mediterranean to Zambia and Botswana in southern Africa. The U.S. Seventeenth Air Force’s contingency and crisis planning and response team had already visited four African nations through April 2009 to carry out airfield surveys, with plans to visit seven more nations by September 30.¹⁷

In January 2009, AFRICOM delivered four 200 hp Yamaha outboard engines to RDF marines in Gisenyi, Rwanda. The RDF maritime regiment was formed in 1995—“in response to Rwanda’s genocide,” according to AFRICOM, “to control [Rwanda’s] water border with the Democratic Republic of Congo and prevent the infiltration of genocidal forces from the Congo.”

In May 2009, Brigadier General Mike Callan, vice commander of the new AFRICOM Air Forces AFRICA (U.S. Seventeenth Air Force), met with RDF Chief James Kabarebe—an internationally indicted war criminal—and Rwandan Air Force commanders in Kigali for talks focused on turning tiny Rwanda into central and east Africa’s leading ‘air hub’ for both military and civilian air traffic.¹⁸

Bound for the Dongo rebellion in mid-November RDF crossed from Gisenyi, Rwanda to Goma, DRC, and were then flown from Goma to Kamina Air Base in Katanga, a military transport hub used for the Belgo-American-U.N. mercenary occupations during the Katanga secession (1960-63) and ‘Congo Crises’ (1964–67). The RDF battalion was next flown to Bandundu Province and from there they joined President Kabila at his ‘farm’ security compound outside Kinshasa.

The RDF troops were reportedly next moved to the 42-acre campus of the U.S. Embassy-affiliated American School in Kinshasa (TASOK), near the notorious Camp Tshatshi military base, and then flown to Gemena airport in Equateur.

The Colonel Tshatshi Military Camp in Kinshasa hosts the defense department and the Chiefs of Staff central command headquarters of the FARDC. The TASOK campus was used for RDF troops because they would not be welcome amongst Congolese-FARDC at Camp Tshatshi.

There were at least three round trips in some legs of the RDF flight plan reportedly using both MONUC and Hewa Bora Airlines, an airline 70% owned by Belgian arms trafficker Philippe de Moerloose. In the ‘leaked’ November 2009 U.N. Panel of Experts Report on Illegal Exploitation in the Congo, Philippe De Moerloose and Hewa Bora Airlines were named for weapons shipments from Sudan to Congo in violation of the International Arms Embargo on the DRC.¹⁹

De Moerloose supplies Kabila with Presidential jets and other toys.

“Nobody in the Congo was aware of this operation except Kabila and John Numbi,” says one insider in Kinshasa. “Everyone was surprised to see Rwandan troops enter Kivu [Goma] from Rwanda. When the speaker of the Congolese parliament, Vital Kamhere, criticized the operation, President Kabila pushed for his resignation.”

Former DRC Air Force Commander John Numbi is reported to be Kabila’s main link to Rwandan military officials Paul Kagame and the indicted war criminal James Kabarebe. John Numbi, currently the Inspector General of the Congolese National Police, is a regular visitor to Kigali and described as ‘one of Congo’s most dangerous men’.

John Numbi reportedly orchestrated the joint military operations between RDF and FARDC that began in January 2009. The main overt military campaigns were ‘Umoja Wetu,’ a joint operation between FARDC and RDF, and the ‘Kimia I’ and ‘Kimia II’ operations, which were FARDC operations supported by MONUC.
 
“Just before the joint operation ‘Umoja Wetu’ [RDF General] James Kabarebe met Joseph Kabila in Kinshasa, and they have spoken in secret,” says one Congolese insider. “Nobody knows what they talked about. The real story is that Rwanda took the opportunity to secretly inject at least 4000 and maybe as many as 10,000 Rwandan soldiers into the FARDC army.”

Congolese FARDC troops deployed by Kabila to the Dongo area refused to fight and instead defected to the rebel cause rather than kill their Congolese brothers and sisters for the private enrichment of foreigners and the pro-Rwanda alliance of Kabila and Kagame. Thus President Kabila has been forced to deploy to Dongo only those FARDC units comprised exclusively of ‘ex’-CNDP Tutsi units loyal to Rwanda.

By mid-November 2009 international humanitarian agencies began reporting thousands of refugees flooding across the Congo River to Congo-Brazzaville, with 54,000 now in Congo-Brazzaville and 38,000 IDPs in Congo by December 1, according to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR).

The Resistance Patriots of Dongo are claiming to have inflicted high casualties on the RDF-MONUC-FARDC forces dispatched to Dongo and surrounding areas. Several towns have been taken, lost, and retaken in pitched battles against RDF-MONUC-FARDC forces.

While the conflict in Equateur slowly escalated from March to October, and deteriorated quickly after that, MONUC’s press and information corps have been mute about the rebellion.

All official channels deny the presence of RDF troops, or that RDF troops fought in Equateur. Several very small media outlets are also reporting the RDF presence, their sources appearing to be connected with the Resistance Patriots of Dongo movement.²⁰

MONUC issued one tiny press report on November 26, after resistance forces shot up a MONUC helicopter that flew to Dongo to resupply the RDF-MONUC-FARDC ground troops. Five of the 25 to 30 personnel on board were injured, and the pilot took off and flew the chopper to Congo-Brazza. None of the personnel (or their nationalities) aboard the MONUC chopper was identified.

A short western media propaganda blurb circulated by Agence France-Presse attempted to discredit the rebellion and cover for MONUC’s involvement in open military aggression against Congolese people. Titled “Armed group claims firing at UN chopper in DRC,” the AFP blurb also confirmed the Resistance Patriots of Dongos’ strike against a MONUC helicopter.

“In their confused statement,” AFP wrote, November 26, 2009, “the Patriots-Resistance [of Dongo] alleged that Rwandan occupation forces were in the region and they denounced the ‘complicity’ of MONUC ‘with the Mafia-like imperialists’.”

“Dongo was attacked on October 29 and 30 by a group from the Lobala community (also known as the Enyele), which targeted the Bamboma (or Boba) community,” the AFP reported. “Both sides have frequently disputed the fishing resources of the region. The violence, which has since spread to other villages, left at least 100 dead, mainly in Dongo, who were either hacked with machetes or shot, while a number drowned trying to cross the Oubangi river, which marks the border with the Congo Republic [Brazzaville].”

The AFP not only decontextualized the conflict, describing it as purely tribal, they also framed it as ruthless savage Africans killing with machetes. The MONUC chopper apparently was attacked on November 26. There was no mention of the major battles that occurred between foreign forces on November 22-24 or November 26-28.23

On December 3, 2009, the Dongo resistance forces intercepted a tugboat pulling two big barges carrying 2,500 tons of arms and ammunition destined for Dongo RDF-MONUC-FARDC forces. The commander of the FARDC operations involved in moving the weapons, Colonel Nyav, was killed during the clashes; Nyav had previously been commanding RDF-MONUC-FARDC troops at Dongo. The ethnic Congolese FARDC under Col. Nyav’s command jubilantly defected to the resistance after seizing the boat and weapons.
 
Also on December 3, the strategic Congolese airport town of Libenge fell into the hands of the Resistance Patriots of Dongo. The resistance forces now control the towns of Dongo, Libenge, all the territory located along Oubangi River, the localities of Bomongo, Kutu, Kungu, Saba-Saba, Buburu and the Catholic mission of Bokonzi.

The Resistance Patriots of Dongo next plan to take Mbandaka, the major administrative city on the Congo River—and the end of the line for thousands of Hutu refugee women and children executed in cold blood by the RPF/A and the AFDL on the banks of the Congo River there in 1997.

“We take the engagement before God and before all the Congolese to topple the puppet regime currently in place in Kinshasa,” the November 26 resistance statement added, according to the AFP.

DONGO WAR NOT CONNECTED TO EASTERN CONGO?

“The helicopter was delivering supplies to peacekeepers recently deployed to the town of Dongo,” reported Reuters, basing their “news” report on MONUC Public Information Officer Madnodje Mounoubai. Reuters reported “around 20 Ghanaian peacekeepers” deployed by MONUC in Dongo.

“The fighting is not related to the simmering conflict in the mineral-rich eastern borderlands,” Reuters wrote, “where the army—backed by thousands of peacekeepers—are attempting to stamp out local, Rwandan, and Ugandan rebels.”²¹

On December 3, 2009 Belgian newspapers La Libre Belgique and RTLM reported that Belgium’s Foreign Minister Steven Vanackere and Defense Minister Pieter De Crem had responded to the communiqué of the Resistance Patriots of Dongo, circulated on the Internet on December 1, which warned Belgium and Kinshasa that the resistance knew of the secret plan to dispatch paratroopers to Kisangani. The two Belgian ministries issued a joint communiqué denying the operation “with the biggest firmness.”²²

According to Kinshasa sources, the MONUC-uniformed Belgians would be flown from Kisangani, Orientale Province, to Equateur Probvince’s northwestern frontier city of Gbadolite, the stronghold of former President Mobutu and the Bemba family, Jean-Pierre and father Saolona (1942-2009), and then to Gemena airport near Dongo.²³

Soon after the Resistance Patriots of Dongo forces occupied the frontier city of Libenge, President Kabila dispatched 600 elite FARDC commandos trained by 60 Belgian Armed Forces instructors in Kindu Province. As of December 5, Libenge remained under siege, with civilians fleeing to escape the massive battle.²⁴

Sources in Kinshasa on December 5 report “massive violent fighting in Libenge and Gemena areas,” involving 1000 Congolese National Police (PNC) and 100 Ghanaian MONUC troops and two MONUC helicopter gunships. MONUC sources in Kisangani indicate that two additional MONUC helicopter gunships are ‘standing by’ for possible immediate deployment to Equateur.

The MONUC ‘peacekeeping’ in Congo is a one billion dollar a year operation.

The recently ‘leaked’ United Nations Group of Experts Report provides evidence of direct PNC involvement in contraband activities involving Rwandan Defense Forces in eastern Congo. The U.N. experts investigated the frequent and suspicious undocumented flights of a white Mi-8 helicopter leased on 27 January 2009 to the Congolese National Police through John Numbi, the head of the PNC. Numbi managed the joint RDF-MONUC-FARDC military operations (‘Umoja Wetu’) in eastern DRC begun in January 2009, along with Major General James Kaberebe, the army chief of Rwanda.¹⁹

1. For this report these RDF disguised troops will be designated ‘RDF’ to separate them from other FRADC troops with Rwandan allegiances.
2. Private investigations and interviews, Kinshasa, Equateur (Mbandaka, Basankusu, Bosondjo, Lisala) and Orientale (Kisangani, Isangi, Lokutu) Congo, 2004-2007.
3. See e.g., Spain’s February 6, 2008, indictment issued by High Court Judge Andreu Merelles charging 40 current or former high-ranking Rwandan military officials with serious crimes including genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and terrorism, perpetrated over a period of 12 years, from 1990 to 2002, against the civilian population, and primarily against members of the Hutu ethnic group.
4. See e.g., Davenport and Stam, “What Really Happened in Rwanda?” Miller-McCune, October 6, 2009.
5. See e.g., keith harmon snow, “The Rwanda Genocide Fabrications,” Dissident Voice, April 13, 2009.
6. Jeffrey Gettleman, “Congo army helps rebels get arms, UN finds,” New York Times, November 25, 2009.
7. See keith harmon snow, “Congo’s President Kabila: Dynasty or Travesty?” Toward Freedom, November 13, 2007.
8. Private investigations, De. Rep. of Congo, July-August 2006 and February-March 2007.
9. See keith harmon snow, “Behind the Scenes: Warlord’s Deadly Battle in Congo,” Toward Freedom, August 19, 2007.
10. I previously, but incorrectly, reported that Joseph Kabila married Sandrine Nguesso, the sister the President in Congo-Brazza. See keith harmon snow, “Congo’s President Kabila: Dynasty or Travesty?” Toward Freedom, November 13, 2007.
11. Interviews with Rwandans in the Diaspora, keith harmon snow.
12. See Keith Harmon Snow, “The Crimes of Bongo: Apartheid & Terror in Africa’s Gardens of Eden,” Dissident Voice, July 17, 2009.
13. David Barouski, “Transcript of David Barouski’s 10/19/08 Presentation for Congo Week in Chicago, IL.,” World News Journal, October 22, 2008.
14. Elwyn Blattner and his plantations holdings are revealed in the 2008 documentary film Episode III: Enjoy Poverty by Dutch filmmaker Renzo Martens.
15. Wilf Mbanga, “Zimbabwe/DRC: Zimbabwean troops guards President Kabila in Congo,” The Zimbabwean/UK, August 12, 2005.
16. See Wayne Madsen, “Admission of Rwanda to Commonwealth caps off assassination, genocide, and civil war,” Online Journal, December 4, 2009.
17. Stewart M. Powell, “Engagement in Africa,” airforce-Magazine.com, July 2009.
18. Eric Elliot, “U.S. Begins Flying Rwandan Peacekeeping Equipment to Darfur,” U.S. AFRICOM Public Affairs, January 14, 2009.
19. United Nations: Letter dated 9 November 2009 from the Group of Experts on the Democratic Republic of the Congo addressed to the Chairman of the Security Council Committee established pursuant to resolution 1533 (2004), ‘leaked’ November 2009.
20. “La radio Bendele reçoit Mr Ambroise LOBALA MOKOBE Porte-parole des Patriotes-résistants de Dongo,” Radio Bendele, November 22, 2009.
21. Joe Bavier, “Congo gunmen fire at U.N. helicopter, five wounded,” Reuters, November 26, 2009.
22. Belga, “La Belgique dément tout projet d’envoi de troupes en RDC,” RTBF, December 3, 2009. [“Belgium denies all project of sending of troops to DRC”].
23. Bemba Saolona’s company, Scibe CMMJ, was implicated by the U.N. in smuggling weapons to UNITA during the Angolan Civil War: Johan Peleman, “The logistics of sanctions busting: the airborne component.” (PDF file), page 303.
24. In 2006-07, Police Nationale Congolaise were outfitted with high-tech radio communications, funded by the United Nations Development Program, purchased from New Zealand.

The conflict mineral approach has an obsessive focus on the FDLR and other rebel groups while scant attention is paid to Uganda (which has an International Court of Justice ruling against it for looting and crimes against humanity in the Congo) and Rwanda (whose role in the perpetuation of the conflict and looting of Congo is well documented by UN reports and international arrest warrants for its top officials). Rwanda is the main transit point for illicit minerals coming from the Congo irrespective of the rebel group (FDLR, CNDP or others) transporting the minerals. According to Dow Jones, Rwanda’s mining sector output grew 20% in 2008 from the year earlier due to increased export volumes of tungsten, cassiterite and coltan, the country’s three leading minerals with which Rwanda is not well endowed. In fact, should Rwanda continue to pilfer Congo’s minerals, its annual mineral export revenues are expected to reach $200 million by 2010. Former Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Herman Cohen says it best when he notes “having controlled the Kivu provinces for 12 years, Rwanda will not relinquish access to resources that constitute a significant percentage of its gross national product.” As long as the West continues to give the Kagame regime carte blanche, the conflict and instability will endure.

According to Global Witness’s 2009 report, Faced With A Gun What Can you Do, Congolese government statistics and reports by the Group of Experts and NGOs, Rwanda is one of the main conduits for illicit minerals leaving the Congo. It is amazing that the conflict mineral approach shout loudly about making sure that the trade in minerals does not benefit armed groups but the biggest armed beneficiary of Congo’s minerals is the Rwandan regime headed by Paul Kagame. Nonetheless, the conflict mineral approach is remarkably silent about Rwanda’s complicity in the fueling of the conflict in the Congo and the fleecing of Congo’s riches.

Advocates of the conflict mineral approach would be far more credible if they had ever called for any kind of pressure whatsoever on mining companies that are directly involved in either fueling the conflict or exploiting the Congolese people. The United Nations, The Congolese Parliament, Carter Center, Southern Africa Resource Watch and several other NGOs have documented corporations that have pilfered Congo’s wealth and contributed to the perpetuation of the conflict. Some of these companies include but are not limited to: Traxys, OM Group, Blattner Elwyn Group, Freeport McMoran, Eagle Wings/Trinitech, Lundin, Kemet, Banro, AngloGold Ashanti, Anvil Mining, and First Quantum.

The conflict mineral approach, like the Blood Diamond campaign from which it draws its inspiration, is silent on the question of resource sovereignty which has been a central question in the geo-strategic battle for Congo’s mineral wealth. It was over this question of resource sovereignty that the West assassinated Congo’s first democratically elected Prime Minister, Patrice Lumumba and stifled the democratic aspirations of the Congolese people for over three decades by installing and backing the dictator Joseph Mobutu. In addition, the United States also backed the 1996 and 1998 invasions of Congo by Rwanda and Uganda instead of supporting the non-violent, pro-democracy forces inside the Congo. Unfortunately and to the chagrin of the Congolese people, some of the strongest advocates of the conflict mineral approach are former Clinton administration officials who supported the invasions of Congo by Rwanda and Uganda. This may in part explains the militaristic underbelly of the conflict mineral approach, which has as its so-called second step a comprehensive counterinsurgency.

The focus on the east of Congo falls in line with the long-held obsession by some advocates in Washington who incessantly push for the balkanization of the Congo. Their focus on “Eastern Congo” is inadequate and does not fully take into account the nature and scope of the dynamics in the entire country. Political decisions in Kinshasa, the capital in the West, have a direct impact on the events that unfold in the East of Congo and are central to any durable solutions.

The central claim of the conflict mineral approach is to bring an end to the conflict; however, the conflict can plausibly be brought to an end much quicker through diplomatic and political means. The so-called blood mineral route is not the quickest way to end the conflict. We have already seen how quickly world pressure can work with the sidelining of rebel leader Laurent Nkunda and the demobilization and/or rearranging of his CNDP rebel group in January 2009, as a result of global pressure placed on the CNDP’s sponsor Paul Kagame of Rwanda. More pressure needs to be placed on leaders such as Kagame and Museveni who have been at the root of the conflict since 1996. The FDLR can readily be pressured as well, especially with most of their political leadership residing in the West, however this should be done within a political framework, which brings all the players to the table as opposed to the current militaristic, dichotomous, good-guy bad-guy approach where the West sees Kagame and Museveni as the “good-guys” and everyone else as bad. The picture is far grayer than Black and White.

A robust political approach by the global community would entail the following prescriptions:

1. Join Sweden and Netherlands in pressuring Rwanda to be a partner for peace and a stabilizing presence in the region. The United States and Great Britain in particular should apply more pressure on their allies Rwanda and Uganda to the point of withholding aid if necessary.

2. Hold to account companies and individuals through sanctions trafficking in minerals whether with rebel groups or neighboring countries, particularly Rwanda and Uganda. Canada has chimed in as well but has been deadly silent on the exploitative practices of its mining companies in the Congo. Canada must do more to hold its mining companies accountable as is called for in Bill C-300.

3. Encourage world leaders to be more engaged diplomatically and place a higher priority on what is the deadliest conflict in the World since World War Two.

4. Reject the militarization of the Great Lakes region represented by AFRICOM, which has already resulted in the suffering of civilian population; the strengthening of authoritarian figures such as Uganda’s Museveni (in power since 1986) and Rwanda’s Kagame (won the 2003 “elections” with 95 percent of the vote); and the restriction of political space in their countries.

5. Demand of the Obama administration to be engaged differently from its current military-laden approach and to take the lead in pursuing an aggressive diplomatic path with an emphasis on pursuing a regional political framework that can lead to lasting peace and stability.

To learn more about the current crisis in the Congo.

Mamdani called Save Darfur “the most successful piece of single issue organizing since the Vietnam era antiwar movement, really more successful than the antiwar movement.” But Save Darfur, with slogans like “boots on the ground,” “out of Iraq, into Darfur” and persistent demands for the creation of “no fly zones” is far from being an antiwar movement.

As Black Agenda Report (BAR) pointed in a 2007 article, “Ten Reasons Why ‘Save Darfur’ is a PR Scam to Justify the Next US Oil and Resource Wars in Africa,” Save Darfur is no grassroots movement either.

The backers and founders of the ‘Save Darfur’ movement are the well-connected and well-funded U.S. foreign policy elite. According to a copyrighted Washington Post story this summer,

The “Save Darfur (Coalition) was created in 2005 by two groups concerned about genocide in the African country — the American Jewish World Service and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum . . .

The coalition has a staff of 30 with expertise in policy and public relations. Its budget was about $15 million in the most recent fiscal year . . .

‘Save Darfur will not say exactly how much it has spent on its ads, which this week have attempted to shame China, host of the 2008 Olympics, into easing its support for Sudan. But a coalition spokeswoman said the amount is in the millions of dollars.’

Though the “Save Darfur” PR campaign employs viral marketing techniques, reaching out to college students, even to black bloggers, it is not a grassroots affair, as were the movement against apartheid and in support of African liberation movements in South Africa, Namibia, Angola and Mozambique a generation ago. Top heavy with evangelical Christians who preach the coming war for the end of the world, and with elements known for their uncritical support of Israeli rejectionism in the Middle East, the Save Darfur movement is clearly an establishment affair, a propaganda campaign that spends millions of dollars each month to manufacture consent for US military intervention in Africa under the cloak of stopping or preventing genocide.

None of the funds raised by the “Save Darfur Coalition”, the flagship of the “Save Darfur Movement” go to help needy Africans on the ground in Darfur, according to 2008 stories in both the Washington Post and the New York Times.

The Appeal of Save Darfur to US Audiences

Mamdani explained the unique appeal of the Save Darfur Movement to US audiences by noting that unlike US responsibility for the one million Iraqi dead over the last six years, the Save Darfur Movement does not demand that we understand Darfur’s history, ethnography, or the complexities of the current conflict there, or acknowledge any culpability of our own. Unlike the killings in Iraq, Save Darfur does not demand that Americans respond as citizens, with a need to account for responsibilities and actions, but merely as human beings with a need to feel powerful and justified. Save Darfur, Mamdani argued, has de-historicized and de-politicized the conflict for its American audience, presenting them with a simple morality play in which they can be the heroes.

Everybody wants to be a hero. Nobody wants to be a citizen.

And what could be more heroically self-justifying and self-affirming than intervening on the side of the angels in the picture of straight-up racial conflict presented to us by the Save Darfur Movement? The trouble is, it’s an utterly false picture. The historic and present uses and definitions of race in America are not nearly the same as those in Africa. Most of Darfur’s janjaweed who committed atrocities against civilians in Darfur are as black as those they murdered, and just as indigenous. The prosecutors at the International Criminal Court who recently indicted the Sudanese president are accountable only to the wealthy nations of the UN Security Council, not to anybody on the African continent. And the casualty figures thrown out by Save Darfur are wildly inflated.

Darfuri Casualties Inflated by Save Darfur and US Authorities

Professor Mamdani noted that in response to a request from members of Congress, GAO, the independent US government agency whose job it is to monitor the accuracy of information disseminated by other organs of government assessed the widely varying casualty figures coming out of Darfur in 2006. 2004-2006 was the time when the atrocities in Darfur were at their height. They took the low-end figures of 50 to 70 thousand dead, which came from the World Health Organization, and the much higher ones of 200 to 400 thousand coming from people affiliated with Save Darfur, and submitted them to the National Academy of Sciences. The scientists told GAO that the lower figures were more accurate, and those were used in its 2006 assessment of the Darfur situation.

The State Department however, produced reports with two different sets of casualty figures, low numbers for the use of its policymakers, and the higher ones produced by Save Darfur and its allies for public consumption.

To this day, Mamdani contended, the US public is being fed grossly inflated on Darfuri casualties. He recounted a briefing he attended where the commander of the African Union’s forces reported 1,500 deaths in Darfur in all of 2008, as many as Save Darfur and the US government claim are dying every month.

Comparing Darfur and the Congo, Fake vs Real Genocides

Nobody disputes that there is a bipartisan military industrial complex in the US, which creates the “facts” it requires to justify interventions around the world. The Save Darfur coalition, comprising as it does figures who trace their activism to the Freedom Movement like Congressman John Lewis, along with the compatriots of the late Jerry Falwell, would not hold on any other issue under the sun. It is a creation of the bipartisan foreign policy establishment, which urgently needs “humanitarian” cover for its imperial ambitions to control Africa’s oil and other resources.

The blatant hypocrisy of the Save Darfur Movement is most evident when one compares the manufactured concern over 50 to 70 thousand dead in Darfur to the ink and air devoted to five million dead in neighboring Congo. But using professor Mamdani’s yardstick, it’s not hard to understand. Intervening in Darfur makes us heroes. But in the Congo, proxies of the US and the West have been instigated the invasion and depopulation and plundering of the whole of Eastern Congo. There is a lake of oil beneath Sudan, much of it in Darfur. But the Chinese are pumping that oil, not Chevron or BP or Exxon.

To return to our own 2007 article on the Save Darfur movement”

The selective and cynical application of the term “genocide” to Sudan, rather than to the Congo where ten to twenty times as many Africans have been murdered reveals the depth of hypocrisy around the “Save Darfur” movement. In the Congo, where local gangsters, mercenaries and warlords along with invading armies from Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Angola engage in slaughter, mass rape and regional depopulation on a scale that dwarfs anything happening in Sudan, all the players eagerly compete to guarantee that the extraction of vital coltan for Western computers and cell phones, the export of uranium for Western reactors and nukes, along with diamonds, gold, copper, timber and other Congolese resources continue undisturbed.

Former UN Ambassador Andrew Young and George H.W. Bush both serve on the board of Barrcik Gold, one of the largest and most active mining concerns in war-torn Congo. Evidently, with profits from the brutal extraction of Congolese wealth flowing to the West, there can be no Congolese “genocide” worth noting, much less interfering with. For their purposes, U.S. strategic planners may regard their Congolese model as the ideal means of capturing African wealth at minimal cost without the bother of official U.S. boots on the ground.

Responding to the very real genocide in the Congo would require ordinary Americans to think like citizens rather then heroic self-affirmers. But that’s a hard sell.

We can only hope that the members of the Congressional Black Caucus and other members of Congress who last month lent their credibility to the Save Darfur people can get over their self affirming “heroism” and begin to meet Dr. Mamdani’s challenge: to act like citizens and the leaders of citizens, to do the homework, to help others do the homework and to face up to our responsibilities for real genocide in the Congo, and prolonging the war in Sudan. It’s not too late.

Allison Des Forges presents a lecture on ‘genocide in Rwanda’ at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. Photo keith harmon snow, 2007.

On 12 February 2009, Alison Des Forges, a senior researcher with Human Rights Watch (HRW) for more than 20 years, was killed when Continental Airlines Flight 3407 crashed on route to Buffalo, New York. Des Forges was widely cited as a staunch critic of the Rwandan military government controlled by Paul Kagame and the victors of the war in Rwanda, 1990-1994.

In the ongoing life-and-death struggle to reveal the truth about war crimes and genocide in Central Africa, competing factions on all sides have posthumously embraced Alison Des Forges as an activist challenging power and a purveyor of truth and justice against all odds. Meanwhile, in March, 2009, based on false accusations of genocide issued by the Kagame regime—and given the close relations between Rwanda and the Obama administration’s former Clintonite officials—the U.S. Department of Homeland Security began the process of revisiting all immigration cases of Rwandan asylum seekers and criminalizing innocent refugees.

“In May of 1994, a few weeks into the killings of Tutsis in Rwanda, [Alison Des Forges] was among the first voices calling for the killings to be declared a genocide,” reported Amy Goodman, after Des Forges’s passing away, on Democracy Now. “She later became very critical of the Tutsi-led Rwandan government headed by Paul Kagame and its role in the mass killings in both Rwanda and neighboring Congo after 1994. Last year, she was barred from entering Rwanda.”

To say that Des Forges was “amongst the first voices calling for the killings to be declared genocide” in 1994 is an Orwellian ruse. The genocide label applied by Alison Des Forges and certain human rights bodies in May of 1994 was misdirected, used to accuse and criminalize only the majority Hutu people and the remnants of the decapitated Habyarimana government (much as the genocide and war crimes accusations have been selectively applied against President Omar al-Bashir in Sudan).

The Clinton administration refused to apply the genocide label: to do so might have compromised an ongoing U.S.-backed covert operation: the invasion of the Pentagon’s proxy force, the Rwandan Patriotic Front/Army (RPF/A).

According to U.S. intelligence insider Wayne Madsen, Des Forges’ criticisms of the U.S.-brokered pact between presidents Paul Kagame (Rwanda) and Joseph Kabila (Democratic Republic of Congo or DRC) in December 2008 “earned her some powerful enemies ranging from the murderous Kagame, who will not think twice about sending his agents to silence critics abroad, and international interests who want to nothing to prevent them from looting the DRC’s vast mineral and energy resources.”

“With U.S. military forces of the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) now backing a joint Ugandan-DRC offensive in the northeastern DRC to wipe out the Lord’s Resistance Army,” wrote Madsen on 16 February 2009, “with hundreds [sic] of civilian casualties in the DRC and Uganda, and a secret pact worked out between Kabila and Kagame to permit Rwandan troops to occupy the eastern DRC, the target of both operations is securing the vast territory that is rich in commodities that the United States, Britain and Israel—all allies of Uganda and Rwanda—want badly. Those commodities are gold, diamonds, columbium-tantalite (coltan), platinum and natural gas.”

Massive oil reserves are also at stake, with major concessions bifurcated by the international border. Ongoing petroleum sector investment (exploration and exploitation) in the region involves numerous western extraction companies—many being so-called petroleum ‘minors’ likely fronting for larger corporations—including Hardman Resources, Heritage Oil and Gas, H Oil & Minerals, PetroSA, Tullow Oil, Vangold Resources, ContourGlobal Group, Tower Resources, Reservoir Capital Group, and Nexant (a Bechtel Corporation subsidiary).

Billed as a “tireless champion” and “leading light in African human rights,” there is much more to this story than the western propaganda system has revealed: Alison Des Forges and HRW provided intelligence to the U.S. government at the time of the 1994 crises, and they have continued in this role to the present. Des Forges also supported the show trials at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), institutionalizing victor’s justice and shielding the Kagame regime.

Alison Des Forges came across to many people as a wonderful human being with great compassion and impeccable integrity. Indeed, this was my impression upon meeting her as well. She is said to have helped people who were being persecuted—no matter that they were Hutus or Tutsis—by the Rwandan regime that has for more than 19 years operated with impunity behind the misplaced and misappropriated moral currency of victimhood. In the recent past, Alison Des Forges spoke—to some limited degree—against the war crimes of the Kagame regime.

The volcanoes region of the Zaire-Uganda-Rwanda border in 1991, seen in relative peace here, was then just beginning to suffer the destabilizing effects caused by the U.S.-backed invasion of Rwanda by Ugandan troops and the Rwandan Patriotic Army. Photo keith harmon snow, eastern Zaire, 1991.

In life she did not speak about the deeper realities of ‘genocide in Rwanda’, and she had plenty of chances. In fact, she is the primary purveyor of the inversion of truth that covered up the deeper U.S. role in the Rwanda ‘genocide’, and she spent the past 10 years of her life explaining away the inconsistencies, covering up the facts, revising her own story when necessary, and manipulating public opinion about war crimes in the Great Lakes of Africa—in service to the U.S. government and powerful corporations involved in the plunder and depopulation of the region.

THE MYSTERIES OF A PRESIDENT

“Alison des Forges is a liar,” Cameroonian journalist Charles Onana told me, in Paris, France, several years ago. Onana is the author of numerous exposés on war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity in Central Africa, and he is the author of the book The Secrets of the Rwandan Genocide, Investigations on the Mysteries of a President, published in French in 2001.

Paul Kagame, Rwanda’s one-party president ‘elected’ through rigged elections, sued Charles Onana for defamation in a French court in 2002; Kagame lost the original trial and the appeal. Kagame was the commander of the Rwandan Patriotic Front/Army (RPF/A) and a leading agent—with Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni and their U.S., U.K., Belgian and Israeli backers—behind the massive bloodshed and ongoing terrorism in Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi, Congo, Sudan and Somalia.

“Leading light in African Human Rights killed in Buffalo Crash,” reported the Pentagon’s mouthpiece, CNN. “Human Rights Watch, which is based in New York, said she was ‘best known for her award-winning account of the genocide, Leave None to Tell the Story.’ She was truly wonderful, the epitome of the human rights activist—principled, dispassionate, committed to the truth and to using that truth to protect ordinary people.”

Alison Des Forges first worked as a HRW agent in Rwanda in 1992; in 1993 she helped produce a major international document highly biased against the Rwandan Government and protective of the RPF/A invaders: Report of the International Commission of Investigation on Human Rights Violations in Rwanda since October 1, 1990.

In late 1992, the International Federation of Human Rights, Human Rights Watch, the Inter-African Union for Human Rights and the Rights of Peoples, and the International Center for the Rights of the Individual and the Development of Democracy created the International Commission of Investigation on Human Rights Violations in Rwanda since October 1, 1990. With ten members from eight countries, the commission reported its findings in March 1993: Des Forges was co-chairperson, one of the three principal writers, and translator of the French to English version.

The report noted that ‘hundreds of thousands’ of Rwandans were made homeless and forced to flee, prior to January 1993, but these casualties of the RPF/A invasion were not attributed to international crimes of peace against a sovereign government committed by an invading army—the RPF/A guerrillas covertly backed by the U.S., Britain, Belgium and Israel—but instead merely to ‘war’. In other words, the initial act of aggression, the RPA/F invasion, was institutionally protected and the war crimes that set the stage for the conflagrations in Rwanda and Congo went unpunished.

Later in 1993, Rwandans Ferdinand Nanimana and Joseph Mushyandi, representing four Rwandan organizations under the Rwanda Associations for the Defense of Human Rights, challenged the Des Forges commission in their 26-page document, “A Commentary on the Report of the International Commission’s Inquiry on the Violation of Human Rights in Rwanda since October 1990.”

“How can an international commission be taken seriously when its members spent only two weeks extracting verbal and written evidence on human rights violations for a period of two years?” the authors wrote. They also pointed out that the commission spent less than two hours in areas controlled by the RPF/A rebels and that they could not visit all the 11 prefectures in the country because of demonstrations that blocked the roads. “Can there be any objective and credible conclusions in their report?”

Ferdinand Nanimana was later sentenced to life imprisonment for genocide. Many members of the Rwandan human rights organizations he worked with prior to April 1994 were subsequently killed.

The rights and due process of Rwandan Hutus are systematically violated due to victor’s justice secured by the U.S., Europe, Israel and the proxy states Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda. Bernard Ntuyahaga, a Major of the former Rwandan army (ex-FAR) accused of killing 10 Belgian soldiers and Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana, surrendered to the ICTR to avoid extradition to Rwanda; he was tried in Belgium and sentenced to 20 years in prison on July 4, 2007. Photo keith harmon snow, Tanzania, 2000.

The rights and due process of Rwandan Hutus are systematically violated due to victor’s justice secured by the U.S., Europe, Israel and the proxy states Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda. Bernard Ntuyahaga, a Major of the former Rwandan army (ex-FAR) accused of killing 10 Belgian soldiers and Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana, surrendered to the ICTR to avoid extradition to Rwanda; he was tried in Belgium and sentenced to 20 years in prison on July 4, 2007.

Like other researchers who have endlessly perpetuated the disinformation, Des Forges made no attempts to correct the record. In 1992, human rights researchers Rakiya Omaar and Alex de Waal established the London-based NGO African Rights. In August 1995, African Rights published Rwanda: Death, Despair and Defiance, another pivotal ‘human rights’ report that manufactured the ‘genocide’ fabrications, set the stage for victor’s justice at the ICTR, and began the process of dehumanizing millions of Hutu people and protecting the true terrorists. In 1995, Omaar and de Waal recycled the disinformation in the left-leaning Covert Action Quarterly under the title “U.S. Complicity by Silence: Genocide in Rwanda.” Since 2003, Alex de Waal has been one of the primary disinformation conduits on Darfur, Sudan.

“This woman [Omaar] of Somali origin is an RPF agent,” says Jean-Marie Higiro, former director of the Rwandan Information Office (ORINFOR). “[Today] she has her office in Kigali. In 1994 she was at Mulindi [Rwanda], the headquarters of the RPF. As the RPF conquered territories from the Rwandan Government Forces [FAR], she collected information fed to her by the RPF.”

“An intensive back and forth activity between this so-called British human rights organization, African Rights, and the intelligence services of the [Kagame] President’s office and the Rwandan military, has been observed,” wrote Hotel Rwanda star Paul Rusesabagina. “Her investigators are very close to the [RPF/A] military intelligence apparatus, and the modus operandi of both appears to be similar.”

Alison Des Forges’ years long ‘investigations’ into the bloodshed of 1994 resulted in the fat treatise on genocide in Rwanda, Leave None to Tell the Story, a book co-researched and co-written by Timothy Longman, now Associate Professor of Africana Studies and Political Science at Vassar College. Longman and Des Forges produced numerous documents—based on field investigations in Congo (Zaire), Rwanda and Burundi, from 1995 to 2008—touted as independent and unbiased human rights documents, all skewed by hidden interests.

According to a recent PBS Frontline eulogy, less than two weeks into the killing in April 1994 Des Forges met with officials in the U.S. State Department and National Security Council (NSC) and lobbied for their help. “We were not asking for U.S. troops,” Frontline quotes her to say, “it was clear to us that there was no way that the U.S. was going to commit troops to Rwanda.”

But the U.S. military was heavily backing the RPF/A tactically and strategically already. Key to the operation were ‘former’ Special Operations Forces (Ronco Company) providing military equipment and ferrying RPA troops from Uganda to Rwanda; the Pentagon’s logistical and communications support; Defense Intelligence Agency and CIA operatives. Canadian General Romeo Dallaire, commander of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Rwanda (UNAMIR), was also collaborating with the RPF/A, serving the Pentagon interest.

Genocide in Rwanda became a massive psychological operation directed against media consumers using ghastly images—produced by RPA-embedded photographers like James Nachtwey and Gilles Peres—to infer that all cadavers were Tutsi victims of an orchestrated Hutu genocide; meanwhile the text was racist disinformation produced by Joshua Hammer. Newsweek, June 20, 1994.

ICTR defense attorney Christopher Black reports that reliable sources confirm that US Special forces were with the RPF all the way through the war. “My client testified in June that U.S. Hercules [C-130 military aircraft] were seen dropping troops in support of the RPF…”

Further, on 9 April 1994, three days after the so-called ‘mysterious plane crash’ where Burundi’s President Cyprien Ntaryamira and President Habyarimana were assassinated, some 330 U.S. marines landed at Bujumbura’s airport in Burundi, ostensibly to ‘rescue Americans’ in Rwanda. More centrally however, Uganda—with U.S. trained forces and U.S. supplied weaponry—launched its war against Rwanda as a proxy force for the United States of America. The result was a coup d‘etat: we won. The 2003 Frontline interview with Alison Des Forges exemplifies her continuing role in whitewashing U.S. involvement in war crimes and genocide in Central Africa.

“Kagame received his military education under the Pentagon’s Joint Combined Exchange Training (JCET) at the Command and General Staff College of Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, beginning in 1990,” wrote John E. Peck of the Association of African Scholars (2002). “His sidekick, Lt. Col. Frank Rusagara, got his JCET schooling at the U.S. Naval Academy in Monterey, California. Both were dispatched to Rwanda in time to oversee the RPF’s takeover in 1994. Far from being an innocent bystander, the Washington Post revealed on July 12, 1998 that the United States not only gave Kagame $75 million in military assistance, but also sent Green Berets to train Kagame’s forces (as well as their Ugandan rebel allies) in low intensity conflict (LIC) tactics. Pentagon subcontractor Ronco, masquerading as a de-mining company, also smuggled more weapons to RPF fighters in flagrant violation of UN sanctions. All of this U.S. largesse was put to lethal effect in the ethnic bloodbath that is still going on.”

“This genocide resulted from the deliberate choice of a modern elite to foster hatred and fear to keep itself in power,” Des Forges wrote, blaming ‘Hutu Power’. However, her assertions about a ‘planned’ Hutu genocide—“They seized control of the state and used its machinery and its authority to carry out the slaughter”—collapse under scrutiny.

From 1990 to 1994, the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA), comprised most heavily of Ugandan soldiers led by Ugandan citizens like Paul Kagame, committed atrocity after atrocity as they forced their way to power in Kigali, always falsely accusing their enemies—the power-sharing government of then President Juvenal Habyarimana—of genocide.

“Kagame assigned some people to work with Alison Des Forges,” says Ugandan Human Rights expert Remigius Kintu, “and also to assist her in fabricating and distorting stories to suit Tutsi propaganda plans.”

According to the International Forum for Truth and Justice in the Great Lakes Region of Africa, whose discoveries resulted in the high courts of Spain issuing international indictments against 40 top RPF/A officials: “Between 1990 and 1994, the RPA waged a systematic, pre-planned, secretive but highly organized terrorist war aimed at eliminating the largest number of Rwandan people possible—bodies were hacked to pieces and incinerated en masse. From 1994, once the RPA violently seized power, a terror regime was created, and developed, and a criminal structure parallel to the state was set up to pursue pre-determined kidnappings; torturing and raping of women and young girls; terrorist attacks (both directly and by simulating that the same had been perpetrated by the enemy); illegal detention of thousands of civilians; selective murdering; systematic elimination of corpses either by mass incineration or by throwing them into lakes and rivers; indiscriminate attacks against civilians based on pre-determined ethnic categories for the elimination of the predominant ethnic group; and also to carry out acts of war in Rwanda and Congo.”

Before former President Habyarimana’s assassination on 6 April 1994, Des Forges, and the organizations she worked with, blamed the whole war crimes show on President Habyarimana and his government, they dismissed the illegal invasion and atrocities of the RPF/A, and they began calling it genocide against the Tutsis as early as 1992.

“In the Military II case Alison Des Forges admitted that she was funded by USAID when she was part of that so-called International Commission condemning the Rwandan Government [Habyarimana] for human rights violations,” reports Canadian Chris Black, a defense attorney at the ICTR, “and she admitted that she just took the word of the RPF and pro-RPF groups and that she did not deal with RPF atrocities, as she did not have the time.”

Chris Black notes that Des Forges presented reports to the ICTR in certain legal cases that were decidedly doctored from the original reports presented in previous cases against other accused Hutu genocidaires, and that it was necessary to cross-examine Des Forges ‘very forcefully’ to get her to agree that changes had been made to the reports presented as evidence in the case being tried.

Twelve year-old Hutu child soldiers with the Forces for the Democratic Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) in Congo—so-called genocidaires who purportedly fled Rwanda in 1994 and have served as Kagame’s justification for plundering and depopulating Congo since. Photo keith harmon snow, South Kivu, DRC, 2006.

“In her expert report in the 2006 Military II trial against General Ndindiliyimana,” Chris Black adds, “she removed all the positive things she had said about him in her book and in her previous expert report in the [Colonel Théoneste] Bagasora case. When asked by me why she deleted the positive view of him at his own trial, and why she tried to hide the fact that he saved a lot of Tutsis, among other things, she had no explanation. It was a cheap, low thing to do and I can tell you even the judges here at the ICTR were not too happy about it.”

On December 18, 2008, after the protracted ‘Military I’ trial, the judges at the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda ruled that there was no conspiracy to commit genocide by former Rwandan military leaders affiliated with the former Habyarimana government. It was war, and the actions—far from a calculated genocide—were found by ICTR judges to be ‘war-time conditions’.

“The media reports of the December 18 judgment [Military I] at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda focused primarily on the convictions of three of four former top military leaders, who were the supposed ‘masterminds’ of the Rwandan genocide,” wrote ICTR defense lawyer Peter Erlinder. “But, as those who have followed the ICTR closely know, convictions of members of the former Rwandan government and military are scarcely newsworthy.”

Since the inception of the ICTR its decisions have been decisively biased—victor’s justice—in favor of protecting the Kagame regime and its backers. Thus it is no surprise that the former top military leaders of the Habyarimana government—Colonel Théoneste Bagosora and Major Aloys Ntabakuze—were sentenced to life imprisonment for acts of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. However, an act of genocide is not an organized, calculated, systematic genocide.

“The real news was that ALL of the top Rwandan military officers, including the supposedly infamous Colonel Bagosora, were found not guilty of conspiracy or planning to commit genocide,” writes Erlinder. “And General Gratien Kabiligi, a senior member of the general staff, was acquitted of all charges! The others were found guilty of specific acts committed by subordinates, in specific places, at specific times—not an overall conspiracy to kill civilians, much less Tutsi civilians.”

Now, after more than fifteen years of massive western propaganda proclaiming an organized, systematic elimination of the Tutsi people by the Hutu leaders of the former Rwandan government, the official Rwanda genocide story has finally collapsed.

THE GENOCIDE FACTS

In contradistinction to the establishment narrative accusing the ‘Hutu leadership’ of an ‘organized’ and ‘planned’ genocide were the countless acts of genocide committed through a spontaneous uprising of the Hutu masses—people who had been brutalized, disenfranchised, uprooted and forced from homes; people who had witnessed massacres and rapes of family members; people who were themselves the victims of brutal atrocities. These were more than a million internally displaced Rwandan Hutus, people who had been terrorized by the Rwandan Patriotic Army from October 1990 to April 1994, as it butchered its way into Rwanda; and possibly a million Burundian refugees, Hutus who suffered massive reprisals in Burundi after the first civilian President, Melchior Ndadaye, a democratically elected Hutu, was assassinated by the Tutsi military in October 1993. There is evidence that the RPA/F pursued “pseudo-operations”—death squads committing atrocities disguised as government soldiers—and evidence that at least some of the infamous Interahamwe militias pursued their campaigns of terror in the pay of the Rwandan Patriotic Front/Army.

“She [Des Forges] concealed the fact that from 1990 the war caused an unprecedented economic poverty and that the one million internally displaced people tore the social fabric apart!” wrote Dr. Helmut Strizek, a former German official who had called for Des Forges’ resignation from HRW. “And these people knew that Tutsi rebels [RPA] caused their misery. They did not wait for ‘instructions’ in order to revenge, once no one was able to maintain public order after the April 6 [1994] assassination [sic] and resumption of hostilities by the RPF.”

“Alison Des Forges is no longer,” writes Charles Onana. “Peace be with her soul! She nonetheless leaves behind her many victims of injustice, who she painstakingly accused, using false testimony, before the International Criminal Tribunal Court for Rwanda (ICTR).”

Alison Des Forges provided expert testimony in 11 genocide trials before the ICTR, including the ‘Military I’ trials that condemned Col. Theoneste Bagosora and two others on December 18. Des Forges also testified in genocide trials in Belgium, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Canada.

Charles Onana continues:

Among her victims there is Jean-Paul Akayesu, the first to be condemned to life imprisonment for genocide. This man, who Alison Des Forges had accused without any proof against him, was even defended by a Tutsi from the Patriotic Rwandan Army [RPA] who had been party to the fabrication of the ‘incriminating’ evidence against him in Rwanda. The Tribunal never listened to this witness, but they did listen to Alison Des Forges.

I have also discovered during the course of my investigations into the ICTR that, at the start of the trial in 1997, she introduced a forged fax that was purported to be written by General Dallaire in 1994. This fax, maintained Des Forges, concerned the ‘planning of genocide’.

New Yorker staff writer Philip Gourevitch spread the mythology of “The Genocide Fax” far and wide. Gourevitch’s first pro-RPF/A disinformation piece appeared in the New Yorker in December 1995; in May 1998 the New Yorker published Gourevitch’s “The Genocide Fax,” a charade fed to him by Madeleine Albright’s undersecretary of state James Rubin. Gourevitch’s fictional book We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families was funded by the euphemistically named U.S. Institute for Peace and written in league with the Kagame regime. It is certainly possible that Alison Des Forges was unaware of the original fabrication, but she and Human Rights Watch never changed their tune, and they never denounced the fabrication.

Charles Onana continues:

It was on the basis of this false document that she called for the condemnation of Jean-Paul Akaseyu. To lend credibility to this first trial process, the ICTR, with astonishing lightness and irresponsibility, condemned this man to life. The Tribunal had no proof. The judicial dossier is slapdash and skimpy, but that has no importance. This was Alison Des Forges first great victory.

She then decided to pursue a Rwandan refugee living in Canada: an ideal target. He had the misfortune to be Hutu. For her, this man was a ‘planner of genocide’. But where is the proof? Alison Des Forges has none, but she wants to see this man [Leon Mugesera] in prison. Having deciphered or seen through Alison Des Forge’s arguments, the Judge of the Canadian Federal Tribunal concluded witheringly and without pity: ‘I note above all the relentlessness with which Mme Des Forges launched her diatribe against M. [Leon] Mugesera, and am astonished by the lack of care she has demonstrated in drawing up the report for the International Commission of Enquiry and in her Expert Assessment.’

The Canadian judge did not hesitate to qualify Mme. Des Forges as partisan, demonstrating ‘a prejudice or preconceived position against Léon Mugesera’. He concluded that she could not be considered an objective witness, adding that no correctly informed tribunal could take her allegations seriously. Nevertheless it was on the basis of the same arguments, and of the same fantasy report published in 1999, that she accused numerous Rwandans, all Hutu.

“CONTINENTAL SHIFT,” one of Philip Gourevitch’s pivotal disinformation essays that appeared in the New Yorker, outlined the “new brand of African leader” exemplified by Yoweri Museveni and Paul Kagame: it is a whitewash of U.S.-backed terrorism.

It was thus that she devoted the penultimate day of her examination, during the process against the military, to presenting Colonel Bagosora, Hutu, as the king pin in the genocide. The Tribunal in the long-running ‘Military I’ trial did not accept the ‘planning of genocide’ that Alison Des Forges never ceased to hammer on about by means of her pseudo-fax of 11 January 1994. She lied, lied and lied again. She tried a come-back or to recover her credibility by criticizing her ‘hero’ Paul Kagame, the organizer the 6 April 1994 assassination of two presidents.

Alison Des Forges finally dared to speak of the crimes committed by the Tutsi rebels of the RPF/A: the great taboo. It was a bit late but it assuaged her conscience. For those who were condemned by the ICTR, deliberately and unjustly recorded by her, there will be no justice for them. Can Alison Des Forges still hear their suffering and their pain? She who has done them so much harm—along with their families? She who claimed to defend the Rights of Man has without doubt violated the rights of many Rwandans, who will undoubtedly never forget her. Their homage to Mme. Des Forges would have been different, very different, to what her many friends in the media have to say.

Timothy Longman and Des Forges, the co-authors of the HRW treatise, Leave None To Tell The Story, both worked with USAID, the U.S. State Department and the Pentagon. Des Forges was a member of the HRW board from 1988 and was “principal researcher” on Rwanda and Burundi, 1991-1994. In this period Des Forges also consulted for USAID, and collaborated with the State Department, Pentagon, and National Security Council. Simultaneously, Des Forges worked with, informed and influenced U.S. Congress-people, Permanent Representatives at the United Nations, the U.N. Under-Secretary General, and U.N. Special Rapporteur for Rwanda and Special Rapporteur for Summary and Arbitrary Executions. Des Forges also pumped the disinformation into the academic world through her high-level ties to human rights committees, African and Africana Studies departments and the elite African Studies Association.

In the same period, Des Forges constantly influenced the U.S. media through special briefings to the editorial boards and reporters of the New York Times, Washington Post, National Public Radio, and Associated Press, and she was frequently presented as an “expert” on genocide in Rwanda for CNN, 60 Minutes, Nightline, All Things Considered, BBC, Radio France Internationale, and the Canadian Broadcasting Company. Such relations explain the mass media’s consistency in producing the monolithic disinformation about Rwanda that shielded the illegal U.S.-backed and covert RPF/A (Ugandan) guerrilla insurgency. The blanket media coverage falsely situated the “Rwanda genocide” as it is now widely misunderstood: 100 days of genocide, 800,000 to 1.2 million Tutsis killed with machetes; the ‘highly disciplined’ RPF/A stopping the genocide. Such is the disinformation that indoctrinated the English-speaking media consumers and created a mass psychological hysteria about Rwanda that persists to this day.

Timothy Longman worked with Des Forges in Rwanda in 1994 and has worked regularly with both USAID and HRW on contracts in Congo, Burundi and Rwanda, throughout the late 1990’s and into the present; Longman worked in Rwanda on one USAID contract for Management Systems Incorporated, a firm whose clients include the Pentagon. Longman also worked as a consultant for HRW in the spring of 2000 conducting field research in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo and producing “a detailed report on human rights conditions in rebel-controlled areas.”

The Des Forges and Longman position vis-à-vis their whitewashing of the Tutsi-led RPF/A-organized genocide in Rwanda certainly explains the sanitation of HRW reports, and it raises questions, for example, about how Human Rights Watch ‘researchers’ navigate their ‘work’ in rebel (read: Rwandan and Ugandan) controlled areas in DRC. It also raises questions about how, why and when HRW does or doesn’t expose the western operatives, non-government organizations and multinational corporations: a singular example is the Human Rights Watch report that mildly exposes the criminal operations of Anglo-Gold Ashanti—a company partnered with the Bush-connected Barrick Gold Corporation—in eastern DRC. HRW says nothing about Moto Gold, Mwana Africa, Banro Resources, Hardmann Oil, Tullow Oil, De Beers, H Oil & Minerals, OM Group, Metalurg, Kotecha, International Rescue Committee—and the many proxy armies, militias, gun-runners and other organized white collar war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Congo.

The role of HRW as an intelligence conduit to the U.S. Government is incidentally confirmed by Samantha Power in her book A Problem from Hell: America in the Age of Genocide—a whitewash of U.S. and allied war crimes for which she was rewarded with a Pulitzer Prize. While Power’s “bystanders to genocide” thesis about Rwanda is a total inversion of the facts, she notes in passing that “Human Rights Watch supplied exemplary intelligence to the U.S. Government and lobbied in one-on-one meetings” in April and May 1994, and that Alison Des Forges and other HRW staff visited the White House on April 21, 1994. Samantha Power is currently a member of the National Security Council in the administration of President Barack Obama.

The mass media was flooded with “Rwanda genocide” disinformation between April and July of 1994, and advertising that served up subliminal seduction and white supremacy often surrounded these ‘news’ clips. This adverts’ sexualized message—MODERN MEANS STAYING COOL, CALM AND DIRECTED—is augmented by a sanitized ‘news’ clip that described the double presidential assassination as a “mysterious plane crash.” New York Times, June 12, 1994.

Alison Des Forges continued to remain silent about western corporate and military interests in the Great Lakes region to her death. A perfect example of this silence is the very unrevealing March 2008 interview by the U.S. nationalist and Zionist U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum titled “Alison Des Forges: The Impact of Rwandan Genocide in Congo.”

Timothy Longman also produces significant pro-US propaganda about Sudan. Thus it is important to note that amongst the key USAID conduits for disinformation and covert operations in Sudan today is Roger Winter, one of the primary architects of the RPF/A guerrilla war, organized from Washington in 1989, that led to the loss of at least twelve million lives in the Great Lakes of Africa since October 1990. Alison Des Forges, of course, never mentioned Roger Winter or his colleague in covert operations, Susan Rice, the Obama Administration’s Ambassador to the U.N.

“Roger Winter was with the RPA on the front lines in Rwanda and he regularly briefed the Clinton Administration of the RPA’s military achievements,” says Jean Marie Vianney Higiro, former Rwandan official. “Alison Des Forges contributed to the RPF/A takeover of Rwanda. I have no doubt about that… I met her three times, first in 1995, and in 2004 she encouraged me to testify at the ICTR. I said no way: I will only testify if RPF officials are arrested. She insisted I should testify, she was confident that the RPF were going to be arrested. I think she did not realize that the U.S. government would never accept that. She was something of an opportunist.”

“I don’t know how assassins could control icing on the wings or why it was necessary to bring down 50 other people just to silence her,” says ICTR lawyer Chris Black, commenting on the speculation that Alison Des Forges was assassinated by ‘plane crash’. “It would have been much simpler to kill her in all sorts of other ways. But she was no big critic. She made some noises, but it was just to give Human Rights Watch some credibility.”

“I hold a strong belief in the plane crash being planned,” says Remigius Kintu. “These international cabal members have no mercy to hide their crime in something like this and could care less about the other people on the plane. As for Roger Winter, he was the chief logistics boss for [RPF] Tutsis until their victory in 1994, operating from 1717 Massachusetts Avenue NW in Washington D.C.”

The zeal displayed by Alison Des Forges and Human Rights Watch in the pursuit of justice and human rights appears in sharp contradistinction to their absence of zeal in pursuing the architects of the criminal invasion of Rwanda on 10 October 1990, the double presidential assassinations of 6 April 1994, and all kinds of other nasty corporate conspiracies in Central Africa.

Thus while the world commemorated the 15th Anniversary of the “Rwanda Genocide” on 6 April 2009, innocent Rwandan asylum seekers and critics of the Kagame terrorist regime, all over the world, live under perpetual fear of being hunted down, branded as genocide perpetrators, ostracized, and persecuted by an illegitimate one-party dictatorship comprised 40 military officials indicted for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide by two international courts.

According to insiders from Rwanda, Kagame’s ruthless Directorate of Military Intelligence has dispatched some 300 agents to Europe to kill RPF opponents; some of these agents are operating under cover as bogus asylum seekers in Europe and North America. As of January 20, 2009 the U.S. Department of Homeland Security began reopening all cases of Rwandan asylum seekers, and is criminalizing and threatening to deport legitimate refugees to Rwanda, actions that violate the 1951 United Nations High Commission for Refugees Convention and Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees.

However, in the wake of the December 2008 report, which clearly documents Rwanda’s support of destabilizing proxy forces inside the Congo, a series of stunning proposals and actions have been presented which all appear to be an attempt to cover up or bury the damning U.N. report on the latest expression of Rwanda’s aggression against the Congolese people.

The earliest proposal came from Herman Cohen, former assistant secretary of state for African affairs under George Herbert Walker Bush. He proposed that Rwanda be rewarded for its well documented looting of Congo’s wealth by being a part of a Central and/or East African free trade zone whereby Rwanda would keep its ill-gotten gains.

French President Nicholas Sarkozy would not be outdone; he also brought his proposal off the shelf, which argues for essentially the same scheme of rewarding Rwanda for its 12-year war booty from the Congo. Two elements are at the core of both proposals.

One is the legitimization of the economic annexation of the Congo by Rwanda, which for all intents and purposes represents the status quo. And two is basically the laying of the foundation for the balkanization of the Congo or the outright political annexation of Eastern Congo by Rwanda. Both Sarkozy and Cohen have moved with lightning speed past the Dec. 12, 2008, United Nations report to make proposals that avoid the core issues revealed in the report.

The U.N. report reaffirms what Congolese intellectuals, scholars and victims have been saying for over a decade in regard to Rwanda’s role as the main catalyst for the biblical scale death and misery in the Congo. The Ugandan and Rwandan invasions of 1996 and 1998 have triggered the deaths of nearly 6 million Congolese. The United Nations says it is the deadliest conflict in the world since World War II.

The report “found evidence that the Rwandan authorities have been complicit in the recruitment of soldiers, including children, have facilitated the supply of military equipment, and have sent officers and units from the Rwandan Defense Forces” to the DRC. The support is for the National Congress for the Defense of the People, or CNDP, formerly led by self-proclaimed Gen. Laurent Nkunda.

The report also shows that the CNDP is sheltering a war criminal wanted by the International Criminal Court, Gen. Jean Bosco Ntaganda. The CNDP has used Rwanda as a rear base for fundraising meetings and bank accounts, and Uganda is once more implicated as Nkunda has met regularly with embassies in both Kigali and Kampala.

Also, Uganda is accepting illegal CNDP immigration papers. Earlier U.N. reports said that Kagame and Museveni are the mafia dons of Congo’s exploitation. This has not changed in any substantive way.

The report implicates Tribert Rujugiro Ayabatwa, a close advisor to Paul Kagame, president of Rwanda. Rujugiro is the founder of the Rwandan Investment Group. This is not the first time he has been named by the United Nations as one of the individuals contributing to the conflict in the Congo.

In April 2001, he was identified as Tibere Rujigiro in the U.N. Panel of Experts on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and Other Forms of Wealth in the Democratic Republic of the Congo as one of the figures illegally exploiting Congo’s wealth. His implication this time comes in financial contributions to CNDP and appropriation of land.

This brings to light the organizations he is a part of, which include but are not limited to the Rwanda Development Board, the Rwandan Investment Group, of which he is the founder, and Kagame’s Presidential Advisory Council. They have members as notable as Rev. Rick Warren, business tycoon Joe Ritchie, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Scott Ford of Alltell, Dr. Clet Niyikiza of GlaxoSmithKline, former U.S. president Bill Clinton and many more.

These connections provide some insight into why Rwanda has been able to commit and support remarkable atrocities in the Congo without receiving even a reprimand in spite of the fact that two European courts have charged their top leadership with war crimes and crimes against humanity. It is only recently that two European nations, Sweden and the Netherlands, have decided to withhold aid from Rwanda as a result of their aggression against the Congolese people.

The report shows that the Congolese soldiers have also given support to the FDLR and other armed groups to fight against the aggression of Rwanda’s CNDP proxy. One important distinction must be made in this regard. It appears that the FDLR support comes more from individual Congolese soldiers as opposed to overall government support.

The Congolese government is not supporting the FDLR in incursions into Rwanda; however, the Rwandan government is in fact supporting rebel groups inside Congo. The Congolese population is the victim of the CNDP, FDLR and the Congolese military.

The United Nations report is a predictable outgrowth of previous reports produced by the U.N. since 2001. It reflects the continued appropriation of the land, theft of Congo’s resources, and continuous human rights abuses caused by Rwanda and Uganda. An apparent aim of these spasms is to create facts on the ground – land appropriation, theft of cattle and other assets – to consolidate CNDP/Rwandan economic integration into Rwanda.

Herman Cohen’s “Can Africa Trade Its Way to Peace?” in the New York Times reflects the disastrous policies that favor profits over people. In his article, the former lobbyist for Mobutu and Kabila’s government in the United States and former assistant secretary of state for Africa from 1989 to 1993 argues, “Having controlled the Kivu provinces for 12 years, Rwanda will not relinquish access to resources that constitute a significant percentage of its gross national product.”

He adds, “The normal flow of trade from eastern Congo is to Indian Ocean ports rather than the Atlantic Ocean, which is more than a thousand miles away.” Continuing his argument, he believes that “the free movement of people would empty the refugee camps and would allow the densely populated countries of Rwanda and Burundi to supply needed labor to Congo and Tanzania.”

Cohen’s first mistake in providing solutions to the conflict is to look at the conflict as a humanitarian crisis that can be solved by economic means. Uganda and Rwanda are the aggressors. Aggressors should not define for the Congo what is best, but rather it is for the Congo to define what it has to offer to its neighbor.

A lasting solution is to stop the silent annexation of Eastern Congo. The International Court of Justice has already weighed in on this matter when it ruled in 2005 that Congo is entitled to $10 billion in reparations due to Uganda’s looting of Congo’s natural resources and the commission of human rights abuses in the Congo. It would have in all likelihood ruled in the same fashion against Rwanda; however, Rwanda claimed to be outside the jurisdiction of the court.

The United States and Great Britain’s implication is becoming very clear. These two great powers consider Rwanda and Uganda their staunch allies and, some would argue, client states. These two countries have received millions of dollars of military aid, which in turn they use in Congo to cause destruction and death.

Rwandan President Paul Kagame is a former student at the U.S. military training base Fort Leavenworth and Yoweri Museveni’s son, Lt. Gen. Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, graduated from the same U.S. military college in the summer of 2008. Both the United States and Great Britain should follow the lead of the Dutch and Swedish governments, who have suspended their financial support to Rwanda.

With U.S. and British taxpayers’ support, we now see an estimated 6 million people dead in Congo, hundreds of thousands of women systematically raped as an instrument of war and millions displaced.

A political solution will resolve the crisis, and part of that requires pressure on Rwanda in spite of Rwanda’s recent so-called “house arrest” of Laurent Nkunda. African institutions such as the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the African Union are primed to be more engaged in the Congo issue. Considering Congo’s importance to Africa, it is remarkable that they have been so anemic in regard to the Congo crisis for so long.

Rwanda’s leader, Paul Kagame, cannot feel as secure or be as arrogant as he has been in the past. One of his top aides was arrested in Germany as a result of warrants issued by a French court and there is almost global consensus that pressure must be put on him to cease his support of the destabilization of the Congo and its resultant humanitarian catastrophe.

In addition to pressure on Kagame, the global community should support the following policies:

1. Initiate an international tribunal on the Congo.

2. Work with the Congolese to implement a national reconciliation process; this could be a part of the international tribunal.

3. Work with the Congolese to assure that those who have committed war crimes or crimes against humanity are brought to justice.

4. Hold accountable corporations that are benefiting from the suffering and deaths in the Congo.

5. Make the resolution of the Congo crisis a top international priority.

Living is a right, not a privilege, and Congolese deaths must be honored by due process of the law. As the implication of the many parties in this conflict becomes clear, we should start firmly acknowledging that the conflict is a resource war waged by U.S. and British allies.

We call upon people of good will once again to advocate for the Congolese by following the prescriptions we have been outlining to end the conflict and start the new path to peace, harmony and an end to the exploitation of Congo’s wealth and devastation of its peoples.

We have reasons to doubt that Laurent Nkunda has been arrested. Rwandan Maj. Jill Rutaremara said that Nkunda was in Rwanda but “not in jail.” If Nkunda has in fact been arrested it would be a positive development but not a massive change as some analysts would like you to believe. A true marker of the veracity of Rwanda’s claims of arresting Nkunda will be the extradition of Nkunda to the Congo where he committed the crimes against the Congolese people. If Nkunda is not extradited to Congo in short order then that will be a clear sign that this is part of the shell game that Rwanda has been playing for the past 12 years, a period during which they replaced one proxy leader with another while they continued to occupy Eastern Congo. Even if Nkunda were to be arrested, it would be a fundamental flaw in one’s reasoning to believe that Nkunda was the primary cause of the conflict in the east. In essence, what has happened is that Nkunda’s National Congress for the Defense of the People has been replaced by thousands of Rwandan troops. The problem is Rwanda’s and Uganda’s aggression against the Congo backed primarily by the United States and British governments and corporate interests since 1996.

If Rwanda did in fact arrest Nkunda, doesn’t this mean that they never supported him as the December 12th UN Report documented?

No, to the contrary, over the past twelve years Rwanda has shuffled different rebel leaders according to its interests. It is in part for this reason there were so many versions of the Rally for Congolese Democracy (RCD, former rebel militia backed by Rwanda), which Nkunda was a part of in 1998 – 2002 war. Nkunda’s apparent replacement, Jean-Bosco Ntaganda, also has an arrest warrant out for him issued by the International Criminal Court; one human rights offender has been replaced by another as Bosco now proclaims to head the CNDP.

A systemic and historical analysis is warranted in order to demystify current events in the Congo and arrive at prescriptions that will lead to lasting peace and stability. Unfortunately, the majority of Great Lakes analysts offer Rwanda-friendly analysis and prescriptions as Rwanda represents the US and British foreign policy interests in Central Africa. These analysts’ job is to provide intellectual and advocacy cover for an otherwise disastrous policy across now two US and British administrations that have led to the deaths of millions of Congolese and the systematic looting of Congo’s wealth to the benefit of U.S. allies Rwanda and Uganda as well as Western corporations.

Isn’t the new collaboration between Congo and Rwanda a good sign on the road to peace and stability in the region?

On December 5th, Rwanda and Congo signed a secret pact in Goma that the Congolese people know nothing about (President Kabila is scheduled to speak to his nation on this issue on Saturday, January 31, 2009). James Kabarebe, Chief of General Staff of the Rwandan Defense Forces and former private secretary and aide-de-camp of Rwanda’s president Paul Kagame was later dispatched to Kinshasa to consummate a deal with President Kabila. Thus, Rwandan President Paul Kagame, James Kabarebe, and President Kabila worked out a deal that resulted in over 5,000 Rwandan soldiers entering Congo. These are the same characters that collaborated in 1996 when Congo was first invaded by Rwanda during the Clinton administration. During that period they traversed the Congo slaughtering Hutu man, woman and child and anyone else who was in the way. The United Nations says that the killings were so massive and systematic that they can be considered crimes against humanity and possibly genocide. The United Nations investigation into these crimes against humanity by the Rwandan army, Kabarebe and Kabila was blocked and still remains to be resolved (see the UN investigations). Once a responsible and credible government is in place in Congo all these crimes must be investigated and justice must be delivered so that the Congolese people can be made whole. Find out more about the Kagame, Kabarebe, Kabila connection in our January 20th Blog. In the final analysis, more troops and further militarization of the region is not the answer. A robust political path must be established in order to lead to peace and stability in the Great Lakes region.

So are you saying that President Kabila allowing Rwandan troops on Congolese soil to hunt down those responsible for the 1994 genocide is not a good thing?

The logic that allowing Rwandan soldiers on Congolese territory to hunt down Hutu rebels will bring about peace is fundamentally flawed. Below are some factors to consider:

1. The deal allowing Rwandan soldiers on Congolese soil was not between the Congolese government and the Rwandan government. It was between the Congolese president Joseph Kabila, whom many suspect is not even Congolese and the Kagame regime in Kigali. Neither the Congolese parliament nor the Congolese people were either consulted or addressed regarding Rwandan troops entering Congolese territory. In fact some Congolese are calling for the impeachment of Kabila. When it comes to matters in Africa, we tend to drop all critical faculties and common sense. Can you imagine troops entering US territory without the US Congress knowing about it and the president not even addressing the population to explain why? What is even more farcical is that some Congolese government officials are trying to convince the world that thousands of Rwandan soldiers are coming into the Congo as advisers to the Congolese troops. It has even been stated that the Rwandan troops will be under Congolese command. Will they be under the same compromised command that Nkunda chased out of North Kivu?

2. It is beyond imagination that Rwanda is going to do in a few weeks what it was not able to do or interested in doing when it occupied the Congo from 1996–2002. During this period of the occupation of eastern Congo they did not wipe out the so-called Hutu militia. In fact, the biggest battle they had was with their ally Uganda over mining concessions. Also, during this time they systematically looted Congo of its wealth. (See UN Reports from 2001–2003). It is this looting of Congo’s wealth that spurred the economic miracle that President Clinton and other Western officials wax eloquently about in Rwanda. You will notice that they never mention the degree to which ill-gotten wealth from the Congo contributed to Rwanda’s “economic miracle.” Former Secretary of State for African Affairs, Herman Cohen says it best when he notes “Having controlled the Kivu provinces for 12 years, Rwanda will not relinquish access to resources that constitute a significant percentage of its gross national product”.

3. What is almost certain is that Rwandan troops on Congolese soil will lead to more suffering of the people of the Congo. Analysts in the West have not fully appreciated the enmity that the average Congolese holds toward Rwanda. Remember, it was the US and British backed Rwandan and Ugandan invasions of 1996 and 1998 that unleashed the deaths of estimated millions of Congolese. So, for one to say that Rwandan soldiers are now going to make things better for the people of the Congo does not take history into account. One merely has to look at the Congo-Ugandan action against Ugandan rebels inside Congolese territory to see where this latest action is heading. Over 600 Congolese civilians lost their lives as a result of military action against the Lord’s Resistance Army in Congo, which began over a month ago. Moreover, that operation was supposed to take a few weeks and now Uganda is requesting more time on Congo’s soil, while Congo’s gold and timber continue to find its way into Uganda.

What role are great powers playing in what is unfolding in the Congo?

It is key to understand how the game is played to keep Africa dependent and impoverished. Because the West is more powerful than the divided and weak African nations, they have been able to assassinate or systematically sideline leaders who truly serve the interest of the people. They facilitate the ascension to power of those who demonstrate a proclivity for killing their fellow Africans. Once these feckless leaders are in power and predictably incapable of governing, western diplomats condescendingly intervene on the premise that those they have assisted in acquiring power either through elections or otherwise cannot in fact justly govern. This narrative is buttressed by superficial media coverage of African society, intellectuals for hire by Western powers and the humanitarian industry. It is in this context that French President Nicolas Sarkozy and former Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Herman Cohen, have proposed the balkanization and economic neutering of the Congo. They have made proposals to reward Rwanda and their Western support structure for the systematic looting of Congo, which has resulted in unmatched death and terror for the Congolese people. Nearly 125 years since Europe gave Congo to King Leopold II of Belgium as his own personal property, the situation is fundamentally the same whereby the affairs of the Congolese people are not determined by themselves; but rather by external forces.

So what can be positively drawn from recent events?

Several things can be looked at positively:

1. It is clear that international pressure works. It has moved Rwanda to at least announce the arrest of Nkunda. As was said, the litmus test for whether Nkunda has actually been arrested is his extradition to Kinshasa, otherwise for all intents and purposes he is vacationing in Rwanda at the behest of Kagame while Rwandan troops roam the hillsides of Eastern Congo with the blessing of Joseph Kabila. The U.S. is finding it increasingly difficult to defend its proxy, Rwanda, as both French and Spanish courts (the same Spanish court that ruled against Pinochet of Chile ) have arrest warrants out on President Kagame’s top officials for commission of war crimes, one of whom, Rose Kabuye, was arrested in Germany in November 2008. Despite such repeated damning evidence against the Kagame regime, under the auspices of Donald Rumsfeld’s AFRICOM program, the US sent a shipment of military equipment to Rwanda for peace keeping purposes in Western Sudan in early January 2009, coinciding with Rwandan troops intervention in Congo. The military shipment is supposed to be used for peace keeping in Western Sudan. Both Sweden and the Netherlands suspended aid to Rwanda and of course the damning December 12th UN Report have made it difficult for anyone to defend Rwanda except for some ideologically-driven humanitarian institutions. Even the New York Times editorial board continues to call for international pressure on Rwanda.

2. Kagame felt a necessity to adjust to the new realities in Washington. He could not necessarily count on President Obama to give him carte blanche as he has received from Presidents Clinton and Bush. Rwanda is certainly still a staunch ally of the U.S. However, Kagame cannot be certain that President Obama will fully support him in spite of some of the old guards (Susan Rice at the UN and Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State) being in the administration. The Obama administration can hardly present itself as an administration of change with an old policy for the Great Lakes in particular and Africa in general. The new administration would be best served to implement policies that serve the people and not strongmen like Kagame and Kabila.

3. The US and British baked resource war of aggression is being disrobed on a daily basis. The hunt for the Hutu rebels is an attempt to recast the conflict in an ethnic context. The Hutu rebels, otherwise know as the Interahamwe or Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR in French) need to be dealt with, but not in the manner currently underway. Remember, it has been the Congolese people who have been the primary victims of the presence of the Hutu rebels in the Congo. Nonetheless, what is happening in Central Africa is a high stakes geo-political battle for precious and strategic resources that are vital to the world’s military, aeronautics, electronics and technology industries. This interview with British Foreign Minister David Miliband provides some insight and perspective on the vital corporate interests in Central Africa.

4. The average person is becoming better informed and more engaged about the root causes of the deadliest conflict in the world since World War Two. They are better equipped to demand action from their elected officials and challenge humanitarian institutions that come to their communities peddling warmed over ethnic explanations for the suffering of the people of Congo.

We are confident that with persistent education, organization and mobilization, the people of Congo will be free from the forces that have her sons and daughters living in absolute misery while we in the West benefit from her riches.

Join the global movement in support of the people of the Congo and strike a blow for justice and human dignity.