The dictator Kagame at UN

The dictator Kagame at UN
Dictators like Kagame who have changed their national constitutions to remain indefinitely on power should not be involved in UN high level and global activities including chairing UN meetings

Why has the UN ignored its own report about the massacres of Hutu refugees in DRC ?

The UN has ignored its own reports, NGOs and media reports about the massacres of hundreds of thousands of Hutu in DRC Congo (estimated to be more than 400,000) by Kagame when he attacked Hutu refugee camps in Eastern DRC in 1996. This barbaric killings and human rights violations were perpetrated by Kagame’s RPF with the approval of UK and USA and with sympathetic understanding and knowledge of UNHCR and international NGOs which were operating in the refugees camps. According to the UN, NGO and media reports between 1993 and 2003 women and girls were raped. Men slaughtered. Refugees killed with machetes and sticks. The attacks of refugees also prevented humanitarian organisations to help many other refugees and were forced to die from cholera and other diseases. Other refugees who tried to return to Rwanda where killed on their way by RFI and did not reach their homes. No media, no UNHCR, no NGO were there to witness these massacres. When Kagame plans to kill, he makes sure no NGO and no media are prevent. Kagame always kills at night.

2 Dec 2012

U.S. Condemns M23 While New York Times Op-Ed Defends The Rwanda-backed Bandits


U.S. Condemns M23 While New York Times Op-Ed Defends The Rwanda-backed Bandits

By Milton Allimadi

12-02-12

 
 
 
J. Peter Pham, author of the Op-Ed calling for Congo partition and showing sympathy for M23
   
 
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[Commentary]

The New York Times published a bizarre  Op-Ed  piece "To Save Congo, Let It Fall Apart," that could have as well been authored by M23 -- an apologia and rationalization for the terroristic army's invasion of Congo from Rwanda, which was accompanied by massacres along the way.

M23 also occupied and pillaged the city of Goma. 

Ironically, while the Op-Ed piece offers a defense for M23, in the same issue of The Times, on page A6, the newspaper's own East Africa correspondent, Jeffrey Gettleman, documents M23's litany of war crimes including:  targeted killings of Congolese officials and judges and the looting of Goma's central bank. Citing human rights organizations, Gettleman found that M23 "were now going on an assassination campaign as they prepared to leave, creating a vortex of crime and confusion." 
 
The Op-Ed, authored by J. Peter Pham, starts off in a seemingly sober way, noting that Congo is so well-endowed with mineral resources yet is still one of the world's poorest country. "Instead of prosperity, Congo's mineral wealth has brought only an endless procession of unscrupulous rulers eager to exploit its riches, from King Leopold II of Belgium to Mobutu Sese Seko, who was allowed by the logic of the cold war to rule the same area as a private fief," Pham, correctly notes, even though Leopold's genocidal reign belongs in a league of its own. 

Pham also correctly recounts Congo president Joseph Kabila's own ineptitude and the fraudulent elections that granted him another five year term last year. Yet non of this justifies the war of aggression against Congo launched by Rwanda and Uganda. 

Pham's Op-Ed, to those familiar with the players in the region, reads like a smoke screen to divert focus from Rwanda's and Uganda's role, and the sanctions and criminal liability the military and political leadership in those countries may now exposed to on account of sponsoring M23. Human Rights Watch  has documented "widespread war crimes" by M23, including summary executions, rapes and forced recruitments.  "M23 commanders should be held accountable for these crimes, and the Rwandan officials supporting these abusive commanders could face justice for aiding and abetting the crimes," states the report.

Pham hopes to change the narrative. It's Congo itself that's the problem, not the invaders. The country is simply "too big to succeed" Pham writes. Talk about blaming the victim. This is akin to saying Hitler wasn't at fault for invading France; the French were divided and prone to surrendering.

But let's deal with Congo today:

"It is an artificial entity whose constituent parts share the misfortune of having been seized by the explorer Henry Morton Stanley in the name of a rapacious 19th-century Belgian monarch," Pham writes. "From the moment Congo was given independence in 1960, it was being torn apart by centrifugal forces, beginning with separatism in the mineral-rich southern province of Katanga." 

Omitted from this two-sentence recap of history is the Congo crisis of the 1960s. How about: the intervention of the Belgians even before the country's nominal independence, to encourage mineral rich Katanga to secede, leading to the conflict with the Central government under Patrice Lumumba? How about the Belgian's military presence in the Congo, to embolden and support Katanga separatism so that the breakaway region under Moise Tshombe could continue the colonial exploitative mining contracts with the former colonial power?  

How about the instigation of Mobutu's coup d'etat by the Central Intelligence agency and the subsequent murder of Lumumba by Katangese and Belgian agents, and the dissolving of his body in acid? How about support of Mobutu for almost 40 years by Washington? 

How about the fact that after Rwanda and Uganda ousted Mobutu in 1997, they have never left Congo alone to govern itself? 

Congo in fact has never enjoyed independence. Yet rather than defend Congo from outside invaders and demand that its people be accorded the right to determine their destiny in peace, Pham's Op-Ed calls for dismemberment, even though the violence created by the invasion from Rwanda and Uganda since 1998 has already caused an estimated 10 million deaths. 

The Op-Ed blames the victims, Congolese, for the wars against them and says the solution is to slice up the country. 

"Rather than nation-building, what is needed to end Congo's violence is the opposite: breaking up a chronically failed state into smaller organic units whose members share broad agreement or at least have common interests in personal and community security," Pham writes.
  
If dismembering an African country was the solution to recurrent violence surely the candidates would be exhaustive and include: Uganda; Kenya; Rwanda; Burundi; Nigeria; and Somalia, just to mention a few. 

The most painful parts of Pham's New York Times Op-Ed is when he defends M23, the army trained, armed, financed and commanded by neighboring Rwanda and to a lesser extent, Uganda. 

M23's recent assault on Goma bore all the marks of invasion by a conventional army and it was accompanied by artillery bombardment, exposing the lies by Rwanda's leadership that it had nothing to do with the invasion. The M23 marauders have also displaced almost 300,000 Congolese from their homes. 

As The Times correspondent Gettleman wrote, a United Nations investigator found that Rwanda's regular army soldiers actually marched alongside M23. 

Not surprising since a United Nations report which became widely available to media a few days before Rwanda's invasion of Congo found that M23's nominal leaders, Bosco Ntaganda (who is wanted at the ICC) and Sultan Makeni (who is on a current United Nations sanctions list) both take "direct military orders from RDF Chief of Defense Staff General Charles Kayonga, who in turn acts on instructions from Minster of Defense General James Kabarebe..."

RDF is the Rwanda Defense Forces, Rwanda's national army.

The UN report further details Rwanda's involvement: Rwandan general, Emmanuel Ruvusha, manages military ground support for M23; and, Gen. Jacques Nziza, Permanent Secretary in the Defense Ministry, provides strategic advice and oversees logistical support.

The United Kingdom's Foreign Office in statement endorsed the UN report and found it "credible and compelling" as did the French government. This week the United States also took a strong position: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called for the ending of outside support for M23 and its withdrawal while Senator Chris Coons, who chairs the Foreign Relations sub-committee on Africa, called for the disarming and dismantling of M23 and sanctions against its sponsors. 

And on Thursday, when the U.S. Senate  voted on sanctions against M23's leaders and those who support the militia, Senator Coons and Senator Dick Durbin used even stronger language.

"M23 has demonstrated an unconscionable disregard for human life and Congo's territorial integrity and seems determined to sink central Africa in another deadly, devastating war that could set the region back a generation," Senator Coons said. "The actions of M23 rebels, as well as those who aid and abet the M23, are deplorable and must be stopped immediately. These sanctions are designed to stop the illicit and dangerous support the M23 is receiving from those seeking to destabilize the region.

"The rebels, known for brutal violence and led by known war criminals, have the potential to destabilize the entire nation," Senator Durbin who is a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on African Affairs, said. "As the violence continues to escalate, it is clear that the rebels are benefitting from strategic and material support from outside forces. This amendment freezes the assets and implements a visa ban for any person providing such troubling support. Our goal is to hasten an end to the violence by starving the rebels of their key lines of support."

Does Pham take these developments seriously?  

Here's Pham's position on this matter: "A United Nations report has accused the Rwandan government of supporting M23. Although Rwanda has denied it, this may well be true, and it is perfectly understandable given that the M23 rebels are fighting former Hutu génocidaires who still dream of invading Rwanda and finishing what they started nearly two decades ago." 

Most recent news accounts acknowledge that the criminal Hutu militias capabilities have been diminished and that Rwanda has often played the "Hutu card" to justify intervention in Congo mostly inspired by the desire to plunder the country's resources. It's estimated that trade from Congo flowing into Rwanda is about $100 million a year; no surprise that Rwanda, bereft of mineral resources, wants to control this lifeline. 

Pham on the other hand treats M23's leaders almost like a bunch of frat boys; noting that they have been referred to as "warlords" by some critics. 

"But warlords, even if they do not acquire power through democratic means, tend to provide some sort of political framework, often based on kinship ties or ethnic solidarity, that is seen as legitimate," Pham writes in the sorry apologia.  "They also tend to provide some basic security — which is more than the questionably legitimate Kabila government in Kinshasa provides for most Congolese." 

One wonders whether Pham would also extend this accommodating observation to a warlord such as Joseph Kony of the LRA, whose crimes surely pales in comparison to M23's. In any case, Pham's sympathetic perspective on M23 is of small comfort to the relatives of Congolese massacred or assassinated by M23; or the women, girls, and infants raped.  

Moreover it's absurd for Pham to downplay the abuses in Congo attributed to the Rwanda and Uganda regimes since there are in fact several UN and Human Rights Watch reports documenting them, dating back years.

In 2010 a United Nations "mapping" report found that Rwanda's army, which had pursued Hutu militias into Congo in the 1990s, went out of its way in exacting retribution for the 1994 genocide, killing even unarmed Hutu children, women and the elderly. The accounts of the killings, referred to in the UN report as amounting to "genocide" was earlier documented in "Kagame's Hidden War In The Congo" a book by a former New York Timescorrespondent, Howard French

As for Uganda, in 2005, after Congo referred alleged crimes by Uganda's military and allied militia to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the court ruled in Kinshasa's favor -- it found Uganda liable and awarded Congo $10 billion. Not a dime of which has been paid. The case was so strong that when the International Criminal Court itself launched its own investigation, Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni himself contacted then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and asked him to block the case; this is according to a story in The Wall Street Journal   on June 8, 2006. 

Since the ICC investigation never led to an indictment -- even though the ICJ found Uganda liable -- it's possible that either the U.S. or U.K. did block that investigation. Had Western countries that support Uganda and Rwanda militarily and financially, including the United States and the U.K., sanctioned these two hostile neighbors for the earlier crimes, it's unlikely that they would again today be sponsoring atrocities in Congo so that they could continue ransacking the country. 

What are Pham's own motives? He is the director of the Michael S. Ansari Africa Center, at The Atlantic Council and an article about his appointment in AllAfrica.com  may hint at something: "Dr. Pham has served on the Senior Advisory Group of the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) since its creation."

Obviously this wasn't noted when his bonafides were provided at the end of the Op-Ed.

This is what Congo needs: the ejection of outside invaders and prosecution of those who've sponsored the crimes since 1998. 

Recall that Liberia's former president, Charles Taylor was convicted by a Special Tribunal for sponsoring violent insurgents in Sierra Leone and is now serving a 50 year prison term. And the evidence against Taylor was much weaker, and circumstantial, compared to what's been assembled tying Presidents Kagame and Museveni to the atrocities in the Congo. 

And how to explain why The Times' Op-Ed editor, in light of all the evidence about M23's crimes, including the article on page A6 of his own newspaper, agreed to publish such a spin job?  Was he not aware of the UN reports and the one by Human Rights Watch?  

It's difficult to conclude that anyone would wish external-supported genocide upon Congolese women and children. 

Enough is enough.


"Speaking Truth To Empower."

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-“The enemies of Freedom do not argue ; they shout and they shoot.”

The principal key root causes that lead to the Rwandan genocide of 1994 that affected all Rwandan ethnic groups were:

1)The majority Hutu community’s fear of the return of the discriminatory monarchy system that was practiced by the minority Tutsi community against the enslaved majority Hutu community for about 500 years

2)The Hutu community’s fear of Kagame’s guerrilla that committed massacres in the North of the country and other parts of the countries including assassinations of Rwandan politicians.

3) The Rwandan people felt abandoned by the international community ( who was believed to support Kagame’s guerrilla) and then decided to defend themselves with whatever means they had against the advance of Kagame’ guerrilla supported by Ugandan, Tanzanian and Ethiopian armies and other Western powers.

-“The enemies of Freedom do not argue ; they shout and they shoot.”

-“The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish.”

-“The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.”

-“I have loved justice and hated iniquity: therefore I die in exile.”

The Rwanda war of 1990-1994 had multiple dimensions.

The Rwanda war of 1990-1994 had multiple dimensions. Among Kagame’s rebels who were fighting against the Rwandan government, there were foreigners, mainly Ugandan fighters who were hired to kill and rape innocent Rwandan people in Rwanda and refugees in DRC.

READ MORE RECENT NEWS AND OPINIONS

SUMMARY : THE TRAGIC CONSEQUENCES OF THE BRITISH BUDGET SUPPORT AND GEO-STRATEGIC AMBITIONS

United Kingdom's Proxy Wars in Africa: The Case of Rwanda and DR Congo:

The Rwandan genocide and 6,000,000 Congolese and Hutu refugees killed are the culminating point of a long UK’s battle to expand their influence to the African Great Lakes Region. UK supported Kagame’s guerrilla war by providing military support and money. The UK refused to intervene in Rwanda during the genocide to allow Kagame to take power by military means that triggered the genocide. Kagame’s fighters and their families were on the Ugandan payroll paid by UK budget support.


· 4 Heads of State assassinated in the francophone African Great Lakes Region.
· 2,000,000 people died in Hutu and Tutsi genocides in Rwanda, Burundi and RD.Congo.
· 600,000 Hutu refugees killed in R.D.Congo, Uganda, Central African Republic and Rep of Congo.
· 6,000,000 Congolese dead.
· 8,000,000 internal displaced people in Rwanda, Burundi and DR. Congo.
· 500,000 permanent Rwandan and Burundian Hutu refugees, and Congolese refugees around the world.
· English language expansion to Rwanda to replace the French language.
· 20,000 Kagame’s fighters paid salaries from the British Budget Support from 1986 to present.
· £500,000 of British taxpayer’s money paid, so far, to Kagame and his cronies through the budget support, SWAPs, Tutsi-dominated parliament, consultancy, British and Tutsi-owned NGOs.
· Kagame has paid back the British aid received to invade Rwanda and to strengthen his political power by joining the East African Community together with Burundi, joining the Commonwealth, imposing the English Language to Rwandans to replace the French language; helping the British to establish businesses and to access to jobs in Rwanda, and to exploit minerals in D.R.Congo.



Thousands of Hutu murdered by Kagame inside Rwanda, e.g. Kibeho massacres

Thousands of Hutu murdered by Kagame inside Rwanda, e.g. Kibeho massacres
Kagame killed 200,000 Hutus from all regions of the country, the elderly and children who were left by their relatives, the disabled were burned alive. Other thousands of people were killed in several camps of displaced persons including Kibeho camp. All these war crimes remain unpunished.The British news reporters were accompanying Kagame’s fighters on day-by-day basis and witnessed these massacres, but they never reported on this.

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25,000 Hutu bodies floated down River Akagera into Lake Victoria in Uganda.

25,000  Hutu bodies  floated down River Akagera into Lake Victoria in Uganda.
The British irrational, extremist, partisan,biased, one-sided media and politicians have disregarded Kagame war crimes e.g. the Kibeho camp massacres, massacres of innocents Hutu refugees in DR. Congo. The British media have been supporting Kagame since he invaded Rwanda by organising the propaganda against the French over the Rwandan genocide, suppressing the truth about the genocide and promoting the impunity of Kagame and his cronies in the African Great Lakes Region. For the British, Rwanda does not need democracy, Rwanda is the African Israel; and Kagame and his guerilla fighters are heroes.The extremist British news reporters including Fergal Keane, Chris Simpson, Chris McGreal, Mark Doyle, etc. continue to hate the Hutus communities and to polarise the Rwandan society.

Kagame political ambitions triggered the genocide.

Kagame  political  ambitions triggered the genocide.
Kagame’s guerrilla war was aimed at accessing to power at any cost. He rejected all attempts and advice that could stop his military adventures including the cease-fire, political negotiations and cohabitation, and UN peacekeeping interventions. He ignored all warnings that could have helped him to manage the war without tragic consequences. Either you supported Kagame’ s wars and you are now his friend, or you were against his wars and you are his enemy. Therefore, Kagame as the Rwandan strong man now, you have to apologise to him for having been against his war and condemned his war crimes, or accept to be labelled as having been involved in the genocide. All key Kagame’s fighters who committed war crimes and crimes against humanity are the ones who hold key positions in Rwandan army and government for the last 15 years. They continue to be supported and advised by the British including Tony Blair, Andrew Mitchell MP, and the British army senior officials.

Aid that kills: The British Budget Support financed Museveni and Kagame’s wars in Rwanda and DRC.

Aid that kills: The British Budget Support  financed Museveni and Kagame’s wars in Rwanda and DRC.
Genocide propaganda and fabrications are used by the so-called British scholars, news reporters and investigative journalists to promote their CVs and to get income out of the genocide through the selling of their books, providing testimonies against the French, access to consultancy contracts from the UN and Kagame, and participation in conferences and lectures in Rwanda, UK and internationally about genocide. Genocide propaganda has become a lucrative business for Kagame and the British. Anyone who condemned or did not support Kagame’s war is now in jail in Rwanda under the gacaca courts system suuported by British tax payer's money, or his/she is on arrest warrant if he/she managed to flee the Kagame’s regime. Others have fled the country and are still fleeing now. Many others Rwandans are being persecuted in their own country. Kagame is waiting indefinitely for the apologies from other players who warn him or who wanted to help to ensure that political negotiations take place between Kagame and the former government he was fighting against. Britain continues to supply foreign aid to Kagame and his cronies with media reports highlighting economic successes of Rwanda. Such reports are flawed and are aimed at misleading the British public to justify the use of British taxpayers’ money. Kagame and his cronies continue to milk British taxpayers’ money under the British budget support. This started from 1986 through the British budget support to Uganda until now.

Dictator Kagame: No remorse for his unwise actions and ambitions that led to the Rwandan genocide.

Dictator Kagame: No remorse for his unwise actions and ambitions that led to the  Rwandan genocide.
No apologies yet to the Rwandan people. The assassination of President Juvenal Habyarimana by Kagame was the only gateway for Kagame to access power in Rwanda. The British media, politicians, and the so-called British scholars took the role of obstructing the search for the truth and justice; and of denying this assassination on behalf of General Kagame. General Paul Kagame has been obliging the whole world to apologise for his mistakes and war crimes. The UK’s way to apologise has been pumping massive aid into Rwanda's crony government and parliement; and supporting Kagame though media campaigns.

Fanatical, partisan, suspicious, childish and fawning relations between UK and Kagame

Fanatical, partisan, suspicious, childish and fawning relations between UK and Kagame
Kagame receives the British massive aid through the budget support, British excessive consultancy, sector wide programmes, the Tutsi-dominated parliament, British and Tutsi-owned NGOs; for political, economic and English language expansion to Rwanda. The British aid to Rwanda is not for all Rwandans. It is for Kagame himself and his Tutsi cronies.

Paul Kagame' actvities as former rebel

Africa

UN News Centre - Africa

The Africa Report - Latest

IRIN - Great Lakes

This blog reports the crimes that remain unpunished and the impunity that has generated a continuous cycle of massacres in many parts of Africa. In many cases, the perpetrators of the crimes seem to have acted in the knowledge that they would not be held to account for their actions.

The need to fight this impunity has become even clearer with the massacres and genocide in many parts of Africa and beyond.

The blog also addresses issues such as Rwanda War Crimes, Rwandan Refugee massacres in Dr Congo, genocide, African leaders’ war crimes and crimes against humanity, Africa war criminals, Africa crimes against humanity, Africa Justice.

-The British relentless and long running battle to become the sole player and gain new grounds of influence in the francophone African Great Lakes Region has led to the expulsion of other traditional players from the region, or strained diplomatic relations between the countries of the region and their traditional friends. These new tensions are even encouraged by the British using a variety of political and economic manoeuvres.

-General Kagame has been echoing the British advice that Rwanda does not need any loan or aid from Rwandan traditional development partners, meaning that British aid is enough to solve all Rwandan problems.

-The British obsession for the English Language expansion has become a tyranny that has led to genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, dictatorial regimes, human rights violations, mass killings, destruction of families, communities and cultures, permanent refugees and displaced persons in the African Great Lakes region.


- Rwanda, a country that is run by a corrupt clique of minority-tutsi is governed with institutional discrmination, human rights violations, dictatorship, authoritarianism and autocracy, as everybody would expect.