Below is a story of outrage and woe. A story that would not have been told if not for the efforts of a small group of brave and dogged investigators, writers, lawyers, priests, former soldiers, and others -many of whom have risked, and not a few of whom have lost, their lives in the telling. It is a story that reminds us all that however far "above it" we may feel, we are not.
* * *
[For a breakdown of the key players in this story, see the "Cast of Characters" list at the bottom of this article - editors]
On August 26, 2010 the French newspaper Le Monde revealed the existence of a draft UN report detailing the most serious human rights violations in the Democratic Republic of Congo over an eleven year period (1993 – 2003). The report detailed how, following the Rwandan Patriotic Front's takeover of Rwanda in 1994, the RPF proceeded to carry out "systematic and widespread attacks" against Hutu refugees who had fled to neighbouring Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). These attacks the report stated "reveal a number of damning elements that, if they were proven before a competent court, could be classified as crimes of genocide."
The report was leaked to Le Monde by sources within the UN who feared its most damning facts and charges would be edited or expunged prior to its official release. As if confirming this fear, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navanethem Pillay subsequently announced that the official report would be delayed several months "to give concerned states" further time "to comment on the draft" and "publish any comments alongside the report itself." What this really meant was Rwanda's leader Paul Kagame was given the opportunity to respond to/ address/ comment on the charges of genocide laid against him in the report before it was published. In short, save for the leak to Le Monde, a cover-up of the report would have been a near certainty.
But, of course, this was hardly the first time a cover-up of a UN report had revealed that the supposed "saviours" of Rwanda had, in fact, not only been responsible for mass murder, but were the ones responsible for the execution of a systematic program of genocide.
As early as October 11, 1994, Robert Gersony, an employee of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), then attached to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, made an oral presentation to the UN Commission of Experts on Rwanda. Gersony had been dispatched to survey the situation inside Rwanda to determine if conditions were right for a return of the Hutu refugees who had fled the RPF. Instead, he found that the RPF had been committing systematic massacres of the Hutu population in Rwanda starting in April 1994 through the date of his presentation. On page four of the UN record of Gersony's oral presentation, we read:
"Significant areas....have been the scene of systematic and sustained killing and persecution of the civilian Hutu populations by the [Rwandan Patriotic Front]. These activities are reported to have begun, depending on location, between April and July 1994, immediately following the expulsion from each area of former Government military, militia and surrogate forces. These [RPF] actions were consistently reported to be conducted in areas where opposition forces of any kind – armed or unarmed, or resistance of any kind other than attempts by the victims of these actions to escape – were absent. Large scale indiscriminate killings of men, women and children, including the sick and elderly, were consistently reported."
It is important to note that the killings reported here were not perpetrated by Hutu government troops, but by the Tutsi RPF, the supposed saviours of the country who had invaded from Uganda to ostensibly "stop the genocide".
No member of the RPF, and certainly not its leader, Paul Kagame, has ever been indicted let alone been brought to trial for these or any other crimes. This while thousands of former Hutu military and political figures have been, and are to this day, in prison. These Hutu prisoners were indicted before what was little more than a kangaroo court set up by the United States to justify post facto the coup d'etat -and genocide- for which the U.S. are responsible.
Further evidence is found in a letter, identifying the Gersony report. The cover-letter, dated October 11, 1994, was sent by one Francois Fouinat to Mrs. B Molina-Abram, the Secretary to the Commission of Experts on Rwanda. In this brief letter Fouinat writes: "As requested by the Commission, we are forwarding herewith a written summary of Mr. Gersony's oral presentation and copies of some field reports sent to UNHCR Headquarters by UNHCR Field Offices. We are confident that as agreed by the President of the Commission of Experts, these documents will be treated as confidential and only be made available to the members of the Commission."
The Gersony report was buried. Christopher Black, however, is in possession of copies of both Fouinat's cover letter and the Gersony report from October 1994. Christopher Black gained access to copies of these two documents because they are part of the evidence-base at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). He serves there as the lead defense counsel for Hutu former General Augustin Ndindiliyimana, once the Chief of Staff of the Rwandan Gendarmerie.
The documents were found by his legal assistant purely by chance while scanning the prosecution's Electronic Disclosure System (EDS), which contains hundreds-of-thousands of documents that are not indexed in any order. The assistant came across them as part of a package of material organized by Robert Gersony himself while he was assigned to the UNHCR. It must be thought that Mr. Gersony thought the documents relevant, as they affected the fate of the Hutu refugees.
As important as the Gersony report is, a third and even more astonishing document was discovered in the morass of the prosecution's EDS. This document's historical significance has been underscored by the recent draft UN report leaked to Le Monde. This third document is a copy of a letter from Paul Kagame to his fellow Tutsi Jean-Baptiste Bagaza of Burundi, dated August 10, 1994.
In it Kagame thanks Bagaza for his help in "taking Kigali". He then relates his communications with "our big brother Yoweri Museveni" (ruler of Uganda whence originated the RPF forces), and talks of "some modifications to the plan" [emphasis added], noting that,
"We have found that the presence of a large number of Rwandan refugees at Goma and the international community can cause our plan for Zaire [emphasis added] to fail. We cannot occupy ourselves with Zaire until after the return of these Hutus. .....In any case, our external intelligence services continue to crisscross [sic] the east of Zaire and our Belgian, British and American collaborators, the rest of Zaire. The action reports are expected in the next few days."
Kagame goes on to speak "concerning the Burundi plan": "The plan for Burundi must be executed as soon as possible before the Hutus of Rwanda can organize themselves."
As Christopher stated on November 18, 2008 before the Military II trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR): "The importance of this letter, if you have grasped it fully, cannot be overstated. It means the attack on Rwanda from 1990 was not the prime objective of Kagame and his collaborators. Zaire was always the prime objective. That their excuse for the attack on Rwanda [was] about establishing democracy and return of refugees was completely false...
"[T]he invasion from Uganda had only one purpose: to clear the path through Rwanda to Zaire...
[T]he return of refugees, as many witnesses have stated, was not for humanitarian reasons, but to clear the path for the invasion of Zaire.
"[The letter indicates] the American[s and] British -particularly with Kagame and Museveni- planned the invasion of Zaire in 1994, probably before that. It means the excuse given for the invasions of the Congo...to clear the 'Interahamwe' or 'genocidaires', is completely false. No mention is made of 'Interahamwe'. No mention is made of 'genocide'.
"It means, since this was received -it looks like a date stamp of this tribunal, 8th December 1994 -that the Prosecutor of this Tribunal has been hiding information indicating a conspiracy to commit a war of aggression against Congo-Zaire, Zaire and all of the war crimes have flowed from it since and the continuation of those wars in Congo now begun 14 years ago, if not longer...So here you have the smoking gun, the letter, planning the invasion of Zaire with the Americans and British."
Apart from an appearance in Monthly Review, the unveiling of the letter from Kagame to Bagaza -like many other documents reversing the perspective on Rwanda and the Congo- has been met by an official conspiracy of silence. Nevertheless, that wall of silence has been chipped away at now for over a decade and half and is starting to crumble.
In next month's issue we will continue the demolition work by investigating more of the documentary evidence. Finally, in Part III, we will stitch the evidence, historical context, and actual events as they happened from 1990 to 1994 into a coherent whole.
Antony C. Black
Antony has been a freelance journalist and political essayist for the past 25 years. Though writing largely for the Indy media, Tony has also regularly skirmished the lines of the corporate media. No quarter given or taken. Antony has also had the privelege of acting as “Global Affairs” editor and as a regular columnist for Mayday Magazine since its inception.
Christopher C. Black Christopher is an international criminal lawyer who has achieved renown /“infamy” for his legal and politically active roles in the International Criminal Tribunals for Yugoslavia and Rwanda. Throughout his illustrious career on the international scene Chris has been instrumental in demonstrating the “kangaroo” nature of these “victors” courtsserving, as they do, the functional role of “legal” ex post facto justifications of imperial conquest.
Cast of Characters
Yoweri Museveni: Tutsi President of Uganda since 26 January 1986. Leader of National Resistance Army (NRA).
Navanethem Pillay: United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights since 2008. She previously served for eight years as a judge of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), including four years as the ICTR's president.
Jean-Baptiste Bagaza: Bagaza's Tutsi-dominated military regime took control of Burundi in 1976; he was president from 1984-1987; since 1994 he has led the Party for National Recovery (PARENA) in Burundi.
Francois Fouinet: Chief of Cabinet, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
B. Molina-Abram: Secretary to the Commission of Experts on Rwanda.
Augustin Ndindiliyimana: Former head of Rwanda's Gendarmerie or National Police Force. Now a defendant before the ICTR; he is alleged to have conspired with other officers to plan the logistics of the Rwandan Genocide.
Paul Kagame: President of the Republic of Rwanda since 2000. Leader of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), composed of mostly Tutsi soldiers. Former member of Museveni's NRA.
Hutus: The Hutu are the largest of the three ethnic groups in Burundi and Rwanda
Tutsis: They are the second largest population of peoples in Rwanda and Burundi. Also referred to as Watussi or Watusi
Le Monde: a French daily newspaper owned by La Vie-Le Monde Group and edited in Paris.
Monthly Review: an independent socialist journal published 11 times per year in New York City.
Robert Gersony: Employed by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and agency with ties to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. He is a consultant known for his reports on conflict-affected countries, in particular in Africa.
Interahomwe: The Interahamwe is a Hutu paramilitary organization. The militia enjoyed the backing of the Hutu-led government leading up to, during, and after the Rwandan Genocide.
International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR): an international court established in November 1994 by the United Nations Security Council in Resolution 955 in order to judge people responsible for the Rwandan Genocide and other serious violations of the international law in Rwanda, or by Rwandan citizens in nearby states.
Prosecutor of ICTR: Responsible for prosecuting all cases before the Tribunal. Hassan Bubacar Jallow served as Prosecutor of the ICTR since 2003. Previous Prosecutors include Louise Arbour (1996-1999) and Carla Del Ponte (1999-2003).
BY CHRISTOPHER BLACK AND
ANTONY BLACK
“Propaganda”. What does the word invariably suggest, but that we are above it. Certainly we could never fall for the Big Lie and certainly not one of the largest lies to be perpetrated in modern history. A lie whose grim shadow covers the restive ghosts of some three to six millions souls awaiting the truth.
For the truth is that Paul Kagame, his Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), and their allies are responsible for the Rwandan “genocide” of 1994 and the multiple follow-up genocides in what was then Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) from 1996 to the present. Kagame and the RPF, the very actors who claimed to be the victims and saviours, share this responsibility with those who allegedly came to their “aid”: i.e. the leading political figures in the United States, Britain, Canada, Belgium, Uganda, and Tanzania. The United Nations was also complicit, as were numerous Western NGOs, prominent American journalists and virtually the entirety of the Western corporate press.
Below is a story of outrage and woe. A story that would not have been told if not for the efforts of a small group of brave and dogged investigators, writers, lawyers, priests, former soldiers, and others -many of whom have risked, and not a few of whom have lost, their lives in the telling. It is a story that reminds us all that however far “above it” we may feel, we are not.
* * *
On August 26, 2010 the French newspaper Le Monde revealed the existence of a draft UN report detailing the most serious human rights violations in the Democratic Republic of Congo over an eleven year period (1993 – 2003). The report detailed how, following the Rwandan Patriotic Front’s takeover of Rwanda in 1994, the RPF proceeded to carry out “systematic and widespread attacks” against Hutu refugees who had fled to neighbouring Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). These attacks the report stated “reveal a number of damning elements that, if they were proven before a competent court, could be classified as crimes of genocide.”
The report was leaked to Le Monde by sources within the UN who feared its most damning facts and charges would be edited or expunged prior to its official release. As if confirming this fear, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navanethem Pillay subsequently announced that the official report would be delayed several months “to give concerned states” further time “to comment on the draft” and “publish any comments alongside the report itself.” What this really meant was Rwanda’s leader Paul Kagame was given the opportunity to respond to/ address/ comment on the charges of genocide laid against him in the report before it was published. In short, save for the leak to Le Monde, a cover-up of the report would have been a near certainty.
But, of course, this was hardly the first time a cover-up of a UN report had revealed that the supposed “saviours” of Rwanda had, in fact, not only been responsible for mass murder, but were the ones responsible for the execution of a systematic program of genocide.
As early as October 11, 1994, Robert Gersony, an employee of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), then attached to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, made an oral presentation to the UN Commission of Experts on Rwanda. Gersony had been dispatched to survey the situation inside Rwanda to determine if conditions were right for a return of the Hutu refugees who had fled the RPF. Instead, he found that the RPF had been committing systematic massacres of the Hutu population in Rwanda starting in April 1994 through the date of his presentation. On page four of the UN record of Gersony’s oral presentation, we read:
“Significant areas….have been the scene of systematic and sustained killing and persecution of the civilian Hutu populations by the [Rwandan Patriotic Front]. These activities are reported to have begun, depending on location, between April and July 1994, immediately following the expulsion from each area of former Government military, militia and surrogate forces. These [RPF] actions were consistently reported to be conducted in areas where opposition forces of any kind – armed or unarmed, or resistance of any kind other than attempts by the victims of these actions to escape – were absent. Large scale indiscriminate killings of men, women and children, including the sick and elderly, were consistently reported.”
It is important to note that the killings reported here were not perpetrated by Hutu government troops, but by the Tutsi RPF, the supposed saviours of the country who had invaded from Uganda to ostensibly “stop the genocide”.
No member of the RPF, and certainly not its leader, Paul Kagame, has ever been indicted let alone been brought to trial for these or any other crimes. This while thousands of former Hutu military and political figures have been, and are to this day, in prison. These Hutu prisoners were indicted before what was little more than a kangaroo court set up by the United States to justify post facto the coup d’etat -and genocide- for which the U.S. are responsible.
Further evidence is found in a letter, identifying the Gersony report. The cover-letter, dated October 11, 1994, was sent by one Francois Fouinat to Mrs. B Molina-Abram, the Secretary to the Commission of Experts on Rwanda. In this brief letter Fouinat writes: “As requested by the Commission, we are forwarding herewith a written summary of Mr. Gersony’s oral presentation and copies of some field reports sent to UNHCR Headquarters by UNHCR Field Offices. We are confident that as agreed by the President of the Commission of Experts, these documents will be treated as confidential and only be made available to the members of the Commission.”
The Gersony report was buried. Christopher Black, however, is in possession of copies of both Fouinat’s cover letter and the Gersony report from October 1994. Christopher Black gained access to copies of these two documents because they are part of the evidence-base at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). He serves there as the lead defense counsel for Hutu former General Augustin Ndindiliyimana, once the Chief of Staff of the Rwandan Gendarmerie.
The documents were found by his legal assistant purely by chance while scanning the prosecution’s Electronic Disclosure System (EDS), which contains hundreds-of-thousands of documents that are not indexed in any order. The assistant came across them as part of a package of material organized by Robert Gersony himself while he was assigned to the UNHCR. It must be thought that Mr. Gersony thought the documents relevant, as they affected the fate of the Hutu refugees.
As important as the Gersony report is, a third and even more astonishing document was discovered in the morass of the prosecution’s EDS. This document’s historical significance has been underscored by the recent draft UN report leaked to Le Monde. This third document is a copy of a letter from Paul Kagame to his fellow Tutsi Jean-Baptiste Bagaza of Burundi, dated August 10, 1994.
In it Kagame thanks Bagaza for his help in “taking Kigali”. He then relates his communications with “our big brother Yoweri Museveni” (ruler of Uganda whence originated the RPF forces), and talks of “some modifications to the plan” [emphasis added], noting that,
“We have found that the presence of a large number of Rwandan refugees at Goma and the international community can cause our plan for Zaire [emphasis added] to fail. We cannot occupy ourselves with Zaire until after the return of these Hutus. …..In any case, our external intelligence services continue to crisscross [sic] the east of Zaire and our Belgian, British and American collaborators, the rest of Zaire. The action reports are expected in the next few days.”
Kagame goes on to speak “concerning the Burundi plan”: “The plan for Burundi must be executed as soon as possible before the Hutus of Rwanda can organize themselves.”
As Christopher stated on November 18, 2008 before the Military II trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR): “The importance of this letter, if you have grasped it fully, cannot be overstated. It means the attack on Rwanda from 1990 was not the prime objective of Kagame and his collaborators. Zaire was always the prime objective. That their excuse for the attack on Rwanda [was] about establishing democracy and return of refugees was completely false…
“[T]he invasion from Uganda had only one purpose: to clear the path through Rwanda to Zaire…
[T]he return of refugees, as many witnesses have stated, was not for humanitarian reasons, but to clear the path for the invasion of Zaire.
“[The letter indicates] the American[s and] British -particularly with Kagame and Museveni- planned the invasion of Zaire in 1994, probably before that. It means the excuse given for the invasions of the Congo…to clear the ‘Interahamwe’ or ‘genocidaires’, is completely false. No mention is made of ‘Interahamwe’. No mention is made of ‘genocide’.
“It means, since this was received -it looks like a date stamp of this tribunal, 8th December 1994 -that the Prosecutor of this Tribunal has been hiding information indicating a conspiracy to commit a war of aggression against Congo-Zaire, Zaire and all of the war crimes have flowed from it since and the continuation of those wars in Congo now begun 14 years ago, if not longer...So here you have the smoking gun, the letter, planning the invasion of Zaire with the Americans and British.”
Apart from an appearance in Monthly Review, the unveiling of the letter from Kagame to Bagaza -like many other documents reversing the perspective on Rwanda and the Congo- has been met by an official conspiracy of silence. Nevertheless, that wall of silence has been chipped away at now for over a decade and half and is starting to crumble.
In next month’s issue we will continue the demolition work by investigating more of the documentary evidence. Finally, in Part III, we will stitch the evidence, historical context, and actual events as they happened from 1990 to 1994 into a coherent whole. BY CHRISTOPHER BLACK AND
ANTONY BLACK
"Propaganda". What does the word invariably suggest, but that we are above it. Certainly we could never fall for the Big Lie and certainly not one of the largest lies to be perpetrated in modern history. A lie whose grim shadow covers the restive ghosts of some three to six millions souls awaiting the truth.
For the truth is that Paul Kagame, his Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), and their allies are responsible for the Rwandan "genocide" of 1994 and the multiple follow-up genocides in what was then Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) from 1996 to the present. Kagame and the RPF, the very actors who claimed to be the victims and saviours, share this responsibility with those who allegedly came to their "aid": i.e. the leading political figures in the United States, Britain, Canada, Belgium, Uganda, and Tanzania. The United Nations was also complicit, as were numerous Western NGOs, prominent American journalists and virtually the entirety of the Western corporate press.
Below is a story of outrage and woe. A story that would not have been told if not for the efforts of a small group of brave and dogged investigators, writers, lawyers, priests, former soldiers, and others -many of whom have risked, and not a few of whom have lost, their lives in the telling. It is a story that reminds us all that however far "above it" we may feel, we are not.
* * *
On August 26, 2010 the French newspaper Le Monde revealed the existence of a draft UN report detailing the most serious human rights violations in the Democratic Republic of Congo over an eleven year period (1993 – 2003). The report detailed how, following the Rwandan Patriotic Front's takeover of Rwanda in 1994, the RPF proceeded to carry out "systematic and widespread attacks" against Hutu refugees who had fled to neighbouring Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). These attacks the report stated "reveal a number of damning elements that, if they were proven before a competent court, could be classified as crimes of genocide."
The report was leaked to Le Monde by sources within the UN who feared its most damning facts and charges would be edited or expunged prior to its official release. As if confirming this fear, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navanethem Pillay subsequently announced that the official report would be delayed several months "to give concerned states" further time "to comment on the draft" and "publish any comments alongside the report itself." What this really meant was Rwanda's leader Paul Kagame was given the opportunity to respond to/ address/ comment on the charges of genocide laid against him in the report before it was published. In short, save for the leak to Le Monde, a cover-up of the report would have been a near certainty.
But, of course, this was hardly the first time a cover-up of a UN report had revealed that the supposed "saviours" of Rwanda had, in fact, not only been responsible for mass murder, but were the ones responsible for the execution of a systematic program of genocide.
As early as October 11, 1994, Robert Gersony, an employee of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), then attached to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, made an oral presentation to the UN Commission of Experts on Rwanda. Gersony had been dispatched to survey the situation inside Rwanda to determine if conditions were right for a return of the Hutu refugees who had fled the RPF. Instead, he found that the RPF had been committing systematic massacres of the Hutu population in Rwanda starting in April 1994 through the date of his presentation. On page four of the UN record of Gersony's oral presentation, we read:
"Significant areas....have been the scene of systematic and sustained killing and persecution of the civilian Hutu populations by the [Rwandan Patriotic Front]. These activities are reported to have begun, depending on location, between April and July 1994, immediately following the expulsion from each area of former Government military, militia and surrogate forces. These [RPF] actions were consistently reported to be conducted in areas where opposition forces of any kind – armed or unarmed, or resistance of any kind other than attempts by the victims of these actions to escape – were absent. Large scale indiscriminate killings of men, women and children, including the sick and elderly, were consistently reported."
It is important to note that the killings reported here were not perpetrated by Hutu government troops, but by the Tutsi RPF, the supposed saviours of the country who had invaded from Uganda to ostensibly "stop the genocide".
No member of the RPF, and certainly not its leader, Paul Kagame, has ever been indicted let alone been brought to trial for these or any other crimes. This while thousands of former Hutu military and political figures have been, and are to this day, in prison. These Hutu prisoners were indicted before what was little more than a kangaroo court set up by the United States to justify post facto the coup d'etat -and genocide- for which the U.S. are responsible.
Further evidence is found in a letter, identifying the Gersony report. The cover-letter, dated October 11, 1994, was sent by one Francois Fouinat to Mrs. B Molina-Abram, the Secretary to the Commission of Experts on Rwanda. In this brief letter Fouinat writes: "As requested by the Commission, we are forwarding herewith a written summary of Mr. Gersony's oral presentation and copies of some field reports sent to UNHCR Headquarters by UNHCR Field Offices. We are confident that as agreed by the President of the Commission of Experts, these documents will be treated as confidential and only be made available to the members of the Commission."
The Gersony report was buried. Christopher Black, however, is in possession of copies of both Fouinat's cover letter and the Gersony report from October 1994. Christopher Black gained access to copies of these two documents because they are part of the evidence-base at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). He serves there as the lead defense counsel for Hutu former General Augustin Ndindiliyimana, once the Chief of Staff of the Rwandan Gendarmerie.
The documents were found by his legal assistant purely by chance while scanning the prosecution's Electronic Disclosure System (EDS), which contains hundreds-of-thousands of documents that are not indexed in any order. The assistant came across them as part of a package of material organized by Robert Gersony himself while he was assigned to the UNHCR. It must be thought that Mr. Gersony thought the documents relevant, as they affected the fate of the Hutu refugees.
As important as the Gersony report is, a third and even more astonishing document was discovered in the morass of the prosecution's EDS. This document's historical significance has been underscored by the recent draft UN report leaked to Le Monde. This third document is a copy of a letter from Paul Kagame to his fellow Tutsi Jean-Baptiste Bagaza of Burundi, dated August 10, 1994.
In it Kagame thanks Bagaza for his help in "taking Kigali". He then relates his communications with "our big brother Yoweri Museveni" (ruler of Uganda whence originated the RPF forces), and talks of "some modifications to the plan" [emphasis added], noting that,
"We have found that the presence of a large number of Rwandan refugees at Goma and the international community can cause our plan for Zaire [emphasis added] to fail. We cannot occupy ourselves with Zaire until after the return of these Hutus. .....In any case, our external intelligence services continue to crisscross [sic] the east of Zaire and our Belgian, British and American collaborators, the rest of Zaire. The action reports are expected in the next few days."
Kagame goes on to speak "concerning the Burundi plan": "The plan for Burundi must be executed as soon as possible before the Hutus of Rwanda can organize themselves."
As Christopher stated on November 18, 2008 before the Military II trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR): "The importance of this letter, if you have grasped it fully, cannot be overstated. It means the attack on Rwanda from 1990 was not the prime objective of Kagame and his collaborators. Zaire was always the prime objective. That their excuse for the attack on Rwanda [was] about establishing democracy and return of refugees was completely false...
"[T]he invasion from Uganda had only one purpose: to clear the path through Rwanda to Zaire...
[T]he return of refugees, as many witnesses have stated, was not for humanitarian reasons, but to clear the path for the invasion of Zaire.
"[The letter indicates] the American[s and] British -particularly with Kagame and Museveni- planned the invasion of Zaire in 1994, probably before that. It means the excuse given for the invasions of the Congo...to clear the 'Interahamwe' or 'genocidaires', is completely false. No mention is made of 'Interahamwe'. No mention is made of 'genocide'.
"It means, since this was received -it looks like a date stamp of this tribunal, 8th December 1994 -that the Prosecutor of this Tribunal has been hiding information indicating a conspiracy to commit a war of aggression against Congo-Zaire, Zaire and all of the war crimes have flowed from it since and the continuation of those wars in Congo now begun 14 years ago, if not longer...So here you have the smoking gun, the letter, planning the invasion of Zaire with the Americans and British."
Apart from an appearance in Monthly Review, the unveiling of the letter from Kagame to Bagaza -like many other documents reversing the perspective on Rwanda and the Congo- has been met by an official conspiracy of silence. Nevertheless, that wall of silence has been chipped away at now for over a decade and half and is starting to crumble.
In next month's issue we will continue the demolition work by investigating more of the documentary evidence. Finally, in Part III, we will stitch the evidence, historical context, and actual events as they happened from 1990 to 1994 into a coherent whole.
