by Keith Harmon Snow
In the 80s and early 90s murderous US-sponsored guerrilla armies in Uganda and Rwanda used child soldiers, American training, and atrocities to butcher their way to power. The US State Department, intelligence, military & corporate media afterward portrayed the monstrous death tolls as genocide committed by their opponents. This is the genesis of the Rwandan genocide fable that now bolsters US sponsored police states in Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda, and US intervention throughout the region.
April 1994 to April 2012: Commemorating More Than 18 years of US Sponsored Terrorism in Central Africa
by Keith Harmon Snow
Eighteen years after the historic '100 days of genocide' in Rwanda the United States Government has suddenly produced never-before-seen satellite images to support the genocide extradition trial of a former Rwandan now U.S. citizen in New Hampshire (USA). The existence of satellite imagery from 1994 would enable the 'international community' to further explore heretofore hidden facts about the double presidential assassinations of April 6 or massacres committed before, during and after 1994. As the world commemorates the official Rwanda genocide story on the 18th anniversary of the Rwanda genocide the people of Central Africa continue to suffer under the brutal terrorism of the Kagame military regime. Instead of celebrating, we should be asking: who are the real victims and who are the real criminals, and what really happened in Rwanda?
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 so-called '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 verified.
Later in the Munyenyezi trial the U.S. prosecutors produced a 'Pentagon analyst' who testified about the satellite photographs. The Pentagon analyst was Mr. Eric R. Benn, Technical Executive, Analysis and Production Directorate, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. The photographs introduced into the public record include very high resolution images shot over Rwanda in May, June and July of 1994.
The confirmation 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.' Rwanda is also peddled as the model homeland for the 'stateless' Tutsis -- the so-called 'Jews of Africa' -- who exercise victim's license and a false moral righteousness to justify the commission of atrocities anywhere, anytime, and against anyone. 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 estimates 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 authorized '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 silenced or coerced to lie 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 court's 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.
The charge that Beatrice Munyenyezi commanded and organized the rape of Rwandan women is as implausible as the charge by Invisible Children founder Jason Russell 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.
Dr. Timothy Longman is another academic who has fallen into disrepute with the Kagame regime, though only mildly. Longman, now director of African Studies at Boston University, is the Rwanda genocide expert that was brought in to testify as a witness for the prosecution in the Beatrice Munyenyezi case. Dr. Longman and former Human Rights Watch (HRW) researcher Alison Des Forges (d. 2009) co-authored the HRW book on Rwanda Leave None to Tell the Story, and both formerly worked with USAID, the U.S. State Department and the Pentagon; the 790 page tome did not mention a word about Beatrice Munyenyezi.
Beatrice Munyenyezi's defense attorneys took advantage of the prosecution's Rwanda genocide expert and successfully cross-examined Dr. Timothy Longman making important points. Dr. Longman, Dr. Susan Thomson and other academics came under fire from the Kagame regime just prior to the April 2011 publication of the book Remaking Rwanda: State Building and Human Rights After Mass Violence. The Kagame regime put up a web site(by an 'anonymous' blogger) spreading disinformation and attacking the authors of the edited edition.
"The book is a collection of articles by a group of people who have made it heir mission to shoot down anything that the government of Rwanda does," the propagandist begins. "The new book should be seen as the latest project of an association of what may be appropriately called 'Genocide Deniers Inc.' and 'Hate Rwanda Ltd'. The editors have brought together the works of a wide array of members of these two groups."
The lists of 'friends' and 'enemies' of the government of Rwanda is constantly in flux, but ever growing. First, France was the hostile enemy of Kagame, after the publication of the report on the shooting down of the presidential plane produced by French anti-terrorist Judge Louis Brugiere. Then when business and profits took precedents over truth and human rights, President Nicholas Sarkozy made a deal with Kagame and the French government soon after this became more hostile to Madame Agatha Habyriamana and more accommodating to Paul Kagame. But the recent volume of supposed 'Genocide Deniers Inc.' includes articles by some very accomplished and highly respected Rwanda scholars, including as professors David Newbury and Catherine Newbury, and Dr. Scott Strauss. None of these accomplished academics have ever previously fallen anywhere near the category 'genocide deniers'.
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 Luwero 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 allegedly 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 attaché Lt. Colonel Thomas P. Odom and defense attaché 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.
After the RPA/F victory, Roger Winter encamped in Kampala, Uganda, from where he directed the U.S./NATO/Israeli covert operations against the Islamic government of Sudan: his primary mouthpiece in the English-language world -- always hysterically screaming about genocide, inflating casualties and inventing facts, and published anywhere and everywhere -- is Smith College professor Dr. Eric Reeves.
The U.S. House of Representatives 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 those who knew what, where it was happening, and when.
In May 2001, U.S. Representative Cynthia McKinney (D-GA) convened a hearing for the Subcommittee on Africa where investigative journalist Wayne Madsen testified about U.S. covert operations and U.S. involvement in genocide in Central Africa.
"A French military intelligence officer said he detected some 100 armed U.S. troops in the eastern Zaire conflict zone," Madsen's statement began. "Moreover, the DGSE [French secret service] reported the Americans had knowledge of the extermination of Hutu refugees by Tutsis in both Rwanda and eastern Zaire and were doing nothing about it. More ominously, there was reason to believe that some U.S. forces, either Special Forces or mercenaries, may have actually participated in the extermination of Hutu refugees." (See: Statement by Wayne Madsen, Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights, May 17, 2001, and Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa, 1993-1999, Wayne Madsen, Mellen Press, 1999.)
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 multiparty coalition government of Juvenal Habyarimana was falsely accused of genocide as early as 1993. This was after a sham international "Commission of Inquiry" investigation led by Alison Des Forges (HRW), William Schabas and others traveled to Rwanda and produced a one-sided report blaming the Habyarimana government [Ndiaye, B.w., Report by Special Rapporteur on his mission to Rwanda from 8 to 17 April 1993, Commission on Human Rights, U.N. Economic and Social Council document E/CN.4/1994/7/Add.1, 11 August 1993, p. 23]. The investigators spent about a week in Rwanda all told, they had RPA/F support, and they never investigated RPA/F atrocities in RPA/F controlled zones. Branded with 'genocide', the label stuck to Habyarimana and the genocide charge was then repeated over and over until it was considered fact.
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 armed forces -- Forces Armées Rwandaises (FAR) -- soon after the plane was shot down on 6 April 1994, the RPA/F continued the war to achieve absolute military dominance and to eliminate as many 'enemies' as possible. To Kagame and his elite thugs, the 'enemies' were Hutu and Tutsi people who lived in Rwanda. The plan succeeded and the land and property of millions of people was taken over by invading Tutsis and western multinational corporations.
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. 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. After April 6, 1994, both Hutus and Tutsis suffered at the hands of the Kagame regime. 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 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 Caplan, New Yorker magazine writer Philip Gourevitch, 'human rights' investigator William Schabas, U.S. intelligence agent John Prendergast, British mouthpiece Linda Melvern, the RPA/F's Somalian mouthpiece Rakiya Omaar, and their Rwandan mouthpiece Tom Ndahiro are some of the most prominent individuals who have whitewashed the Kagame regime. Of course, there is a long list of Clinton and Bush officials who have lied again and again about our involvement in terrorism in the Great Lakes.
KaNdiaye, B.w., Report by Special Rapporteur on his mission to Rwanda from 8 to 17 April 1993, Commission on Human Rights, U.N. Economic and Social Council document E/CN.4/1994/7/Add.1, 11 August 1993, p. p. 23 game 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 "offset 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."
DEEPER HISTORICAL REALITIES
When he came to power in 1973, Rwanda's Hutu president Juvenal Habyarimana warned Colonel Joseph Mobutu, the western-imposed president in Zaire (now Dem. Rep. of Congo), that Tutsis settling and seeking citizenship in Zaire were slowly infiltrating with the intent to annex the mineral rich eastern provinces; this is one reason Mobutu promoted isolationism in the far eastern provinces on the frontiers with Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda.
Meanwhile, Rwandan Tutsis continued to infiltrate eastern Congo, pressing for land and citizenship, and giving rise to what has become known as the Congolese Banyamulenge--"the people of Mulenge". The "Banyamulenge problem" is another mythology created to support Tutsi expansionism to annex Congolese territory. There is no such area or territory in the Congo: both Hutus and Tutsis have become refugees in Congo-Zaire off and on, but they have never been concentrated in one specific area. They have lived all over the country, moving about and, sometimes, living and working as if they were Congolese.
Throughout the 1960's and 1970's, the elite Tutsis who fled Rwanda during the independence struggle (1958-1962) led guerrilla attacks from neighboring countries against the new Hutu governments (Kayibanda, Habyarimana) in Rwanda. In response, and never forgetting centuries of the Tutsi monarchies and conquest, Hutus retaliated against Tutsis inside Rwanda, driving more refugees from the country. As Black Nationalism gained power in Africa the Belgians supported majority Hutu rule in Rwanda, at the expense of their former allies in oppression, the elite upper class Tutsis.
Thus did the elite Tutsis who fled Rwanda find sympathy with other peoples involved in the international struggle against imperialism in the 1960s and 1970s. The 'Third World' non-aligned movement (outside the NATO versus Soviet arena) welcomed the elite Tutsis in the diaspora, their brothers and sisters in the struggle for freedom and rights, because the Tutsi elites proclaimed themselves the victims of post-independence oppression by the colonial Belgian masters.
Members of the non-aligned movement funded and armed the Tutsis guerrillas that attacked the Belgian-backed Hutus from outside Rwanda. With every Tutsis guerrilla attack against the Hutu power structure came more genocidal pogroms against Tutsi people in Rwanda.
On July 5, 1973, while serving as Army Chief of Staff, Juvenal Habyarimana seized power by overthrowing Hutu leader Grégoire Kayibanda, the first elected and second president of Rwanda (Hutu Dominique Mbonyumutwa was the first president of a ten-month transition in 1961).
During the Soviet era, and pre-1989, the elite benefactors of the international financial and political system were only too happy to turn a blind eye to the human rights record of Juvenal Habyarimana--and his friend, Mobutu, the CIA's big man in Zaire--in exchange for their military, economic and political allegiance against the so-called "Communist bloc". With the fall of the Berlin Wall, the international monetary system put the screws on the Habyarimana (and Mobutu) government, ramming neoliberal 'reforms' down the throats of the Rwandans. The International Monetary Fund and World Bank enforced 'Structural Adjustment' programs that severely degraded the lives of ordinary Rwandans. On top of this, coffee prices fell. By the time of the Ugandan and RPA/F invasion of October 1990, the stage was set in Rwanda for class warfare.
While advancing and creating a stable country in many ways, with some Tutsi power sharing, Habyarimana's exclusionary policies against Tutsis also led to widespread Tutsi disaffection inside Rwanda. Habyarimana refused to address the "refugee" question and "rights to return" of Tutsis, a thorny issue pressed upon Rwanda by the international community. When thousands of Tutsis expelled by the government forces of Milton Obote fled Uganda in the early 1980's, Habyarimana refused to allow them to stay in Rwanda. Later, both Habyarimana and Yoweri Museveni jockeyed for power and profit where the pawns in the game were the Tutsis who had lived in Uganda for decades. Nonetheless, hundreds of thousands of French-speaking ethnic Tutsis had stayed and prospered inside Rwanda since 1959.
When the Rwandan Patriotic Army--elite Tutsi guerrillas led by Paul Kagame--invaded Rwanda from Uganda in 1990, the situation shifted rapidly. Over the next four years the ethnic labels of Hutu and Tutsi became more politicized and more fluid. Hundreds of thousands of French-speaking ethnic Tutsi who had stayed and prospered inside Rwanda from 1959 until 1990 were now confronted with the choice of supporting the invading Tutsi army or retaining allegiance to the Habyarimana government. Complicated economic and political considerations, such as long-standing business relationships, and class issues, belied the Hutu-Tutsi divide.
Major Paul Kagame and his Ugandan Tutsi commanders, and other (very influential) elite Tutsis in the diaspora, who were mostly English language speakers, considered French-speaking Tutsis who stayed behind in Rwanda traitors to the Tutsi cause. While the RPA propagandized the masses and recruited Tutsi males for RPA military service from inside Rwanda, recruits were also subject to an internal RPA terrorism -- another story that has never been told -- and many Tutsis who joined the RPA/F were marginalized, many mistreated, and some were disappeared.
SEARCH AND SEIZURE IN NEW HAMPSHIRE
On June 22, 2010 a Search and Seizure Warrant was approved by the U.S. District Court in New Hampshire for the purpose of invading the Manchester N.H. home of Beatrice Munyenyezi. This warrant offers a perfect example of how the official narrative about genocide in Rwanda is maliciously used against innocent people.
The warrant is based on the affidavit of Thomas Brian Andersen, Jr., an ICE Special Agent assigned to the National Security Group of the Boston Office of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. In his affidavit, Andersen distilled the Hutu/Tutsi conflict in Rwanda down to a few essential details that helped to frame Beatrice Munyenyezi as a genocidaire.
The affidavit is extremely biased, and it offers a portrait of western arrogance and ignorance. For example: "Just prior to Rwanda's independence from Belgium in 1962," wrote Thomas Brian Andersen Jr., summarily dismissing the entire history of the elite Tutsi monarchy's brutal oppression and domination over the peasant Hutu masses, "the Hutu majority gained control of the government, and after independence, the Hutu majority engaged in acts, including discrimination and acts of violence against Tutsis. As a result, numerous Tutsis fled Rwanda, and some formed a rebel guerrilla army, known as the Rwandan Patriotic Front ("RPF")."
For Thomas Brian Andersen, Jr, it is not even incidental that the elite Tutsi rebels were attacking Rwanda, sneaking into Rwanda under cover of darkness, committing massive atrocities, targeted assassinations, bombings, spreading wholesale terrorism, and then sneaking back out of the country. This is where the Kinyarwanda term 'Inyenzi' came from: this is the infamous cockroach slur used in all Hollywood movies to portray the Hutus as the blood thirsty killers set on exterminating the Tutsi cockroaches. The Inyenzi slur, when attributed to the Hutus, implicated their dehumanization of the Tutsis, and dehumanization is part of the ideology that underpins genocide (according to its unbastardized original etymology). But Inyenzi was a term the Tutsi guerrillas proudly assigned to themselves: they were proud of their capacity to come and go under cover of night, just like cockroaches, spreading terrorism and committing murder.
When ICE Special Agent Thomas Brian Andersen, Jr. invaded the Munyenyezi home, he and the other officers were even searching for 'weapons used by Munyenyezi'. Special Agent Thomas Brian Andersen, Jr. had been deeply conditioned to believe the official narrative. That is, Thomas Brian Andersen, Jr. was expecting he might even find a machete. They asked asked the children of Beatrice Munyenyezi if there were machetes in the house or the garage.
The affidavit assumes and asserts Beatrice Munyenyezi's guilt, and the Search and Seizure Warrant was approved by Judge Daniel J. Lynch. It is an example of insufferable arrogance, insufferable ignorance, insufferable entitlement by Thomas Brian Andersen, Jr., and the abuse of power.
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 planning of genocide by the government of Juvenal Habyarimana or its immediate successors, the interim coalition government of Jean Kambanda formed on April 7, 1994.
The official Rwanda genocide narrative is founded upon the false claim 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.
From April 1992 to the middle of July 1993 there was a coalition government led by Prime Minister Dr. Dismas Nsengiyaremye. 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 one prominent Tutsi in this government was Landoald Ndasingwa from the Parti Liberal, but at least three of the opposition parties were pro-RPF.
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'. Habyarimana 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 supporters -- like Faustin Twagiramungu and Marianne Baziruwiha -- 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.
Fautsin Twagiramungu became Prime Minister under the Kagame government at the time of massive atrocities against Hutus inside Rwanda. Baziruwiha took a position with the RPA/F government after July 1994, where she quickly saw that she was expected to betray Hutus and support the killing of Hutus. Baziruwiha later worked at the Rwandan Embassy in Washington under RPA/F cadre Theogene Rudasingwa. In the end, Twagiramungu, Baziruwiha and Rudasingwa all fled for their lives and live in exile.
The question or Hutu 'extremists' and the labels like 'extremist Hutu' and 'moderate Hutu' and 'Hutu power' must be unpacked for clarity, and distanced from the reductionist or essentialist narrative where they are used to criminalize and dehumanize all Hutu people. These labels created by and to serve the official 'Hutus killing Tutsis' narrative also inspire the application of labels like 'extremist Tutsi' and 'moderate Tutsi', but the question of Tutsi extremism or Tutsi moderatism is never raised, no matter the abject brutality and terrorism of the elite Tutsis of the Kagame inner circles and terror networks. The same is true of language like 'Akazu' or 'inner house' -- another label that was applied to the Habyarimana government and has been applied to Madame Agathe Habyarimana to further the nonsensical proposition that she assassinated her own husband, and which are quite reasonably applied to Kagame and his Akazu.
Other people who could arguably be labeled 'extremists' then would be Belgian academic Philipe Reyntjens, an ardent RPA/F supporter and Habyarimana critic throughout the four year civil war, and up to about 1995 or 1996, where he began to sing a different tune (much to his credit). Dr. Reyntjens has done some fantastic scholarship on the Great Lakes region, and he is not to be confused with French academic Gerard Prunier, whose whitewashing of events and support of the RPA/F official narrative suggests he could easily be an intelligence asset working for the RPA/F or for the United States.
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. However, every ICTR trial should be declared a mistrial. These trials have been politically motivated, one-sided productions, and not one Rwandan Patriotic Army/Front official or soldier has even been indicted. Controlled and manhandled by the United States, the ICTR is merely dispensing 'victor's justice'.
The ICTR conviction of Jean Kambanda, the former interim prime minister 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.
Next week: Part 2 --- Persecutions, the Real Genocidaires, the Genocide Tourism Industry, Eyes In The Sky and the Great Lakes Cover-Up.
Keith Harmon Snow is a photographer, journalist and researcher who resides in Western Massachusetts, and has worked in and reported from many African and Asian countries. Find more of his work at http://allthingspass.com/, at http://www.keithharmonsnow.com/ and his current site, http://www.consciousbeingalliance.com/. Contact him here or here.
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