The truth about the Rwandan genocide
By Timothy Kalyegira
October 12, 2009
Photo:
An RPF guerrilla stands guard over the wreckage of the presidential jet in Kigali on May 23, 1994. Photograph by Marc Boujou for the Associated Press.
Ugandan police is reported to have arrested a Rwandan suspected of involvement in the 1994 genocide.Idelphonse Nizeyimana was arrested on Monday Oct. 5 but details of his arrest were first made public on Oct. 6.
The police spokeswoman Judith Nabakoba said Nizeyimana secretly entered Uganda through the Bunagana area of the Uganda-Congo border using forged travel documents.He has now been flown to the northern Tanzanian town of Arusha for trial at UN's International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.
"The former intelligence chief, Nizeyimana is alleged to have participated in the Rwandan genocide in 1994 which left about 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus dead in 100 days," the Daily Monitor reported on Wednesday Oct. 7An arrest warrant for Nizeyimana was issued by the Arusha tribunal on Nov. 27, 2000.
He becomes the latest of several high profile Hutus arrested since 1994 in different parts of the world and who have been jailed or brought to trial.
The question of responsibility for the 1994 Rwandan genocide remains a sore spot on the world's conscience and is an extremely sensitive topic in Rwanda 15 years later.Whose side of the story are we to believe? Most world opinion blames the genocide squarely on the Hutu.
The Hutu have always denied orchestrating the genocide but their voice has been and remained drowned out by the powerful media in the English-speaking western world.
What really happened during what has been dubbed "100 days" of genocide? The Uganda Record will attempt a full explanation and analysis to this still-troubling episode in African history.
Since July 2006 when I met the Nyabingi, the Seer who seems to have done something to me and led me to see certain things and meet certain people by the strangest of coincidences and chance, I have come to the following conclusions:
a)The true story of the Great Lakes region of Central Africa is one of the most evil in modern times. Evil because of the brutality and horrific scale of the carnage and above all, evil because of the skill of the cover up and how millions upon millions of people around the world, from peasants to university professors and media commentators were deceived about it.
b)Formal education, even from the best of schools and universities, news gathering, even by the best of the world renowned radio and TV networks, magazines and newspapers, is not enough to understand the flow of current affairs. Eventually and inevitably, they let us down, as has happened with the world in failing to understand what took place in Central Africa.
c)There are things that cannot be understood by intellect and the force of logic and reason alone. There is a type of human behaviour that beggars description and to understand which, an understanding of the core, base, evil human nature is an only key and without which, the observer is left to clutch around for answers.
d)To unravel the deep and dark mysteries, especially of Africa, requires extremes of patience and the sort of mind that rules nothing out, one that is prepared to countenance anything as possible, from the most obvious to the most uncanny coincidence.
One needs a certain understanding of the unseen spiritual world and it is therefore no wonder that the largely secular news media cannot fathom this dark history.
To understand the story of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, one can start from any of several directions, all of which will lead to one conclusion even before details and research are expounded on.
The first question, for example, is to ask: we are constantly told about 800,000 Tutsi and "moderate" Hutu killed in the genocide. What is never asked is, what does "moderate" mean when used of the Hutu?Might there, likewise have been a massacre, a genocide of Hutus and "moderate" Tutsis? Is it to be assumed that Hutus are, somehow, by default, hardline and murderous and where there are exceptions, the term "moderate" must be used?
Secondly, if it is true that 800,000 Tutsi in Rwanda were killed by the Hutu regime of the late President Juvenal Habyarimana, is it not striking that this murderous regime would have lived with well over one million Tutsi in its midst, had 21 years to plan a systematic genocide to wipe them out, but somehow chose only three months between April and July 1994 to carry out this gruesome massacre?
If Habyarimana's hatred of the Tutsi was so extreme, how come Rwanda had such a huge number of Tutsi living in Rwanda under Habyarimana for 21 years?
We are told that within a few days of the Oct. 1, 1990 invasion of Rwanda by the Uganda-based Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), the founding commander Maj. Gen. Fred Rwigyema was dead, killed, we now know, by some of his fellow RPF commanders.
In all these 15 years of reporting on the Rwandan genocide, why have world renowned news groups like the BBC, New York Times, CNN, and all the other names that stand out in the world of western journalism, not once asked a simple question: if the RPF, after 30 years as refugees --- just starting a high-risk guerrilla war whose outcome was by no means certain --- back on home soil many for the first time since they were born --- could be so divided and be so engrossed in intrigue that senior commanders could murder their own top commander and fellow Tutsi Rwigyema when their war was barely underway, what would such people do to the Hutu, the people they now viewed as their enemies, who had kept them as refugees in Uganda for 30 years, once the war got underway months and years later?
Thirdly, why do we never get to hear the Hutu side of the story?
Why are they always cast as the "genocidaires" and the only time we hear from them is when they are in court in Arusha? Why is there no curiosity to find out from them what they have to say about the genocide?
Why, in all the 15 years since the genocide, has not one single RPF official or RPA commander been taken to any international court over possible misconduct of any sort during the civil war?Why does the world not seek to investigate the murder of Fred Rwigyema as one of the war crimes of that 1990-94 war?
To repeat the earlier point, if top RPF commanders could murder their own experienced and, by all accounts, much-loved commander from his army days in Uganda, why is there no wondering about what these remaining RPF commanders would do to Hutu civilians they encountered in the Rwandan countryside weeks and months after Rwigyema's murder?
Many such questions have never been seriously asked, as the western media has lazily kept up the narrative of Tutsi and "moderate" Hutu, figures of 800,000 that were once put at 1,000,000, and no serious thought given to what the sudden and early death of Rwigyema and the power struggle within the RPF at so early a point in their war might have foretold about the mentality and ruthlessness of these people who invaded Rwanda in 1990.
As the next story (See "Death of Maj. Gen. Fred Rwigyema") demonstrates, long before the first clashes between the RPF and Habyarimana's regime had taken place, long before the RPF had even set foot in Rwanda to start their guerrilla war, there was already deadly intrigue within the military ranks of the RPF Tutsi exile community in Uganda.
It was clan rivalry and would result in the murder of Rwigyema at the hands of Maj. Dr. Peter Bayingana (or Baingana) and Maj. Chris Bunyenyezi. The third man to die was Maj. Frank Munyeneza.
The question that this article wants to keep repeating is, if there was this level of bad blood and struggle for power within the RPF and it could result in the murder of their overall commander so soon into the war, what havoc would these ruthless men inflict on the Hutu civilians they encountered in villages as they made their way into Rwanda after Oct. 1990?
The answer to that question holds the key to unlocking the mystery of the 1994 genocide.
Photo:
An RPF guerrilla stands guard over the wreckage of the presidential jet in Kigali on May 23, 1994. Photograph by Marc Boujou for the Associated Press.
Ugandan police is reported to have arrested a Rwandan suspected of involvement in the 1994 genocide.Idelphonse Nizeyimana was arrested on Monday Oct. 5 but details of his arrest were first made public on Oct. 6.
The police spokeswoman Judith Nabakoba said Nizeyimana secretly entered Uganda through the Bunagana area of the Uganda-Congo border using forged travel documents.He has now been flown to the northern Tanzanian town of Arusha for trial at UN's International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.
"The former intelligence chief, Nizeyimana is alleged to have participated in the Rwandan genocide in 1994 which left about 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus dead in 100 days," the Daily Monitor reported on Wednesday Oct. 7An arrest warrant for Nizeyimana was issued by the Arusha tribunal on Nov. 27, 2000.
He becomes the latest of several high profile Hutus arrested since 1994 in different parts of the world and who have been jailed or brought to trial.
The question of responsibility for the 1994 Rwandan genocide remains a sore spot on the world's conscience and is an extremely sensitive topic in Rwanda 15 years later.Whose side of the story are we to believe? Most world opinion blames the genocide squarely on the Hutu.
The Hutu have always denied orchestrating the genocide but their voice has been and remained drowned out by the powerful media in the English-speaking western world.
What really happened during what has been dubbed "100 days" of genocide? The Uganda Record will attempt a full explanation and analysis to this still-troubling episode in African history.
Since July 2006 when I met the Nyabingi, the Seer who seems to have done something to me and led me to see certain things and meet certain people by the strangest of coincidences and chance, I have come to the following conclusions:
a)The true story of the Great Lakes region of Central Africa is one of the most evil in modern times. Evil because of the brutality and horrific scale of the carnage and above all, evil because of the skill of the cover up and how millions upon millions of people around the world, from peasants to university professors and media commentators were deceived about it.
b)Formal education, even from the best of schools and universities, news gathering, even by the best of the world renowned radio and TV networks, magazines and newspapers, is not enough to understand the flow of current affairs. Eventually and inevitably, they let us down, as has happened with the world in failing to understand what took place in Central Africa.
c)There are things that cannot be understood by intellect and the force of logic and reason alone. There is a type of human behaviour that beggars description and to understand which, an understanding of the core, base, evil human nature is an only key and without which, the observer is left to clutch around for answers.
d)To unravel the deep and dark mysteries, especially of Africa, requires extremes of patience and the sort of mind that rules nothing out, one that is prepared to countenance anything as possible, from the most obvious to the most uncanny coincidence.
One needs a certain understanding of the unseen spiritual world and it is therefore no wonder that the largely secular news media cannot fathom this dark history.
To understand the story of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, one can start from any of several directions, all of which will lead to one conclusion even before details and research are expounded on.
The first question, for example, is to ask: we are constantly told about 800,000 Tutsi and "moderate" Hutu killed in the genocide. What is never asked is, what does "moderate" mean when used of the Hutu?Might there, likewise have been a massacre, a genocide of Hutus and "moderate" Tutsis? Is it to be assumed that Hutus are, somehow, by default, hardline and murderous and where there are exceptions, the term "moderate" must be used?
Secondly, if it is true that 800,000 Tutsi in Rwanda were killed by the Hutu regime of the late President Juvenal Habyarimana, is it not striking that this murderous regime would have lived with well over one million Tutsi in its midst, had 21 years to plan a systematic genocide to wipe them out, but somehow chose only three months between April and July 1994 to carry out this gruesome massacre?
If Habyarimana's hatred of the Tutsi was so extreme, how come Rwanda had such a huge number of Tutsi living in Rwanda under Habyarimana for 21 years?
We are told that within a few days of the Oct. 1, 1990 invasion of Rwanda by the Uganda-based Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), the founding commander Maj. Gen. Fred Rwigyema was dead, killed, we now know, by some of his fellow RPF commanders.
In all these 15 years of reporting on the Rwandan genocide, why have world renowned news groups like the BBC, New York Times, CNN, and all the other names that stand out in the world of western journalism, not once asked a simple question: if the RPF, after 30 years as refugees --- just starting a high-risk guerrilla war whose outcome was by no means certain --- back on home soil many for the first time since they were born --- could be so divided and be so engrossed in intrigue that senior commanders could murder their own top commander and fellow Tutsi Rwigyema when their war was barely underway, what would such people do to the Hutu, the people they now viewed as their enemies, who had kept them as refugees in Uganda for 30 years, once the war got underway months and years later?
Thirdly, why do we never get to hear the Hutu side of the story?
Why are they always cast as the "genocidaires" and the only time we hear from them is when they are in court in Arusha? Why is there no curiosity to find out from them what they have to say about the genocide?
Why, in all the 15 years since the genocide, has not one single RPF official or RPA commander been taken to any international court over possible misconduct of any sort during the civil war?Why does the world not seek to investigate the murder of Fred Rwigyema as one of the war crimes of that 1990-94 war?
To repeat the earlier point, if top RPF commanders could murder their own experienced and, by all accounts, much-loved commander from his army days in Uganda, why is there no wondering about what these remaining RPF commanders would do to Hutu civilians they encountered in the Rwandan countryside weeks and months after Rwigyema's murder?
Many such questions have never been seriously asked, as the western media has lazily kept up the narrative of Tutsi and "moderate" Hutu, figures of 800,000 that were once put at 1,000,000, and no serious thought given to what the sudden and early death of Rwigyema and the power struggle within the RPF at so early a point in their war might have foretold about the mentality and ruthlessness of these people who invaded Rwanda in 1990.
As the next story (See "Death of Maj. Gen. Fred Rwigyema") demonstrates, long before the first clashes between the RPF and Habyarimana's regime had taken place, long before the RPF had even set foot in Rwanda to start their guerrilla war, there was already deadly intrigue within the military ranks of the RPF Tutsi exile community in Uganda.
It was clan rivalry and would result in the murder of Rwigyema at the hands of Maj. Dr. Peter Bayingana (or Baingana) and Maj. Chris Bunyenyezi. The third man to die was Maj. Frank Munyeneza.
The question that this article wants to keep repeating is, if there was this level of bad blood and struggle for power within the RPF and it could result in the murder of their overall commander so soon into the war, what havoc would these ruthless men inflict on the Hutu civilians they encountered in villages as they made their way into Rwanda after Oct. 1990?
The answer to that question holds the key to unlocking the mystery of the 1994 genocide.
This takes us back to the earlier argument that just as we are told endlessly of Tutsi and "moderate" Hutu, there is another side to this, which is, Hutu and "moderate" Tutsi.
President Habyarimana and his ministers kept insisting on this fact but their voices were drowned out by the international English-speaking international media.As informed sources will tell you, when the RPF invaded Rwanda, they met resistance from the Hutu as well as the Tutsi.
Although there were tensions and rivalry between Hutu and Tuti during Habyarimana's 21-year rule --- just as there are between the Bairu and Bahima in Uganda --- they were not of a kind to result into all-out blood battles.This is why it is important to answer the question of even if we assume 800,000 Tutsi were killed by the Habyarimana regime in 1994, what were all those many Tutsi doing in Rwanda for those 21 years? Why had they not gone into exile?
If Habyarimana hated them that much, why did he have to leave it to the last minute to start massacring them? If the Interahamwe could liquidate that many people in three months of chaos after Habyarimana's assassination, surely they could have achieved it much faster, much earlier.
The fact that there were French-speaking Tutsi in Rwanda who preferred to live under Habyarimana and who were hostile to the invading English-speaking Tutsi from Uganda is never discussed by the RPF or the world community.
When the RPF invaded Rwanda, they released a statement announcing their presence and mission. Reported the Uganda government-owned newspaper, the New Vision: "The force which invaded Rwanda on Monday [Oct. 1, 1990] calls itself the Rwandese Patriotic Front.
According to members of the Front, its aim is to overthrow the government of President Juvenal Habyarimana…They say they are not planning an immediate overthrow but a prolonged struggle which would mobilise the people…The RPF has an 8-point programme calling for, among other things, national unity, democracy, a self-sustaining economy and an end to corruption…They said they had no plans as to who should be Rwanda's president and that the 'people will choose'.
They said they were prepared for a protracted war: 'We don't mind about speed, we mind about getting to the people'" (New Vision, Oct. 4, 1990, p.1, 12).
That was their first formal statement. Even the pro-RPF New Vision admitted that "its aim is to overthrow the government of President Juvenal Habyarimana." There was no mention or allegation that Habyarimana was massacring or planning to massacre the Tutsi.
The reasons the RPF gave in their eight-point programme were fairly plain and basic. You don't start a civil war and risk your lives just to fight corruption and create a self-sustaining economy, if you are a serious guerrilla group. It is like starting a civil war in Uganda today to "fight the pot holes on Kampala's roads."It was clear from this simple eight-point programme that the RPF was not a high-minded, visionary organisation.
They were trying to compile what appeared to be serious reasons for starting the war and failed to find any. Surely, had the RPF uncovered any plan, however vague, by Habyarimana to exterminate the Tutsi, it would have been the number one point among the eight. Yet here was the summary of the RPF's philosophy and goals and there was no single point on averting a genocide or even anything remotely to do with human rights.
The RPF's eight-point programme was an imitation of the NRM's ten-point programme, including the NRM ten-point programme's Secondary School-ish lack of depth and broad, historic weight.In fact, the almost sub-standard quality and lack of real content in the RPF's original eight-point programme is the single greatest argument that under Juvenal Habyarimana until 1990, life was okay for both Hutu and Tutsi in Rwanda.
Where then does genocide and death at a grisly, monumental level start, since we now know that at the time the RPF invaded Rwanda, there was no plan by the Hutu to massacre the Tutsi?In late April or early May 1994, the new Kampala radio station, 91.3 Capital FM invited the long-serving Rwandese ambassador to Uganda, Claver Kanyarusoke as a guest on their Sunday evening programme, Desert Island Discs, on which guests played their favourite music and recounted their life story.Pike, co-Managing Director of Capital Radio, was also the Editor-in-Chief of the government-owned newspaper, the New Vision.
Kanyarusoke, a Hutu, arrived on a Thursday afternoon for the recording, dressed in a dark brown business suit. At the time, the Rwanda genocide was underway and bodies were floating down the River Kagera from Rwanda into Lake Victoria in Uganda and during the interview, Pike asked Kanyarusoke to explain the massacre of innocent Tutsi civilians.
Calmly, Kanyarusoke reminded Pike that under the 1993 Arusha peace accords between the Habyarimana government and the RPF guerrillas, Rwanda had been divided into two geographical areas of control, one for the Tutsi and the other for the Hutu.
Since the world believed that the Tutsi-dominated RPF was a both a strong and disciplined force, fully in control of its area, Kanyarusoke asked, how were we to explain the fact that all the bodies floating down the river, without exception, were from the RPF-controlled region of Rwanda?
Pike missed the significance of Kanyarusoke's observation and did not ask follow up questions. Last year, this writer asked a contact inside Capital FM to trace the Kanyarusoke recording and, not surprisingly, it had vanished from the archives.
What happened in April 1994 in Rwanda?
In early 1994, the Rwandan capital Kigali saw a sudden rise in violence and insecurity, with many people being killed. The RPF rebels blamed it on the government.
Leaders of the opposition Social Democrat Party and Liberal Party, as well as 2,300 other people, were gunned down in the months before April 6, 1994.
The Ugandan newspsper, The Monitor (today called the Daily Monitor) published an interview on March 25, 1994, with Justin Bahunga, who was the Second Counsel at the Rwanda Embassy in Kampala:
Q: "The insecurity and violence that has engulfed the capital Kigali, is blamed on Habyarimana.
What do you say?"Bahunga: "Of course, if you have got two protagonists each one gives his own story.
But you should ask: in whose interests would the government of Habyarimana cause insecurity in Kigali?...
If you want to rule, you can't rule by insecurity…So the only person who can cause insecurity is the one who wants to make a government fail."Less than two weeks later, President Habyarimana was dead in an assassination after a surface-to-air missile was fired on the presidential jet.
What followed is very important in understanding that tragic chapter in African history. Fighting broke out in Kigali and in many other parts of Rwanda.
Let us read the news reports of the time, starting with the French news agency AFP or Agence France-Presse, in a report from Kigali by Annie Thomas:"Wednesday 13 April 1994, KIGALI - Tutsi rebels fought their way into the Rwandan capital yesterday, sending the government, foreigners and thousands of residents fleeing in fear of a new wave of tribal bloodletting.
Intense fighting rocked several parts of the city.
The Hutu-dominated interim government fled its headquarters in the Hotel des Diplomates in the city centre 'for a more secure place', a Rwandan soldier in the hotel said. Unconfirmed reports said the week-old government had moved to the town of Gitarama, south-west of the city.As the rebels closed, residents emerged from hiding and tried to escape an expected wave of revenge killings by the Tutsi forces. 'It's going to be carnage,' predicted a Nairobi-based Rwandan diplomat.
The last foreign residents seeking to leave the city were escorted to the airport by French and Belgian paratroopers. France, Russia, Germany and the United States said they had evacuated virtually all their nationals from Kigali.
In Kampala, Christine Umutoni, spokeswoman for the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), said its forces had entered Kigali and were about to join a battalion of 600 fellow rebels camped outside the city under a UN-sponsored peace plan approved by the government and the rebels in August.
She said RPF forces were awaiting instructions to seize the capital, where she said 'government forces had dispersed, many of them surrendering with their arms to the RPF'. The rebels' entry into the city was later confirmed by the UN in New York.
The RPF has around 20,000 soldiers, against an estimated 30,000 government troops. RPF radio said advancing rebel forces had signed an agreement with UN officials yesterday guaranteeing the evacuation of foreign nationals."At this juncture, we pause to reflect.
Over the years, President Paul Kagame has railed against the UN and the world community for failing Rwanda in its time of great danger. "Where was the UN?" is a refrain we have heard countless times from Kagame in person and many of the top RPF leadership over the last 15 years.
We now see, in the report, that the RPF's own radio station broadcast a news item saying they had "signed an agreement with UN officials yesterday guaranteeing the evacuation of foreign nationals." The UN was cooperating with the RPF, not standing by indifferently as we have been told.
Secondly, the first paragraph of this AFP report states that "Tutsi rebels fought their way into the Rwandan capital yesterday, sending the government, foreigners and thousands of residents fleeing in fear of a new wave of tribal bloodletting."In other words, as the RPF advanced on Kigali, the former Habyarimana government fled.
The second paragraph shows the government, still in disarray, fleeing to a "more secure place."
Clearly the RPF was in a stronger position and was rapidly gaining the upper hand in the days following Habyarimana's assassination.Thirdly, the AFP report said "In Kampala, Christine Umutoni, spokeswoman for the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), said its forces had entered Kigali and were about to join a battalion of 600 fellow rebels camped outside the city..."The RPF was in Kigali, according to its spokeswoman, within a week of Habyarimana's death.
These news reports were written in the fast-moving atmosphere of the day, and so nobody can claim that because the AFP is a French state news agency, it was somehow doctoring its reports.However, just in case some detractors might dismiss the AFP report, is there any other we can turn to for an alternative angle to this story? Indeed there is.
The Monitor, founded by Kevin Aliro, Wafula Oguttu, James Serugo, Teddy Seezi Cheeye, Richard Tebere, Davi Ouma Balikowa, and Charles Onyango-Obbo was a decidedly pro-RPF Kampala newspaper. There can be no question about it for those who know its history.
Certainly there was a pro-RPF mood in Uganda in 1994, especially in central and western Uganda.
So we can now go to a lead story in The Monitor of April 12, 1994, just six days after the shooting down of the Habyarimana plane. The story was written by Monitor reporters Steven Shalita and Dismas Nkunda:
"As the looting, indiscriminate killing by the Presidential Guard, regular troops and rampaging Hutu vigilantes went from bad to worse, there were indications that Kigali is about to fall to the rebel Rwanda Patriotic Army (RPA).
Information reaching The Monitor from Kigali said an advance RPA force which had been infiltrated into the capital earlier were poised to take the Post Office and the Central Bank…The RPA, which said it was going into the city to restore order and rescue the battalion of its 600 soldiers who had gone into Kigali as part of the peace process, had ben giving out a call for all foreigners to leave within 12 hours if they could…
Truckloads of reinforcements for RPA rebels could be seen moving to Kigali from their northern stronghold.
By day break [April 11] RPA had easy prey of the Rwanda army. The RPA commander-in-chief Maj. Gen. Paul Kagame told Voice of America (VOA) that his troops had overrun government positions in Mutara, formerly a stronghold for the government forces…
In another interview with the BBC Swahili, Maj. Gen. Kagame boasted 'We are in Kigali and we have had very little resistance to get here.'
Hundreds of Rwanda government forces are said to be deserting to the RPA to secure positions in the subsequent government when the RPA topples the current interim government under the leadership of Theodore Sindikubwabo which was installed a few days ago. A member of the RPF Poliical Bureau (Maj.) Christine Umutoni yesterday told journalists at Speke Hotel [in Kampala] that the RPA will advance to 'crush' any forces which stand in defence of the 'hoax government' headed by Theodore Sindikubwabo, whether thos forces are local or foreign.
'If any foreign force comes our way, while we are advancing, we shall regard them as the enemy,' she said. 'We are going to crush them.' Though Umutoni could not commit herself to actual distances, she said the RPA forces are 'very, very close.' So far, RPA has faced minimal resistance and has reported 3 casualties and no deaths.
Reports from Kigali say that rampant massacres by Habyarimana loyalists have narrowed to specific targets, killing whole families of people opposed to their government. The targets include nearly every Tutsi and what has been described as 'moderate Hutus.' Umutoni however told journalists that Kigali remains a horror town and condemned the United Nations for their passive role. 'The situation about massacres in Kigali now is very horrific,' she said. 'The UN has failed to control the situation.' Maj. Umutoni boasted that the RPA had been capable of taking power as far back as February 8. 'It was capable long ago…even February 8 when we were 30km from the town [Kigali].
Umutoni said the RPA was recruiting several more forces as it advanced to beef up its more than 20,000 strong man army. Commenting on the military strength of the RPA, she said their main source of armament is the Rwandese forces. 'Habyarimana has always been our quarter master. Even now we are going to use those very weapons he bought."
President Habyarimana and his ministers kept insisting on this fact but their voices were drowned out by the international English-speaking international media.As informed sources will tell you, when the RPF invaded Rwanda, they met resistance from the Hutu as well as the Tutsi.
Although there were tensions and rivalry between Hutu and Tuti during Habyarimana's 21-year rule --- just as there are between the Bairu and Bahima in Uganda --- they were not of a kind to result into all-out blood battles.This is why it is important to answer the question of even if we assume 800,000 Tutsi were killed by the Habyarimana regime in 1994, what were all those many Tutsi doing in Rwanda for those 21 years? Why had they not gone into exile?
If Habyarimana hated them that much, why did he have to leave it to the last minute to start massacring them? If the Interahamwe could liquidate that many people in three months of chaos after Habyarimana's assassination, surely they could have achieved it much faster, much earlier.
The fact that there were French-speaking Tutsi in Rwanda who preferred to live under Habyarimana and who were hostile to the invading English-speaking Tutsi from Uganda is never discussed by the RPF or the world community.
When the RPF invaded Rwanda, they released a statement announcing their presence and mission. Reported the Uganda government-owned newspaper, the New Vision: "The force which invaded Rwanda on Monday [Oct. 1, 1990] calls itself the Rwandese Patriotic Front.
According to members of the Front, its aim is to overthrow the government of President Juvenal Habyarimana…They say they are not planning an immediate overthrow but a prolonged struggle which would mobilise the people…The RPF has an 8-point programme calling for, among other things, national unity, democracy, a self-sustaining economy and an end to corruption…They said they had no plans as to who should be Rwanda's president and that the 'people will choose'.
They said they were prepared for a protracted war: 'We don't mind about speed, we mind about getting to the people'" (New Vision, Oct. 4, 1990, p.1, 12).
That was their first formal statement. Even the pro-RPF New Vision admitted that "its aim is to overthrow the government of President Juvenal Habyarimana." There was no mention or allegation that Habyarimana was massacring or planning to massacre the Tutsi.
The reasons the RPF gave in their eight-point programme were fairly plain and basic. You don't start a civil war and risk your lives just to fight corruption and create a self-sustaining economy, if you are a serious guerrilla group. It is like starting a civil war in Uganda today to "fight the pot holes on Kampala's roads."It was clear from this simple eight-point programme that the RPF was not a high-minded, visionary organisation.
They were trying to compile what appeared to be serious reasons for starting the war and failed to find any. Surely, had the RPF uncovered any plan, however vague, by Habyarimana to exterminate the Tutsi, it would have been the number one point among the eight. Yet here was the summary of the RPF's philosophy and goals and there was no single point on averting a genocide or even anything remotely to do with human rights.
The RPF's eight-point programme was an imitation of the NRM's ten-point programme, including the NRM ten-point programme's Secondary School-ish lack of depth and broad, historic weight.In fact, the almost sub-standard quality and lack of real content in the RPF's original eight-point programme is the single greatest argument that under Juvenal Habyarimana until 1990, life was okay for both Hutu and Tutsi in Rwanda.
Where then does genocide and death at a grisly, monumental level start, since we now know that at the time the RPF invaded Rwanda, there was no plan by the Hutu to massacre the Tutsi?In late April or early May 1994, the new Kampala radio station, 91.3 Capital FM invited the long-serving Rwandese ambassador to Uganda, Claver Kanyarusoke as a guest on their Sunday evening programme, Desert Island Discs, on which guests played their favourite music and recounted their life story.Pike, co-Managing Director of Capital Radio, was also the Editor-in-Chief of the government-owned newspaper, the New Vision.
Kanyarusoke, a Hutu, arrived on a Thursday afternoon for the recording, dressed in a dark brown business suit. At the time, the Rwanda genocide was underway and bodies were floating down the River Kagera from Rwanda into Lake Victoria in Uganda and during the interview, Pike asked Kanyarusoke to explain the massacre of innocent Tutsi civilians.
Calmly, Kanyarusoke reminded Pike that under the 1993 Arusha peace accords between the Habyarimana government and the RPF guerrillas, Rwanda had been divided into two geographical areas of control, one for the Tutsi and the other for the Hutu.
Since the world believed that the Tutsi-dominated RPF was a both a strong and disciplined force, fully in control of its area, Kanyarusoke asked, how were we to explain the fact that all the bodies floating down the river, without exception, were from the RPF-controlled region of Rwanda?
Pike missed the significance of Kanyarusoke's observation and did not ask follow up questions. Last year, this writer asked a contact inside Capital FM to trace the Kanyarusoke recording and, not surprisingly, it had vanished from the archives.
What happened in April 1994 in Rwanda?
In early 1994, the Rwandan capital Kigali saw a sudden rise in violence and insecurity, with many people being killed. The RPF rebels blamed it on the government.
Leaders of the opposition Social Democrat Party and Liberal Party, as well as 2,300 other people, were gunned down in the months before April 6, 1994.
The Ugandan newspsper, The Monitor (today called the Daily Monitor) published an interview on March 25, 1994, with Justin Bahunga, who was the Second Counsel at the Rwanda Embassy in Kampala:
Q: "The insecurity and violence that has engulfed the capital Kigali, is blamed on Habyarimana.
What do you say?"Bahunga: "Of course, if you have got two protagonists each one gives his own story.
But you should ask: in whose interests would the government of Habyarimana cause insecurity in Kigali?...
If you want to rule, you can't rule by insecurity…So the only person who can cause insecurity is the one who wants to make a government fail."Less than two weeks later, President Habyarimana was dead in an assassination after a surface-to-air missile was fired on the presidential jet.
What followed is very important in understanding that tragic chapter in African history. Fighting broke out in Kigali and in many other parts of Rwanda.
Let us read the news reports of the time, starting with the French news agency AFP or Agence France-Presse, in a report from Kigali by Annie Thomas:"Wednesday 13 April 1994, KIGALI - Tutsi rebels fought their way into the Rwandan capital yesterday, sending the government, foreigners and thousands of residents fleeing in fear of a new wave of tribal bloodletting.
Intense fighting rocked several parts of the city.
The Hutu-dominated interim government fled its headquarters in the Hotel des Diplomates in the city centre 'for a more secure place', a Rwandan soldier in the hotel said. Unconfirmed reports said the week-old government had moved to the town of Gitarama, south-west of the city.As the rebels closed, residents emerged from hiding and tried to escape an expected wave of revenge killings by the Tutsi forces. 'It's going to be carnage,' predicted a Nairobi-based Rwandan diplomat.
The last foreign residents seeking to leave the city were escorted to the airport by French and Belgian paratroopers. France, Russia, Germany and the United States said they had evacuated virtually all their nationals from Kigali.
In Kampala, Christine Umutoni, spokeswoman for the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), said its forces had entered Kigali and were about to join a battalion of 600 fellow rebels camped outside the city under a UN-sponsored peace plan approved by the government and the rebels in August.
She said RPF forces were awaiting instructions to seize the capital, where she said 'government forces had dispersed, many of them surrendering with their arms to the RPF'. The rebels' entry into the city was later confirmed by the UN in New York.
The RPF has around 20,000 soldiers, against an estimated 30,000 government troops. RPF radio said advancing rebel forces had signed an agreement with UN officials yesterday guaranteeing the evacuation of foreign nationals."At this juncture, we pause to reflect.
Over the years, President Paul Kagame has railed against the UN and the world community for failing Rwanda in its time of great danger. "Where was the UN?" is a refrain we have heard countless times from Kagame in person and many of the top RPF leadership over the last 15 years.
We now see, in the report, that the RPF's own radio station broadcast a news item saying they had "signed an agreement with UN officials yesterday guaranteeing the evacuation of foreign nationals." The UN was cooperating with the RPF, not standing by indifferently as we have been told.
Secondly, the first paragraph of this AFP report states that "Tutsi rebels fought their way into the Rwandan capital yesterday, sending the government, foreigners and thousands of residents fleeing in fear of a new wave of tribal bloodletting."In other words, as the RPF advanced on Kigali, the former Habyarimana government fled.
The second paragraph shows the government, still in disarray, fleeing to a "more secure place."
Clearly the RPF was in a stronger position and was rapidly gaining the upper hand in the days following Habyarimana's assassination.Thirdly, the AFP report said "In Kampala, Christine Umutoni, spokeswoman for the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), said its forces had entered Kigali and were about to join a battalion of 600 fellow rebels camped outside the city..."The RPF was in Kigali, according to its spokeswoman, within a week of Habyarimana's death.
These news reports were written in the fast-moving atmosphere of the day, and so nobody can claim that because the AFP is a French state news agency, it was somehow doctoring its reports.However, just in case some detractors might dismiss the AFP report, is there any other we can turn to for an alternative angle to this story? Indeed there is.
The Monitor, founded by Kevin Aliro, Wafula Oguttu, James Serugo, Teddy Seezi Cheeye, Richard Tebere, Davi Ouma Balikowa, and Charles Onyango-Obbo was a decidedly pro-RPF Kampala newspaper. There can be no question about it for those who know its history.
Certainly there was a pro-RPF mood in Uganda in 1994, especially in central and western Uganda.
So we can now go to a lead story in The Monitor of April 12, 1994, just six days after the shooting down of the Habyarimana plane. The story was written by Monitor reporters Steven Shalita and Dismas Nkunda:
"As the looting, indiscriminate killing by the Presidential Guard, regular troops and rampaging Hutu vigilantes went from bad to worse, there were indications that Kigali is about to fall to the rebel Rwanda Patriotic Army (RPA).
Information reaching The Monitor from Kigali said an advance RPA force which had been infiltrated into the capital earlier were poised to take the Post Office and the Central Bank…The RPA, which said it was going into the city to restore order and rescue the battalion of its 600 soldiers who had gone into Kigali as part of the peace process, had ben giving out a call for all foreigners to leave within 12 hours if they could…
Truckloads of reinforcements for RPA rebels could be seen moving to Kigali from their northern stronghold.
By day break [April 11] RPA had easy prey of the Rwanda army. The RPA commander-in-chief Maj. Gen. Paul Kagame told Voice of America (VOA) that his troops had overrun government positions in Mutara, formerly a stronghold for the government forces…
In another interview with the BBC Swahili, Maj. Gen. Kagame boasted 'We are in Kigali and we have had very little resistance to get here.'
Hundreds of Rwanda government forces are said to be deserting to the RPA to secure positions in the subsequent government when the RPA topples the current interim government under the leadership of Theodore Sindikubwabo which was installed a few days ago. A member of the RPF Poliical Bureau (Maj.) Christine Umutoni yesterday told journalists at Speke Hotel [in Kampala] that the RPA will advance to 'crush' any forces which stand in defence of the 'hoax government' headed by Theodore Sindikubwabo, whether thos forces are local or foreign.
'If any foreign force comes our way, while we are advancing, we shall regard them as the enemy,' she said. 'We are going to crush them.' Though Umutoni could not commit herself to actual distances, she said the RPA forces are 'very, very close.' So far, RPA has faced minimal resistance and has reported 3 casualties and no deaths.
Reports from Kigali say that rampant massacres by Habyarimana loyalists have narrowed to specific targets, killing whole families of people opposed to their government. The targets include nearly every Tutsi and what has been described as 'moderate Hutus.' Umutoni however told journalists that Kigali remains a horror town and condemned the United Nations for their passive role. 'The situation about massacres in Kigali now is very horrific,' she said. 'The UN has failed to control the situation.' Maj. Umutoni boasted that the RPA had been capable of taking power as far back as February 8. 'It was capable long ago…even February 8 when we were 30km from the town [Kigali].
Umutoni said the RPA was recruiting several more forces as it advanced to beef up its more than 20,000 strong man army. Commenting on the military strength of the RPA, she said their main source of armament is the Rwandese forces. 'Habyarimana has always been our quarter master. Even now we are going to use those very weapons he bought."
Once again, we stop and reflect on this story by the Monitor. It is even more revealing than the AFP story.
The reports by AFP and the Monitor showed :
1) the RPF in a position of increasing strength, advancing on Kigali and at various stages of taking control or having already taken control.
2) Hutu government troops either fleeing or surrendering to the RPF and the government in disarray.
The RPF is reported to be at 20,000-strong while the rapidly crumbling government army, the FAR, is at 30,000, so the two armies are at nearly the same strength.
We see, in fact, Christine Umutoni, the RPF spokesperson, "boasting" that the RPF was in a position to capture Kigali as far back as February 1994.
Take a careful look at this Monitor news story: the overall RPF/RPA commander, Maj. Gen. Paul Kagame talks of the RPF overrunning government bases and positions and, according to the Monitor, boasting to the BBC World Service Kiswahili service that (in his own words) "We are in Kigali and we have had very little resistance to get here."And then, we have the strange turnabout from Umutoni.
She was the first RPF official to accuse the UN of doing nothing, and yet all other reports, including one by the RPF's own radio, were speaking of an agreement between the RPF and the UN to ease the humanitarian crisis.
Umutoni's comments at Speke Hotel in Kampala were the first indications of the dishonesty of the RPF. This is why it is so important for research and investigation to become a part of our societies.
So much history is distorted and allowed to remain so, because we are not bothered about re-reading and re-searching what we have been told.
Having now seen, both from the AFP and the pro-RPF Monitor, that the RPF was in a position of rising strength and the remnant of the Habyarimana army and government was in disarray and either fleeing or surrendering, we come to the all-important question: what then happened?
Why did the genocide take place when, as we now see, the RPF was in control, or gaining control, of Kigali and other towns and was unchallenged by the fleeing FAR government army? If, as we have seen too, the Hutu-dominated government was fleeing Kigali, the army also fleeing or surrendering, how then was this government, falling apart and fleeing, able to orchestrate a genocide that claimed more than 800,000 lives, with the 20,000-man RPF army in control or about to be, but not doing anything about it?
If Christine Umutoni told that Speke Hotel press conference that the RPF was strong enough to take power as far back as Feb. 8, 1994, what then prevented these former refugees in Uganda if, as they claim, they knew of a plan by Habyarimana to exterminate the Tutsi minority?The answer begins to appear when we go to the next news excerpt from 1994.
Here once again is the The Monitor's lead story in its April 15, 1994 edition, headlined: "RPA in trouble?", written by Steven Shalita and Dismas Nkunda:"What is happening? Eleven days have gone and Rwandese Patriotic Army (RPA) is still in a bloody battle with Rwandese government troops for Kigali.
Parts of the Rwandese capital remain in the hands of The Presidential Guard, regular troops and paramilitary forces to former president Juvenal Habyarimana who was assassinated in a rocket attack on his plane April 6…Anxiety has gripped supporters of the RPA/F cause who view their 'delay' to capture Kigali as a sign of trouble.
On Wednesday afternoon an RPF official told a Monitor reporter at Mulindi, the RPF headquarters, that Kigali would fall in 12 hours, but it did not happen. The rebels have besieged Kigali for almost a week now but have failed to take full control.
There is an estimated force of 18,000 RPA men laying siege to Kigali on three fronts. Latest reports say that some strategic hills around Kigali such as Nyamirambo, are in the hands of RPF.
According to a military analyst, the RPF is being cautious about destroying down-town Kigali. The Monitor was told that RPA was surrounding Kigali leaving only one outlet through Gitarama that could be used by fleeing soldiers.
RPF spokesman Shaban Rutayisire told journalist [sic] at Mulindi that 'It is a question of time and tactics so that we rout the murderous Rwanda army.'The puzzlement that Kigali has not fallen is only deepened, because the entire interim cabinet fled Kigali on Tuesday. Interim President Theodore Sindikubwabo and 19 of his ministers fled to Gitarama, 50km, south west of Kigali.
A Uganda military expert told The Monitor yesterday that with the murders of civilians estimated about 20,000 so far, most of them suspected to be pro-RPF and Tutsi, RPA has a political obligation to go in to stop the bloodletting…
Another source watching developments said "The RPA was militarily ready to enter Kigali and there is no doubt they will win the fight within the week, but they were not politically ready.
But, on the face of it, the death of Habyarimana and the blood that flowed the Kigali streets was an 'opportune time' for the RPF to enter Kigali.
He said that while RPA had support, it was not clear whether they had the majority of the people on their side; and now that they were bogged down in Kigali, the Hutu hardliners have been given time to mobilise the people with fears of Tutsi massacring them."
There we have it. The story of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, in crystal clear light at last.There is no question that the RPF held the upper hand militarily by the beginning of 1994.
That much Christine Umutoni, a former student at Makerere University and the then RPF spokesperson, was able to tell a public press conference at Kampala's Speke Hotel.
And in case we might want to dismiss her observation as that from a junior official, we have Maj. Gen. Paul Kagame's own direct and unambiguous words to the BBC Kiswahili service that "'We are in Kigali and we have had very little resistance to get here.
"Crucially, according to this Monitor news report, the RPF was so comfortably in control of Kigali a week after Habyarimana's death that they even left the road to Gitarama open so that it "could be used by fleeing soldiers."
Far from the FAR government army embarking on a mass murder of Tutsi, they were fleeing Kigali, as we have already seen and, in fact, even being helped by the RPF to escape. The comments by the Ugandan military expert to the Monitor fill in all the remaining blanks.
Here is the critical passage in the story by the Monitor on April 15, 1994: "Another source watching developments said 'The RPA was militarily ready to enter Kigali and there is no doubt they will win the fight within the week, but they were not politically ready.'
But, on the face of it, the death of Habyarimana and the blood that flowed the Kigali streets was an 'opportune time' for the RPF to enter Kigali.
He said that while RPA had support, it was not clear whether they had the majority of the people on their side..."It confirms that the RPF was militarily victorious but, being a minority ethnic group, moreover from a foreign, English-speaking country Uganda, they could have walked into Kigali, taken control, but how would they have governed politically?
They had to develop their political standing. How? By resorting to the sinister tactics their mentor President Yoweri Museveni had employed so successfully in Luwero in central Uganda --- commit atrocities against the population and then blame them on your adversary and by that make the population believe it was your enemy who carried out the massacre, so that you gain the population's support.
Classic Museveni tactic.
A simple question can answer all this: if Museveni used these tactics, of causing havoc in Luwero, dressing his NRA men up in UNLA uniform, in order to convince the population that it was the UNLA killing them, and it worked, leading many Baganda to support the NRA, and we read that Paul Kagame was deeply influenced by the tactics and success of the NRA in Luwero, would the RPF, made up of commanders who had served under Museveni in Luwero, not resort to the tactics they had seen work so well in Luwero when it came to Rwanda?
Let's get a panoramic view of events: the RPF advances on Kigali and is within distance of gaining power by early February.
When Habyarimana is killed on April 6, the government and the Hutu-majority army start to fall apart as the RPF rapidly moves in.
The RPF moves in, takes control or near control, then.....silence. It does nothing. It allows the Hutu soldiers to flee by way of the Kigali-Gitarama road.
It cooperates with the UN in evacuating all foreign nationals. They leave. The RPF is now in charge of Rwanda. But they sit....and do nothing.
For three months from April to July 1994, the RPF is in total charge of Rwanda, including the capital Kigali. A genocide starts to take place.
Bodies are scatterd everywhere. Tens of thousands float down the Kagera River into Uganda.
But this force of Tutsi exiles, most of them born in Uganda, away for 30 years, this force which says it knew of a plan by the Hutu government to massacre hundreds of thousands of Tutsi, is in full control of Kigali, as its own Paul Kagame and Christine Umutoni publicly boast, but it watches...and does nothing.
It is obvious, given all this evidence, given the fact that the RPF was part of the NRA that fought in the central Ugandan region of Luwero in the 1980s, that what was going on from April to July 1994 was a genocide, alright, but by the RPF AGAINST THE HUTU AND TUTSI IN A BID TO HAVE IT BLAMED ON THE HUTU!
Are we still in doubt at what happened?
The Hutus have pleaded innocence but world opinion refuses to believe them. That is the reason, totally disillusioned with the world news media's blindness to the facts, I decided to turn to the spirit world that no human being, no matter how careful or cunning, can hide the truth from.
The ICC at The Hague, the ICTR in Arusha, the western media, these are sincere people in many ways, but they do not know what goes on in Africa.They are easily deceived.
To get to the bottom of the carnage in Rwanda from 1990 to 1994, one sometimes has to employ the services of the same dark powers that the RPF and the NRA used. This is a spiritual battle, not one at the political level.
This is the evil design by these ruthless leaders, Museveni and Kagame, who, cunning and in some way brilliant, were able to understand how gullible the White western mind is and to spin the story of the genocide and the genocide in Luwero in such a way that millions still believe it was the Hutu in Rwanda and the Acholi and Langi UNLA in Uganda who carried out these grizzly deeds."Hurt the crowd and blame it on your enemy." Perfect summary of the philosophy of the NRA and the RPF.
It should be noted that before the shooting down of the Dassault Falcon 50 9XR-NN presidential jet carrying the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi and nine other people on April 6, 1994, the RPF guerrillas had been shooting down of aircraft.
On October 3, 1990 in Matimba in Rwanda, a Rwandan spy plane was shot down by the RPF; on October 23, 1990, a Gazelle helicopter was shot down by the RPF over Nyakayaga; on September 10, 1991, a Fokker 27 plane belonging to the Zairean (now DR Congo) company SCIBE was shot down over the Rwanda-Uganda-Zaire border area by the RPF; and on February 1993, another Rwandan army helicopter over Cyeru in Rwanda was shot down by an RPF missile.
Already, even this is starting to change. In April 2004, a team of investigators from the University of Maryland in the United States published a report questioning the claim that most of the victims of the genocide were the Tutsi. "The study, which international prosecutors are using, concludes that many of those killed may not have been minority Tutsis, as commonly believed, but majority Hutus…
Our research strongly suggests that many of the victims, possibly even a majority, were Hutus," says the report published in the Feb. 6, 2007 edition of the university's Outlook newspaper.
In Dec. 2005, a British-based team of investigators, the Sanders Research Associates, published a report that questioned the basis for apportioning blame for the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
There had been claims, advanced by the RPF and their sympathisers, of documents to prove Juvenal Habyarimana and his government had systematically planned the genocide.
The Sanders report stated: "There is a stunning lack of documentary evidence of a [Habyarimana] government plan to commit genocide.
There are no orders, minutes of meetings, notes, cables, faxes, radio intercepts or any other type of documentation that such a plan ever existed.
In fact, the documentary evidence establishes just the opposite." (View from Rwanda: The Dallaire Genocide Fax: A Fabrication, Sanders Research Associated Ltd., December 1, 2005).
It also should be noted that there are two general views of the RPF government.
The first is by the mainly English-speaking White western nations who --- since they are Anglophile like the Ugandan-born RPF leaders of 1990 --- not surprisingly view the RPF as liberating heroes who intervened just in time to stop a horrific genocide in 1994.
Then there is the French, German, Belgian, and to some degree Spanish view, that questions the shooting down of that plane, has issued arrest warrants for top RPF leaders, arrested some like the protocol official Rose Kanyange Kabuye.
Since the 1990s and the end of European Communism, the English-speaking nations have dominated the world's media and diplomatic circuit and that is the reason and the reason alone, that the true perpetrators of the 1994 genocide remain untouched, as world opinion remains hostile to the French-speaking Hutu.
However, as we are starting to see, America and Britain are on the wane as world powers.
Britain has now been overtaken by China in economic size. Their troops are bogged down in Afghanistan. The United States is a superpower that remains so only because its national economy is kept afloat by heavy borrowing from China.
American troops are also beleagured in Afghanistan and Iraq.When that future time comes when these two countries are no longer influential in media and diplomatic terms, the truth of the Rwandan genocide --- which was simply Luwero Part II --- will come out.
Related Materials:
The reports by AFP and the Monitor showed :
1) the RPF in a position of increasing strength, advancing on Kigali and at various stages of taking control or having already taken control.
2) Hutu government troops either fleeing or surrendering to the RPF and the government in disarray.
The RPF is reported to be at 20,000-strong while the rapidly crumbling government army, the FAR, is at 30,000, so the two armies are at nearly the same strength.
We see, in fact, Christine Umutoni, the RPF spokesperson, "boasting" that the RPF was in a position to capture Kigali as far back as February 1994.
Take a careful look at this Monitor news story: the overall RPF/RPA commander, Maj. Gen. Paul Kagame talks of the RPF overrunning government bases and positions and, according to the Monitor, boasting to the BBC World Service Kiswahili service that (in his own words) "We are in Kigali and we have had very little resistance to get here."And then, we have the strange turnabout from Umutoni.
She was the first RPF official to accuse the UN of doing nothing, and yet all other reports, including one by the RPF's own radio, were speaking of an agreement between the RPF and the UN to ease the humanitarian crisis.
Umutoni's comments at Speke Hotel in Kampala were the first indications of the dishonesty of the RPF. This is why it is so important for research and investigation to become a part of our societies.
So much history is distorted and allowed to remain so, because we are not bothered about re-reading and re-searching what we have been told.
Having now seen, both from the AFP and the pro-RPF Monitor, that the RPF was in a position of rising strength and the remnant of the Habyarimana army and government was in disarray and either fleeing or surrendering, we come to the all-important question: what then happened?
Why did the genocide take place when, as we now see, the RPF was in control, or gaining control, of Kigali and other towns and was unchallenged by the fleeing FAR government army? If, as we have seen too, the Hutu-dominated government was fleeing Kigali, the army also fleeing or surrendering, how then was this government, falling apart and fleeing, able to orchestrate a genocide that claimed more than 800,000 lives, with the 20,000-man RPF army in control or about to be, but not doing anything about it?
If Christine Umutoni told that Speke Hotel press conference that the RPF was strong enough to take power as far back as Feb. 8, 1994, what then prevented these former refugees in Uganda if, as they claim, they knew of a plan by Habyarimana to exterminate the Tutsi minority?The answer begins to appear when we go to the next news excerpt from 1994.
Here once again is the The Monitor's lead story in its April 15, 1994 edition, headlined: "RPA in trouble?", written by Steven Shalita and Dismas Nkunda:"What is happening? Eleven days have gone and Rwandese Patriotic Army (RPA) is still in a bloody battle with Rwandese government troops for Kigali.
Parts of the Rwandese capital remain in the hands of The Presidential Guard, regular troops and paramilitary forces to former president Juvenal Habyarimana who was assassinated in a rocket attack on his plane April 6…Anxiety has gripped supporters of the RPA/F cause who view their 'delay' to capture Kigali as a sign of trouble.
On Wednesday afternoon an RPF official told a Monitor reporter at Mulindi, the RPF headquarters, that Kigali would fall in 12 hours, but it did not happen. The rebels have besieged Kigali for almost a week now but have failed to take full control.
There is an estimated force of 18,000 RPA men laying siege to Kigali on three fronts. Latest reports say that some strategic hills around Kigali such as Nyamirambo, are in the hands of RPF.
According to a military analyst, the RPF is being cautious about destroying down-town Kigali. The Monitor was told that RPA was surrounding Kigali leaving only one outlet through Gitarama that could be used by fleeing soldiers.
RPF spokesman Shaban Rutayisire told journalist [sic] at Mulindi that 'It is a question of time and tactics so that we rout the murderous Rwanda army.'The puzzlement that Kigali has not fallen is only deepened, because the entire interim cabinet fled Kigali on Tuesday. Interim President Theodore Sindikubwabo and 19 of his ministers fled to Gitarama, 50km, south west of Kigali.
A Uganda military expert told The Monitor yesterday that with the murders of civilians estimated about 20,000 so far, most of them suspected to be pro-RPF and Tutsi, RPA has a political obligation to go in to stop the bloodletting…
Another source watching developments said "The RPA was militarily ready to enter Kigali and there is no doubt they will win the fight within the week, but they were not politically ready.
But, on the face of it, the death of Habyarimana and the blood that flowed the Kigali streets was an 'opportune time' for the RPF to enter Kigali.
He said that while RPA had support, it was not clear whether they had the majority of the people on their side; and now that they were bogged down in Kigali, the Hutu hardliners have been given time to mobilise the people with fears of Tutsi massacring them."
There we have it. The story of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, in crystal clear light at last.There is no question that the RPF held the upper hand militarily by the beginning of 1994.
That much Christine Umutoni, a former student at Makerere University and the then RPF spokesperson, was able to tell a public press conference at Kampala's Speke Hotel.
And in case we might want to dismiss her observation as that from a junior official, we have Maj. Gen. Paul Kagame's own direct and unambiguous words to the BBC Kiswahili service that "'We are in Kigali and we have had very little resistance to get here.
"Crucially, according to this Monitor news report, the RPF was so comfortably in control of Kigali a week after Habyarimana's death that they even left the road to Gitarama open so that it "could be used by fleeing soldiers."
Far from the FAR government army embarking on a mass murder of Tutsi, they were fleeing Kigali, as we have already seen and, in fact, even being helped by the RPF to escape. The comments by the Ugandan military expert to the Monitor fill in all the remaining blanks.
Here is the critical passage in the story by the Monitor on April 15, 1994: "Another source watching developments said 'The RPA was militarily ready to enter Kigali and there is no doubt they will win the fight within the week, but they were not politically ready.'
But, on the face of it, the death of Habyarimana and the blood that flowed the Kigali streets was an 'opportune time' for the RPF to enter Kigali.
He said that while RPA had support, it was not clear whether they had the majority of the people on their side..."It confirms that the RPF was militarily victorious but, being a minority ethnic group, moreover from a foreign, English-speaking country Uganda, they could have walked into Kigali, taken control, but how would they have governed politically?
They had to develop their political standing. How? By resorting to the sinister tactics their mentor President Yoweri Museveni had employed so successfully in Luwero in central Uganda --- commit atrocities against the population and then blame them on your adversary and by that make the population believe it was your enemy who carried out the massacre, so that you gain the population's support.
Classic Museveni tactic.
A simple question can answer all this: if Museveni used these tactics, of causing havoc in Luwero, dressing his NRA men up in UNLA uniform, in order to convince the population that it was the UNLA killing them, and it worked, leading many Baganda to support the NRA, and we read that Paul Kagame was deeply influenced by the tactics and success of the NRA in Luwero, would the RPF, made up of commanders who had served under Museveni in Luwero, not resort to the tactics they had seen work so well in Luwero when it came to Rwanda?
Let's get a panoramic view of events: the RPF advances on Kigali and is within distance of gaining power by early February.
When Habyarimana is killed on April 6, the government and the Hutu-majority army start to fall apart as the RPF rapidly moves in.
The RPF moves in, takes control or near control, then.....silence. It does nothing. It allows the Hutu soldiers to flee by way of the Kigali-Gitarama road.
It cooperates with the UN in evacuating all foreign nationals. They leave. The RPF is now in charge of Rwanda. But they sit....and do nothing.
For three months from April to July 1994, the RPF is in total charge of Rwanda, including the capital Kigali. A genocide starts to take place.
Bodies are scatterd everywhere. Tens of thousands float down the Kagera River into Uganda.
But this force of Tutsi exiles, most of them born in Uganda, away for 30 years, this force which says it knew of a plan by the Hutu government to massacre hundreds of thousands of Tutsi, is in full control of Kigali, as its own Paul Kagame and Christine Umutoni publicly boast, but it watches...and does nothing.
It is obvious, given all this evidence, given the fact that the RPF was part of the NRA that fought in the central Ugandan region of Luwero in the 1980s, that what was going on from April to July 1994 was a genocide, alright, but by the RPF AGAINST THE HUTU AND TUTSI IN A BID TO HAVE IT BLAMED ON THE HUTU!
Are we still in doubt at what happened?
The Hutus have pleaded innocence but world opinion refuses to believe them. That is the reason, totally disillusioned with the world news media's blindness to the facts, I decided to turn to the spirit world that no human being, no matter how careful or cunning, can hide the truth from.
The ICC at The Hague, the ICTR in Arusha, the western media, these are sincere people in many ways, but they do not know what goes on in Africa.They are easily deceived.
To get to the bottom of the carnage in Rwanda from 1990 to 1994, one sometimes has to employ the services of the same dark powers that the RPF and the NRA used. This is a spiritual battle, not one at the political level.
This is the evil design by these ruthless leaders, Museveni and Kagame, who, cunning and in some way brilliant, were able to understand how gullible the White western mind is and to spin the story of the genocide and the genocide in Luwero in such a way that millions still believe it was the Hutu in Rwanda and the Acholi and Langi UNLA in Uganda who carried out these grizzly deeds."Hurt the crowd and blame it on your enemy." Perfect summary of the philosophy of the NRA and the RPF.
It should be noted that before the shooting down of the Dassault Falcon 50 9XR-NN presidential jet carrying the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi and nine other people on April 6, 1994, the RPF guerrillas had been shooting down of aircraft.
On October 3, 1990 in Matimba in Rwanda, a Rwandan spy plane was shot down by the RPF; on October 23, 1990, a Gazelle helicopter was shot down by the RPF over Nyakayaga; on September 10, 1991, a Fokker 27 plane belonging to the Zairean (now DR Congo) company SCIBE was shot down over the Rwanda-Uganda-Zaire border area by the RPF; and on February 1993, another Rwandan army helicopter over Cyeru in Rwanda was shot down by an RPF missile.
Already, even this is starting to change. In April 2004, a team of investigators from the University of Maryland in the United States published a report questioning the claim that most of the victims of the genocide were the Tutsi. "The study, which international prosecutors are using, concludes that many of those killed may not have been minority Tutsis, as commonly believed, but majority Hutus…
Our research strongly suggests that many of the victims, possibly even a majority, were Hutus," says the report published in the Feb. 6, 2007 edition of the university's Outlook newspaper.
In Dec. 2005, a British-based team of investigators, the Sanders Research Associates, published a report that questioned the basis for apportioning blame for the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
There had been claims, advanced by the RPF and their sympathisers, of documents to prove Juvenal Habyarimana and his government had systematically planned the genocide.
The Sanders report stated: "There is a stunning lack of documentary evidence of a [Habyarimana] government plan to commit genocide.
There are no orders, minutes of meetings, notes, cables, faxes, radio intercepts or any other type of documentation that such a plan ever existed.
In fact, the documentary evidence establishes just the opposite." (View from Rwanda: The Dallaire Genocide Fax: A Fabrication, Sanders Research Associated Ltd., December 1, 2005).
It also should be noted that there are two general views of the RPF government.
The first is by the mainly English-speaking White western nations who --- since they are Anglophile like the Ugandan-born RPF leaders of 1990 --- not surprisingly view the RPF as liberating heroes who intervened just in time to stop a horrific genocide in 1994.
Then there is the French, German, Belgian, and to some degree Spanish view, that questions the shooting down of that plane, has issued arrest warrants for top RPF leaders, arrested some like the protocol official Rose Kanyange Kabuye.
Since the 1990s and the end of European Communism, the English-speaking nations have dominated the world's media and diplomatic circuit and that is the reason and the reason alone, that the true perpetrators of the 1994 genocide remain untouched, as world opinion remains hostile to the French-speaking Hutu.
However, as we are starting to see, America and Britain are on the wane as world powers.
Britain has now been overtaken by China in economic size. Their troops are bogged down in Afghanistan. The United States is a superpower that remains so only because its national economy is kept afloat by heavy borrowing from China.
American troops are also beleagured in Afghanistan and Iraq.When that future time comes when these two countries are no longer influential in media and diplomatic terms, the truth of the Rwandan genocide --- which was simply Luwero Part II --- will come out.
Related Materials:
The Truth about the Death of Maj. Gen. Fred Rwigyema
What Really Happened in Rwanda?
What they don’t tell you about Rwanda
The conquest of Rwanda (1990-1994): Recognizing the international conspiracy
Rwanda: General Marcel Gatsinzi obscures the truth about the Rwandan genocide
Michael Hourigan's Affidavit to ICTR about Habyarimana's assassination
Rwanda: Paul Kagame Sacrificed The Tutsis
What Really Happened in Rwanda?
What they don’t tell you about Rwanda
The conquest of Rwanda (1990-1994): Recognizing the international conspiracy
Rwanda: General Marcel Gatsinzi obscures the truth about the Rwandan genocide
Michael Hourigan's Affidavit to ICTR about Habyarimana's assassination
Rwanda: Paul Kagame Sacrificed The Tutsis
posted by Mamadou Kouyate @ 9:26 AM
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