Hungry for Truth, Peace and Justice

Open letter to Oliver Kamm in response to his article "Extremes Collide"

By Christopher Black
Published in: CirqueMinime/Paris
December 14, 2009

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Extremes Collide
By Oliver Kamm
The Times Online
December 13, 2009
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Dear Mr. Kamm,

I must apologize for my second post as it appeared you had unfairly removed my first, which really irritated me. So I beg your pardon for my intemperate remarks. But I must thank you for posting my first post in its entirety and bringing to the attention of your readers my positions on these various issues.
First of all, I reiterate my remarks about the alleged massacre at Srebrenica. President Milosevic and others at the Hague tribunal knocked down that American-KLA canard a long time ago. That you keep repeating US-KLA propaganda only shows that you have no interest in the facts or the evidence. As for my representation of President Milosevic, yes, it was an honor to represent such a brave and principled man whose only crime was to continue to fight for socialism against the fascism of the US and its axis. He was completely innocent of those fabricated charges, as was stated in the report I made at the request of the American Association of Jurists after his initial arrest in Belgrade by the DOS regime. In an interview with the Deputy Minister of Justice and the investigating judge, I asked if there was any substance to the charges and they told me, no, it was fabricated, but they were forced to do so as the Americans wanted his head. They told me that if they had refused to charge him, the Americans threatened to resume the bombing of Belgrade.

You try to damage my credibility by telling your readers that I also deny that there was a genocide in Rwanda. Well, Mr. Kamm, if you, or your newspaper, had even superficially followed the trials at the Rwandan war crimes tribunal, you would know that I am correct. The war in Rwanda, begun by Uganda and backed by the US and the UK in order to prepare the invasion of the Congo, was long and bloody. The evidence is that in 1990, the RPF (part of the Ugandan Army), along with American Special Forces, and, from 1993, assisted by a supposedly neutral UN force headed by Canadian General Roméo Dallaire, invaded the country and massacred tens of thousands of Rwandans, mostly Hutus. Several ceasefires were arranged, and every one of them was broken by the RPF, who, in each case, massacred thousands more Hutus. Finally, on April 6th, 1994, they, with the assistance of the Canadian and Belgian UN forces, conducted a sneak attack on the Rwandan president’s plane, assassinating two democratically-elected Hutu presidents (of Rwanda and Burundi) and then immediately attacked all Rwandan Army units in Kigali and the north of Rwanda and began to massacre Hutus all across the country. The RPF forces, assisted by airdrops of soldiers and equipment by US C130 Hercules (Clinton lied), in 6 hours wiped out the gendarme camp at Remera, attacked all the main Rwandan Army camps and gendarme camps, bombarded the civilian refugee camp at Nyaconga, just north of Kigali, where a million Hutu refugees (fleeing RPF terror) were located, and proceeded to kill everyone in their path. In that attack on the refugee camp, they killed thousands with high-explosive shells. The Rwandan Army was overwhelmed. UN officers there testified that the RPF was firing thousands of Katysuha rockets at Kigali without cessation, while the Rwandan Army even ran out of hand grenades within ten days and were reduced to trying to fight off the RPF with homemade grenades. Even the testimony of Dr. Alison Des Forges from Human Rights Watch is that the RPF killed everyone in every village they entered. I have in my possession statements from RPF officers, which are exhibits in the trials at the ICTR, that Paul Kagame ordered the massacre of all civilians (mainly Hutus but also Tutsis) in the stadiums of several towns, including Byumba and Gitarama. I will send them to you if you wish.

We also have statements of RPF officers that the Interahamwe, an organization headed by Tutsis, was infiltrated by RPF commandos, who committed massacres at roadblocks in such a way as to cast blame on the Rwandan forces and discredit them in the eyes of the world.

We presented to the ICTR a video of UN officers distributing machine guns and flak jackets to Interahamwe leaders during this period. You can also get that from the ICTR.

The Rwandan Army retreated from Kigali for one reason only: they ran out of ammunition and could not get any more, while US and Canadian aircraft were supplying the RPF with tons of materiel every day.

The evidence now is that most of the people killed in those 12 weeks were Hutus. There were also many Tutsis killed, both by the RPF and by Hutu civilians angered by the mass killings carried out by the RPF forces.

We estimate 2 million Hutus were killed (this was the claim of an RPF officer in a letter to the UN in 1999). The RPF and US, in order to discredit and demonize the Rwandan Army and majority population, claimed that the Hutus had committed genocide against the Tutsis, when the exact opposite occurred. As an example, the RPF claimed that 250,000 Tutsis were killed in Kigali. But in 1994, there were only 40,000 Tutsis in Kigali, and Dallaire and Bernard Kouchner, who were there at the time, have stated that most of them survived. So, it is clear that most of those bodies are not Tutsis, but are Hutus massacred by the RPF when they took the city.

This is all evidence presented before the trial chamber at the ICTR. I can send you the transcripts if you are interested. One other thing your readers should be told regarding the alleged genocide: The Rwandan Army was a multiethnic force that included in its ranks many Tutsi officers and men. Everyone of them stayed with the army and fought the RPF, and when the Rwandan Army retreated into the Congo, these Tutsi soldiers stayed with the army rather than join the RPF. How on earth can anyone claim that an army partly composed of Tutsis could engage in a genocide of their own people? It’s absurd.

Antoine Nyetera, a Tutsi prince and the son of the last king, testified at the ICTR and stated he was in Kigali all through the alleged genocide and saw no massacres by the Rwandan Army against Tutsis. He added that the massacres were committed by the RPF forces during their attacks and later when they took control of the city.

A journalist testified that she saw RPF soldiers taking Hutu refugees out of Amahoro stadium in Kigali, where Dallaire and the UN had their headquarters, and shooting them en masse, and that Dallaire and other UN officers watched and did nothing to stop it. She has some credibility having later won an award for journalism from the UN in another context.

As regards the man I defend at the ICTR, the evidence from General Dallaire and Professor Des Forges and many others is that he was considered pro-RPF and protected many Tutsis during that period. Even the prosecution presented evidence to that effect.

Bill Clinton stated that the US failed to act in Rwanda and has since used that as an excuse for other wars. But as UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali stated in 2004, “The Americans are 100% responsible for what happened in Rwanda .”

I also have in my possession a letter from Paul Kagame, dated August 1994, referring to the assistance he received from Museveni and the Americans, British and Belgians, and referring to their coming plans for Zaire (Congo). I can send that to you if your paper would care—or dare—to publish it. So, millions have died in Central Africa all for access to the immense resources there, and all you can do is swallow wholesale the bald faced lies of the Americans, British, Belgians and Canadians, who are really responsible for that terrible war and the installation of a mass murderer, Paul Kagame, in Kigali.

Re North Korea: You quote me correctly. You don’t believe me? Well, ridicule will not get you very far. People want to know facts. Have you ever been to North Korea? I doubt it. So how can dare you ridicule me-if you are an honest man? But since you doubt me, I invite to come with me to the DPRK and see for yourself. You may not agree with me from what you have been fed by the US propaganda machine, but I am no liar. I invite you to see for yourself that the North Koreans have attained something most Britons can only wish they had: a civilized, humane society in which people and individuals come first, not money and power. You do not discredit me by repeating my findings (I was one of a team of mainly American lawyers who were invited to the DPRK by the Democratic Lawyers Association of North Korea.)

As for the alleged connection between a virus and what is termed AIDS, I draw your attention to any number of published scientific papers that point out that no one has yet isolated any such virus, or explained the cause of the syndrome as a particular viral agent. I refer you in particular to the Perth Group and the work of Drs. Turner and Papadoupolos as a starting point. Their website is a good place to begin. The HIV theory is bankrupt. A sounder theory is that AIDS is caused by malnutrition and chemical poisoning, particularly from the use of amyl nitrates (poppers) and other oxidating agents. The HIV theory is full of holes, explains nothing and, moreover, is dangerous, as it leads to misdiagnosis and mistreatment of the problem. But whether you accept that or not, the point is that there is a vigorous debate in the scientific and medical communities about what really does cause AIDS, and the HIV theory is losing ground daily. Instead of smirking at this debate you might want to read the opposing theories and become enlightened.

By the way I am not a Trotskyite. I had some appreciation for Trotsky’s critiques of the USSR, but, by and large, most of them are the Right masquerading as the Left.

Finally, I wrote to your blog to object to your use of ridicule to attack three important intellectuals whose views are carefully considered and researched, and whose contributions too learning and truth are incontestable. If you disagree with them then you should argue the facts. But to descend into sarcasm, false connections to deniers of the murder of the Jews by the Nazis and so on, is not only unfair, it is dishonest and a disservice to your readers and to History.

Christopher Black

Barrister, International Criminal Lawyer
Lead Counsel, International War Crimes Tribunal For Rwanda.
Toronto, Canada


* Edward S. Herman and David Peterson, "Open Letter to Amnesty
International," MRZine , November 22, 2009:
http://www.monthlyreview.org/mrzine/hp221109.html.

* Edward S. Herman and David Peterson, "In Response to the Bosnia
Genocide Lobby," MRZine , December 8, 2009:
http://www.monthlyreview.org/mrzine/hp081209.html.

* Edward S. Herman and David Peterson, "Open Letter to Amnesty
International," MRZine , November 22, 2009:
http://www.monthlyreview.org/mrzine/hp221109.html.

* Edward S. Herman and David Peterson, "In Response to the Bosnia
Genocide Lobby," MRZine , December 8, 2009:
http://www.monthlyreview.org/.

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PS:

Kamm wrote:

You must reconcile yourself to the prospect that The Times will in no circumstances publish such grotesque libels.

Then Chris wrote back:

Dear Mr. Kamm,

Sincerely, they are not libels. They are the facts. What you don't know about what really happened in Rwanda would curl your hair. Dallaire (whom I have met personally aside from cross-examining him) was a close friend of my client and was involved up to his neck in blood. The Canadian Army is little more than an auxiliary force for the Americans. Whenever they need someone to do their dirty work--especially when they need men who can speak French--they use them. E.g., the overthrow of Aristide in Haiti was accomplished with the help of Canadian commandos who secured the airport when Arisitide was taken out at the point of a gun. And a Canadian commando (member of the JTF2 commando) published a book about all this in Montreal just last year, Les Invincibles.

But I find it surprising that you find my statements potentially libelous, but your statements about Milosevic et al. are not. The Canadian government under Jean Chretien worked hand in glove with the Americans to overthrow the coalition government in Rwanda (a government composed of Hutu and Tutsi ministers) because it would not cooperate in overthrowing Mobutu in Zaire.

All I have reconciled myself to is that the Times will publish all sorts of grotesque libels against those people the state has declared to be enemies, but will not provide its readers with the facts about war criminals declared to be the friends of the state.

Christopher Black

Note:
Oliver Kamm is a leader writer and columnist at The Times. He joined the paper in 2008, having been an investment banker and co-founder of a hedge fund. His main areas of interest include economic policy, foreign affairs and European literature. He also writes a weekly column about language.

Related Materials:
Extreme Collide

Retreat of the Srebrenica deniers

The Dallaire Genocide Fax

Letters on Rwanda: Chris Black's Response to the article “Rwanda: Perpetrators of genocide jailed”

A reply to correspondence on the article “Rwanda: Perpetrators of genocide jailed”

posted by Mamadou Kouyate @ 12:18 AM