THE
RWANDA GENOCIDE FABRICATIONS
Human
Right Watch, Alison Des Forges &
Disinformation
on Central Africa
6 April 2009
keith harmon snow
www.allthingspass.com
Allison Des Forges presents a lecture on Ôgenocide
in RwandaÕ at Harvard UniversityÕs Kennedy School of Government. Photo keith harmon snow, 2007.
On 12
February 2009, Alison Des Forges, a senior researcher with Human Rights Watch
(HRW) for more than 20 years, was killed when Continental Airlines Flight 3407
crashed on route to Buffalo, New York. Des Forges was widely cited as a staunch
critic of the Rwandan military government controlled by Paul Kagame and the
victors of the war in Rwanda, 1990-1994.
In the ongoing life-and-death struggle to reveal the truth
about war crimes and genocide in Central Africa, competing factions on all
sides have posthumously embraced Alison Des Forges as an activist challenging
power and a purveyor of truth and justice against all odds. Meanwhile, in
March, 2009, based on false accusations of genocide issued by the Kagame
regime—and given the close relations between Rwanda and the Obama
administrationÕs former Clintonite officials—the U.S. Department of
Homeland Security began the process of revisiting all immigration cases of
Rwandan asylum seekers and criminalizing innocent refugees.
ÒIn May of 1994, a few weeks into the killings of Tutsis
in Rwanda, [Alison Des Forges] was among the first voices calling for the
killings to be declared a genocide,Ó reported Amy Goodman, posthumously, on Democracy
Now. ÒShe later became very critical of the Tutsi-led Rwandan government
headed by Paul Kagame and its role in the mass killings in both Rwanda and
neighboring Congo after 1994. Last year, she was barred from entering Rwanda.Ó
To say that Des Forges was Òamongst the first voices
calling for the killings to be declared genocideÓ in 1994 is an Orwellian ruse.
The genocide label applied by Alison Des Forges and certain human rights bodies
in May of 1994 was misdirected, used to accuse and criminalize only the
majority Hutu people and the remnants of the decapitated Habyarimana government
(much as the genocide and war crimes accusations have been selectively applied
against President Omar al-Bashir in Sudan).
The Clinton administration refused to apply the genocide
label: to do so might have compromised an ongoing U.S.-backed covert operation:
the invasion of the PentagonÕs proxy force, the Rwandan Patriotic Front/Army
(RPF/A).
According to U.S. intelligence insider Wayne Madsen, Des
ForgesÕ criticisms of the U.S.-brokered pact between presidents Paul Kagame
(Rwanda) and Joseph Kabila (Democratic Republic of Congo or DRC) in December
2008 Òearned her some powerful enemies ranging from the murderous Kagame, who
will not think twice about sending his agents to silence critics abroad, and
international interests who want to nothing to prevent them from looting the
DRCÕs vast mineral and energy resources.Ó
ÒWith U.S. military forces of the U.S. Africa Command
(AFRICOM) now backing a joint Ugandan-DRC offensive in the northeastern DRC to
wipe out the LordÕs Resistance Army,Ó wrote Madsen on 16 February 2009, Òwith
hundreds [sic] of civilian casualties in the DRC and Uganda, and a secret pact
worked out between Kabila and Kagame to permit Rwandan troops to occupy the
eastern DRC, the target of both operations is securing the vast territory that
is rich in commodities that the United States, Britain and Israel—all
allies of Uganda and Rwanda—want badly. Those commodities are gold,
diamonds, columbium-tantalite (coltan), platinum and natural gas.Ó
Massive oil reserves are also at stake, with major
concessions bifurcated by the international border. Ongoing petroleum sector
investment (exploration and exploitation) in the region involves numerous
western extraction companies—many being so-called petroleum ÔminorsÕ
likely fronting for larger corporations—including Hardman Resources,
Heritage Oil and Gas, H Oil & Minerals, PetroSA, Tullow Oil, Vangold
Resources, ContourGlobal Group, Tower Resources, Reservoir Capital Group, and
Nexant (a Bechtel Corporation subsidiary).
Billed as a Òtireless championÓ and Òleading light in
African human rights,Ó there is much more to this story than the western
propaganda system has revealed: Alison Des Forges and HRW provided intelligence
to the U.S. government at the time of the 1994 crises, and they have continued
in this role to the present. Des Forges also supported the show trials at the
International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), institutionalizing victorÕs
justice and shielding the Kagame regime.
Alison Des Forges came across to many people as a
wonderful human being with great compassion and impeccable integrity. Indeed,
this was my impression upon meeting her as well. She is said to have helped
people who were being persecuted—no matter that they were Hutus or
Tutsis—by the Rwandan regime that has for more than 19 years operated
with impunity behind the misplaced and misappropriated moral currency of
victimhood. In the recent past, Alison Des Forges spoke—to some limited
degree—against the war crimes of the Kagame regime.
The volcanoes region of the Zaire-Uganda-Rwanda
border in 1991, seen in relative peace here, was then just beginning to suffer
the destabilizing effects caused by the U.S.-backed invasion of Rwanda by
Ugandan troops and the Rwandan Patriotic Army.
Photo keith harmon snow, eastern Zaire, 1991.
In life she did not speak about the deeper realities of
Ôgenocide in RwandaÕ, and she had plenty of chances. In fact, she is the
primary purveyor of the inversion of truth that covered up the deeper U.S. role
in the Rwanda ÔgenocideÕ, and she spent the past 10 years of her life
explaining away the inconsistencies, covering up the facts, revising her own
story when necessary, and manipulating public opinion about war crimes in the
Great Lakes of Africa—in service to the U.S. government and powerful
corporations involved in the plunder and depopulation of the region.
THE MYSTERIES OF A PRESIDENT
ÒAlison des Forges is a liar,Ó Cameroonian
journalist Charles Onana told me, in Paris, France, several years ago. Onana is
the author of numerous exposŽs on war crimes, genocide and crimes against
humanity in Central Africa, and he is the author of the book The Secrets of
the Rwandan Genocide, Investigations on the Mysteries of a President,
published in French in 2001.
Paul Kagame, RwandaÕs one-party president ÔelectedÕ
through rigged elections, sued Charles Onana for defamation in a French court
in 2002; Kagame lost the original trial and the appeal. Kagame was the
commander of the Rwandan Patriotic Front/Army (RPF/A) and a leading
agent—with Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni and their U.S., U.K.,
Belgian and Israeli backers—behind the massive bloodshed and ongoing
terrorism in Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi, Congo, Sudan and Somalia.
ÒLeading light in African Human Rights killed in Buffalo
Crash,Ó reported the PentagonÕs mouthpiece, CNN. ÒHuman
Rights Watch, which is based in New York, said she was
Ôbest known for her award-winning account of the genocide, Leave None to
Tell the Story.Õ She was truly wonderful, the epitome of the human rights
activist—principled, dispassionate, committed to the truth and to using
that truth to protect ordinary people.Ó
Alison Des Forges first worked as a HRW agent in Rwanda in
1992; in 1993 she helped produce a major international document highly biased
against the Rwandan Government and protective of the RPF/A invaders: Report
of the International Commission of Investigation on Human Rights Violations in
Rwanda since October 1, 1990.
In late 1992, the International Federation of Human
Rights, Human Rights Watch, the Inter-African Union for Human Rights and the
Rights of Peoples, and the International Center for the Rights of the Individual
and the Development of Democracy created the International Commission of
Investigation on Human Rights Violations in Rwanda since October 1, 1990. With ten members from eight countries, the
commission reported its findings in March 1993: Des Forges was co-chairperson,
one of the three principal writers, and translator of the French to English
version.
The report noted that Ôhundreds of thousandsÕ of Rwandans
were made homeless and forced to flee, prior to January 1993, but these
casualties of the RPF/A invasion were not attributed to international crimes of
peace against a sovereign government committed by an invading army—the
RPF/A guerrillas covertly backed by the U.S., Britain, Belgium and
Israel—but instead merely to ÔwarÕ. In other words, the initial act of
aggression, the RPA/F invasion, was institutionally protected and the war
crimes that set the stage for the conflagrations in Rwanda and Congo went
unpunished.
Later in 1993, Rwandans Ferdinand Nanimana and Joseph
Mushyandi, representing four Rwandan organizations under the Rwanda
Associations for the Defense of Human Rights, challenged the Des Forges
commission in their 26-page document, A Commentary on the Report of the
International Commission's Inquiry on the Violation of Human Rights in Rwanda
since October 1990.
ÒHow can an international commission be taken seriously
when its members spent only two weeks extracting verbal and written evidence on
human rights violations for a period of two years?Ó the authors wrote. They
also pointed out that the commission spent less than two hours in areas
controlled by the RPF/A rebels and that they could not visit all the 11
prefectures in the country because of demonstrations that blocked the roads.
ÒCan there be any objective and credible conclusions in their report?Ó
Ferdinand Nanimana was later sentenced to life
imprisonment for genocide. Many members of the Rwandan human rights
organizations he worked with prior to April 1994 were subsequently killed.
The rights and due process of Rwandan Hutus are
systematically violated due to victorÕs justice secured by the U.S., Europe,
Israel and the proxy states Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda. Bernard Ntuyahaga, a
Major of the former Rwandan army (ex-FAR) accused of killing 10 Belgian
soldiers and Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana, surrendered to the ICTR to
avoid extradition to Rwanda; he was tried in Belgium and sentenced to 20 years
in prison on July 4, 2007.
Photo keith harmon snow, Tanzania, 2000.
Like other researchers who have endlessly perpetuated the
disinformation, Des Forges made no attempts to correct the record. In 1992, human rights researchers Rakiya Omaar and Alex
de Waal established the London-based NGO African Rights. In August 1995,
African Rights published Rwanda: Death, Despair and Defiance, another
pivotal Ôhuman rightsÕ report that manufactured the ÔgenocideÕ fabrications,
set the stage for victorÕs justice at the ICTR, and began the process of
dehumanizing millions of Hutu people and protecting the true terrorists. In
1995, Omaar and de Waal recycled the disinformation in the left-leaning Covert
Action Quarterly under the title ÒU.S. Complicity by Silence: Genocide in
Rwanda.Ó Since 2003, Alex de Waal has been one of
the primary disinformation conduits on Darfur, Sudan.
ÒThis woman [Omaar] of Somali
origin is an RPF agent,Ó says Jean-Marie Higiro, former director of the Rwandan
Information Office (ORINFOR). Ò[Today] she has her office in Kigali. In 1994
she was at Mulindi [Rwanda], the headquarters of the RPF. As the RPF conquered territories
from the Rwandan Government Forces [FAR], she collected information fed to her
by the RPF.Ó
ÒAn intensive back and forth
activity between this so-called British human rights organization, African
Rights, and the intelligence services of the [Kagame] PresidentÕs office and
the Rwandan military, has been observed,Ó wrote Hotel Rwanda star Paul
Rusesabagina. ÒHer investigators are very close to the [RPF/A] military
intelligence apparatus, and the modus operandi of both appears to be similar.Ó
Alison Des Forges years long ÔinvestigationsÕ into the
bloodshed of 1994 resulted in the fat treatise on genocide in Rwanda, Leave
None to Tell the Story, a book co-researched and co-written by Timothy
Longman, now Associate Professor of Africana Studies and Political Science at
Vassar College. Longman and Des Forges produced numerous documents—based
on field investigations in Congo (Zaire), Rwanda and Burundi, from 1995 to
2008—touted as independent and unbiased human rights documents, all
skewed by hidden interests.
According to a recent PBS Frontline eulogy, less
than two weeks into the killing in April 1994 Des Forges met with officials in
the U.S. State Department and National Security Council (NSC) and lobbied for
their help. ÒWe were not asking for U.S. troops,Ó Frontline quotes her
to say, Òit was clear to us that there was no way that the U.S. was going to
commit troops to Rwanda.Ó
But the U.S. military was heavily backing the RPF/A
tactically and strategically already. Key to the operation were ÔformerÕ
Special Operations Forces (Ronco Company) providing military equipment and
ferrying RPA troops from Uganda to Rwanda; the Pentagon's logistical and
communications support; Defense Intelligence Agency and CIA operatives.
Canadian General Romeo Dallaire, commander of the United Nations Assistance
Mission in Rwanda (UNAMIR), was also collaborating with the RPF/A, serving the
Pentagon interest.
Genocide in Rwanda became a massive psychological
operation directed against media consumers using ghastly images—produced
by RPA-embedded photographers like James Nachtwey and Gilles Peres—to
infer that all cadavers were Tutsi victims of an orchestrated Hutu genocide;
meanwhile the text was racist disinformation produced by Joshua Hammer. Newsweek,
June 20, 1994.
ICTR defense attorney Christopher Black reports that
reliable sources confirm that US Special forces were with the RPF all the way
through the war. ÒMy client testified in June that U.S. Hercules [C-130
military aircraft] were seen dropping troops in support of the RPFÉÓ
Further, on 9 April 1994, three days after the so-called
Ômysterious plane crashÕ where Burundi's President Cyprien Ntaryamira and
President Habyarimana were assassinated, some 330 U.S. marines landed at
Bujumbura's airport in Burundi, ostensibly to Ôrescue AmericansÕ in Rwanda.
More centrally however, Uganda—with U.S. trained forces and U.S. supplied
weaponry—launched its war against Rwanda as a proxy force for the United
States of America. The result was a coup dÔetat: we won. The 2003 Frontline interview with Alison Des Forges
exemplifies her continuing role in whitewashing U.S. involvement in war crimes
and genocide in Central Africa.
ÒKagame received his military education under the
Pentagon's Joint Combined Exchange Training (JCET) at the Command and General
Staff College of Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, beginning in 1990,Ó wrote John E.
Peck of the Association of African Scholars (2002). ÒHis sidekick, Lt. Col.
Frank Rusagara, got his JCET schooling at the U.S. Naval Academy in Monterey,
California. Both were dispatched to Rwanda in time to oversee the RPF's
takeover in 1994. Far from being an innocent bystander, the Washington Post
revealed on July 12, 1998 that the United States not only gave Kagame $75
million in military assistance, but also sent Green Berets to train Kagame's
forces (as well as their Ugandan rebel allies) in low intensity conflict (LIC)
tactics. Pentagon subcontractor Ronco, masquerading as a de-mining company,
also smuggled more weapons to RPF fighters in flagrant violation of UN
sanctions. All of this U.S. largesse was put to lethal effect in the ethnic
bloodbath that is still going on.Ó
ÒThis genocide resulted from the deliberate choice of a
modern elite to foster hatred and fear to keep itself in power,Ó Des Forges
wrote, blaming ÔHutu PowerÕ. However, her assertions about a ÔplannedÕ Hutu
genocide—ÒThey seized control of the state and used its machinery and its
authority to carry out the slaughterÓ—collapse under scrutiny.
From 1990 to 1994, the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA),
comprised most heavily of Ugandan soldiers led by Ugandan citizens like Paul
Kagame, committed atrocity after atrocity as they forced their way to power in
Kigali, always falsely accusing their enemies—the power-sharing
government of then President Juvenal Habyarimana—of genocide.
ÒKagame assigned some people to work with Alison Des
Forges,Ó says Ugandan Human Rights expert Remigius Kintu, Òand also to assist
her in fabricating and distorting stories to suit Tutsi propaganda plans.Ó
According to the International Forum for Truth and
Justice in the Great Lakes Region of Africa,
whose discoveries resulted in the high courts of Spain issuing international
indictments against 40 top RPF/A officials: ÒBetween 1990 and 1994, the RPA
waged a systematic, pre-planned, secretive but highly organized terrorist war
aimed at eliminating the largest number of Rwandan people possible—bodies
were hacked to pieces and incinerated en masse. From 1994, once the RPA
violently seized power, a terror regime was created, and developed, and a
criminal structure parallel to the state was set up to pursue pre-determined
kidnappings; torturing and raping of women and young girls; terrorist attacks
(both directly and by simulating that the same had been perpetrated by the
enemy); illegal detention of thousands of civilians; selective murdering;
systematic elimination of corpses either by mass incineration or by throwing
them into lakes and rivers; indiscriminate attacks against civilians based on
pre-determined ethnic categories for the elimination of the predominant ethnic
group; and also to carry out acts of war in Rwanda and Congo.Ó
Before former President HabyarimanaÕs assassination on 6
April 1994, Des Forges, and the organizations she worked with, blamed the whole
war crimes show on President Habyarimana and his government, they dismissed the
illegal invasion and atrocities of the RPF/A, and they began calling it
genocide against the Tutsis as early as 1992.
ÒIn the Military II case Alison Des Forges admitted that
she was funded by USAID when she was part of that so-called International
Commission condemning the Rwandan Government [Habyarimana] for human rights
violations,Ó reports Canadian Chris Black, a defense attorney at the ICTR, Òand
she admitted that she just took the word of the RPF and pro-RPF groups and that
she did not deal with RPF atrocities, as she did not have the time.Ó
Chris Black notes that Des Forges presented reports to the ICTR in certain
legal cases that were decidedly doctored from the original reports presented in
previous cases against other accused Hutu genocidaires, and that it was necessary to cross-examine Des
Forges Ôvery forcefullyÕ to get her to agree that changes had been made to the
reports presented as evidence in the case being tried.
Twelve year-old Hutu child soldiers with the Forces
for the Democratic Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) in Congo—so-called genocidaires who purportedly fled Rwanda in 1994 and have
served as KagameÕs justification for plundering and depopulating Congo since.
Photo keith harmon snow, South Kivu, DRC, 2006.
ÒIn her expert report in the 2006 Military II trial
against General Ndindiliyimana,Ó Chris Black adds, Òshe removed all the
positive things she had said about him in her book and in her previous expert
report in the [Colonel ThŽoneste] Bagasora case. When asked by me why she
deleted the positive view of him at his own trial, and why she tried to hide
the fact that he saved a lot of Tutsis, among other things, she had no
explanation. It was a cheap, low thing to do and I can tell you even the judges
here at the ICTR were not too happy about it.Ó
On December 18, 2008, after the protracted ÔMilitary IÕ
trial, the judges at the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda ruled that
there was no conspiracy to commit genocide by former Rwandan military leaders
affiliated with the former Habyarimana government. It was war, and the
actions—far from a calculated genocide—were found by ICTR judges to
be Ôwar-time conditionsÕ.
ÒThe media reports of the December 18 judgment [Military
I] at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda focused primarily on the
convictions of three of four former top military leaders, who were the supposed
ÔmastermindsÕ of the Rwandan genocide,Ó wrote ICTR defense lawyer Peter Erlinder.
ÒBut, as those who have followed the ICTR closely know, convictions of members
of the former Rwandan government and military are scarcely newsworthy.Ó
Since the inception of the ICTR its decisions have been
decisively biased—victorÕs justice—in favor of protecting the
Kagame regime and its backers. Thus it is no surprise that the former top
military leaders of the Habyarimana government—Colonel ThŽoneste Bagosora
and Major Aloys Ntabakuze—were sentenced to life imprisonment for acts of
genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. However, an act of genocide is not an organized, calculated,
systematic genocide.
ÒThe real news was that ALL of the top Rwandan military
officers, including the supposedly infamous Colonel Bagosora, were found not guilty
of conspiracy or planning to commit genocide,Ó writes Erlinder. ÒAnd General
Gratien Kabiligi, a senior member of the general staff, was acquitted of all
charges! The others were found guilty of specific acts committed by
subordinates, in specific places, at specific times—not an overall
conspiracy to kill civilians, much less Tutsi civilians.Ó
Now, after more than fifteen years of massive western
propaganda proclaiming an organized, systematic elimination of the Tutsi people
by the Hutu leaders of the former Rwandan government, the official Rwanda
genocide story has finally collapsed.
THE GENOCIDE FACTS
In contradistinction to the establishment narrative
accusing the ÔHutu leadershipÕ of an ÔorganizedÕ and ÔplannedÕ genocide were
the countless acts of genocide committed
through a spontaneous uprising of the Hutu masses—people who had been
brutalized, disenfranchised, uprooted and forced from homes; people who had
witnessed massacres and rapes of family members; people who were themselves the
victims of brutal atrocities. These were more than a million internally
displaced Rwandan Hutus, people who had been terrorized by the Rwandan
Patriotic Army from October 1990 to April 1994, as it butchered its way into
Rwanda; and possibly a million Burundian refugees, Hutus who suffered massive
reprisals in Burundi after the first civilian President, Melchior Ndadaye, a
democratically elected Hutu, was assassinated by the Tutsi military in October
1993. There is evidence that the RPA/F pursued Òpseudo-operationsÓ—death
squads committing atrocities disguised as government soldiers—and
evidence that at least some of the infamous Interahamwe militias pursued their
campaigns of terror in the pay of the Rwandan Patriotic Front/Army.
ÒShe [Des
Forges] concealed the fact that from 1990 the war caused an unprecedented
economic poverty and that the one million internally displaced people tore the
social fabric apart!Ó wrote Dr. Helmut Strizek, a former German official who
had called for Des ForgesÕ resignation from HRW. ÒAnd these people knew that
Tutsi rebels [RPA] caused their misery. They did not wait for ÔinstructionsÕ in
order to revenge, once no one was able to maintain public order after the April
6 [1994] assassination [sic] and resumption of hostilities by the RPF.Ó
ÒAlison Des Forges is no longer,Ó writes Charles Onana.
ÒPeace be with her soul! She nonetheless leaves behind her many victims of
injustice, who she painstakingly accused, using false testimony, before the
International Criminal Tribunal Court for Rwanda (ICTR).Ó
Alison Des Forges provided expert testimony in 11 genocide
trials before the ICTR, including the ÔMilitary IÕ trials that condemned Col.
Theoneste Bagosora and two others on December 18. Des Forges also testified in
genocide trials in Belgium, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Canada.
Charles Onana continues:
ÒAmong her victims there is Jean-Paul Akayesu, the
first to be condemned to life imprisonment for genocide. This man, who Alison
Des Forges had accused without any proof against him, was even defended by a
Tutsi from the Patriotic Rwandan Army [RPA] who had been party to the
fabrication of the ÔincriminatingÕ evidence against him in Rwanda. The Tribunal
never listened to this witness, but they did listen to Alison Des Forges.Ó
ÒI have also discovered during the course of my
investigations into the ICTR that, at the start of the trial in 1997, she
introduced a forged fax that was purported to be written by General Dallaire in
1994. This fax, maintained Des Forges, concerned the Ôplanning of genocideÕ.Ó
New Yorker staff writer Philip Gourevitch spread
the mythology of ÒThe Genocide
FaxÓ far and wide. GourevitchÕs first pro-RPF/A disinformation piece appeared
in the New Yorker in December 1995; in May 1998 the New Yorker
published GourevitchÕs ÒThe Genocide Fax,Ó a charade fed to him by Madeleine
AlbrightÕs undersecretary of state James Rubin. GourevitchÕs fictional book We
Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families was
funded by the euphemistically named U.S. Institute for Peace and written in
league with the Kagame regime. It is certainly possible that Alison Des Forges
was unaware of the original fabrication, but she and Human Rights Watch never
changed their tune, and they never denounced the fabrication.
Charles Onana continues:
ÒIt was on the basis of this false document that she
called for the condemnation of Jean-Paul Akaseyu. To lend credibility to this
first trial process, the ICTR, with astonishing lightness and irresponsibility,
condemned this man to life. The Tribunal had no proof. The judicial
dossier is slapdash and skimpy, but that has no importance. This was Alison Des
Forges first great victory.Ó
ÒShe then decided to pursue a Rwandan refugee living
in Canada: an ideal target. He had the misfortune to be Hutu. For her, this man
was a Ôplanner of genocideÕ. But where is the proof? Alison Des Forges has
none, but she wants to see this man [Leon Mugesera] in prison. Having
deciphered or seen through Alison Des ForgeÕs arguments, the Judge of the Canadian
Federal Tribunal concluded witheringly and without pity: ÔI note above all the
relentlessness with which Mme Des Forges launched her diatribe against M.
[Leon] Mugesera, and am astonished by the lack of care she has demonstrated in
drawing up the report for the International Commission of Enquiry and in her
Expert Assessment.ÕÓ
ÒThe Canadian judge did not hesitate to qualify Mme.
Des Forges as partisan, demonstrating Ôa prejudice or preconceived position
against LŽon MugeseraÕ. He concluded that she could not be considered an
objective witness, adding that no correctly informed tribunal could take her
allegations seriously. Nevertheless it was on the basis of the same arguments,
and of the same fantasy report published in 1999, that she accused numerous
Rwandans, all Hutu.Ó
ÒCONTINENTAL SHIFT,Ó one of Philip GourevitchÕs
pivotal disinformation essays that appeared in the New Yorker, outlined
the Ònew brand of African leaderÓ exemplified by Yoweri Museveni and Paul
Kagame: it is a whitewash of U.S.-backed terrorism.
ÒIt was thus that she devoted the penultimate day of
her examination, during the process against the military, to presenting Colonel
Bagosora, Hutu, as the king pin in the genocide. The Tribunal in the
long-running ÔMilitary IÕ trial did not accept the Ôplanning of genocideÕ that
Alison Des Forges never ceased to hammer on about by means of her pseudo-fax of
11 January 1994. She lied, lied and lied again. She tried a come-back or to
recover her credibility by criticizing her ÔheroÕ Paul Kagame, the organizer
the 6 April 1994 assassination of two presidents.Ó
ÒAlison Des Forges finally dared to speak of the
crimes committed by the Tutsi rebels of the RPF/A: the great taboo. It was
a bit late but it assuaged her conscience. For those who were condemned by the
ICTR, deliberately and unjustly recorded by her, there will be no justice for
them. Can Alison Des Forges still hear their suffering and their pain? She who
has done them so much harm—along with their families? She who claimed to
defend the Rights of Man has without doubt violated the rights of many
Rwandans, who will undoubtedly never forget her. Their homage to Mme. Des
Forges would have been different, very different, to what her many friends in
the media have to say.Ó
Timothy Longman and Des Forges, the co-authors of the HRW
treatise, Leave None To Tell The Story, both worked with USAID, the U.S.
State Department and the Pentagon. Des Forges was a member of the HRW board
from 1988 and was Òprincipal researcherÓ on Rwanda and Burundi, 1991-1994. In
this period Des Forges also consulted for USAID, and collaborated with the
State Department, Pentagon, and National Security Council. Simultaneously, Des
Forges worked with, informed and influenced U.S. Congress-people, Permanent
Representatives at the United Nations, the U.N. Under-Secretary General, and
U.N. Special Rapporteur for Rwanda and
Special Rapporteur for Summary
and Arbitrary Executions. Des Forges also pumped the disinformation into the
academic world through her high-level ties to human rights committees, African
and Africana Studies departments and the elite African Studies Association.
In the same period, Des Forges constantly
influenced the U.S. media through special briefings to the editorial boards and
reporters of the New York Times, Washington Post, National
Public Radio, and Associated Press, and she was frequently presented
as an ÒexpertÓ on genocide in Rwanda for CNN, 60 Minutes, Nightline,
All Things Considered, BBC, Radio France Internationale,
and the Canadian Broadcasting Company. Such relations explain the mass
mediaÕs consistency in producing the monolithic disinformation about Rwanda
that shielded the illegal U.S.-backed and covert RPF/A (Ugandan) guerrilla
insurgency. The blanket media coverage falsely situated the ÒRwanda genocideÓ
as it is now widely misunderstood: 100 days of genocide, 800,000 to 1.2 million
Tutsis killed with machetes; the Ôhighly disciplinedÕ RPF/A stopping the
genocide. Such is the disinformation that indoctrinated the English-speaking media
consumers and created a mass psychological hysteria about Rwanda that persists
to this day.
Timothy Longman worked with Des Forges in Rwanda
in 1994 and has worked regularly with both USAID and HRW on contracts in Congo,
Burundi and Rwanda, throughout the late 1990Õs and into the present; Longman
worked in Rwanda on one USAID contract for Management Systems Incorporated, a
firm whose clients include the Pentagon. Longman also worked as a consultant
for HRW in the spring of 2000 conducting field research in eastern Democratic
Republic of Congo and producing Òa detailed report on human rights conditions
in rebel-controlled areas.Ó
The Des Forges and Longman position vis-ˆ-vis their
whitewashing of the Tutsi-led RPF/A-organized genocide in Rwanda certainly
explains the sanitation of HRW reports, and it raises questions, for example,
about how Human Rights Watch ÔresearchersÕ navigate their ÔworkÕ in rebel
(read: Rwandan and Ugandan) controlled areas in DRC. It also raises questions
about how, why and when HRW does or doesnÕt expose the western operatives,
non-government organizations and multinational corporations: a singular example
is the Human Rights Watch report that mildly exposes the criminal operations of
Anglo-Gold Ashanti—a company partnered with the Bush-connected Barrick
Gold Corporation—in eastern DRC. HRW says nothing about Moto Gold, Mwana
Africa, Banro Resources, Hardmann Oil, Tullow Oil, De Beers, H Oil &
Minerals, OM Group, Metalurg, Kotecha, International Rescue Committee—and
the many proxy armies, militias, gun-runners and other organized white collar
war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Congo.
The role of HRW as an intelligence conduit to the U.S.
Government is incidentally confirmed by Samantha Power in her book A Problem
from Hell: America in the Age of Genocide—a whitewash of U.S. and
allied war crimes for which she was rewarded with a Pulitzer Prize. While
PowerÕs Òbystanders to genocideÓ thesis about Rwanda is a total inversion of
the facts, she notes in passing that ÒHuman Rights Watch supplied exemplary
intelligence to the U.S. Government and lobbied in one-on-one meetingsÓ in
April and May 1994, and that Alison Des Forges and other HRW staff visited the
White House on April 21, 1994. Samantha Power is currently a member of the
National Security Council in the administration of President Barack Obama.
The mass media was
flooded with ÒRwanda genocideÓ disinformation between April and July of 1994,
and advertising that served up subliminal seduction and white supremacy often
surrounded these ÔnewsÕ clips. This advertsÕ sexualized message—MODERN
MEANS STAYING COOL, CALM AND DIRECTED—is augmented by a sanitized ÔnewsÕ
clip that described the double presidential assassination as a Òmysterious
plane crash.Ó New York Times, June 12, 1994.
Alison Des Forges continued to remain silent
about western corporate and military interests in the Great Lakes region to her
death. A perfect example of this silence is the very unrevealing March 2008
interview by the U.S. nationalist and Zionist U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
titled Alison Des Forges: The Impact of Rwandan Genocide in Congo.
Timothy Longman also produces significant pro-US
propaganda about Sudan. Thus it is important to note that amongst the key USAID
conduits for disinformation and covert operations in Sudan today is Roger
Winter, one of the primary architects of the RPF/A guerrilla war, organized
from Washington in 1989, that led to the loss of at least twelve million lives
in the Great Lakes of Africa since October 1990. Alison Des Forges, of course,
never mentioned Roger Winter or his colleague in covert
operations, Susan Rice, the Obama AdministrationÕs Ambassador to the U.N.
ÒRoger Winter was with the RPA on the front lines in
Rwanda and he regularly briefed the Clinton Administration of the RPAÕs
military achievements,Ó says Jean Marie Vianney Higiro, former Rwandan
official. ÒAlison Des Forges contributed to the RPF/A takeover of Rwanda. I
have no doubt about thatÉ I met her three times, first in 1995, and in 2004 she
encouraged me to testify at the ICTR. I said no way: I will only testify if RPF
officials are arrested. She insisted I should testify, she was confident that
the RPF were going to be arrested. I think she did not realize that the U.S.
government would never accept that. She was something of an opportunist.Ó
ÒI donÕt know how assassins could control icing
on the wings or why it was necessary to bring down 50 other people just to
silence her,Ó says ICTR lawyer Chris Black, commenting on the speculation that
Alison Des Forges was assassinated by Ôplane crashÕ. ÒIt would have been much
simpler to kill her in all sorts of other ways. But she was no big critic. She
made some noises, but it was just to give Human Rights Watch some credibility.Ó
ÒI hold a strong belief in the plane crash being planned,Ó
says Remigius Kintu. ÒThese international cabal members have no mercy to hide
their crime in something like this and could care less about the
other people on the plane. As for Roger Winter, he was the chief logistics
boss for [RPF] Tutsis until their victory in 1994, operating from 1717
Massachusetts Avenue NW in Washington D.C.Ó
The zeal displayed by Alison Des Forges and Human Rights
Watch in the pursuit of justice and human rights appears in sharp contradistinction
to their absence of zeal in pursuing the architects of the criminal invasion of
Rwanda on 10 October 1990, the double presidential assassinations of 6 April
1994, and all kinds of other nasty corporate conspiracies in Central Africa.
Thus while the world commemorated the 15th Anniversary of
the ÒRwanda GenocideÓ on 6 April 2009, innocent Rwandan asylum seekers and
critics of the Kagame terrorist regime, all over the world, live under
perpetual fear of being hunted down, branded as genocide perpetrators,
ostracized, and persecuted by an illegitimate one-party dictatorship comprised
40 military officials indicted for war crimes, crimes against humanity and
genocide by two international courts.
According to insiders from Rwanda, KagameÕs ruthless
Directorate of Military Intelligence has dispatched some 300 agents to
Europe to kill RPF opponents; some of these agents are operating under cover as
bogus asylum seekers in Europe and North America. As of January 20, 2009 the
U.S. Department of Homeland Security began reopening all cases of Rwandan
asylum seekers, and is criminalizing and threatening to deport legitimate
refugees to Rwanda, actions that violate the 1951 United Nations High
Commission for Refugees Convention and Protocol Relating to the Status of
Refugees.