URU, Alm.del - 2009-10 - Bilag 264: DRC

3.On behalf of Hotel Rwanda Rusesabagina Foundation and of Dialogue Inter-RwandaisHautement Inclusif (DIRHI), and in memory of all innocent Rwandans from the three ethnicgroups of Hutus, Tutsis, and Twas, of all innocent Burundian, Congolese, Belgian, Canadian,French, Spanish and other nationals who died in Rwanda and the Great Lakes Region of Africabecause of this senseless war, I want to thank your Excellency for your wisdom to mandate theinquiry into these crimes, applaud Ms. Navanethem Pillay, UN Commissioner for Human Rights,for her wisdom, remarkable courage and humanity to manage and see the inquiry through, andcommend the ﬁeld experts for their outstanding professionalism in gathering all facts andbringing to light the horrors of manʼs inhumanity against man during this dark period. I thank youall for defending human life, our precious gift from God. I can assure you that throughoutRwanda and across the globe among Rwandan refugees, there has been a collective sigh ofrelief that this report ﬁnally puts an end to a long and bleak period of impunity while alsoclearing the dense fog out of the path to the future for future generations of Rwandans. At last,we feel that equitable justice that was long denied has ﬁnally been served, that truth that waslong buried has ﬁnally triumphed, and the Rwandan people can begin the painful process ofreconciliation in serenity.

5.This new era of accountability must start with ﬁrst things ﬁrst: we all know that from October 1,1990 to today, one bad mistake has led to another multiple times over. If the invasion ofRwanda on October 1, 1990 had been dealt with as the gross humanitarian crime that it was,the 1994 Rwandan genocide would not have happened, nor would the tragedy in DRC. Puttingit more squarely, the RPF rebel movement and its leaders including General Paul Kagame,were more and more emboldened to continue on a violent path until, over a period of 20 years,they transformed criminal activity and state terrorism into a lucrative industry, satisﬁed that theirprevious infractions went unpunished.

6.What this means is that as far-reaching and signiﬁcant as this Mapping Exercise report is, it willnot achieve a true sense of complete justice and vindication if crimes committed outside of(prior to and after) the period of inquiry by the same RPF army and leadership are leftunaccounted for. There were gruesome crimes committed before and after 1993 in Rwanda,and after 2003 both in Rwanda and DRC. In other words, Rwanda needs a UN MappingExercise report of its own: out of the ofﬁcial ﬁgure for 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus killedduring the genocide, we need to know how many were Hutus and how many were Tutsis, asboth warring sides engaged in large scale massacres; we need to ﬁnd out what was the fate ofour brothers and sisters from the Twa ethnic group during the genocide; the time has arrived totake a closer look at the objectivity and scientiﬁc value of Christian Davenport and Allan C.Stamʼs independent ﬁndings of “What really happened in Rwanda” and many like-mindedr e s e a r c h e r s a n d h i s t o r i a n s(h t t p : / / w w w. t h i r d w o r l d t r a v e l e r. c o m / E a s t _ A f r i c a /Rwanda_WhatReallyHappened.html).Not conducting such neutral inquiries will continue to haveseverely adverse effects on the psyche and healing process of a whole nation where 85% areHutus and 14% Tutsis.

7.What this also implies is that the long-shelved UN mandated reports by Robert Gersony,Roberto Garreton, Michael Hourrigan, and other experts must receive proper legal and judicialfollow-up. It would be a tragic ending and a terrible waste of UN funds if this UN MappingExercise report were altered, gutted, or otherwise met the same fate as those other reports fromearlier inquiries. Once this report is ofﬁcially out, we expect the wheels of international justice tostart moving. But above all else, the most fundamental implication of this report is that our worldorganization, the UN, should and must deeply re-examine its own line of often contradictorypolicies that have seriously dented its credibility and raison dʼêtre, with catastrophicconsequences. When Iraq invaded Kuwait, the invasion was overturned, but when the RPFinvaded Rwanda, and Rwanda later invaded DRC, these invasions were allowed to stand.Similarly, if itʼs not OK for pirates to attack and pillage ships off the Somali coast, then itʼsequally not OK for President Kagame to send his army to pillage resources in the DRC. Pre-eminence should be given to the golden rule of diplomatic engagement and peaceful resolutionof conﬂicts as enshrined in the UN Charter and so dear to current U.S. President BarackObama. The world needs to be reminded that Kagameʼs RPF army invaded Rwanda onOctober 1, 1990 on claims that Tutsi refugeesʼ issues had been neglected at a time whennegotiations were far advanced between Rwanda, Uganda, the UN and Tutsi refugeesrepresentatives and neared a peaceful settlement. If that approach had been given a chance,we would not be talking about more than 5 million people killed in the DRC conﬂict today.

8.In a troubling way, these repeated contradictions appear to be underpinned by an apparentpractice of selective justice and double standards. If former Liberian President Charles Taylor isincarcerated for crimes of war, including trading in blood diamonds, and Sudanese PresidentBashir is a pariah due to suspicions of genocide crimes, then something is wrong whenInternational Network for Truth and Reconciliation in Central AfricaRéseau International pour la Vérité et la Réconciliation en Afrique Centrale

President Kagame, who is under similar suspicions as both Taylor and Bashir, is regularly fetedat international functions and bestowed with numerous distinction awards. In 2009 alone, hewas the recipient of many international awards; only less than a year after a UN Expert Reportout in December 2008 blamed him for recruiting child soldiers in DRC, funding and arming theCNDP rebel army of renegade General Laurent Nkunda, and accused his army of massiverapes of girls and women. Something is terribly wrong when the UN contradicts itself inResolution 955 of November 8, 1994where it has granted the ICTR (International CriminalTribunal for Rwanda) full authority to prosecute all crimes committed from January 1, 1994 toDecember 31, 1994 and yet has excluded from prosecutorial process the April 6, 1994 shootingdown of President Juvenal Habyarimanaʼs aircraft - the one single incident that everyoneagrees ignited the Rwandan genocide.

9.Allowing President Kagame to shine among world leaders follows in the same line ofcontradictions by the international community. To date, only Spanish Prime Minister José LuisRodriguez Zapatero has refused to shake hands with this suspected criminal. It is beyondcomprehension how Kagame is allowed to chair the UN Millennium Development Goals projectwith the kind of criminal allegations weighing against him. This is quickly becoming aninteresting case of unprecedented character laundering, where a President facing these kindsof accusations is assigned lofty roles, showered with royal trappings including red carpetreceptions, caviar meals and chandelier galas, all in an obvious attempt to shield him fromprosecution. A majority of Rwandans are none too impressed by such a spectacle which is aﬂagrant perpetuation of impunity.

10.Two major controversies have erupted to the fore in the wake of this report. The ﬁrst iswhether some of the crimes committed by President Kagameʼs RPF army in the DRC doamount to genocide. Wikipedia deﬁnes “genocide” as“the deliberate and systematicdestruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group”.Article 2 of the1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime ofgenocide (CPPCG)provides a more legal deﬁnition of genocide as "anyof the following actscommitted with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, anational, ethnical, racialorreligiousgroup, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm tomembers of the group; deliberately inﬂicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bringabout its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent birthswithin the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group”.By eitherdeﬁnition and from available evidence of what happened inside Rwanda starting October 1,1990 and in the refugee camps in Zaire, an overwhelming majority of Rwandans have no doubtwhatsoever that the RPF army committed the crime of genocide against the Hutu ethnic group.Hutu populations in the provinces of Byumba and Ruhengeri to the North, and of Kibungo to theeast were decimated by the RPF army through ethnic cleansing operations primarily targetingmale members, including young children. Upwards of 80% of all Hutu women in these areashave been rendered widows. Thatʼs why Rwanda truly needs its own UN Mapping Exercisereport. There are many harrowing inside stories and eye witness accounts of people whotrekked unimaginable distances on foot inside Rwanda and the entire Zairian territory ahead ofan advancing RPF army, each time hoping to run as far away from the killing army as possible,only to be overtaken and mercilessly butchered, gunned down, or drowned in Kisangani, TingiTingi and other places, or Mbandaka in Western Zaire, simply because they were Hutus.Kagame can dismiss the allegations against him all he wants, but facts are stubborn things.

11.The second controversy surrounds President Kagameʼs threat to pull his army from UN PeaceKeeping operations in Darfur if the Mapping Exercise report is not watered down to remove anysuggestion of genocide by the RPF army. This is typical brinkmanship tactics Kagame has usedthroughout the conﬂict. But in a twist of irony, the threat unmasks Kagame as a selﬁsh and cold-hearted hypocrite who couldnʼt care less about peace and does not give a damn (to use his ownexpression) about peace-keeping operations. If President Kagame had some humanity in himInternational Network for Truth and Reconciliation in Central AfricaRéseau International pour la Vérité et la Réconciliation en Afrique Centrale

and genuinely cared about peace, why should he make the people of Sudan suffer bywithdrawing his army simply because of his legal problems, which they have nothing to do with?In April 1994, then rebel leader General Kagame dispatched his aides Claude Dusaidi andCharles Muligande to New York and Washington at the height of the killings to request the UNto stop its military intervention in Rwanda (http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=18540). But itʼs funny today, except itʼs tragic, how he blames the UN for notintervening in Rwanda to stop the genocide when he knows heʼs the one who told them to stayaway. The cold-hearted man, who couldnʼt care about peace for his own people, certainly willnot care about peace for the Sudanese, especially when his hold on power seems in peril. Itwould be deeply unsettling if the UN in one way or another caved in to the blackmail gambit ofthis President who is over-taken by his inglorious past.

12.The combativeness with which President Kagame is ﬁghting the allegations against himmakes one think he has something to hide, knows heʼs guilty, and is scared. If he had a clearconscience, had nothing to fear and really believed in his innocence, he would welcome his dayin court as a chance to exculpate himself. This is the same man who has ferociously resistedthe idea of an international independent inquiry into the assassination of his predecessor,President Juvenal Habyarimana, on April 6, 1994, preferring to insist that Habyarimana waskilled by Hutu extremists from within his inner circle. But if he really believes in his innocence,why hasnʼt he agreed to such an inquiry which Hutus in the opposing camp have requestedrepeatedly - if only to clear his name from any suspicion?

13.In ﬁnal analysis, the UN report of the Mapping Exercise is in many respects a vibrant andtranscendent testimony to, and vivid reminder of, the cohesiveness and enduring spirit ofmankind in the face of evil. Its over-arching message, which will reverberate for many years inthe halls of power across the globe, is that so much blood in the Great Lakes region of Africacould not have been spilled in vain, and no matter how very cunning and entrenched evil mayseem to be sometimes, even after 20 years of evidence destruction, intensive lobbying,evasions and stone-walling, truth and justice will always triumph. Whether itʼs the army thatengaged in the extermination or those on the receiving end, those who made the painstakinggathering of evidence, risked their lives or endured threats during the inquiry process, theexecutives who made the tough decisions, the authorities who will meticulously adjudicate theﬁnal legal dispositions of this report, or the rest of humanity who welcome the report, we all feela collective sense of ﬁnality that justice has ﬁnally arrived, and both Rwanda and the DRC willmove forward in serenity and “build a better future where impunity has no place”, to quote Ms.Navanethem Pillay. It is entirely possible that during military operations “Umoja Wetu”, “Kimia I”and “Kimia II” in DRC, RPF criminals were able to return to their previous crime scenes and hada chance to dispose of all incriminating evidence, namely through the un-earthing and burningof bodies from mass graves. No matter. Crime of this scale and magnitude couldnʼt bealtogether concealed, and ultimately truth is prevailing. But one thing and one thing only, willhelp make the entire Great Lakes region of Africa become whole again: the UN must ensurethat the same crime meets the same punishment regardless of the suspects, whether itʼs in1993 or 2003, or any time before, in between, or after.Peace to Rwanda, the DRC, the Great Lakes region of Africa, and the world.Paul Rusesabagina

President of the Coordination committee – DIRHI InitiativeCC:Barack Obama, U.S. PresidentMr Herman Van Rompuy, Président de l'Union EuropéenneJean Ping, African Union PresidentPope Benedict XVI, RomeArchbishop Rowan Williams of Canterbury, LondonNicolas Sarkozy, President of FranceDavid Cameron, U.K. Prime MinisterJosé Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, Prime Minister of SpainSteven harper, Prime Minister of CanadaU.N. Permanent Security Council Members (all)Hillary Clinton, U.S. Secretary of StateMs. Navanethem Pillay, UN Commissioner for Human RightsThe Secretary General, East African Community Secretariat,Nancy Pelosi, Speaker, U.S. CongressHarry Reid, Majority Leader, U.S. SenateSecretary General Salil Shetty, Amnesty InternationalExecutive Director Kenneth Roth, Human Rights WatchExecutive Director Maja Daruwala, Commonwealth Human Rights InitiativePresident and CEO Louise Arbour, International Crisis GroupMedia Outlets

Report of the Mapping Exercise documenting the most serious violations of human rights

and international humanitarian law committed within the territory of the Democratic

Republic of the Congo between March 1993 and June 2003;

Due ofﬁcially out OCTOBER 1, 2010