Category Archives: KHS

There is No Christian Genocide in Nigeria | Jerm Warfare

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PD Lawton with Jerm Warfare : I discuss the role of insurgencies/ low-intensity wars on the African continent and how the media use perception modification to keep eyes off reality.

Source: UK Column News and UK Column

There is No Christian Genocide in Nigeria | Jerm Warfare

25 June 2026

P.D. Lawton argues that conflicts like Boko Haram are synthetic, Western-backed insurgencies designed to keep African states weak while corporations extract minerals cheaply — She cites the PMC Executive Outcomes, which routed Boko Haram in four weeks before it was dismissed so the insurgency could continue. She links this to a Kissinger-era destabilisation doctrine, flags the UK–Rwanda deal as to have funded Kagame’s Congo operations, and sees hope in the Alliance of Sahelian States (Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger), where military governments reclaim their mineral wealth and infrastructure, to include a neglected continental railway project.

 

Spain Revives War Crimes Case Against Gen. Kayumba: What It Means for Rwanda & DRC

British Financial Empire, KHS, Rwanda

Source: Africa Habari

Spain Revives War Crimes Case Against Gen. Kayumba: What It Means for Rwanda & DRC

22 October 2025

Spain has reignited a war crimes investigation against General Kayumba Nyamwasa, a former Rwandan military commander and close ally of President Paul Kagame, who now lives in exile in South Africa. The Spanish National Court issued international and European arrest warrants in July 2025, accusing Nyamwasa of orchestrating killings of Spanish nationals and civilians in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo following the 1994 genocide. Once a key figure in the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), Nyamwasa fled in 2010 after a falling out with Kagame and has survived multiple assassination attempts. The case, rooted in universal jurisdiction, seeks justice for victims like aid workers and priests, though it faces obstacles due to Rwanda’s non-cooperation and political support from Western allies. This revival tests international accountability amid Rwanda’s modern progress and regional tensions.

KHS: Kagame and the West: The Hidden Truth Behind Congo’s Invasion and Plunder

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please read caption of video below

Source: Africa Flashes

Kagame and the West: The Hidden Truth Behind Congo’s Invasion and Plunder

23 August 2025

The truth is uncomfortable — but it always finds its way out. For decades, Paul Kagame has justified his military incursions into the Democratic Republic of Congo by claiming he was chasing “armed groups” crossing into Rwanda. Yet testimonies and serious investigations tell a different story: these claims are nothing but political pretexts to cover a long-standing project — controlling eastern Congo and exploiting its vast resources.

This powerful narrative dismantles the lies used since 1996 to rationalize Rwanda’s invasion of Congo. Kagame has always claimed he needed to “hunt down militias” or “protect his territory,” but no solid evidence has ever proven large-scale offensives from Congo into Rwanda.

The reality is that the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), once victorious in Kigali, deliberately planned a regional domination strategy with the backing of Western powers. Joseph Kabila was installed in Kinshasa, while the Congolese state was deliberately weakened, paving the way for resource plunder. This testimony also shows how the conflict was more than “ethnic.”

After independence, Rwanda experienced a genuine social revolution, where the Hutu majority gained access to education and political rights, ending centuries of feudal Tutsi aristocracy. But in 1990, with the invasion of the RPF (backed by Uganda and the West), that revolution was reversed. Tensions often portrayed as ethnic were in reality political struggles — between a majority that refused to return to serfdom and an elite determined to reclaim absolute power. Western media played a crucial role in shaping the narrative.

In the U.S. and Europe, the press painted a picture of “dark crowds with machetes,” an image straight out of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, while ignoring the organized killings with heavy weapons, rockets, and military strategy. This framing absolved foreign powers, shielding the role of those who financed and armed Kagame’s forces. But behind the propaganda was the deeper motive: Congo’s natural resources.

Cynthia McKinney, former U.S. congresswoman, revealed how in 1996 she boarded a plane chartered by a Canadian mining company at the exact moment Rwandan and Ugandan armies invaded Congo. Mining corporations were already signing contracts with Kabila, securing access to coltan, gold, cobalt, and cassiterite. Spanish and Canadian court cases later uncovered mountains of evidence: massacres, looting, fraudulent mining deals, all linked to Kagame’s war machine. This was not just a “resource war.” It was a full-scale imperialist war. The U.S., U.K., and later France all backed the operations. Their goal? Push out rival influences, dismantle the Congolese state, and maintain control over one of the most mineral-rich regions on earth.

The multinationals — often registered in Toronto or New York — were only the front. The real actors were the Pentagon, the White House, and the National Security Council, orchestrating imperial operations under the cover of “humanitarian” justifications. This documentary exposes that reality: Congo was not only the victim of local militias, but of a global system of exploitation where Kagame acted as a loyal enforcer for foreign powers. The result? A weakened state, millions of displaced civilians, over six million dead, and the looting of Congo on a scale unseen in modern history.

KHS: Rwanda: 25 Years On, U.S. Taxpayers Paying Millions for Homeland Security’s Sham ‘Genocide Fugitive’ Trials in Boston

British Financial Empire, History Modern, KHS, Rwanda,

re posted from                           GLOBAL RESEARCH

Rwanda: 25 Years On, U.S. Taxpayers Paying Millions for Homeland Security’s Sham ‘Genocide Fugitive’ Trials in Boston

Jean Leonard Teganya on Trial

By Keith Harmon Snow
Global Research, April 08, 2019
Conscious Being Alliance 5 April 2019

On 6 April 1994, the Hutu presidents of Rwanda and Burundi, their top military staff and six French crew members were assassinated when surface-to-air missiles shot down the Rwandan presidential jet on approach to Kigali airport. It is now well established that the assassination plot that decapitated the Hutu-led governments was executed by Rwanda’s now president and strongman-for-life, then Major General Paul Kagame, commander of the terrorist Tutsi-Hima army that invaded Rwanda from Uganda. 

Now, 25 years later, while Kagame and the Rwanda genocide industry commemorate the 25th anniversary of the so-called 100 days of genocide, U.S. taxpayers continue to pay millions of dollars for yet another bogus asylum show trial targeting another genocide survivor and fugitive from the terrorist Kagame regime.  Meanwhile, reporting on the trial in federal court in Boston, Massachusetts, the Boston newspapers have not challenged the vested-interests of their quoted sources or the machinations of the Department of Homeland Security and its Immigration & Customs Enforcement.

Habyarimana Plane Wreckage-2.jpg

The wreckage of the presidential Mystere Falcon airplane, shot down on approach to Kigali airport on 6 April 1994, at rest after air-to-surface missiles caused it to crash into the presidential compound.  Photo by Cranimer, New Vision newspaper, Kampala, Uganda.

Jean Leonard Teganya, 46, is a wanted man who has spent much of his adult life trying to start over and recover from the atrocities he survived in Rwanda.

Teganya was a medical student who volunteered at the hospital in Butare, Rwanda in the spring of 1994, treating the sick and wounded when no doctors or nurses were available (due to the large numbers of casualties).

Mr. Teganya was also a victim of the violence in 1994, rescued by fellow students after being attacked by an armed militia in Butare. He fled Butare around 20 June 1994, after killings intensified in the region in parallel with the arrival of the Rwandan Patriotic Army.

In June of 1994 Mr. Teganya fled Rwanda during the mass exodus of some 2 million Rwandans to neighboring countries. Mr. Teganya ended up in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) at Nyakavogo, a (mostly) Hutu refugee camp that in September of 1996 was attacked by Paul Kagame and the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA) in violation of international humanitarian law.

A trial in a federal court in Boston commenced against Jean Leonard Teganya on 11 March 2019. Photographs of the scars of his wounds were shown to the Boston jury by the attorneys from the public defenders office that are representing him.

Witnesses for the prosecution, flown in from Rwanda for the trial in Boston, swore under oath that Mr. Teganya wore the hats, shirts and scarves of the ‘extremist Hutu’ parties. Prosecution witnesses described in great detail the insignia that was on Mr. Teganya’s hat: a machete and tool. He helped commit genocide, the U.S. prosecutors and immigration agents in Boston said, then tried to claim asylum.

“‘The defendant had a problem,’ Assistant US Attorney Scott L. Garland told a jury in US District Court in Boston during opening arguments in the trial against Teganya,’ reported the Boston Globe.  ‘His problem was that his application for asylum would be denied if the US found out what he had done in Rwanda, because persecutors cannot claim asylum.’”

More than two weeks of hearings later, witnesses for the defense described Mr. Teganya as an amicable, quiet man devoted to helping other people. They described an intelligent, sensitive and caring fellow student who did not participate in party politics. More than 15 witness stated under oath that Jean Leonard Teganya never wore the signature clothing of the more radical Hutu political parties.

Where and how were the Rwandan prosecution witnesses to Mr. Teganya’s alleged crimes identified and who identified them? These are some of the pivotal questions that an ICE agent on the witness stand at Mr. Teganya’s trial was unable or unwilling to answer with conviction.

Did the ICE agent commit perjury?

Hutu, Death Agents, Have Becomes Its Victims

As the cataclysm unfolded in Rwanda in 1994, the western media reported from behind the RPA lines. The RPA narrative became the mainstream establishment narrative (that remains the predominant one): Tutsis as victims, Hutus as killers.

When the United Nations High Commission for Refugees special rapporteur Robert Gersony reported on the RPA’s widespread killing of scores of thousands of Hutu inside Rwanda, the report was squashed: all Hutus were killers, all Tutsis were victims. Gersony went silent and stayed silent.

As a survivor of the mass atrocities and genocide that occurred in his home country of Rwanda during the civil war, Jean Leonard Teganya was one of millions of innocent non-combatant Rwandans uprooted and driven from his homeland.

Forced to flee at the age of 21, from one country to another, he was for all practical purposes a fugitive from injustice (at the hands of the RPA), forced to survive or perish under the constant nagging memory of the horrors that he witnessed and the threat of arrest and persecution by the current regime in Rwanda.

His real crimes? He is a Hutu. He is an intellectual. He is a survivor. He had a U.S. government issued work permit and (for over two years) he was working at a prestigious university.

Mr. Teganya persevered in finding a new home, building a new life, raising a family.

And the worst crime of all? Jean Leonard Teganya was on the path of gaining asylum in the United States of America.

When president Paul Kagame and his Directorate of Military Intelligence in Rwanda learned that Mr. Teganya was legally employed as a laboratory technician at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge Massachusetts, and that Mr. Teganya was about to gain legal U.S. residency status through the formal immigration process, they set about manufacturing a case against him.

The RPA slaughtered hundreds of thousands of unarmed non-combatant Rwandans–mostly Hutu women, children and elders–and also uncountable Congolese citizens during the Rwandan and Ugandan invasion of Zaire in 1996 and 1997.

Read complete article here

Source: https://www.globalresearch.ca/rwanda-25-years-on-u-s-taxpayers-paying-millions-for-homeland-securitys-sham-genocide-fugitive-trials-in-boston/5673791

 

KHS: The US Sponsored “Rwanda Genocide” and its Aftermath

British Financial Empire, DRC, History Modern, KHS, Rwanda, Uganda,

re posted from                          GLOBAL RESEARCH

The US Sponsored “Rwanda Genocide” and its Aftermath

Psychological Warfare, Embedded Reporters and the Hunting of Refugees

By Keith Harmon Snow
Global Research, April 12, 2008
12 April 2008

An investigation has uncovered an asylum system scandal where bogus Rwandan “refugees” infiltrate the U.S. and U.K. and work as undercover agents to hunt down critics of the Rwandan dictatorship and legitimate refugees and drag them back to Rwanda. This is yet the latest revelation on how the dictatorship in Rwanda manufactures and exports terrorism using an ideology of genocide and how the West supports terrorism by backing its Rwanda proxy. Meanwhile, business in Rwanda is booming and the criminal networks of the Kagame military machine continue to plunder the blood-drenched Congo.

In October 1990, the Ugandan army and the Rwandan Patriotic Front/Army (RPF/A) led by Major General Paul Kagame invaded Rwanda.1 This action set in motion a course of history that determined the fate of millions of innocent people in Central Africa.

By July 1994, the RPF completed its coup d’etat and consolidated its power in Rwanda. The government of Paul Kagame has since then maintained political power and manipulated public sympathy by promoting a highly politicized ideology of genocide.2

After more than 14 years of systematic disinformation about Rwanda there exists a collective ignorance about what really happened in Rwanda and who is responsible. The so-called “Rwanda Genocide” is one of the most widely misunderstood events in contemporary history, and not because the evidence is lacking or because the truth is obscured by butchery.

According to the official story, extremist Hutus in the government and military committed an orchestrated and pre-planned genocide against the Tutsi minority from April 6 to about July 16, 1994. In this mythology, some 800,000 to 1.2 million Tutsi were butchered with hoes, axes, and machetes, over the now infamous “100 days of genocide.”

Anyone who challenges the official story is branded a ‘genocide negationist’ or ‘genocide revisionist’ by the Kagame regime, and they are castigated as ‘killers of remembrance.’3

“Within Rwanda, legislation prevents anyone from questioning the official historical record. Although the constitution already forbids denial of the 1994 killings, the Rwandan government has stepped up moves to combat ‘genocide ideology’. […] A new law is in the making, aimed at criminalizing all ideas that might provoke ethnic division. Under the law, children below the age of 12 will be sent to a rehabilitation centre for a year if found guilty.”4

The real story seems to be that the RPF were the killers to a far greater extent, the majority of the victims were Hutus, and the numbers of dead during those 100 days were far less. The final insult to truth comes in the upside-down assertion that the RPF “stopped the genocide by winning the war.” Also, the RPF typically killed everyone in its path: Major General Paul Kagame did not trust any Tutsis who stayed in Rwanda after pogroms that created the Tutsi exile community prior to the Habyarimana government (1973-1994) and Tutsis were also targeted by the RPF.

Even those experts on “genocide in Rwanda” who do not contest the official story will attest to the myriad complexities that surround accusations and counter accusations about victims and perpetrators in post-1994 Rwanda.5 Under the new power structure there were strong motivations to accuse the stigmatized Hutus of crimes that were never committed.

continue reading HERE: Source:

https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-us-sponsored-rwanda-genocide-and-its-aftermath/8657

KHS: The Emancipation of the Rwandan People

British Financial Empire, History before 1900, History Modern, KHS, Rwanda,

re posted from                           KEITH HARMON SNOW

Keith Harmon Snow’s Speech During the GREX International Convention in Paris 2023

GREX: The Rwanda Government in Exile

The Emancipation of the Rwandan People

Paris, France
2 December 2023
Keith Harmon Snow

“Until the lion tells the story, the hunter will always be the hero.”
African Proverb

This African proverb aptly sums up the reasons for the Western world`s contemporary (mis-) understanding of Rwandan history and events in Central Africa.

The pre-colonial era was no picnic for Hutus. The so-called ‘history’ of Rwanda told by the Tutsi monarchist historian Alexis Kagame (1912-1981) was the authorized history of the Tutsi monarchy and at its base it was as dishonest as the stories Americans have always told about Cowboys and Indians, or Israel’s stories about the Palestinians, or the stories that the former CIA station chief Larry Devlin told about the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, or the stories that the Paul Kagame regime and it`s propagandists tell about the first president Gregoire Kayibanda and the HUTU Revolution.

We have to examine the falsification of African history carefully, because history is not dead, it is also part of the present. The roots of all the contemporary violence in Central Africa can be traced through the violence of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF). This includes all the lies, and disinformation.

So, it is necessary to understand the depth of these lies and the manipulation that the RPF-Inkotanyi has engaged in.
I will give a few examples of how the RPF has controlled and manipulated information and how this information has spread like the cancer of the RPF itself.

The RPF has successfully inculcated the lie that the founders of the Hutu Social Movement and the events of the 1960s were part of the Hutu plan to exterminate the Tutsis. This is patently false.

For example:
Most genocide scholars in the West (USA, Canada, & Europe) and almost every book they have produced about genocide lists the Bahutu Manifesto as one of the first indications that the Hutu wanted to exterminate the Tutsis. However, let us recall that it was the “Mise au Point” issued by the Counseil supérieur du pays set the tone for the Bahutu Manifesto that was published after. The Counseil supérieur du pays was a Tutsi monarchist council.

In February 1957, in anticipation of the United Nations’ fourth triennial visit to Ruanda, scheduled for the fall, the Counseil supérieur du pays, stacked with monarchist Tutsis, issued a manifesto that situated Ruanda’s problems in a black-white racial context and completely dismissed the Tutsi Apartheid against the Hutus.

In response, in March 1957 nine Hutu intellectuals published the Bahutu Manifesto, a liberation tract that very respectfully challenged Tutsi supremacy and called for radical reforms. This was not a call for genocide or a precursor for genocide in any way.

The Bahutu Manifesto criticized “anti-colonial nationalism” by the elite Tutsis and praised colonialism for protecting the Hutu masses from what would have been even worse in the absence of the colonists.

The response of the Tutsi aristocracy was an increasingly violent militarist revival born out of Tutsi entitlement, intransigence and supremacy. The Tutsi aristocracy portrayed themselves as victims, as an oppressed and superior people descended from heaven and born to rule over the lesser Hutus.

The Tutsi monarchists were abusive, punitive and unrelenting, and they fought tooth and nail to preserve the social order, and this was a social order that relied on absolute force, violence and the enslavement of the Hutus. Let`s call this what it is: TUTSI FRAGILITY (like white fragility) where even the tiniest challenge to Tutsi power and the monarchist supremacy was considered an outrageous injustice and an offense to the Mwami (Tutsi king).
The Tutsi monarchists responded to the Bahutu Manifesto with a reactionary, counter- revolutionary, call-to-arms. They wanted blood. They began a war of words that soon led to attacks and even assassinations of HUTU leaders.

In the days immediately following Mwami Mutara’s death in 1959, armed bands of Tutsi and Twa roamed central Rwanda attacking Europeans and European property. A Belgian agent was wounded by a Hutu mob officered by Tutsi, while Twa commandos hunted down another Belgian agent, a known Hutu sympathizer, who escaped when Belgian reinforcements arrived by accident. Attacks also occurred against a pro-Hutu Catholic newspaper and other ‘targets.’
Tutsi plans were executed with amazing speed. In September 1959, Twa commandos serving the monarchist Tutsi Union Nationale Rwandaise (UNAR) party assaulted the Hutu leader Joseph Gitera: the news spread like wildfire through the population.

On 27 September Gitera’s moderate APROSOMA party issued a communiqué that described the Tutsi people as “exploiters by nature, xenophobic by instinct, and communist by need, as manifested by the UNAR party.”
In hindsight, it is quite clear that the description of the monarchist Tutsi people in this communiqué was profoundly prescient; meanwhile, addressing the crimes of the Tutsis in the 1959- 1968 era remains rather taboo.
It was true: the monarchist Tutsis and UNARists were out of their minds with vengeance, xenophobia and hate. It is exactly what we saw—and what we see—from Paul Kagame and the RPF 25- 30 years later. So, who, exactly, set the stage for the 1994 genocide of the Tutsis in Rwanda? It was the extremist Tutsis.

It is time for change in Rwanda.

The famous Belgian ‘White Father’ of the Catholic Church, Monsignor Andre Perraudin, is almost always portrayed in academic texts (and contemporary accounts that revisit Rwanda`s history) as a Hutu sympathizer whose support for the Hutus confirms his role as an evildoer and Tutsi hater. These claims do not hold water.
Any accurate portrait of Monsignor Perraudin would properly define him as perhaps one of the world`s most important and first liberation theologists. This is why Paul Kagame and the RPF attacked the Catholic Church.

Andre Perraudin saw with his own eyes the violent and intransigent nature of the monarchist Tutsi supremacy. A thorough examination of Monsignor Perraudin’s statements and actions has to take into account the force and violence of the Tutsi Monarchist institution.
Monsignor Perraudin’s experiences in Switzerland during World War II led him to declare that “[t]his [UNAR] tendency resembles strongly the ‘national socialism’ that other countries have known, and which have caused them so much grief.” To Andre Perraudin, the Tutsis behaved like the NAZIs from World War II.

Also, in 1959, an extremist Tutsi leader, Gratien Sendanyoye, authored an incendiary Tutsi warrior epic poetry tract that called for military mobilization and labeled Hutu leader Joseph Gitera a traitor.

Another example is the attack against Dominique Mbonumutwa. The RPF narrative and many academics suggest that this was the “spark” that ignited the attacks by Hutus against Tutsis in 1959 and in the years that followed. That is a twisted interpretation of the truth.

There were many provocations and attacks and assassinations—both attempted and successful—committed by the Tutsi extremists, and their agents or loyal subjects, that preceded the attack against Dominique Mbonumutwa. ( Dominique Mbonumutwa was the first president of Ruanda, for nine months, but only in an interim capacity, and Gregoire Kayibanda was the first Prime Minister, both elected at an emergency (limited) public forum on 28 January 1961. Gregoire Kayibanda was the First President ( of the First Republic) of Rwanda following the elections of 6 October 1961)

The establishment narrative about ‘genocide in Rwanda’ portrays the Tutsis as victims from the late 1950’s forward to today. There are also many examples where the pre-colonial era depicts the Tutsi monarchies as the great benefactors of the Hutus. This is the extremist Tutsi historiography, comparable to the hunter’s version of the Lion hunt.

These accounts ignore the Tutsi terror campaigns of the independence era (1958-1963) and the decades that followed (1963-1990). The Tutsis are almost universally portrayed as a mistreated people who were undeservedly dispossessed of state and country. This portrayal of the Tutsis as victims, the narrative which subsumes all others from 1959 forward, was inculcated by the elite Tutsis and their Inkotanyi.

After their flight into exile, which, we must of course mention, was as often by choice as not, the Tutsi elites called their UNAR armed guerrillas Inyenzi—a term that represented their pride in their ability to attack at night, hit and run, inflict damage, terrorize the people and the country, and retreat by day. It was also a term meant to invoke terror in the population. We have to remember, too, that many of the monarchist Tutsis CHOSE exile over participation in the First Republic, and that not every Tutsi in exile supported the Inyenzi.
Every Inyenzi attack was a provocation and the Inyenzi and their leadership KNEW that Hutu would retaliate against interior Tutsis. The RPF also knew that every attack would result in the death of more Tutsis. The Inyenzi didn`t care. The RPF didn`t care. In fact, we now know that Paul Kagame and the English-speaking RPF Tutsis didn`t care about the French-speaking Tutsis who never left Rwanda (in the 1959-1968 era). In fact, Paul Kagame hated them, considered them traitors, betrayers, and both killed them directly and facilitated their killing through the RPF military advanced and the RPF infiltration of the Interahamwe.

The monarchist Tutsis tried to KILL the First Republic. They did everything they could, knowing that thousands of people would be injured, killed, or uprooted from Ruanda.
The Inyenzi also joined the Lumumbist and Mulele and Simba rebellions in the Congo. This is interesting, and it is just one of many details that are profoundly relevant to understanding the true historiography of Ruanda-Urundi and Congo. It is imperative to examine the Belgian role in the decolonization crises in both Congo and Ruanda-Urundi. It is complex, but such things are often distilled down to soundbites or gross caricatures of reality that serve the extremist TUTSI ‘victims’ narrative.

There is an unwritten story that needs to be written under the title THE EMANCIPATION OF THE HUTU PEOPLE or maybe A PEOPLE`S HISTORY OF Rwanda.

With the Civil Rights movement in full swing in the United States in the early 1960s, and anti- colonial resistance and liberation struggles all over the world, Ruanda-Urundi was a very unique situation. It was easy for the extremist Tutsis to sell their victimization to the rest of the world, merely pointing at the Belgian occupiers and declaring themselves a subjugated and enslaved people. Well, it was true, and it wasn`t.

And that is the nature of this extremist Tutsi fascism, and that is what exists in Rwanda today.

It`s time for a change in Rwanda.

The terms Inkotanyi and Inyenzi symbolized the mythology of supernatural powers that were inculcated and bestowed upon the Tutsi and their Mwami. The Tutsi extremists knew exactly what effect the use of these terms would have on the masses of Hutus and petit Tutsis, both in the revolutionary era (1959-1968) and the Civil War era (1990-1994).

Inkotanyi, Inyenzi, Union Nationale Rwandaise (UNAR), Rwandese Alliance for National Unity (RANU), the Rwandan Patriotic Front, the RPF’s Directorate of Military Intelligence in Rwanda today—this is the face of Tutsi Supremacy and terror in Rwanda and Congo.
It was the extremist Tutsi elites who set Rwanda on a genocidal path. The elite Tutsi and RPF narrative omits all mention of the terrorism orchestrated by the Tutsi elites.

This is the hidden history of genocide in Rwanda.

The Hutu and petite Tutsi people will never forget.

Paul Kagame is a terribly sick man. A tortured man. All the pain and sorrow inflicted on him and his family, as refugees, must have taken a toll on him that he never recovered from. Later, 1980-1985,he joined Yoweri Museveni and participated in the bloody campaigns of the National Resistance Movement/Army in the Lowero Triangle in Uganda. He was rewarded with a high post in the new Museveni regime, a post where he is said to have committed horrible atrocities in the new Ugandan state.

In his rise to immortality, Paul Kagame was never afforded a chance to rescue his Self and recover his true nature, his true Self. Paul Kagame, the man, is a discombobulation of a human being who never found his way to having his fractured and discombobulated Self reconstituted and reintegrated to become a whole and complete human being. The effects of the multiple traumas suffered by Paul Kagame—as a child, in the refugee camps, as a soldier—shattered his psyche. There was no therapy to help him reintegrate his shattered Self and no mentor who helped him find a moral compass.

The effects of trauma of the kind that Paul Kagame must have suffered are devastating. In the language of psychology, Paul Kagame was clearly stricken with multiple psychological disorders. Trauma scrambles the brain and lodges itself in the muscles and tissues of the body (this is known as Reichian armoring). We can imagine the gears of Paul Kagame`s brain spinning out of control—and this is no joke or understatement of the diagnosis—all haywire and random and on the verge of explosion, or maybe we should more accurately envision the inner workings of his mind as a broken spring, whammied and warped and kerbanging around like a Jack-in-the-Box trapped inside the tight confines of his skull. The man suffers from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), antisocial personality disorder, paranoia, delusions of grandeur, and he seems to thrive on vengeance and hatred and the commission of horrible violence. Antisocial personality disorder is known as sociopathy, a mental health disease where a person consistently shows no regard for right and wrong and ignores the rights and feelings of others. This is exactly what we see in Paul Kagame.

Paul Kagame’s brains are obviously scrambled and disfigured, like a machine that has exploded or a bouncing, broken spring, or a ghetto that has been bombed.
Paul Kagame has shielded his wounded Self from all normal human feelings; he has shielded his Self from showing any compassion; he long ago lost any and all moral conscience-ness. Indeed, it requires a whole new vocabulary to even begin to describe the deranged man that is Paul Kagame, or the scale and nature of the horrible crimes he has committed.

And this fatal wounding of Paul Kagame`s Self goes back to the earliest years of baby Paul’s childhood, the wounding of the once innocent child that was born—as most all normal healthy children are—a perfect manifestation of the great Creator, of God, or Mohammed, of Shiva, or the Great Cosmic Mother, or Jesus… whomever you believe that the creator might be.

We need not focus on Paul Kagame, however, because he is only a symptom of the problem, albeit the most dangerous, social kind.
THE ATROCITIES OF THE RPF ARE UNSPEAKABLE.

There is, I suppose, one last thing to say about the immortalization of Paul Kagame, because the world has immortalized this… man. In the minds of his supporters he is like Moses, perhaps—though he is an armed and vengeful Moses—who metaphorically parted the sea and led “his people” out of the refugee camps. Or maybe they see him as their own Odysseus, the hero of Homer’s Greek legend, the Odyssey.

For anyone whose eyes are open, and whose heart is true, for anyone capable of grasping concepts of responsibility and integrity and compassion, anyone capable of feeling them, Paul Kagame’s immortality will always be seen more in the image of Mephistopheles, or Hannibal Lector, or some amalgamation of Homer’s Odyssean beasts, Scylla and Charybdis, the Sirens and the Hydra all in the character and behavior of one man.

I see no point here in once again cataloging the crimes of the RPF-Inkotanyi, as others have done this already, and as I have, the tortures, rapes, massacres, incineration, suffocation and other horrible violence.

I first met the RPF in Kampala, in 1991. Soon after that I crossed the frontier from Karambi (Uganda) to Kasindi (Zaire) and bicycled to Goma. Sixteen years later, I retraced my route on a motorcycle with a young Congolese driver. Departing Goma on the road to the frontier with Uganda, we were detained at gunpoint by kadogo that had been kidnapped by the Rassemblement congolais pour la democratie (RCD)—one of Paul Kagame and Yoweri Museveni’s many bloody militias operating in eastern Congo. I say kidnapped because these were children, and their lives were stolen from them, and they carried deadly Kalashnikovs bigger than their vocabularies. They took me prisoner, and if the commander of their camp had understood my mission in Congo (to document the crimes of the Rwandan Patriotic Front) they would have shot me then and there.

Coming and going from Central Africa between 2000 and 2011, I documented and catalogued the war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide committed by the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) and Ugandan People’s Defense Forces (UPDF) from 1996-2003 all across the Congo-Zaire. Since then Ihave also documented some of the UNSPEAKABLE crimes committed by the RPF in Byumba and Ruhengeri in 1991, 1992, and 1993. The RPF regime is still committing crimes in Congo and it is a repressive regime in control of Rwanda. Millions upon millions of people have suffered and millions more died.

Where was the international press when the RPF was wiping the people of Byumba off the face of the earth between 1990 and 1995? Well, journalists visited the RPF headquarters in Mulindi (Byumba) but they didn`t “see” anything, and they didn`t question the “silence” or the terror or the “emptiness”. Many of these journalists were embedded with the RPF, and they have only told the story of the RPF “victors” and they keep on telling this story even though it is clearly false.

It`s time for these Western journalists to tell the truth. We know who they are.

It is one thing to do something, it is another thing to cover it up.

It is also critical, at this moment in time, to recognize and to admit, that the Tutsi monarchists and the RPF demagogues were not—and are not—the only extremists. Hutu extremism is also a very real problem.

Rwandans need to unite.

The problems of Rwandan regionalism—the conflicts between Kiga and Nduga, for example, between northerners and southerners—need to be put aside. People on all sides need to come clean.

The colonial system, the ethnicization of the language of Hutu and Tutsi, the Rwandan Civil War of 1990 to 1994, these are the things that have the Rwandan people divided and conquered.

Justifications and lies are indicative of a psychological complex, a pathology that the individual uses to protect himself, to armor himself or herself against the acknowledgement of his own pain and suffering. It is one thing to do something, it is another thing to deny it.
When someone commits an injustice against another person, or even against another being, they have committed an injustice against themselves. When we dehumanize another, when we debase them, we are also dehumanizing ourselves, and debasing ourselves.

Proclamations about JUSTICE and LIBERTY and TRUTH and FREEDOM and UNITY and declarations of TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION are all very wonderful sounding. We can see what Paul Kagame has done with these, and what a huge facade they are in the context of modern Rwanda 1994 to the present day. If these terms are to have any meaning, beyond their deployment as empty patriotic slogans, there needs to be something else included in the mix.

Until we forgive, we do not love. And more than anything else in the world, love is in need of love today.

And so, I will close by saying that we must both understand and never forget our true history. It is only through this understanding, this truth, combined with integrity, forgiveness and love, can we hope to break the cycle of violence against others, and ourselves. This is a very personal responsibility for each and every one of us.

Keith Harmon Snow
Paris, France
December 2, 2023

December 2, 2023

Behind the Numbers: Untold Suffering in the Congo

British Financial Empire, DRC, KHS, Rwanda, Uganda, ,

re posted from                                        GLOBAL POLICY FORUM

Behind the Numbers: Untold Suffering in the Congo

By Keith Harmon Snow and David Barouski

ZNet
March 1, 2006

The British medical journal Lancet recently took greater notice of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) than all western media outlets combined. A group of physicians reported that about 4 million people have died since the “official” outbreak of the Congolese war in 1998 (1). The BBC reported the war in Congo has claimed more lives than any armed conflict since World War II (2). However, experts working in the Congo, and Congolese survivors, count over 10 million dead since war began in 1996—not 1998—with the U.S.-backed invasion to overthrow Zaire’s President Joseph Mobutu. While the western press quantifies African deaths all the time, no statistic can quantify the suffering of the Congolese.

Some people are aware that war in the Congo is driven by the desire to extract raw materials, including diamonds, gold, columbium tantalite (coltan), niobium, cobalt, copper, uranium and petroleum. Mining in the Congo by western companies proceeds at an unprecedented rate, and it is reported that some $6 million in raw cobalt alone—an element of superalloys essential for nuclear, chemical, aerospace and defense industries—exits DRC daily. Any analysis of the geopolitics in the Congo requires an understanding of the organized crime perpetrated through multinational businesses, in order to understand the reasons why the Congolese people have suffered a virtually unending war since 1996.

Some people have lauded great progress in the exposure of illegal mining in DRC, particularly by the group Human Rights Watch (HRW), whose 2005 report “The Curse of Gold” exposed Ugandan officials and multi-national corporations smuggling gold through local rebel militias. The cited rebel groups were the Nationalist and Integrationist Front (FNI) and the People’s Armed Forces of Congo (FAPC). The western companies targeted by HRW were Anglo-Ashanti Gold, a company headquartered in South Africa, and Metalor, a Swedish firm. The HRW report failed to mention that Anglo-Ashanti is partnered with Anglo-American, owned by the Oppenheimer family and partnered with Canada-based Barrick Gold described below (3). London-based Anglo-American Plc. owns a 45% share in DeBeers, another Oppenheimer company that is infamous for its near monopoly of the international diamond industry (4). Sir Mark Moody-Stuart, a director of Anglo-American, is a director of Royal Dutch/Shell and a member of U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan’s Advisory Board (5). The report also suppressed the most damning evidence discovered by HRW researchers—that Anglo-Ashanti sent its top lawyers into eastern DRC to aid rebel militia leaders arrested there.

Several multinational mining companies have rarely if ever been mentioned in any human rights report. One is Barrick Gold, who operates in the town of Watsa, northwest of the town of Bunia, located in the most violent corner of the Congo. The Ugandan People’s Defense Force (UPDF) controlled the mines intermittently during the war. Officials in Bunia claim that Barrick executives flew into the region, with UPDF and RPF (Rwanda Patriotic Front) escorts, to survey and inspect their mining interests (6).

George H.W. Bush served as a paid advisor for Barrick Gold. Barrick directors include: Brian Mulroney, former PM of Canada; Edward Neys, former U.S. ambassador to Canada and chairman of the private PR firm Burston-Marsteller; former U.S. Senator Howard Baker; J. Trevor Eyton, a member of the Canadian Senate; and Vernon Jordan, one of Bill Clinton’s lawyers (7).

Barrick Gold is one of the client companies of Andrew Young’s Goodworks International lobbying firm. Andrew Young is the former Mayor of Atlanta, and a key organizer of the U.S.-Uganda Friendship Council. Young was chosen by President Clinton to chair the Southern Africa Enterprise Development Fund in October 1994. Goodworks’ clients—or business partners in some cases—include Coke, Chevron-Texaco, Monsanto, and the governments of Angola and Nigeria (note weapons transfers from Nigeria cited below). Young is a director of Cox Communications and Archers Daniels Midland—the “supermarket to the world” and National Public Radio sponsor whose directors include Brian Mulroney (Barrick) and G. Allen Andreas, a member of the European Advisory Board of The Carlyle Group.

Barrick Gold’s mining partners have included Adastra Mining—formerly named America Mineral Fields (AMFI, AMX, other names), formerly based in Hope, Arkansas, Bill Clinton’s hometown. Adastra had close ties with Lazare Kaplan International Inc., the largest diamond brokerage firm in the U.S., whose president, Maurice Tempelsman, has been an advisor on African Affairs to the U.S. Government and has been the U.S. Honorary Consul General of the Congo since 1977 (8).

Maurice Tempelsman accompanied Bill Clinton during his African tour in 1998, and he sails with the Clintons off Martha’s Vineyard. He serves on the International Advisory Council of the American Stock Exchange, and is a director of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, a “scientific” front for his offshore diamond mining—raking the seabed into oblivion.

Adastra also purchased a diamond concession on the Congolese-Angolan border from the Belgian mercenary firm International Defense and Security (1998), and currently has cobalt and copper concessions in Congo’s Katanga (Shaba) province (9). Adastra is a member of the Corporate Council on Africa, along with Goodworks, Halliburton, Chevron-Texaco, Northrop Grumman, GE, Boeing, Raytheon, Bechtel and SAIC—the latter two being secretive intelligence and defense entities involved in classified and supra-governmental “black” projects.

In April 1997, Jean-Ramon Boulle, a co-founder of Adastra (then AMFI), received a $1 billion dollar deal for mines in the Congo at Kolwezi (cobalt) and Kipushi (zinc) from Laurent Kabila’s Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Zaire (ADFL) before they were even officially in power. The ADFL were even allowed to use Boulle’s private jet (10). Meanwhile, directors of Adastra are also former directors of Anglo-American (11). Other Clinton-connected founders of Adastra include Michael McMurrough and Robert Friedland—both involved in shady, criminal, offshore businesses in Indonesia, Africa, Burma and the Americas (12).

Barrick sub-contracts to Caleb International, who has also partnered with Adastra in the past. Caleb is run by Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni’s half-brother Salim Saleh, the former acting General of the UPDF. When Uganda withdrew from the Congo in 2002 following a so-called “peace” agreement, Saleh began training paramilitary groups to act as Ugandan proxies to sustain the flow of minerals into Uganda (13).

Salim Saleh is a shareholder in Catalyst Co. of Canada, who has a 100% interest in Uganda’s Kaabong gold fields (14). He is a part owner of Saracen, a private military company created by the mercenaries-for-hire firm Executive Outcomes (15). The U.N. Panel of Experts on Illegal Exploitation of Congo’s Mineral Resources recommended Salim Saleh be put on a travel ban and have his assets frozen, but nothing was done.

Recent interventions by the armed U.N. peacekeeping mission in the Congo (MONUC) have concentrated on disarming or eliminating the Forces for the Democratic Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), a rebel group that opposes Rwanda, and the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a rebel group that opposes Uganda. (Note that the Rwanda military has partnered with its erstwhile “enemies”—the FDLR—when necessary to secure resource plunder while Uganda has its own pattern of complicity with its “rebel” enemies. Rebel alliances are to perpetually shifting.) The removal of these rebel groups will effectively clear the eastern Congo for large–scale multi-national mining. The Mai-Mai militia, whose stated goal is “to protect Congo from Rwandan and Ugandan invaders,” has committed documented human rights abuses, yet they appear to be off the agenda for MONUC. The Mai-Mai operate in northern Katanga (Shaba) province and in the Kivus.

Katanga’s militias and racketeering are connected to criminal networks of businessmen, including Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe, Billy Rautenbach, John Bredenkamp, and Marc Rich. U.S. diamond magnate Maurice Tempelsman has profited from Katanga concessions since the Kennedy era. Lawrence Devlin, the old CIA station chief of Lubumbashi under Eisenhower, maintained Tempelsman’s criminal rackets with direct ties to Zaire’s former President Mobutu, and was subsequently employed by Tempelsman (16).

The Forrest Group has the longest history of exploitation in the Congo, gaining its first mining concessions before the Congo declared independence from the Belgians. The group, which includes the Ohio-based OM Group, has numerous concessions in Katanga (Shaba). Chairman George Forrest is the former chairman of the Congo’s state-owned mining firm GECAMINES, and owner of the New Lachaussee weapons manufacturing company.

Coltan ore is widely used in the aerospace and electronics industries for capacitors, superconductors and transistors after it is refined to tantalum. The U.S. is entirely dependant on foreign sources for tantalum, an enabling technology for capacitors essential to aerospace weaponry and every pager, cell phone, computer, VCR, CD player, P.D.A. and TV. U.S. import records show a dramatic jump of purchases from Rwanda and Uganda during the time they were smuggling tantalum and cobalt out of the Congo.

Sony dramatically increased their importation of coltan following the release of their Playstation 2, while Compaq, Microsoft, Dell, Ericsson, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Nokia, Intel, Lucent, and Motorola are also large-scale consumers (17). Sony’s current Executive Vice-President and General Counsel Nicole Seligman was a former legal adviser for Bill Clinton through the D.C. firm Williams and Connelly, LLP, whose clients included Bill Clinton and Oliver North (18). Sony Executive Vice-President and Chief Financial Officer Robert Wiesenthal is a former banker with First Boston, a supporter of Refugees International’s “humanitarian” relief efforts at Rwandan refugee camps in Eastern Congo, just before the fall of Mobutu in 1995; Wiesenthal was also financial adviser to Cox Communications, OM Group, Time Warner and The New York Times (19).

Walter Kansteiner, the son of a coltan trader in Chicago, is the Assistant Secretary of State for Africa and former member of the Dept. of Defense Task Force on Strategic Minerals. Kansteiner’s speech at The Forum for International Policy in October of 1996 advocated partitioning the Congo (then Zaire) into smaller states based on ethnic lineage (20). Ironically, while the speech was given, Laurent Kabila and his ADFL were beginning their march to overthrow Mobutu with the aid of Rwanda, Uganda, and the U.S. (21). Kansteiner is a trustee of the Africa Wildlife Foundation—another euphemistic front for resource acquisition in Congo.

Bechtel, a U.S. aerospace & construction company, provided satellite maps of reconnaissance photos of Mobutu’s troops for the ADFL invasion of Congo in 1996; they also created infrared maps of the Congo’s mineral deposits (22). The Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF), led by Paul Kagame, the current Rwandan President graduate of the U.S. Army officers school at Fort Leavenworth, used Bechtel’s NASA maps to locate Rwandan Hutu civilians that fled the cataclysm in Rwanda in 1994. An estimated 800,000 refugees were hunted down and killed in the Congo’s forests (23). Bechtel’s friends in high places include former Secretary of State George Shultz (Board of Directors), former Secretary of Defense Casper Weinberger (Bechtel Counsel) and retired U.S.M.C. general Jack Sheehan (Senior Vice President), who is also a member of the Defense Policy Board at the Pentagon (24). Riley P. Bechtel is on the Board of J.P. Morgan (25). Bechtel’s Nexant Company is the prime contractor on the Uganda-Kenya pipeline project, believed to ultimately facilitate petroleum transport out of the Semliki Basin of Lake Albert.

The U.N. Panel of Experts named New England-based Cabot Co. for conducting unethical business practices (26). Cabot is one of the largest tantalum processors in the world. The current Deputy Director of the U.S. Treasury, Samuel Bodman, was CEO and chairman of the board for Cabot from 1997-2001 (27). Current Director John H. McArthur is a Senior Advisor to Paul Wolfowitz at the World Bank (28).

Private Military Contractors (PMCs) are also big business in Africa. Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton, helped build a military base near Cyangugu, Rwanda just next to the Congo-Rwandan border. “Officially,” Brown and Root was there to clear land mines, but instead housed mercenaries from Military Professional Resources Inc. (MPRI) who trained the RPF and Laurent Kabila’s ADFL for invasion of the Congo in 1996, and the Rwandan army’s re-invasion in 1998, after Laurent Kabila threw out the Rwandans, Ugandans, Bechtel and the IMF (29). The French intelligence service reported that U.S. Special Forces and mercenaries from MPRI participated in the murder of Rwandan Hutu refugees on the Oso River near Goma in 1996 and even claims to have turned over the bodies of two American soldiers killed in combat near Goma (30). The circumstances surrounding the unofficial recovery of these two U.S. soldiers remain very mysterious (31).

MPRI is based in Arlington, Virginia and is staffed and run by 36 retired U.S. generals. It is contracted by the Pentagon to fulfill the African Crisis Responsive Initiative (ACRI). This program includes the Ugandan military, and it supplied military training in guerrilla warfare to Ugandan officers at Fort Bragg, North Carolina in July 1996. During the invasion of the Congo in 1998, Ugandan soldiers were found with ACRI equipment while Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have implicated Ugandan battalions trained by ACRI in rapes, murders, extortion, and beatings of Ugandan civilians (32).

Executive Outcomes founder Tony Buckingham has established other Private Military Companies that operate around Africa. Buckingham’s Heritage Oil & Gas works closely with his PMC Sandline International to manipulate the petroleum options around Lake Albert, and is believed to have signed concession deals with warring armies and governments on both sides of the Uganda-Congo border. Branch Energy is another Buckingham affiliated company operating in the Great Lakes region.

Investigations of illegal weapons sales to Rwanda last year, in violation of the U.N. arms embargo on the region, have been hampered by the Rwandan government’s refusal to provide a list of serial numbers of the 5000 AK-47s delivered there. The shipping country, Bulgaria, also refused to provide serial numbers, and would only confirm that the weapons were sold legally to a non-embargo country, Nigeria, en route to Rwanda and DRC. The governments of Uganda, Congo, South Africa and Equatorial Guinea—a major U.S. petroleum protectorate—are equally culpable in supporting the clandestine arms sales to the region (33).

Weapons shipments arriving by boat from Tanzania, and the Government of Tanzania’s role in supporting war in DRC, are never questioned. This may have something to do with Barrick Gold’s mining licenses in Tanzania’s Masaai territories. Aircraft flying between Tanzania, DRC, and from Kenya, are allowed to do so without proper documentation, record-keeping or customs oversight.

Another shady “untouchable” arms dealer operating behind the scenes in the region is an Indian-American named Mr. Kotecha. Kotecha’s interests in South Kivu are substantial, and he is openly fingered as dealing in money laundering, arms, coltan and diamonds. After the first U.S.-sponsored invasion of the Congo in 1996, Kotecha is known to have repeatedly boasted of being the “United States Consulate” in South Kivu. Kotecha holds a U.S. passport and owns a mansion in California.

When an outspoken local defender of human rights working for a small NGO (Pascal Kabungulu of Heritiers de la Justice) was assassinated during the summer of 2005 in Bukavu, the alleged killers, including a local Congolese military commander, were identified but MONUC and the international “community” took no action. The killing revolved around his role in exposing the Congolese commanders’ involvement in contraband smuggling (which continues today).

A U.N. Panel of Experts in a forthcoming report will challenge many airlines and companies for undertaking illicit flights (illegal, secret, unregistered or falsely registered) into and out of DRC. One of many notable companies apparently connected to Victor Bout’s arms trafficking networks is Simax, an Oregon-based company using an address in Sierra Leone. However, the U.N. Panel of Experts has once again ignored certain western agencies—with histories of illicit activities—whose flights remain equally surreptitious and unaccountable. At the top of the list is the International Rescue Committee (IRC)—directors include Henry Kissinger —whose flights in and out of Congo, and internal flights to and from isolated airports in eastern DRC, are completely unmonitored by MONUC arms embargo inspectors. In Bukavu, for example, all light aircraft are subject to MONUC arms embargo inspections, but IRC flights are not within the MONUC mandate. As one MONUC Military Observer admitted, “The IRC should be subject to the same standards as everyone else; otherwise we have to assume they are shipping weapons, because they do not let us confirm they are not.”

Similarly, while the U.N. Panel of Experts have investigated and reported on certain illegal criminal networks and activities in Congo, they never attend to the top-level deals brokered behind closed doors by executives from Adastra, Anglo-American, the companies of Sweden’s Adolph Lundin (a close friend of George H.W. Bush), who have control of mining concessions in Lubumbashi, Kolwezi and Mbuji Mayi areas in the Katanga (Shaba) and Kasai provinces. U.S.-based Phelps Dodge is partnered in Katanga copper/cobalt mining projects with Lundin’s Tenke Mining. Phelps Dodge director Douglas C. Yearly is also a director of Lockheed Martin, and the World Wildlife Fund—partnered with USAID and CARE in “conservation”—read: acquisition—projects all over Congo while CARE’s “humanitarian” agenda is also funded by Lockheed Martin.

“Conservation” interests provide the vanguard of western penetration in Central Africa: USAID, WWF, AWF, and Conservation International lead the charge. Evidence from USAID cases all over Congo quickly contradicts all fanfare about USAID bringing “sustainable” or “community development” projects. Most notable are the Central Africa Region Partnership for the Environment (CARPE) and Congo Basin Forest Partnership (CBFP), two programs pressing hidden military, intelligence and economic agendas. Notably, National Geographic is involved in furthering the mythologies of conservation, democracy, community development, or the lip service paid to respecting and supporting indigenous people.

Some people have suggested the reason that there isn’t greater awareness and equitable intervention in the Congo is because “we simply don’t know what to do” to remedy the situation. However, it is fairly clear what needs to be done, the West is just unwilling to do it because of powerful economic and geopolitical reasons.

1. U.S. Military Training programs must have an oversight committee and total transparency. Western governments must end their hypocritical stance and ensure they don’t train any “rebel” or “dissident” groups, especially if they are against a democratically elected government (provided the elections weren’t fraudulent), even if the elected government isn’t politically aligned with the western ideology and/or economic ideals. To do otherwise would refute claims that the west is intervening to “spread democracy.”

2. In parallel with number 1, a committee must be set up to ensure the same doesn’t occur for the private military companies. As multinational corporations, these firms aren’t subject to obey laws of warfare as an established country’s armed forces are supposed to. The U.N. must pass resolutions mandating the World Court and International Criminal Court (ICC) to prosecute such corporations. Lastly, when such companies are exposed for conducting illegal activities, such as aiding coups or trafficking human slaves, the corporations who conduct these activities must be blacklisted from receiving government contracts, domestic or international, and the guilty individuals must be prosecuted (34).

3. In the arms arena, more substantial efforts must be created to intercept and prosecute “embargo busters,” illegal brokers, and arms sellers. Furthermore, those selling, transporting, brokering, funding, or wiring arms transactions for weapons specifically intended for children should receive the harshest of the penalties (certain “small weapons” are modified to reduce their weight to make it easier for a child to carry). Firms that participate in arms shipments, transport and/or the movement of the flow of the money generated from these sales with countries, people or organizations that are embargoed or act against national or international law should be held accountable for their crimes. Assets can be frozen, travel bans imposed, and all government and economic business ties with such firms severed. These penalties must also have an assurance of enforcement.

4. Debt relief is essential, but ways must be found to protect IMF and World Bank loans from being used for military expenditures. The motivations of World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz are suspect. Dr. Wolfowitz is a former Deputy Secretary of Defense under George W. Bush, a former ambassador to Indonesia under Ronald Reagan, a PNAC member, and dual citizen in Israel. Likewise, the World Bank and IMF must shift their policy of privatization as a stipulation for loan approval in order to stimulate business growth within the state instead of having the business sector growth be almost entirely from multinational corporations. The World Bank and IMF must also provide debt relief to the counties that need it most according to economic indicators. Some countries receiving debt relief, like Uganda and Rwanda, are among the biggest spenders of their loans in the military sector (35). It must be ensured that a majority of spending occurs on infrastructure and public services, and that this does not benefit the standard set of “embedded” western corporations. It must also be ensured the loan money is used in areas that need development the most. For example, in Uganda, the loan money Museveni has used for development has focused in the south in Kampala, the capital, and in Mbarra, his hometown. Meanwhile, the Acholi people, who always vote against Museveni’s party in the polls, are ignored and the situation in the Lira, Gulu, and Kitgum districts continues to deteriorate. In addition, individual countries must examine the aid they give to countries that spend a high percentage of capital on military, as well as commit human rights abuses. Lastly, debt relief doesn’t harm banks that gave the loans in the first place and collect on some of the interest rates, not to mention the American businesses that make profit on the privatized businesses as part of the loan deal. The debt is transferred to the taxpayers, so transparency is needed to insure that costs are also incurred by the firms granting the loans (if they want credit for their “humanitarian” debt relief).

5. Western countries must end the impunity for those responsible for looting minerals from Congo. Firms that purchase smuggled minerals, and/or purchase concessions from illegitimate rebel groups must be prosecuted. The World Court recently made a start by convicting Uganda and fining the government, but Rwanda, Burundi, Zambia, and Zimbabwe remain unaccountable for their direct pirating, as are the Western firms that purchased the minerals, and Western individuals supporting them. (The Kimberly Process, established with the support of academic and intelligence experts at Harvard University, is a perfect example of the gatekeepers policing their own gates: the huge, entrenched, but secretive interests like the Oppenheimer/DeBeers and Maurice Tempelsman owned companies are legitimized as dealers of “clean” diamonds; while the other, far less connected competitors and challengers of the status quo, including Congolese children sneaking into mines and being shot for “stealing” the diamonds off their own starving families’ former lands, are demonized as dealers of “blood” diamonds.)

6. The World Court and International Criminal Court must hold all military and civilian leaders—African, U.S., European—that are guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity accountable for their actions. The West must not be allowed to shield criminals from prosecution by virtue of their economic and political alliances with Western governments. Governments that harbor these criminals should be subject to prosecution. Economic sanctions may not be proper, as poor nations generally suffer severe civilian casualties as a result; specific involved individuals in government and the military must be held accountable.

7. “Peacekeeping” forces, in particular MONUC, must be examined to ensure that the mission is being conducted with the interests of promoting stability in the country. As illustrated, elements of MONUC have used the mission as a cover to further the agenda of the West and its corporate sponsors under the banner of “peacekeeping,” causing the death of civilians in the process: those responsible should be tried and prosecuted. It must also be ensured that the investigations don’t stop at individual soldiers or brigades committing crimes, but to examine the chain of command and their allegiances to uncover the motivations behind MONUC operations. There have been reports of MONUC troops looting ivory, gold, and animal skins in National Parks. Villagers say that they have seen murders occur right in front of MONUC soldiers and they didn’t act to prevent the killings (36). MONUC soldiers have raped Congolese women (37). When pro-Rwandan rebel leaders Laurent Nkunda and Jules Mutibusi, both war criminals wanted by the U.N., took over Bukavu by force in May 2004, MONUC provided them with weapons and vehicles. Nkunda himself has stated the head of MONUC, William Swing, personally gave him a telephone to use during the raid. (38)

8. The international media is completely silent on virtually every major issue of significance with respect to war in DRC—and the international and criminal networks behind it. Misinformation about Africa prevails due to a concerted effort by the mainstream media to blackout the truth. A boycott of key publications is imperative, and must include the most offensive: Boston Globe, Washington Post, Newsweek, Time, US News & World Report, USA Today, New York Times, the New Yorker (Conde Nast Publications), Harper’s, Atlantic Monthly (highly subsidized by Lockheed Martin and Northrup Grumman) and, especially, National Geographic.

9. The fog of war needs to be cleared away from so-called “humanitarian” and “human rights” programs, organizations and individuals currently aligned with the Western corporate enterprise. Notables in this category include: Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, CARE, USAID, Norwegian People’s Aid, International Crises Group, International Rescue Committee, Refugees International, the Genocide Intervention Fund, and many U.N. bodies, but especially UNHCR. Most of these agencies appear to exist merely to perpetuate their own survival. Doctors Without Borders also deserves scrutiny for their recent actions in DRC.

10. The peace and justice community remains unaccountable for its failure to take any significant actions to mitigate war in Congo and expose the true reasons behind it. A first step should be open up the spaces to alternative voices currently excluded by major social justice media venues. Second is to declare a total boycott on diamonds and gold, and an organized campaign to protest and economically castigate diamond stores where Lazare diamonds are sold. A third action is the commitment of meaningful funds—both from individuals and from organizations—to support the vibrant grass roots organizations and individuals working for human rights, women’s health, disarmament, education, food security, rainforest and environmental defense in Congo. Fourth, people need to break through their fear (inculcated by the western media) of taking action to help people in the Congo: there is no reason—except the unacceptable—that westerners cannot establish a “Witness for Peace” program situated in the Congo.

11. Rights groups with missions pertinent to Congo’s need must expand their missions to include Congo. Rape is endemic in the Congo: a source of psychological and physical trauma, it contributes to the spread of HIV, Ebola and other sexually transmitted diseases. Survivors often give birth to HIV positive children with no prospects for medical or financial help. This has lead to an insurmountable need for aid to care for the orphans. Mothers of children conceived of rape are often disowned by their village and families. Western feminist and women’s rights activists and organizations must get involved and provide resources for the victims of rape in Congo. Those responsible for rapes must be tried and punished as per the law if guilty. Indeed, evidence from rape cases in rural DRC shows that sexual violence is significantly reduced simply by holding military officers accountable for their troops’ actions, but this is not happening.

12. MONUC’s Radio Okapi is the lifeline of news in DRC today, but programming is largely comprised of U.N. programming. The United Nations needs to be pressured to open up the Radio Okapi network, eliminate the “fluff” pieces, and diversify and deepen its programming and reportage. As a simple example of how things could easily be improved in DRC, programs that sensitize the public o the issue of rape, and sensitize the military to the punishment for it, could easily be implemented; such programming is never considered.

13. The transitional government in Congo is comprised of military leaders and government officials who must be held accountable for their crimes. Like the individuals, organizations, corporations and governments that have supported them, all are responsible for crimes against humanity. The current profiteering in DRC is enabled by these key players, who hold the highest levels of the DRC government, and whose crimes remain hidden by the western press. The transitional government must not be allowed to appoint war criminals to cabinet or parliamentary positions, as well as local governor positions in the provinces.

References

(1) “Mortality in the Democratic Republic of the Congo: A Nationwide Survey.” Benjamin Coghlan, Richard J. Brennan, Pascal Ngoy, David Dofara, Brad Otto, Mark Clements, and Tony Steward. The Lancet, 7 Jan. 2006. Number 367 pp. 44-51

(2) “Thousands’ dying in DR Congo war,” BBC News, 6, Jan. 2006

(3) “Depopulation & Perception Management Part 2: Central Africa,” keith harmon snow. Pioneer Valley VOICE, Feb. 2001″; Congo: Capitalist Mineral Lust Fuels Bloodshed,” Direct Action

(4) “The Lost World War,” Erik Vilwar, Corporation Watch Newsletter, Issue 13, March-April 2003

(5) “Depopulation As Policy, or, How the Despair and Death of Millions of African People is Daily Determined by the Lifestyle of Ordinary Americans, in Small Town USA, With Nary a Word of Truth In the US Press, If Anything At All, And Why Most of Us Know Nothing About It, And Do Nothing To Stop It When We Do Know,” keith harmon snow, 2003

(6) Private interview, keith harmon snow, Bunia, 2005.

(7) “Central Africa: Hidden Agendas and the Western Press,” Pioneer Valley Voice, Keith Harmon Snow

(8) “Genocide and Covert Operations In Africa 1993-1999,” United States One Hundred Seventh Congress. Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights. First Session. 17 May 2001. comp. Centre for Research on Globalization.

(9) Ibid.

(10) “Stolen Goods: Coltan and Conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo,” Dena Montague, SAIS Review, vol. XXII no. 1 (Winter-Spring 2002); “Congo: Capitalist Mineral Lust Fuels Bloodshed,” Direct Action; “Congo: The Western Heart of Darkness,” Asad Ismi, The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives Monitor, October 2001.

(11) “Depopulation & Perception Management Part 2: Central Africa,” keith harmon snow, Pioneer Valley VOICE, Feb. 2001 .

(12) “Proxy Wars in Central Africa: Profits, Propaganda, and Luxury Goods for the White World—Pacification, Rape, and Slavery for the Blacks,” keith harmon snow, World War 3 Report, Issue No. 100, 19 July 2004.

(13) “Named and Shamed,” Ruud Leeuw.

(14) “Uganda, Sanctions, and Congo-K: Who is Who in Uganda Mining,” Africa Analysis, 5 June 2001.

(15) “Corporate Soldiers: The U.S. Government Privatizes Force,” Daniel Burton and Wayne Madsen.

(16) David Gibbs, “The Political Economy of Third World Interventions,” University of Arizona Press; and Wayne Madsen, “Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa, 1993-1999,” Mellen Press, 1999.

(17) “The Lost World War,” Erik Vilwar, Corporation Watch Newsletter, Issue 13, March-April 2003.

(18) “Sony Corporation of America: Executive Biographies,” Jan. 2006.

(19) “Proxy Wars in Central Africa: Profits, Propaganda, and Luxury Goods for the White World – Pacification, Rape, and Slavery for the Blacks,” keith harmon snow, World War 3 Report, Issue No. 100, 19 Jul. 2004

(20) “Genocide and Covert Operations In Africa, 1993-1999,” United States One Hundred Seventh Congress, Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights, First Session, 17 May 2001, comp. Centre for Research on Globalization

(21) “The U.S. (Under)mining Job of Africa”

(22) “Stolen Goods: Coltan and Conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo,” Dena Montague, SAIS Review, Vol. XXII, No. 1, (Winter-Spring 2002).

(23) “A Continent for the Taking: The Tragedy and Hope of Africa,” Howard French, 12 April 2005, Vintage, New York, NY.

(24) “The Exception to the Rulers: Exposing Oily Polititians, War Profiteers, and the Media That Love Them,” Amy Goodman, David Goodman, 2004, Hyperion Press, New York, NY.

(25) See: “Friends in High Places: The Bechtel Story.”

(26) “Stolen Goods: Coltan and Conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo,” Dena Montague, SAIS Review, Vol. XXII, No. 1, (Winter-Spring 2002); Named and Shamed, Ruud Leeuw

(27) “Rwanda’s Secret War: U.S.-Backed Destabilization of Central Africa,” keith harmon snow, 12 December 2004.

(28) “Proxy Wars in Central Africa: Profits, Propaganda, and Luxury Goods for the White World – Pacification, Rape, and Slavery for the Blacks,” keith harmon snow, World War 3 Report, Issue No. 100, 19 Jul. 2004.

(29) “The U.S. (Under)mining Job of Africa”

(30) “Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa, 1993-1999,” United States One Hundred Seventh Congress. Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights. First Session. 17 May 2001. comp. Centre for Research on Globalization.

(31) Private interview, keith harmon snow, eastern DRC, July 2005.

(32) “Corporate Soldiers: The U.S. Government Privatizes Force,” Daniel Burton and Wayne Madsen

(33) Confidential report, received, February 2006.

(34) “The Controversial Commando,” Pratap Chatterjee, 14 Jun. 2004; “CSC/DynCorp.” Corporation Watch; “Crossing the Rubicon,” Michael Ruppert, 2004, New Society Publishers, Gabriola Island, BC, Canada: p. 79-80.

(35) “The Use of Rwanda’s External Debt (1990-1994): The Responsibility of Donors and Creditors,” Michel Chossudovsky, Pierre Galand, 30 March 2004.

(36) “Rwanda’s Secret War: U.S.-Backed Destabilization of Central Africa,” keith harmon snow, World War Four Report, 12 Dec. 2004.

(37) “Proxy Wars in Central Africa: Profits, Propaganda, and Luxury Goods for the White World—Pacification, Rape, and Slavery for the Blacks,” keith harmon snow, World War 3 Report, No. 100, 19 Jul. 2004.

(38) “Report on Events in Bukavu, South Kivu: May 26 to June 9, 2004,” Network of Women for the Defense of Rights and of Peace

Source:

https://archive.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/congo/2006/0301numbers.htm

Roger Winter Was a Shadowy Figure at the Heart of the 1994 Rwandan Genocide

British Financial Empire, Burundi, DRC, History Modern, KHS, Rwanda, Uganda, ,

re posted from                          COVERT ACTION MAGAZINE

Winter operated as an intelligence agent under cover of the U.S. Committee for Refugees and served as a paid propagandist for the Rwandan Patriotic Front, a criminal organization that developed open-air crematoria to dispose of all the bodies of the people they killed.

Roger Winter Was a Shadowy Figure at the Heart of the 1994 Rwandan Genocide

By  Dr Jean-Marie Higiro

Jean-Marie Higiro

–

A person sitting in a chair<br><br>Description automatically generated
Roger Winter [Source: Photo courtesy of Jean-Marie Higiro]

Winter operated as an intelligence agent under cover of the U.S. Committee for Refugees and served as a paid propagandist for the Rwandan Patriotic Front, a criminal organization that developed open-air crematoria to dispose of all the bodies of the people they killed.

Much has been written on the Rwanda Crisis of 1990-1994. However, some questions pertaining to the role of humanitarian organizations remain to be explored. For example, what was the relationship between the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) and the United States Committee for Refugees (USCR)? What kind of support did the USCR provide the RPF?

To answer those two questions, I analyzed Roger Winter’s communications to international news media in relation to what I witnessed in Rwanda before April 1994.

Winter, who is suspected of operating as an undercover intelligence agent, was the head of the USCR. He was very close to RPF leader Paul Kagame and sponsored intellectual journals of the diaspora Tutsi that helped to mobilize support for their reconquest of Rwanda from Uganda in 1990, which triggered the conflict that culminated in the Rwandan genocide.

The RPF and the USCR

While in Washington attending the meeting of the Association of Banyarwanda Diaspora (USA) in August 1988, at no time did I realize that an invasion supported by the USCR and Uganda was in the planning and that it would turn upside down Rwanda and the region of the Great Lakes of Africa. I did not question the presence of Roger Winter, the USCR executive director, at the conference as I thought the organization he headed was fulfilling its role of assisting refugees.

In June 1988, when the president of the Association of Banyarwanda Diaspora (USA) announced the convocation of the International Conference on the Status of Banyarwanda Refugees in Impuruza no. 11, the Magazine of All Rwandans from Around the World, he briefly said;

“I would like to conclude my remarks by expressing my and the Association’s deep-felt gratitude and thanks to Mr. Roger Winter in his individual capacity and in his [capacity] as Executive Director for the United States Committee for Refugees. Those of you in Uganda and elsewhere may already know his efforts in documenting the terrible conditions you were in from 1982-1985. But what you don’t know is his daily contacts with the leaders of the American government in trying to get pressure to bear against Obote and his government because of his treatment of Banyarwanda in Uganda, and how invaluable his help has been in keeping us informed, in absence of a communication mechanism, about our people’s conditions in various countries, as well as sparing no effort to see that our conference is a success. We are eternally grateful to his efforts.”

At the conference, George Rubagumya introduced the most important guests: Winter, two diplomats from the U.S. Department of State (all white), a diplomat from the embassy of Uganda in Washington, D.C., and Jason Clay from Cultural Survival, Inc., a non-profit organization based in Boston.

Clay had authored a paper on refugees in southwestern Uganda. Rubagumya thanked Winter for providing coordination for the conference, such as airplane tickets, hotel accommodations for the participants, and the venue for the conference. He expressed his gratitude to the U.S. Department of State for sending two representatives, the representative of the embassy of Uganda who was also present, and Clay for his support to the activities of the Rwandan diaspora.

Then the representatives of refugees took the floor to describe the plight of Tutsi refugees in the host countries. The representatives of the Tutsi refugees in Uganda informed participants that they had an army capable of taking power in Kigali and asked for support and unity. They all spoke in Kinyarwanda. As people spoke, Winter moved around the room visibly annoyed, complaining loudly that there was no interpretation. I then wondered how the USCR would financially support refugees who were claiming to have an army.

A map of the country<br><br>Description automatically generated
[Source: Photo courtesy of Jean-Marie Higiro]

The USCR as the RPF Crisis Communication Center

In February 1995, the School of Public Health of the University of Illinois at Chicago convened a conference titled “Understanding the Crisis in Rwanda.” When I arrived at the conference room, I saw Winter there. He handed out documents prepared by the U.S. Committee for Refugees: Two of them were “A Selected Chronology of the Rwandan Crisis, April 5, 1994-September 30, 1994,” and “Genocide in Rwanda: Documentation of Two Massacres during April 1994.” A third contained a list of the composition of the RPF government headed by Prime Minister Faustin Twagiramungu.

On the cover of the documents the motto of the mission of the USCR read, “USCR is a public information and advocacy program of the American Council for Nationalities. Established in 1958, it encourages the American public to participate actively in efforts to assist the world’s refugees.” What puzzled me was the stated mission of the USCR and the support it gave to the RPF, an armed organization that had terrorized and massacred people in Rwanda. Winter did not deliver a presentation; instead, he sat there and did not even comment on presentations.

I became curious about Winter and tried to find out why he was there. I learned that the dean of the School of Public Health thought it was a good idea to organize a conference at which people knowledgeable about Rwanda could speak and answer questions from the public. A flyer was then sent out and somehow the Rwandan embassy in Washington, D.C., came across it and called the College of Public Health to ask whether Winter could attend. There was no objection.

A former Rwandan diplomat who served at the Washington Rwandan embassy after the RPF took power told me that while at the embassy between 1994 and 1996, Winter held meetings in his office with RPF representatives to discuss advocacy strategies to frame events occurring in Rwanda and later in Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), when Rwanda invaded that country in 1996. Winter made frequent visits to the Rwandan embassy, working closely with Joseph Mutaboba, the chargé d’affaires in Washington, D.C.

During my research I learned that Winter served as the shadow RPF ambassador and public relations agent in the United States of America before the RPF took power in Rwanda. That information led me to Winter’s communications to international news media.

I found one sound-bite from an interview he gave to Radio France International (RFI) and two articles he wrote, one appearing in The Washington Post and the other in The Globe and Mail (Toronto, Canada). They contained what I believe to be the talking points of his RPF advocacy campaign.

A “Suicidal” Invasion

The RPF invaded Rwanda from Uganda on October 1, 1990. On October 2, 1990, Winter told RFI:

“Those rebels were Rwandan refugees in Uganda who were mainly Tutsi. They were led by Fred Rwigyema, former deputy commander of the Ugandan army who had been demoted the year before under pressure from the Rwandan government which regarded him as dangerous because he was a Tutsi. The military attack was a suicidal gesture undoubtedly provoked by the refusal by Tutsi refugees to definitely integrate into Ugandan society.”

In July 1990 the representatives of the Rwandan government, the Ugandan government, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) signed an agreement on the peaceful return of the Tutsi refugees. Following the agreement the representatives of the refugees were scheduled to visit Kigali in October 1990 to assess the logistics of their return. The military invasion was not the only remaining option.

A group of men in military uniforms walking on a path<br><br>Description automatically generated
Paul Kagame and RPF invasion force. [Source: ar.inspiredpencil.com]

The Oppression of the Banyarwanda/Batutsi and the Search for a Homeland

In 1991, the USCR published a commissioned paper titled “Exile from Rwanda: Background to an Invasion,” written by Catherine Watson, a British journalist based in Uganda,

which advocated the legitimacy of the RPF invasion of Rwanda. The major theme was the oppression of the Banyarwanda, people who speak Kinyarwanda, particularly Tutsi in the region of the Great Lakes of Africa and their search for a homeland. The issue paper laid out the main grievance of the RPF which was the struggle for the right to return home.

The Perpetrators of the Assassination of President Habyarimana

In April 1994 Winter published an article in The Globe and Mail titled “Power, not tribalism, stokes Rwanda’s slaughter/To halt the bloodshed, Rwanda needs to carry out last year’s peace agreement and install a transitional government.” In this article Winter designated the perpetrator of President Juvénal Habyarimana’s assassination and the bloodshed that followed. He wrote:

“A privileged clique of extremist military and political leaders is ruthlessly determined to block negotiated reforms that would loosen their exclusive grip on power. They have demonstrated again in the past week that they are willing to kill members of their own ethnic group to achieve their own naked political ends.”

A person in a suit and tie<br><br>Description automatically generated
Juvénal Habyarimana [Source: britannica.com]

To Winter, there was one villain: “a privileged clique of extremist military and political leaders.” He did not mention that the RPF had blocked what he called the “negotiated reforms” by refusing the inclusion of the Coalition for the Defense of the Republic (CDR) in the national transitional assembly.

To establish credibility, he recalled his visit to Mulindi, the headquarters of the RPF. He wrote:

“I spent four days in northern Rwanda just a few days ago investigating the conditions of some 65,000 civilians who had spontaneously moved back into the RPF sector during the last few months. I had unhindered access to all territory controlled by the RPF—the same rebels who are now simplistically alleged to have killed the President as a prelude to a planned military attack. During my visit, rebel soldiers were not mobilized. They were clearly not preparing to launch a military offensive.”

Northern Rwanda comprised two zones: the zone occupied by the RPF and the demilitarized zone (DMZ). He had “unhindered access.” What did Winter see in northern Rwanda? He did not say.

I spent three months in DMZ of Byumba from June to August 1993 as a member of a joint commission comprising RPF and political parties’ representatives tasked with resettling internally displaced people (IDPs). I did not cross into the zone occupied by the RPF.

Commission members held meetings at the sub-prefecture of Kinihira. Here, the buildings had been looted; furniture, windows and toilet seats had been taken away. All the archives had been ripped off and destroyed. When RPF representatives were not present, some residents informed us of kidnappings and disappearances committed by the RPF. These residents thought we could do something to help. But our job was only to organize elections and to create an administrative structure through elections.

For our work, commission members rode together in a government-owned van. Even though we did not enter the zone occupied by the RPF, we reached its edge, for instance, at Miyove and Ngarama. At Miyove, we picked up and dropped off the RPF representatives in the morning and in the late afternoon. I remember that one day we went to hold a public meeting in Ngarama and, when we arrived at the site of the meeting, we were met by six kadogos, or child soldiers, who told us we could not hold a meeting there. So we left.

A documentary on the zone occupied by the RPF, produced in July 1992 by journalist Joseph Mudatsikira with RPF approval, showed the destruction of businesses, public buildings, records, and child soldiers. It showed that some residential homes built near main roads were occupied by the RPF and the entire northern Rwanda had been turned into a bush.

A person sitting on a bicycle next to a bear<br><br>Description automatically generated
Child soldier with his bicycle near Kabale, Commune Kiyombe, in northern Rwanda. RPF soldiers appear in the background. From the documentary titled Igihugu Mu Kindi, produced by Joseph Mudatsikira in July 1992. [Source: Photo courtesy of Jean-Marie Higiro]

What was the condition of the “65,000 civilians”? Winter did not say. There was a camp the RPF had set up at Gishambashayo in the commune of Kivuye. The RPF showcased it as a success and a paragon of its future administration. Westerners who traveled to the occupied zone to socialize with RPF representatives were driven there to meet its residents. A former resident said “abazungu,” or white people, were regular visitors. The camp was an open prison, an indoctrination and torture site. Did Winter not notice?

A group of people standing outside a building<br><br>Description automatically generated
From the documentary titled Igihugu Mu Kindi, produced by Joseph Mudatsikira in July 1992. Destruction of the Banques Populaires building of Kiyombe. RPF soldiers appear in the foreground. [Source: Photo courtesy of Jean-Marie Higiro]

Peace and Business Investments

Winter argued that the rebels were not responsible for triggering the resumption of the war. He contended that “the rebels were, in fact, preparing for peace. The RPF was holding an ‘investors seminar’ to attract business investments into the country in expectation that peace was at hand. The day after I left—two days before the assassination of the President—the RPF held a fund-raising picnic for almost 700 civilian guests. It seems to me in retrospect that the RPF was clearly not an army on alert for a major operation, as some would allege. I am confident that I would have seen signs if it had been.”

To him, the rebels were peace-loving people whose interest was implementing liberal economic policies attractive to investors. I interviewed a person who attended this type of seminar at Mulindi, the RPF headquarters; this participant told me that RPF supporters from around the world met there to raise funds for war. At the gathering, a wealthy Rwandan woman married to a European bought a large photograph of Rwigyema for $4,000. Businesspeople who attended and gave money to the RPF were rewarded with government contracts after the victory of the RPF. This participant mentioned to me Manasse Karangwa and Venuste Rwabukamba, two of the businesspeople who were there. Winter was right to speak of investment as these businesspeople were rewarded with government contracts after the RPF victory.

The Replication of the Jewish Holocaust

Winter published an article in The Washington Post on June 5, 1994, describing a trip to Rwanda. What he saw was the replication of the Jewish Holocaust:

“From May 15 to May 18, I traveled extensively inside the country and managed to reach locations previously unseen by the outside world since the massacres began on April 5. What I found there was the detritus of genocide.”

He added,

“During my 300 miles of travel inside a country I have known well and visited regularly for years, I saw that thousands of families died trapped and cowering in village churches, to which they had instinctively fled for protection.”

Winter then described what he saw in a church in the village of Musanze:

“Men, women, children, and infants of ethnic Tutsi origin were rounded up and forced to strip. Then they were slaughtered—by bullets or machetes rather than by gas showers—leaving behind in a scattered heap their clothes, their shoes, their water buckets and their straw sleeping mats as a final testimony that they ever existed. I sifted through the strewn personal effects, examining private letters, family photos and identity cards for clues. It seemed as if the inanimate items were desperately trying to cry out, much like the piles of shoes and spectacles left behind by Jewish genocide victims that are now on display at the Holocaust Museum in Washington.”

Winter’s outrage is understandable. What he saw was savagery and perpetrators should be condemned and severely punished. However, there is another savagery he did not see. When the Hutu militia Interahamwe killed Tutsi at a location and withdrew from it fearing the RPF military advance, the RPF killed Hutu and even Tutsi who had stayed and piled up the bodies of those killed on top of the bodies of those who had already died and called international media to see. That is exactly what happened at Kabuga and Nyarubuye.

At Kabuga, the RPF killed villagers and put the bodies on the top of the bodies of those killed by Hutu militias, then called a journalist from the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) to see. When RPF soldiers arrived at Nyarubuye, the Hutu Interahamwe militia had killed Tutsi and political opposition members. RPF soldiers then killed every Hutu they could find and threw them on top of the pile of the bodies killed before their arrival.

Before the assassination of President Habyarimana, the RPF implemented a scorched-earth strategy in northern Rwanda, and I saw its impact during the three months I spent in the DMZ. Had Winter been a true humanitarian, he would have seen the devastating consequences of this strategy and denounced it. Given his friendship with rebel leaders, the catastrophe that befell Rwanda in 1994 could have been averted.

Winter described the burying of the dead this way:

“The killers in Rwanda, however, are discovering what the Nazis discovered half a century before them: The truth of this ultimate crime against humanity can be difficult to keep buried. Random arms and legs, demanding attention, have somehow managed to pop up through the loose soil of Rwanda’s newly dug grave pits.”

Similar images remain engraved in my memory as I saw them in Ngarama in March 1993. The RPF broke the cease-fire on February 28, 1993, and advanced toward Kigali. A Radio Rwanda reporter visited a site in Ngarama where there had been a massacre and filed a report attributing it to the RPF. It sparked outrage from pro-RPF Rwandan human rights organizations, political parties, and private print media. The Neutral Military Observer Group (NMOG) sent to Rwanda to monitor the cease-fire organized a visit to the site of the massacre. I participated in the visit.

While at the site of the massacre, I walked around counting the human skeletons buried in anti-erosive trenches of a banana grove of less than one acre. Animals had unearthed the corpses and eaten them up. I could see that the killers had tied their arms behind their backs using improvised dried banana grove tree skins before hitting them on the head with an object smashing the forehead. I could see the ropes and the broken skulls.

Animals had unearthed their bodies and eaten portions. I could see the bones of their legs. I counted more than 70 skeletons. A nauseating smell emanating from a mud house with a corrugated iron roof caught my attention. People had been locked up in it and a grenade had probably been lobbed at them and shredded them. Near the house, there was a pit from which the fingers of a dead person were protruding. The entire site was macabre.

During his trips to Rwanda, Winter never saw or heard about the massacres or killings the RPF committed in northern Rwanda. Probably Winter never heard of either a crematorium the RPF set up in the National Park of Akagera or the massacres it committed using the strategy of calling for public meetings and killing all the attendees.

If Winter had really had free access to the territory occupied by the RPF, he would have talked to people living in the DMZ and the occupied zone and learned about akandoyi and agafuni, two killing methods used by the RPF. Akandoyi consists of tying the arms of a person behind the back and using agafuni, or a small, used hoe, to crush the forehead.

The RPF choreographed his visit and did not see dead bodies on his itinerary in northern Rwanda. He never heard about grenades and mine explosions and assassinations that were frequent across Rwanda before April 1994. If Winter had taken time to visit northern Rwanda with an open mind, his perspective might have changed.

Erasing the Memory

Winter remarked that “the selectivity of the killings is also evident in the patterned destruction of buildings. In locations where thousands died, many homes and businesses of Tutsi. Merely burning those homes was apparently not enough: Many Tutsi residences are utterly flattened, as if the killers were trying to erase all memory of the inhabitants. These are the calculated acts which, one by one, have pushed out of existence up to a half-million Tutsi in less than two months.”

Mudatsikira’s documentary shows that the RPF destroyed records in all of northern Rwanda at the communes’ offices, health centers, credit unions and Catholic parishes. Images from the documentary suggest that the RPF’s intent was to erase the past and the people. People’s homes located away from the road were looted and destroyed as residences close to the road housed RPF soldiers and its political cadres. Keep in mind that the war had displaced Hutu and Tutsi of northern Rwanda and forced them to survive together in the IDPs. Why did Winter not see what I saw or what Joseph Mudatsikira saw? Did he really have free access to northern Rwanda before April 1994?

A group of sheep in a field<br><br>Description automatically generated
Destruction of the Archives at Commune Cyumba. From the documentary titled Igihugu Mu Kindi, produced by Joseph Mudatsikira in July 1992. [Source: Photo courtesy of Jean-Marie Higiro]

Three Awards and Tribute

The RPF government awarded Winter “two national heroes’ medals, namely the National Liberation Medal (Uruti) and Rwanda’s Campaign Against Genocide Medal (Umurinzi) in 2010” (The New Times, January 31, 2023).

A person in suit shaking hands with another person Description automatically generated
Roger Winter receives decoration from Paul Kagame on the 16th anniversary of the RPF’s victory. [Source: whale.to]

In pre-colonial Rwanda, the king awarded “uruti” to a warrior who killed 21 enemies in war. “Uruti” was the highest medal a hero received. To prove his heroism, the warrior collected the testicles of his enemies as the war unfolded.

Today, Rwanda awards uruti to an individual who participated in what the RPF calls the war of liberation, the war it waged from 1990 to 1994. Symbolically, Winter deserved it for having killed 21 enemies. As to “umurinzi,” it belongs to a new category the RPF created. It awards it to an individual who participated in fighting against genocide.

Winter died in January 2023. The pro-Rwandan government newspaper Igihe wrote,

“Roger Winter was a friend of Major General Fred Gisa Rwigyema, and he held conversations several times with him about refugee problems. Thereafter he accepted to publicize them and be the advocate on the Rwandan refugee problem that seemed to have been forgotten.” (Author’s translation from Kinyarwanda into English)

The New Times, another mouthpiece, memorialized him this way:

“Throughout the RPF armed struggle, and during the genocide, you communicated frequently to the press, organized briefings for American civil society, Washington think-tanks, policy makers and intelligence; and appeared before the United States Congress on many occasions to share your expert knowledge of the situation in Rwanda.

You generously provided facilities for members of the RPF in the United States to meet and disseminate much-needed information.

In the 100 days of genocide, at the risk of your own life, you visited the RPF liberated zone several times, were the first foreigner to arrive at sites of mass massacres such as Nyarubuye and continued to act as ardent and vocal eyewitness to what was happening.

You mobilized journalists from major American media to visit Rwanda and report on the crisis and rallied humanitarian organizations to assist survivors.”

The excerpts leave no doubt that, since the early 1980s, Winter participated in the planning and the prosecution of the war. The war was a USCR project which came to fruition with massacres and genocide.

Prevention, Not War

Tutsi refugees whom Winter and the USCR supported comprised the descendants of the monarchists who ruled Rwanda until 1959 when a Hutu elite emerged with grievances and overthrew it. The monarchy and Belgian colonizers had subjected the majority of Hutu, but also poor Tutsi, to exploitation. Not all Tutsi were power holders. Most of the Tutsi remained in Rwanda after 1959 and accepted to co-exist peacefully with Hutu. Tutsi aristocrats who left for exile organized without success armed incursions from Burundi, Congo, Tanzania, and Uganda to re-take power. These armed incursions sparked reprisals from Hutu against innocent Tutsi.

In Uganda, the descendants of the pre-colonial royal families, the clans producing queen mothers, chiefs of armies, chiefs of provinces and sub-chiefs, joined the National Resistance Army (NRA) of Yoweri Museveni with the goal of acquiring military skills and building a military arsenal to invade and re-take power in Rwanda. Before invading Rwanda from Uganda, they had already shown brutality and cruelty. Major Paul Kagame, the RPF commander, had served as the chief intelligence of Uganda where he had earned the nickname Pilate because of his glaring cruelty.

Extreme violence in Rwanda resulting from the RPF invasion was predictable in a country where pre-colonial monarchist culture valued and glorified violence. Manhood meant preserving dignity (agaciro) and respect (icyubahiro), killing enemies (kwica umwanzi), cutting off the testicles of an enemy at war (gushahura) to receive military awards, instilling terror (kugira igitinyiro), taking revenge (guca inzigo), extinguishing an entire family or lineage (kuzimya umuryango), looting property (kunyaga), and abducting women and girls to turn them into servants and sex slaves. Although Belgian policies outlawed these monarchist practices, they did not erase them. Massacres and counter-massacres, grenades and mine explosions, scorched-earth strategy, extortion, and population displacement that marked Rwanda’s painful period of 1990 to 1994 should be analyzed through the enduring monarchist culture of violence.

Conclusion

The preparation of a war against Rwanda with Winter’s and the USCR’s knowledge and participation stood in contrast with advocacy for refugees. Winter served as the bridge between the Washington power establishment and an armed group. Through him, the RPF conveyed its narratives about the war it waged in Rwanda to the U.S. press, think tanks, politicians, and intelligence agencies. His partisan advocacy and participation in the prosecution of the war contributed to shaping and misleading public opinion in the United States.

References

Nick Gordon, “Return to Hell,” Sunday Express, April 21, 1996.

Alice Kagina,” Roger Winter, recipient of Rwandan heroes’ medals, dies at 80,” The New Times, January 31, 2023.

Ntabareshya Jean De Dieu, “Roger Winter wari inshuti y’u Rwanda yitabye Imana,” Igihe. February 1, 2023.

George Rubagumya, The International Conference on the Status of Banyarwanda Refugees, Washington, D.C., August 17-20, 1988, in Impuruza 11.

Catharine Watson, “Exile from Rwanda: Background to an Invasion,” USCR issue paper, February 1991.

Roger Winter, “Power, not tribalism, stokes Rwanda’s slaughter/To halt the bloodshed, Rwanda needs to carry out last year’s peace agreement and install a transitional government,” The Globe and Mail (Toronto, Canada), April 14, 1994.

Roger Winter, “Journey into Genocide: A Rwandan Diary,” The Washington Post. June 5, 1994.

Source: Covert Action Magazine

https://covertactionmagazine.com/2025/03/06/roger-winter-was-a-shadowy-figure-at-the-heart-of-the-1994-rwandan-genocide/