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2024-04-09 Africa Subsaharan
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African Ukraine. Unlearned lessons from the Rwandan genocide 30 years later
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Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
by Viktor Vasiliev
[REGNUM] On April 7, early in the morning, Rwandan President Paul Kagame lit a flame of remembrance at the Gisozi memorial. Five thousand guests, including more than thirty heads of state, government, former presidents and representatives of international organizations, gathered around a black stage with a large illuminated tree in the center. Rwanda marks the 30th anniversary of the genocide of the Tutsi, an event significant not only for the African continent, but also for the entire world politics. This is confirmed by the composition of the guests. Current and former leaders include Congolese President Denis Sassou Nguesso and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, European Council President Charles Michel, former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, and former US President Bill Clinton, who led the White House during the Rwandan genocide.
Continued from Page 3
Western media specifically emphasize that the invitation to the celebrations was not sent to Vladimir Putin.
| What had Russia to do with the horrible events at that time? |
Congolese leader Felix Tshisekedi and Burundian leader Evariste Ndayishimiye, with whom Kagame, for obvious reasons (more on this below), have tense relations, are also considered persona non grata.
FRENCH WINE
The Rwandan leader confirmed his reputation as a tough and principled politician.
During the celebrations, reproaches were voiced against the international community for its indifference during the genocide of the Tutsi. “ It is the international community that has failed us all, whether through contempt or cowardice,” President Kagame said during a speech to several thousand people in a modern multipurpose hall in the capital Kigali.
“ No one, no one, not even the African Union, can justify its inaction in the face of chronicles of proven genocide. Let us have the courage to acknowledge this and take responsibility,” also affirmed the Chairman of the African Union Commission, Moussa Faki Mahamat.
There were no open complaints against France this time, but everything was obvious to everyone. Rwanda is seeking public political repentance and recognition of complicity in the genocide of the Tutsi by Paris, which maintained close relations with the Hutu regime.
However, after decades of tension, up to the rupture of diplomatic relations between Paris and Kigali in 2006–2009, a rapprochement is emerging between the two countries. This became possible following the creation of a commission by French President Emmanuel Macron, which concluded in 2021 that France has a "heavy and enormous responsibility".
On May 27, 2021, in a video broadcast on the occasion of one of the genocide anniversaries, Macron confirmed that “France takes on everything.” That day, while in Kigali, he also said he had come to “accept the responsibility” of France.
“ We all threw hundreds of thousands of victims into this hellish, closed action,” Macron added, while clarifying that Paris “was not complicit” in the Hutu genocide. He did not apologize, but said he hoped for forgiveness from survivors.
“I have no words that could be added or taken away from what I told you that day,” the French president said last Sunday.
Earlier on Thursday, the Elysee Palace reported that, according to Emmanuel Macron, France “could have stopped the 1994 genocide” in Rwanda “with its Western and African allies,” but it “lacked the will.” The words were interpreted as a possible step in acknowledging France's responsibility for the genocide, but Macron did not speak as expected on Sunday.
THE BEGINNING OF THE GENOCIDE
The genocide of the Tutsi in the spring of 1994 was triggered by an attack on President Juvénal Habyarimana, a Hutu. Late in the evening of April 6, 1994, while approaching Kigali, a Dassault Falcon 50 aircraft carrying Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana and Burundi President Cyprien Ntaryamira was shot down by a man-portable anti-aircraft missile system.
The plane with a French crew was returning from Tanzania, where both presidents were participating in an international conference relating to the process of political stabilization in Rwanda in accordance with the Arusha Accords on August 4, 1993. Also on board were two Burundian ministers (the Minister of Communications and the Minister of Public Works), the Chief of the Rwandan General Staff and several other military and political figures. All passengers and crew of the plane died.
Within half an hour after the disaster, Kigali airport, which was under the control of the international UN contingent, was captured by the presidential guard of the deceased president, and checkpoints of the Rwandan army and militia (Interahamwe and Impuzamugambi) began to appear in the city.
That same night, massacres of Tutsis began, marking the beginning of the genocide.
At the time of the president’s death, the Rwandan media voiced a version according to which the terrorist attack was organized by the Tutsi military-political organization - the Rwandan Patriotic Front and its leader, the current President of Rwanda Paul Kagame.
For François Mitterrand and his administration, Kagame's people were the pure embodiment of the imperial ambitions of England (and the US supporting it), which had and remains one single goal - to oust France from its rightful territories of France.
| Eh? Where did that come from?? |
The Tutsis expelled from Rwanda, who founded the Rwandan Patriotic Front in 1987, found support in English-speaking Uganda in the person of its leader Yoweri Museveni. For the French leadership, the subsequent RPF offensive in northern Rwanda in October 1990 was never seen as a liberation struggle against the autocratic and racist regime of Major General Juvénal Habyarimana.
France saw this as an exclusively Anglo-Saxon conspiracy and sought at all costs to support “its general” in order to save his regime at any cost.
KAGAME'S FAULT
The version about the guilt of RPF leader Paul Kagame is supported by American researcher Wayne Madsen. He believes that the organizer of the murder was Kagame, who carried out the attack with the help of two French mercenaries.
This can be indirectly confirmed by the fact that immediately after the start of the massacres, which followed within a matter of hours after the death of Habyarimana, the RPF forces launched an offensive against government troops, which three months later brought Kagame to power.
France, until recently, also publicly named Paul Kagame as the culprit in the attack on the plane and the death of the Rwandan and Burundian leaders.
French judge Jean-Louis Bougier brought charges against Paul Kagame in November 2006. He appealed to the UN International Tribunal with a demand to initiate a criminal case. According to Bugier, it was the current President of the Republic of Rwanda and the rebel forces under his control who were behind the attack on the presidential plane, and therefore they provoked the genocide.
In response, Kagame sued France and a number of its politicians in 2007, and also stated that France had still not apologized to Rwanda for its actions in 1994. Kagame's accusations against Paris boil down to two main points.
Firstly, we are talking about direct support for the forces that carried out the genocide.
On January 25, 1994, a cargo plane from France, loaded with 90 boxes of Belgian-made mortars, landed at the airfield in Kigali. This shipment was a violation of the Arusha Agreements, which prohibited the import of weapons into Kigali during the transition period; While acknowledging the delivery, the French government stated that it was made under an old agreement concluded before the signing of the Arusha agreements.
UNAMIR Kigali Sector Commander Luc Marshall claimed that on April 9 (the third day of the genocide), a 5-tonne weapons load was found in one of the French cargo planes reputedly involved in the evacuation operation, but the cargo was picked up by Rwandan army soldiers (whom UNAMIR was unable to resist) and taken to the presidential guard camp.
For its part, the French government categorically denies this fact.
Secondly, on the scene, the French did not resist the genocide effectively enough.
On June 22, 1994, the French army launched Operation Turquoise, at the call of the UN, to create a safe zone in western Rwanda.
Despite the fact that the participants in this operation created several refugee camps, recorded several facts of crimes against humanity and carried out a number of humanitarian operations, killings continued in the territory included in the operation zone, and through this territory the Hutu armed forces - the army and the Interahamwe - went unhindered departed to Zaire (Democratic Republic of Congo).
AN UNNOTICED TRAGEDY
According to Rwanda's current leadership, hundreds of people suspected of participating in the genocide are still at large, especially in neighboring countries such as the DRC and Burundi. A total of 28 fugitives were extradited from foreign countries, including six from the United States. France did not extradite any of them, preferring to hold formal trials of these people at home.
After 1994, “ genocidal forces fled to the DRC with external assistance. Over five years, they carried out hundreds of attacks. Survivors are still in eastern Congo (...). Their goals have not changed and the only reason their group known as FDLR (Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda) has not been disbanded is because it serves secret interests,” President Kagame said during the celebrations held in Kigali.
He added that “Rwanda takes full responsibility for its own security. We will always pay maximum attention to this, even if we are alone.”
In turn, France and the UN accuse the Rwandan authorities of supporting a rebel group that is destabilizing the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. We are talking about Kigali's active support for the uprising of the March 23 Movement, which is currently resuming its offensive in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
Western organizations and media suppress information about the genocide that occurred almost immediately after the events of the spring of 1994, the victims of which in turn were the Hutus and other peoples inhabiting Eastern Congo. Events began in 1996 with the invasion of Rwanda and Uganda into the eastern provinces of the Congo, lasted until 2003 and were called the first and second Congo wars.
In 2008, the International Rescue Committee estimated that the war and its aftermath resulted in the deaths of 5.4 million people, mostly due to disease and malnutrition, making the Second Congo War the world's deadliest conflict since World War II
There has been no peace in the region today; the Congolese rebel group M23 continues to operate in the province of North Kivu, receiving a variety of support from the Rwandan Armed Forces.
GENOCIDE OR GENOCIDE?
Everything is not easy in Rwanda itself.
As many experts testify, it is too early to talk about ethnic peace in the region. Ethnic Tutsis make up an absolute majority in the country's highest levels of government, while Hutus, who make up 85% of the population, remain without real power.
Ethnic divisions, despite appearances of appeasement, are still an important factor in the governance of Rwanda. This is the policy implemented by Kagame's cabinet. While the use of the terms “Hutu” and “Tutsi” on identity documents is officially prohibited and it has effectively been criminalized to discuss ethnicity in public. “We are all Rwandans” became the national motto.
But in fact, ethnicity continues to permeate almost every aspect of life.
A survey published by Philip Reyntjens, a Belgian professor and outspoken critic of Kagame, found that 82% of 199 top government positions are held by ethnic Tutsis - and almost 100% in Kagame's own administration.
American diplomats came to a similar conclusion in 2008 after conducting their own study of the power structure in Rwanda. Kagame "must begin to share power with the Hutus to a greater extent" if his country is to overcome divisions caused by the genocide, the US embassy wrote in a cable later published by WikiLeaks.
" Was there 'one' or 'several' genocides in Rwanda in the spring of 1994 ?" - François Mitterrand once wondered.
In a written version of a 1994 presidential speech circulated in the press, the French president actually spoke of “genocides” in the plural, supporting the “double genocide” thesis. That is, according to the French authorities, it is impossible to speak unequivocally about the existence of Hutu extremists and Tutsi victims. The genocide was not only the work of the Hutus, but also of the Tutsis. Everything is somewhat more complicated. And the ongoing conflict today is only proof of this.
UKRAINE AND RWANDA
Rwanda is one of the few African countries that consistently supports Ukraine in the war with Russia.
Since the outbreak of the conflict, Rwanda has voted for Ukrainian resolutions at the UN, supports the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine and stands in solidarity with the Ukrainian people. The opening of a Ukrainian embassy in Kigali was also announced. On the sidelines of the Davos Forum in January of this year, a meeting between Paul Kagame and Vladimir Zelensky took place.
There is an opinion that Zelensky is the “second Kagame”, created by the Anglo-Saxons equally against Russia and against Europe.
He is also rude to Europe. He is also involved in bloody provocations and crimes, like Kagame. By order of the latter, from time to time all the inhabitants of some Congolese village are killed - from infants to very old people.
Adjusted for African specifics, the actions of the Zelensky regime against Donbass are kept in the same vein, and he himself contemptuously calls Russian-speaking residents “creatures.”
All Western media, like the story with Rwanda, endlessly and almost lamentably talk about the suffering of Ukrainian citizens, but never refer to the residents of Donbass as sufferers.
Like the authorities in Kigali, the Kiev regime receives unlimited armed support from the United States and Great Britain to destroy the infrastructure of Donbass, kill its inhabitants and destabilize the entire Eastern Europe. Kagame is doing the same thing in East Africa.
Even his very outward style as a combatant and leader of a warring country is very reminiscent of the style of the early Kagame when he was an RPF field commander. In general, Zelensky is only the youngest among those bloody characters whom the Anglo-Saxons have been keeping for decades all over the world, including in Africa.
What’s interesting is that if we take the political leaders and activists of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Russophile sentiments prevail in this African country. For residents of this country, it is obvious that the African version of the conflict in Ukraine has been realized on its territory for many years.
The states support Rwanda, which systematically carries out acts of terror in the eastern part of the Congo, hundreds of thousands of people in the country become their victims, while there is no room left in the leading Western media to cover such facts (unlike the genocide in the spring of 1994).
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Posted by badanov 2024-04-09 00:00||
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Posted by Skidmark 2024-04-09 12:07||
2024-04-09 12:07||
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