JANUARY 2008
Surviving the Rwandan Genocide: An Interview with Jean-Christophe Nizeyimana.
Conducted and written by David Barouski.
Edited for content and accuracy by Jean-Christophe Nizeyimana.
22 June 2007.
[Originally appeared on ZNet at
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=13139]
“I have been through Hell, have known horror, and now that I have escaped, I want to testify in the name of all the men and women who did not have my luck and who died in Hell.” – Marie Béatrice Umutesi. (“Surviving the Slaughter.” Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press. 2004.)
1. Introduction
By David Barouski
On the night of 27 June 2006, it was warm and dry in Kigali, the capital city of Rwanda. A typical day since it wasn’t rainy season. It was nearly 18:30 and the sun had already settled down below the horizon. Gratefully, the temperature would soon cool down a bit. I rolled out of the bed in my hotel room and trudged up the long winding staircase to the dining room, where Hotel Okapi serves a famous (and delicious) breakfast buffet every morning beginning at 06:30. On this particular evening, I went outside to make a phone call on my portable (cell) phone because the reception emitting from the Mobile Telephone Networks’ (MTN) tower was very difficult to pick up from inside my room.
I strolled casually past the front desk and the internet café connected to the hotel. Behind the front desk on the bleach white wall hung a framed official presidential picture of Paul Kagame. Sometimes, I got a strange and irrational sensation the picture itself was watching me as I would walk by. I later learned every business in Rwanda was required to have a framed picture of President Kagame on display. I was also told those who were less enthusiastic about his regime would often put the picture back in the manager’s office instead of in a public place. In contrast, one of the primary schools run by Ibuka[1] that I visited in Kigali proudly displayed a very large and regal portrait painting of him over the headmaster’s desk.
As I stepped outside the hotel, I immediately turned around to face the hotel, which was opposite the street. Hotel Okapi is a relatively small hotel near the city center next to a plot of land that was boarded off by wooden planks because it was designated to be the site of a new housing complex, one of many already under construction all over the city. Behind the wooden planks was a labyrinth maze of mud homes with aluminum foil roofs where the poorest people that I encountered in the city lived. They all resided on the bottom of the hills that slope away from the city.
I made my call and began talking, oblivious to the environment around me. The streets of Kigali were virtually barren after dark every day. One night, I ventured out after dark and walked south of the hotel down the hill. I only encountered two people along the way. Both of them gave me a nervous glance as they swiftly walked past me in the opposite direction. I later learned that this behavior has been the norm since the Arusha Accords were signed in 1993.
As I spoke on the phone, I casually noticed a small red dot appear on the wooden posts. It wasn’t long before it began moving around erratically. It reminded me of those low-power laser pens and key-chains I have seen in the United States (U.S.). Sometimes, young kids use them to drive their teachers crazy in school (but not me of course). Some university professors in the U.S. use them to point things out on overhead projectors during a lecture or presentation. It seemed so grossly out of place that I initially ignored it as an oddity caused by my state of being overly tired. After about ten seconds or so, it disappeared. “See,” I thought, “It was just my imagination.”
I continued conversing for a few minutes before I finally turned around to face the street. After I finished turning around, I lifted my gaze and stiffened instantly. Directly across the street in front of me was a black Toyota Landcruiser without any license plates. All its windows were tinted black. I knew instantly it was a government vehicle from the Directorate of Military Intelligence (DMI). I quickly shifted my eyes to glance from left to right without turning my head to see if there was anybody else around. A quick survey revealed the street was completely vacant. No one came running out of the shadows to ambush me. I was alone in a standoff with the vehicle’s occupants.
Then, from the passenger-side window facing me (the left-hand side of the vehicle facing the front of the jeep), the same red laser beam shined out brightly and quickly swept across my eyes, blinding me very briefly. It was in that moment I realized it wasn’t my imagination after all. The laser rotated back around and settled squarely on my sternum right where my heart is. It held there steadily in position for several long seconds, and then it blinked out of existence.
Suspecting the situation might escalate dramatically if I tried to run away; I kept talking in a normal tone of voice on the phone and did not alert the caller for the time being. I paced back and forth outside the front of the hotel for a few more minutes while keeping a watchful eye on the vehicle. The laser did not appear again and the vehicle had both its engine and headlights turned off. The vehicle’s occupants did not make any moves.
I hung up the phone and walked back into the hotel at a normal pace past the front desk and sat down in the dining room at the back of the hotelfor several minutes to try and absorb what had just happened. Meanwhile, nobody working at the front desk, in the restaurant, or the internet café said a single word to me the entire time. It was like nothing ever happened. I did not see anyone particularly suspicious in the hotel at the time nor did I hear the vehicle drive off quickly with screeching tires. I slowly went back by the front door and peered outside. The vehicle was gone. It slipped off quietly into the night and I did not see it again that night.
Afterwards, I refused to flee the country. Roughly a week after this incident, I attended the Liberation Day ceremony at Amahoro Stadium on 4 July 2006, where President Kagame came and made his annual speech to the crowd. As was to be expected, the Presidential Guard was stationed at the stadium’s entrances to screen everybody before allowing them passage inside. Their weapons reminded me of the CAR-15s some U.S. Special Forces units used to use. Unmistakably mounted on each Presidential Guard’s rifle was a laser-sighted scope.
Though I was only in Rwanda for a very short time, I was able to catch a glimpse of daily life under the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) and its leader Paul Kagame. I experienced a portion of the same oppressive environment described by Jean-Christophe Nizeyimana (or “Chris” as he is known to his friends), who lived in this climate of oppression for several years. Chris is a proud umuhutu who is not an active politician, ex-soldier, or former militia member. Instead, he is a self-proclaimed “free thinker” who rejects the RPF’s authority and refuses to accept Paul Kagame’s genocide dogma and the “official” version of what happened in 1994. He is also what the RPF would call a “Hutu intellectual.” That is to say, he is a multilingual Hutu who attended a university overseas, where he earned a master’s degree in economics at Moscow University.
Chris is a survivor in every sense of the word. Not only did he survive several RPF massacres carried out in the north of his country in 1993-1994, he also survived the Zairian[2] refugee camps near Goma and in Mugunga and is an eyewitness to the horrendous crimes committed in the RPF-controlled zone. Though he is originally from the Jenda (Nyabihu District) of the Ruhengeri Prefecture,[3] one of the areas hit hardest by the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA),[4] he lived in Gisenyi during 1993-1994, where he was a professor at the High Institute of Management and Computing. This town, across the border from Goma, Zaire, was an area journalists and United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) peacekeepers did not go during the genocide.[5] Today, he lives exiled from his homeland. He was once called to testify at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) but decided to refuse the summons. Now, for the first time ever, he is going public with his testimony.
Chris has two general themes in this interview. One is a harrowing personal account of the things he experienced and witnessed in Rwanda and Zaire. The other is a unique insight into the broader issues affecting Rwandans and the Diaspora community as a whole. In providing this testimony, Chris aspires to dispel the many widely disseminated lies and disinformation surrounding his country’s genocide and the RPF’s admonishment of innocent Hutu for their own political gains.
He implores the international community to uphold the standards of law and prosecute all those who have committed grave criminal acts against humanity in Rwanda. It is only through this act that he feels all the traumatized people of Rwanda can truly begin a national reconciliation and healing process. Chris rejects the RPF’s one-sided version of events and wants the international community to facilitate an independent, rational, and impartial investigation of the Rwandan genocide.
Lastly, Chris wants this interview to serve as a memorial to all the forgotten victims of the RPF’s crimes and dedicates this testimony in their beloved memory, particularly the many members of his family that were lost. Contrary to popular media depictions, it was not just the Tutsi who lost everything in the genocide. Untold thousands of innocent Hutu and Tutsi were victims of the horrendous violence that engulfed Rwanda beginning in 1990.
I would like to dedicate my efforts in this endeavor not only to all the innocent Rwandan, Congolese, Burundian, Ugandan, and Tanzanian victims, but also to Chris for his bravery in coming forward with his story and his humbleness in sharing such trauma openly with me. A special thank you also goes out to A.F. and T.H. Hopefully I will be able to thank you properly someday.
The following interview is a transcript of a four-hour interview recorded in early May 2007. It was supplemented with clarification questions delivered through several subsequent correspondences with Mr. Nizeyimana. Since English is not Mr. Nizeyimana’s first language, I changed some verb tenses and the plurality of certain words to make the manuscript more readable. Therefore, the transcript is not verbatim. Mr. Nizeyimana reviewed and approved the final draft to ensure the intended meaning of all his words was intact and the native Kinyarwandan words and names were spelled correctly. It is also important for the reader to understand the RPF changed the names of the prefectures, communes, cells, districts, and streets across most of the country. Chris has deliberately chosen to use the old names so as not to confuse anyone who decides to investigate his claims.
2. The Testimony of Jean-Christophe Nizeyimana.
David Barouski (DB): I’m going start from the beginning and try to progress chronologically. I’d like to start at the beginning of the Rwandan War (1990-1993). In 1990, when the RPF invaded Rwanda from Uganda, what was it like in your country? Did the Rwandans know the RPF were going to invade?
Jean-Christophe Nizeyimana (JCN): Tutsi first fled the country in 1959 to Uganda mostly, but also to other neighboring countries like Burundi and Zaire. This was during the so-called “Hutu Revolution” after the Tutsi monarchy was removed. It wasn’t because they (Tutsi) didn’t accept the country. No. The Tutsi left because they didn’t accept living under a republic regime where the people who were their slaves during the monarchy (Hutu) are now free to choose their own destiny and hold political office.
So, in 1979, a political party was formed by the Tutsi in exile.[6] Most of the members were in (Yoweri) Museveni’s administration in Uganda because they helped the NRM (National Resistance Movement)[7] take power in Uganda. They were fighting in Mozambique with Museveni, where cruelties, vandalism, torture, and rape became their daily job.[8] Those people who made up the RPF leadership: General Fred Rwigema, (Chris) Bunyenyezi, and (Peter) Bayingana…all of them were there and when they came back to Uganda and took power, Museveni appointed them into his administration. That’s where Paul Kagame started his career as the Chief of the Ugandan Internal Security and Intelligence Service where he interrogated, tortured, and killed Ugandans who were real or imagined opponents of the NRM.
After Museveni took power, he promised he would help the Tutsis take back Rwanda. That’s why, in the late 1980s, they (RPF) started spreading propaganda against President Habyarimana to prepare for war. The RPF created a radio station called Radio Muhabura that they used for propaganda and spreading rumors. They also printed newspapers in Kampala and used RPF infiltrators to sell the papers in Kigali to spread these lies and rumors with the intent of inciting riots against Habyarimana so that later, lynching would take place throughout the country.
The aggression officially started on October 1st, 1990, in the north of my country near the region I was born, where Rwanda has its border with Uganda. The aggression was aided by the same pro-RPF press and radio stations I mentioned that were sponsored by RPF backers, including the U.S., U.K. (United Kingdom) and Belgium. They told the world at the beginning of the war that the RPF was only fifteen kilometers from the Kigali to create panic and confusion. Their propaganda aimed to hammer the international community with lies. The propaganda also spread the idea that it was not an aggression from an outside country, but a civil war.
DB: So it was covering up the illegality of the war, the fact members of the Ugandan army had defected and were invading a sovereign nation.
JCN: Exactly. Exactly. What was important, the RPF had to plan something like this carefully. It had to be labeled a civil war. If it was about foreign countries, a war between foreign aggressors and Rwandans, it was going to be really difficult to say Hutu extremists planned the genocide in advance. That’s why, for the RPF, the genocide was planned at the beginning the war. They started by admonishing and prejudicing Hutus through their propaganda. They used all kinds of harsh words to create a rift between Hutu and Tutsi while also dividing the north and south of the country as part of their main strategy.
DB: Are you saying you believe the RPF planned to incite genocide and began to do so back when they invaded in 1990?
JCN: Yes, because the final aggression that started on April 6th was the final attack, but since the beginning, they had planned to seize power and in order to seize power it was not in their interest to join a transitional government because they would eventually lose the elections anyway. Imagine any country, anywhere you go, the United States or any country from Europe, Asia…you can’t find a minority ruling the country. The only way for the RPF to do this, they had to find a shortcut that could help them seize and retain power and they have to use force and fear to maintain it. They also had to get support from all the countries that had their own interests in the region.
When the aggression started, the RPF told the world they wanted to bring back democracy to Rwanda. This was a smokescreen to hide their real agenda: minority rule. They got financial aid, advising, and military training from the U.K. and the United States through Uganda.
DB: Do you know who specifically was financing the RPF in the beginning, regardless of if they are foreign nationals or Rwandans?
JCN: U.S. and U.K. multinationals supported the RPF so that they could get access to loot Central Africa’s mineral resources, particularly in Zaire. To reach this goal, the RPF had to be connected to the Clinton Administration because they were the most influential in the U.N. There were also organizations that supported the Tutsi refugees based in the United States. Can you imagine the shameful attitude of the U.S. administration’s representative Herman Cohen against the Rwandan nation? He said that President Habyarimana’s body, the state symbol of Rwanda, would be dragged through the streets of Kigali and his government would be tried by a special tribunal.[9]
DB: When did he say this?
JCN: Before the 6th of April. It was incredible to hear that. As a U.S. representative, you know, he had to justify what was going to happen within one month, two months, three months, and so on. Also, the aggression was an opportunity for U.S. multinationals linked to the Bush (George Herbert Walker) administration to get access to Congolese and Rwandan mineral resources. For more information, just refer to my website[10] and you will find out who those multinationals were that kept busy by looting in both countries during RPF aggressions in Rwanda and the Congo as well.
To get an idea of the scope of the war, it is very easy to get information and details in Addis Ababa, where you will find people who were hired to fight for the RPF. They will tell you that the U.S. Embassy in Ethiopia recruited foreign fighters for the RPF.[11] These soldiers came from Somalia, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and South Sudan to fight against the Rwandan Government. Obviously, there is no need to say that the 1990-1994 war was a civil war as it was described before and after the RPF seized power. Even today there are Somalis living in Rwanda with full Rwandan citizenship and still others who were disappointed and left for Europe. That is why, at the end of the day, the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) said Paul Kagame was linked to Al-Qaeda without giving more detailed information.[12] Many of those guys fighting with the RPF were actually terrorists, but that label was not used with those countries at that time because it was before September the eleventh, 2001!
DB: So they fought along with the RPF? What year did this happen?
JCN: Just after the assassination of President Juvenal Habyarimana, on April 6th, 1994, when the final aggression was launched. There were Somalis, Ethiopians, Eritreans, South Sudanese, you know, and also there were soldiers from the Burundian Army under the command of Colonel Bikomagu attacking from the south of Rwanda and Tanzanian soldiers were occupying part of the eastern region of Rwanda.[13] You remember that the Tanzanians fought with Museveni to get rid of Idi Amin.[14] Yet, the campaign was still to talk about civil war in Rwanda, which was not true.
DB: So Somali fighters were helping the RPF?
JCN: Yes, and as I said before, many of them are still there. Also, some are back in Ethiopia today and if you ask them, they will openly tell you they have been fighting in Rwanda.[15]
DB: Let me ask you this. Now, as you probably know, the United States military was in Somalia, in Mogadishu and in October 1993, 18 U.S. military members were killed and the U.S. withdrew. Later, while the genocide was already underway and the Clinton Administration knew about it because of reports from the State Department and satellite photographs,[16] President Clinton created PDD-25 (Presidential Decision Directive),[17] which essentially said the United States could not participate in any peacekeeping operations unless there was a geostrategic interest. When the U.S. failed to reinforce the United Nations (U.N.) peacekeeping mission and UNAMIR eventually had its size reduced, PDD-25 was later used as an excuse because the U.S. supposedly had no strategic interests in Rwanda.[18]
JCN: That’s not true.
DB: You don’t believe that at all?
JCN: No, I don’t believe that because the people who said that are the same people who supported the RPF through financial aid and military support, the same ones who said they had no interest in the region. When President Clinton decided not to send help to Rwanda…you know you can browse on the Internet or ask people who were linked to the U.S. administration and you will find out that Bill Clinton knew exactly what was happening in Rwanda but decided not to intervene due to a hidden agenda. A U.N. intervention would have stopped the fighting and cut off the RPF’s main objective: to seize power and keep it by force.
DB: Do you believe they (Clinton Administration) purposefully decided not to intervene in Rwanda and not to allow the U.N. to have a meaningful intervention?
JCN: Yes, but not because it was like you explained to me. A peacekeeping force meant an end to hostilities against Tutsi civilians and thus the RPF rebels could not seize power by force because they told the world they were fighting to stop Hutus from killing Tutsis. There is no denying that after they (Americans) refused to intervene, they aided the RPF by using mass media committed to copying and pasting the same chosen images and the same information to support Paul Kagame as he was fighting “to stop the genocide” perpetrated by Hutu militias or “extremists” as the press called them.
DB: When the genocide broke out, there were people in the Security Council who said, you know, we need… General Dallaire was asking for five thousand five hundred troops, I believe. After a number of delays by the U.S., the RPF, and the U.K., it was proposed to create a safe zone in the north of Gikongoro, I believe. It was going to be an operation similar in planning to Operation Turquoise, which was created later by the French. The U.N. was wanted to let all civilians to gather in a neutral zone where the U.N. soldiers would protect them and let the Rwandan Government negotiate a ceasefire with the RPF while the civilians were out of the way and could not be harmed. Now what happened was, first of all, General Kagame told General Dallaire that any U.N. force deployed in Rwanda would be taken as aggressors and therefore would be attacked by the RPF. He told Dallaire that too his face during a meeting, the same meeting he said the RPF would not cooperate with the U.N. if Booh-Booh remained in the country.[19]
JCN: That’s what Kagame said.
DB: And Rwanda had a seat in the Security Council at the time.
JCN: I remember. But also remember that, at that time, we had the so-called “La Baule” meeting where French President François Mitterrand asked African nations to accept democratic values. This demand also went to President Habyarimana and Rwanda. The opposition parties in Rwanda that formed were used by the RPF to divide the country and they used the opportunity to talk about democracy while the RPF and its allies were busy planning regime change. They had to create an impractical situation so that the parameters to urge the war to resume would be available. In this context, the U.N Special Representative, the guy you just mentioned…
DB: Jacques-Roger Booh-Booh.
JCN: Yes, Jacques Roger Booh-Booh tried to be neutral in the conflict. He tried to get a ceasefire, but at the same time, General Romeo Dallaire did whatever he could to hide RPF operations during the calm period right after the Arusha Accords were signed. Ongoing killings and awful massacres committed by the RPF in the north were not reported to the international community and no investigation ever started by UNAMIR was finished. The RPF continued its preparations for war in the demilitarized zone whereas strict controls were enforced in the government zone.
DB: If I can back up a bit, you mentioned the propaganda war the RPF started in the late 1980s. Can you provide details on how this worked?
JCN: Well, the radio broadcast into Rwandan territory while the newspapers and magazines were printed in Uganda and sent by infiltrators to Kigali and other parts of the country.[20] How this was done was actually very easy. After the Arusha Accords, it was agreed that an RPF division of six hundred soldiers would be stationed in Kigali at the parliament building. Instead of having six hundred, they eventually had-as people will tell you-thousands of RPF infiltrators in Kigali. They were escorted by UNAMIR forces in Kigali and other parts of the country, especially in the Kibuye Province. General Romeo Dallaire told the Rwandan Government that RPF transports from Kigali to Mulindi[21] and from Mulindi to Kigali were for water provisions! This claim has nothing to do with reality. They were delivering ammunition and supplies. Once the troops and infiltrators were in place, they organized the RPF fronts and supply lines in Kigali, from Mulindi to the CND (Conseil National de Développement) parliament building, and from the CND to different districts of Kigali.
DB: Were they in civilian clothes?
JCN: Yes and other infiltrators were, of course, hiding inside the Parliament building where nobody else was allowed to go in. There was no control at all; no mechanisms in place to allow both parties equal rights to check each other’s positions. What is very dramatic is that only the Rwandan Government was checked for violations of the Accords. We can’t forget that the U.N. was supposed to come to Rwanda as a neutral party, a party to help Rwandans reach and enforce a peace agreement. Unfortunately, the U.N. commander, Mr. Dallaire was totally under RPF sway, control and command.
DB: That’s quite a claim. How do you know that?
JCN: The Bangladeshi and Ghanaian representatives who were there can always testify to what I say.
DB: The UNAMIR soldiers?
JCN: Yes. They described how RPF military officers always held meetings with Mr. Dallaire.
DB: Were they private meetings?
JCN: They were at UNAMIR headquarters and the RPF used the HQs for their own military means.
DB: What was said at these meetings?
JCN: They shared maps so the RPF would know exactly where Rwandan Government soldiers were positioned in the country. It was to keep track of their movements. Always after such meetings, there were attacks on the Rwandan Government’s side of the demilitarized zone by the RPF attachment, the one inside the FAR (Armed Forces of Rwanda) zone. It was very easy for the RPF because there were different units-including UNAMIR-that had to go and check both sides for violations of the Arusha Accords. However, instead of doing their job, they gathered information to give to the RPF.
DB: Let me be clear, you’re saying that General Dallaire frequently shared military intelligence with RPF officers?
JCN: Precisely.
DB: Which RPF officers did he meet with?
JCN: There were many different people, but I can mention Charles Kayonga. That one I know for sure because he commanded the RPF Advance Military Division stationed at the Kimihurura Parliament Building. French journalist and investigator Pierre Pean gave more details on this issue.
DB: Why would General Dallaire do such a thing?
JCN: Because it was his commitment. His reasons are known by those who financially and militarily supported the RPF. He was committed to this because he was sent by the French-Canadian Government, the U.K., and the U.S. He had to cover up RPF crimes and do whatever he could to let the RPF seize power in Rwanda. He was committed to help the RPF rebels by all means including the sharing of details about the Rwandan Government policies and the FAR positions. He also allowed RPF ammunition and fighters to infiltrate Kigali.
DB: Did General Dallaire know the genocide was going to happen?
JCN: As part of a pre-arranged agenda, he knew he had to talk about plans for mass killings of Tutsis before the genocide started so that the RPF could seize power in Rwanda. This could also be used by the U.S. and U.K. as an explanation for their support of the RPF because if they tell the public the RPF stopped the genocide, everybody thinks their country gave military aid to the good guys. As I told you before, without such a massive crime committed by the other side in the conflict, the RPF would have been unable to seize power through democratic elections where both ethnic groups would have representatives to supervise the elections. Dallaire himself even said that he cannot believe a genocide against the Tutsi was planned.[22]
Many people remember General Dallaire said he had information a genocide was being planned according to a controversial fax he said he sent to U.N. headquarters. Later, that fax could not be found anywhere. It was a lie when he said he sent a fax to the U.N, he knew there was no fax. The Canadian Government adopted a strategy of protecting him from prosecution when he became a Canadian senator. If you need more information about that, please read the findings of Cameroonian journalist Charles Onana. Let me say again, Romeo Dallaire never sent that fax to the U.N.
DB: That fax, they called it “The Genocide Fax,” and a copy of it was later sent over to a reporter at the New Yorker named Phillip Gourevitch. He wrote a number of articles on it and it really launched his career. He got a book deal out of it.
JCN: Yeah, I remember the name. He was the only public person at the time to have the information on the fax![23]
DB: The person who gave the information contained the fax, which talked about Hutu militias’ plans to kill Tutsis and Belgian peacekeepers, was an acquaintance of Faustin Twagiramungu, correct? [24]
JCN: He was an RPF infiltrator by the name of Jean-Pierre Turatsinze.[25]
DB: Yeah, that’s the name I have too. What can you tell me about him?
JCN: The guy was Twagiramungu’s informant. Faustin Twagiramungu had no idea the guy was working for the RPF. The informant told him Interahamwe[26] are going to kill Tutsi. He said that he was one of the core members of the Interahamwe youth organization of the MRND (National Republican Movement for Democracy and Development),[27] so he knew about everything they were planning. He said he knew the ruling government was going to kill Tutsis and I believe, according to Twagiramungu´s statement, the reality was that this wasn’t true. He was being manipulated by the RPF.
After that, people found out Dallaire did not send that fax. It was actually sent by a military officer from the U.K. The fax that Dallaire did send to the U.N. was never found as I said before. Later, they did find a fax at U.N. headquarters, but the fax said the sender’s name was a U.K. military officer and not General Dallaire.
DB: Do you know his name?
JCN: I cannot tell you right now, but I will find it.
DB: So was Mr. Turatsinze an Interahamwe or was he an RPF infiltrator?
JCN: Obviously, he was an infiltrator. He was not working for the MRND. He tried to convince Twagiramungu that he was not just an ordinary militia member, but a well-informed and high-ranking member. Twagiramungu himself said he was manipulated by this man. Why did the informant come forward at a time the country was talking about adopting democratic values and ending the war? Once the fax was sent, nobody was talking about the peace process. It was about the preparations for genocide now. The information in the fax changed the focus of the international community, it disrupted the peace process. Since Mr. Turatsinze was an infiltrator, he was killed by the RPF after he talked to Twagiramungu because he knew too much information and his job was finished. As you yourself know, the RPF kills people who know too much information when they are done using them. This is Paul Kagame’s policy.
DB: Sorry, but I have to back up a bit. We were talking about those people from the Horn of Africa.
JCN: The Ethiopians, Somalis, Eritreans…
DB: Yeah. How did that relationship come about with the RPF? Is there a cultural or ethnic link to the Tutsi refugees in Uganda?
JCN: People say all of them, Ethiopians, Eritreans, and Tutsi came from the same Hamitic race. However, pro-RPF philosophers argue that there are no Bantu, Hamitic, or Nilotic races. The point of this philosophy is to say there are no ethnic groups in Rwanda, only Rwandans. The president, err, the Prime Minister of Ethiopia…Meles Zenawi, and the other one, the President of Eritrea…President Afwerki, together with President Kagame were all hailed to the world as the new leaders of Africa by Prime Minister Tony Blair at the U.N. The reality is that these guys were chosen because there was political conflict between western countries and France in Africa at the time. These three were backed by western powers against France. These so-called `leaders`, in reality, are criminals that are ready to serve their backers’ interests at any cost. The only way they can stay in power is to have a U.S.-backing, so they do whatever is necessary for the U.S. administration even if their own people die.
DB: Now, I have to back up even farther now, to 1990. In 1990, Paul Kagame was not leading the RPF when they first came into your country. It was General Fred Rwigema. Did Rwandans know Paul Kagame was in the United States and if so, what did they think of that?[28] How did that make Rwandans view him? Did it change anything?
JCN: Ok. At the beginning of the war in 1990, Rwandans heard on the radio that the RPF was headed by Rwigema. After about the 4th of October, he was killed and they said that he was replaced by Paul Kagame, who was in the U.S. Kagame came back to Uganda to replace him and supervise all RPF military operations, but ordinary RPF soldiers did not want him to lead.
DB: Why was that?
JCN: Because they knew him as a criminal. Referring to his background as the chief of Uganda’s Security and Intelligence Division before the invasion of Rwanda, he was the one who tortured and killed many Ugandans, as I said before.
Also as I said before, when Kagame returned to Uganda and brought the RPF back into Rwanda, the aggression was not shown as a Ugandan invasion, not as an outside aggressor, though these men were all from the Ugandan Army. There is no way you can talk about that as a civil war because those Tutsis fought for the Ugandan Army for many years. What is also difficult is the fact that the ICTR has, up-to-now, never shown any real proof that Habyarimana planned a genocide. I believe the definition of the word “genocide” was negotiated to support the RPF leadership because the U.N. Security Council said that deciding on the definition of genocide was the ICTR’s decision even before the trials began. This meant the U.N. said there was a genocide, but it was a genocide that had yet to be defined by the ICTR! In my understanding, the conclusion made on the definition had to be given after the chief judge declared that a genocide was committed in Rwanda. One or two years ago, RPF backers asked the ICTR to decide, without sufficient evidence, that the genocide was committed only by Hutus against Tutsis! I totally disagree.
DB: Well, do you personally believe there was a genocide?
JCN: I believe, I still believe the RPF planned for mass killings of civilians and they also planned to kill many Hutu in Rwanda. I believe the RPF planned the genocide one hundred percent. I’m not talking about the Rwandan Tutsi genocide; I’m talking about the Rwandan genocide that includes both Tutsi and Hutu, the real definition of the Rwandan genocide. Tutsis were killed as planned by the RPF leadership and these killings were supposed to be a bridge for Paul Kagame to seize power in Rwanda, a sine qua non condition to seize power in Rwanda.
DB: With respect, let me ask you this. Do you believe or do you deny the Rwandan Armed Forces, militia like the Interahamwe, and members of the gendarmes killed thousands of Tutsi?
JCN: I believe Interahamwe were involved in the killing of many innocent Tutsi and also some Hutu for political reasons. At the same time, like I told you, and everybody knows, the numbers of Tutsi killed does not correspond with the numbers given by the RPF Government. This is Kagame’s scenario. After the U.N. gave their figures on the number of people killed, the RPF said they would have their own investigation and then they gave their own numbers. First of all, I should tell you that very few estimates were given. The U.N. said from 100,000 to 500,000 total were killed and independent organizations like some NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations) said 250,000 were killed. Then the RPF gave its own number and said about 800,000 Tutsis were killed, a number that was widely broadcasted in the U.S., U.K., and Belgian press. At the same time, I want to know… if you know about Rwanda, you know that many people were killed and according to the RPF version, all of them were either Tutsis or politically moderate Hutu. How many Tutsis were living in Kigali according to the 1993 census that was done? The real truth is that Hutu were the majority living in Kigali. At the same time, where are my brothers and sisters!? Where are my friends!? All of them were…they talk about moderates. Why this confusion? Why are they saying all these people were Tutsis or `moderate` Hutus?
What I have just said, I am very confident in. The RPF will never investigate. The RPF will never accept an independent investigation and they want us to take this as an axiom. I know this one hundred percent. If anyone believes what I am saying is not true, let’s go and open an investigation! Let’s use DNA to find out what really happened to my people, to other people, to my fellow citizens! DNA was used in Bosnia and Croatia. Why not in Rwanda? We all want to know who really got killed. Who killed who? In Kigali and Kigali´s neighborhoods, in the northwestern region where I am from, where most of the people died, you had a Hutu majority. Where I am from, in Ruhengeri, there weren’t many Tutsi living there and nobody ever talks about how many Hutu were killed there from 1990 up to today. We need to know the whole truth.
Against conventional wisdom, I believe that the victims of this violence were fairly evenly distributed between Hutu and Tutsi, taking into account the total percentage of each ethnic group. According to some estimates, the majority of the victims may even have been Hutu. There is widely accepted demographic data showing that there simply wasn’t a large enough number of Tutsi living in Rwanda at the time to account for all the reported deaths.[29] Definitive numbers aren’t possible because the death tolls vary so much. The world has not yet confronted the true scale of Hutu deaths from 1990 to1994, and from 1995 up to now beginning with the Kibeho massacre in 1995, and including the 1996, 1997 and 1998 massacres of returning refugees, which totaled about three and a half million deaths.
DB: Where were you in 1993?
JCN: In 1993, I was in Rwanda.
DB: Where in Rwanda?
JCN: Gisenyi, because I was teaching at the Gisenyi High Institute of Management and Computing, called the Institut Saint Fidele in French. I was working as the chief academic officer.
DB: Can you describe the February offensive of 1993 by the RPF?
JCN: Oh, yes, I will never forget that. I was in Gisenyi at that time. I heard that the RPF was attacking Ruhengeri. That’s my town, my hometown. People said many people were gathered into houses. Then, RPF soldiers used grenades and threw them inside the houses. You had women and kids in those houses that were blown up into pieces. Nevertheless, I was lucky because, at that time, I had to attend a marriage in Ruhengeri. A friend of mine, ok? Laurent Uwimana.
DB: Ok.
JCN: I was in Ruhengeri the day before the attack, on February 7th, that is why, I cannot forget it.
DB: I see.
JCN: The family I was celebrating with, all of them got killed. Laurent’s girlfriend, parents, and relatives were all killed.
DB: You lost so many friends there…..
JCN: If you want, I can tell you names, ok? I don’t want to hide anything, it´s about the truth; it’s about Paul Kagame´s cruelties. Many of my friends and classmates were killed over there. I knew one friend, Jotham Dusabimana, who graduated at Moscow University where I attended. He went to see his girlfriend in Ruhengeri on February 8th and he never came back. Ok. I went back to Gisenyi the day before because I had to work in the office at the College the next day, but I know how they got killed. Some of them were even crucified like Jesus Christ. They killed ordinary people to make everyone afraid so they would flee the region. The RPF needed people to flee so infiltrators could blend in with the displaced people and gather information.
DB: So the RPF put people in different camps around the country and then they hid spies with the refugees?
JCN: Yes, the displaced people.
DB: I see.
JCN: There were thousands who were displaced and killed and there is no report on what happened in the Ruhengeri and Byumba prefectures. Workers sent to investigate were killed by the RPF. Unfortunately, there is also no report about that incident. Thousands were killed there. The RPF separated men from women and put them in separate houses before burning them all down using grenades and high artillery. Thousands fled to Nyacyonga Camp. Shortly after the displaced Rwandans gathered there, Paul Kagame himself arrived at the camp and took a machine gun and shot the kids and women in the neighboring market. Other RPF soldiers killed hundreds of displaced people from Byumba and Kibungo prefectures. People were crucified and pregnant women had their stomach cut open. The fetuses were given to their supposed fathers before they were killed by akandoya.[30] Many were killed with an agafuni.[31]
DB: Are you saying Paul Kagame did this personally? He killed those people?
JCN: Yes. Personally…and when I see him getting a visa, going to the U.S…. it’s shameful! When I see Americans…..I understand they don’t get the right information from institutions and universities, but, you know… it’s shameful. I cannot believe that such a criminal would be granted a Doctorate of Law degree by a U.S. university….it’s not possible. People who were killed that day in February…who knows about that? Who knows about them? Nobody. Americans know nothing about that. I would like to let Americans know about the extreme cruelty of Paul Kagame. He killed willingly and tortured people...he is more a criminal than a statesman. If I can give a kind of a…. it’s serious. It’s very serious. If someone doesn’t believe me, let’s go have an independent investigation right now. It’s very easy to get information. Have it not be under RPF supervision and then go and tell people that you are part of a team investigating what happened in Rwanda. Right now, investigators only get information from one source, from one side, from RPF leaders and RPF party members.
DB: What was Ruhengeri like after the attack?
JCN: After the attack…well, there was only wreckage. People said the town was destroyed one hundred percent. The prison was destroyed and, ah, the hospitals were also destroyed. The hospital was run by a group of French doctors and it was a modern hospital as far as I remember, with modern equipment, experienced workers, you know, and after that everything was destroyed. Many people fled from the hospital to the university, were many students were killed. Others fled to Kigali and Butare. That’s why the university in Ruhengeri shut down. Then, Paul Kagame announced on Radio Muhabura, “Those who are now displaced, I’m going to find them and all of them are going to be dumped into Lake Kivu.”
DB: He announced this on the radio personally?
JCN: Yes, he did. I remember it well. Many others can confirm what I say because they also heard the broadcast. He wanted to kill them all.
DB: Now, you were still in Gisenyi at the time, correct?
JCN: Yes.
DB: You left Ruhengeri the day before the RPF came?
JCN: You mean Ruhengeri? I left the evening they attacked! 4:00 P.M…ok. I went back to Gisenyi because I had to work at the university the next day. That evening at 9:00, the same night I left to go home, the Byumba Prefecture was attacked by the RPF. The next day, they arrived in Ruhengeri Prefecture.
DB: Can you describe what happened to you after the attack on Ruhengeri?
JCN: After the attack, I was really shaken up and I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t go there and my people, my friend who I mentioned, Jotham and his girlfriend were reported killed. Laurent’s girlfriend told me that her parents were killed that same night. I could not believe I was there. I knew that Jotham would never be back. Those images still cause me to hallucinate sometimes.
DB: He was from Gisenyi also?
JCN: No. He was from Ruhengeri, from Jenda, from the countryside just like me. The RPF also killed Philippe Gakwerere, the Inspector of Mining along with his family during these attacks. They killed a classroom full of students in Musanze School. Women and children were killed in Nyamagumba. In Nyarutovu Commune, over several days, hundreds were killed. They even killed patients at the hospital in Kinigi Commune. Many died in Ngarama in Byumba Prefecture.
There was another guy, Barengayabo, President of the Appeals Court; he was killed with his wife and children on February 8th. One time before that, he escaped death because he spent the night in another town. That’s why he was able to survive. Then he went back home, I don’t exactly know the details, but I had information from Seth Sendashonga about it because he was a friend of mine after he fled to Kenya. He called me and asked me to work with him. The day he was killed by the RPF, when I learned he was killed by RPF in Nairobi, I had told him that I was not comfortable to go out of the country. After that, when he got killed, I couldn’t sleep. I learned so much from him. I still have some of his documents here.
DB: Why did Mr. Sendashonga leave the RPF? I mean, he had been with them for quite some time….
JCN: First of all, Seth Sendashonga was a Hutu who was believed to be one of the main RPF figures before and after the RPF seized power. I asked him the same question.
DB: Right. He was a Hutu.
JCN: Yes, and it was very difficult for me to trust him. When he first called me, I told him, “I heard about what you said all the time when I was in the refugee camps near Goma, so I don’t want to get involved with you. I cannot trust you.” He told me, “Jean-Christophe, I understand your position, but you cannot say that what I said and what I have done was really wrong. I really believed we (RPF) were bringing democracy to Rwanda, but I found out that it’s not possible under Kagame’s rule. That’s why I left and I tried to save myself after I found out I was tricked. It is not possible to implement democratic objectives so I decided to find another way to liberate our country.” That’s what he told me. He was a brilliant mind. He prefaced the RPF membership’s Umuryango. Before he died, we met every day in Nairobi in different places and worked on ways to bring democratic values to Rwanda. To reach this goal, we have to first inform the international community about what happened. He even told me he was originally supposed to be the president of Rwanda. That’s what he wanted me to understand.
DB: Did you believe him at the time?
JCN: (Pauses) Yes. According to the job he did for RPF and after I realized his determination to tell the whole truth, yes, I did believe him.
DB: Do you think they promised him the presidency to get him to work for them?
JCN: Yes. They promised him, but once his job was finished, he became disposable to Kagame. Paul Kagame did not want him to be president. Paul Kagame said, “I will use those Hutu to reach my goal.” After that, Paul Kagame publicly announced that everybody is nothing, but he meant Hutu are nothing. Once his Hutu allies are useless to him, they are thrown into prison or killed. He knew too much information. Seth was killed on May 14th around 4:00 pm at the Nairobi round-a-bout from the Gigili U.N. headquarters. I was not there with him, but we were supposed to meet that very same evening. If I was with him…I don’t know what would have happened to me.
DB: One of the more memorable things to me was when the ICTR witnesses like Mr. Sendashonga starting getting killed outside of Rwanda, even in Europe and the international community did nothing publicly to investigate the murders. Specifically, I’m actually referring to Mr. Juvenal Uwillingiyimana, who was killed in Brussels.[32] Later, they found his naked body in a canal.
JCN: Oh yeah I remember, yes, a tragic story.
DB: He was executed differently in that his hands were cut off. What was the significance of that? Was it a message?
JCN: Ok, yes. I don’t know if you have details on Kagame’s strategy… I told you that the genocide was negotiated. Since the genocide was negotiated, it had to be labeled. You must have a label, a definition. You have to maintain it, you have to prepare, and you have to do whatever you can to reinforce that label, that definition among the targeted people. Ok. In that context, the RPF and Paul Kagame asked Rwandans to testify against their own relatives and against the former government so that every single testimony refers to the genocide as the definition the RPF wanted the world to see; that only Hutu extremists killed Tutsis.
Paul Kagame’s strategy has always been to recreate what happened to fit into his scenario, to have people testify and say that these people on trial at the ICTR are guilty and thus they have to be thrown in prison for life or be killed. Most importantly, genocide must be recognized as a terrible crime and the perpetrators must only be Hutus.
The prisoners had to accept they were guilty and some of them were even released after they gave false testimonies against other, more well-known prisoners, political and government officials. If a prisoner refuses to accept their guilt, especially a well-known prisoner, the RPF sometimes paid people to give false testimony against those who refused to cooperate. Some prisoners who said nothing or refused to declare their guilt were tortured until they admitted their guilt. Also, they were threatened by ICTR investigators, “If you don’t do this, your wife and your kids will be killed, and then you will be killed too.” This is just what happened to Uwilingiyimana.
DB: So the removal of his hands was part of the torture he endured to force him to cooperate. Was that the message to the Rwandan community?
JCN: To the Rwandan community, it means that, if you are asked to testify against your friends, parents, whatever, you have to do it. If you don’t cooperate, you will be killed. Nobody can deny that the RPF has death squads flourishing in Europe. I am afraid the European countries are not able to protect us against these RPF death squads. They even let RPF killers come and search for those who are saying anything other than Kagame’s scenario. We say that we cannot…I just want to emphasize the fact that I will never accept the scenario as told by the RPF. They know Paul Kagame cannot tolerate opponents, especially those who challenge him about the genocide. He wants everybody to see the genocide only how he defines it.
That guy Uwilingiyimana, he worked closely with Habyarimana. I mean, he was a former minister in Habyarimana’s administration and was believed to be his close friend. People also said he was close to the so-called “Akazu”[33] meaning that he knew everything and was an important figure. You should know that the term Akazu is really just another label to characterize and qualify the enemy so his testimony would back up the idea that the genocide was planned only by Hutu extremists. He was called to testify and was told to accept the RPF’s version of the genocide story. He was told to confirm that Hutu planned the genocide in advance and killed Tutsis. He refused. He said he would never accept this. After they found out he was not willing to change his mind, they unfortunately decided to torture and kill him.
The people guilty of threatening Uwilingiyimana were from the U.N. and working for the ICTR at the time. They were two Canadians, Richard Renaud[34] and another guy named Rejean Tremblay,[35] along with a Belgian guy named André Delvaux.[36] Later, I saw on T.V. Tremblay and another person I don’t want to mention here together with Louise Arbour,[37] and they were talking about how they were working with the ICTR to track down Hutu and force them to testify. It was incredible![38]
DB: Now, so I get this correct, the ICTR workers investigating Mr. Uwilingiyimana were the ones on the T.V.?
JCN: Yes. This plan started with a guy named Akayesu who was being tried in Arusha.[39] He was forced to testify to things in which he himself did not believe in. He also was forced to sign a document. If he did not sign it, he was told he would be killed. The investigators told him that he would be released or get a very short time of imprisonment if he signed it.
Everyone should also know about the hate speech of Paul Kagame given this April in Murambi. He said he did not kill enough Hutu in 1994. He actually admitted he is trying to think of a way to carry this out again. Then, only one or two weeks after his speech, there were killings in southern Rwanda near Butare, in the previous Mbazi Commune, and in other places. Then, his speech transcript was censored and changed on the Internet. Other places removed the audio file of his speech from their websites.
DB: I didn’t see any reports about the killings. I did not know about that.
JCN: I have heard the killings were carried out by Jean de Dieu Mucyo. No reports have been given about it in the papers. In the same context as Akayesu, there are men and women who are specially trained to give false testimony, like the well-known Kimisagara accusers. There are men and women from Kimisagara, Bugesera, and Kibuye who are brought to Kigali to be specially trained for that. This started after Hillary Clinton came and offered a reward for the first rape conviction at the ICTR. Suddenly, all these women came forward to the ICTR to testify and then Akayesu was convicted for rape and many others followed!
To know exactly what I am talking about, ask the defense attorneys in Arusha. They will tell you all about these women’s false allegations. For instance, they will say, “Oh, we were raped by this man for one, two weeks, etc.” After the cross-examination session, it’s obvious they are lying. Some of them will even admit it, but then they cannot to go back to Rwanda. This is a matter of fact. Do you realize that? Sometimes, when asked about conflicting facts in their testimony, these women reply, “I am sorry, I have forgotten,” or, “It wasn’t my idea.” If they testify otherwise though, there is a problem. This problem is real but it is minimized by ICTR prosecutors who maintain the genocide was planned and executed only by Hutu extremists. This is why the ICTR, through its prosecutors, is under RPF control. The ICTR has become the main source of money for the judges and attorneys who had a chance to get a job there. They are there to get rich. It is also about getting a reputation, about being known. The thing is, the prosecution must be done according to the will of Paul Kagame.
There is one man who I owe much respect because said he couldn’t do his job under such conditions. That’s why he resigned on September 30th, 1996. A former ICTR judge named Richard Goldstone from South Africa said on the BBC (British Broadcasting Company) that what is happening at Arusha has nothing to do with the rule of law! “Nobody can talk about ICTR partiality. If we are going to reconcile Rwandans, we have to work under the rule of law. All crimes that have been committed between January 1st and December 31st, 1994, must be prosecuted, including RPF crimes committed against Hutus. We have to investigate and find out why so many people died and find out exactly what happened.” That’s what he said.
From my side, when I came back to Rwanda for the second time in 1996, on the 17th of November, I personally saw people getting beaten, imprisoned, and killed by the RPF. My brothers and my sisters died in these conditions. I’d like to give you the names of some of my family members who were murdered by the RPF. Domitille Uwimana, who was working for the Red Cross, was raped for one week at the gendarmerie headquarters in Gisenyi before she was killed along with her one-year child named Nshuti. My brother, Charles Kizito Bwanakweli, disappeared on January 23rd, 1997. Diane and her sister Fifi, six and eight years old, and my other brothers Nshimiye and Ndagije, sixteen and seventeen years old, were also killed. At Mukamira Centrum in Nkuli Commune, the RPF massacred my cousin Josephine Mukagatare, her six children, and her husband Serushago. They killed my cousin Dativa, her mother, her three sisters, her brothers Emmanuel, Dusabe, Ntabugi, Kazehe, and her father Aloys Kanyabitaro. Rose was killed by the RPF on the morning of April 7th at Remera, in Kigali town. My uncle, Stanis Baganizi, was together with his wife Theresia, a tutsi woman (umugwabira) and their four children were burned alive in their house at Nyundo, in Gisenyi.
DB: Where were you in Rwanda?
JCN: Ruhengeri.
DB: So, you came back through Goma?
JCN: Yeah. I was living near Goma in the camp at Mugunga on Lake Kivu. The camp was attacked by the RPF and we had to flee to Sake. Then we were forcibly sent back to Rwanda on November 14th, 1996.
DB: So you left Congo at the time Mugunga was destroyed.
JCN: Yes. I was living there at the time the massacres started. I fled to Sake where I stayed a couple of days before coming back to Rwanda.
DB: What happened in Mugunga? Can you describe what you saw?
JCN: Well, what I saw there…was just like, um…I have never been in the Sahara Desert before, but I think the day the RPF attacked must have been like that. It was very hot, a very hot afternoon. In the beginning, you know, there was intense artillery falling on the camp. I don’t know how to describe that, I’m not military. I am not a soldier. Before the attack, it was so hot in that camp we didn’t know how much worse the situation could possibly be. The roads were crowded with crying children and anxious women.
First of all, before the attacks, I saw people in Mugunga who looked like journalists, white journalists, approaching us. They came to us and said that they wanted to know how we were doing and they asked if they could help somehow. They said they were working for an NGO but did not specify what organization they were working for.
DB: How many of them were there?
JCN: I saw three.
DB: Did they have any accents? Did they sound British, American, South African…
JCN: American accent, yes, there was one American there. British accent, yes, there was also one British guy. But South African I can’t say because I don’t know. I’m not sure where the third guy was from. I don’t believe they were journalists or NGO workers. They were wearing khaki shorts with small khaki shirts that had four pockets, two on top, two on bottom. At the same time, I couldn’t pay too much attention to them because I was in panic. We knew the RPF was approaching the camp and a bloodbath was about to happen. I had to decide very quickly if I wanted to go back to Rwanda or move ahead into the huge Congolese forests and mountains.
DB: What did they say that made you suspicious of them?
JCN: After they left, many people were shot and others were mutilated. When the RPF arrived at the camp, we didn’t know where exactly the rifles were shooting from and I don’t really know which side those ground troops attacked from. So many people got killed.[40] I saw wounded people being helped into a Toyota vehicle. Many of them were mutilated and their arms and legs were blown off. There was so much blood on the road. The vehicle went towards Sake, where there were medical facilities. I am sure that those people who went there as NGO workers wanted to collect information so they could help the RPF attack the camp.
DB: Why did you go to Sake?
JCN: The first people who left Mugunga and went to the Rwandan border right away ran into the RPF and were killed. I couldn’t pass through. I just wanted to go with the crowd because I thought I would have a better chance to survive. I had to wait until later. If they found out I was somebody who knows something, I mean that I was educated, I would be killed. I couldn’t leave Congo that way. I even had to wear very dirty clothes so the RPF soldiers wouldn’t think I went to school.
DB: So most of the intellectuals decided to stay there in Congo?
JCN: Yes. Unfortunately, many of them got killed. I can’t say for sure who survived the RPF mass-slaughters. I know many of my friends got killed, including a classmate of mine, Banzi Wellars. He and his wife never returned to Rwanda. They were educated in mathematics. Those who survived the forest…there were many massacre sites in Congo were thousands of Hutu were killed. I know so many who died, but I won’t talk about them because there is not enough time for that. Many of the people who were butchered in Kibeho and in the Congo were teachers from Butare University.
DB: So they went into the forest and decided to take their chances and those who survived the forest ended up at the Tingi-Tingi camp.
JCN: Not only at Tingi-Tingi, but also later at Ubundu, Kisangani, Mbandaka, and many other sites where Hutus were slaughtered by RPF soldiers. There is one lady who lives in Switzerland who knows exactly how refugees were butchered by RPF soldiers. My people are ready to testify but most of them have not had an opportunity to do so like me.
When I left Rwanda, I was with my wife and our daughter, Vanessa. She was the only child we had together. I told my wife I knew I would be killed by the RPF so I have to go to Congo without her. I was with a friend and my brother-in-law, Dr. Deo Twgirayezu. By the way, he’s also ready to testify publicly. He lives in exile in Europe. He’s suffered so much because he lost almost his entire family to RPF massacres.
Ok. We had some money we were going to share and I said to my wife Catherine, “Go home ok, I’ll never see you again. I know I’m gonna die, but what I can do…maybe you will be safe, I don’t know, but please try to survive.” That’s what I told her. I was in tears of course. I kissed her for what I thought was the last time. After that, I left and when I arrived at the border between Rwanda and Congo at Gisenyi, an RPF soldier guarding the border there asked me, “Where are you going? Where are you staying?” I told him I was going to Butare.[41] He looked at me with anger and said, “We will find you anytime.” There were thousands of people crossing while I was there.
If you had any kind of document that showed you were educated, you could not survive. I saw many people who went to Congo before me that were killed. I also had some diplomas for my students. I hid them under a big stone before I left. Like so many of my fellow Rwandans, I had to destroy all my remaining documents, including my identity card. Our clothes were so worn…you could not imagine that we had not moved anywhere before this.
There was one place at the border where the RPF separated some of the men from the women and they were led away. I don’t know where they were taken but I never saw any of them again. There was one lady from the Red Cross working there who called me over and said that I should not cross the border, it was too dangerous.[42] She took me to her place where I stayed with my wife and child in Gisenyi for the night. Those who crossed over on that day, many of them got killed. We couldn’t find any of them on our way back to Nkuli Commune. That could have been me.
As a matter of fact, in 1996 and 1997, RPF military officers serving in Ruhengeri Prefecture that killed people were promoted. As a reward for killing people in Ruhengeri, the RPF promoted soldiers to different positions in the ministries. People like (Deus) Kagiraneza were promoted to command the Ruhengeri Prefecture. (Gerald) Gahima, (Diogène) Bideli, (Charles) Zilimwabagabo, and many others killed thousands of Hutu in Ruhengeri. The RPF arbitrarily arrested people and put them in Ruhengeri Prison. Later, they were killed and their relatives were not even allowed to bury the body. You know Zac Nsenga? He represented Rwanda as the Ambassador to the United States. He was in Ruhengeri killing people also. As a promotion, he was given the post of Ambassador to Washington DC. It’s incredible!
One time, Paul Kagame came personally to Ruhengeri and he called everybody to meeting. He blamed the local population for supporting the ex-FAR and Interahamwe. He even called on some of the attendees to stand up and explain why they were supporting the militias. He told them they would be held responsible for what would happen to them. He personally ordered the RPF soldiers there to kill everyone present at the meeting and he left after that. Hundreds of people were killed that evening. The killing occurred in Nkuli Commune, on the hills near the Gatovu secondary school.
When I came back to Rwanda in November 1996, there were no military troops; no RPF soldiers were in the military camps. All of them were spread out across the country. You had twenty-five to twenty-six RPF soldiers in each commune. They had permission to kill any anyone they even suspected of disagreeing with the RPF. The other soldiers were known as the Local Defense Forces, or Abakada. They arrested, killed, looted, and terrorized Hutus throughout the country. They started training with the RPF in 1995 up to 1998.
General Nyamwasa was the chief commander of military operations in Ruhengeri Prefecture. He organized all the massacres in that area. Throughout that prefecture, you had one hundred to four hundred soldiers total with twenty-five here, twenty-five there, twenty-five there, and they killed people every day after a few interrogations. They would shoot a friend of yours or maybe your brother and the way they killed him was so incredibly horrible that you couldn’t recognize him anymore. After that, they told us the people they killed were Interahamwe and they said the killings were proof for those who wouldn’t accept that we had Interahamwe living among us. They said, “This is the sentence for all those who committed genocide.”
We didn’t even know who the Interahamwe really were. In reality, it was every single Hutu! We were all just told the Interahamwe were evil and were the enemy. We all knew was that tomorrow any Hutu could be accused of being an Interahamwe-a common enemy that had to be destroyed-by anyone if they wanted us dead. We lived in constant fear.
After that, we had to get food from the UNHCR (United Nations High Commission for Refugees) because when we returned to our houses after arriving back from Congo, we found they were occupied by Tutsi returning from Uganda who supported the RPF. The UNHCR representatives told us they were going to give us papers that could be used to move from the countryside through the commune to go and get food. As I said, when we got back from Congo, all of our homes were forcibly occupied by Tutsis. You had no rights to reclaim the house that belonged to you. No. Anyone who said anything was accused of being an Interahamwe and was put in prison or executed. Those who asked RPF officials for their property back were also killed.
DB: Where were you at this time?
JCN: In Ruhengeri Prefecture. My family lived in a plastic sheet outside and we could say nothing about it. We had to worship those who had stolen our houses. It was slavery.
DB: Ok.
JCN: Because our homes were taken away by the RPF. We had to sleep outside and the UNHCR did nothing to help us. All they did was give us those papers. You had to use them during your travels inside the country. At the same time, that permit was proof you were a returnee from Congo, and that meant you were a refugee, an enemy who fled. It made it very easy for the RPF militias and the Local Defense Forces to identify you and kill you. Many of the returnees were reported missing. Others were imprisoned and still others were killed. That’s why I refused to travel anywhere and you know what, I still hate the UNHCR for that. I was forced to stay there in the countryside and couldn’t sell anything that belonged to us for food. Everything we had there was taken for the Tutsis’ enjoyment. We needed to buy documents such as an ID card, but this was not possible. We weren’t considered Rwandan citizens. We were treated like second-class citizens by everyone, even the U.N. So the only way to travel was to get an identity permit with your picture on it (Attestation d’Identité Complete) otherwise we were exposed to imprisonment, disappearances and killings. There was a soldier at every checkpoint for population control on the way to Kigali. Even in Kigali, we were checked every day, every morning, and every night.[43]
When we came back to Rwanda, people in Gisenyi who wanted to go to Cyangugu could not go through Goma as a shortcut and cross the border back into Rwanda at Bukavu. The RPF didn’t allow us to do this. Instead, we had to walk through Ruhengeri, then Kigali, Gitarama, then to Butare, Gikongoro and finally Cyangugu. We were forced to walk the entire way by the RPF. Do you understand? Many of the people who walked those hundreds of kilometers died on the way. There were UNHCR vehicles parked along the entire path, but they did not help anyone. It was so many kilometers to walk! Five hundred kilometers!? Six hundred kilometers!? Maybe even eight hundred kilometers?! I don’t know exactly but we did exactly the same thing as those people who fled into the Congo forests!
DB: Now in 1996, in March, then again in October while you were in Congo, there were several Spanish priests and nuns killed in Rwanda. Do you know anything about these incidents?
JCN: What happened there, every outsider…priests, nuns, none of them could survive because they were accused of supporting the former regime. The RPF killed many of the priests all across the country and as you know many of Rwanda’s religious figures were assassinated in Gakurizo. They slaughtered bishops, nuns, and priests, especially Hutus. Another reason to kill the Spanish priests was because they helped resist the Tutsi monarchy in the past. They empowered Hutu with education through their missions. Also, the Spanish priests knew the RPF massacred Bagogwe,[44] who the RPF said were killed by Interahamwe. The RPF believed the Spanish priests and nuns were reporting RPF massacres of Hutu to the international community and NGOs.
DB: Do you believe now, we saw that the RPF was particularly violent towards Hutu in the north, towards the so-called “Bakiga.”
JCN: Yes.
DB: Do you believe that comes from their resistance to the monarchy? That Paul Kagame was carrying out an old feud so-to-speak?
JCN: Yes, I believe that is true. Even before when we had the monarchy in the country, it was rejected in the north and many of my fellow citizens, I mean those who were educated, were still threatened for not collaborating with the regime. I remember in 1996, Tito Rutaremara, the RPF’s main philosopher, his brother Jill Rutaremara,[45] General Nyamwasa, and Antoine Mugesera, another RPF philosopher who actually is changing the history of Rwanda in Butare University, organized a meeting were they wanted to learn why the Bakiga did not accept a monarchy and minority rule. It was held in Ruhengeri town. Dr. Twagirayezy was there as an attendee and he actually wants to testify about this event as I told you before. They brought a document for everyone to sign as a contract agreeing to RPF rule in order to bring security back to the region and the person who signed it took an oath not to undermine the RPF’s efforts. Many of the people that gathered there were killed; especially those who refused to sign the document.
DB: Some individuals have brought up Paul Kagame’s own unique bloodlines that extend back to the monarchy. Does this influence his domestic policies?
JCN: In my country, we have a president, but we really have an unofficial monarchy. You know, in that country we have two competitive clans: Abanyiginya and Abega. They have been killing each other for power, you know, and whatever clan was in charge of the monarchy always killed local Hutu chiefs to expand their influence. Have you ever heard about the Kalinga?
DB: Yes, I have heard about that. It was a symbolic royal war drum.
JCN: Yeah, they hung the testicles of Hutu from it for about four centuries.
DB: I have heard of it before, but I always wondered if it was real or just propaganda to demonize the monarchy.
JCN: It’s true. It’s true.
DB: Do you think his ties to the royal family help him keep the loyalty of some RPF members? [46]
JCN: I know that he is related to one of the royal family, I don’t know, one of them was killed in the genocide.
DB: Oh, yes. That was his aunt. It’s his aunt Rosalie Gicanda. She was the Queen Mother.
JCN: Yes, I heard about that, but I already know, Kagame does not want the rule of a monarchy to become official because the king has to answer before the Tutsi council, “Abiru”, a council that holds the real power over the country. That is exactly the same council used in gacaca courts today to decide every Hutu’s fate.
DB: Are you saying that if he formally becomes king, he would have to answer to somebody?
JCN: Yes, and this is the big issue. Kagame is from the Abega tribe, so he hates the Abanyiginya who for four centuries were ruling the country before a revolution took place in 1959 to overthrow the monarchy and install a Republican regime. He is the king of Rwanda under the president’s label. He decides everyone’s destiny, takes or gives to anybody he likes or dislikes. The entire power is in his hands. Whoever says anything contrary to his will gets arrested or killed by his death squads. He says how everything must be done. I think you understand this.
DB: I saw President Kagame speak at Amahoro Stadium on Liberation Day last year and it was particularly remarkable how different his attitude was during his speech from his trips abroad. His delivery and word choice had so much more conviction and was so stern compared to when he is speaking abroad.
JCN: Also, in 1996, Kagame said that he would destroy the refugee camps in Congo anytime he wanted due to the fact they did not listen to him when he asked them to return to Rwanda. Then, after they forcibly returned, he invited the public to Amahoro Stadium and he had a group of Hutu refugees march before everyone in the stadium. He said, “You see these Interahamwe marching in front of you. They aren’t human anymore. Look at them! And they tell people they can attack Rwanda! They are nothing! Nothing!”
DB: Now in 1997, there were a number of assassinations in your country. In January and February, you had several U.N. observers killed.
JCN: If it was January or February, I don’t remember, but the killings were blamed on ex-FAR while it was really more RPF crimes. All of those ex-FAR who were sent back to Rwanda were told they would be integrated into the new RPF army. Many of them believed that and later in January they were killed together with their families and neighbors. This carnage took place in Rwanda during thirty straight days of killings. RPF soldiers and Local Defense Forces started by killing the high ranking ex-FAR officers together with their wives, children and all their neighbors so that nobody could testify. They killed everybody within one kilometer of the targeted neighborhood.
DB: Do you know Kiswahili by chance?
JCN: Yes, I do.
DB: You know the word, “Fagia?”
JCN: Yeah, fagia means “finish the job.”
DB: Ok. I am aware that Kagame….
JCN: Yes, that’s…
DB: …used that word to speak of such operations.
JCN: ...to finish the job.
DB: So essentially, it’s….it’s a complete extermination of one’s bloodline in a sense, if it’s a targeted individual.
JCN: Yes. “Fagia” meaning to kill him or them, those who were targeted….nobody could survive.
DB: Yes.
JCN: We know that many people here, there, everywhere were killed in a different manner. The RPF used akandoya and other times, they forced someone to kill their own friend, bury them, and then the RPF killed them also. They used such cruel methods, not just killing someone but humiliating them first.
DB: What you just described, this was all around Ruhengeri?
JCN: Yes, Ruhengeri Prefecture was like….it was horrible.
DB: Now, when the U.N. observers were murdered on the 4th of February, I have it at the Karengera Commune near Cyangugu and that a Briton was among those killed. Only about a week earlier, several Spanish medical workers for Medicos del Mundo were killed and an American worker was among those wounded.[47] There’s currently a pending lawsuit against several Rwandan military officials for this incident.[48] What were these events about?
JCN: The RPF was always up there in 1997. They were always by the border area. We were told Interahamwe were crossing the border and killing people, but for us in the north, we never saw any Interahamwe as far as I can remember, but we saw many people getting killed. There were times around one hundred people were killed in Cyamabuye Pentecostal Church and in several schools, but they officially reported these killings were criminal acts by the Interahamwe, but this was not true. The RPF and Local Defense Forces killed everybody in the area and at the end of the day, RPFlocal authorities reported that all of them were killed by Interahamwe or by ex-FAR insurgents crossing over from Congo. The soldiers would even take weapons with them and leave them with the bodies and say they were Hutu infiltrators. Nobody could take a risk and say that RPF was involved in those massacres. Another trick that the RPF used is they went to your home at night and brought a pair of boots and left them there. In the morning, they came back and said that you were using the boots to help Interahamwe cross Lake Kivu into Rwanda. As a result, they killed those people and told everyone they were helping the insurgents.
Those Spanish citizens, they died like so many Rwandans did. They were not killed by insurgents; they were killed by RPF soldiers and LDF (Local Defense Forces). As I said earlier, the RPF killed Bagogwe in that area and said the Interahamwe killed them. They added that the genocide is underway again. Those aid workers knew about this and were going to report it.[49]
DB: Then in February, as I mentioned, another priest was killed and then several U.N. were killed in Karengera.
JCN: Cyangugu?
DB: Yeah. Was this a similar situation?
JCN: Yes. The RPF believed those guys were giving information to the international community and the RPF had a policy to kill without being seen or finish the job without any eyewitness to their crimes. That’s also what happened to the Canadian priest in Ruhengeri and to the Croatian priests and so on…
DB: I want to ask a question specifically about the Local Defense Forces. When I was in Rwanda, as I was coming in from the countryside, I saw soldiers in camouflage uniforms patrolling along the road to Kigali, particularly around the forests. In the forests, there were also soldiers blending in amongst the forest, presumably for border security. In Kigali, there were armed men, typically young, who wore pink uniforms, but not the prison uniforms. I was told by Rwandans they were called the “Local Defense Force.” Who were these different groups of soldiers?
JCN: You have guys who, most of those guys in the countryside roads are RPF. The Local Defense Force does not wear a uniform out there. They look like ordinary Rwandans. But all in all, they were Abakada as we Rwandans call them. Those guys travel in groups of five, all men, and they patrol the area they are in charge of. They are not paid and they do whatever they want in the area they control. Their main training camps are in Mutobo, Gabiro, and Gishari. But also, there are these so-called “Rasta,” who are Hutu soldiers, sometimes even ex-FAR, that work for and are under RPF supervision.[50]
DB: So it is a paramilitary unit.
JCN: A paramilitary unit as you said, yes, but they received training from RPF officers. They even make maps and generate plans together with RPF soldiers for their military operations.
DB: That helps clarify things for me a bit. Now just one more question with regards to specific military units. One well-known military unit in Rwanda is the Presidential Guard. In Rwanda today, in current times, what role does this unit play? What is their mission? Is it only to provide physical protection for President Kagame?
JCN: The Presidential Guard, what it is…ok. Everywhere President Kagame goes in the country; they are part of his escort and must be there with him. They are all chosen to do the job, you cannot volunteer. It is run by Frank Nziza. They are mostly used in special death squad missions inside and outside the country. There is no denying also they have received training by U.S. Special Forces and some of them, including U.S. intelligence-gathering units, are based in Kigali-Kacyiru.
DB: When I was in Kigali, I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to tour the KIST (Kigali Institute of Science and Technology) school grounds. I asked some of the students there what they were going to do once they graduated. All of them told me they were going to work for their country. Since it is a technology-education school, they said they were going to work for firms like Terracom and other state-owned telecommunications firms. What is the relationship between schools, jobs, and political ideology in Rwanda?
JCN: Let me explain to you the job situation as I understand it. In the countryside, we were told by Rwandans coming from Kigali there was nowhere to go. I went to Kigali by taxi and got a job at Sulfo-Rwanda Industries, an Indian-owned mining company. When I worked there, every intellectual Hutu had to pay 5,000 Rwandan Francs[51] every week to their supervisor. This guy who worked there, he was a friend of Rose Kabuye’s[52] husband. He told me if I didn’t pay him every week, he will come back to find me and my new home would be 1930, meaning the central prison in Kigali. I was afraid so I paid every week on Friday. They told me, “You have to know what happened to other Hutus.” He also told me he’s saving my life and I actually do agree with that.
After that, I decided to try and find another job. I went for an interview with the UNDP (United Nations Development Project) and a Tutsi woman refused to give me access to the person in charge of interviews. She said I had to bring proof that I have a job from the Ministry of Industry. I told her, “No, I got a job at Sulfo-Rwanda you cannot ask me to bring such proof. Everyone there knows me.” She responded, “That’s your business.” Then I left and understood I would never get that job.
Also, there was a guy connected to Sulfo-Rwanda, Froduald Karamira, who was killed on February 14th, 1997. I was in Nkuli Commune on that day, which is now known as Buhoma District. He was accused of being a Hutu extremist so he fled to India through his contacts at Sulfo-Rwanda. He was arrested in Bombay and instead of being sent to the ICTR, he was deported back to Rwanda. In return, India was given a contract to supply the RPF military with TATA vehicles. Karamira admitted he was guilty and the RPF took him and a woman lawyer to Nyabugogo and shot them in public. However, the real reason he was shot was so the RPF could confiscate his property, just like they did with Kabuga’s properties. Clever, huh?
Every Hutu lived like this. You had to work for the government, for the RPF. They used other workers to keep informed about every newcomer, everyone who’s starting work. To understand this, let me give you an example. Today, when you graduate, you must go to a training center at Gikondo for brainwashing to get a job. Every semester, some graduates are chosen to be sent there from among all the universities in Rwanda. Nobody knows where that person is going and then they return later, both Hutu and Tutsi, determined to kill anyone who opposes the RPF.
You spend six months at the center. They give you a list of people to hate, people who are supposed to be opponents of the RPF. People are taught to hate their own parents and friends if they oppose the RPF. These people spy on everyone else at work and report suspicious people to the Directorate of Military Intelligence. After one and a half years of living in this hell, I fled to Nairobi.
DB: That was when you eventually moved out of Africa?
JCN: At that time, my wife was regularly travelling to Kigali. Many people thought she looked like a Tutsi so she didn’t have as much trouble. The third time she went there, her friends were killed. She came back and told me to leave. We got a traveling permit and I traveled to Kigali. The last day I fled to Kampala and from there I went to Nairobi. After Seth died, I left Africa. I am not afraid to say that. I have nothing to hide.
DB: What happened in Bwindi Forest in 1999?
JCN: You know Americans were killed there right?
DB: Well, there were reports that an armed group came and killed some western tourists. Some said it was Interahamwe, others said it was a Ugandan rebel group like the ADF (Allied Democratic Forces) or NALU (National Army for the Liberation of Uganda). There were different….
JCN: If you ask me that question, I will ask you why you the Bagogwe tribe got killed in Gisenyi. Who is the perpetrator? The same one who killed the American tourists: the RPF soldiers and Paul Kagame. After Madeline Albright arrived in Rwanda….
DB: This was where?
JCN: I was in Rwanda, in the countryside, in my commune of origin. Albright left to go to Congo or something like that. After they left Rwanda, Bagogwe were killed by the RPF and they reported the Interahamwe did it. Albright and…I don’t remember the other one; she was in African Affairs Department.
DB: That would be Susan Rice.
JCN: Yes, Miss Susan Rice. She also came back to Rwanda with Albright and met with Paul Kagame. After the meeting she approved his allegations that the Interahamwe killed the Bagogwe. Everybody knows that version of facts is incorrect. The Prefect of Gisenyi, Epimaque, said on Radio Rwanda the Bagogwe were killed because they were stealing potatoes. Kagame got mad about that and removed him.
Exactly the same thing happened to the tourists, the American tourists. This was an act of terrorism.[53] On that same day, in Jenda District, where I was born, and also in Nkuli, RPA soldiers killed at least 500 civilians on November 21st. Susan Rice did not say anything about this. Why did she condemn this crime and accuse Hutus before an independent inquiry team went there to investigate?
DB: Are you saying the RPF committed all those crimes?
JCN: Of course, I know this for sure. I also know that they even killed Tutsis in different areas, including a Tutsi agriculturist in Ruhengeri. I don’t know his name unfortunately, but he was an agriculturalist who worked at the plantations in the countryside of Nkuli and Karago communes. He was killed at the Adventist Church in Rwankeli, Nkuli Commune with his wife, children, and fifteen neighbors. The RPF blamed the Abacengezi.[54] In total, seventeen people were killed that day in the same area.
Also that year, in January 1997, one RPF soldier was killed in public because he was supposed to kill some people, but did not. There was a Hutu woman who came to ask for her husband’s house back because it had been taken over by Tutsis. For this courageous act, the woman had to die. The soldier who was ordered to shoot her did not do so and that RPF soldier was killed for not following instructions. He was shot in public. So when Paul Kagame says he punished those who were involved in killings, it’s not really true. The RPF soldiers who did follow such orders, they were glorified and promoted to the highest military rankings. For example, Colonel Ibingira after he massacred displaced people in Kibeho. There was also (Faustin-Kayumba) Nyamwasa, (Jackson) Nziza, (Gerald) Gahima, (Charles) Zilimwabagabo…as a matter of fact; the RPF punishes those who don’t kill Hutus. Can you believe that? You can’t believe this. But it’s true.
DB: Let’s talk about another one of those cases you just mentioned. Can you tell me about Kibeho?
JCN: Yes, Kibeho, I cannot forget that because I had a good friend who was killed there. Remember, you asked me in the beginning about how people in Butare were killed by the RPF soldiers while U.N. forces were there? University workers, students, and teachers were massacred in front of the U.N. peacekeeping forces. At first, the Rwandans who ended up in that camp were going to flee to the southern region of Congo, but this did not happen because they were told they would be protected by the U.N. peacekeeping forces. At that time, Octave Iligukunze, a classmate and a friend of mine at Moscow University was there. He was there with other Hutu intellectuals at the camp and… you know what, I’ll never, ever see him again because the RPF killed all of them. They were told to go to Kibeho and after that, Paul Kagame gave an ultimatum and told them leave the camps. He said the RPF is going to close the camps in Rwanda starting with Kibeho because it was not necessary for them to stay open because the country is now safer than it was before. The result was catastrophic, unspeakable killings done with U.N. and UNHCR complicity.
The RPF started by using machine guns and mortars to destroy the camp; destroy the houses, to destroy all the people. They killed women, children, and young guys from the university that were there. This was a bloody planned genocide as I told you before; genocide planned very well by the RPF leadership. No Hutu intellectual could be allowed survive. If you survived Kibeho, you had to go to the countryside and stay there until you disappeared or were killed very far from the U.N. observers in Kigali. We had no rights. We were treated animals that had to be butchered. No more, no less. Luckily, I had a chance to escape and go to Kigali. How did I get there? Through bribery and corruption…using whatever I could so that I could go there.
DB: To Kigali?
JCN: Yes. I know how my friends got killed at the same time as I left my area for Kigali, but you have asked me about Kibeho so…Kibeho was really our tragic history to live with. I don’t…I compare it to the Jewish Auschwitz. During the morning, starting at about 04:00, they started shooting and using all kinds of weapons, including heavy artillery to kill them. They killed a lot of innocent people. They did not care. U.N. soldiers from Australia that were there have said they are ready to testify anywhere if they are asked. They saw everything.[55] There was also an organization that included this lady named Kleine who has a website where you can find pictures of the mass graves.[56] You have seen those?
DB: Yeah, I’ve seen those.
JCN: So the guy, Paul Kagame, decided to close the camps using this guy named Fred Ibingira, who was promoted to the rank of General a few months later. He worked with Jacques Bihozagara, who was first promoted to be the Rwandan Ambassador to Belgium then later as the Ambassador to France for having killed so many people. You know that I talked about him already. He was killing people in Ruhengeri before getting appointed to a higher position. Also, there was Major Rubagumya Gacinya, who headed the CID (Criminal Investigation Division) and was recently named the military attaché at the Rwandan Embassy in Washington D.C.
Now, let’s talk about happened to my people, my fellow citizens. President Bizimungu went to Kibeho because he was afraid of Kagame and he told everybody only a few hundred were killed there. At the same time, how many really died? Most people say eight thousand people but I met a guy from the UNHCR who told me twenty-one thousand died, including Kibeho and the surrounding area.
DB: I found some similar information that I would like to share with you and get your reaction. It started on the 22nd or 23rd, but the day after the killings, the United States Embassy sent its Defense Attaché Officer (DAO), whose name is Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Odom, along with Mr. Mickey Dunham, the Operations Officer in the Defense Attaché Office at the U.S. Embassy to Kibeho to find out exactly what happened.[57]
JCN: Yeah.
DB: They spoke with Sam Kaka, Colonel Nyamwasa, Charles Muhire, and Lieutenant Colonel Karenzi. When they left, they told U.S. Ambassador David Rawson that 2,000 were killed in Kibeho. Now this is what Lieutenant Colonel Odom, a well-trained and veteran military officer said was his reasoning for his estimate. He determined eight thousand or more bodies could not possibly have been moved overnight because there were only five thousand RPF soldiers in the area, which wasn’t enough manpower to move that many bodies and also remove all the shell casings it would have taken to shoot that many people.[58]
After that, Ambassador Rawson called in a lawyer named Maurice Nyberg, an American who was part of the U.N. Special Investigations Unit that eventually became the ICTR. Anyway, he investigated Kibeho for a month and stayed with Lieutenant Colonel Odom at the house of the U.S. Embassy’s Political Officer at the time, (then) Ms. Laura Lane. Whatever Mr. Nyberg discovered was never made public.[59] The reason I bring this up, first it is clear the U.S. was on the ground in Kibeho very quickly after the event. Second, there are no indications they ever interrogated any surviving refugees in the camp. What are your thoughts on this?
JCN: Of course, this is ridiculous and shameful. I don’t understand how the U.S. could support such criminals.
DB: To move on from that subject, you, now in 1993, you were in Moscow for graduate school?
JCN: Yes, up to February 28th, 1993.
DB: Can you tell me what happened when you got back to Rwanda?
JCN: Well, I told you about the February attack in 1993. I thought there would be peace in Rwanda; otherwise I wouldn’t have gone back. What I remember is that the RPF signed the Arusha Accords. Rwandans thought those accords would be implemented, but the RPF had another agenda. Many people in Rwanda were hopeful the fighting would end, but, for the U.S. and the U.K., as RPF backers, this would be a tragedy because the RPF would lose the elections because they killed so many people and nobody wanted them in power after what they experienced. That is why RPF had to step up to the second level; to step up to the killing of Hutu political leaders like Gatabazi, Bucyana, Rwambuka and Gapyisi. The RPF expected the Hutu to react by killing Tutsis so the RPF could resume hostilities and say they were defending Tutsi, but this did not happen. Eventually, they stepped to the 3rd level and eliminated President Juvenal Habyarimana and hoped Hutus would be too angry to stay calm. Without that, the RPF could not seize power and accomplish the final agenda of going to the Congo to payback their debts to their backers.
DB: You believed the Arusha Accords would hold?
JCN: Myself, yes. I believed Hutu and Tutsi finally had a chance to live together without too many problems.
DB: Where did you go when you first arrived back in Rwanda?
JCN: I stayed in Kigali because I came back with Jews, Russian Jews who wanted to establish a company in Kigali for mineral resources.
DB: Do you know the name of the company?
JCN: Excuse me?
DB: Do you know the name of the company?
JCN: (Long pause)
DB: That’s ok if you don’t remember.
JCN: (Laughs) I will be telling you sometime maybe. I had a problem with the Rwandan Government because they said we cannot accept their offer because there was already another company mining the mineral resources. They did not want the Russians to go in there. They asked me to pay six thous-…er, six million Rwandan Francs unfortunately. I refused. I was so angry. In the end, we had to negotiate and we paid four to five million for the startup costs.
DB: So at some point, you said you went home to…er, you said you accepted a job at the university in Gisenyi.
JCN: What happened to me was, after that, people from the MRND said, “This guy, Jean-Christophe is not helping so we have to work with someone else, we have to discuss directly with the Russians.” They decided to remove me and send me to Gisenyi. Before I came back to Rwanda, I had not even heard of this university, but I went because they asked me to and I had no choice.
DB: Who asked you to go?
JCN: They were people from the MRND. One of them belonged to Habyarimana’s family. They were angry with me, but I really don’t want to talk about this. Actually, in 1993, this is why I decided to pursue my PhD studies in Canada. First, I had a proposal from the U.S. Embassy, but later I decided to go to Canada after winning a French speaking scholarship that gave me the possibility to pursue PhD studies. I told the Canadian Embassy not to tell anyone because I was afraid they would find out and put an end to my dreams. I later resigned from the institute after March 5th and I got a letter from the Rwandan Embassy in Canada that I was chosen to fly to Canada. I didn’t tell anyone at the university where I was going for security reasons. Fortunately, at that time, everything went smoothly. What happened later in the beginning of April, it was unthinkable for me because the Canadian Embassy told me I had to prepare to leave for Canada in April 1994. Then, you know what happened next.
DB: Right.
JCN: The death of Habyarimana.
DB: You mentioned that you first had an offer to go abroad through the U.S. Embassy. How did you forge ties with the United States Embassy?
JCN: Ok, first of all, I needed books for my studies at the Institute so I got some contacts the embassy and they put me in touch with their Political Affairs officer named Linda. She told me there was no problem and she was going to help me. She said she could also get books from the U.S. and she did. I got many books from her. She also gave me a pass to attend a July 4th celebration held at the U.S. Embassy in 1993. After that, she told me that I could maybe get a Fulbright Scholarship to go to the U.S. and get my PhD. I said, “Ok. I have to tell those MRND guys who sent me to the university.” They told me that there was no problem to go to the U.S. I just had to wait and decide with Linda. In January 1994, she told me I really should go, but I thought the Arusha Accords would hold so I did not go. I have no idea if she knew that something was going to happen and was trying to warn me. I regret that I did not go because of what happened to me after that was not really….it was my fault. I made a mistake.
DB: But you honestly believed the Arusha Accords would work?
JCN: Yeah.
DB: Ok. So you told Linda Buggeln at the U.S. Embassy you were not going to go and the Arusha Accords were already signed but not implemented. Then there were a series of political assassinations in Rwanda. You mentioned these names earlier. Gapyisi, Rwambuka, Gatabazi, Bucyana…what can you tell me about what it was like in Rwanda at that time? Who was responsible for these killings and did they influence the intensity of the genocide?
JCN: As I told you before, the killings were part of the strategy of genocide, so that mass killings of Tutsi would occur in Rwanda. It was a plan that was initiated by the RPF leadership because the RPF knew they could not seize power under the Arusha Accords. They had to have mass killings of Tutsi so they could start the final aggression and say that they were fighting to stop the killings when all they really wanted was to seize power. They had to get people to kill Tutsis and the killing of Hutu in the northwest of my country was obviously not enough to generate that kind of hate. People got angry and their anger was rising day after day towards the RPF, but they were not attacking Tutsi civilians.
The second step was to create strong tension between the people to prepare them for killing. You are going to ask me how. In the beginning, they started by killing the heads of prefectures. They watched the reaction from the government, from others, you know, the chairmen of political parties, and they saw Rwandans acting disciplined. Rwandans were not reacting to every single RPF attack, every assassination. So they said, “Ok, we have people in power that really have influence in this country. Let’s start with them.”
They started by killing Emmanuel Gapyisi of the MDR (Democratic Republican Movement) in May 1993.[60] Gapysi was very intellectual and he was supposed to replace Habyarimana, as I understood it at the time. He was from the south, but was supported by Hutu in both the north and the south. He created a kind of a…he was in the right place at the right moment. The RPF saw that he was going to replace Habyarimana and possibly help unite Hutu in the north and the south, which was not in their interests.
Then in August 1993, the RPF decided to really raise tensions by killing Fidele Rwambuka, the Mayor of Kanzenze Commune from the MRND party. These assassinations were trigger points and each time the RPF killed one of them, they thought the militias of their political parties would react by killing Tutsi, which would allow the RPF to resume aggressions. When they killed Fidel Rwambuka, there were riots but no lynching, so nothing happened.
In February 1994, they killed Felicien Gatabazi of the PSD (Social Democratic Party). He was going home and the RPF killed him at the gate to his house. People say that Eric Hakizimana led the death squad that killed him. In 1993, when the RPF was killing people in the north and they attacked Ruhengeri, they destroyed the electricity source, water supply…they destroyed everything. Gatabazi, who was the Minister of Public Works, said, “We can’t trust the RPF anymore. What they did is a crime against humanity. How could they do this knowing that ninety percent of the population used that water? Why did they destroy it?”[61] After he said that, he was killed because the RPF knew they would no longer have his support. You see, he went too far because he sent the Abakombozi[62] to train with RPF soldiers in Mulindi. They thought he had no right to criticize them. That’s why they killed him.
After he was killed, Abakombozi militias of the PSD got angry and started riots with the CDR (Coalition for the Defense of the Republic)[63] militia, the Impuzamugambi[64], who they thought had killed Gatabazi. This was just what the RPF wanted. See, after Gatabazi was killed, the RPF began using Radio Muhabura to spread lots of rumors about who had done it. Infiltrators in Kigali helped out by telling people in town. You know the big difference rumors can make during wartime.
Still, Habyarimana did not believe it. He told everybody to stop the riots because this is exactly what somebody wants us to do. We must stop. Everybody did stop, but divisions were created between the parties. It also made the Rwandan conflict look like a civil war to the outside world and that is what the RPF wanted. Unfortunately for them, the Hutu stopped rioting and they still did not kill Tutsi.
The next day, the RPF did a very smart move from their viewpoint. They killed Martin Bucyana, the CDR’s president. By killing the head of the “extremist” party, they thought for sure Tutsi were going to be killed because they knew the CDR would blame the RPF and kill Tutsi civilians who they thought were RPF infiltrators in revenge. Also, Bucyana was killed when he was travelling from Cyangugu to Butare in his own car. The RPF killed him knowing that, if he was killed in the area where Gatabazi was born, the CDR might also blame the Abakombozi for the killing and the Abakombozi would start riots with the CDR militias again. At the same time, Radio Muhabura said the Hutu militias were responsible to make sure there was mass confusion. The RPF also got help from the international community, who were only saying in the press that Bucyana was an extremist, like he deserved to be killed. That way, nobody cared that he was killed and nobody would ask questions about who really killed him.
The RPF was increasing tensions to get an explosion of violence. I myself can say that tensions were much worse after each political killing. Sometimes during the latest riots after Bucyana’s death, there was lynching. After that, people did not want to be around anyone they didn’t know. You would go to a new place, for example a bar, and the people there would say to you, “Who are you? Don’t you know the RPF is going to be here in two weeks? Get out of the bar!” Then people, including infiltrators, were going around telling Hutu, “You have to get armed, the enemy is increasing every day.” Infiltrators were also committing random killings in the city. They would drive by somewhere on a motorcycle and use a grenade somewhere that people had gathered.
Myself, I had Tutsi family friends, but we became divided by stereotypes. While all of this is going on, one of these politicians were killed, somebody’s friend and a member of a powerful political party. The RPF expected people to react! Still, it did not happen! The RPF and its allies were very angry with that. They did not understand what kind of people they were dealing with.
DB: Where the FAR and Presidential Guard compromised by RPF infiltrators by the time President Habyarimana was killed?
JCN: I really don’t know for sure but I do not think so. Other units were infiltrated but not the Presidential Guard. The RPF did offer Major Ntabakuze millions of dollars to work for the RPF, but I was told he refused.
So the final step, the final job, was to kill President Habyarimana, the president’s staff, and Déogratias Nsabimana, the FAR Chief of Staff who went with him to Tanzania. They were killed coming back from a meeting about implementing the Arusha Accords. What the RPF did is obvious. That series of assassinations, the killers showed deep knowledge of Rwandans’ limits of tolerance. It was the last possible step in something they had planned for a long time. I believe they chose April 6th because Paul Kagame thought the militias were at their breaking point and they would kill with the most anger because of the tensions.[65] They knew that people were already very angry and prepared to kill because they were paranoid and thought so many Tutsi were RPF sympathizers. The RPF knew people would get revenge this time. That’s why you saw those people killing everybody after President Habyarimana.
The country had not only Tutsi, who were financing the RPF, but you had infiltrators, RPF infiltrators in so many places. You must know Valens Kajeguhakwa, who was with the RPF, said they even used priests to hide RPF weapons in churches. Everyone knew this and unfortunately, the Hutu militias found documents and RPA identity cards on many people in the churches and that is why so many people believed this and killed so many people in the churches. They realized they had been betrayed and because of the tension, because of the situation after the killing of President Habyarimana, the FAR and gendarmes were unable to control the militias. The country was beheaded and the genocide could only be planned by someone who knew the consequences of the 6th of April and it was not a surprise to anyone to see the RPF attack in Kigali and Kanombe on the same night Habyarimana died.
DB: President Habyarimana had a famous nickname did he not?
JCN: Huh?
DB: He was called, “Ikinani.”
JCN: Ok!
DB: The Invincible.
JCN: The Invincible. What that means, he said so because when he went to Ruhengeri, he said that at the time we had many political parties in the country. So they had to go and vote. He had been in power for many years and he said he was going to stay there. He also said to everyone, “My Interahamwe are going to win.” Radio Muhabura told everyone Habyarimana was not invincible to the RPF. The truth is, people who wanted democracy would never have voted for the RPF over Habyarimana, and he knew that. So the RPF knew they had to somehow mobilize opinion against the MRND.
DB: Right after President Habyarimana was killed; the RPF left their barracks at the CND building and attacked the Presidential Guard. Right away, there was fighting in Kigali and the Hutu militias came out. One of the most memorable events that occurred shortly after President Habyarimana’s death was the murder of the Prime Minister, Agathe Unwilingiyimana of the MDR. What was behind that? Why was she killed?
JCN: That problem goes with the Belgian UNAMIR forces.
DB: Why were they a problem?
JCN: They were trying to protect her. She was under U.N. protection with some of the other politicians. As I understood it, she even asked for more protection than what they gave her. She asked the U.N. to take her to Radio Rwanda so she could give a public speech.
DB: What was she going to say?
JCN: She was going to tell people to stay calm.
DB: Was she going to call off the militias?
JCN: She wanted to tell the militias, to tell everybody that now is not the time to go to war.
DB: Who actually killed her? Was it the FAR?
JCN: People say that she was killed by soldiers from the Rwandan Army, the FAR. The problem is how those Belgian troops were there in Camp Kigali. How did they end up there?[66]
DB: They were the Belgians who were later killed correct?
JCN: Yes, they were the ones who were killed. There is even an ongoing trial in Belgium about that.[67] They will want to know who brought those Belgians to Camp Kigali. The Canadians say the FAR brought them there, but we found out that the Belgian battalion went to another area outside their patrol the day Habyarimana got killed without an order from their commander, Luc Marchal. Marchal said, “I have no idea, I don’t know who gave them the order to do that.”
DB: Are you referring to their mission in Akagera National Park in RPF-controlled territory?
JCN: Exactly, exactly. Why did they go there with the RPF? After that, people wanted to know what their timetable was on that day. Who gave them the order to go there? In this case, the only one who can answer for those Belgians who were killed is General Dallaire. He knows why because he cannot be unaware. He was in charge of all the U.N. soldiers. He has to know the orders that were given. He has to answer to the courts.[68]
DB: Have you ever met General Dallaire in person?
JCN: Yes, I met him at The Hague during the “Africa Days” festivities.
DB: What did he say to you?
JCN: I met him last year. I talked to him personally. First of all, I told him, “General Dallaire, I’m very sorry you’re here. I cannot understand how you’re here knowing that your hands have blood on them.” He said, “No, I have no blood on my hands.” I said, “No! Do you remember Rwanda? If you are here, you know what happened in Rwanda. Are you willing to go to justice and answer all questions asked to you to explain what happened? What you did, what you did not do in Kigali?” He said again, “I have no blood on my hands.” Then he went inside the building where he had a conference. I had a chance to go inside and I spoke to some people, some Dutch women who were there also, about twenty of them. During his speech, they stood up and said, “We will not ask any questions unless you give this gentleman the chance to speak.”
DB: Did they allow you to speak?
JCN: Yes. I took the microphone and I talked to him. I asked him, first of all, about what he did in Rwanda. I asked him if he was under RPF command. Then I talked to him about Darfur because I know he was preparing to go and work for the U.N. again.
DB: Yeah, he works as an advisor. “Genocide Advisor” is his official title I believe.[69]
JCN: Yes, as a military advisor. I asked him if…I told him like this. “You have to answer ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ only. Do you think that Auschwitz victims should be protected? The U.N. said they should be protected. Do you agree, with that? If you say ‘No,’ I cannot agree with that, but I have no more questions. If you agree with me, then how could you ask the RDF (Rwandan Defense Forces)[70] to protect those who are being exterminated in Sudan?” I asked that question and he refused to answer. Then I asked aloud if there were any Jews in the room because it’s shameful that somebody who is supposed to know what is right and wrong can’t find an answer to my question. I said, “How could you accept RDF soldiers going to protect people in Darfur knowing they killed their own people and conquered them? How could you do that?” He finally answered that he understands why I am so angry. He told me he did not understand why the ICTR has not arrested and tried RPF soldiers for the massacre of Hutu.[71] It was the first time he said so and people there applauded him saying, “Finally, he said so!” Unfortunately, his words stayed inside those walls. There were many foreign journalists there and they even asked me many questions about what happened, about what I thought of Dallaire but nobody reported about that.
DB: How did that make you feel?
JCN: Honestly, I was not surprised. There were so many journalists, but I don’t know how they…where the information went after that. That’s why I’m angry with so-called democratic western countries because you have so many copy –and – paste journalists, where you have one piece of information you see in everybody’s newspaper. The same pictures, the same story on television, on the Internet…this is exactly how the genocide in Rwanda became possible, because they copy-and-paste these lies in their books and their articles. That’s why so many people were killed in Rwanda, Congo, and Burundi. Nobody knows about the truth.
Also, there are groups who will not investigate Rwanda and yet they call themselves “human rights groups.” The International Crisis Group (ICG) in Brussels has not published anything on Rwanda since 2003. In fact, when the French arrest warrant came out, the ICG released statements praising Rwanda.[72] I tried to contact them several times, but each time they told me they would get back to me and they never did.
Then, when Paul Kagame goes to the United States, those universities…he was given an honorary degree in law from the University of the Pacific. What does Paul Kagame know about the law!? He is a criminal! I called this university and I told this to one of the directors and he told me nobody can do anything, it’s too political. Then, the guy gets a degree from another university in the United States and all these awards from Andrew Young…Kagame pays Andrew Young to say good things about Rwanda to investors.[73] It’s unbelievable!
DB: Now, for you personally, after the February offensive in 1993, what happened to you after that? I know we covered part of it earlier. What happened up to the time you left for the Congo?
JCN: From my experience in Rwanda and outside the country, I must say that, in the beginning, I also thought that maybe Hutu extremists killed Habyarimana because of the propaganda, because of the lies of RPF allies.
DB: Where were you in that time period? In early 1993, you were in Gisenyi, the RPF attacked Ruhengeri and Byumba. What happened to you after that?
JCN: I was in Gisenyi. After the killings began, I often had to sleep outside my house. I was worried the RPF would attack from Goma because Paul Kagame used to say on Radio Muhabura that he was going to throw all Hutu into Lake Kivu, and there was no way to escape if the border was occupied by the RPF. A Belgian teacher I knew who lived in Gisenyi was leaving with some French soldiers who came to pick him up. He told me, “Good luck,” and warned me that many people were going to be killed in the north. The RPF would sometimes search house-to-house and kill people. I even knew of one Tutsi from the college who disappeared. I saw his wife in Kigali in 1997, but I later learned that he was put in prison by RPF.
DB: You travelled to Kigali at some point correct?
JCN: Yes.
DB: When did you go to Kigali?
JCN: I went in January 1994. Travelling from Gisenyi to Kigali was not a big problem for me. It was really complicated to move through Kigali and nobody knew if they would be alive the next day.
DB: What did you do when you arrived in Kigali?
JCN: Well, I had decided I was going to leave the country and I was going to get a scholarship to go study in Quebec, so I went to the Canadian Embassy. They told me I had to get tested for SIDA before I go.[74] I told her, there is no problem and I got the tests, but we had to wait for the results to come back from Nairobi. The problem was, I was known as a Hutu academic by the infiltrators in Kigali after that, after they saw me at the embassy. One time, they tried to take my bag. While I was being attacked, a Tutsi woman, she came over to help me and they went away. She told me, “I don’t know you, but I’m going to help you and maybe you’ll help me one day. I’m going to get you out of here.” She got a motorcycle to come over and I drove to the bus station. At that time, I was sure I was going to die so there will be no tomorrow for me. Fortunately, I did not. I was able to go back to Gisenyi. By March 5th, I had the papers I needed to go to Canada. That did not turn out well though, because later, in 1997 when I returned to Kigali, I went to the Canadian High Commissioner’s Officer and they told me they were ready to send me to Canada. Then, he said to me, “I got a feeling you will never be back.” I told him that wasn’t my intention. Then he told me he couldn’t help me anymore because the contract with the Rwandan authority of Higher Education said that if I left the country, I could never come back.
DB: Where were you in April 1994?
JCN: Well, before Habyarimana was killed, I was in my office and somebody called me about twelve o’clock. I thought it was maybe a student, but I never learned who it was. He told me I had to go to Goma if I did not want to be killed. It was a trap because there were RPF soldiers already in Goma who would have killed me. I didn’t go and after that, an American guy visited my office and said he was a missionary. I have never learned why he visited me and I think he was working for U.S. intelligence. He was about fifty years old and he told me he was trying to build a new Catholic church in Rwanda.
DB: So you didn’t believe his story?
JCN: Yes I did! I did at first because he had nothing; he looked like somebody you could trust. Rwandans believed people from the church at that time.
DB: What types of questions did he ask you? Did it seem like he was gathering intelligence?
JCN: That was what made me think later that he wasn’t a missionary. He asked me what I think of the RPF and what Rwandans think about the Arusha Accords. He told me he was going to stay in Rwanda and preach.
DB: Did you ever see him again?
JCN: No, never.
DB: What happened after President Habyarimana was killed? You were back in Gisenyi at that time. What did you do?
JCN: I stayed in my house, but the day Habyarimana died; I slept outside in the bush by my house in case the RPF attacked. I had been told they were going to attack. I woke up the next day and I saw nobody. I stayed there for a few days and then I had leave for Congo as I said before.
When I got to Goma with thousands of people, I saw several journalists there. They asked me, “Why are you fleeing? Why don’t you have anything except for what you are wearing?” I told them I was with displaced people from Byumba Prefecture who suffered through years of RPF massacres. I asked some women from Byumba about what happened there and they told me I should not ask questions if I wanted to survive. They also told me their husbands and brothers were killed by RPF soldiers.
There were RPF soldiers at the border on the Rwandan side. They were shooting sometimes. There were also military aircraft flying overhead. Later, I found out, one of them was a French aircraft. The RPF had planned to kill all the refugees crossing into Congo, but the plane flying overhead stopped them.[75] We also saw a UNHCR plane that was tracking the refugees’ movements. Also, there were American or British amphibian ships on Lake Kivu. In fact, the first artillery that hit Mugunga camp came from the lake. I watched them turn hundreds of refugees into bleeding pieces with my own eyes.[76]
DB: Where did the ships come from?
JCN: I don’t know for sure, but the RPF cannot get that kind of equipment on their own. They had to have outside help. Also, how would they know how operate it?
DB: So the French apparently averted this attack?
JCN: Yes, but two, maybe three weeks later, people started dying in the camps near Goma. So many people died. I was working for the UNHCR. I was a supervisor and I had to collect all the dead and dying every day. I moved the bodies, mostly in Kibumba, Mugunga, and Lac Vert camps. I remember, from August to November, every day we had in the average of one hundred twenty-five deaths daily, then one hundred ten, ninety-nine, and finally seventy to eighty deaths every day from disease and hunger. The camps were terrible. Women would, you know, have sex with U.N. workers to get food or a trip out of there. I have no respect for UNHCR officers. They opened up a prostitution network in the camps and even teenagers were received in UNHCR workers’ apartments in Goma and also at the camps as well.
After that, I worked for the IOM (International Organization for Migration). By this time, the RPF was attacking the camps in the south. Also, people I knew, people who lived on the Congo-Rwandan border in Runyoni, Bunagana, and Jomba, all of them were killed. The RPF killed every Tutsi they could find there in 1996 and 1997. The RPF eventually attacked Kibumba and Lac Vert, so we had to move to Mugunga camp. There were so many people there. That was where I told you I saw those guys who I think were spies. It was clear the Americans knew the camp was going to be attacked because their NGOs all left Mugunga right before the attack. I also remember hearing Boutros-Boutros Ghali on the radio in the refugee camp. (Secretary-General) Ghali told the President of Rwanda’s Transitional Government, Pasteur Bizimungu, that he wasn’t doing enough to reconcile Rwandans. After that, the United States decided not to reappoint him.
DB: Here in the United States, the media and State Department officials told us there were lots of ex-FAR and Hutu militia in the camps. We were told in some camps, the militants were even using refugees as human shields. There were cross-border battles with the RPA, but many of them were the Armed Forces of Zaire (FAZ) and not the ex-FAR and Hutu militias, though it is known the Hutu militants were taken by bus to Bukavu through Zone Turquoise by the French Foreign Legion.[77] North of there, many instances of armed assaults against refugees attributed to fleeing Hutu militants werecommitted by Tiri militias active in the area. Since this was the justification for the west to allow General Kagame to attack the refugee camps, I am compelled to ask, did you see a lot of militants in the camps?
JCN: There were lots of militants, but unlike what you described, they were not mixed with the refugees. They were either in Lac Vert camp or in the bush.[78] I remember, when I was in Goma, a guy I knew was killed on his way from Goma to Kibumba by the RPF. Another way they killed Hutu refugees, they would cut off our routes out of the camps and force us to go in one direction. After refugees gathered in some place, they would kill them all. They always had a way to find us. Somebody was giving them information about where the refugees were moving.[79] At the end of the day, I could not understand why I was still alive after Mugunga.
DB: Did you ever see any Americans at the camp warning the refugees to return or that an attack was coming?
JCN: I did not see anyone telling us anything, we only knew something was going to happen because the NGOs were leaving. The attack was sudden.
DB: So you stayed in Mugunga as long as you could until the attack. Then you went back to Rwanda. Tell me about that.
JCN: When I arrived in Gisenyi, I went to the beach by the lake. I sat down near the water and I cried. I couldn’t stay for long because I looked up and saw an RPF soldier coming. I wiped my eyes and stood up. He asked me what I was doing. I told him I was just resting now I’m going to go. He just stared at me so I started walking towards town. I did not know if he was going to shoot me or not. I stopped at my friend’s house in Gisenyi to spend the night and rest at her house. The next day, I resumed my march on foot to Ruhengeri Prefecture. This was the RPF’s punishment to those who fled to Congo and were now forcibly coming back to Rwanda. We had to march so many kilometers to get home only to find Tutsi living in our houses.[80]
Over the next few years, the RPF exterminated Hutu at will. People disappeared and they were killed or put in prison. People would be accused of committing genocide and put in prison at random. The RPF soldiers would sometimes make us fight each other with machetes. After one Hutu killed the other, they sometimes forced him to…to…
DB: It’s ok. Why don’t we change the subject?
JCN: I’m fine.
DB: Are you sure? It’s not a problem at all to change subjects?
JCN: Yeah, I’m fine. No problem. The one who survived the fight; he was also killed by the RPF. I saw this happen several times and I was surprised they never picked me. They always told us those who were killed by a machete were killed by Interhamwe. The RPF would also ask Hutu to help them do something, and those people never came back. Other times, they killed Hutu and said they were insurgents killed during an attack. It was as if all Hutu were Interahamwe and had to be exterminated. Those who said anything were killed. “Why are you asking why,” the RPF soldiers would say.
I lost many of my family under these conditions. My brother, Charles Kizito Bwanakweli, was paralyzed in 1994 because of trauma. He stayed in Goma at a place for handicapped people for one year. He was fine when I returned to Rwanda. In the morning of January 23rd, 1997, he asked me for money to go and make a phone call to France, where he had friends who helped pay his medical costs. He left and never came back. My brother’s wife, who was a Tutsi, she went to Ruhengeri to find out where he was. She was told he was detained in the Muhoza military camp. Kalisa, the RPF commander of the camp, told her she could see him next week. After one week, Kalisa, along with Major Habyarabatuma and Lieutenant Colonel Munyakazi, told her he was never there, but they were lying. Two military drivers from Muhoza confirmed he was there. He was easy to see because he was invalid and handicapped. We were told later they killed everyone in the camp. I started crying and then I lost my voice for one or two weeks.
My sister, Domitille Uwimana, had a one-year-old son plus two other kids, two daughters aged eight and six. They left one day and nobody told us they had left. They all disappeared early one morning in January 1998. They were brought to the gendarmerie headquarters and there she was raped by many RPF soldiers for one week before she disappeared. Her son was crying in a nearby room while they raped her according to eyewitnesses.
DB: Let’s change subjects then. You and I have talked about this in the past, but I think it’s important to bring up again briefly. Can you talk about the situation with Rwanda’s gorillas?
JCN: Ok. It’s a sad story. Myself, I have no idea why Dian Fossey was killed. Many Rwandans think she was killed by the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency).
DB: What reason would the CIA have to hurt her?
JCN: Because she had a kind of…she wanted to help Rwanda by keeping those gorillas safe. I was not in Rwanda then, but I approached ordinary people who had nothing to do with the MRND and I asked them about it. Even me, I never appreciated the MRND either because people needed to go to the embassy and do things only with the MRND because everybody was forced to have MRND membership. I remember when I was working with those Russians and the MRND told me to wait three hours for a bank transaction to be done. After that, they called me and said, “Chris, I’m sorry.” They told me people from India were going to mine the area the Russians wanted even though we had been negotiating for months. That’s how the gorillas were treated. Once Dian Fossey was killed, the gorillas became very popular.
DB: It is my understanding the RPF gave gorillas away to the countries that backed them and were quick to extend aid to their government after they took power.
JCN: Yeah, these countries, they were allowed to come to Rwanda and capture a gorilla from Volcanoes National Park, where the RPF used to carry out operations in the war. How it worked, these countries were telling Rwanda to conserve its gorillas and they sent their scientists there. When they arrived, they went back to Europe or North America with a gorilla. While this happened, the Rwandan Government was saying they needed to protect the gorillas from Interahamwe crossing into Rwanda from Congo and the world was told Interahamwe were killing gorillas, which wasn’t true. The RPF took control of the park and the world saw them as the good guys, as protectors. Also, the different gorilla conservation groups, including the Rwanda-based ones, received lots of donations to protect the gorillas from the Interahamwe threat that did not exist. These NGOs kept the money for themselves. Most of them actually did very little to develop Rwanda’s gorilla tourism.
DB: What countries received gorillas from Rwanda?
JCN: I don’t know many for sure, but I know there are gorillas in Holland and Germany.[81]
DB: Those gorillas all came from Volcanoes National Park?
JCN: Yeah, yeah.
DB: Changing the subject again, let’s talk about the Rwandan prison system. I have reports of the release of large numbers of children and the use of forced labor in the mines in Congo. Is there any truth to these reports? What can you tell me about these allegations?
JCN: As I told you before, the genocide has many sides. Actually, let’s talk about the lost generation. We have children who, in 1994, were four, five, even six years old. They were put in prison and the government told UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund) that the children participated in the genocide. They spent ten years there in the same room with the real criminals. These children, when they got out, could not go to school. Why? Because it’s too late. They had to become street kids. These same street kids who got out of prison, they were presented to the international community as poor kids who need help and protection in order to raise money for RPF-owned NGOs that were supposed to help the orphans. Nobody knows what happens to that money.
You also have kids, Hutu kids, who are taken from their families by the RPF. They are then put in Tutsi families where they are brainwashed like at the Gikondo and Gishari concentration camps. They tell them they do not belong to an ethnic group. This is a form of genocide. If you don’t believe me, look at the contract of the genocide convention.[82] Sometimes, I can’t go on with my work when I think about this. I don’t know who I can talk to because people seem to be blinded by those RPF sympathizers who say they are a genocide survivor. The RPF shamelessly uses the guilt of the international community to get what they want.
You know in many countries in Europe, you cannot show a child if you are a serious journalist. You do not show the face of a child. But in Europe, after those kids were called criminals, because of all the hard years they spent in prison, people actually believed they had committed genocide. When you ask those children, they know nothing about it. These children have no future. They are afraid. The RPF will stage the release of a large number of these kids from prison all at once and say, “See how merciful we are, we have freed genocidares for national unity,” and the international community says, “Thank you very much.” This is so shameful.
I remember first hearing about this when I was in Rwanda in January 1997. Paul Kagame had just returned from Brussels, where he met with RPF leaders in Europe. They created a plan to put Hutu to work on the old plantations or in the mines. They started by using these kids. The kids were told they don’t have to go to school, but they had to work for a Tutsi to pay them back for the crimes their parents committed during the genocide, whether they actually had committed crimes or not. The RPF even used these kids to mine in the Congo during the war there. Also, there is no real private property, it is only a formality. The RPF gives land-use rights to people who pay them, but the RPF expropriates these people whenever they want.
In Ruhengeri, they killed so many people that nobody was living there. When visitors or investors asked them about it, they said everybody had fled to Congo to join the FDLR (Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda) and were now insurgents. After that, Kagame forced people to move there to work the fields and on the plantations. They grow coffee for Starbucks and tobacco plants in Ruhengeri that these people are forced to tend, usually on plantations owned by RPF party members.[83] When those people moved to Ruhengeri, the RPF seized their land, especially in Kibungo where it is now almost entirely Tutsi. They raise their cattle there and Paul Kagame even owns a farm there. It is very difficult for people to visit that area.[84]
Kagame also has a program called Imidugudu where he forces everyone in the countryside by the borders to move near the main roads out of the countryside. He told everyone it was to protect them from Interahamwe who were crossing the border. These people lost their farms and their homes. Many of them cannot grow the same crops they used to in the area where they were moved. It was a way to group those people together in a place they can be controlled like in a concentration camp, so the Local Defense Forces could keep watch over them. The purpose was not only to take the land, but it also forced the missionaries in the countryside to leave because they had nobody to work with anymore because those people were all forced to move by the RPF.
Today, the Rwandan Government also has a so-called “family planning program.” Hutu must stop at two to three children for each family and Hutu men are not allowed to get married until the age of twenty-five.[85] Tutsi are told to marry young and have large families. This is why the Rwandan Government will not take a new census.[86]
Also, you can go to the VOA (Voice of America) and ask them to show you the interviews with Rwanda’s young generation. I heard it one day. It was a while ago, but the information is still out there. They talk about their daily problems. They say they can’t do many things because it is what the government tells them. They even laughed about it on the interview because they did not know about the consequences of talking about it.
I understand now why Paul Kagame said that those who think democracy is about numbers are right. He understood, at the end of the day, Tutsi were still the minority. It is genocide when he implements his politics of diminishing the numbers of Hutus so that, one day, if they ever have a truly fair election, they can say, “Ok, now we agree. One person, one vote.”
DB: Staying on the issue of children, did the RPF use child soldiers when they invaded Rwanda in 1990?
JCN: Yes. Many, many children were used for the invasion of Rwanda. What is dramatic is, no one in the international community has ever reported on that.
DB: That’s exactly why I brought this point up. You hear about child soldiers in the Congo, first back in 2000-2001, then again with Thomas Lubanga and the UPC (Union of Congolese Patriots) and now General Laurent Nkundabatware, a former RPF soldier, is getting exposed for his recruitment of children. I personally saw photos of child soldiers in North Kivu Province as young as nine in the archives of the Congolese Civil Society.
JCN: Do you know about kadogos?
DB: Well, I know that is the Kiswahili word for them.
JCN: Those kadogos in North Kivu now, many of them came from the RPF military. They have used them for years and they are already trained.[87]
DB: Can you comment of the recent release of former president Pasteur Bizimungu?
JCN: Bizimungu is just like the situation with releasing those kids from prison. Kagame said publicly it was for national reconciliation. He made Bizimungu write a letter to apologize and ask for forgiveness. Bizimungu had, in fact, already written a letter to Kagame earlier asking for clemency, but Kagame lied and said he never wrote such a letter. It was not Kagame’s good will that released him. Bizimungu is a finished man. He is very sick and cannot do anything. The way he was treated in prison…they will never let him leave Rwanda. He knows too much. They are afraid of what he will say. He can’t apply for exile. It’s incredible.
What I see is Paul Kagame becoming god, in my own country. Anything that happens must be ordered by him. Only he has the power to let you survive. This is why many prisoners are freed all at once, usually along with RPF infiltrators mixed in with them. The infiltrators ask the prisoners about their crimes to find out who really killed who and report to military intelligence.
DB: What was the reason he was released?
JCN: He went to prison on multiple charges. After Bizimungu found out the real agenda of the RPF after Kibeho, he said, “I’m gone. I’m going to found my own political party PDR-Ubuyanja (Party for Democratic Renewal).” His party brought in many followers like Ntakirutinka. Some of the party members were killed by the RPF and then Bizimungu was sent to prison to stop any attempt to create a serious opposition party to the RPF. The RPF wanted to control the forum. They had no use for all those political parties and Bizimungu’s party could have competed for the presidency.
DB: Is this also why former Speaker Sebarenzi was considered a threat?
JCN: Yes. It was the same arrangement. I think he left the country because he was considering joining that party, then he later founded a political party after he was in exile.
Back to the prison system…it’s unbelievable. Every commune has two hundred RPF and Local Defense Forces. They arrest any Hutu in the north they want. After holding them for several days, they tell him he can go free, but first he must sign a document stating he killed Tutsi during the genocide. He also must also name four Hutu and say they killed with him. It can be any four Hutu; they don’t really care if they actually committed any crimes. If you refuse, you stay in jail. So for every one that is released, four go in jail. When something happens to make the RPF look bad to the international community, they release most of these prisoners and say it is for national reconciliation to look good.[88] Others are tried in gacaca. All those prisoners have to say, “Oh yes, we killed Tutsis.” Nobody wants to stay in those prisons.[89] For five thousand Rwandan Francs, you can have somebody sign a paper accusing anybody you want of genocide. Then that person is thrown in jail. The Red Cross even knows about this system. They kept lists of the prisoners they met with. Every time they went back to those prisons, people on their list had disappeared.
You know Paul Wolfowitz, the World Bank’s President?[90] He fooled everybody when he went to Rwanda. People think the World Bank is going to help them, but Wolfowitz said he was proud of Rwanda and that the country was going well. He was saying how prisoners working on the plantations are a good thing. You can go to Butare, Kigali, more so in the north, you will see what those prisoners are doing. As I said, they are forced to work on plantations owned by RPF leaders. I found out also that foreign NGOs are using this labor force! I know of some Belgian NGOs for sure. There needs to be an investigation into this. They use the cheapest kind of labor where you pay nothing and then the same NGOs ask for donations from their own countries to give to Rwandans! They keep the money and they don’t need to pay their workers. They even use these kids as labor and they will never go to school!
They say gacaca is for the national reconciliation, but who is there on trial? Only Hutus. It doesn’t concern the Tutsis. Who is a Hutu? He is a genocidaire! They are the only ones who committed genocide and yet so many Hutus died during the genocide as well. Those who killed them now run the gacaca courts and at least seven hundred and fifty Hutu are added to gacaca every year.
Imprisonment in Rwanda is a tool just like the genocide is a tool. It is a tool to stay in power. The RPF even said so. After the genocide of 1994, the RPF told everyone to always be sure and talk about the genocide with everyone, especially foreigners, or else we will lose power in this country.
DB: Where did they say this?
JCN: Radio Muhabura. It was January 1997 at 08:30 on a Sunday. I don’t remember the date exactly but everybody knows about it. You can ask people and they will tell you the RPF told everybody they must always talk about the genocide or else they are lost. It was announced by Antoine Mugesera and Rutaramara. They said, “We must portray ourselves as victims.” We (Diaspora) know how many people really got killed. We have the study from the University of Maryland.[91] The RPF uses the genocide to ensure Hutu do not approach power. They try to control everything. When they took power, they renamed all the streets, reorganized the prefectures created provinces, and changed the spelling of many names. They did this to confuse investigators and erase that history from the minds of the next generation of Rwandans.
DB: That’s ironic you should mention that last point because one individual I met in Rwanda laughed at the map of Kigali I had because all the streets were labeled wrong. They were labeled with their old names.
Moving on, one of the forgotten topics in the Great Lakes region is Burundi. As you know, in the space of less than a year, Burundi lost two Hutu presidents to assassinations. The first president who was assassinated, Melchior Ndadaye, was killed by the Armed Forces of Burundi (FAB) in Bujumbura.[92]
JCN: With the help of Paul Kagame.
DB: That was precisely my line of questioning. I have heard of such claims. Can you comment on that? Is there any truth to them?
JCN: Ok. The reason I know that RPF was involved is because when Ndadaye was killed, I was, at that time, politically active. My friends and I created the Ndadaye Foundation at the CEPGL headquarters in Gisenyi. It was part of an administration that was in five countries including Congo, Burundi, and Rwanda. After he was killed, we received some MPs (Members of Parliament) from Bujumbura who came to thank us for doing a great job because they really appreciated our unforgettable deeds. We all respected Ndadaye because he was democratic and respected all ethnic groups. He was working for his country and wanted to reunify Burundians. Unfortunately, President Buyoya got a job from the European Union (EU).[93] I don’t know why people supported him.
When President Ndadaye was elected, it could not be accepted by the RPF because a Hutu in power in Burundi, especially when Tutsi are trying to seize power in Rwanda… it could not happen. It would cause turmoil in Rwanda. That’s why they decided to kill President Ndadaye. For the continuation of Tutsi rule in both countries. The day he was killed, Paul Kagame was in Bujumbura. I was told by the MPs who came to visit us in Gisenyi that he was there in a hotel where he spent his holiday. During his stay, he met with the Chief of the Army, Bikomagu.
DB: And yet, if I recall correctly, Colonel Bikomagu was later acquitted for his role in the assassination.
JCN: Yeah. They set up everything just like with Gatabazi and Bucyana.
DB: Does the Rwandan community believe the RPF was involved in the assassination?
JCN: Yes. In fact, President Ndadaye had many supporters in Rwanda. Thousands of people came to Gisenyi to support the foundation and I spoke to them. I remember when I talked to them and they were so keen to support the foundation. They supported people who wanted to bring democratic values to their countries. Of course, we must remember also the other Burundian Hutu president, who was killed along with President Habyarimana. His name was Cyprien Ntaryamira. Then, you had President Sylvestre Ntibantunganya escape to the U.S. Embassy and come out of hiding after the coup by Buyoya.
DB: How are relations between Rwanda and Burundi today?
JCN: The relations are still good because the government does the will of Kagame.
DB: Yet, current President Pierre Nkurunziza is a Hutu.
JCN: Yes, he’s a Hutu, but he is willing to leave him alone if he takes orders. We know that the former Chairman of the FDD (National Council for the Defense of Democracy-Front for the Defense of Democracy) party was in Kigali supporting Paul Kagame officially.[94] He was asked by Paul Kagame to remove some members of his party that did not agree with RPF policy in Burundi. After he tried to do so, he got in trouble with some old MPs who removed him instead. Today, he is in prison because he said four guys, including former President Ndayizeye, were planning a coup, but it was not true and Ndayizeye was dismissed from the courts.[95]
DB: This is a broad topic, but the single most influential event in your country recently is probably the Brugière arrest warrant. One thing…
JCN: Ok. I just remembered. The U.K. officer, the military officer who sent the fax to the U.N. was Colonel R.M. Connaughton of the British Army, based at Camberley,
Surrey in England, the home of the British Military Academy. His name
and fax number appear at the top of the document. It was sent to Maurice Baril at the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) in the U.N. There was no cover letter explaining who sent it or why it was sent. There was no document confirming that it was received and accepted by the U.N. ad hoc authorities.
DB: Ok. Thank you.
JCN: You’re welcome.
DB: Ok. When the arrest warrant came out, there were large protests in Rwanda. What was behind all that?
JCN: The people were incited to demonstrate. First of all, the Rwandan people knew nothing. Most of them do not even know where the French embassy is. Those people had to be brought there by buses and trucks. Who paid for that? Those poor people? Who was angry with the French in the first place? Kagame and the RPF-the real criminals-who asked everyone to demonstrate. The demonstrators destroyed the French Embassy and the French Cultural Center. Rwandans demonstrated once before when ICTR prosecutor Carla Del Pointe went there. She was investigating RPF crimes also and wanted to try them at the ICTR. Why is it that Rwandans are only demonstrating when an international person is doing something the RPF doesn’t like?
The way the country is run where people become so frustrated…they are in constant fear and terror. They are terrorized because they must do whatever the RPF tells them. During elections, people have to stand in line and vote one after another. The way it works, you have to go and stand behind the box of the person you are voting for, so everybody knows it. If you do not do this, your vote is lost and in some places, if you don’t vote RPF, the soldiers will ask you to go and vote again, this time for the RPF.
In the same way, during demonstrations, you cannot stay at home because the abakada go to every house to see who is still at home. Anyone who is at home is threatened, "We will remember you." Nobody can say no, yet most Rwandans who are protesting do not know who Brugière is at all.
If the warrant was something that really had no basis, why does the RPF refuse to go and testify to clear their names? Why does Paul Kagame refuse to testify? He knows he has killed people. Those nine people could go to a French judge and explain what they did, but they don’t. Why not if they are innocent?
For the French, it was about the French crew members who died in the plane with Habyarimana. When the Libyans shot that plane down years ago, Gaddafi turned over those who committed the crime. Why doesn’t Paul Kagame do the same? If the international community ever approaches him with criminal charges, he will threaten to use ordinary Rwandans who had nothing to do with it, like in these demonstrations.[96]
DB: In closing, I want to leave it open to you for any comments you may have about anything. Is there anything at all you would like to say, any focused message you would like to give or something you want to add?
JCN: What I want to say concerns the attitude of the American and British administrations before, during, and after the massacres in my country. The U.S. administration refused to intervene while Rwandans were getting killed. The administration refused to investigate when the American tourists were killed in the Congo by the RPF. The U.S. refused to investigate when Dian Fossey was killed. Inquires should be taken seriously by the powerful democratic countries.
They should try to help us so all Rwandans can finally be free. There is no other way these nations can apologize to us for what happened other than by giving us freedom from these criminals. We need justice. To apologize to Rwandans, the international community must send the RPF to justice. We cannot accept anything else. I listen to how my kids talk about wanting to go to America, but at the same time, they are in exile because somebody in the White House helped the RPF kill their uncle and other people they loved. It’s an embarrassing situation for me as a father. It’s shameful and I get angry because I know the United States can still help us go home to a place where we won’t be killed or oppressed. Paul Kagame is killing his own people, even today. He’s killing and destroying everybody and now he’s blackmailing those who helped him, saying, “If you don’t do this for me, I’m going to tell everybody how you helped me take power,” or “If you don’t do this, I will do that.” Please don’t wait for Paul Kagame to kill more people. Now is the right time to listen to me as a Rwandan who honestly likes Americans. Please help us so we can have a free country to organize a democratic society. Rwandans will not cut ties with Americans after the RPF leaves. We know so many of you were not told the truth about what happened in my country. It is not the fault of the whole country, just those people in the administration who aided the RPF.
That’s it. That’s what I wanted to say. For me personally, I want to see my kids raised back home in Rwanda. I want to see everybody’s kids grow up without being incriminated by what happened in 1994, or by what somebody says their parents did in 1994. We have to respect each other and we have to respect our ethnicity. We can’t be afraid of our neighbors. We cannot live that way. Please help those of us who can’t go back to help rebuild our country. We need support and it is possible. Thank you very much.
David Barouski is an African Affairs researcher focused on Central Africa and a Political Science student at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh. He is a regular contributor to ZNet/ZMagazine. His work has also appeared in Waheen Online, the Somaliland Times, Golis News, Congo Vision, and the Congo Panorama. He authored the book, “Laurent Nkundabatware, his Rwandan Allies, and the ex-ANC Mutiny: Chronic Barriers to Lasting Peace in the Democratic Republic of the Congo,” and he traveled to the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda in 2006. He can be contacted at BarouD@hush.com.
Jean-Christophe Nizeyimana is a Rwandan national from the Jenda (Nyabihu District) of the former Ruhengeri Prefecture. He holds a Master’s degree in Economics from Moscow University and is a former Professor at the High Institute of Management and Computing in Gisenyi. He is the author of “A Compendium of RPF Crimes,” “Hutus: Victims of Verbal Indoctrination,” and several other articles available at info-Burundi.net. He currently lives exiled in Europe.
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[1] Note: Ibuka is a Kinyarwandan word meaning “remember.” It is the name of a government-run organization for Tutsi survivors of the genocide. They were the organization that concluded 800,000 Rwandans were killed in the 1994 genocide.
[2] Note: In 1996, President Joseph Mobutu Sese Seko was still in power. Zaire was renamed the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) by Laurent Kabila in 1997 after his rebel army, the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire (AFDL-CZ) and the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA) overthrew him.
[3] Note: A prefecture is equivalent to a province in organization level. The Ruhengeri Prefecture no longer officially exists because Rwanda was condensed into four provinces by the RPF Government: North, South, East, and West.
[4] Note: The RPA is the armed wing of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF). The RPF refers to the political party. However, for simplicity, the RPF is used to refer to both the political party and the armed wing (RPA) in the majority of this interview.
[5] Note: When Kamombe Airport was shut down due to fighting, the only safe way for reporters and film crews to enter Rwanda was to contact the RPF through their political office in Brussels, Belgium and arrange for an RPF armed escort to Mulindi from Southern Uganda. Journalists already in Kigali took refuge at the Hôtel des Mille Collines when the fighting broke out in April and were quickly evacuated by a UNAMIR convoy. From April to July 1994, General Kagame appointed Lieutenant Frank Ndore and several other RPA officers to guide foreigners and journalists through the country. (Keane, Fergal. “Season Of Blood: A Rwandan Journey.” New York, New York. Viking Penguin. 1993. pg. 51-53, 58.) Journalists located in Kigali during the genocide were forced to stay at the Meridian Hotel on the RPA frontline. (Peterson, Scott. “Me Against My Brother: at War in Somalia, Sudan, and Rwanda.” New York, New York: Routledge. 2000. pg. 298.)
[6] Note: The party was called the Rwandese Alliance for National Unity (RANU). RANU transformed into the RPF in 1987.
[7] Note: The NRM is a political party founded by current Ugandan President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni as opposition to (then) President Milton Obote’s Ugandan People’s Congress (UPC). Mr. Museveni served as President Obote’s Minister of Defense before founding the NRM and launching the Luwero Bush War against him in 1980. President Museveni is a Hima from Uganda’s Ankole District. The Hima are related to Tutsi.
[8] Note: Paul Kagame and Fred Rwigyima fought alongside Yoweri Museveni in the Front for National Salvation (FRONASA) to overthrow Idi Amin in 1979.
[9] Note: In 1989, Mr. Cohen also told President Habyarimana the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) did not possess any intelligence that the RPA was planning to attack Rwanda. When the RPA attacked in October 1990, President Habyarimana and President Museveni were attending a U.N. General Assembly debate. Also present at the debate were President George Herbert Walker Bush, (then) Secretary Cohen, and (then) Secretary of State James Baker, a family friend of President Bush. President Bush met with twenty-five African heads of state at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel the day after the debate. (“In the Waiting Room of the Rwandan Genocide Tribunal.” Barrie Collins. Spiked Online. 26 May 2006. http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/322/.)
[10] Note: Mr. Nizeyimana’s website can be found at http://members.lycos.co.uk/hutusurvivors/.
[11] Note: From August of 1988 to June of 1991, Robert Houdek was the U.S. Ambassador to Ethiopia. Prior to this post, he was the U.S. Ambassador to Uganda from 1985 (shortly before Yoweri Museveni took power) until 1988. He also served as the U.S. Ambassador to Eritrea from 1993 to 1997. Mr. Houdek also reportedly used a United States Agency for International Development (USAID) mission as cover and gathered intelligence on the movement of Hutu refugees in Congo-Zaire. (Madsen, Wayne. “Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa: 1993-1999.” Lewiston, New York: The Edwin Mellen Press. 1999. pg. 196) Mr. Marc Baas took Ambassador Houdek’s position from June 1991 to 08 July 1994; just days after the RPF captured Kigali. Ambassador Irvin Hicks took his place until June 1996.
[12] “Kagame, Officials Alleged to Have Al-Qaeda Ties,” Periscope Daily Defense News Capsules. 11 September 2002.
[13] Note: The Tanzanian People’s Defense Force (TPDF) still has ties with the Rwandan military. In September 2006, Forty-five members of the Staff and Command College in Monduli, Tanzania (led by General F.N. Ulomi) visited Rwanda for seven days and met with General James Kabarebe (Chief of Staff), General Richard Rutatina (Chief of Training, Operations, and Planning) and General Kagame. They signed an agreement to allow Rwandan soldiers to attend the Monduli school. (“Tz Military Team Visits,” Staff Reporter. The New Times. 5 September 2006; “RDF for Training in Tz,” Edwin Musoni. The New Times. 11 September 2006.)
[14] Note: Please refer to footnote #8.
[15] Note: General Saleh acted as a military advisor to the RPA from the very beginning of the Rwandan War. In 1990, he was stationed in Mbarara, Southwestern Uganda, but he relocated to the Byumba Prefecture in North-central Rwanda after the RPA took control of the territory. (Private Correspondence. 2006.) When the RPA set up headquarters in Mulindi, General Saleh returned to Southern Uganda because he did not want to be seen by the press or the U.N. during peace talks and military meetings held there. (“The Prosecutor v. Augustin Ndindilyimana, François-Xavier Nzuwonemeye, Innocent Sagahutu, Augustin Bizimungu.” ICTR Case Number 00-56-T. Cross-Examination of General Roméo Dallaire by Ronnie MacDonald. 5 December 2006. Exhibit Number D. 158 (Bizimungu) 63. “Coded Cable from General Asrato to General Dallaire.” 15 April 1994.) When the RPA launched its infamous offensive in the Ruhengeri and Byumba prefectures in February 1993, three battalions of the NRA were at General Kagame’s side. (“In the Waiting Room of the Rwandan Genocide Tribunal.” Barrie Collins. Spiked Online. 26 May 2006. http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/322/.)
General Saleh remained in Uganda while the RPA made its final push into Kigali, but (then) Lieutenant Colonel Walter Ochora, a former Uganda National Liberation Army (UNLA) fighter (and later the Local Council [LC]-5 of the Gulu District), commanded a unit of former UNLA soldiers that fought in the final battle for Kigali alongside the RPA. (Private Correspondence. 2006.)
[16] Ferroggiaro, William. “The U.S. and the Genocide in Rwanda 1994: Information, Intelligence, and the U.S. Response.” The National Security Archive. 24 March 2004. http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB53/index.html.
[17] Note: See http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/pdd25.htm for the full text.
[18] Power, Samantha. “Bystanders to Genocide.” The Atlantic Monthly. September 2001.
[19] “Rwandan Rebels ‘Will Treat UN Troops as Foes’,” The Herald. 18 May 1994; Dallaire, General Roméo, Beardsley, Major Brent. “Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanitity in Rwanda.” New York, New York: Carrol & Graf Publishers (Avalon Publishing Group). 1st American Edition. pg. 342-343.
[20] Note: Pro-RPF newspapers and magazines included L’Ere de Liberte¸ Le Messager, Umuturaga, Ijambo, Kanguka, Rwanda Rushya, Congo Nil, Impuruza, Isibo, Inkotanyi, Intego, Avante Garde, Le Patriote, Huguka, Umulinzi, and Le Flambeau.
[21] Note: Mulindi was an old colonial tea plantation located 60 kilometers north of Kigali in the former Byumba Prefecture. It became the RPA’s headquarters.
[22] Philpot, Robin. “Rwanda 1994: Colonialism Dies Hard.” Robin Philpot, The Taylor Report (Phil Taylor). 2004. E-Book. http://www.taylor-report.com/Rwanda_1994/.
Note: U.S. Ambassador to Rwanda Robert Flaten (December 1990-November 1993) testified at the ICTR that he also did not believe the genocide was pre-planned. (“Former U,S, Ambassador Testifies in Genocide Trial,” Hirondelle News Agency. 30 June 2005.)
[23] Note: Mr. Gourevitch received the fax from Mr. Jamie Rubin, who was U.N. Ambassador Madeline Albright’s press attaché at the time. At the same time, Mr. Gourevitch was also dating Mr. Rubin’s sister. (“An Open Letter to Phillip Gourevitch,” Robin Philpot. Counterpunch. 7 June 2003. http://www.counterpunch.org/philpot06072003.html.) Interestingly, Lieutenant Colonel Tony Marley, the U.S. State Department’s Political Advisor from 1992-1995, said he questioned the accuracy of the information contained in the fax because the State Department had reportedly received unfulfilled warnings of an impending genocide since 1992. (“The Triumph of Evil - Interview: Tony Marley.” Frontline. Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). WGBH Educational Foundation, Boston: U.S.A. 30 January 2004.) Mr. Marley was also an advisor to Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense James L. Woods in the Defense Department’s African Affairs office.
[24] Note: Mr. Twagiramungu was the Hutu Prime Minister of Rwanda’s Transitional Government. He resigned in 1995 and fled to Belgium. He ran in Rwanda’s 2003 presidential elections as an independent. In February 2003, he visited the U.S. State Department and met with Dr. Cindy Courville, who-at the time-ran the Central and Southern Africa Desk at the National Security Council. She reportedly did not seem enthused about his candidacy. (Madsen, Wayne. “Jaded Tasks: Brass Plates, Black Ops, & Big Oil.” Walterville, Oregon: Trineday. 2006. pg. 4.)
[25] Note: Mr. Nizeyimana’s statement is supported by ICTR testimony. Mr. Turatsinze’s wife submitted an affidavit testifying he joined the RPF after he lived with a family in Tanzania who supported the RPF in February 1994. (“The Prosecutor v. Augustin Ndindilyimana, François-Xavier Nzuwonemeye, Innocent Sagahutu, Augustin Bizimungu.” ICTR Case Number 00-56-T. Cross-Examination of General Roméo Dallaire by Mr. Fabien Segatwa. 22 November 2006. KO 272527, AKO 272533. “Written Statement from the wife of Jean-Pierre Abubacarr Turatsinze.”)
[26] Note: This is an ikinyarwanda word meaning, “those who work together.” Expert witnesses at the ICTR have offered differing definitions of what actually constituted the Interahamwe militia. (“’Interahamwe’: Experts Give Different Interpretations,” Hirondelle News Agency. 11 July 2005.) The Interahamwe militia began as a youth group of (then) Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana’s National Revolutionary Movement for Development (MRND) political party. It was founded in early 1992 by its president, Jerry Robert Kajuga, a Tutsi from Kibungo.
[27] Note: The MRND(D) was the political party of President Habyarimana. Founded in 1975, it was the sole political party in the country and every Rwandan was given membership at birth. The old Rwandan Constitution also had a clause only MRND party members could run for president.
[28] Note: (then) Major Paul Kagame spent three months training at the U.S. General Staff and Command College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas under Uganda’s International Military Education and Training (IMET) program. IMET was coordinated by the U.S. Embassy in Kampala’s Deputy Chief of Mission (DCM) Robert Gribbin. (“Politics, War, and Genocide in Rwanda 10 Years Later.” Lieutenant Colonel Thomas P. Odom (Retired). Small Wars Journal. Volume 6. October 2006.) Mr. Gribbin later became the U.S. Ambassador to Rwanda from 1996-1998. President Kagame said he studied organization, battle tactics, strategy, human resources, psychological operations (PSYOPS), information gathering, psychology, and troop information during his brief time in the U.S. (Gowing, Nik. “New Challenges and Problems for Information Management in Complex Emergencies: Ominous Lessons From the Great Lakes and Eastern Zaire in Late 1996 and Early 1997.”
Paper presented at the conference “Dispatches from Disaster Zones: The Reporting of Humanitarian Emergencies.” London, Great Britain. 27–28 May 1998. pg. 15-16.) He was trained by (then) Major Anthony Marley. (Waugh, Colin M. “Paul Kagame and Rwanda: Power, Genocide, and the Rwanda Patriotic Front.” Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company Incorporated. 2004. pg. 222). Dr. Stephen Metz, a former staff member at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College who currently resides at the U.S. Army War College, said he was the one who instructed Major Kagame, not Major Marley. (Correspondence with Dr. Stephen Metz. 13 March 2007.)
[29] Note: Mr. Nizeyimana is referring to the following study: “Rwanda 1994: More than Genocide.” Christian Davenport, Allan Stam. University of Maryland. http://www.umd.edu/features/rwanda.html; http://www.geodynamics.com.
[30] Note: Akandoya is a Ugandan word meaning to tightly bind both arms behind the victim’s back with such pressure that the ribs break. Many RPF murder victims were discovered bound in this manner.
[31] Note: An agafuni is an old used hoe.
[32] Note: Juvenal Uwilingiyimana, a Hutu, was the former Minister of Parks. His naked and maimed body was found in a canal in Brussels on 17 December 2005.
[33] Note: The word Akazu means “little house.” In this context, it refers to a tight knit group of Hutu Bushiru, an area that included the Karango Commune President Habyarimana was born, and the Giciye Commune, where his wife Agathe Kanziga was from. She was reportedly well-connected and her “clan” wielded tremendous influence within the government. They were all Bakiga, which is a term generally referring to Hutu living in north-central and northwestern Rwanda (Byumba, Ruhengeri, Gisenyi). Bakiga resisted the Tutsi monarchy and were political opponents of the Hutu living in southern Rwanda, where Rwandan President Grégoire Kayibanda was from. Recent ICTR testimony by Jean-Marie Vianney Nkezabera, a member of the Mouvement Démocratique Républicain (MDR), said the Akazu did not exist and were a creation of the political opposition parties to isolate President Habyarimana and discredit his leadership abilities. (“Akazu, Opponent’s Invention (Witness),” Hirondelle News Agency. 8 March 2007.)
[34] Note: Chief of Investigations at the ICTR.
[35] Note: Chief of Legal Proceeding at the ICTR.
[36] Note: Mr. Delvaux was a police inspector at the time.
[37] Note: Louise Arbour was the Chief Prosecutor of the ICTR at the time. During her tenure, ICTR judge Richard Goldstone (South Africa), Judge Honoré Rakotomana (an ICTR Prosecutor) and Mr. Alphonse Breau ([then] Director of Investigations) asked Australian lawyer Michael Hourigan to investigate the shoot-down of President Habyarimana’s plane. After completing his investigation, he concluded the RPA was responsible. When he presented his findings to Ms. Arbour, she abruptly shut down the investigation without warning. (Affidavit of Michael Andrew Hourigan. Filed at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. 27 November 2006.)
After her tenure at the ICTR was completed, she was promoted to the Supreme Court of Canada and is currently the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. At the end of May 2007, she visited Rwanda and lauded their rebuilding efforts, but said the gacaca trials are progressing too slowly. (“UNCHR Chief Happy With Reforms, Advises on Gacaca,” The New Times. 27 May 2007.)
[38] Note: According to a note left by Mr. Uwilingiyimana before he died, Mr. Delvaux, Mr. Renaud, Mr. Tremblay, Stephen Rapp (an American who was serving as Chief of Prosecutions at the time), and Chief Prosecutor Hassan Bubacar Jallow visited him on 5 October 2005. He says in the letter his life was threatened by Mr. Tremblay and Mr. Delavaux if he didn’t cooperate and incriminate Protais Zigiranyirazo, Mathieu Ngirumpatse, Edouard Karemara, and Michel Bagaragaza. (Letter to the Prosecutor of the ICTR. Juvénal Uwilingiyimana. 5 November 2005. http://www.internationalcrimesblog.com/Nov5_letter.pdf.)
There have been other allegations of witness intimidation and tampering. One witness stated he was threatened to testify in support of Protais Zigiranyirazo and Tharcisse Renzaho accused Rwandan officials of intimidating defense witnesses. Several of the witnesses will no longer testify in the trial because of threats. (“The ICTR Orders an Inquest on an Eventual Pressure on a Witness,” Hirondelle News Agency. 4 April 2007; “Renzaho’s Defense Accuses Kigali of Witness Intimidation,” Hirondelle News Agency. 17 May 2007; “An ICTR Lawyer Denonces (sic!) the Threats Made to his Witnesses,” Hirondelle News Agency. 12 June 2007.)
[39] Note: Jean-Paul Akayesu was a teacher, school inspector, and MDR party member. He was also mayor of the Taba Commune. One woman who testified against him was killed with her family in mid-January 1997. Officially, the murders were committed by Hutu insurgents.
[40] Note: The RPA attacked Mugunga from the northeast and the east in a strategic pincer attack. (Then) Colonel James Kabarebe led the RPA unit that approached Mugunga from the east and (then) Colonel Fred Ibingira led the RPA’s 7th Battalion approaching from the northeast. (Génocide de Mugunga. R94.org. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MW8j-o3JPrY.) RPA soldiers approaching from the east stole vehicles from the United Nations High Commissionner for Refugees (UNHCR) and forcibly loaded Rwandan medical patients at NGO clinics into the vehicles and moved them to Nkamira. The NGOs were also prohibited to distribute food to returning refugees. (“Rwanda: Human Rights Overlooked in Mass Repatriation.” Amnesty International. AFR 47/002/1997. 14 January 1997.)
[41] Note: At that time, it wasn’t safe to travel through Rwanda to get from the north to the south because of RPA roadblocks. Many refugees who wanted to travel south to Cyangugu or Butare went through Goma, travelled south to Bukavu, and crossed back into southern Rwanda rather than taking the traditional route through Kigali and Gitarama.
[42] Note: The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) branch in Rwanda, under the leadership of Philippe Gaillard, stayed in the country during the genocide, saving thousands of lives in the process.
[43] Note: One individual I interviewed in Rwanda who was working in Kigali during 1995 described a similar situation. RPA checkpoints were all over the city and the soldiers checked for identification at each one. This individual walked to work every single day through several checkpoints. Every day, this individual saw Hutu bodies with gunshot wounds stacked on the side of the road next to the checkpoints. They commented that well-dressed individuals and those known to earn higher wages, both Hutu and Tutsi, were often killed, but the vast majority of the victims were Hutu. At night, people were dragged out of their homes and killed. In the morning, bodies riddled with bullets were found near the side of the road. The RPF told everyone the killings were caused by Interahamwe and ex-FAR hiding in the Nyamirambo Sector. The individual also said many Tutsi in the city were publicly accusing individual Hutu of genocide. Those who were accused were taken away by RPA soldiers and never seen again. (Private Interview. Rwanda. 2006.)
[44] Note: The Bagogwe are a sub-group of Tutsi pastoralists who live in northwestern Rwanda around Gisenyi and Ruhengeri.
[45] Note: Jill Rutaremara is currently the Military Spokesman for the RPA.
[46] Note: In pre-colonial times, before the ethnic (or racial within Rwanda) identity of Hutu and Tutsi deeply divided the country; clans (ubwoko [singular]) formed the foundation of Rwandan society and identity. The clan is the most abstract form of patrilineal kinship in Rwanda but its members do not trace back to a common ancestor. Clans do not regard ethnic identity and all clans have both Hutu and Tutsi members. Clan membership does not bestow a social status or privilege to its members and clans do not have a “leader” or person in charge. (Government of the Republic of Rwanda. “The Counting of the Genocide Victims: Final Report.” Ministry for Local Government: Department of Information and Social Affairs. November 2002. pg. 7.)
The only possible exceptions were the Abanyiginya and Abega clans. However, originating from one of these clans does not afford an elevated social status to its members because other sub-divisions within the clan, such as lineage, are more indicative of social status. Rwandan mythology says these two clans hold a sacred origin because the Rwandan Kings were chosen from these clans. In pre-colonial times, the King was believed to be a divine being sent by God and was considered to be the physical embodiment of Rwanda itself. (Mamdani, Mahmood. “When Victims Become Killers.” Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. 2002. 3rd Edition. pg. 54-55, 79.) The Queen Mother came from the Abega clan. (Martins, Ludo. “Rwanda: The Responsibility of Belgium in the Creation of a Racist Ideology.” Report Presented at the Conference on Rwanda. English Translation. Brussels, Belgium. 5 April 1997; Prunier, Gérard. “The Rwanda Crisis: History of a Genocide.” New York, New York: Columbia University Press. 1995. pg. 9.) As the Rwandan refugees from the late 1950s-very early 1960s grew up in Uganda, they were grouped together under the cultural label of “Banyarwanda” by the Ugandans, though they still were ethnically Tutsi. Ugandan law discriminated against Banyarwanda by denying them education and job opportunities.
The RPF itself was considered an inzu (lineage) to its Tutsi members when it was founded, giving them a new, but distinctly Rwandan identity. Rwandan lineages are not ethnically mixed; they are exclusively Hutu or Tutsi. Lineage does have a bearing on social status in Rwandan culture and RPF members were strongly encouraged to feel a common bond with each other. If this context is taken literally, the RPF/RPA is a family, with President Kagame as the “King” or figurehead.
The RPA soldiers called themselves ‘inkotanyi,’ meaning “fighter,” “invincible ones,” or “struggler.” Originally the term referred to the militia of a 19th Century Tutsi king who beat Hutus into submission and it was originally considered a derogatory term. (“Terror Surrounds Rwanda’s Orphans.” Bill Berkeley. Alicia Patterson Foundation Reporter. Volume 16, Number 4. 1995.) The RPF redefined the term to create a uniting bond. Their creed was, “Inkotanyi are Rwandans who aim to lead Rwanda to development…Inkotanyi are not Hutu, Tutsi, nor Twa…the Inkotanyi accepts everyone who believes in its goals.” (“Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda.” Alison Des Forges. Human Rights Watch. 1 April 2004. 2nd Edition.) In 1993-1994, RPA training included extensive lessons on Rwandan history and taught that whites were the cause of ethnic divisions. (Ibid.) For additional background information from an RPF perspective, please consult the official Rwandan Patriotic Front website at http://www.rpfinkotanyi.co.rw/. Please be advised the website is primarily written in ikinyarwanda with a lesser portion in French.
Paul Kagame is a member of the former Tutsi monarchy’s royal bloodline. His father, Deogratius Kagame, was related to King Charles Mutara Rudahigwa. Mr. Kagame remained a close friend of the King’s during the early part of his career. He was so well-connected and respected, he was even offered the opportunity to become a chief but he turned down the offer. President Kagame’s mother Madame Asteria Kagame, was a sister of King Rudahigwa’s wife, Queen Rosalie Gicanda. (Waugh, Colin M. “Paul Kagame and Rwanda: Power, Genocide and the Rwanda Patriotic Front.” Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company Incorporated. 2004. pg. 8.) President Kagame is also related to the father and brother of Queen Kanjogera. (Musabyimana, Gaspard. “La Vraie Nature du FPR/APR d'Ouganda en Rwanda.” Paris, France: L'Harmattan. English Translation. 2003. pg. 60-67.)
Historically, it is noteworthy the Abega and Abanyiginya clans (the two largest clans in Rwanda) have gone to war for control of the Rwandan monarchy in the past. It was the Ega lineage within the Abega clan who began the war in earnest after the death of King Kigeri IV Rwabugiri in 1896. His son Rutalindwa took the throne but King Rwabugiri’s wife, Queen Kanjogera, (who was not the newly anointed king’s mother) and her brother Kabera had him killed to consolidate Ega influence in the monarchy. The late King Kigeri IV had already killed many of his relatives belonging to the Abahindiro clan to consolidate his own power and this had the unintended effect of paving the way for the Ega dynasty. (Prunier, Gérard. “The Rwanda Crisis: History of a Genocide.” New York, New York: Columbia University Press. 1995. pg. 23-25.)
Dr. Helmut Strizek, an expert witness for the ICTR, revealed President Kagame is the highest ranking living member of the Ega royal family. The Ega family is one of four Rwandan lineages called Ibibanda who produce the royal spouses. When the Ega lineage (inzu) was in charge of the Rwandan monarchy in the very early 1900s, they were attacked from Northern Rwanda. The Bakiga led a revolt against the Abega clan and the Tutsi monarchy. Hutu localities in the north, northwest, and southwest of Rwanda resisted the monarchy for decades and Hutu chiefs had been killed in the north to consolidate Tutsi power in the region. The German Schütztruppe brought in their guns to defend the colonial monarchy and brutally suppressed the uprising. (“Interview with Dr. Helmut Strizek,” german-foreign-policy.com. 29 May 2006. English Translation. http://german-foreign-policy.com/en/fulltext/56005.) Former President Juvenal Habyarimana, born in the former Gisenyi Prefecture, was by definition a Bakiga.
King Rudahigwa died in 1959 just after receiving a vaccine from a Belgian doctor right before he was leaving to travel to the U.N. and plead for Rwanda’s independence. He was originally appointed king by Belgium and the Catholic Church in 1931 because he was a baptized Catholic who they thought would be more likely to institute their colonial policies. (Gourevitch, Phillip. “We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families.” New York, New York: Picador (St. Martin’s Press). 1998. pg. 56.) He was succeeded by King Kigeli V Ndahindurwa, his half-brother, but the monarchy was quickly dissolved in 1961 by a popular vote held under U.N. supervision.
The majority of the royal family went into exile and King Kigeli V currently lives in Washington D.C. Queen Gicanda avoided politics following the 1959 Hutu uprising in order to protect her family. During the October 1990-April 1994 Rwandan War, Queen Gicanda reportedly pleaded with her nephew to stop the RPA from killing civilians. (Collins, Mick, Ndindiliyimana, Major General Augustin. “The General’s Book on Rwanda.” CirqueMinime/Paris. 2004.) She was murdered near her home in Butare during the genocide on 20 April 1994 by FAR Private lst Class Aloys Mazimpaka, who was acting under the command of Lieutenant Pierre Bizimana. (“Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda.” Alison Des Forges. Human Rights Watch. 1 April 2004. 2nd Edition.)
Paul Kagame was close to his aunt. While exiled in Uganda, he would often sneak across the Ugandan border to visit her and gather intelligence about what was going on in Rwanda. Beginning in 1977, he arranged to stay at a series of safehouses with various relatives. He traveled throughout Rwanda posing as a Banyankole with a Ugandan passport to avoid suspicion. He stayed for two months before returning to Uganda and returned in 1978, entering the country through Goma, Zaire. During this trip, he stayed with several political sympathizers to the Rwandan refugees’ cause. (Kintu, Remigius. “The Truth Behind the Rwandan Tragedy.” ICTR. Document Number #7233. 20 March 2004; Waugh, Colin M. “Paul Kagame and Rwanda: Power, Genocide, and the Rwanda Patriotic Front.” Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company Incorporated. 2004. pg. 16-19.)
In 1998, the King asked (then) Vice President Kagame allow him to return to his country as the rightful king and install a transitional government with equal representation for Hutu and Tutsi. However, the newly ratified Rwandan Constitution (2003) has a specific clause forbidding the King’s return to Rwanda. (“Exiled King Demands Role in Bringing Peace to Rwanda,” The International Strategic Studies Association. 11 October 1998.) President Kagame later said he would allow King Kigeli V to return as an ordinary Rwandan citizen. (“Rwanda: The Search for Security and Human Rights Abuses.” Human Rights Watch. Volume 12, Number 1 (A). April 2000.)
Though King Kigeli V denied their existence, there were persistent rumors of a so-called “Army of the King,” (Ingabo Z’umwami) who will take up arms to restore the royal monarchy. Notably, some of the King’s political supporters abroad are former members of Rwanda’s Transitional Government now in exile. There is also a Diaspora political group called “NATION” that lobbies for the reinstitution of a parliamentary monarchy and the return of King Kigeli V to the throne. President Kagame said in no uncertain terms he would meet them with force. “Whoever will come will definitely die…We are ready.” One RPA officer commented, "…if you dare side with the king, you risk serious trouble. Prison will not be good enough. We are going to make you suffer like we did the last time…We will use bullets and, when we run out of bullets, then we will come at you with machetes." The RPA detained and tortured several individuals they accused of plotting with King Kigeli V to overthrow the Rwandan Government in February 2000. (Ibid)
On the other hand, others believe the "Army of the King" is a creation of the RPF that was used to label political opposition as dissidents in order and justify their expulsion from Rwanda, thus solidifying the RPF's hold on political power in the country. The best known example of this is the former Transitional Government National Assembly Speaker, Joseph Kabuye Sebarenzi. Mr. Sebarenzi is a Tutsi who originally identified with the RPF. He later joined the Parti Liberal (PL), a politically "moderate" group composed predominantly of Tutsi that preached the unity of all genocide survivors.
Mr. Sebarenzi became very popular among both Hutu and Tutsi genocide survivors and it was said he had a legitimate chance of becoming the president of Rwanda if free elections were held. In December 1999, the PL was voting to elect its new president. In order to prevent what seemed like an impending victory for Mr. Sebarenzi (which would elevate his political status further for the presidential elections), the PL's incumbent president Pio Mugabo delayed the vote, reportedly at the behest of (then) Vice President Kagame. (“Rwanda: The Search for Security and Human Rights Abuses.” Human Rights Watch. Volume 12, Number 1 (A). April 2000.)
The following month, the majority members forced Mr. Sebarenzi to resign from the National Assembly. Politicians claimed it was because of "misconduct" and quickly escalated the charges to include the recruitment of soldiers to join the "Army of the King" and organizing genocide survivors against the Transitional Government. Vice President Kagame announced on Radio Rwanda there was "credible evidence" of Mr. Sebarenzi's association with "royalists," but no evidence was presented, nor was the existence of the "Army of the King" even proven (or disproven) publicly. Fearing for his life, Mr. Sebarenzi fled his homeland and now resides in exile. (Ibid.) He has since founded the Alliance Rwandaise pour la Renaissance de la Nation (ARENA) and has advocated tirelessly for reconciliation in his home country.
[47] Note: In addition to the murders mentioned above, numerous other U.N. and NGO workers were murdered by the RPA in 1997 and 1998. What follows is a U.N.-compiled chronology, including the aforementioned victims. Note the U.N. has not publicly named the RPA as the perpetrator in some of the killings.
19 January 1997: Three Doctors of the World personnel, Dr.Manuel Madrazo, Maria Flors Sirera, and Luis Valtuena, were killed. An American project coordinator, Nitin Madhav, was injured when their compound in Ruhengeri was attacked. All four people were working on a health and reintegration assistance program in the Ruhengeri Prefecture under the joint auspices of Doctors of the World and the organization’s Spanish affiliate, Medicos del Mundo. [MDM]
02 February 1997: A Canadian Roman Catholic priest who condemned human rights abuses by the RPF was killed in northwestern Rwanda while performing Mass. [Reuters]
04 February 1997: Four U.N. human rights monitors, Graham Turnbull, Sastra Chim Chan, Jean-Bosco Muyaneza, and Agrippin Ngabo were killed. The two international and two local staff members were killed during an ambush in their two well-marked U.N. vehicles in the Karengera sector of Cyangugu Province. [UNHCR]
08 June 1997: World Vision Rwanda assistant agronomist Appolinaire Uwamahirwe was killed among a group of villagers attacked near the town of Ruhengeri. [WV]
14 June 1997: Mr.Didace Nkezagera, a World Food Programme (WFP) Field Officer, was killed on the night of 14/15 June 1997, along with his wife, child, and member of his family in the Rubange Sector, of Kigombe Commune, located 8 kilometers from Ruhengeri. In a separate incident, Mr. Jean de Dieu Murwanashyaka, a WFP tally clerk, was killed by a gunshot after being arrested by two soldiers on 9 June 1997. [WFP]
19 June 1997: Mr. Felicien Bucyekabili, a driver for the UNHCR, was killed in the Gashangoiro Sector of Kigombe Commune, located 7 kilometers from Ruhengeri town. He was killed by gunmen firing through the window of his residence. [UNHCR]
06 July 1997: A World Vision staff member, Felicien Rudacyahwa, 42, was killed when gunmen attacked his hometown in Ruhengeri. [WV]
22 October 1997: A WFP driver transporting emergency relief food was killed during an attack by assailants at a military checkpoint. The truck was part of a military-escorted relief food convoy transporting WFP food rations from Kigali to Kibuye. The truck was then set on fire, resulting in the loss of 15 tons of humanitarian relief food which would have fed some 1,700 people for the next month. [WFP]
12 March 1998: Three Action for Churches Together (ACT)/Lutheran World Federation (LWF) staff members were killed. They died in an armed assault near the border with Tanzania during the night of March 11-12, at the compound of a Resettlement project for returning Tutsi refugees. A number of other staff members were injured. [ACT]
(“Chronology of Humanitarian Aid Workers Killed in 1997 – 2001,” Dennis King. Reliefweb. 15 January 2002. http://www.reliefweb.int/symposium/NewChron1997-2001.html.)
[48] Note: Please visit http://www.veritasrwandaforum.com for further details.
[49] Note: Also see the testimony of 2nd Lieutenant Aloys Ruyenzi, a former member of the Presidential Guard on this matter: “President Paul Kagame is Indeed a War Criminal.” Open Letter by Aloys Ruyenzi. 18 January 2005.
[50] Note: There is a group of Hutu insurgents called the Rastas active in the South Kivu Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Congolese sources in the region have stated that these individuals were not originally linked with the ex-FAR and Interahamwe combatants in the Congo, called the Forces Combattantes Abacunguzi (FOCA). The Rasta are reportedly comprised of Hutu prisoners, including ex-FAR, released by Paul Kagame with the purpose of carrying out counter-insurgency operations in the Congo to provide a pretext for RPA invasions. While officially the RPA are securing the Congo-Rwandan border, the real purpose was to exert control over key mining areas in the Congo that are mined with forced labor. (Private Interview. 2006.)
There is evidence the Rasta worked with Rwandan authorities. Sources in the region testified that cassiterite mined, stolen, or purchased by the Rastas was flown by helicopter to Rwanda. (“Digging Deeper: How the DR Congo’s Mining Policy is Failing the Country.” Dominic Johnson, Aloys Tegerea. Pole Institute. N°15. December 2005. pg. 57.) This is crucial because it allows Rwanda to continue to mine coltan and cassiterite from the South Kivu Province and continue to make a profit even as Rwandan influence in the more lucrative mining areas in North Kivu wanes.
During the 2nd Congo War (1998-2003), some of the Hutu prisoners were used by RPA and ex-ANC soldiers as slave labor in Walikale Territory and Numbi, located in South Kivu Province. Several sources stated the RPA even used to work with their mortal enemies, FOCA and the Mai-Mai, to exploit coltan and cassiterite from the same mining areas. (“Democratic Republic of the Congo: ‘Our Brothers Who Help Kill Us’ – Economic Exploitation and Human Rights Abuses in the East.” Amnesty International. AFR 62/10/2003. 1 April 2003. pg. 13, 32; United Nations Security Council. “Final Report of the Panel of Experts on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and Other Forms of Wealth of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.” S/2002/1146. 16 October 2002. pg. 14; Rusesabagina, Paul. “Compendium of RPF Crimes – October 1990 to Present: The Case for Overdue Prosecution.” November 2006. pg. 11.)
[51] Note: 5,000 Rwandan Francs are roughly equivalent to $10.00 (U.S.) or 5 Quid.
[52] Note: Rose Kabuye was the highest ranked woman in the RPA and she fought alongside General Kagame from the beginning. She held several high-profile government positions and is currently the Director General of State Protocol. She is named in Judge Brugière’s report as one of the RPA officers responsible for the shoot-down of President Habyarimana’s plane.
[53] Note: Shortly after the killings, different versions of what happened began to emerge. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) sent agents to investigate and the RPF arbitrarily arrested several Hutu from the countryside homes and tortured them into confessing to the tourist killings. They were all released from prison earlier this year and have been granted asylum in the United States. Sources who contacted these men directly told the interviewer they have no idea who actually committed the crimes. Please also see the testimony of 2nd Lieutenant Aloys Ruyenzi, a former member of the Presidential Guard on this matter: “President Paul Kagame is Indeed a War Criminal.” Open Letter by Aloys Ruyenzi. 18 January 2005.
[54] Note: An iKinyarwanda word meaning “Hutu insurgents.”
[55] Note: Several of the Australian UNAMIR soldiers’ testimonies are available online. Please visit http://warriordoc.com/rwanda/kibeho.htm and read “Witness to Genocide – A Personal Account of the 1995 Kibeho Massacre,” Paul Jordan. Australian Army Journal. http://www.anzacday.org.au/history/peacekeeping/anecdotes/kibeho.html; “Remembering the Forgotten Diggers.” National Nine News. NineMSN. Sydney, Australia. 25 September 2005.
[56] http://www.pbase.com/kleine/cuthbertbrown_kibeho.
[57] Odom, Thomas P. “Journey Into Darkness: Genocide in Rwanda.” College Station, Texas: Texas A&M University Press. 2005. pg. 226-227.
[58] Ibid. pg. 228-229.
[59] Ibid. pg. 230-231.
[60] Note: The contemporary MDR party originated from the MDR-Party of the Hutu Emancipation Movement (MDR-PARMEHUTU), created by Rwanda’s first president Grégoire Kayibanda in October 1959 out of the Mouvement Sociale Muhutu. The majority of its members were Hutu from the southern half of Rwanda, particularly around Gitarama, where former President Kayibanda (who was overthrown by General Habyarimanya in 1973) had his base of support. MDR-PARMEHUTU also had some Hutu support in Ruhengeri and Gisenyi. The party was outlawed in 1973, but was reborn as the first opposition group to the MRND(D) in 1991. The PARMEHUTU acronym was dropped to avoid association with its violent past history of reprisals against Tutsi for guerrilla infiltrations by the so-called Inyezi (meaning “cockroach”) Tutsi fighters from the refugee camps in Uganda. The MDR eventually split into a so-called “Hutu Power” group usually referred to as MDR-Power lead by Rwandan Prime Minister Jean Kambanda. The movement also had a youth group called the Inkuba or Tonnerre.
[61] Note: During a meeting at Butare Huye Stadium in Butare, he publicly distanced himself from the RPF and expressed the independence of the PSD party. (Private Correspondence. 2007.)
[62] Note: The Abakombozi (meaning “liberators” in Kinyarwanda) was the youth militia of the Parti Social Democrate (PSD). The PSD was considered a moderate party primarily comprised of Hutu from the south. The PSD was accused of working for the RPF as late as 2005, but Chairman Biruta denied these allegations. (“Social Democrats Deny Operating Under RPF,” Felly Kimenyi, Magnus Mazimpaka. The New Times. 11 October 2005.)
[63] Note: Created in early 1992, the CDR was billed as an “extremist” party that openly preached a genocidal ideology. Founded by Jean Shyirambere Barahinyura, the CDR was responsible for much of the Hutu Power movement’s media propaganda. They were involved in the infamous Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (“Thousand Hills”) a.k.a. RTLM Radio and the Hutu Power publications like Kangura (“Wake it Up”) and Le Courrier du Peuple. Like the MRND(D), the CDR also created its own civilian militia called the Impuzamugambi (“Those with a single purpose”), who participated in massacres.
[64] Note: A Kinyarwandan word meaning “Those with a single purpose.” (see above footnote)
[65] Note: 2nd Lieutenant Aloys Ruyenzi, who served in General Kagame’s High Command Unit as his personal bodyguard, testified in a written statement that General Kagame personally ordered the attack on President Habyarimana’s plane at a meeting on 31 March 1994 that he personally attended. (Ruyenzi, Aloys. Written Testimony of Aloys Ruyenzi. English Translation. 5 July 2004. http://www.grandslacs.net/doc/3092.pdf. Note: Must have Adobe Reader to view.)
[66] Note: Please refer to General Dallaire’s ICTR testimony from 5 December 2006 for additional details.
[67] Note: This refers to the ongoing trial of Major Bernard Ntuyahaga at the Crown Court in Brussels. Major Ntuyahaga is charged with the murder of the Belgian UNAMIR soldiers. The trial is suspended as of this writing because the key defense witness, Laurent Nubaha, died under mysterious circumstances in Brussels on 20 May 2007 before he finished his testimony. Mr. Nubaha was present at Camp Kigali and tried to stop the killings. He fled to the Congo after the genocide and hid in the forests for eleven years. The Belgian Government originally denied Mr. Nubaha a visa, which sources told me was because of political pressure applied by RPF officials. They eventually relented and allowed Mr. Nubaha to come and testify. His key testimony was that Major Ntuyahaga went to Prime Minister Unwilingiyimana’s house to pick her up because she was going to assume power during her radio announcement. (“Ntuyahaga: Death of a Key Witness,” Hirondelle News Agency. 21 May 2007.)
Togolese UNAMIR Captain Kodojo Apedo, one of the few eyewitnesses, testified Major Ntuyahaga did not incite nor prevent the murders. (“Ntuyahaga, Spectateur ou Complice?,” Gérard Papy. La Libre Belgique. English Translation. 30 May 2007.) General Dallaire has refused to testify at the Belgian court, but he testified at the ICTR that he personally received reports Colonel Nubaha (incorrectly referred to in the ICTR trial as “Lubaha”) tried to stop the massacre of the Belgian soldiers. (“The Prosecutor v. Augustin Ndindilyimana, François-Xavier Nzuwonemeye, Innocent Sagahutu, Augustin Bizimungu.” ICTR Case Number 00-56-T. Cross-Examination of General Roméo Dallaire by Mr. Charles Taku. 22 November 2006.)
[68] Note: Testimony from the trial of Bernard Ntuyahaga has revealed more details on this event. Mr. Ntuyahaga is accused of killing the Belgian UNAMIR soldiers in the Kigali Battalion (KIBAT) at Camp Kigali on 7 April 1994. On 6 April 1994, Lieutenant Lotin, and five members of the KIBAT mortar squad, including Corporal Didier Lefévre, the only surviving member of the group said the Belgians escorted a few FAR soldiers and a group of RPA soldiers from the parliament building to Akagera, where he said they passed RPF positions. His statements contradicted earlier testimony that claimed only the RPF was present on the mission. Deus Kagiraneza was part of the mission for the RPF and his version varied from Corporal Lefévre’s. He claims the mission was sponsored by the United Nations Development Project (UNDP) and was conducted to survey wildlife in Akagera National Park. It is still unknown who gave the order for the mission and Colonel Marchal said he did not approve it or have any knowledge of it. It is unlikely the mission would not have been coordinated with senior UNAMIR officers had the UNDP sponsored it. Additionally, Akagera was not a regular stop for UNAMIR escorts. (“Ntuyahaga: Testimonies on the ‘Akagera mission’,” Hirondelle News Agency. 17 May 2007; “The Mystery of the ‘Akagera Mission’ Soon To Be Cleared Up?” Hirondelle News Agency. 7 March 2007; Braeckman, Colette. “La Dernière Journée des Casques Bleus Belges Dans l’Akagera.” Le Carnet de Colette Braeckman. Le Soir. English Translation. 5 April 2007. http://blogs.lesoir.be/colette-braeckman/2007/04/05/la-derniere-journee-des-casques-bleus-belges-dans-lakagera/.)
[69] Note: At the end of September 2006, Senator Dallaire lobbied unsuccessfully to deploy Canadian troops in Darfur. (“Gen. Dallaire Wants Canadian Army in Darfur Amidst Military Resistance,” Rwanda News Agency. 28 September 2006.)
[70] Note: The RPA was renamed the Rwandan Defense Force (RDF) in June 2002. The RDF includes RPA soldiers along with reintegrated ex-FAR soldiers and ex-militia members who returned to Rwanda from Zaire after fleeing from the RPA in 1994. Others stuck in Rwanda spontaneously adhered to the RPF ideology in order to survive.
[71] Note: In his book co-authored with Major Brent Beardsley, General Dallaire stated responsibility for the genocide lies with “those Rwandans” who planned it. He goes on to say General Kagame was also responsible because he did not “speed up his [military] campaign” to stop the killings. General Dallaire also noted General Kagame openly told him “fellow Tutsis might have to pay for the cause.” (Dallaire, General Roméo, Beardsley, Major Brent. “Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanitity in Rwanda.” New York, New York: Carrol & Graf Publishers (Avalon Publishing Group). 1st American Edition. pg. 515.)
[72] Note: The IRC has also refused to publicly address reports of human rights violations in Rwanda. They visited President Kagame in January 2007 and Board member Tom Brokaw commented, “We have been here checking on Rwanda’s commitment to the protection of human rights and we found out that the country has a good record.” The IRC is currently funding a community committee in the Eastern Province. (“Rights Activists Meet Kagame,” Ignatius Ssuuna. The New Times. 10 January 2007.)
[73] Note: Most recently, Mr. Young produced a documentary entitled “Rwanda Rising” that was screened at several film festivals, including the Pan African Film and Arts Festival.
[74] Note: SIDA is the French acronym for AIDS.
[75] Note: In November 1996, shortly before Mugunga camp was attacked, General Edwin Smith and an American survey team arrived in Kigali to scout for the upcoming U.S. relief mission “Operation Support Hope.” They utilized satellites and U.S. Navy Orion P-3s to “survey” the Rwandan refugees in Zaire. The P-3s (usually used for anti-submarine warfare) were stationed at Entebbe Airport and they did not draw anti-aircraft fire over Eastern Zaire while all other planes in the same airspace took fire from AFDL-CZ anti-aircraft batteries. (Madsen, Wayne. “Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa 1993 – 1999.” Lampeter, Ceredigion, Wales, United Kingdom: Edwin Mellen Press Limited. 1999. pg. 202.)
[76] Note: Helicopter gunships were also used to shell Mugunga, particularly at night. One survivor of the onslaught said the gunships fired from behind the hills near camp and from over the lake at night. (Private Interview. Democratic Republic of the Congo. 2006.)
[77] Private Interviews in Cyangugu, Rwanda, and Bukavu, Democratic Republic of the Congo. 2006.
[78] Note: Lac Vert (Green Lake) was attacked to dismantle the ex-FAR and militia headquarters first. The bodies were thrown into the inactive volcano. The bulk of the surviving refugees fled to Mugunga. The RPA/AFDL-CZ forces immediately began moving forward to surround Mugunga and they also advanced from the southwest, trapping the camp in a pincer movement. Only days before the Mugunga camp was bombed on 14-15 November, 1996, a group of American soldiers drove through camp with a megaphone and encouraged the refugees to go back to Rwanda because afterwards it would be “too late.” (Umutesi, Marie Béatrice. “Surviving the Slaughter: The Ordeal of a Rwandan Refugee in Zaire.” Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press. 2004. pg. 120.) Radio stations like the Voice of America (VOA) broadcast messages that it was safe to return to Goma, but this was not true because the RPA and AFDL-CZ were already advancing through Goma. Kate Crawford’s Disaster Assistance Relief Team (DART) went to Goma on their way to survey Mugunga right before the attack and AFDL-CZ soldiers turned them away at the border. (“Zaire: IRIN Update 23 on Eastern Zaire, 11/14/96,” United Nations Department of Humanitarian Affairs. IRIN News. 14 November 1996.)
[79] Note: The Rwandan Ministry of Defense was able to gather intelligence on refugee movements from several sources. U.N. security officials warned NGOs in Zaire that their satellite phone conversations were being recorded. One Doctors Without Borders (MSF) employee was told by a diplomat that their communications were being monitored by RPA and AFDL-CZ forces. Rwandans working for the NGOs in Rwanda and Zaire were instructed to fax confidential information from NGO offices to the Ministry of Defense. (then) Vice President Kagame said, “I learned from the field that the media and the NGOs would be a problem. They leaked information. They were very damaging. They are not neutral, as many claim to be. To allow a free hand will not bring us the best results." (Gowing, Nik. “New Challenges and Problems for Information Management in Complex Emergencies: Ominous Lessons from the Great Lakes and Eastern Zaire in Late 1996 and Early 1997.” Paper presented at the conference “Dispatches from Disaster Zones: The Reporting of Humanitarian Emergencies.” London, Great Britain. 27–28 May 1998. pg. 16, 47, 51.)
[80] Note: Most refugees left Mugunga out of fear, but militia members, ex-FAR, former politicians, students and their families decided to stay in Congo and flee into the forest. Those who left discovered all the camp exits were blocked by the AFDL-CZ and RPA soldiers except for the ones leading back to Rwanda. Anyone who approached the other exits was shot on sight. Many male refugees who took the open path and tried to return to Rwanda were accosted by RPA soldiers and taken to Lac Vert where they were executed and dumped into the lake. At least 6,700 people from Mugunga camp died during the forced repatriation and bombing raids. (Umutesi, Marie Béatrice. “Surviving the Slaughter: The Ordeal of a Rwandan Refugee in Zaire.” Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press. 2004. pg. 120-121.)
[81] Note: Germany, Rwanda’s first colonial occupier, was one of the first countries to officially recognize Paul Kagame and the RPF as the official government of Rwanda in 1994. In 2000, (then) Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer of the Green Party accompanied Paul Kagame on a trip through Virunga National Park to see the gorillas in the midst of their invasion of the Democratic Republic of the Congo just to the north of their trek. (Waugh, Colin M. “Paul Kagame and Rwanda: Power, Genocide and the Rwanda Patriotic Front.” Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company Incorporated. 2004. pg. 217.)
[82] Note: This is a reference to The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide held in 1948, where Article II, Section C states forcible transfer of children from one group to another is genocide.
[83] Note: Rwanda is aided in their coffee, tourism, and mining export sectors by an international consultancy firm called “On the Frontier” (OTF Group), led by Mr. Michael Fairbanks (a former Wall Street banker) and Mr. Eric Kacou, OTF’s Rwanda group director. OTF is also involved in Columbia, Gabon’s timber sector, Afghanistan, Peru, and Bolivia. They also work closely with the World Bank and USAID.
[84] Note: Major Alphonse Furuma, a former RPA officer who defected in January 2001, also testified that Hutu in Kibungo, Umutara, and Bugesera were either killed or forcibly relocated and replaced with the family members of RPF leaders. He referred to the program as “Villagization.” (Open Letter to His Excellency President Paul Kagame. Major Alphonse Furuma. 23 January 2001. http://users.skynet.be/wihogora/furuma-230101.htm.)
[85] Note: One public example of this occurred in March 2007. Theogene Nkuranga, the District Vice Mayor in charge of Economic Affairs and Development, told women in the Rusizi District to limit the number of children they have and instead take part in community work (Umuganda) and gacaca court logistics. (“Ruzizi Residents Told to Produce Few Children,” Stevenson Mugisha. The New Times. 10 March 2007.)
[86] Note: Ibuka has shown strong resistance to conducting the new genocide survivors’ census currently underway. (“Ibuka Challenges the Survivor Census Taking Place,” Hirondelle News Agency. 14 May 2007.)
[87] Note: Very recently, the ‘mixed’ brigades of General Nkundabatware loyalists were recruiting children from the Rwandan refugee camps and bringing them into the Congo to fight for them. (“DR Congo: Army Should Stop Use of Child Soldiers.” Human Rights Watch. Press Release. 19 April 2007.)
[88] Note: One fairly recent example of this occurred in January 2007, when the Ministry of Justice released eight thousand prisoners. (“Rwanda Announces Upcoming Release of 8,000 Prisoners,” Hirondelle News Agency. 25 January 2007.)
[89] Note: Hundreds of Rwandans fled the gacaca courts for the Congo during the first two weeks April 2007. In June 2005, nearly ten thousand Rwandans fled to Burundi for the same reason. (“Hundreds of People Fleeing the Gacaca Tribunal Towards the RDC,” Hirondelle News Agency. 17 April 2007.)
[90] Note: At the time this interview was conducted, Mr. Wolfowitz had not yet resigned from the World Bank.
[91] “Rwanda 1994: More than Genocide.” Christian Davenport, Allan Stam. University of Maryland. http://www.umd.edu/features/rwanda.html; http://www.geodynamics.com.
[92] Note: President Melchior Ndadaye was assassinated at the Muha Barracks by Tutsi Armed Forces of Burundi (FAB) soldiers from the 11th Armored Reconnaissance Battalion and the 1st and 2nd Parachute Battalions (led by Chief-of-Staff Colonel Jean Bikomagu and former Burundian President, Colonel Jean-Baptiste Bagaza) on 20 October 1993. Journalist Charles Onana uncovered documents from the International Christian Democrat stating they were warned on 18th October about the coup attempt and informed them General Paul Kagame was in Bujumbura travelling on a Burundian passport during the days leading up to the assassination. He reportedly met with outgoing President Pierre Buyoya and blessed the coup. Paul Baril was hired to investigate the coup threats and he reportedly concluded the RPA was actively involved. However, as a French mercenary involved in Operation Turquoise, Mr. Baril’s potential bias against the RPA should be noted. (Onana, Charles. “Les Secrets de la Justice Internationale.” English Translation. Paris, France: Editions Duboiris. 2005; Brugière, Jean-Louis. “The Report by French Anti-Terrorist Judge Jean-Louis Brugière on the Shooting Down of Rwandan President Habyarimana’s Plane on 6 April 1994.” Article 45. English Translation. 17 November 2006.)
[93] Note: Mr. Buyoya, a Hima, became Burundi’s President again in 1996. He received his military training in Europe and he is now a visiting fellow at Brown University in Rhode Island, U.S.A. The term “Hima” in this context, refers to a sub-group of Tutsi hailing from Southern Burundi.
[94] Note: Shortly after Rwanda severed ties with France following the release of Judge Brugière’s arrest warrants, Chairman Rajab Hussein visited President Kagame at Village Urugwiro and told him, “I am here to assure the President of our government’s support at this time when relations (between Rwanda and France) are not good.” (“Burundi backs Rwanda on France,” Robert Mukombozi. The New Times. 30 November 2006.)
[95] Note: In late August 2006, former Hutu President Domitien Ndayizeye was arrested by the Burundian Government and charged with plotting a coup that included a plan to assassinate President Nkurunziza, the Secret Service Chief, and several military officials. Some of the journalists and radio personalities who reported on his detention were accosted and thrown into jail on claims they were threatening public order. Suspected rebel leader Alain Mugabarabona said he was tortured by the Documentation Nationale (Burundi’s Presidential Guard and police force) and forced to implicate Mr. Ndayizeye in the plot. (“Burundi’s Ex-President in Court,” BBC News. 25 August 2006.)
The case took an interesting turn in late December 2006 when prosecutor Gaudence Ndayizeye said D. Ndayizeye and Mr. Mugabarabona met with General Laurent Nkundabatware, General James Kabarebe, and General Salim Saleh to plan the coup. He called the group the “Club of Kampala” and said their aim was to get a sympathetic rebel group in power (led by Mugabarabona) that would allow Burundi to be used as a rear base for General Nkundabatware to attack the Congo with the help of Rwanda and Uganda. (“Guerre à l’Est : Voici Comment est Aidé Nkunda pour Attaquer la RDC : Révélation sur un Réquisitoire,” DigitalCongo 3.0. English Translation. 23 December 2006. http://www.digitalcongo.net/article/39809.) Rwandan military officials denounced the allegations as unfounded and baseless.
Burundi’s Tutsi Minister of Defense General Germain Niyoyankana denied there was ever any coup plot and claimed the Army’s intelligence division had neither received nor observed any indications of such a plot. In the end, Mr. Ndayizeye, former Vice President Alphonse Marie Kadege, FAB officer Damien Ndarisigaranye, lawyer Isidore Ruyikri, and politician Deo Niyonzima were acquitted of all charges on 15 January 2007. Mr. Mugabarabona was sentenced to 20 years and Tharcisse Ndayishimiye, who admitted attending meetings with the accused, was sentenced to 15 years.
[96] Note: The ICTR ruled they have no jurisdiction to try President Kagame and other RPF/RPA officials accused of committing crimes in 1994. The Rwandan Government has asked the International Court of Justice to overturn the warrant. In particular, General Charles Kayonga and General Jack (Jackson) Nkurunziza (Nziza) claim the warrant has restricted them to the point they can no longer carry on the duties their respective jobs require. That trial has been delayed until September.
http://cirqueminime.blogcollective.com/blog/_archives/2007/11/3/3329234.html
Genocide Inflation is the Real Human Rights Threat: Yugoslavia and Rwanda
November, 28 2007 By Edward Herman
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We have all heard about
“genocide denial” and “holocaust
denial” as very bad happenings that have focused
attention, indignation, and concern to the point of
laws passed to criminalize such behavior in
Genocide Denial
Genocide denial has received its greatest
attention in relation to the occasional questioning
of the Nazi destruction of the Jews during World War II.
Those denying this horrendous set of real events
have almost always been powerless eccentrics who posed no
threat to existing Jewish populations, and in fact the
outcries against them have gotten louder as real
antisemitism has declined (although hostility to Israeli
policy has increased). This was surely true in the famous
case of Robert Faurisson in
In recent years as well, Israel has been
subject to increasing criticism for its harsh and illegal
treatment of its own untermenschen,
and the response of many individual and organized
Jewish groups in the United States and Europe has been
once again to cry about genocide denial and an alleged
increase in antisemitism (more and more identified with
hostility to Israeli policies). This has been
happening in a period where real antisemitism (as opposed
to hostility to Israeli ethnic cleansing) and holocaust
denial are at a low level, but where the power of
Western Jewish elites and lobbying operations are
unprecedentedly high. [2] This has allowed them to get
substantial but completely unwarranted publicity for
their current victimization claims, including even the
passage of laws outlawing Holocaust denial and
legislative as well as private efforts to rein in critics
of Israeli policy. [3]
The human rights impact of this set of
campaigns, including those featuring and trying to
constrain Holocaust denial, has been negative. As Jews
are not under threat in the West, the campaign does not
help their human rights. On the other hand, by featuring
Jewish victimization these campaigns build support for
It has of course been argued that
It should also be noted that there is a
systematic “genocide [or holocaust] denial”
when it comes to treating Western-based genocidal
operations, but this is invisible because the West does
it. The most prominent illustration at present is the
Genocide Inflation
But awkwardly for Rieff and his
fellow war campaigners and propagandists, in 2005
and 2007 two studies made their appearance, one by Ewa
Tabeau and Jacub Bijak published in 2005
under the auspices of the Western-organized
Yugoslavia Tribunal, the other in 2007 by the
Bosnian Muslim lawyer Mirsad Tokaca and funded by the
Norwegian government, both claiming that the
total Bosnian war deaths on all sides, military and
civilian, was in the order of 100,000, of which
some 40-55,000 were civilians (including thousands of
Serbs). These new values penetrated into mainstream
reporting slowly and grudgingly, because the inflated
numbers had fitted so well the needs of
While the Bosnian “genocide” has
taken a beating, the Srebrenica massacre of July 1995 has
survived as a now institutionalized
“genocide.” But it has done so in the face of
intractable problems: the NATO-organized and compliant
Yugoslav Tribunal identified it as such by finding that
there could be genocide in one small town, where
the genocidists had bussed to safety all the women and
children of their target population, and where the
claims of 8,000 executed have never been verified
by forensic or credible witness evidence of anything like
this scale of killing. [11] It lives on by virtue of its
political utility and aggressive challenges to its
truthfulness as “revisionism” and
“denial.”
This same inflation process occurred before
and during NATO’s 78-day bombing war on
Needless to say, there has been no apology,
or any call for reprimand let alone punishment, for
participation in these processes of genocide
inflation. But in contrast with the genocide denial cases
mentioned earlier, these inflation processes had real and
substantial negative human rights consequences. By
helping demonize U.S.-NATO targets, they readied Western
publics for a refusal to negotiate with the demons,
helped bring about an ensuing burst of ethnic cleansing
and eventually NATO military intervention, and they
helped cover over the NATO commission of war
crimes. Michael Mandel made an
excellent case that the main point of the
Yugoslavia Tribunal’s operations from its inception
in 1993 was to demonize the NATO target (Serbia) and to
allow the demand for “justice” to trump peace
settlements, which the United States and its allies did
trump from 1992 till the Dayton Accord in late 1995 [13]
The genocide inflation helped to this end.
The same was true in the Kosovo case, where the inflated
claims of Serb violence against the Kosovo Albanians both
before and during the bombing war—including the
fabricated threat of a Serb mass ethnic cleansing under
Operation Horseshoe—helped make publicly
acceptable the carefully engineered avoidance of
negotiations and plunge into a bombing war.
Contrary to the establishment narrative: (1)
The plane was shot down by Paul Kagame and his Tutsi
associates, [15] with active or tacit help from the
Belgians, UN representative Romeo Dallaire, [16] and
possibly the CIA. This act was part of the
Kagame-Tutsi final assault to seize power after a
four-year war, with the assistance of the U.S.-sponsored
Ugandan military. When the chief investigator for the
Rwanda Tribunal, Australian Michael Hourigan,
reported solid evidence on this locus of
responsibility for the April 6th
assassination to Chief Prosecutor Louise Arbour in
1997, she immediately closed down the investigation and
ordered him to destroy his files. This finding, which
does not comport with the idea of a pre-planned Hutu
murder program, has been suppressed in the Free Press.
[17]
(2) The two leaders whose plane was
shot down on April 6, 1994, were Hutus. A third Hutu
leader, Melchior Ndadaye, an earlier president of
Burundi, was assassinated by his Tutsi military in
October 1993, which was followed by an anti-Hutu pogrom
that killed tens of thousands and drove hundreds of
thousands of Burundian-Hutu refugees into Rwanda.
(3) Clinton and his Western
allies (UK, Belgium) sponsored the U.S.-trained Kagame,
supported his invasions of Rwanda from Uganda and massive
ethnic cleansing prior to April 1994, and via their
control of the Security Council refused to allow
additional UN troops into Rwanda in April 1994, in fact
forcing a reduction of the UNIMIR contingent in
Rwanda from 2,500 to 270, not because of caution
but because Kagame didn’t want them there to
interfere with his conquest of Rwanda, which Clinton and
his allies supported.
(4) The Hutu authorities urged more UN
troops—and in light of the Kagame/U.S. (etc.)
opposition to such civilian-protective assistance, this
once again calls into question who it was that did the
main killing in
(5) A suppressed 1994 UNCHR
(Gersony) Report documented massacres of civilians in
Kagame-controlled areas of
(6) A
To an amazing degree, the Western media and
NGOs swallowed the propaganda line and lies on
Because the Western propaganda machine
succeeded so well in making the Hutus the villains and
killers, and Paul Kagame the defender/savior of Rwanda,
this cleared the ground for Kagame and Yoweri
Musevemi--Kagame’s ally and fellow U.S. client and
dictator (of Uganda)—to periodically
invade and occupy the Eastern Congo (then Zaire)
and beyond without “international
community” opposition as they were allegedly
cleaning out the genocidaires.
The Pentagon very actively supported this on the ground,
even more than it supported the Kagame machine’s
drive in
In sum,
-------------------------
Notes:
1. This was the conclusion of a
conference at Brandeis University in 1983 on “The
Jews in Modern France”--see “Decline Seen in
French Anti-Semitism,” Reuters, Boston
Globe, April 20, 1983.
2. See John Mearsheimer and
Stanley Walt, The Israel Lobby and U.S.
Foreign Policy (Farrar, Straus and Giroux,
2007); James Petras, The Power of Israel in
the United States (Clarity Press, 2006; also
Petras,
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2007/05/the-pro-israel-lobby-and-us-middle-east-policy/.
3. For a discussion of the
systematic attempts of pro-Israeli-occupation supporters
to curb debate on the relevant issues, see, e.g., the
audio-links of the presentations at the "In Defense
of Academic Freedom" conference held in
4. "Ethnic Cleansing and the
'Moral Instinct'," Edward S. Herman, Z
Magazine, March, 2006, http://zmagsite.zmag.org/Mar2006/herman0306.html.
5. Ahmadinejad’s remarks on the
Holocaust have mainly been complaints that Europe has
addressed the problem of the mistreatment of European
Jews by imposing
6. See, e.g., John M. Donnelly,
"Item In War Request Stokes Fears Of Iran
Strike," Congressional Quarterly Today, October 23,
2007, http://public.cq.com/docs/cqt/news110-000002611347.html; and John H. Richardson, "The Secret
History of the Impending War With Iran That the White
House Doesn't Want You to Know," Esquire,
October 18, 2007, http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/102407B.shtml.
7. Edward S. Herman, "The
Cruise Missile Left (part 5): Samantha Power And The
Genocide Gambit," ZNet, May 17, 2004, http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=5538.
8. Peter Brock, Media
Cleansing: Dirty Reporting--Journalism and Tragedy in
9. David Rieff, Slaughterhouse:
10. See Herman and Peterson,
“The Dismantling of Yugoslavia: A Study in
Inhumanitarian Intervention (and a Western Liberal-Left
Intellectual and Moral Collapse),” Monthly
Review, October, 2007, pp. 22-26, http://www.monthlyreview.org/nfte0907.htm.
11. See Michael Mandel, How
12. Herman and Peterson,
“Dismantling
13. Mandel, How
14. Samantha Power, "Bystanders
to Genocide," Atlantic Monthly,
September, 2001, http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200109/power-genocide.
15. On November 21, 2006, the French
Judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere issued a lengthy report on his
investigation into the April 6, 1994 shootdown of the
aircraft carrying the Rwandan and Burundian presidents
back to
16. Dallaire, who has attained
heroic status for allegedly “resisting” the
genocide, and who has been a “fellow” of
Harvard’s Carr Center for Human Rights, was actually
a virtual agent of the invading Kagame forces. He closed
one axis of the Kagali airport runway to make the
shootdown easier, refused to allow a nearby French
investigative team to investigate the crime, failed to
warn the Rwanda government of the military buildup of the
Kagame forces, and was charged by his direct superior, Dr
Jacques Roger Booh-Booh, with working in collaboration
with the RPF and also taking orders from the US and
Belgian embassies in Kigali. (See his Le
Patron de Dallaire Parle (
17. Some accessible basic sources
supporting this analysis are Robin Philpot, Rwanda
1994:Colonialism Dies Hard (The Taylor
Report, 2004), www.taylor-report.com/Rwanda_1994; Barrie Collins, “Rewriting
Rwanda,” Spiked Online, April
7, 2004, http://www.spiked-online.co.uk/Articles/0000000CA4BD.htm; and Keith Harmon Snow, “Hotel Rwanda:
Hollywood and the Holocaust in Central Africa,”
January 10, 2006, http://www.allthingspass.com/uploads/html-135Hotel%20Rwanda%20Final%2010%20Jan%202006.htm.
18. On Gourevitch and other Western
intellectual apologists for the Kagame assassinations and
slaughterhouse, see
19. See "The Lancet
Publishes IRC Mortality Study from DR Congo; 3.9 Million
Have Died: 38,000 Die per Month," News Release,
International Rescue Committee, January, 2006, http://www.theirc.org/news/page-27819067.html; and Simon Robinson and Vivienne Walt,
“The Deadliest War in the World,” Time
Magazine, May 28, 2006, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1198921,00.html.
20. Steven Da Silva, “Revisiting
the ‘Rwanda Genocide’,” Center for
Research on Globalization, June 1, 2007, http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=5848; and Michel Chossudovsky, “The
Geopolitics Behind the Rwanda Genocide,” Center for
Research on Globalization, November 23, 2006, http://www.globalresearch.
ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20061123&articleId=3958.
21. Aleksandar Jokic, “Genocidalism,” The Journal of Ethics, Vol. 8, No. 3, September, 2004, pp. 251 - 297, http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/klu/joet/2004/00000008/00000003/05256293; and Aleksandar Jokic and Tiphaine Dickson, "Globalization and Genocidalism: Fictional Discourse Without Borders (for Fun and Profit)," Sociological Review (Belgrade), 2006, pp. 323 - 346, http://www.socioloskipregled.org.yu/Tekstovi/3(2006)/1%20Jokic.pdf.