Twenty four years ago, the UN set up an independent international commission of inquiry to establish the organization’s responsibilities during the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda where more than one million innocent people were massacred, in 100 days.
About a year later, in a report submitted to the UN, in April 2000, the Commission chaired by the former Prime Minister of Sweden, Ingvar Carlsson, concluded that UN intervention in Rwanda before and during the 1994 genocide was “the absolute failure of the UN in Rwanda.”
The Commission indicated that while the UN had not been able to prevent or stop the Genocide against the Tutsi, the blame was put on several actors, in particular the Secretary-General, the Secretariat, the Security Council, the then United Nations Mission in Rwanda (UNAMIR) and UN member states. As noted, the primary failure was that of not mobilizing resources and political commitment commensurate to the gravity of the situation. Member states failed to demonstrate political will and refused to act decisively.
Nearly three decades later, regrettably, the UN system continues to fail Rwanda and humanity.
Consider the case of the leaked final report of the UN Group of Experts on DRC led by Mélanie De Groof (Belgium).
The report was provided to the Security Council Committee established pursuant to resolution 1533 (2004) concerning DRC on May 1, 2023. It was considered by the Committee on May 19. The Group of Experts wanted the report to be brought to the attention of the members of the Security Council and issued as a document of the Council.
nstrumentalizing genocide narrative?
There are way so many things wrong with this leaked report. But let’s consider, among other things, the blatant allegation that the M23 “exploited the narrative that it was protecting the Congolese Tutsi and Banyamulenge communities in eastern DRC from extermination in order to justify its aggressive territorial expansion in North Kivu.”
In public communiqués, the UN Group of Experts noted, M23 referred to an “imminent genocide” against the Tutsi community it purported to protect, thereby inextricably linking the Tutsi community to its belligerent and expansionist objectives.
The report added: “This narrative was similarly used by Rwanda, as well as Twirwaneho, with regard to the Banyamulenge community.”
Perversely, De Groof and co noted, this genocide narrative created a dangerously fertile ground for the fearmongering, hateful discourse, and violent reprisals, including killings, against the above-mentioned communities “by those who opposed M23.”
“Members of the Tutsi community interviewed by the Group of Experts confirmed that incidents of violence, including the killing of Tutsi civilians, had coincided with the resurgence of M23,” the Group of Experts reported, indicating that they relied on witness testimonies, community leaders, civil society and MONUSCO sources.
“The Group of Experts notes that, while incidents of violence against Rwandophone communities in the current context were beyond doubt, the manipulation of the genocide narrative by M23 and the Rwandan authorities has significantly increased the risk of civilians being targeted and could trigger widespread inter-ethnic violence between communities.”
Now, there are questions to answer here.
First; the Group of Experts notes that incidents of violence against Rwandophone communities “in the current context” are beyond doubt. How so different is this current context from the context in 1994 and the years thereafter? It is hard to understand the current state of affairs out of context. The Group of Experts should able to, for example, tell the world how for nearly three decades, the UN has maintained, with billions of dollars, a force supposed to stabilize eastern DRC, with a contemptible or non-existent result and, to find a scapegoat for its failure, all the blame is put on Rwanda.
Why is it so hard for these so-called experts to see the reality? Why can’t they see the fact that the responsibility for the eastern DRC mess lies first with the Congolese government, or leaders, who are only too happy to find an excuse for their own weakness, and then with the Western powers involved in the creation of the problem?
And, what is so wrong with properly clarifying the fact that the Congolese Tutsi and Banyamulenge communities in eastern DRC face extermination? Why gloss over this serious problem and simply portray M23, and Rwanda, as the problem?
Important facts – that shed light on the root cause of the endless conflict in eastern DRC – are being glossed over.
The readers of the Group of Experts’ report should not be duped.
The so-called experts should shed good light on, among others, who are “those who opposed M23” and why they oppose it. And they should properly explain the genesis of the DRC conflict without glossing over issues.
Following her official visit to the DRC from November 10-13, 2022, the UN Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, Alice Wairimu Nderitu, was deeply alarmed about the escalation of violence in the region where a genocide – the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda – happened.
“The current violence is a warning sign of societal fragility and proof of the enduring presence of the conditions that allowed large-scale hatred and violence to erupt into a genocide in the past,” she said.
Nderitu is not a fool.
She understood how, in eastern DRC, the current violence mainly stems from the refugee crisis that resulted as many individuals involved in the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda fled to eastern DRC, forming armed groups such as the FDLR which is still active in eastern DRC. In response to the presence of this genocidal militia group, new armed groups were formed and the failure to bring non-state armed actors to book is the consequence we now see, she added.
How does the UN Group of Experts explain the fact that a genocidal militia is still active, 29 years after the 1994 genocide, despite the continued presence of MONUSCO, the UN’s biggest, most costly, and most ineffective peacekeeping mission?
The endless accusation that Rwanda is backing M23 does not really matter considering the real issues. The important factor is to know why – without spins as is the case in the latest leaked UN Group of Experts’ report and others before it – Rwanda would get involved.
The Rwandan government has never minced words on this.
The threat posed to Rwandans’ security by a group filled with genocidal ideology – the FDLR – is undoubtedly likely to lead Rwanda to intervene in DRC, “without apology or notice.” The Genocidal militia is integrated into the Congolese army.
That is a serious matter of national security for Rwanda. And it should be a matter of concern to the international community considering the fact that genocide is a crime against humanity.
Nderitu has noted that finding a solution to the ongoing conflict in eastern DRC would require addressing the underlying causes of the violence and learning lessons from the past.
“The abuses currently occurring in eastern DRC, including the targeting of civilians based on their ethnicity or perceived affiliation to the warring parties must be halted. Our collective commitment not to forget past atrocities constitutes an obligation to prevent re-occurrence,” she stressed.
If De Groof was serious about getting to the bottom of the eastern DRC conflict she should have sat down with her compatriot, Bernard Maingain, and got educated.
The Belgian lawyer has, for years, condemned the anti-Tutsi hate speeches in eastern DRC and is well-versed in issues there.
De Groof and her team should have asked Maingain why the genocide ideology in eastern DRC and the region did not dissolve with time, with the flight and dispersion of the genocidaires in 1994. But, at least, French journalist Jean-Francois Dupaquier, asked. De Groof should have read the entire transcript which is in French, a language she understands.
Below is how part of the interview went:
Jean-François DUPAQUIER: Why didn’t the genocide ideology dissolve with time, with the flight and dispersion of the genocidaires?
Bernard MAINGAIN: Théoneste Bagosora, the ‘architect of the Tutsi genocide’, one of the main defendants before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, expressed the programme most clearly in various writings and during his trial. In summary, and I hope correctly, he said: “We have lost the war in Rwanda for the time being, but we will come back to power sooner or later because that is the way of history.”
This is the ideology we are facing today. I will remember for a long time the image of a new generation of extremists, shouting at the big barrier in Goma on 15 June 2022, that they will cross to complete the genocide in Rwanda… How can these words be uttered today?
In the Congo, the plan to complete this programme of extermination of the Tutsi was never lost sight of by the genocidaires who managed to stay in the country and mingle with the population. It is under the impulse of these people that the ideology is propagated while in Europe their relays speak of human rights being flouted. The entire Great Lakes region is now infested by this Manichean discourse that led to the massive act of violence in Rwanda in 1994.
It should be remembered that this discourse had been formulated and refined in Rwanda since 1959: “The Tutsi are a predatory race, the only solution is to eliminate them, from the child to the old man.”
With the emergence of social networks, this discourse is taken up again and again and is growing in the DRC, but much further afield, as hate speech can be found in Belgium, France, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States….
By and large, just like the genocide ideologues who are determined to continue denying the 1994 genocide, the Group of Experts have mounted an information war against the current Rwandan government.
They are trying so hard to persuade the world with well-crafted disinformation that the victims, the Tutsi, in DRC and Rwanda, brought the catastrophe upon themselves.
The leaked UN report is an effort to absolve the UN of its failure in Rwanda and DRC and shift blame to others. Its narrative feeds into the last stage of genocide, denial.
As previously noted by Romeo Dallaire, a retired Canadian general who served as UN Force Commander in Rwanda, in 1994, it is critically important that the world remains vigilant against calculated deceit, and the dissemination of misinformation by unwitting dupes and bald-faced lies.
Despite the evidence, genocide deniers continue to claim through their writings and publications that the 1994 genocide against Tutsi was not planned.
Despite the evidence of the poisonous genocide ideology being spewed by the Rwandan genocidaires – and their allies – in DRC and Western capitals, among other places, the UN continues to leak genocide denial and dangerous narratives.
