General Paul Kagame on his sat phone, during the RPF
invasion of Rwanda from Uganda, circa 1993-1994.
Paul Kagame has been blackmailing the Western world for "turning its back on Rwanda" in 1994 ever since, but this May 1994 Reuters news clip reports that Kagame actually threatened to fire on UN peacekeepers as though they were enemy combatants, if they tried to stand between his invading Rwandan Patriotic Army and Rwanda's Forces Armées du Rwanda (Rwandan Armed Forces):
"RWANDA: RWANDA's REBEL ARMY WARNS THE UNITED NATIONS IT WILL TREAT THE ORGANIZATION AS THE ENEMY IF THEY ATTEMPT TO COME BETWEEN THEM AND GOVERNMENT TROOPS.
Story
Rebel forces in Rwanda warned peacekeeping officials on Friday (May 20) they would treat United Nations (U.N.) forces as the enemy if the organization attempted to come between them and government troops.
Rebel Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) Deputy Vice Chairman Denis Polisi warned if there was any interference by the U.N. they "would be engaged".
Senior U.N. officials are heading for Kigali to try to persuade warring parties to cooperate with peacekeeping forces.
The U.N. Assistance Mission in Rwanda is currently made up of 470 troops, shortly to be bolstered by the 2,500 additional troops ordered by the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday.
Meanwhile the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the Medicins Sans Frontiers (MSF) are operating feeding centres and medical clinics in the North Rwandan town of Mulundi.
In Tanzania many refugees caught up and wounded in the violence in Rwanda have found safety in the Benaco camp, but some continue to die from their previously inflicted wounds.
Those who die are buried just a few metres (yards) from the camp perimeter in shallow graves."
Reuters, May 18, 1994, archived on ITN, http://www.itnsource.com/
Rwanda's Foreign Minister Louise Musikiwabo, however, quoted in the Financial Times's 09.05.2010 report, "UN faces dilemma in report on Congo killings," now says that, "It is patently absurd for the UN, which deliberately turned its back on the Rwandan people during the 1994 genocide, to accuse the army that stopped the genocide of committing atrocities in the Democratic Republic of Congo."
Since Musikiwabo seems to argue that the UN turned its back on Rwanda by not intervening in 1994, are we to conclude that the UN turned its back by not stopping her President, then General, Paul Kagame, when he threatened to fire on its peacekeepers if they did intervene?
Are we to conclude that the UN then turned its back on D.R. Congo?
The official version of the United Nations High Commissioner on Human Rights report mapping human rights abuses, 1993-2003, including documentation of the Rwandan Patriotic Army's genocidal massacres of Hutu refugees and Congolese Hutus, is due for release on October 1st, 2010, after being leaked to Le Monde on August 26th, and reported all over the world.
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It is indeed true that in 1994 General Kagame's forces forcefully refused any intervention by the UN. Because if the UN had stopped the hostilities from the outset, General Kagame's extremist Tutsi forces would never have gained power and gone on to commit the genocide and plunder in Congo that the recently leaked UN report has documented.
ReplyDeleteSeveral documents in UN court for Rwanda (ICTR) confirmed that massive violence was predicted to erupt in Rwanda as a consequence of war, because of similar massacres that occurred in neighboring Burundi in late 1993, when the first popularly-elected Burundian president was assassinated by Kagame’s Burundi-military allies. In fact, in late 1993 the US ambassador to Rwanda personally warned Kagame that he would be responsible for the same kind of massive violence, if he resumed the war. Evidence at ICTR shows that Kagame not only resumed the war, but assassinated two presidents as the opening shot, triggering the same massive killings that had already happened in Burundi six months before. Previously suppressed UN documents also show that two-weeks after he assassinated Rwandan President Habyarimana…along with a second Burundian president, Kagame told UN General Dallaire that he would not use his troops to stop the massacres because he was winning the war, and the civilian deaths were only “collateral damage for his their war-plan. The April 22, 1994 memo reporting this conversation is in the ICTR evidence.
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