by DANIEL KOVALIK
With the takeover of the city of Goma in the Democratic
Republic of the Congo (“Congo”) last year by M23 rebels, and with Rwanda
receiving a seat on the UN Security Council last year as well, I wanted to talk
to Rwanda’s most famous son, Paul Rusesabagina, about Rwanda’s role in
supporting the M23 militia. Paul Rusesabagina was famously
portrayed in the movie Hotel Rwanda by Don Cheadle.
My
first question to Paul was about the criminal charges brought against him in
2010 by the Rwandan government for his questioning the role of Paul Kagame (now
Rwandan President) and his RPF forces in the Rwandan civil war and in the
Congo. The government accused him of allegedly advocating a “double
genocide” theory.
PR:
This is what happens to any person who has really been advocating about the
genocide that happened in 1994. I was on the inside and I
sensitized the whole world. I called for help. I tried to help people
during that period of time. And afterward, I still fought for the truth
to come out until I noticed that that was not what the Rwandan government
wanted to do. They wanted power — not shared — and they wanted to
demonize the rest of the population so that the army appeared to be the only
nice people. For that I was not considered a nice guy. I had no
choice but to go into exile. In exile, I was the one who spoke real
loudly about the Rwanda genocide—the Rwandan genocide; not two genocides.
. . . If we Rwandans don’t reconcile, and sit down honestly and talk,
then we might see history repeating itself because the Rwandan government as of
now also has been involved in many massacres. This is what I talk
about. The Tutsi government has been involved in many massacres.
And they are still doing it. So that’s what they have been doing in the
Congo. If you look at the situation as it has been analyzed, for example,
in the Mapping Report which you may be aware of. People analyzing that
are recording a genocide. (1)
A
growing number of voices now charge that the Obama administration, like the
Bush and Clinton administrations before it, has “protected” Rwanda and Uganda
in their de facto annexation of eastern Congo and its mineral riches. But the
actual relationship is more like that between a Mafia Godfather and his
murderous henchmen. For 16 years, Uganda and Rwanda have done the bidding of
their paymasters and arms suppliers, the American and British governments. If
the Nuremburg rules of international justice were in force today, the highest
officials in London and Washington would face death by hanging for their
monstrous crimes – and only later would Presidents Kagame of Rwanda and
Museveni of Uganda take their walk with the executioner.
