Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo in the Propaganda System

David Peterson and Edward S. Herman

MonthlyReview

 

Excerpted from The Politics of Genocide(Monthly Review Press, 2009)

Elsewhere we have written that the breakup of Yugoslavia “may have been the most misrepresented series of major events over the past twenty years.”1 But the far bloodier and more destructive invasions, insurgencies, and civil wars that have ravaged several countries in the Great Lakes region of Central Africa over the same years may have been subjected to even greater misrepresentation.

To a remarkable degree, all major sectors of the Western establishment swallowed a propaganda line on Rwanda that turned perpetrator and victim upside-down. In the much-cited 1999 study, “Leave None to Tell the Story”: Genocide in Rwanda, on behalf of Human Rights Watch and the International Federation of Human Rights in Paris, Alison Des Forges writes that “By late March 1994, Hutu Power leaders were determined to slaughter massive numbers of Tutsi and Hutu opposed to [Hutu President Juvénal] Habyarimana,” and that on April 6, 1994, with the assassination of Habyarimana, “[a] small group of his close associates…decided to execute the planned extermination.”

Hotel Rwanda Revisited: an Interview with Paul Rusesabagina

by DANIEL KOVALIK

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/01/11/hotel-rwanda-revisited-an-interview-with-paul-rusesabagina/

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)