Rwanda 25 years on: a morally constructed tyranny

A visitor to Rwanda today would be impressed. Kigali, the capital, is modern and well organised.
No slums, no litter. The traffic runs smoothly, there is wifi on the buses. There is a sense of a
country on the move. Rwanda’s GDP grew 8.3% on average each year from 2000 to 2017 1. It has a
new international airline and Kigali is set to become the hub of central Africa with a large airport
and international conference centre. The burgeoning tourist industry is centred mainly around the
main wildlife attraction – the gorillas in Volcano National Park. There is also the chance to see the
‘big five’ at Kagera National Park and to visit Lake Kivu and Nyungwe forest. The ‘land of a
thousand hills’ is beautiful. The other draw are the genocide memorials, the main one being in
Kigali, where the grim evidence of the horror Rwandans went through for three months from 6
April 1994 is displayed in visceral detail. With the memorial juxtaposed with a shiny modern city,
the impression is that Rwanda has progressed beyond recognition from year zero twenty five years
ago.

Appearances are deceptive. While the economic growth is real enough, it is skewed toward the
capital and prestige projects. Rwanda remains a desperately poor country with 63 per cent of the
population living on less than 1.25 dollars a day.2Thirty-eight per cent of Rwanda’s children are
stunted due to malnutrition.3 Per capita gross domestic product is lower than neighbouring
Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda. The hype around Kagame’s economic achievements reflects his
elevated standing in international forums. Rwanda is Africa’s most aid-dependent country, with 40
per cent of its annual budget sustained directly by foreign aid. It’s big projects are going ahead
because of the willingness of international finance organisations to grant Rwanda special status
where lending is concerned. Nevertheless, debt repayments are placing severe constraints on
development initiatives. Capital flows were negative for the first time in 2016. 4Kagame’s much
vaunted goal of making Rwanda a middle-income country by 2020 has been quietly postponed to
2034.5

Also less obvious to a visitor is the regime’s murderously repressive nature. Ever since the rebel
Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA), the military wing of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) swept to
power in July 1994, the RPF and its leader Paul Kagame have run a dictatorship in all but name.
Initially, Kagame presented a facade of an inclusive government that transcended the Hutu-Tutsi
ethnic divide. He made himself Vice-President and made sure that the President, Prime Minister and
four other cabinet members were Hutu, while controlling them and a compliant parliament. But this
‘inclusive government’ could not endure as the tyrannical nature of Kagame’s rule unfolded.

All Hutus, men especially, were regarded as génocidaire suspects. Terror was instilled by gutunga
agatoki – pointing the finger. Everyone lived in fear of this accusation which could come from
anyone at any time. Rwanda’s prison population soared: one thousand in July 1994, six thousand
by the end of that year, forty-four thousand by June 1995 and over one hundred thousand by 1997.
When judge Gratien attempted to free forty prisoners who had no files, he was kidnapped and
murdered. When twenty-six magistrates tried to free those they considered innocent, they too were
arrested and charged as génocidaires.6 Médicines Sans Frontières stated that a thousand prisoners
died between October 1994 and June 1995 in a single prison. 7In her book Le Chateau: The Lives of
Prisoners in Rwanda, Carina Tertsakian, former Human Rights Watch representative in Rwanda,
revealed that between September 1994 and May 1995, thirteen per cent of Rwanda’s prison
population had died as a result of overcrowding, a situation ‘unparalleled in any part of the world’.8

The crisis for the Hutu government ministers came to a head in April 1995 when Kagame ordered
the massacre of over four thousand people in a camp for internally displaced people called Kibeho.
The process of returning displaced people home had ground to a halt as they were too afraid of what
they would face outside the camps. Instead, insecurity in the countryside was causing camp
numbers to rise. On the 18th of April, Kibeho was surrounded by two RPA batallions. The following
day, Minister of the Interior Seth Sendashonga visited Kibeho then returned to voice his alarm to
the government. Kagame assured him that, as Minister of Defence, he had everything under control.
Two days later, around fifteen hundred people had been standing squashed together on a hilltop
forced to relieve themselves where they stood. Food and water supplies were stopped and sent back
and all refugee aid forbidden. At noon another two days later, on 22 nd April 1995, the RPA opened
fire with rifles and 60mm mortars. The slaughter went on into the night, when the RPA commenced
with mass burials. At dawn thirty-two members of the Australian Medial Corps began a body count.
They reached 4200 by the time they were stopped by the RPA. Sendashonga rushed back to Kibeho
but was barred entry. He returned to Kigali and called for and independent commission of inquiry. 9
The Rwandan government’s line was that the RPA had come under fire from the crowd and had to
return fire. The official death toll was put at 338. Kagame stated that over ninety-five per cent of the
Kibeho people had arrived home in good shape.10

The reaction of the Hutu ministers, led to them being fired, with the exception of President
Bizimungu, who had colluded with Kagame’s whitewashing of the massacre. The facade of a
government of national unity was stripped bare. The regime had still a long way to go to consolidate
its power and govern effectively, and the only tool it had was repression.

Almost two million Rwandans had fled the country rather than live under the new regime. Most
were in what was then Zaire and is now the Democratic Republic of Congo, others were in Tanzania
and Burundi. Their refusal to return posed a problem for the regime’s legitimacy. Also, among the
refugees were remnants of the army and militia who were organising an insurgency into the
northwest from Zaire. In the course of pursuing the insurgents, the RPA treated locals in the region
as accomplices. Thousands of civilians were shot or driven out of their homes. This repression
generated more volunteers for the insurgents. On August 8th 1997, the RPA moved into Mahoko
market and killed around four hundred people. Thousands took refuge in a network of caves the
mountainous commune of Kanama. The army threw grenades into the caves and sealed the
entrances. Amnesty International stated that several hundred had died at Mahoko market and
between five and eight thousand were killed in the Kanama caves.11

Several months earlier, the RPA had embarked on its plan to close down all the camps in Burundi
and Zaire and forcibly repatriate the refugees. Burundi, Rwanda’s southern neighbour, has a similar
Hutu-Tutsi
ethnic divide as Rwanda, and was also dominated by a Tutsi-led army which made common cause
with the RPA. RPA units joined forces with the Burundian army, as well as local militias, in
attacking the refugee camps in Burundi from late 1995. By August 1996, the last 85000 refugees
were deported back to Rwanda.12 The RPA teamed up in Zaire with a rebel group called the
Alliance des Forces Démocratiques pour la Libération (AFDL). Their aim was to close down the
refugee camps and then overthrow the ailing regime of Mobutu. Together they entered Zaire’s
south-eastern province of South Kivu. On October 17 th 1996 they attacked camps around Uvira
causing 40 000 to flee. A few days later, 100 000 were on the move northward along the Rwandan
border. Attacks on Kibumba and Katale followed. The RPA/AFDL then into North Kivu province
and launched a full-scale attack upon the city of Goma. From there they attacked several more
camps, sending waves of refugees northward toward the camp of Mugunga. By November
Mugunga’s population had swollen to 800 000, becoming the world’s largest refugee camp. The
scene was set for a major assault. The international press corps was expelled from Goma. On
November 13th the attack on Mugunga commenced with close range mortar fire which went on into
the night. The next day the infantry attacked. Reliable figures of casualties are hard to come by. A
significant proportion of the population was driven back to Rwanda, while hundreds of thousands
fled from Mugunga and Lac Vert, another camp that had been besieged, into the surrounding
forests.13 They were pursued by the RPA/AFDL and shot or bludgened to death wherever they were
found. Three and a half months later, around 150 000 emaciated stragglers were congregated at a
camp called Tingi-Tingi. On March 2nd they were fired on with mortars and machine guns. 14
Survivors fled further west. Some made it to the Central African Republic, Gabon, Congo-
Brazzaville. Others made the six hundred mile journey to Mbandaka in the far west of Zaire. Yet
again, their killers found them and anywhere between two hundred and two thousand were
butchered.15 The military assault on Rwandan refugees, and the relentless pursuit of their assailants
over hundreds of miles is without precedent. French historian Gérard Prunier, along with United
Nations High Commission for Refugees President Sakado Ogato, did a tally of the numbers of
refugees in Zaire at the beginning, the number who returned to Rwanda, and estimated that the
death toll was between 213 000 and 280 000.16

By this time the refugees residing in Tanzania had also been deported to Rwanda, though less
violently, by the Tanzanian army. By mid 1997 the Rwandan regime had settled its refugee problem.

Back home it was a case of repression as usual. What was also evident was the hegemony of the
‘Ugandan’ corps of Rwandan Tutsis, the second generation of the Tutsi elite who had been the
agents of colonial indirect rule and who had fled to Uganda when they were overthrown at in
dependence. The ‘Ugandans’ especially those in the military, helped themselves to the best of the
houses that had been vacated, and took over land for their cattle, especially in the eastern provinces.
Rwandans who returned to claim their property from them often had to back off when threatened
with gutunga agatoki.

The compliant President Pasteur Bizimungu finally resigned in 2000 to form an opposition party. It
was immediately banned and he was placed under house arrest, and sentenced to fifteen years
imprisonment for ‘inciting violence’. He was pardoned by Kagame without explanation after seven
years. After resigning in 1995, former Prime Minister Faustin Twagiramungu was put under house
arrest but managed to flee the country. The former Minister of the Interior, Seth Sendashonga, left
Rwanda and set up an opposition party with Twagiramungu in Belgium in 1996. In May 1998,
Sendashonga was murdered in Nairobi. The Kenyan court ruled the murder to be political and
blamed the Rwandan government.17 Twagiramungu returned to Rwanda in 2003 to contest the
presidential elections. Forced to stand as an independent as his party was also banned, he gained
3.62% of the vote, declared the election fraudulent and left Rwanda fearing arrest. 18 Bereft of any
credible Hutu politician willing to front his government, Kagame had no choice but to step up to
become President in 2000. With serious opposition figures either in prison, exile or dead, Kagame
has been able to obtain huge majorities in the presidential elections: 95% cent in 2003, 93% in 2010
and 98.8% in 2017. Commenting on the 92% victory in the 2008 parliamentary elections, Human
Rights Watch director Kenneth Roth stated that ‘evidence collected by European Union and
Rwandan monitors suggested that the government actually inflated the percentage of opposition
votes so as to avoid the appearance of an embarrassing Soviet-style acclamation’.19

The latest major challenger to Kagame is Victoria Ngabire Umuhoza. She returned from exile in
Holland in 2010 to form a Permanent Consultative Council of Opposition Parties. On the first day
of her arrival, she visited the genocide memorial in Kigali. According to Human Rights Watch, ‘she
stated that current political policy was not sufficient to bring about reconciliation, and noted as an
example that the memorial did not acknowledge Hutus who also died during the genocide. She
stressed that those who committed genocide as well as those who committed other war
crimes and crimes against humanity should be brought before the courts of justice’.20 This challenge
to the official genocide narrative resulted in an eight year prison sentence for ‘conspiracy against
the country through terrorism and war’ and ‘genocide denial’. In December 2013 her conviction
was upheld and her sentence increased to fifteen years.21 She was released in September last year
and is at present courageously testing Kagame by refusing to have her party registered until all
political prisoners are released.

The tyranny has generated several high-level defections from the regime. These comrades-turned-
dissidents threatened to expose Kagame’s dirty laundry to the world. Kagame’s death sqauds have
pursued them across Africa and beyond to silence them: Théoniste Lizinde (1996) and Seth
Sendashonga (1998) in Kenya; Théogène Turatsinze (2012) in Mozambique; Patrick Karageya
(2013) in South Africa being his most prominent victims. 22 A South African magistrate has said this
month that the identities of four suspects in Karageya’s murder are known and are ‘directly linked
to the Rwandan government.’23

No other African leader has this much blood on his hands. Yet Kagame is feted the world over.
From the moment the RPF seized power, Kagame has been lauded. First, as the hero who liberated
Rwanda from genocide, and later as the man who has transformed the country. Former US President
Bill Clinton called him “one of the greatest leaders of our time”. In 2009 Clinton handed Kagame a
global citizenship award and described him as “one of the greatest leaders of our times” 23 This
support persisted under the Obama administration, where the US deputy ambassador to Rwanda
stated that “Rwandans are lucky to have a visionary leader in President Paul Kagame, whose ideas
are simply admirable.” Kagame has been showered with honours and awards. He has honorary
doctorates from the Pacific, Oklahoma Christian, Fatih and Glasgow universities. He received the
Chellow Foundation Humanitarian Award of 2011 for “outstanding leadership”. 24 Perhaps the most
perverse of all awards was the Hands Off Cain Award to Kagame in 2007 for ending the death
penalty.25 The fauning over Kagame has continued with Trump presidency. At the Davos meeting in
Switzerland last January, Trump shook Kagame’s hand saying, “It’s an honour to have you as a
friend”26

Under Tony Blair, Britain became Rwanda’s largest bilateral donor. Despite having no hitorical ties
with Britain, Rwanda was invited to join the Commonwealth in 2009. Out of office, Tony Blair
offered his services as pro-bono international secretary to the “visionary leader”.27 He has visited
Rwanda at least six times. His charity, the Africa Governance Initiative, employs around ten people
inside the Rwandan government. When Kagame was re-elected with 93 per cent of the vote in 2010,
Blair sent a message of congratulation: “The popular mandate received by President Kagame in the
recent Presidential election is testament to the huge strides made under his formidable leadership.”28

Not to be outdone by Blair, Prime Minister David Cameron saw in Rwanda an opportunity to deal
with the Conservative Party’s image as the ‘nasty’ party. In 2007, Cameron visited Rwanda and
addressed its parliament: “Here we see depravity defeated, barbarity vanquished, a society once
riven by grievances today brought together by a shared desire to live together, through education,
diligence, hard work and trade. You have rebuilt this land and you are rebuilding hope, as one of
Africa's brightest good news stories.”29 Cameron then launched the ‘Umubano Project’, a
Conservative Party charity that has involved a large number of Conservative Party volunteers,
including several parliamentary candidates. Run by former British International Development
Secretary, Andrew Mitchell, it’s aims were to do something for a country that ‘had been to hell and
back’, to offer a life-changing experience for British volunteers, and to provide practical experience
in the efficacy of development aid. The charity’s activities range from partnering Rwandan
entrepreneurs so as to promote ethical business practice; teaching English to Rwandan English
teachers (Kagame made English an official language in 2009); building community centres, and
promoting cricket.30
In August 2017, Kagame visited London to join a celebration of Umubano’s tenth anniversary. By
this time [check] Kagame had won a referendum that allowed him to make a constitutional change
to permit him another possible seven year term and two more five year terms which could have him
remain in power power until 2034. He then won the subsequent presidential elections with over 98
per cent of the vote. Theresa May sent a message of congratulations to Kagame at the Umubano
celebration: “I am proud of what the United Kingdom and Rwanda have achieved together and as
partners and as friends thanks to the cooperation and vision of President Kagame who I congratulate
on his re-election. Today, Rwandans have the best life chances they have ever had.”31

What is driving this Anglo-American promotion of the Rwandan regime? Most commentators,
imbued with the official narrative, argue that it is all about the guilt that ‘Rwanda’ invokes,
especially in Washington. While Hutu extremists carried about their genocide of Rwandan Tutsis
and moderate Hutus, the line goes, Western powers chose not to act. Thanks to the military
intervention of the Rwandan Patriotic Front and Paul Kagame’s leadership, the genocide was
brought to an end. According to this view, Kagame simply has to keep reminding these leaders of
their ‘sin of omission’ to boost the aid flow and have more praise heaped upon him.

Not quite so. America chose not to intervene militarily to stop the slaughter because the objectives
of its discrete intervention in Rwanda, by then in its fourth year, were being realised, though not
quite in the way they had intended. They did not want to put their soldiers in harm’s way, nor did
they want to impede Kagame’s victory. The RPF didn’t want an international intervention force
either to obstruct their victory either. When the force was being considered twenty-three days into
the slaughter, the RPF wrote to the United Nations arguing that there was no point because “the
time for U.N. intervention is long past. The genocide is almost completed. Most of the potential
victims of the regime have either been killed or have since fled”. 32 After seizing power, the RPF
later extended the period of the genocide to one hundred days, to cover the period of the final phase
of their war.

Support for Kagame is not driven by guilt but by common purpose. While initially appearing
wrong-footed because of its reluctance to use the term of genocide to what was unfolding in
Rwanda at the time, the US, along with Britain and other allies have, like Kagame, milked the
official narrative of the Rwandan genocide for all its worth. It is one of the greatest moral parables
of our times. Although the narrative is being increasingly challenged, it continues to serve its
beneficiaries well. The problem with it is that it is untrue. So far, the United States has got away
with covering up inconvenient truths that make gaping holes in the narrative. Should the official
narrative be displaced by one closer to the mark, Kagame would go down as a war criminal. And his
Western backers know that he he wouldn’t go down without causing considerable harm to their
reputations. Allowing what really transpired to reach the world’s attention would transform the
warm reflective glow of the official narrative into humiliating disgrace. For it is Kagame and the
RPF who bear the greatest responsibility for the death toll between April and July 1994. And they
could not have pulled it off or gotten away with it for a quarter of a century without Washington’s
sustained support.

I have attempted a reconstruction of events in my book 33. A concise summary of my account is as

follows:
The targeting of Tutsi civilians was conducted mainly by Hutu militias. But the conditions that
made the slaughter possible were created by the RPF’s war that dated back to its invasion of
Rwanda from Uganda in October 1990. The killings were triggered by the news of the death of
President Habyarimana, whose plane was shot down on 6 April 1994. Much credible evidence
points to Kagame ordering the missile attack on the plane as a deliberate provocation. The RPF had
to find a justification for resuming its war, since the peace accord it had signed in August 1993 had
scheduled elections which it knew it could not possibly win. By the time of the accords, the RPF’s
propaganda campaign, facilitated by biased human rights reports, had created sympathy in Western
circles for the false claim that genocidal forces were already operating under Habyarimana’s watch.
Killing Habyarimana, Rwanda’s most popular figure at the time, was certain to provoke a violent
response. Kagame could then justify breaching the accords with the evidence of massacres.
Kagame ordered his soldiers to resume the war from the moment he received confirmation of
Habyarimana’s death. The fact of the president’s death and a renewed RPA offensive meant that it
was now a fight to the finish. The Rwandan army was no match for the better trained and equipped
RPA. The small gendarmerie was ineffectual as an enforcer of law and order. The government that
had been formed after Habyarimana’s death was a government in name only. They could not use the
government buildings because the RPF had already occupied them. Government ministers were in
any case more preoccupied with staying alive than in trying to run the country. After six days they
fled the capital. In conditions of complete anarchy, the militias had no-one to stop them. The
killings were neither directed nor controlled. The RPF could have stopped them but they chose to
delay taking over Kigali completely. By the time they did, hundreds of thousands of Tutsis had died.
But not only Hutu ‘moderates’ were killed. The term ‘moderate’ is supposed to mean those who did
not regard Tutsis as their enemy. The opposition parties had all split over the issue of an alliance
with the RPF - those who wanted to maintain the alliance are termed moderates by the official
narrative, and were targeted as fifth column ‘accomplices’ by the militia. Some analysts, like
Davenport and Stam, have argued that more Hutus than Tutsis died in this period.32 Whatever the
true figures are, it is certain that hundreds of thousands of Hutus also died, mostly at the hands of
the well disciplined RPA under Kagame’s command. Kagame did not liberate Rwanda from
genocide. His army waged a war to capture state power and used the massacres of Tutsis that they
had provoked as justification for returning to the battlefield. During the war they terrorised local
people into internal displacement camps which numbered close to a million by April 1994. They
deliberately provoked massacres against Tutsis by assassinating Rwanda’s popular president and by
infiltrating their supporters into the militia. Confident that their well-prepared narrative of genocide
would be accepted by Western humanitarians, they resumed the war the moment the president’s
death was confirmed. While the mass slaughter of Tutsis grabbed the world’s attention, the RPA’s
massacres were either hidden from view or attributed to the genocidaires. Since they had control
over the entire eastern border region which is bounded by the Kagera river by late April 1994, most
of the tens of thousands of corpses that floated down the Kagera river and emptied eventually into
Lake Victoria were victims of the RPA and not Hutu genocidaires.

At every stage of this unfolding tragedy, we see a conscious RPF strategy with American backing.

The RPF’s invasion from Uganda in October 1990 was justified by them as a last resort of Tutsi
refugees exercising their right of return in the face of a dictatorship that oppressed Tutsis. In fact, it
was a joint exercise by Rwandan Tutsis who were in the Ugandan army who left their barracks with
discrete support from the army. The Rwandan government, in conjunction with officials from the
United States, were already making preparations for the return of refugees. 33 And Rwanda was
already in the process of introducing democratic reforms. The invasion was therefore without
justification. Yet British and American officials produced a cover story with the fiction that the
Rwandans had ‘defected’ from the Ugandan army without President Museveni’s knowledge or
support. British High Commissioner to Uganda told the London Foreign Office that ‘the GOU
[government of Uganda] as such and Museveni himself were taken by surprise by the incursion into
Rwanda although many individuals in senior positions must have had an inkling of what was afoot.
As a consequence the GOU was now in an extremely embarrassing position.’ 33 More than a decade
later, Herman Cohen, America’s Assistant Secretary of State for Africa, admitted that America had
“silently acquiesced in the invasion”.34

A protracted war ensued. Realising from the outset that they could not win over support from the
local population, the RPF resorted to terrorist methods. With each successive offensive, increasing
numbers of Rwandans were driven from their homes into displacement camps.

Despite the heightened insecurity brought about by the war, the Habyarimana government pressed
on with its democratic reform programme. The new constitution came into force on 30 May.
Rwanda was to be a liberal democratic republic. All citizens were ‘equal in the eyes of the law,
without any discrimination, especially in respect to race, colour, origin, ethnic background, clan,
sex, opinion, religion, or social status’ (Article 16). The head of state was the President (Article 39)
who was elected ‘by direct universal suffrage by an absolute majority of votes’ for a five year term
and for no more than two successive mandates (Article 39).35

Habyarimana then offered the RPF the opportunity to return to Rwanda under amnesty and register
as a political party. But the RPF’s terror tactics had alienate it from the majority of Rwandans and
they knew that they would go nowhere along the democratic path. Washington also knew this. As
Herman Cohen observed, “the fact that tens of thousands of Rwandans immediately became
internally displaced as the RPF advanced should have served as a warning. Rwandans, including
Tutsis, clearly did not view the RPF as liberators”.36

The United States then had a clear choice: either to terminate their support for the RPF and
withdraw aid to Uganda to induce it in turn to stop supporting the RPF and thereby give Rwandan
democracy a chance, or to continue to sustain the RPF’s war. They decided on the latter. Not only
did they make a significant increase in aid to Uganda, thereby enabling it to continue supplying
weaponry and other material support to the RPF, but they also engaged in coercive diplomacy to
force the Rwandan regime to make a political accommodation with the RPF. Coercing a
government into undermining its democratic reforms and coercing it instead to agree to share power
with an organisation that was feared and loathed by the majority of Rwandans, and which in any
case had no intention of sharing power, proved to be a strategy that was to condemn Rwandans, and
later Congolese, to decades of death and destruction.

In May 1992 Cohen visited Museveni and told him if he got the RPF to negotiate with Habyarimana
he could deal “a blow to Habyarimana”37 He then visited Habyarimana and convinced him of the
need to negotiate with the RPF.38 America convened talks between the RPF in Harare, Zimbawe,
then secret meetings in Kampala, Uganda and Goma then Kinshase in former-Zaire. These paved
the way for the crucial meeting of July 10th 1992. By this time the Rwandan government’s only
Western ally, France, had acquiesced to American demands and had agreed to withdraw the troops it
had sent to defend Kigali in response to the invasion. America told the Rwandan government that
with the imminent withdrawal for French forces, it had no option but to sign a settlement with the
RPF that would include it in a Broad-Based Transitional Government and integrate its army with
the RPA into a new national army. The government resisted. Talks went non-stop from the 10 th to
the 12th of July, when, at midnight they were still deadlocked. At that point an American official told
Rwandan ambassador to Uganda, Pierre-Claver Kanyarushoke, that if he wanted the RPF to stop at
the northern town of Byumba, he should sign – otherwise they would reach Kigali. Kanyarushoki
understood this to mean that the RPF would reach Kigali with Washington’s blessing. The
government signed.39

Thus the ‘Arusha peace-process’ commenced, named after the town in Tanzania. While Tanzanians
acted as convenors, the United States was closely involved. It delegated teams of ‘enskillers’ to both
parties. John Byerly lead the team ‘helping the RPF with negotiation tactics’, while Charles Snyder
‘helped the government delegation with their negotiating books’.40 In Washington the RPF’s
representative, Claude Desaidi, was given working level contact with Carol Fuller, the State
Department’s desk officer for Rwanda. Herman Cohen included Desaidi in an inter-agency forum to
discuss Rwandan matters. The agencies included the Secretary of Defense Staff, Joint Staff, the
Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the African Bureau of the State
Department.41

At Arusha the bias among the diplomatic milieu toward the RPF became increasingly evident. The
RPF’s strategy was to demonise Habyarimana and put the government on the defensive on human
rights issues. It is at this point that they introduced accusations of ‘genocide’ into the discussions.
When the crucial round of talks on the integration of the proposed national army began,
Habyarimana offered the RPF 20% of the troops in the army, and a 15% per cent share of the
command positions, proportional to the percentage of the Rwandan Tutsi population. The RPF
rejected this outright, demanded a 50:50 split and suspended the talks.42

In order to underline its power, the RPF lauched its largest offensive to date, on February 8 th 1993.
Its military superiority over the Rwandan army was immediately apparent and it doubled the
territory under its control in two weeks. Uganda assisted by sending in three elite battalions of its
army to help attack the town of Ruhengeri.43 The French forces had not yet departed from Rwanda,
and were immediately strengthened. They were almost certainly the reason the RPF stopped short
of Kigali and agreed a ceasefire.

The resulting misery was for all to see: the population of internally displaced approached a million.
Their living conditions were desperate. Yet there was no condemnation from the international
community nor even acknowledgement of Uganda’s direct involvement, nor condemnation of the
RPF for violating the letter and spirit of the ‘peace-process’. The RPF was using its guns to have its
demands met at Arusha.

A human rights report was published conveniently one day before the ceasefire.

The RPF offensive began on 8 February 1993. Its military superiority over the FAR was
immediately apparent and the amount of territory under its control doubled in two weeks.
According to Gasana, Uganda assisted by sending in three elite battalions of its National Resistance
Army to help invade the town of Ruhengeri.44 France immediately increased its forces in Kigali
from 170 to 680 troops.45 The strengthened French military presence in Kigali was almost certainly
the main reason why the RPF stopped short of capturing the capital. On 9 March both sides agreed
to a new cease-fire. The misery generated in the wake of this offensive could now be observed. Yet
attention was captivated by a human rights report which had been published the previous day.

The report of the International Commission of Inquiry (ICI) claimed widespread abuses by
Rwandan soldiers or officials, with at least 2000 civilians executed. The report was widely
criticised for its bias, spending only a token two hours investigating RPF abuses, which amounted
to talking to individuals under the watchful eye of RPF soldiers. The report was written on the basis
of research conducted by its commissioners in Rwanda between 7 and 21 January, and stated that
there had been widespread abuses by Rwandan soldiers or officials. At least 2000 civilians had been
executed.46 The press release about the report was sensationally titled “Genocide and war crimes in
Rwanda” but the report itself actually stopped short of using the term genocide. 47 Nevertheless, the
RPF was using the term to justify its offensive. On the day they launched the offensive they
released a press communiqué stating “We remind the international community these French troops,
in addition to participating in the war effort of the president, train security personnel responsible for
the genocide that happens in Rwanda. It is on this background of genocide, refusal of negotiated
settlement of the conflict, and the presence of French troops in our country that the hostilities have
resumed”.48

Academics at the University of Rwanda compiled a table of RPF massacres of civilians by

commune in Ruhengeri and Byumba prefectures. Their figures indicated 24,400 killed in
Ruhengeri, and 15,800 killed in Byumba, bringing the total death toll to just over 40,000. 49 These
figures, while possibly inflated, are significantly in excess of the 2000 civilian deaths for which the
Rwandan government had been blamed the previous month.

True to form, Kagame returned to Arusha unapologetic and demanded recognition for the ‘genocide
in Kigali’. The Arusha Facilitator and Western observers were sympathetic and the government side
was put on the back foot. The Facilitator and Western diplomats shed their stance of neutrality and
lent their weight to the RPF’s demand of a 50:50 split in the command structure of the proposed
new army.50 The same approach was used to get the final Arusha Accords signed. Alison Des
Forges, the lead author of the ICI report, indicated that Western coercion had played a signficant
part: “This peace agreement had come about largely as a result of the active intervention of the
international community, particularly the United States and various other actors through the United
Nations”.51 Having also worked as a consultant for the United States Department of State between
July 1991 and July 1992, Des Forges was well placed to say this.52

Robert Gribbin, then US Deputy Ambassador in Kampala, states that the RPF had “flummoxed” the
government, and “won” the negotiations. He felt that the Accords were “too blatantly stacked in the
Tutsis’ favour to be truly workable. But, having bought into the process, neither the United States
nor others could repudiate the product”.52 Apparently the joke at Arusha was that John Byerly, the
‘enskiller’ assigned to the RPF negotiating team, had done too good a job.53

From then on, the Western world seemed to view the RPF as a government in waiting. Toward the
end of 1993, the crucially important donors’ roundtable meeting on Rwanda took place not in
Kigali, but at the RPF headquarters at Mulindi.54

Having ‘won’ the Arusha negotiations process and succeeded in planting the word ‘genocide’ in the
Western diplomatic and humanitarian communities, the RPF had to find a way of utilizing these
gains in order to legitimise its final military offensive. They had no intention of complying with the
Accords, nor of participating in any election that they could not control. Former French Minister of
Co-operation, Bernard Debré testified that an RPF representative told him in Kigali in late January
1994 that the RPF would not wait for elections that it would lose, but was going to seize power
before the elections”.55 The RPF embarked on a strategy of provoking violence and raising social
tensions and then used the violence to support their claim that a Hutu extremist conspiracy to
destroy the Arusha Accords was underway. At the same time, their preparations for another
offensive were obvious to Rwandans. Social tensions escalated dramatically. America’s Central
Intelligence Agency produced a study at the end of January 1994 which concluded that if conflict
were to resume in Rwanda up to half a million lives would be lost. 56 No conspiracy theory was
needed to discern this. Yet the RPF was already developing precisely that. When the American
Deputy Assistant Secretary for African Affairs Prudence Bushnel met the RPF in March 1994, she
was told that “Hutus wanted to exterminate all Tutsis, but there was absolutely no evidence, or even
a hint of that, at least that we saw. We were proven tragically wrong.”57

A wealth of evidence points to the RPF being responsible for shooting down President
Habyarimana’s plane, thereby setting off the bloodbath Rwandans had been dreading. Immediately
after the confirmation of the president’s death, Kagame ordered his units to move. And the
Presidential Guard went after and killed those they considered responsible: Belgian soldiers in
Kigali and Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana. Hutu militias first targeted known RPF cells in
and around Kigali before embarking on a killing spree of all Tutsis and Hutu ‘accomplices’ they
could find. Their massacres at roadblocks, in churches and house-to-house killings are well
documented. Less well documented are the RPF’s massacres. They targeted prominent members of
the Hutu elite, like the former attorney general, and civilians. By the time they seized power, at least
a million Rwandans had died.

Law professor Luc Reydams shows how the RPF co-opted the human rights NGO to write its
narrative of the Rwandan genocide and publish it less than three months after the RPF seized power.
58
Rwanda: Death, Despair and Defiance59 established the RPF’s narrative of the Akazu genocide
conspiracy for journalists. Later, it became the bible of the prosecutors at the International Criminal
Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). Its main claims about genocide planning and implementation by Hutu
extremists are the central to the official narrative, though the narrative tends to be attributed more
to Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda, by Human Rights Watch.60 Together, they
cast the RPF as the liberators and make a moral distinction between genocidal killings by Hutu
extremists and revenge killings by the RPF.

In order to make these claims stick, inconvenient truths had to be buried or discredited. And this is
where the United States has played a key role. American officials have gone to great lengths to do
both. When the United Nations investigation team came across credible evidence that the RPF was
responsible for aerial assassination of President Habyarimana, their report was buried by Chief
Prosecutor Arbour and the mandate to investigate the plane shooting terminated. Judges at the ICTR
ruled that the issue was not relevant to any of the trials. When Arbour’s successor, Carla Del Ponte,
stated her intention to reopen the file and also investigate allegations of RPF massacres, she was
promptly relieved of her job. When another UN investigator, Robert Gersony, produced
documentation for a report on RPF massacres, the UN tried to discredit Gersony and pretend that
his report did not exist.
1 International Monetary Fund: World economic outlook database, April 2018.
www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2018/01/weodata accessed 04.04.19.
2 World Economic Forum: 5 things to know about the Rwandan economy.
www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/04/5-things-to-know-about-rwanda-s-economy/ accessed 04.04.2019.
3 ‘Tackling Stunting: An unfinished agenda’ World Bank: Rwanda Economic Update. June 2018, edition no.12.
https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/rwanda/publication/tackling-stunting-rwandas-unfinished-business
accessed 02.02.19.
4 Review of African Political Economy, 04.04.2019 ‘Faking it: The Rwandan GDP growth myth.
http://roape.net/2017/07/26/faking-rwandan-gdp-growth-myth/ accessed 04.04.19.
5 David Himbira. ‘Kagame is drowning Rwanda in debt’
https://medium.com/@david.himbara_27884/kagame-is-drowning-rwanda-into-debt-b7d08f39c14b accessed
06.02.2019
6 Gérard Prunier (2009) Africa’s World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental
Catastrophe. (Oxford: Oxford University Press) 11.
7 Radio France Internationale in BBC/SWB, 9 March 1995, cited in Prunier (2009) 11.
8 Tertsakian, C. (2008) Le Chateau: The Lives of Prisoners in Rwanda (London: Arves Books)19-38.
9 This account is taken from Prunier (2009) 39-41.
10 Gérard Prunier (2009) 44.
11 Amnesty International, December 1997. “Rwanda: Civilians Trapped in Armed Conflict”.
https://www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/156000/afr47031997en.pdf Cited in Judi Rever (2018) In Praise of
Blood: The Crimes of the Rwandan Patriotic Front. (Random House Canada) 138-140.
12 Gérard Prunier (2009) 66.
13 Gérard Prunier (2009) 120.
14 James McKinley and Howard French. ‘Hidden Horrors: A special report.; Uncovering the Guilty Footprints Along
Zaire’s Long Trail of Death.’ New York Times. 14 November 1997.
15 McKinley and French. 14 November 1997.
16 Gérard Prunier (2009) 409, note 200.
17 The New Humanitarian 31.05.2001, ‘Court acquits Sendashonga accused.’
https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/report/21889/rwanda-court-acquits-sendashonga-accused
18 Research Directorate, Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Ottawa. Rwanda: Treatment by government
authorities of Faustin Twagiramungu and supporters of his candidacy during the presidential election campaign in
August 2003 (August 2003 - April 2006) www.refworld.org/docid/47d6548ee.html. Accessed 04.04.2019.
19 Kenneth Roth, 11.04.2009 ‘The power of horror in Rwanda’
www.hrw.org/news/2009/04/11/power-horror-rwanda Accessed 06.11.2016.
20 Human Rights Watch, ‘Rwanda Tribunal should pursue for RPF crimes’
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21 BBC news . ‘Victoria Ngabire, Rwanda leader’s jail term raised.’
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22 Judi Rever (2018) 236.
23 Michela Wrong ‘Suspects in murder of ex-Rwandan spy chief ‘directly linked to Kigali’ - inquest. The Guardian.
18.04.19.
23 ‘President Kagame receives Clinton Global Citizenship award. New York. 24.09.2009.
http://paulkagame.com/?p=11389 . Accessed 14.04.19.
24 EastAfrica (2 July 2011) ‘Kagame receives humanitarian award from Chellow Foundation’
http://in2eastafrica.net/kagame-receives-humanitarian-award-from-chello-foundation/ accessed 15 December 2012.
25 Hands Off Cain (29 August 2007) ‘Hands Off Cain presents its annual report on the death penalty’
http://www.handsoffcain.info/news/index.php?iddocumento=9324909 accessed 15 December 2012.
26 BBC News, 18.01.18 ‘Donald Trump to Rwanda’s Kagame: An honour to have you as a friend’
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as-a-friend. Accessed 15.04.19.
27 Smith, D. (25 July 2012) ‘The end of the west’s humiliating affair with Paul Kagame’ The Guardian
www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jul/25/paul-kagame-rwanda-us-britain?intcmp=239 , Accessed 10 December 2012.
28 The New Statesman 27.09.2012 ‘Why did Andrew Mitchell reinstate aid to Rwanda on his last day at Dfid?
https://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/politics/2012/09/why-did-andrew-mitchell-reinstate-aid-rwanda-his-last-day-
dfid accessed 19.14.19.
29 David Cameron, Speech to the Rwandan Parliament.
https://conservative-speeches.sayit.mysociety.org/speech/599819 accessed 21.04.19.
30 Andrew Mitchell, 14.07.17: ‘Project Umubano is the best of Conservative endeavor’
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31 Rwandan High Commission. 14.08.17 :H E Kagame praises ‘Significant’ Rwanda-UK Partnership.
http://rwandahc.org/president-kagame-praises-significant-rwanda-uk-partnership/ accessed 14.04.19.
32 Rwandan Patriotic Front. ‘Statement by the Political Bureau of the Rwandese Patriotic Front on the Proposed
Deployment of a U.N. Intervention Force in Rwanda’. New York. April 13 1994. United States Department of
 State, Freedom of Information Act release, 17 April 1996. Case ID: 9500403.
33 Barrie Collins (2014) ‘Rwanda 1994: The myth of the Akazu genocide conspiracy and its consequences.’ (Palgrave
Macmillan).
32 BBC2 ‘This World’ Rwanda’s Untold Story
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04kk03t Accessed 04.04.2019.
33
33 High Commissioner Charles Cullimore to London Foreign Office. 18.10.90 OF 1211352.
34 Herman Cohen (2000) Intervening in Africa: Superpower Peacemaking in a Troubled Continent. (New York,
N.Y.:St.Martin’s Press) 178.
35 International Constitutional Law Project Information. http://www.oefre.unibe.ch/law/icl/rw00000_.html. Accessed
19.12.05.
36 Herman Cohen (2000) 177-8.
37 Rwandan Ambassador to Uganda, Pierre-Claver Kanyarushoke. Author interview 23 September 2006.
38 Bruce Jones Jones (2001) Peacemaking in Rwanda: The Dynamics of Failure (Boulder, Co.: Lynne Rienner).57-8.
39 Pierre-Claver Kanyarushoke, former Rwandan ambassador to Uganda. Author interview 23.09.06.
40 Bruce Jones (2001) 76. Gribbin states that Snyder and Byerly had already been in preparatory talks with their
respective sides in advance of the first negotations. Gribbin, R. E. (2005) 69.
41 Miliatary observer at Arusa, Lt-Colonel Tony Marley, e-mail correspondence with author, 17 September 2004.
42 Bruce Jones (2001) 84., citing his interview with Lt-Col. Marley.
43 Former Rwandan minister of defence James Gasana (2002) Rwanda: du Parti-Etat a l’Etat-Garnison (Paris:
Editions L’Harmattan).182.
44 James Gasana (2002) 182.
45 Joyce Leader (2001) 26,27., citing Human Rights Watch Arms Project (1995) Rwanda/Zaire:Rearming with
Impunity (New York:Human Rights Watch) 5.
46 United Nations (1996) 20. Howard Adelman and Astri Suhrke ‘Early Warning and Conflict Management’, in
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47 Linda Melvern (2004) Conspiracy to Murder: The Rwandan Genocide. (New York, Verso) 62., and Howard Adelman and Astri
Suhrke, (1999) 29.
48 Théogène Rudasingwa, “The resumption of hostilities in Rwanda.”press communiqué 8 February 1993. Cited in
James Gasana (2002) 183, note 114, translated for author by Alexis Ndibwami.
49 ‘Victimes des massacres du FPR en préfectures de Ruhengeri et de Byumba en février 1993’. Table reproduced in James Gasana
(2002) 185.
50 Bruce Jones (2001) 85.
51 Human Rights Watch (1999) “Leave None to Tell the Story”: Genocide in Rwanda (New York: Human Rights
Watch) 129.
52 Des Forges’ curriculum vitae submitted to the Canadian High Court of Appeal states under ‘other professional activities’:
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52 Robert Gribbin (2005) In the Aftermath of Genocide: The U.S. Role in Rwanda (iUniverse) 71-2.
53 Bruce Jones (2001) 76.
54 This point is confirmed by Faustin Twagiramungu who attended the meeting. Author interview, London, 22 March
2003.
55 Bruguière, J-L. (27 November 2006) ‘The Report by French Anti-Terrorist Judge Jean-Louis Bruguière on the
Shooting Down of Rwandan President Habyarimana’s Plane on 6 April 1994’. Paris. English translation by
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translatedhtml.Paragraph 115. Accessed 29 February 2008.
56 Senate Committee on International Operations and Human Rights of the Committee on International Relations, House of
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57 ‘A Soul Filled with Shame –The Rwandan Genocide, April 7- July 18,1994’ Interview with Prudence Bushnel in
Moments in U.S. Diplomatic History.
file:///C:/Users/bmcol/OneDrive/Documents/Rwanda%20research/Bushnell.html Accessed 22.04.19.
58 Luc Reydams ‘NGO Justice: African Rights as Pseudo-Prosecutor of the Rwandan Genocide. Human Rights
Quarterly 38 (2016) 547-588. Johns Hopkins University Press.
http://www.corteidh.or.cr/tablas/r35223.pdf Accessed 07.01.19.
59 African Rights (1994) Rwanda: Death, Despair and Defiance (London: African Rights).
60 Human Rights Watch (1999) “Leave None to Tell the Story”: Genocide in Rwanda (New York: Human Rights
Watch).