***
Rwanda may successfully browbeat the United Nations and compel the
withdrawal of its recent report implicating Rwanda in the current
mayhem and chaos in eastern DRC.
For, instead of squarely addressing the damning accusations contained
in the Report of the UN Group of Experts (GoE), Rwanda is now
massively invested in deconstructing a 2009 brief penned by Steve
Hege, the GoE coordinator, when he worked for the NGO Peace Appeal and
titled "Understanding the FDLR."
Three quotes in that brief are now being bandied about by the Rwandan
government and its lobbyists as evidence that Steve Hege is an
"ideological warrior" against Rwanda and a "revisionist" who's denying
that the 1994 genocide ever took place!
(I'm told that Steve Hege's "factsheet" has since been taken down.
What's left of it are short out-context citations that are now being
deconstructed.)
I'll only pick up the 2 quotes related to the DRC that purport to be
evidence of Steve Hege's crimes against humanity:
1) "Consistently linked to the Rwandan genocide of 1994, the FDLR are
better understood in relation to the massive revenge killings of Hutu
refugees in the eastern Congo from 1996 to 1999."
2) "[It] is not enough that they [Congolese Rwnadophones] just say
that they are Congolese. They must demonstrate that they
truly are just that by prioritizing their relationships with their
fellow Congolese citizens over the economic and territorial interests
of Rwanda."
Regarding the first count of Steve Hege's indictment for crimes
against humanity, there were coordinated vast scale massacres of Hutu
refugees on Congolese territory by RPF troops that were at the time
helping Laurent-Désiré Kabila topple Mobutu.
Given such vast scale of the massacres and the targeting of one ethnic
group, these killings rightly qualify as genocide or, in the event, as
counter-genocide--not just as Hege's euphemism of "revenge killings"
would have it.
I myself wrote a piece for OpEdNews in 2007 to that effect, and based
on contemporaneous news accounts, titled "The 1997 U.S-sanctioned
counter-genocide of Hutu refugees in DRC."
(see Page Address:
www.opednews.com/articles/1/opedne_alex_eng_071107_the_1997_u_s__sancti.htm)
Saying that doesn't mean that a genocide didn't take place in Rwanda
but rather that "that" (genocide)explained "this" (counter-genocide).
What's more, if, after witnessing and surviving such wanton massacres,
the génocidaires themselves and others from their ethnic group rallied
together for their own survival and continued the cycle of violence,
is that the fault of the cold and objective analyst that Steve Hege
happened to be?
As for the second count of the indictment of Steve Hege for crimes
against humanity, it could be refuted by this counter-argument: the
repeated violence in eastern Congo, the 5 millions of Congolese
slaughtered or indirectly killed as a result of Rwandan aggression and
5-year occupation of half of the Congo, the hundreds of thousands of
Congolese IDPs, and the plunder of Congo resources have been wreaked
upon the Congo mostly by none others than some Rwandophone Congolese
doing Rwanda's bidding.
And the M23 insurgency is the latest episode of some Rwandophone
Congelese acting as Rwanda's proxies.
Well, never mind all of these cool-headed rational arguments.
Rwanda has once again succeeded in spinning the narrative from its own
crimes to the narrative of the supposed crimes of the investigator.
If the international community isn't vigilant, Rwanda could once more
get away with its crimes in the Congo--just as O.J. Simpson got away
with murders by focussing on the Los Angeles Police Department.
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