webmaster
© Copyright DEHAI-Eritrea OnLine, 1993-2010
All rights reserved
From: Berhane Habtemariam (Berhane.Habtemariam@gmx.de)
Date: Mon Oct 04 2010 - 09:41:43 EDT
<http://turtlebay.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/10/01/un_waters_down_genocide
_charges_against_rwandan_forces_in_congo> U.N. waters down genocide charges
against Rwandan forces in Congo
Posted By <http://turtlebay.foreignpolicy.com/blog/16159> Colum Lynch
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/images/091022_meta_block.gif
October 4, 2010 - 11:42 PM
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/images/091022_meta_block.gif
<http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=20>
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/images/091022_more_icon.gifShare
The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights on Friday issued a somewhat
watered-down report detailing allegations that Rwanda and its allies may
have committed genocide against ethnic Hutu refugees in eastern Congo
between 1993 and 2003.
The release of the long-awaited 566-page report -- referred to as a mapping
exercise -- comes several weeks after a draft version of the damning report
leaked to the French newspaper Le Monde, prompting Rwanda to threaten to
withdraw thousands of its peacekeepers from Darfur and other U.N. missions
in retaliation.
Despite the changes, the final report still constitutes the most
comprehensive and damning official account of crimes committed in one of
Africa's deadliest conflict zones. And it continues to assert that an
alliance of Rwandan, Burundian soldiers and Congolese rebels may have
committed genocide during military operations in eastern Congo during the
1990s.
But it has softened its finding with numerous words and phrases -- including
"alleged", "suggests" "apparent" and "if proven in a court of law" -- that
serve to lessen the force of some of the final conclusions. Instead of
stating whether crimes had been committed, the final report leaves it to a
court to definitively decide.
The final text also contains a far more detailed and robust set of
countervailing legal arguments suggesting that Rwandanan forces, in fact,
may not have committed genocide despite possible culpability for large-scale
killings of civilians, and that any final decision would have to be made by
a court.
The decision to amend the final text came after U.N. Secretary General Ban
Ki-moon's top advisors, including his chief of staff, Vijay Nambiar, voiced
concern to the High Commissioner, Navi Pillay, about the legal basis for the
genocide charge. A top U.N. official, who was involved in the deliberations,
insisted that the effort to revise the text was not carried out to assuage
the Rwandans.
The violence in eastern Congo stems from the 1994 Rwandan genocide, where
ethnic Hutu extremists, backed by the former government, orchestrated the
murder of more than 800,000 ethnic Tutsi and moderate Hutu.
Rwanda's current president, Paul Kagame, was the commander of the
Uganda-based Tutsi rebel army, the Rwandan Patriotic Army(RPA), that now
stands accused of wrongdoing. It was the RPA under Kagame's command that
seized power in Kigali and drove the Hutu perpetrators of the Rwandan
genocide, together with hundreds of thousands of Hutu civilians, across the
border into eastern Congo (then known as eastern Zaire). The report
maintains that they conducted massive atrocities along the way.
In 1996, the Rwandan army fashioned an alliance -- known as the The Alliance
des Forces Democratiques pour la Liberation du Congo-Zaire (AFLD) -- with
Burundian forces, and a Congolese rebel leader, Laurent Desire Kabila. The
force initially launched a series of attacks on the Rwandan refugee camps in
Congo, which had been used as a staging ground for attacks against the new
Rwandan government.
The mapping exercise was set up, in part, to investigate crimes committed by
Rwanda and its allies as they continued their military campaign to
Kinshasha, where they overthrew the government of Mobutu Sese Seko and
installed Kabila as the leader of the newly named Democratic Republic of
Congo. But the report also documents crimes by numerous other countries,
including Uganda, and various rebel groups who were drawn into Congo's
widening war.
The report was tasked with investigating 617 mass killings in eastern Congo
between 1993 and 2003. The final version noted that the majority of victims
were children, women, the elderly and the sick, and that they were often
murdered with the claw edge of a hammer. "The apparent systematic and
widespread attacks described in this report reveal a number of inculpatory
elements that, if proven before a competent court, could be characterized as
crimes of genocide," according to the report.
The report added, however, took pains to say that there are "a number of
countervailing factors that could lead a court to find that the requisite
intent was lacking, and hence that the crime of genocide was not committed."
"Facts which tend to show that the RPA/AFDL spared the lives, and in fact
facilitated the return to Rwanda of very large numbers of Hutu militate
against proving a clear intent to destroy the group," the report said.
The report also argues that it is "very difficult to establish" a genocidal
intent where an "alternative inference" can be drawn from the conduct of a
perpetrator. The report then sets out to propose a series of alternative
theories for attacking Hutu refugee camps, including the possibility that
Rwanda and its Congolese allies were engaging in "collective retribution"
against Hutu civilians suspected of having engaged in the Rwanda genocide --
a horrific crime perhaps, but not genocide.
The reports release comes weeks after Ban Ki-moon, his peacekeeping chief,
and his human rights advisors, traveled to Kigali to meet with President
Kagame. After the meeting, Kagame backed down from a threat to withdraw his
peacekeepers. But he has made it clear that he will carry through with it if
the U.N. presses ahead with the prosecution of Rwandan officers implicated
in the crimes.
Rwanda's foreign minister Louise Mushikiwabo reacted angrily to the report,
saying that "Rwanda categorically states that the document is flawed and
dangerous from start to finish." She said that the report's findings
constitute "a moral and intellectual failure, as well as an insult to
history."
Human rights activists said they were confident that despite amendments that
softened the report it still presented an overwhelming body of evidence that
will now be hard to ignore. The challenge now, they say, is to press ahead
with some mechanism for holding perpetrators accountable. "The real question
is, does the political will exist to have a process that identifies
individual perpetrators, or those most responsible, and brings them to
justice? The report does a good job of fleshing out the facts as they are
known."
Here's a sample of the changes the U.N. introduced into the final report:
BEFORE: With the respect to the charge of genocide, the original draft
report noted that there were developments -- like Rwanda's repatriation of
hundreds of thousands of Hutu refugee -- that would cause jurists to
hesitate in reaching a genocide ruling.
AFTER: The final version included a far more detailed account of the
challenges in securing a genocide finding:
"In the absence of direct evidence of intent to destroy the group, such
intent can only be inferred from circumstantial facts and evidence, that is,
from the conduct of the alleged perpetrator, if it is the only reasonable
inference possible. Where an alternative inference can be drawn from the
conduct of the alleged perpetrator, the clear 'intent to destroy' required
is difficult to establish. A number of alternative explanation or inferences
could be drawn from the conduct of the RPA/AFDL in attacking the camps in
Zaire in 1996 and 1997. The intent underlying the killings could be deemed
as collective retribution against Hutu civilians in Zaire suspected of
involvement with the ex-FAR/Interhamwe, reinforced by the RPA/AFDL's
conviction that upon destroying the camps, all Hutu remaining in Zaire were
in sympathy with the perpetrators of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda."
--BEFORE: "In conclusion, the vast majority of violent incidents listed in this report are the result of armed conflict and point to the commission of war crimes and serious breaches of international humanitarian law."
AFTER: "In conclusion, the vast majority of violent incidents listed in this report are the result of armed conflict and IF PROVEN IN A JUDICIAL PROCESS, point to the commission of war crimes AS serious breaches of international humanitarian laws."
--
BEFORE: "This report shows that the vast majority of incidents listed fall within the scope of widespread or systematic attacks, depicting multiple acts of large scale violence, carried out in an organized fashion and resulting in numerous victims."
AFTER: "This report shows that the vast majority of incidents listed, IF INVESTIGATED AND PROVEN IN A JUDICIAL PROCESS, fall within the scope of widespread or systematic attacks, depicting multiple acts of large-scale violence, APPARENTLY carried out in an organized fashion and resulting in numerous victims."
--
BEFORE: "It could be noted, however, that certain elements could cause a court to hesitate to decide on the existence of a genocidal plan, such as the fact that as of 15 November, 1996, several tens of thousands of Rwandan Hutu refugees, many of whom had survived previous attacks, were repatriated to Rwanda with the help of the AFDL.APR authorities."
AFTER: "There are however a number of countervailing factors that could lead a court to find that the requisite intend was lacking, and hence that the crime of genocide was not committed...Finally, facts which tend to show that the RPA/AFDL spared the lives, and in fact facilitated the return to Rwanda of very large numbers of Hutu militate against proving a clear intent to destroy the groups."
--
BEFORE: "Whilst in general the killings did not spare women and children, it should be noted that in some places, particularly at the beginning of the first war in 1996, Hutu women and children were in fact separated from the men, and only the men were subsequently killed."
AFTER: "Whilst in general the killings did not spare women and children, it should be noted that in some places, particularly at the beginning of the first war in 1996, Hutu women and children were APPARENTLY separated from the men, and ALLEGEDLY only the men were subsequently killed."
--
BEFORE: "It is therefore possible to assert that, even if only a part of the Hutu population in Zaire was targeted and destroyed, it could nonetheless constitute a crime of genocide if this was the intention of the perpetrators."
AFTER: "ACCORDING TO RELEVANT JURISPRUDENCE, even if only part of the Hutu population in Zaire was targeted and destroyed, it could nonetheless constitute a crime of genocide if this was the intention of the perpetrators."
Follow me on Twitter @columlynch <http://twitter.com/columlynch>
