On “Rwanda: Perpetrators of genocide jailed”

My dear colleagues,

Yes, it is true that the Rwandan Tragedy ... some call genocide ... was a product of Imperialism. However, Ms. Slattery failed to speak with the anti-imperialist lawyers of the ICTR [International War Crimes Tribunal for Rwanda] defence who have established that it was US/UK neo-colonialism that was behind events in Rwanda in 1994 ... and US/UK displacement of the French and other continental neo-colonial interest for some 30 years.

Had she read the trial transcript, or familiarized herself with the thousands of pages of declassified US and UN documents put into evidence ... she would understand why the ICTR found all of accused in the Military-1 case ... including Bagosora, not guilty of conspiracy or planning to commit genocide.

Unfortunately, Ms. Mulvaney a former assistant US attorney has continued the “cover-up” of US/UK interests in Central Africa and in the Rwanda genocide. If you will google my name, you will see that the alternative story, which properly places the violence in Africa in its proper neo-colonial and imperialist context is available ... and increasingly so.

I would be please to provide details to fellow anti-imperialists who may not have been following the ICTR closely enough to understand the evidence that is in the record, or its significance. I could not rest, if I did not attempt to prevent misleading of the many socialists, who I consider friends and comrades.....

Best regards,

Prof. Peter Erlinder

Wm. Mitchell College of Law

St. Paul, Minnesota

Pres. ICTR-ADAD, ICTR Defence Lawyers Assn, Arusha DC

6 January 2009

Comment re: Linda Slattery and the Rwanda story of January 6.

I was shocked by Ms. Slattery’s ignorance of the facts and her complete acceptance of RPF-US fascist propaganda as facts.

Her story fell off the rails right at the start of her piece when she stated Mr. Bagasora was a general. He was not. He was a retired colonel. He was only the deputy minister of defence.

Then she proceeds into the myth of genocide which has been demonstrated to be completely false at the war crimes “trials” at the ICTR. But instead of reading the transcripts of the evidence about what really happened and who really did what, she accepts the word of the US imported prosecutor Barbara Mulvaney who was appointed by the Clinton regime to frame up the members of the Hutu-Tutsi coalition government that the USA destroyed in 1994.

She even repeats the fantastic story it was all the fault of the French. The French were not even in Rwanda in 1994, having been forced out by the RPF during the Arusha Accords negotiations in 1993. The French had nothing to do with the “genocide”. As Boutros-Ghali, the UN Secretary-General stated in 2004, “The Americans are 100% responsible for what happened in Rwanda.”

The overwhelming evidence in the trials is that there was no ethnic problem before 1990 when the Ugandan Army, disguising itself as the RPF invaded from Uganda and massacred tens of thousands of Hutus in the north before being pushed back into Uganda by the Rwandan Army. The RPF [Rwandan Patriotic Front], trained and supplied by the US and UK then used the same tactics as the contras in Nicaragua and spent four years committing acts of terrorism against the population including political assassinations which they blamed on the coalition government but which we now know to have been committed by the RPF.

Every ceasefire requested by the government was broken by the RPF. The worst case before 1994 being their attack in the north in February 1993 in which they murdered over 40,000 people in two weeks and created one million refugees who fled to the capital to escape their atrocities.

Then on April 6, 1994, with the complicity and help of the Canadian general Dallaire, commander of the UN forces there, the Belgians and the US the RPF shot down the plane containing the two Hutu presidents of Rwanda and Burundi (making three Hutu presidents murdered by the Tutsis in 6 months.)

Immediately after they launched their final offensive and began by assassinating many Hutu politicians and civilians and then attacked across the country massacring hundreds of thousands of Hutus and any Tutsis who were seen as non-reliable. Roberty Gersony, of USAID, states in his report of November 1994 that the RPF engaged in systematic and planned massacres of the Hutu population. He stated the RPF committed the genocide.

There was no plan by the coalition government (composed of pro-RPF ministers and those of the former regime) because it was a mixed Hutu-Tutsi government. Even Dr. Alison Desforges, the prosecution’s expert on Rwanda testified in the Military II trial that there was no such plan as it was impossible. She also stated that the RPF line that they started their offensive to stop the “genocide” was a myth of RPF propaganda and all they wanted was power by any means.

Several RPF officers have stated that it was the RPF that did most of the killing and continued that in the Congo. They stated they did so in order to eliminate the Hutus and to discredit the Hutus by claiming the dead were all Tutsis.

The RPF-US propaganda machine of which Linda Malvern and others are part did the rest.

Now the WSWS, a supposedly anti-imperialist organ is accepting and propagating the imperialist lies which have been used to cover up the real role of the US and its allies in central Africa and those really responsible for the events in Rwanda, Bill Clinton, John Major, Jean Chretien, General Dallaire, Louise Arbour and Kofi Annan.

Rwanda was a semi-socialist country considered a model for Africa until the RPF-Ugandan aggression. Now it is a destroyed, free enterprise, anything goes military hell.

But instead of WSWS investigating the events, instead of spending the time to read the UN documents and RPF and US documents and the transcripts of the trials which substantiate everything I am saying and that the stories about the French are nothing but a diversion from the real culprit—America (all Tutsi civilian witnesses at the ICTR trials for example, testified that the French forces involved in the UN operation Turquoise were helped by the French not harmed by them) WSWS repeats the press releases of the ICTR
prosecution written by the RPF and the CIA officers who run that kangaroo court.

The role of the UN was their usual role—under a mask of neutrality actively supporting the RPF while attacking the government.

As a communist and an admirer of Trotsky I can only shake my head as to how a supposedly left organ like WSWS has been so easily duped into damning the socialists while supporting the imperialists. How Trotsky’s legendary powers of analysis, investigative thoroughness and objectivity have been completely abandoned to put out this crap.

You should be ashamed of yourselves and I suggest you rethink your view of the world because to continue as unwitting tools of the imperialist powers will soon lose you all credit on the left.

Again, do your work. Read the transcripts. Stop condemning those who fought imperialist aggression and who are being framed up at the US controlled Rwanda war crimes tribunal whose only function is to put out US-RPF propaganda and to protect the US. Go after the real criminals in Rwanda—the RPF and the US and its allies. Go after Linda Malvern and Mulvaney. Ask questions. Demand answers. But please stop acting like US government parrots.

Christopher Black
Lead counsel, International War Crimes Tribunal for Rwanda

Toronto, Ontario