UN Congo report: "Double standards on human rights"

By Albert Rudatsimburwa

The report compiled by the UN High Commission on Human Rights on violations of international humanitarian law between 1993 and 2003 in DRC was published on 1 October.

Following the report, Filip Reyntjens, professor of Law and Politics, Institute of Development Policy and Management at the University of Antwerp, wrote on the RNW Africa website earlier this week that it is clear that "the most serious and systematic crimes are placed firmly on the doorstep of Paul Kagame’s Rwanda."

In response to Reyntjens article, The UN report on Congo's atrocities: the end of impunity? , Albert Rudatsimburwa, a Rwandan political analyst has this to say:

It is always interesting and rather entertaining to be privy to the view of Professor Philip Reyntjens on the politics of a country he has last visited 18 years ago. One might even be tempted to admire his sense of loyalty to the memory of the late Juvenal Habyarimana, President of Rwanda from July 1973 to April 1994.

After all, was he not greatly instrumental in consolidating the latter’s absolute hold on power by providing him, with the help of few others, with a rather well drafted constitutional text? The very text that gave Habyarimana the legal framework to reduce the Tutsis of Rwanda to a status of second class citizenship, effectively setting the wheels in motion in what would later become one of the worst crimes ever perpetrated by a state against its own people.

Relying on Philip Reyntjens for an expert view on Rwanda would be like communicating with the spirit of Socrates or Plato to get an update of the political situation of Greece.

So enough with the rantings of those feeding on the nostalgia from colonial days to Cold War when Africa used to be told what to do, what to think, how to act and never to speak.

Double standards
A new day is dawning on Africa, and Rwanda is spearheading this quiet revolution.
The recently leaked and subsequently released UN report on alleged crimes perpetrated by the Rwanda Patriotic Army (RPA) amongst others in the DRC between 1993 and 2003 is yet another example of the clear double standards on human rights issues when it comes to dealing with Africa from a Western perspective.

The 1994 Genocide on the Tutsi is a fact recognised by International Law and backed by mountains of evidence which have allowed for the prosecution of those suspected in having had a hand in these atrocities in one way or another.

Here is another fact, no less important. Genocide is a legal term defined in the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

Understandable
In light of the definition, the reaction of Rwanda on the release of this report can only be described as understandable. No state in its right mind would accept such baseless allegations backed by no evidence whatsoever to be leveled against it. It is quite evident that the “intent” on the part of the authors and sponsors of this so-called report is to tarnish the otherwise blemish free success story of the current Rwandan Government led by Paul Kagame.

Why wouldn’t they? Isn’t it the same Paul Kagame who exposed the UN’s inefficiencies by stopping the 1994 Genocide in their presence? Was it not the same Paul Kagame led RPA that single handedly solved the humanitarian catastrophe referred to in this report by repatriating and successfully rehabilitating over 3 million “Hutu” refugees who had been taken hostage by the former Rwandan Armed Forces (ex-FAR) right across the border?

It is indeed the same Paul Kagame who successfully raised his country from the ashes of her tragically violent and divided past to become the success story that it is today for the whole world to see. And this bothers those who feed on African misery to make a name for themselves as champions of human rights; those modern day messiahs who know so much better than us ignorant Africans that our only chance for survival is the repentance of our sins, however unreal they might be.

Disciplined and efficient
Africa is no fatality; Paul Kagame, more than any other African Leader, understands it. He found a solution to justice for the survivors and the perpetrators, stabilized and pacified a troubled Great Lakes Region and brought steadfast economic growth to East Africa.

The Rwandan Army that stands accused today of possible acts of genocide is cited as the most disciplined and efficient in the UN peacekeeping mission it is involved in.

This same discipline that the Rwandan Army has always shown was one of the keys to success in fighting the genocide without descending into a whirlwind of revenge killings. It was also one for defeating the FAZ and their mercenaries Yougo’s, the FAR, Interahamwe, Mai-mai and others. And it is well documented that Paul Kagame tirelessly called upon the “international community” to “do something” about the clear and imminent threat paused by refugee camps set up Rwanda’s border with DRC, a mere 200 meters away.

Thorn in the foot
It is also documented that the ex-Far with their allies were on the verge of launching multiple attacks on Rwanda to “finish the job” when the Government of Rwanda decided to send an “integrated exFAR-exAPR” contingent to solve the problem and repatriate all willing unarmed Rwandan refugees/hostage. What would be the logic in sending a Hutu-Tutsi army to carry out massacres of Hutu civilians?

But for all these facts cited above, Paul Kagame is and will always be a thorn in the foot of those who regard humanitarian aid as a business with a future in Africa.

Am I now suggesting that the Congo War was a “clean” war without atrocities? Not by a long shot! I will even go further to say that justice needs to be done to honor the memory of those who lost their lives in these conflicts. Like justice is needed for all the victims of all conflicts. How far do we want to go? Dresden, Hiroshima, Spain, Sumatra, Belgian Congo, Indonesia, Algeria, Biafra, Soweto, Iraq, Kurdistan, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Namibia, Wounded Knee?

Justice isn’t just an ideal to some; Rwandans more than anybody else want it. Not as Trojan Horse carefully crafted to destabilize us, but as a genuine exercise in truth and accountability for the benefit of all parties involved. For now, we say thanks for the gift of justice, but no thanks.

© Radio Netherlands Worldwide

Let Rwanda repeal the UN mapping report

By Félicien Mwumvaneza

The UN is at it again. The popular aphorism, "If life gives you lemons, make lemonade" by a famous writer Dale Carnegie embodies much truth regarding the constant challenges of nation building virtually in all countries. It would be fair to say, though, that the adage has particular resonance in Rwanda’s post-genocide efforts for building sustainable peace and development and the ingenuity with which the leadership has had to overcome unique challenges both at home and from the external environment.

Well, what the UN has given Rwanda and the region through its so-called mapping exercise report on the DRC is not just lemons but also a case of sour grapes owing to a deeply flawed methodology and outrageously false allegations that it seeks to translate into a credible discourse. Still Rwanda has gone out of its way to provide a properly worked out and convincing document in response to some of the serious deficiencies in the UN report.

Assuming other factors constant, the controversy surrounding the making of the report was supposed to be purely methodical and any efforts aimed at correcting the professional deficiencies exposed in the UN report ought to have been limited to the technical level – plain and simple. Yet, the UN created a diplomatic emergency that was completely uncalled for.

Rwanda, out of good will, agreed to the diplomatic initiative by the UN Secretary General. And the results? No more than cosmetic modifications have been made to the report, which serves to indicate that the UN was not genuine about the discussions with Rwandan officials anyway.

After all, albeit out of opportunism, the UN may probably rationalise that it has gotten what it wanted: Rwanda will not withdraw thousands of its troops from various UN peacekeeping missions, and it calmed its fears that President Paul Kagame might have been considering to boycott the UN General Assembly meeting. It is not always easy to speculate about irrational behaviour, but they were certainly well aware of the seriousness of the unsubstantiated allegations against his country.

The UN might have its rationalisations in this case, but it is wrong on one key aspect in the equation, and that is Rwanda’s zero tolerance on all kinds of injustices. This is one of the defining constructs of the country’s character as a nation today and Rwanda is not likely to give up on challenging the UN report until justice to its history is done.

As the situation stands, there is a range of options that Rwanda might explore to challenge the UN’s destructive report.

First, in accordance with articles 34 and 35-paragraph 1 of the UN charter, Rwanda should officially demand the Security Council or the General Assembly to repeal the UN mapping exercise report on the DRC in its entirety or just a number of fundamentally flawed sections of it. The demand for repeal should be on the basis that the false allegations contained in the report are a serious threat to regional peace and security among many other credible justifications.

The charter provides that a member state may bring to the attention of the Security Council or of the General Assembly “any situation which might lead to international friction or give rise to a dispute, in order to determine whether the continuance of the [...] situation is likely to endanger the maintenance of international peace and security.” The Security Council par excellence approved the mapping exercise and it is in order that Rwanda makes such a demand to the UN.

Second and in connection with the above, Rwanda should launch its diplomatic power to rally the support of its regional and international allies to co-sponsor the repeal motion so that a proper and systematic inquiry of crimes committed in the DRC can be commissioned. Even though Rwanda can make the demand on its own, working in the framework of the regional bodies of which Rwanda is a member would be a good option, as it would strengthen its position and voice.

For instance, there are important provisions in the charter for the establishment of the East African Community that would act as a basis for the action even though there is not yet a detailed international relations protocol for the partner countries. The Common Wealth is another important body in which to explore this possibility for action.

Action within the framework of the African Union would be relatively more feasible based on the organisation’s Peace and Security Council protocol. All these different founding documents exist to serve a useful purpose and they should be operationalised in undertaking Rwanda’s legitimate action.

Third, should the above initiatives be sidelined by different actors for various reasons as it ought to be expected, Rwanda should not shy away from exploring several other retaliatory and/ or legal actions. As a juridical person, the United Nations has willingly and deliberately committed a serious offense against the Rwandan people by subtly espousing the “double genocide” theory and by falsely accusing its military of committing serious crimes.

Apart from being a destabilising bonanza against Rwanda’s and regional peace and security in the short and long term, the UN’s false allegations are likely to have a serious negative impact on the character, reputation and legitimacy of the Rwandan people and the government.
Rwandan lawyers should consider whether and under which arbitration jurisdictions the UN can be held to account, and whether the UN’s actions against Rwanda regarding the DRC mapping report may not constitute forms of liabilities for which it may be held accountable.

Rwanda’s course of action in seeking to repeal the report would not be without precedents. For instance in his address to the 46th session of the UNGA on the September 23, 1991, the US president George W.H. Bush called for the repeal of UNGA resolution 3379 that had misrepresented Israel’s Zionism as racism. The resolution was unconditionally repealed just three months later. The resolution had mischaracterised the struggle that led to the creation of the Jewish state enabling millions of Jews in the Diaspora to finally find a place to call home – a home that had been theirs in the first place.

President Bush Sr. rightly made the case that “to equate Zionism with the intolerable sin of racism is to twist history and forget the terrible plight of Jews in World War II and, indeed, throughout history. To equate Zionism with racism is to reject Israel itself, a member of good standing of the United Nations.”

The UN mapping report on the DRC has placed Rwanda and its military in a similar situation and it is Rwanda’s legitimate right to demand that the report be repealed. The UN has committed the same historical mistake against Rwandans by mischaracterising the intentions and the conduct of the Rwandan military in the DRC and it risks undermining Rwanda’s willingness for active self-defence in the future among other negative consequences.

The UN should realise that the need to establish facts about the events in the DRC and its obligation for morality, respect for state sovereignty and fundamental fairness and justice to all are not mutually exclusive. One should not come at the expense of another. That is UN’s duty.

As important as high-level short-term political promises that are likely to ensue may be, such promises may not be reliable in the long term as they tend to last as long as office tenures of the respective politicians who make them. Anyone could take action on the basis a published document anytime and the best course of action might be for Rwanda to keep on challenging the UN mapping report on substantive grounds.

Rwanda: The UN and NGOs – Is State Sovereignty under attack? Part III

By Félicien Mwumvaneza

My previous contributions in this series have pointed out how a select group of western international non-governmental Rights organisations have engaged in what appears to be a sustained mission to undermine the strongholds of Rwanda’s political independence as a sovereign state by attacking its most vital governance policies.

I have pointed out the highly unusual and absurd nature of the collaboration between these “Rights” organisations and the United Nations particularly in circumstances surrounding the so-called mapping exercise report on the DR Congo which accuses Rwanda of possible serious crimes there, and how the mainstream western media have helped to advance the discourse of these negative forces.

The DR Congo ‘amateurish’ mapping report might go down in history as a symbol of how the UN has moved further away from its founding principles given that it has clearly accorded non-state actors vital political preeminence over its sovereign member states in the process of carrying out and publishing the results of the DRC report.

From the way Western human rights organisations and mainstream media have parroted and characterised political conditions and events in Rwanda, to how the UN has joined these forces with some Western governments and have oddly mimicked the same allegations about Rwanda, it becomes extremely difficult to believe how these NGOs are actually non-governmental at all.

That is when nothing is said about the channels through which this so-called Human Rights Organisations are actually funded to carry out their work; evidence indicating that governments are not without a firm hand in their financing.

It becomes very unconvincing to argue that the Western media is indeed free and independent, and it makes the relationship and collaboration between these Western “non-state actors” and some Western governments’ approach to Africa and the rest of the developing world is highly questionable.

Clearly, the application of the newfound means of influencing other countries’ policies – the use of soft power particularly through the work of NGOs, could have been softer and more subtle than Rwanda’s case has shown in recent months, at least for the sake of pretence.

But the new ‘marriage’ relationship between western governments, NGOs and the media regarding their behaviour in and about Rwanda is not actually new. It can be seen as a celebration of longstanding bond that was established at the height of the Cold War purposely to support the use of soft power in order to avoid aggression in a clear act of circumventing the provisions of the UN charter.

By using NGOs, states would not be accused of aggressing other sovereign states as the definition of Aggression does not cover acts by international organisations, and the determination of whether any acts of aggression have been committed at all is an exclusive mandate of the very undemocratic Security Council.

That is a smart move, isn’t it? Well, not if it goes against the fundamental principles of justice and fairness for which the UN was founded to promote in the first place, and it’s definitely neither smart nor ethical at all when it endangers other countries’ peace, security and stability as the case of the international negative forces against Rwanda indicates.

The making and workings of the UN, international human rights law
The charter of the United Nations recognises sovereignty as the hallmark of statehood and it was intended to avert war while ensuring international peace and security by recognising every country’s independence and competence. In the system of international relations and obligations, the principle of noninterference in affairs that are within the domestic jurisdiction of states is an important component of state sovereignty.

Under the UN charter and related conventions, sovereign states have “prescriptive” and “enforcement” powers - competence and authority to make laws and enforce them within their jurisdictions. Some of the cases in which the international community can intervene in domestic affairs of a state include when the state fails to maintain peace and security or when it abuses human rights within its jurisdiction. The latter scenario, though, is a norm that evolved after the establishment of the charter and its meaning and interpretation continue to expand even to this day partly through the work of human rights organisations.

At the height of the cold war in the 1960s and 70s, a number of countries found an indirect way to bypass the UN charter noninterference obligations; and so some of the most powerful human rights organisations we have today were set up primarily to promote the balance of power policies. Non-governmental organisations including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch were later given access and observer status at the United Nations, and their “expert” inputs in the UN processes came to be given important attention.

It is on record how these and other NGOs collaborate in the drafting of reports and resolutions at the UN and how they have been instrumental in the emergency of new human rights norms which form part of the current international human rights law.

As the debate about the UN mapping exercise report on the violation of international human rights law within the DR Congo goes on, it is important to remember that the undemocratic UN Security Council enjoys the exclusive right to interpret, define, frame, decide and declare whether or not a sovereign state has violated its human rights obligations. Thus, even as Rwanda should not relent in the efforts to challenge the flawed report that is clearly a political ploy, it is important to recognise that the underlying challenges actually go deeper that technical issues in the making of documents.

The real issue and important question to be addressed, probably in the long run is to demystify the claims that the UN is just and fair to all countries and peoples when only a few countries enjoy interpretative powers on issues affecting other countries.

And this is something countries could do by giving up some of the short-term benefits and coming together to strongly challenge such a patronising system. It is not something that one country could achieve acting alone.

The way forward for Rwanda
The people of Rwanda need to understand that the onslaught on the country by human rights groups, the mainstream media and the UN might be a deliberate political ploy or a patronising experiment at best that is designed to divide the society by encouraging ethnic politics under the guise of human rights.

Its purpose might be to undermine Rwanda’s increasingly lofty standing both at home and abroad for some unspecified foreign interests. For this reason, Rwandans need to stay united against this challenge and rise above the diversion.
The Rwandan government should refuse to be put on the defensive for doing the right thing for its people and for the country; neither should it be detracted from pursuing the country’s pragmatic foreign engagement that seeks to promote common interests and mutual respect.

These coordinated negative forces and interests have had successes elsewhere in destabilising countries by pressuring governments into abandoning policies that were indeed working for those countries, and it came with devastating consequences and so they seem to believe they can carry out the same experiment in Rwanda today.

Even though there are complex politics at play in the international system, Rwanda must firmly refuse to go down that road because the international community, even when it is at its best, is inherently reckless. This is because despite praises about embracing multilateralism, democracy and freedoms, the struggle for strategic influence and pursuit of self-interest by states has not weathered away. Real actions have not matched rhetoric. The fluid concepts of democracy, human rights and press freedoms are promoted as if they were a specific brand of commodities that developing countries must purchase, rather than theoretical and controversial concepts to be applied contextually. They are, to all intents and purposes, mere instruments for domination. What else could possibly explain the kind of elusive behaviour these interests have manifested in Rwanda in recent months?
For now, Rwanda should continue to firmly challenge the procedural, methodological and all other technical deficiencies of the UN report and demand that these and other substantive issues be systematically revisited as Rwanda holds the obligations of membership in too high regard to let irresponsible mistakes go unquestioned.

The UN has a history of acting inconsistently and there is a possibility that it may realise its grave mistake regarding the mapping exercise report on the DRC and decide to set itself on its feet again. The benefit of time might enable the UN to realise that indeed, in the words of a famous scientist, “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”

Although the UN has created an unnecessary diplomatic crisis for an otherwise purely technical issue, Rwanda might want to give the diplomatic initiative by the UN a chance.

However, that would be only if the postponement was not an opportunistic move to help persuade Rwanda to keep its troops in the UN’s peacekeeping missions in Sudan, Chad, Haiti, and Liberia and to ensure the smooth running of last week’s UN General Assembly in which President Paul Kagame had prominent roles to play in various UN initiatives.

Now that the report was published with negligible changes to the baseless allegations, Rwanda should not shy away from taking appropriate retaliatory actions in accordance with international law based on UN’s record in/on Rwanda and on the detrimental impact the report could have on the character, legitimacy and reputation of the country. Even so, as a UN member state, Rwanda would seek that the UN act out of moral obligations and based on its founding principles rather than out of contingency and opportunism.

Standing up to injustices directed against Rwandans regardless of who the aggressors has been perhaps one of the most distinguishing features of Rwanda’s character as a nation today and it can be seen as one of the key reasons behind its rapid social transformation as well as the increasing lofty standing abroad.

These ideals have brought the country thus far – winning through the power of ideas and actively promoting justice and fairness. It is the same ideals that must defeat the new wave of attacks that are seeking to hijack Rwanda’s right for self-determination as an exercise of its sovereignty. The shotgun...To Whom It May Concern approach in characterising Rwanda’s governance landscape and strategic intentions should be met with strong resistance.

The author is a graduate student of International Development, Wageningen University – The Netherlands
nezaonline@yahoo.com

© The New Times