Rwandan Crimes in the DRC

Contrary to popular opinion, the Hutu are not the only perpetrators of violence in central Africa.

Until last week, the international community bought the oversimplified story that the Hutu were the ogres and war criminals in Central Africa and the Tutsi were innocent victims. Rwanda’s government, Tutsi-led and darling of the international community, has up until now been thought of as a model of good governance in a region plagued by corruption, civil conflict, and war. That may all be about to change.

A UN study, ordered by Canadian Louise Arbour during her tenure as UN high commissioner for human rights, catalogs years of murder, rape, and looting by myriad foreign and domestic militias and national armies in the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire). A draft of this 545-page report was recently leaked.

Of the reports many revelations, none is more striking and politically explosive than the charge that “systematic and widespread attacks” on Hutus by Rwandan forces, “if they were proven before a competent court, could be classified as crimes of genocide.” The report covers Rwanda interventions during both the first and second Congolese War (1996-1997 and 1998-2003 respectively).

Put plainly, the UN has presented evidence that could be used to demonstrate that the Rwandan army has committed genocide.

This report will have seismic effects in the region and beyond. Three particular issues stand out.

First, the report can and should change international attitude and policy towards Rwanda. Re-elected earlier this month with 93 per cent of the vote, Rwandan President Paul Kagame and his party have enjoyed the moral high ground for bringing to an end the 1994 genocide. Less well-known is that Kagame skillfully twisted international guilt for failing to halt the first genocide into unencumbered access to eastern Congo, where Tutsi-led Rwandan forces may have carried out acts of genocide while the international community turned a blind eye. “Never Again,” which so quickly became a succinct epitaph for the Rwandan genocide, has proven tragically hallow in eastern Congo.

For the past decade, Rwanda has been a favourite of the international community despite its known involvement in and, as the UN Group of Experts on the DRC has convincingly demonstrated, profiteering from much of the violence in eastern Congo. Annual foreign aid to Rwanda, which up until last year comprised roughly 50 per cent of the country’s total annual budget, has helped pay for the havoc wreaked next door.

Second, the report has the potential to seriously change the political game in Rwanda. Civil and political liberties have been something of a mirage in the country, particularly in the lead up to the 2010 elections. Over the past decade, normal citizens and aspiring politicians alike have been imprisoned for challenging the dominant historical narrative, accused under the broad banners of “divisionism” and “genocide ideology” for drawing attention to the plight of the Hutu. For example, Victoire Ingabire was thrown in prison and not allowed to run for president in part because she publicly spoke out about massacres carried out by the RPF during the civil war in 1990-1993 and atrocities committed in the DRC, both of which were harrowingly chronicled in Marie-Beatrice Umutesi’s book Surviving the Slaughter. The UN report validates some of these dissenting voices.

Whether or not the UN report will have a significant impact on political freedom in Rwanda remains to be seen. Given the economic and political stakes, it is perhaps no surprise that Kagame’s government has vehemently denounced the report as “malicious, offensive, and ridiculous.” This is in keeping with tradition, as the research for two previous UN investigations, albeit ones much less ambitious in scope (the Gersony report in 1994 and Garreton report in 1998), were nearly scuttled by Rwandan interference, and, once published, were met with scathing criticism by the government.

This time around it has been reported that Kagame approached UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon with threats that Rwanda would withdraw its troops from UN peacekeeping missions if the results of the study were released. The report was leaked to avoid any edits in response to these threats. The final report, due to come out next month, should not pander to Kagame’s demands. Indeed, the UN’s credibility is at stake. If Kagame takes a hard line, the international community must respond with its own.

Third, the report should, as its conclusion asserts, prompt a meaningful process of transitional justice in the region, one in which impunity is finally tackled. The report details more than 600 violent incidents demonstrating gross violations of human rights and/or international humanitarian law. Nowhere else in recent history has war been so viciously waged and the international community been so quiet.

This is particularly critical because the conflict is far from over. Despite the formal cessation of hostilities in July 2003 and the presence of the UN’s largest peacekeeping force, the violence in eastern Congo continues largely unabated. The recent rape of roughly 200 women and young boys mere miles from a UN military post in North Kivu once again exposed the feebleness of the international community in providing meaningful security guarantees in a conflict which has caused over five millions deaths.

The UN report may be a dead canary in a coal mine. It remains to be seen whether it will be treated with the seriousness it deserves.