From: "tony black"
To: <"Undisclosed-Recipient:;"@cogeco.net>
Subject: Reply to critique of Rwanda article
Date: Saturday, February 11, 2006 2:23 PM

Please find below a critique sent in to the editor of 'Mayday' regarding my 
Rwanda article, "Hotel Propaganda". Below that I have included my reply to 
the critique. The reply is a bit long (over 2000 words), but I thought that 
it might serve as both an amplification of the original article and as a 
source of 'footnotes' to those who may have a greater interest in the 
details of the 'case'.

[I have left the name of the author of the critique attached as he indicated 
it could be published in Mayday..and is thus, effectively, in the public 
domain].

Tony

                          * * *

To Whom It May Concern,
My name is Nathan Haldane and I am writing with concern over your article in
the February issue Mayday concerning Rwanda.  I have been a reader of Mayday
since the beginning and have generally thought it is well thought out and
researched, but  I was appalled by some the gross factual errors in the
piece by Antony Black concerning the Rwandan genocide.
To begin, he states that Canadian and Belgian troops fled Rwanda at the
start of the genocide.  There were no Candanian troops there.  Canada
supplied the General in charge, Romeo Dallaire and one other soldier, Major
Brent Beardsley. That's it. Neither of them left until far into the conflict
due to health reasons. The Belgians did pull out of Rwanda after the death
of ten of their soldiers at the hands of Hutu militias.  The murder of the
Belgian soldiers occurred on the day after the beginning of the hostilities
and the Bellgians didn't withdraw until the 11th of April after well
documented pressure came down from the Belgian public.
His second assertion that Tutsi soldiers were "smuggled" into Kigali is also
false.  Their position within the capital was mandated by the Arusha
accords.  There is video tape (I can show it to you) of them marching into
Kigali in a huge procession.  Hardly some clandestine American conspiracy.
His next assertion, that the Tutsi "mass emigrated to Uganda" also lacks
context in exactly the part where he calls for it. Yes, many Tutsi emigrated
to the surrounding countries, but it was because of violence targeted
against them by Hutu militias.  In the "social revolution" of 1959, some
60,000 Tutsi were slaughtered in pogroms, causing many of them to flee. In
the piece, Black leaves out any context as to the reasons of Tutsi
dispersal.
Next he claims that the US sought to undermine the Hutu regime because it
wouldn't help them undermine Mobutu's government in Zaire. The fact of the
matter is is that Mobutu was put into power behind US backing in a response
to the election of socialist Patrice Lumumba.  Far from being an adversary
to the US, Mobutu was a close African ally.
One of his next claims is that the RPF carried out "political and civilian
assassinations".  There is substantial evidence to prove that these attacks
were actually perpetrated by Rwandan military as a way of creating fear
about the RPF.
Upon discussing the plane crash and the chaos that follows, Black fails to
mention that the next legitimate head of the government, a Hutu herself, was
killed by a Hutu militia.  There is substantial evidence to prove that the
high ranking Rwandan military officers created lists of moderate Hutu
politicians that were to be assassinated if something were to happen to the
peace process.
I don't know what Black considers "independent", but there are extensive and
exhaustive reports compiled by the Organization of African Unity and Human
Rights Watch.  The OAU puts the number of deaths at 800,000, while the HRW
report counts 500,000, but (shockingly) does not the count the hundreds of
thousands of bodies that washed up on the shores of Lake Victoria in Kenya.
Black also claims that there is only one piece of evidence to support the
fact that the government planned the genocide, a fax from Dallaire to the
UN.  There is far more evidence than that.  HRW has compiled large amounts
of government documents that show the purchase of machetes in bulk from
China, lists of Tutsi with addresses to be killed, and analysis of "tests"
where the Hutu government massacred Tutsi to see how fast they could kill
them.
Though I agree with Blacks assertion that the RPF is not blameless and
should have to pay the consequences for their massacres his article leaves
out important aspects of Rwandan history.  I also find it extremely
offensive to deny that the Rwandan genocide happened.  800,000 people didn't
just disappear and by claiming that the genocide did not happen dishonours
the immense struggle and pain that many Tutsi went through from April to
July 1994.  Thank you for reading my rather long critique of Mr. Blacks
article.  I would be more than happy to write a rebuttal in your magazine. I
look forward to hearing back from the editor or Mr. Black himself. Yours
Sincerely, Nathan Haldane

                        * * *

Response to Rwandan Article Critique


Mr. Haldane is apparently "appalled at the gross factual errors" in my 
article 'Hotel Propaganda'. I am afraid I must return the complement with 
regard to his critique. Let me first then, respond to specifics before 
concluding with a number of general remarks on his singular failure to 
respond to the central thrust and argument of the piece as a whole.


1. The respondent claims there were no Canadian troops in Rwanda. This is 
the only point in his critique where I am forced into partial concession. 
The looseness of the parenthetical expression "principally Belgian and 
Canadian [troops]" I had meant to correct in my first and only revision for 
the editor (Matt Jelly), and simply missed it. I did, however, catch it in 
my submission of the article to the Hamilton Spectator (just a day or so 
prior to the Mayday publication), which reads, "principally Belgian under 
Canadian command".


Having said that, however, what the author seems unawares is that, though 
General Dallaire and Major Beardsly were present in Rwanda, so to were 
various and sundry other Canadian officers who were floating in and out 
during the period in question. Moreover, there purpose was kept secret from 
Dallaire's boss Jacques Roger Booh-Booh. [See Booh-Booh's recent book on 
Dallaire ('Dallaire's Boss Speaks Out')]. In addition, Dallaire was replaced 
by Canadian General Toussingant, and the head of peacekeeping operations in 
New York was General Baril, another Canadian.


2. None of the Canadians left for health reasons.


3. The Belgian soldiers killed the morning of April 7th, 1994 were thirteen 
in number, not "ten", and were, and are now, believed to part of the 
shootdown team that brought down the plane that carried the two Hutu 
Presidents of Rwanda and Burundi, and the Rwandan Army Chief of Staff (also 
a Hutu). The Belgian soldiers were killed at Camp Kigali by mutinous 
soldiers despite efforts by their commanding officers to stop the 
executions. [A statement to this effect was made by Capt. Apdedo, a UN 
Military Observer, who witnessed the attack and so describes it. He also 
states, interestingly enough, that General Dallaire was in the Camp at the 
time but did nothing about it. [Apedo's statement is contained in UN files].


In fact the official UN Force report signed off on by Dallaire states that 
it was a mutiny by soldiers angry with the Belgians for having murdered 
their president. In short, Hutu "militias" were not involved.


4. As for the Belgians not withdrawing "until the 11th of April": The 
Belgians began preparations for their withdrawal on the 9th, but did not 
complete them until the 17th of April. Furthermore, they knew, in advance of 
the execution of the assassination team, that they were going to withdraw, 
this so as to give the RPF a clear field of action. [See the official 
Belgian Military history of the events known as the KIBAT Report.]


5. Regarding the placement of Tutsi troops in Kigali mandated by the Arusha 
Accords: The author claims that he has a video tape showing them marching in 
a "huge procession". That may be, but the 'huge procession' can't have 
(legally) been more than six hundred because that was the number mandated by 
the Accords. In fact, another 10 battalions had been infiltrated into 
Kigali. [See the UN memo to Dallaire dated April 15, 1994 which states that, 
as of the 14th, the RPF had at least that many men in the capital and had 
been there under cover for some time]. Indeed, RPF officers such as Abdul 
Ruzibiza state in confirmation ['The War in Rwanda, A Secret History'] that 
the RPF had 13,000 men in Kigali as of the 6th, almost three times (as I 
stated in my article) the number of men available to government forces. 
These allegations were further confirmed by other RPF officers including 
Christophe Hakizabera.


Dallaire was aware since December and before that the RPF and the Ugandan 
armies were infiltrating men and heavy arms into the country to prepare for 
an offensive (which began April 6th), but lied about it to his boss, 
Booh-Booh. This because Dallaire was working all along with the US and the 
RPF. There are memos to Dallaire from his military observer in the north of 
Rwanda telling him this, but which he never told Booh-Booh - and about which 
he subsequently lied to the rest of the world.


(It is also worthy of note that, on the night of the shoot-down of the plane 
carrying the Rwandan President, Dallaire arranged for the closure of the 
western approach to the runway at the request of the RPF. The plane was shot 
down as it came in from the east.)


6. The figure of "60,000" killed in the 1959 revolution is pure RPF 
propaganda. The actual figure was in the low hundreds and that as a result 
of the Tutsis trying to mount a coup against majority rule after the 
population voted to get rid of the Tutsi king and aristocracy and found a 
democratic republic. The Tutsi power elite attacked Hutus (whom they 
considered to be serfs) and killed many. Tutsis were killed in retaliation. 
The aristocrats fled, though many others stayed in the country.


7. Yes, initially Mobutu was a US ally, but, like many, many former US 
allies (including Saddam Hussein), he eventually 'fell from favour'. Thus, 
in the late '80's and early '90's he stopped playing ball with the US and 
began looking to China. His days were numbered at that point. In fact, Wayne 
Madsen (former US intelligence officer) in his book, 'CIA Covert Operations 
in the Great Lakes Region of Africa 1990-93', states that the US hoped to 
kill (on the night of April 6th) not only the Hutu presidents of Rwanda and 
Burundi, but also Mobutu and Daniel Arap Moi of Kenya on the same plane. 
They were only thwarted in their full objective when Major General Kombe 
(Chief of Tanzanian Army Intelligence, and who was involved in the plot) 
warned them of the plan. Kombe was later assassinated in Tanzania when it 
was learned he was the source of the leak.


Also worthy of note is the fact that the French investigative judge, 
Brugiere, states in his report on the shoot-down of the plane that the CIA 
is heavily implicated. It was, thus, in a CIA rented warehouse in Kigali 
that the missiles used in the assassination were assembled. When Louise 
Arbour's investigators found this out, Arbour received instructions from the 
US ambassador in Kigali to kill the investigation (the Hourigan Report).


8. It is now known, from the RPF officers involved, that all the political 
assassinations prior to April 6th were carried out by the RPF to discredit 
the Hutu majority government. [See testimony by Abdul Ruzibiza, Christopher 
Hakizabera, Jean Pierre Mugabe, Charles Onana and others. Dallaire, once 
again, was aware of this but covered it up.


9. "The next legitimate head of government"? I am not clear who the author 
is talking about here. The new president and prime minister of Rwanda are 
still alive and well. I gather he is referring to the death of Prime 
Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana, otherwise known as Agathe. She was a pro-RPF 
member of the interim government who was involved in an attempt to overthrow 
the Hutu President on January 8th, 1994 (A Belgian officer, Col. Frank 
Claeys, who testified at the ICTR for the prosecution, stated that she was 
so involved on that date). She was later killed on April 7th by persons 
unknown (though this too comprises a long tale full of intrigue and 
treachery - involving the RPF, the Belgians and other UN personnel - but 
which I won't burden the reader with at this point - though am happy to 
provide for those interested).


10. In regard to the author's claims that "there is substantial evidence to 
prove that the high ranking Rwandan military officers created lists of 
moderate Hutu politicians to be assassinated....": In ten years of trying 
the prosecution at the ICTR has not produced one single list of Tutsi to be 
killed by the former government. However, lists of Hutus to be killed by the 
RPF do exist. The purported lists (of Hutus) in question are pure RPF 
propaganda, complete fabrications.


11. As for the evidence of 800,000 (or even 500,000) Tutsis killed, I 
challenge the author to produce it. Such evidence simply doesn't exist. The 
University of Maryland study is the best to date and indicates 250,000 
people killed in those horrific 12 weeks. But again, they state that for 
every Tutsi killed, two Hutus were killed by the RPF.


Furthermore, several RPF officers have stated that during those 12 weeks 
(and the year following) they killed 2 million Hutus and then told the world 
that the bodies were Tutsis killed by the former regime. [See Abdul 
Ruzibiza, above, and the letter of Christophe Hakizabera to the UN dated 
1995.]


In fact, UN reports exist for several prefectures (dated November 1995) that 
the Tutsi population had actually increased. Other reports are missing. To 
this day the RPF refuses to do a census count to determine the actual number 
killed and to which ethnic group they belonged.


In addition, there are several reports from NGOs at the time that indicate 
that the bodies floating in Lake Victoria and in rivers were mainly Hutus 
killed by the RPF. [See Alison Desforges, an important prosecution expert, 
who in her book cites RPF officers who stated to her that, "when we entered 
a village we killed everyone, Tutsi and Hutu alike." There is a lot of 
evidence regarding this.


12. The machete story is ridiculously outdated. Every peasant in Rwanda had 
machetes for farming and there is no evidence whatsoever of government 
purchases of these farm tools for the purpose of killing people. In fact, 
the prosecution at the ICTR has dropped any mention of such an absurd idea. 
Human Rights Watch has not produced one single document to substantiate the 
claim of a plan to kill Tutsis by the majority government, and neither has a 
single document been produced over ten years at the ICTR to substantiate it.

13. "Immense struggle"?. If you call an offensive launched by the combined 
armies of Uganda, the RPF, Burundi, Belgium, Canada, Tanzania and the US 
against a basically defenseless country like Rwanda...well, then 'War is 
Peace' and 'Slavery is Freedom'. The RPF had enormous resources supplied to 
it by the US and the UK through Uganda, and was helped by Belgian and 
Canadian contingents. The US, it is worthy of note, had 600 Rangers in 
Bujumbura, Burundi on standby to help the RPF if needed.


It was the Hutu people, then, who went through an immense struggle to 
maintain their liberty and to prevent the former Tutsi aristocrats from 
re-establishing their former feudal regime. In the 1980‘s, under the old 
socialist republic, Rwanda had the highest GDP growth rate in Africa. It had 
a pretty good health care and education systems and overall infrastructure 
even whilst a very poor country.


Now under the present RPF Tutsi dictatorship (which is patently what it is), 
it has become the poorest country in Africa with all formerly nationalized 
industries privatized. A country where no one dares speak out for fear of 
being murdered or ‘disappeared’. Meanwhile the RPF, having been used as a 
proxy by the US and the UK is implicated in the killing of up to 4 million 
people in its invasions of the Congo.


So much for the glorious "struggle".


* * *

This last point brings home, by the way, a further (and, indeed, the most 
significant) problem with Mr. Haldane’s (I am sure deeply felt and honest, 
if ultimately misinformed) critique. For while it is natural to feel that I 
have, by my article in some way impugned the memory of those killed in the 
various internecine massacres of 1994, in truth, I have merely attempted to 
shift the burden of responsibility for the horrors of those dark days onto 
the proper shoulders.


For, ultimately, those responsible are not the Hutu people or even the Tutsi 
people. They are, instead, those Western powers who have historically 
cynically manipulated the affairs of Africa (indeed virtually the entire 
globe) to their own advantage irrespective of the enormous damage and loss 
of life it has entailed.... and continues to entail.


As former UN Secretary General of the UN, Boutros-Boutros Ghali stated(!) to 
Robin Philpot, a Montreal journalist, just last year, “The Americans are 
100% responsible for what happened in Rwanda.” There is nothing very new in 
this, nor should it be very surprising. For those acquainted with US 
‘foreign policy’ over the last century there should only be a deep and weary 
sigh of acknowledgement.


Indeed, I have spent most of the last 20 years detailing in essay after 
essay the depredations and propaganda cover-ups of literally dozens upon 
dozens of these diabolical ‘foreign policy’ forays. From the ‘killing fields’ 
of Cambodia [where, once again, the ultimate responsibility rests with the 
US in its ’secret bombing’] to the vicious 1999 attack on, and dismemberment 
of Yugoslavia [where the corporate media was able to wage yet another 
incredible propaganda campaign, even going so far as to fabricate an entire 
‘genocide’ (in Kosovo) out of thin air], to scores of others in between, the 
true actors and proper context of crime after crime has been effectively, 
and in some cases, virtually completed elided from the historical record.


The real failure, then, of the author’s critique is that it persists in the 
refusal to ask fundamental questions about the nature and context of the 
events in question. It fails to stay focused on the central themes, and 
instead indulges in, ultimately, cavilling questions about this or that 
detail whilst ignoring the glaring major facts and context of, and 
contradictions and inconsistencies in, the ‘official’ story. The blame for 
this rests, of course, squarely on the backs of the Western press which time 
and again finds itself as little more than a cheerleader for Western 
imperial interests. But what else is new?


Antony Black