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Focus Media (Kigali)

Rwanda: A Kenyan Professor's Propaganda

Shyaka Kanuma

21 October 2009

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analysis

In an article published on the 4th of this month in the Kenyan newspaper The Standard, renowned law professor, Yash Pal Ghai claims he is telling his readers "what they don't tell you about Rwanda."

The Kenyan academic who was in Rwanda at the request of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative to do a report on human rights and democracy has submitted a report he has written on Rwanda's suitability to join the Commonwealth. His conclusions, some of which he publishes in The Standard, look calculated to scuttle the country's chances of joining the grouping, made up mainly of countries that speak English and that have ties in the areas of commerce, education and so on.

Prof. Yash Pal Ghai begins his article with a glib intro talking about the positive reputation Rwanda now has in the community of nations, and the increasingly high regard international institutions have for President Paul Kagame.

He then has this and similar things to say:

That the Rwandese Patriotic Front "killed thousands of Hutus and drove many to exile and then pursued them in their countries of exile."

That those who imply that "Kagame's RPF had killed Hutus unnecessarily are heavily penalized."

That the Rwandan government "has relied heavily for its revenue (to fund its institutions and the elite) on plunder of the mineral resources of the DR Congo."

That the Rwandan government "bears the primary responsibility for the political and economic instability of the Great Lakes region" and that "it has contributed to a complex, regional regime of illegal economic transactions, evasion of UN sanctions, arming of militias, criminal business organizations, and disregard of neighbors' borders and fiscal systems which has greatly impoverished the region." And so on and so on.

Reading these and numerous other charges one half expects Yash Pal Ghai to also blame Rwanda for cancer, the bubonic plague, HIV Aids, famine, desertification and other terrible afflictions on human kind in this region.

It is likely many of The Standard's readers are not aware that the "revelations" the good professor serves up are fare that you may crib off any of the numerous websites run by deniers of the 94 Genocide, revisionists of Rwandan history, conspiracy theorists and numerous groups whose extremist sectarian views the professor parrots with no inhibition.

But anyone with knowledge of the propaganda of the Kagame administration's detractors will immediately see that Yash Pal Ghai long ago threw his lot in with the naysayers.

He says Rwanda's president is regularly praised by World Bank, the US and UK administrations for his integrity, efforts at reconciliation and economic policies.

But a few lines down Mr. Ghai lets us know those with high regard for Kagame and his administration are utterly wrong.

How did the good academic arrive at his conclusion? Mainly in two ways.

The first one is that everyone he talked to; every "non-official" person he interviewed - diplomats, journalists, professionals and local and international civil society officers - would not speak to him except on assurances of anonymity.

Anonymous diplomats and journalists

One begins to wonder, why should the professor think it strange for diplomats to request anonymity when talking to anyone who will publish what they have to say?

Diplomats supposedly are not to meddle in the affairs of the country where they are posted and they will keep up that deception by among other things not giving consent to be quoted discussing matters to do with the politics of the foreign lands where they are posted. Of course there are exceptions such as rich nation ambassadors in poor countries who can be outspoken in their duties to promote the ideals of their countries, or when they rebuke governments who are net consumers of their aid.

So which diplomats, if any, were whispering things to Yash Pal Ghai and fervently requesting him not to quote them? The American Ambassador? Would Stuart Symington be afraid to say anything openly about Rwanda if he had sufficient reason to, as he would if this were a government which, as the professor claims, is in the habit of killing thousands of people?

We are used to reading statements such as those of Edward Clay, a former British High Commissioner to Kenya, about high-ranking members of that country's government: "the practitioners (in the government) have the arrogance and greed to lead them to eat like gluttons," Clay charged in 94, adding, "they can hardly expect us not to care when their gluttony causes them to vomit all over our shoes!"

If the British ambassador in Nairobi could speak out like that due to reported incidents of corruption then the British ambassador in Kigali would speak up and be quoted if, as Yash Pal Ghai insinuates, the RPF is a criminal enterprise taking Rwanda to the brink.

And while we are still at the professor's anonymous sources, who are those journalists he says he spoke to?

Umuseso? These people who among other mind-bending claims they regularly publish stated two weeks ago that Kagame's government is more corrupt than Juvenal Habyarimana's? These same people who for example have run an anonymous two-page politically motivated tract making the sensational allegation that Kagame ordered one of his generals, Fred Ibingira to commit a massacre in a refugee camp? Here one may ask why these Umuseso journalists are walking around in Kigali everyday breathing the free air of Rwanda despite the good professor's assertions that anyone who says "the RPF massacred thousands" is "heavily punished"?

It is difficult to imagine who Prof. Ghai's anonymous journalists are. Umuvugizi and its boss Bosco Gasasira whose cranky views about this government he airs regularly, loud and clear on Voice of America and anywhere else they may put a microphone in his face?

We wouldn't be surprised if it turned out the professor's anonymous journalists, and diplomats and civil society leaders were a figment of his imagination.

Reports with no truth in them

The second way Prof. Ghai arrived at his conclusions about Rwanda was by "reading numerous reports of the UN Security Council, UNHCR or international NGOs."

If that is all he read then the professor was only re-confirming his own biases.

What we mean is who would expect a report on Rwanda by the UN Security Council or UNHCR to be an objective report?

Remember in 1994 when the ex FAR and Interahamwe militias fled to the then Zaire taking hostage hundreds of thousands of Hutu civilians, threatening them that if they remained either they (Interahamwe, ex FAR) would kill them or the RPF would?

You will also remember that UNHCR which built a massive camp for them in Mugunga was talking daily about the need for ever more humanitarian aid, yet in the camp the Interahamwe and ex FAR were confiscating all the aid to the refugees (about a million dollars worth every day) monetizing it in the neighboring Congolese towns and using the proceeds to purchase weaponry with which to launch reprisal attacks against the RPF and with which to finish their "final solution" to the "Tutsi problem". They were doing this right under the noses of UNHCR officials. They were also receiving weapons directly from some foreign governments and UNHCR was doing absolutely nothing about it.

Naturally the new government in Kigali could not sit around and wait for annihilation and so took the fight to the FAR and Interahamwe, clobbering them in the camp and liberating thousands and thousands of refugees to trek back to Rwanda where each and every one went to their villages or towns.

Maybe this is what Yash Pal Ghai calls "pursuing the Hutus into their countries of refuge"; but then what can the good man know about being targeted for annihilation?

Rwanda has repeatedly embarrassed UN bodies such as MONUC, the so called peacekeepers in eastern DR Congo by stepping in and solving problems they can't.

An example is when the Rwandan military recently offered its help to the DRC army to rout mass murderers of the 94 Genocide who still lurk in the east of the country, whose favorite practice is to massacre Congolese Tutsis, whose strategy is to carve out administrative swathes in the poorly administered country with the long term goal to re-launch attacks in Rwanda.

In fact Rwanda has demonstrated time and again how, at least in our part of the world, the UN only becomes another big problem whenever it supposedly is brought in to solve problems.

Before Rwandan troops helped restore order in eastern DRC, MONUC forces actually were engaged in trade with FDLR, the umbrella group of the mass murderers, exchanging weapons for their gold and other minerals. Rwanda has blown the whistle on these nefarious activities.

The UN therefore has several reasons to harbor animosities towards Rwanda and can never be an objective arbiter of anything this country does.

Now when you learn that Yash Pal Ghai at one time, in 2005, was the special representative of the UN Secretary General on human rights in Cambodia you begin to understand where he is coming from.

It is not difficult to imagine what motivates him when he descends into the sewers of conspiracy theorists pushing the by now worn canard that Kagame has "a grand design of Tutsi hegemony." What does the professor offer up as proof for this allegation? That during the Genocide Kagame refused a ceasefire offer by Romeo Dallaire the commander of UN troops in Rwanda, to stop the massacres.

One begins to wonder how it was the duty of Dallaire's to offer a ceasefire since the RPF was fighting not the UN but an army, the FAR and Interahamwe militias bent on wiping out every last Tutsi in Rwanda.

While Yash Pal Ghai is at it perhaps he may also want to tell us about Tutsi hegemony plans in 1959 when Hutus first launched their many pogroms against Tutsis, and in 1963 on through the seventies and early nineties?

Maybe the man knows something no one else does, but the last time anyone checked it was the government of Juvenal Habyarimana drawing up lists of Tutsis and where each and every one of them lived to identify them for the killers; it was the government of Habyarimana sponsoring the hate RTLM radio station with its incessant calls upon all Hutus to murder all Tutsis; it was the extremist government of Habyarimana and his little sidekicks Bagosora, Zigiranyirazo, Rwagafilita, Serubuga, Nzirorera and other criminals too many to list down here that were providing the militias all the logistics for grisly massacre: machetes, trucks to transport the killers around, money to reward them et cetera et cetera.

So why do we never hear a thing from Yash Pal Ghai and all the other conspiracy theorists about what grand designs for Hutu hegemony Habyarimana had?

The upshot is that these people never can say a positive thing about Rwanda because their minds are impaired by hate and spite and prejudices. That is all.

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