Travesty of justice

On November 9, a court in The Hague, ruled against the extradition of Rwandan genocide suspect Pierre Claver Karangwa to Rwanda where he is wanted on charges of Genocide and crimes against humanity.

 

By and large, the court’s decision was based on messages and reports of Human Rights Watch (HRW) and the input of Prof. Filip Reyntjens that cast doubt on the ‘independence’ Rwanda’s judiciary in criminal cases against political opponents.

 

The court stressed that it was of the opinion that there are objectively justified doubts about the judicial independence in Rwanda in the event of trial of some political opponents of the ‘regime’, because of the risk of political interference in that trial.

 

The 66-year-old was charged for genocide; conspiracy to commit genocide; complicity in genocide; murder as a crime against humanity; extermination as a crime against humanity; violation of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions; establishing, membership in, directing and participating in a criminal organisation whose purpose is to cause harm to individuals and their property.

 

Refusing the extradition of the genocidaire basing on inputs and messages of the biased Human Rights Watch and the anti-Rwanda Belgian professor, Reyntjens, is a clear sign of how judicial independence in the Netherlands is questionable.

 

Reyntjens, a self-proclaimed expert on Rwanda and former senior adviser to President Juvenal Habyarimana, is the author of the 1978 Rwandan Constitution that entrenched ethnic divisions. Having instituted an apartheid regime against part of the population, his work contributed much to the extermination of more than one million Tutsi in the 1994 Genocide. Reyntjens was not only associated with Habyarimana’s genocidal regime. Reyntjens, a friend of genocidaires, has continued to closely identify with some of the mass murderers who planned and executed the Genocide against the Tutsi.

 

Reyntjens belongs with the framers of the genocide against Tutsi, the likes of Ferdinand Nahimana, and Leon Mugesera. In November 1990, a month after the RPF/A launched the war to liberate Rwanda, Habyarimana’s government organised two delegations, one to Europe and another to North America, to drum up support for the genocidal government.

 

Reyntjens was part of the genocidal government’s delegation to Geneva which was led by Nahimana, a historian later described by a witness at the International tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), as “Rwanda’s Joseph Goebbels.” The North American delegation was led by Leon Mugesera, another genocide ideologue now serving life for genocide crimes.

 

Courts in The Netherlands giving the likes of Reyntjens and HRW a platform to presents insights on whether or not to extradite a genocidaire to Rwanda is a mockery of The Hague's judicial system. It is a travesty of justice. What kind of ideas did The Netherlands court expect from an individual with such a tainted background? 

 

The same court also confidently named HRW among respondents consulted on Karangwa’s deportation to Rwanda turning a blind eye to how impartial the New York based international organization is, notably for African countries.

 

Since July 1994, after the RPF stopped the genocide against the Tutsi, HRW published numerous reports against the current Rwandan government. The New-York-based so-called rights group, Human Rights Watch (HRW), has never hidden its poisonous agenda against Rwanda - publishing fabricated reports aimed at smearing the reputation of the current Rwandan government and its institutions.

 

The analysis of HRW’s bias against Rwanda, “The Travesty of Human Rights Watch on Rwanda,” published on March 19, 2013 by Retired American diplomat turned academic, Richard Johnson, sheds lights on how the organization has been supporting the efforts of Rwandan genocide suspects to avoid transfer or extradition to Rwanda by the ICTR or by national courts, on the grounds that they would not get a fair trial.

 

Apart from the case of Karangwa, whose extradition request was turned down by The Hague, the HRW also played a great role in late 2008, when the ICTR rejected the prosecutor’s first request for the transfer to Rwanda of several suspects indicted by the UN Court.

 

Thanks in part to HRW’s urging, in early 2009, a higher court in the UK, overturned a lower court’s approval of a Rwandan request for extradition of genocide suspects, implicated in the murder of thousands in the districts they governed. These suspects and many more continue to live freely in the UK, France, Belgium and The Netherlands. The question remains as to whether or not these countries will hold them accountable for the atrocities they committed in the Genocide.

 

As noted by Johnson, what HRW does about Rwanda is not human rights advocacy but “political advocacy which has become profoundly unscrupulous in both its means and its ends.”

 

And it is this kind of “political advocacy which has become profoundly unscrupulous in both its means and its ends,” that courts in The Netherlands base on to rule on cases where serious crimes of Genocide, and crimes against humanity, are concerned.