Evil Plot behind resurrecting DRC Draft UN Mapping Report

A bunch of Genocide deniers conniving with descendants of Genocide perpetrators in an effort to promote unendorsed UN Mapping Report

These days there is a concerted campaign effort to resurrect the so-called UN Mapping Report that everyone knows was never endorsed or published. Amongst those actively rekindling it are well-known to the public for their anti-Rwanda stance and their hidden agenda. This cabal is comprised of self-seeking Congolese politicians, members of the Congolese in the diaspora, and sections of Rwandan diaspora who often pose as human rights activists or opposition politicians and their foreign supporters.   But looked at closely, the latter are made of genocide fugitives who are eager to mask their crimes in making spurious allegations against the Rwandan government. 

The most vociferous trumpeters of that defunct Mapping Report include Martin Madidi Fayulu, a failed presidential hopeful in the 2018 Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)  general election. They also include Dr Denis Mukwege, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, who has been using his newly acquired high international profile to re-activate groundless accusations against Rwanda. Both men work closely with the Congolese diaspora and international anti-Rwanda lobbyists.

The so called “DRC Mapping Exercise, or the Democratic Report of the Congo 1993-2003” was put together starting in 2008, with 33 staff working on the project in DRC, including Congolese nationals and “international human rights experts.” It was submitted to then High Commission for Human Rights Navi Pillay in 2009.

The biography of its authors, notably Mvemba Dizolele, Carina Tertsakian of Human Rights Watch (HRW) are well-known for their enmity towards the Rwandan government. The latter was declared persona non grata in Rwanda in 2010 for using forged documents to obtain a visa.

What was surprising is that long before its publication, the authors decided to irk the government which issued a strong protestation to the UN in which it highlighted the many flaws contained in the report.  The Government of Rwanda saw in this report an effort by organisations and individuals both inside and outside the UN -- to hijack the UN’s processes with the intention of rewriting history, to inaccurately put the blame for the genocide against the Tutsi that occurred in Rwanda on the government, and to reignite the conflict in Rwanda and the region. 

The Rwanda government also noted that those behind the the “mapping report” that never was, used a flawed methodology and applied the lowest imaginable evidentiary standard that barely meets minimum standard requirements for any credible research based report.  

It noted that the Draft Mapping Report relies almost entirely on the use of anonymous sources, hearsay assertions, unnamed, un-vetted and unidentified investigators, and witnesses, who lack any indicia of credibility, and alleges the existence of victims with no certainty as to their identities. 

The Rwandan government questioned the basis on which the authors selected the period between 1993 and 2003, and did not elucidate the historical context, in which the wars in DR Congo had taken place. It is worth recalling that it was the Zairean troops which first crossed to Rwanda in October 1990, to support President Habyarimana who was killing his own people. At the time, former President Mobutu Sese Seko sent his elite commandos to assist in stopping the advance of the Rebels of the Rwandese Patriotic Army (RPA).

After the genocide against the Tutsi, members of the defeated Rwandan Government Forces, together with armed Interahamwe militias and masses of civilians crossed the border into former Zaire, where they were welcomed with open arms, with all their weaponry. With the complicity of the international community, they helped the armed lot to establish refugee camps near the border, contrary to international laws regarding refugees’ status.

The authors of the so called Draft Mapping Report completely ignored contemporaneous accounts of the situation from the UN Security Council, NGOs and many other eyewitnesses in the region who confirmed that genocidal forces, often posing as civilian refugees, were operating under the cover of UN refugee camps!  In the same report, the authors prefered not to talk about the responsibility of the  international in the genocide against the Tutsi which took place in 1994, but rather apportion the blame on Rwanda for the subsequent wars which rocked the DR Congo afterwards. 

The authors also ignored the nature of the ongoing conflict within Zaire at the time, as well as the extensive repatriation and reintegration of over three million refugees to Rwanda.  This is notwithstanding the UN’s knowledge at the highest level regarding the repatriation process.  It also  failed to address the glaring inconsistency that claims of genocide are directly contradicted by Rwanda’s extensive and coordinated efforts to repatriate, resettle, and reintegrate 3.2 million Rwandan refugees; efforts that were supported by the UN. 

The Rwanda government saw in the report a disruptive attempt to undermine the peace and stability attained in the Great Lakes region, which worked against the expectations of the UN Mission in Congo ( MONUSCO) and the UN in general. 

The report was deeply flawed, exceeded the mandate, and trying to investigate a decade long conflict conflict in a country the size of Western Europe in a period of six months was enough indication of the poor quality of the draft report. 

Rwanda also rebuffed any idea that genocide might have been committed. The investigators heavily relied on unnamed sources and failed to identify alleged victims and perpetrators. The report simply documented an array of alleged crimes committed against  unidentified victims – Rwandan and Congolese, Hutu, and Tutsi alike – by many state armies and armed insurgencies.

All this  to prove that in war, as opposed to genocide, there are casualties on all sides. However, the Draft Mapping Report failed to distinguish between alleged perpetrators. In most of the alleged incidents, the authors lump together the elements of the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA), with the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo (AFDL), the Burundian armed forces (FAB), and the Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF). 

Such lumping together of these forces at best served to create confusion. Where the RPA is bundled with FAB and sometimes UPDF, it is on record that the RPA forces never carried out any joint operations with either FAB or UPDF in the first war in the DRC, the same period that gives rise to most of the allegations of genocide in The Draft Mapping Report.

Nevertheless, these days, those who have ulterior political motives, either Congolese or Rwandan genocide fugitives and dissidents and their supporters in the international community, continue to rehash the theory of a double genocide.

This is one of the biggest lasting damage the UN Draft Mapping Report caused: it provided an avenue to all the ill-intended people to use it to propagate the double genocide theory, and to undermine stability and good neighborliness enjoyed between the Rwandan government and the new government in DRC led by President Felix Tshisekedi.