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The story of HRW’s failure over genocide in Rwanda yet to be told
The latest Human Rights Watch report on Rwanda, published
earlier this month, has come as no surprise to those familiar with its history
of criticism of the Rwandan government.
The research that HRW conducts is poorly regarded in Rwanda and
is questioned by international experts with knowledge of the 1994 genocide
against the Tutsi. It should not be forgotten that HRW advocacy contributed to
the UK High Court decision not to extradite five genocide suspects living in
the UK.
When the five men walked from the courtroom in London and were
greeted by a jubilant crowd of supporters, a disappointed lawyer with the Crown
Prosecution Service described as unfortunate the HRW submissions describing the
impossibility of a fair trial in Rwanda.
The High Court decision not to extradite the men in 2016 came at
a time when the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) was sending
detainees for trial in Rwanda, as were the governments of Sweden and Norway.
The HRW research was initially dismissed in UK courts. In the
first extradition hearing in 2008 at Westminster Magistrates’ Court Judge
Anthony Evans had concluded that HRW reports lacked factual scientific basis
and relied on anecdotal evidence.
The process had seen weeks of testimony. Among those who came to
court to try to stop the extradition was Paul Rusesabagina, the supposed hero
of the film Hotel Rwanda. He told
Judge Evans there was no systematic government-led state-sponsored genocide
against the Tutsi in 1994.
Evans decided the Rusesabagina testimony was worthless, and his
claims about Rwandan justice were wild and exaggerated.
HRW has steadfastly supported Rusesabagina over the years,
seemingly unaware of a September 19, 2021 story in Le
Soir in Brussels by Colette Braeckman. Writing about a police raid on
Rusesabagina’s house in Brussels she had described how mobile phones, a
computer, and documents were seized.
Downloading the material, police found regular amounts of money
sent to armed operatives conducting raids into Rwanda, terrorizing and killing
citizens. In the French daily Libération,
Maria Malagardis wrote of an email in which Rusesabagina had urged the
intensification of attacks into Rwanda.
HRW is not without its critics. Roelof Haveman, a policy adviser
in the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs, once accused the organisation
as incapable of distinguishing between opinion and fact; it was unaccountable
to anyone and more importantly to the people of Rwanda.
Professor William Schabas has said that HRW was not neutral. It
took positions at a political or policy level, then marshalled the evidence,
such as it existed, in order to support its views. Schabas noted how the
organization seemed more concerned to prove supposed RPF guilt for human rights
abuses, rather than to chase recalcitrant governments who had genocide suspects
on their soil.
A concern for HRW in this latest report is that Rwanda’s
improvements in laws and administrative structures have not been matched in
judicial independence and respect for the right to a fair trial.
Not everyone agrees. In a speech to the UN Security Council on
June 12, 2023, the President of the United Nations International Residual
Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (UNMICT), Graciela Gatti Santana, assured
Council members of Rwanda’s advancements in handling court cases efficiently
and effectively, so much so that the ICTR had transferred genocide cases to
Rwandan courts along with numerous countries who have also transferred genocide
suspects.
As in previous reports, there is no mention of the hundreds of
genocide suspects at large, some of them wielding an ongoing campaign of
genocide denial and an information war against Rwanda.
The HRW section on the Rwandan diaspora makes no reference to
this. HRW ignores the Hutu Power movement as though it no longer exists, is
naively unaware of its fake news and disinformation, and is likely susceptible
to influence.
The Hutu Power forces were defeated, not destroyed. There is
scant information in this report about the leadership of the Forces Démocratiques pour la Libération du
Rwanda (FDLR), the remnants of the genocidal forces in the DRC who are
committed to completing the genocide and extending it to communities of
Rwandans across the region.
The anti-Tutsi ideology is broadcast freely in the neighbouring
DRC as these Hutu Power military forces sow misery and terror. “The FDLR have
become weakened militarily in recent years and are only able to conduct rare
attacks into Rwanda”, the HRW report states.
There has been thirty years of research, reports, and studies
yet HRW finds it impossible to provide a verifiable death toll for the 1994
genocide against the Tutsi. It suggests a figure of “more than half a million”
victims without any explanation of how this figure is arrived at and simply
provides a footnote to explain that an exact figure may never be known.
The report claims the killing was triggered by the presidential
assassination and was “orchestrated”, betraying no understanding of the racism
that had underpinned the genocide, nor the crucial role of hate speech, or its
present dangers.
Since 1994, Rwanda has passed several laws intended to prevent
and punish hate speech of the kind that led to the genocide. HRW has determined
these laws are vague and are used to restrict free speech and limit how people
talk about the genocide.
In its report, HRW uses
the words, “divisionism” and “genocide ideology” in inverted commas as though
doubting their existence. No examples are provided of how these laws have been
supposedly misapplied.
One could argue that the criticism of the work of HRW by Judge
Evans still applies. The latest report should raise concerns, even among
supporters. Basic information is missing from the anonymous informants --
times, dates, and places. Even though the witnesses remain anonymous, there is
supporting evidence HRW could have provided.
There is an unfortunate history of misunderstanding. The
organisation was slow to respond in 1994. Its first letter to the Security
Council about an on-going genocide was sent on April 19, nearly two weeks after
the genocide against the Tutsi began. Some of the early advocacy was on the
predicament of Monique Mujawamariya, a human rights activist with strong ties
to HRW.
A series of declassified US cables show the US government's
concerns for her safety as she tried to escape Rwanda. A memo dated April 20
from the US National Security Council suggests that the newly rescued
Mujawamariya might usefully meet with President Bill Clinton. This was to “keep
the tragedy in the public eye....and give us the opportunity to make public our
continuing concern over the killings”.
This myopic focus seems to have set a pattern for HRW work in Rwanda. An attempt to explain a genocide through one individual may have been misplaced when 10,000 people were being killed every day. The story of the failure of HRW over genocide in Rwanda is yet to be told.
The author, Linda Melvern, is a seasoned British investigative journalist and researcher. She extensively covered the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi and has written three books on the subject: A People Betrayed, Conspiracy to Murder and her latest one, Conspiracy to Deceive.
The story was first published at The New Times.