Enduring Lies: The Rwandan Genocide in the Propaganda System, 20 Years Later 1500751111, 9781500751111

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ENDURING TJ—/ 1T F J-/ 0 The Rwandan Genocide in the Propaganda System, 20 Years Later T YXtTTA

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"This landmark investigation into the Rwandan Genocide reminds us that great power rules across the world with a lethal deceit that never speaks its name." — JOHN PILGER

ENDURING

LIES The Rwandan Genocide in the Propaganda System, 20 Years Later The Real News Books Edward S. Herman and David Peterson

The Real News Books

Copyright © 2014 The Real News Books All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any medium without the prior written permission of The Real News Books. ISBN-13: 978-1500751111 ISBN-10: 1500751111

Layout/Design: Alphabet Soup Evergreen Park, IL 60805

Printed in the United States of America

CONTENTS Preface Introduction

1. Rwanda: Background and context

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2. The RPF invasion and low-level aggressive war that never was a “civil war” .......................... 22

3. “Hutu Power extremists” did not shoot-down Habyarimana’s Falcon 50 jet ....................... 26

4. The ‘‘Rwandan genocide” by the numbers

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5. The West’s alleged “failure to intervene”

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6. The ICTR delivers victor’s justice

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7. The alleged Hutu “conspiracy to commit genocide” that never was.................................. 43 8. Did Paul Kagame’s RPF really “stop the genocide”?

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9. “Africa’s World War”: Kagame’s alleged pursuit of “genocidaires” in Zaire—the Democratic Republic of Congo—and the deaths of millions .

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10. The apocryphal “Genocide Fax”

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11. The New York Times and other “Genocide Fax” 63 disinformants ............................................... 12. Role of UN, human rights groups, media, and intellectuals in promulgating the standard model ........................................... 66 Concluding Note: Genocidist misallocation (Rwanda) and the real genocide denial (DRC) ......................... 74

CONTENTS

Appendix I: More on the alleged Hutu “conspiracy to commit genocide” that never was ................. 78

Appendix II: The apocryphal “Genocide Fax”—another look

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Notes

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Index

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Maps: Africa

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Rwanda 1994

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Zaire-The Democratic Republic of Congo

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Table 1. Ranges and ethnic compositions of deaths in the 33 “Rwandan genocide” .............................

Table 2. Bylined-articles on Rwanda in the world’s media, 72 April 1,2004 - April 30, 2014 ................ Illustrations: Three versions of the apocryphal “Genocide Fax”

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Preface According to the widely accepted history of the 1994 “Rwandan geno­ cide,” there existed a plan or conspiracy among members of Rwanda's Hutu majority to exterminate the country’s minority Tutsi population. This plan, the story goes, was hatched some time prior to the April 6, 1994 assassination of Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana, who died when his Falcon 50 jet was shot-down as it approached the airport of the capital city of Kigali. The killers allegedly responsible for this crime were "Hutu Power" extremists in positions of authority at the time. Al­ though Habyarimana was Hutu, the story continues, he was also more moderate and accommodative toward the Tutsi than “Hutu Power” ex­ tremists could tolerate; they were therefore forced to physically eliminate him in order to carry out their plan to exterminate the Tutsi. The mass killings of Tutsi and “moderate Hutu” swiftly followed over the next 100 days, with perhaps 800,000 or as many as 1.1 million deaths. The “Rwan­ dan genocide” came to an end only when the armed forces of Paul Kagame's Rwandan Patriotic Front drove the “genocidaires" from power, and liberated the country. We refer to the above-version of the events that transpired in Rwanda 1994 as the standard model of the “Rwandan genocide.” And we note, up front, that we believe that this model is a complex of interwoven lies which, when examined closely, unravels in toto. Nevertheless, its Truth has been entered into the establishment history books and promulgated within the field of genocide studies, in documen­ taries, in the official history at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, and even proclaimed from on-high by the UN Security Council in April 2014. The institutionalization of the “Rwandan genocide” has been the re­ markable achievement of a propaganda system sustained by both public and private power, with the crucial assistance of a related cadre of intel­ lectual enforcers. The favorite weapons of these enforcers are reciting the institutionalized untruths as gospel while portraying critics of the stan­ dard model as “genocide deniers,” dark figures who lurk at the same moral level as child molesters, to be condemned and even outlawed. But we will show that this is not only crude name-calling, it also deflects at­ tention away from those figures who bear the greatest responsibility for

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the bulk of the killings in Rwanda 1994, and for the even larger-scale killings in Zaire and the Democratic Republic of Congo thereafter. Our book draws upon the work of a number of critics of the standard model, as well as the steadily growing stock of revelations that have en­ tered the public realm over the past 20 years. But we also cite the publi­ cations of many of this model’s defenders who, though failing to question and free themselves from the early deluge of propaganda about the “geno­ cide,” have still produced important studies on Rwanda or central Africa more broadly, and we cite them in their areas of strength. (The Belgian scholar Filip Reyntjens stands-out in this respect.) In other cases, how­ ever, we deal with writers who advocate so zealously on behalf of the standard model that they and their work are notable for entirely different reasons—as willful conveyers of misinformation on Rwanda 1994, and, ultimately, as propagandists for Kagame Power. (The Canadian writer Gerald Caplan and the British writer Linda Melvern are featured here, but they are far from alone.) In the research, acquisition of documents, and writing of the present book, our greatest debts are to the Canadian attorney Christopher Black and the U.S. attorney Peter Erlinder, both of whom have represented Hutu defendants before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in two of its major trials, the Military II and Military I trials, respectively. We’ve also been guided by the work of the Canadian analyst of Rwanda, Robin Philpot. Leopold Nsengiyumva (Rwanda) and Lauren Tipton (United States), both of whom served as legal assistants on Christopher Black's team before the ICTR, among others, also provided us with assistance. As has the U.S. reference librarian Dale Wertz (indeed, over many years).

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