No imperialist intervention in Zaire and
An armed intervention seems less and less likely. But the West is still more concerned about the stability of Zaire's dictator Mobutu than Rwanda's refugees.
Alain Mathieu Hundreds of thousands of Hutu refugees returning to Rwanda have pulled the rug out from under all the Western "armed humanitarians."
This development has shown the world that even after a genocidal massacre, sensible political decisions can defuse a seemingly hopeless frenzy of "us against them" hatred.
Two years ago, the Hutu extremists in Rwanda imposed their "final solution" by killing at least 800,000 Tutsis. With their arms, baggage, and genocidal ideology, they fled into Zaire, dragging a part of the Hutu population with them as hostages. In this, they were assisted by the "international community," in particular the Zairian dictator Mobutu and France.
The Hutu chauvinists exported their
Business is business
Western profiteers fuelled the genocide
The killing started on April 6th 1994. Eleven days later, the British company Mil Tec Corporation delivered a shipment of Israeli ammunition to the Rwandan army. On May 3rd.
they supplied the butchers with mortars and
AK 47 rifles. On Mav 9th. Mil Tec delivered
2,500 Albanian-made AK 47's, 500,000 bullets and 2,000 60mm mortar shells.
On may 17th, the United Nations decreed an arms embargo on the region. The next day Mil Tec supplied another cargo, this time including RP G7 rocket launchers. The last recorded Mil Tec shipment to the authors of the genocide was on July 13th, when another Albanian cargo was delivered, via
Kinshasa, to the town of Goma, at that time controlled by the French army.
Belgium
The old colonial power contributed to the slaughter through Fabrique Nationale de
Herstal, a subsidiary of the French state- owned arms producer GIAT. Rwandan Hutu extremists hidden in the Kivu region of Eastern Zaire were the lucky recipients of 1,500 Chinese and Rumanian kalashnikov assault rifles officially destined for Saudi Arabia. 4 International Viewpoint
"model" to the region, trying to create a "Hutuland" and destabilize Rwanda. This was "the low point of the century" in Africa. It could be feared that the survivors in Rwanda would be drawn into a "Zionist" ideology of ethnic separation.
If this did not happen, it is because the FPR [Patriotic Front of Rwanda] resisted any tendency toward a Bosnia-like "ethnic partition. " In two years, Rwanda was rebuilt by trying to meet the great challenge of living together again, of healing the scars, of assuring the rights of all citizens by eliminating,
"absurd ethnic point of reference. Rwandan "civil society" had to remobilize in order to survive. Meanwhile, the UN concentrated on aiding the Interahamwe Hutu militias.
Rwanda has 6.5 million inhabitants, 80 Belgian authorities provided this shipment with an export certificate for Saudi Arabia. Proof of the deal was uncovered when soldiers of the Rwandan Patriotic Army (APR) overran a position of soldiers of the former Rwandan army on Iwawa island, on lake Kivu. The Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has so far refused to respond to a United Nations Commission enquiry about the motive for the delivery.
Evidence of French military and diplomatic support for Rwanda's Hutu regime in the years leading up to the genocide is available from a range of sources
On May 5th, the part-nationalised SOFREMAS company quoted its price and conditions for the delivery of spare parts for the armoured personnel carriers of the Rwandan Armed Forces (FAR).:
In late May and early June, after the UN embargo on arms deliveries, French suppliers landed artillery, machine guns, assault rifles and ammunition at Goma airport on at least five occasions. In each case, the customer was the genocidal Hutu regime. JeanClaude Urbano, the French Consul in Goma, justified these deliveries as representing contracts signed with the Rwandan government before the embargo. LET] * Sources: (Britain) The Times, 18 November 96, (Belgium) UN Commission on arms deliveries to the bellig erent parties, (France) Human Rights Watch report
May 1995, Francois-Xavier Verschave in Rapport 1996 de /'Observatoire permanent de la cooperation francaise, published by Desclee de Brouwer, May 1995 percent of whom, it should be remembered. are Hutus, as is the president of the country, Pasteur Bizimungu and two-thirds of the government ministers. It had to defuse anger and vengefulness, resist tendencies to retreat into ethnic self-centeredness, and to organize the return of 600,000 Hutu refugees from Zaire.
The returning refugees were met at the border by the Rwandan president, who greeted them with an emotional expression of sympathy, government ministers, and a Rwandan army that talked about reconciliation and about their going back to their villages. The return of the refugees was in fact the only political and social solution other than perpetuating separate development on
Rwanda is not Somalia. Its standard of living has already climbed back to a higher level than that of the Zairian population. The salaries of soldiers, teachers, and government functionaries are being paid. Sufficient goods are reaching the markets.
This very fertile country needs labor in the villages in order to reap the benefits of its relatively prosperous agriculture. It has enjoyed investment from the Tutsi Diaspora that is returning to the country or investing in it. The land question is less vexed in Rwanda than it was in Kivu, where two million refugees were trying to rob the Zairian peasants of their lands and livestock, which is what
Of course, there will be problems in Rwanda, conflicts, situations that get out of hand, attempts at infiltration by the Hutu militias, excessive jailings and harsh sentences. This will happen above all if justice is not done on a regional scale: if those really responsible for the outrages are not sentenced by the Arusha international tribunal, which has not even begun to charge anyone.
Above all, chaos will ensue if Rwanda is not afforded the means to develop itself. French imperialism, Mobutu, and all the mercenary scum of the continent have not made their last attempt to destabilize Rwanda and reconquer Kivu.
We can trust the French media to highlight anything that goes wrong in Rwanda, to try to kill hope. Three Rwandan women were in Paris recently to accept the UNESCO Prize for Tolerance, in recognition of work done by 32 Rwandan women's organizations since 1994. One of them said: "Since 1994, I have had the impression of having gone through an experience lasting 30 years. With the women of Rwanda, who now make up 60 to 70 percent of the population, goaded by terrible suffering and the need to surpass ourselves in order to survive, we have carried through a fundamental change.
"We Hutu and Tutsi women together
Rwanda!
have taken charge of thousands of orphans, and widows, and of the work of rebuilding homes. We are continuing to take charge of receiving the refugees from Zaire. The experience we are going through will not have an effect only on Rwanda but on all of Africa and beyond. It is a message of hope for all of humanity. After the nightmare of genocide and war, we are convinced that we are going to find a solution."
What has just happened is also a defeat for the monstrous system of French domination, which has based itself on the worst kind of dictatorships and survived a succession of governments without changing. It is from France that Mobutu in his villa is trying to regain control of the situation. It is here