Kofi Annan
UN
Political Mafia
Quotes
[2010] U.S./U.N.
cover-up of Kagame’s genocide in Rwanda and Congo by Juan Carrero The
real news is something else: namely, that in a move that breaks the code of
silence that has reigned within the U.N. for too many years, the High
Commissioner for Human Rights reveals that the U.N. Security Council and U.N.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Kofi Annan before him – the same parties who
less than a year ago accused some of us of financing the genocidaires –
have actually spent more than a decade covering up the continuous genocide
carried out by the RPF from Oct. 1, 1990, until today, which probably
constitutes the largest one since the U.N. was founded!
One year after ICTY and ICTR chief prosecutor Carla Del Ponte
(successor to Louise Arbour) opened what she called the “Special Investigation”
of the RPF in 2002, she was terminated as chief prosecutor at the ICTR, despite
taking her plea directly to Secretary-General Kofi Annan, whom Del Ponte
called “inflexible” on the question. In her memoirs, Del Ponte recounts a June
2002 meeting with Kagame at his presidential abode in Kigali, during which
Kagame, “fuming,” told her: “If you investigate [the RPF], people will believe
there were two genocides….All we did was liberate Rwanda.” This was followed by
a May 2003 meeting with Pierre-Richard Prosper, the Bush administration’s
ambassador-at-large for war crimes, who, in Del Ponte’s words, “backed the
Rwandans,” and “suggested that [she] surrender responsibility for investigating
and prosecuting the alleged crimes of the RPF.” By the time Del Ponte was able
to meet with Annan in New York in late July 2003, she told Annan, “This will be
the end of the Special Investigation,” to which Annan replied: “Yes. I know.”
“It is clear that it all started when we embarked on these
Special Investigations,” Del Ponte told an interviewer after her position with
the ICTR ended, “pressure from Rwanda contributed to the non-renewal of my
mandate.” Doubtless, pressure from other sources with a lot more clout with the
Security Council played an even greater role. Former ICTR (and ICTY)
spokesperson Florence Hartmann also recounts extensive interference by the
United States, Britain, and Kagame’s RPF in every effort by the Office of the
Prosecutor to investigate RPF crimes. Hassan Jallow, Del Ponte’s successor at
the ICTR, has stated on the record that he does not believe the assassination of
Habyarimana belongs within the ICTR’s mandate. Under his charge (from September
2003 on), the Office of the Prosecutor systematically dragged its feet when it
came to the crimes of the RPF, always pleading a need to carry out “additional
inquiries,” without ever bringing a single indictment. Through the end of 2008,
100 percent of the ICTR’s indictments for “serious violations of international
humanitarian law” committed during 1994 have been brought against Hutu members
of the former government and ethnic Hutus more generally, and none against
members of the RPF, despite the ICTR’s Statute, making no distinctions on the
basis of ethnicity or political allegiance. Neither the RPF’s violent takeover
of Rwanda, its massacre of “10,000 or more Hutu civilians” per month in 1994,
nor any of its other numerous postwar slaughters, have ever once been disturbed
by criminal charges at the ICTR. [2009] Rwanda and
the Democratic Republic of Congo in the Propaganda System by Edward S. Herman
and David Peterson
[2008] The Great Rwanda "Genocide Coverup"
by Prof. Peter Erlinder According to sworn affidavits placed in
the ICTR record in early 2006, more than 10 years ago, ICTR Lead Investigative
Prosecutor, well-respected Australian QC Michael Hourigan, recommended that
Kagame, himself, be prosecuted for the assassination of Habyarimana. But, in
1997, then-Chief UN Prosecutor Louise Arbour of Canada ordered him to drop the
Kagame investigation; to forget it ever happened; and, to burn his notes !
Hourigan resigned rather than comply and copies of his original notes are now
part of the ICTR public record for all to see.
The Hourigan affidavit makes clear that the "Rwanda
Genocide"-- Cover-up has been going on for at least a decade....but the
reasons for the cover-up did not become clear until late 2007, when a senior
Clinton Administration diplomat, Brian Atwood, was confronted with UN documents
describing a 1994 "cover-up" meeting with the Rwandan Foreign Minister in Kigali
and the UN's Kofi Annan. According to the UN documents, U.S.-sponsored human
rights reports by investigator, Robert Gersony, had documented massive
military-style executions of civilians by Kagame's troops, during and after the
final 90-days of the four-year Rwanda War.
The former Rwandan Foreign Minister at the meeting, Jean
Marie Ndagiyimana, testified at the ICTR that, rather than participate in the
proposed "cover-up," he resigned and went into exile where he remains today. His
ICTR testimony confirmed that Clinton's USAID Chief for Africa,
Brian Atwood, and the chief of the UN Department
of Peace Keeping Operations Kofi Annan, were both in his office in late October
1994 urging him to assist in the "cover-up" the war-crimes committed by Kagame's
forces.
The damning "Gersony Report" included first-hand evidence of
tens of thousands of civilians being massacred by Kagame's troops in
eastern Rwanda, later confirmed by similar reports by Human Rights Watch and
Amnesty International. The U.N. Document (also in the ICTR record) says that
Annan told the Foreign Minister that public knowledge of the Report would be
"embarrassing to the UN" and the U.S. Former Clinton-diplomat, Brian Atwood, not
only confirmed he was at the meeting, but explained that he had engaged
Gersony, and that Gersony's findings of war-crimes being committed by Kagame
were "an inconvenient truth" for both the United States and the UN.
[2007] The Gersony Report: It's Findings and
more. In his findings, Mr. Gersony states he believes that the
RPA committed genocide against Hutu in Kibungo, Butare, and parts of Kigali and
between early April to mid-September 1994, the RPF killed between 25,000-45,000
Rwandans, both Hutu and Tutsi.....The report was so damaging to the UNHCR, RPF
and UNAMIR that UN officials covered it up in October 1994, despite the fact
UNHCR officials on the ground (on the order of UNHCR head Ms. Sagato Ogata)
stopped encouraging Rwandan Hutu refugees to return to Rwanda because of the
killings, as reported in the New York Times at the end of September. Mr. Gersony
was instructed never to talk about it publicly.......The report was also
potentially damaging to the United States, a strong supporter of the new Rwandan
government. As described by Mr. Prunier in his book, then Undersecretary of
State for Global Affairs Timothy Wirth was given orders by the State Department
to discredit the report. Mr. Wirth travelled to Kigali and several places in New
York, spreading disinformation by attacking Gersony's methodology and claiming
it was a "Hutu conspiracy." He also delivered carefully crafted propagandic
press statements.
......"By not publishing the Gersony report and other information about RPF´s
massacres, a blank cheque was issued to continue the murders," said academic
Rwandan expert Dr. Filip Reyntjens of the University of Antwerp to Denmark
newspaper "Information" writer Gunnar Willum. Dr. Reyntjens went on to say in
the article of 28 June 1999, "Publication of the report would have prevented the
RPF to commit the massacre of over 200,000 Hutu refugees in Zaire," says
Reyntjens. "The RPF has used the genocide to legitimate massacres on this
civilian population.
......In his recent book on the Congo, Mr. Gerard Prunier said Kofi Annan
told then VP Kagame, the late Seth Sendashonga (then Interior Minister), PM
Faustin Twagiramungu, and President Pasteur Bizimungu the UN would withhold the
report to allow the RPF government time to consolidate after providing them with
a copy of the report.