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Rwanda Was a Victim of Leopold's Policies

The Monitor (Kampala)
OPINION
January 1, 2005
Posted to the web January 3, 2005

By Ngango Rukara
Kampala
On Saturday, December 18, 2004, Mr Louis Michel, former Belgian Foreign
Minister and current European Union Commissioner For Development and
Humanitarian Aid, declared in Kigali that there can never be peace and
stability in the Great Lakes region, as long as ex-FAR/ Interahamwe are still
armed and free to operate, the way they are currently doing in the Democratic
Republic of the Congo (DRC).
He went on to promise that the international community, including the European
Union, he represents had made the decision to finally take on the ex-FAR/
Interahamwe and to forcibly disarm them. It was in light of this assurance, on
the part of the international community, that the Government of Rwanda has
rescinded its earlier declaration to pursue the Rwandan militia in their bases
in the DRC, since someone seems to be taking the problem seriously.
What is clearly emerging, therefore, is the realization on the part of the
international community, that they can't wish away the threat that the ex-FAR/
Interahamwe constitute to peace and stability in the Great Lakes region. For
the last ten years, the primary target of this threat has been Rwanda. And
certainly the ex-FAR/Interahamwe militia are not an issue to be taken lightly.
Their genocidal record is still vivid in the minds of the Rwandan people and
indeed others in the world who witnessed the 1994 genocide via their television
screens and other media outlets.
From the public statements issued by their leaders and the attempts they have
made against Rwanda since 1994, the ex-FAR/Interahamwe firmly believe that
genocide in Rwanda is an unfinished business, which they have been working hard
to complete, as demonstrated by the sustained efforts they have made towards
that mission.
Given the gravity of the threat they pose, it would be abdication of its
constitutional obligation, if the Government of Rwanda did not decisively deal
with this problem. It, therefore, boggles the mind as to why anyone, much less
a journalist, would seek to minimize the danger represented by ex-FAR/
Interahamwe, demonizing the Government of Rwanda for announcing that it would
seek out these genocidal criminals in their DRC hideouts, if no one else does.
In his December 21, 2004 article in the Monitor, Rwanda Following in Leopold's
Steps, Mr Elias Biryabarema seeks to compare Rwanda to the 19th Century Belgian
monarch responsible for horrendous atrocities against the Congolese people, as
well as epitomizing rampant exploitation of natural resources that
characterized European colonial occupation in Africa and Asia during that
period in history.
However, Mr Biryabarema's comparison of Belgium's Leopold and the Government of
Rwanda is way out of line and a clear case of misrepresentation of facts. When
King Leopold took over the Congo, it was in keeping with the European Scramble
for Africa, part of the larger European imperialism that sought to dominate and
exploit the African continent, a process that was endorsed by the 1888 Berlin
Conference. On the contrary, when Rwanda sent troops to the Democratic Republic
of the Congo in 1996 and 1998, it was confronting an immediate security threat,
as the ex-FAR/Interahamwe were clearly using the DRC territory to launch
attacks on Rwanda in their continued effort to complete the genocide.
While King Leopold and indeed Belgium had the choice as to whether or not to
colonize and exploit the Congo, Rwanda had no choice but to defend its people
against an armed genocidal organization bent on wiping out a section of the
country's population. The Rwandan people were themselves victims of the vicious
Belgian rule, under whose domination they suffered for over sixty years. Today,
the people of Rwanda are still grappling with the effects and horrors of
Belgian colonial rule, including the seeds of division they sowed among the
Rwandan people, which were largely responsible for the 1994 genocide and its
aftermath.
To the author, the number of the Rwandan people who died in the 1994 genocide
is insignificant, because "less than a million people died in that massacre".
He goes on to state: "It cannot be, as has been claimed that Rwanda still basks
in the comfort of the post 1994 genocide guilt of inaction". Whether the claim
belongs to the author or anyone else, it is a demonstration of callousness at
its utmost. By merely beginning to imagine that a people derive any form of
comfort from the decimation of more than a million of their own is nothing
short of criminal cynicism and the most heartless view to an unequalled human
tragedy of our time.
The author is so obsessed with the drive to diminish the 1994 Rwandan genocide,
he resorts to non-existent comparisons, claiming that:
"History has recorded worse human suffering to let us be cowed by the lesser
guilt and permit a nation to precipitate another murder and pillage with such
impunity as Rwanda is doing". The point missed by Mr Biryabarema here is the
fact that the issue is not the numbers, the issue is that someone carefully
decided, planned and organized the wiping out of a section of society. And
talking about numbers: if the over one million Rwandan lives that perished in
1994 do not amount to much, as Biryabarema says, then he does not know what he
is referring to when he mentions "human suffering" !
The author's accusation that Rwanda's mission to Congo would precipitate mass
murder and pillage is a tired and baseless line. Firstly, for the figures he
quotes of the Congolese people who died, it is universally agreed that the
deaths were a result of poverty and disease, the two critical factors, which
date back to Mobutu's regime, when people in the Congo fell victim to epidemics
and poverty-induced diseases.
This scenario has not changed under President Kabila either. Secondly, if the
Democratic Republic of the Congo was endowed with so-easy-to-pick resources,
the Congolese people wouldn't be dying of poverty ! Congo's wealth is literally
buried in the ground, and it takes those with sufficient resources and
technology to exploit them, the way Belgium and other Western powers did.
Rwanda is certainly not in that league. Ask the Americans who in 1945
successfully exploded the bomb over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, an accomplishment
purely facilitated by Uranium mined from the then Belgian Congo.
The argument that Rwanda failed to contain the ex-FAR/Interahamwe during the
time her troops were in the DRC, is equally false. Indeed the Rwanda Defence
Forces (RDF) had decisively neutralized these elements, since all their efforts
to launch attacks on Rwanda were successfully foiled, when the RDF was still
operating in the DRC.
The authr chooses to throw dirt at President Kagame with what he says are
"imperial adventures, intransigence of character and anarchist campaigns",
calling upon the African Union (AU) to view the president of Rwanda in similar
light. However, the President Paul Kagame that the AU knows is the exact
opposite of the image Mr Biryabarema seeks to portray. The African Union knows
the President of Rwanda as a statesman who has worked hard to bring peace and
stability, not only to the Great Lakes region, but to the entire African
continent.
Indeed the African Union knows President Paul Kagame as the one African leader
who came to the rescue of the continent at the hour of need, when he granted
the organization's request to send a peacekeeping force to the Darfur region of
the Sudan when few, if any, were prepared to answer the call.
The author's suggestion that the ex-FAR/Interahamwe "is best handled by
multilateral means" is a cruel joke. The history of the Great Lakes region for
the last ten years has proven that that approach does not work. When the over
one million Rwandans were cut to death, there was a multilateral representation
in the country under the banner of the United Nations.
MONUC, the United Nations Force in the DRC has been hob-knobbing with ex-FAR/
Interahamwe in Eastern Congo for the last three years and they won't hear
anything to do with disarming and disabling the Rwandan genocidal militia.
Meanwhile, they (ex-FAR/Interahamwe) launch rocket attacks on Rwanda, and the
government is supposed to keep quiet !
The author insults the African people by claiming that "Europeans... are
admittedly far smarter than us... as they would never permit a war of the sort
of Congo to blaze in their midst... .". Well, someone out there should remind
this journalist that the wars that were fought in the "midst" of Europeans in
the last century, cost the lives of the equivalent of the populations of three
Continental European countries. So much for smart Europeans.
Now that the European Union and their North American cousins are gradually
coming to terms with the fact that the ex-FAR/Interahamwe menace in the Great
Lakes region has to be fixed for peace and stability to prevail in the region,
one would only conclude that "black African" journalists like Elias Biryabarema
who have bought into the supposed "smartness" and "superiority" of the white
race will finally realize that the Government of Rwanda is not the problem
after all.
The writer is Director, The Great Lakes Centre, Kigali

   

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