"Study history, study history. In history lies
all the secrets of statecraft."
~~Winston Churchill
BBC Documentary : Rwanda
the untold story
http://vimeo.com/107867605
http://watchmanafrica.blogspot.com/2014/10/what-really-happened-in-rwanda-you-can.html
http://www.psmag.com/navigation/politics-and-law/what-really-happened-in-rwanda-3432/
by
Edward S. Herman
http://musictravel.free.fr/political/political75.htm
http://watchmanafrica.blogspot.com/2013/02/tony-blair-defends-rwandas-role-in-dr.html
My
rebuttal of Andrew Mwenda’s attack of the BBC documentary on Rwanda
BBC’s hatchet job on Rwanda
Andrew Mwenda starts his so
called rebuttal of the BBC documentary by saying that; what is in the
documentary is nothing new. However, presenting
evidence over and over again does not make this evidence false. This simply shows that the truth can be
hidden under the ground for some time , but it is a matter of time before it
sprouts out of the ground.
Andrew Mwenda argues that , ‘’BBC
is expected to be fair and balanced – or at least pretend to. Yet the
documentary collects well-known genocide deniers and fugitive former Rwanda
government officials for its cast. There is Filip Reyntjens, a Belgian academic
who helped the Juvenal Habyarimana administration write its constitution. He is
presented as the “world’s leading expert on Rwanda.” This is a lie, none of the people featured in the documentary are genocide
deniers . These people subscribe to a double genocide view. They argue that
there was a genocide against both the Tusis
and Hutus.
Andrew Mwenda also fallaciously argues that , ‘’Others in the
cast include Kayumba Nyamwasa, a renegade general living in exile in South
Africa; and his friend Theogene Rudasingwa, a former director of cabinet in
Kagame’s office. Kayumba even says Kagame “is a serial killer who enjoys
killing his citizens.” Never mind that this “serial killer” is the only
president of a poor country that has given nearly all his poor citizens medical
insurance cover – oh, what a way to enjoy killing your citizens! I know how BBC
works.’’ This is a very silly argument; giving the
poor people insurance does make one a non-serial killer. In other words, there
is no causal relation between giving the poor medical insurance and being a non-serial
killer. I wonder whether Mwenda attended even a single class of logic.
Andrew Mwenda also lies that , ‘’There is not a single person –
whether a genocide survivor, an official of the government of Rwanda, or the RPF who is
interviewed. It is a one-sided condemnation of Rwanda government, Kagame and the
RPF.’’ This a lie, there is a Hutu lady in the documentary who is a genocide survivor . In addition,
the presenter of the documentary states it categorically that Kagame refused to
be interviewed for the documentary . If dictator Kagame refused to be interviewed,
how can Mwenda expect other RPF officials to participate.
Andrew Mwenda also argues that, ‘’Another man claiming to have
been Kagame’s bodyguard alleges it is the RPF that shot down Habyarimana’s
plane. He claims to have been in the meeting where the decision was taken. But
the documentary does nothing to show that he is was actually part of Kagame’s
bodyguard. His claims are taken on face value. Is this journalism? ‘’ Surprisingly, he also fails in his article to prove that this
man was not Kagame’s body guard.
Andrew Mwenda further commits a
fallacy of homogenization by arguing that , ‘’Everyone knows that Habyarimana
had planned the genocide long before he died.’’ This
is nonsense because many people including the ones featured in the documentary do
not believe so.
Andrew Mwenda also argues that ,’’The opportunistic claims of
Kayumba and Rudasingwa thus amount to saying that Britain
and France be held
responsible for the Jewish holocaust because it is their declaration of war
against Germany
that sparked off World War Two and led Hitler to kill six million Jews.’’ Mwenda is making false comparisons . There was no peace
accord between Germany
and France/Britain to end the war but there was the Arusha peace accord between
Kagame’s RPF and Habyarimana’s government which Kagame violated . It can therefore be argued that Kagame’s violation
of the peace accord somehow contributed to the genocide. Why would you declare
war amidst the Arusha peace accord??? And why would you shoot a plane with two
Hutu presidents without thinking of the consequence of that action -which is
genocide.
What Really Happened in Rwanda? You can only find the truth by thinking outside the Box
What Really Happened in Rwanda?
• October 06, 2009
Genocide Inflation is the Real Human Rights Threat: Yugoslavia and Rwanda
by
Edward S. Herman
October 26, 2007
http://musictravel.free.fr/political/political75.htm
MUST READ:
Journalists who have been trained and paid to defend US proxies: Seeing through the hypocrisy of American New world order neo-liberal elites: Andrew Mwenda and his simplistic analysis of the DR Congo Crisis: Andrew Mwenda’s hypocritical defence of Dictator Paul Kagame.
http://watchmanafrica.blogspot.com/2012/12/seeing-through-hypocrisy-of-american.html
The fallacy of appealing to abuse: Ugandan Neo-liberal Media Elite Andrew Mwenda Accuses his critics of attacking his personality instead of his arguments but also attacks their personality by calling them stupid and people of a low IQ.
How American Neo-liberal elites sophisticatedly use their intellectual antics to legitimize USA client state dictatorships : American neo-liberal elite Andrew Mwenda stealthily blames Museveni’s dictatorship on the opposition .
Andrew Mwenda’s atheistic big bang solution to the D.R.Congo makes it to the New York times…Why? The USA loves intellectuals who can make obscurantist analyses that disguise their evil skirmishes in DR.Congo. They love Intellectuals like Mwenda that have the ‘skill’ to portray the D.R Congo Confusion as an essentially domestic one.
The curse of neo-liberal elitism : When American gloomed neo-liberal elites make obscurantist analyses aimed at disguising western and American tentacles to the DR Congo Conflict: According to athesit Andrew Mwenda, To solve the problems of Congo, the United Nations and other African countries may need to allow the belligerents to fight until one secures a decisive military victory
The Herculean task of painting Black US client dictatorial regimes white: How the fallen eloquent journalist Andrew Mwenda tried tooth and Nail to erase Karegeya’s death from Kagame.
Rwandan President Paul Kagame Joins Saddleback Church in Celebrating ‘PEACE’ 20 Years after the Genocide
Also see
Who was Behind the Rwandan Genocide? The Rwandan Patriotic Front's Bloody Record and the History of UN Cover-Ups
The US was behind the Rwandan Genocide: Installing a US
Protectorate in Central Africa
Is the West finally giving up on Rwanda's Kagame? The Case Against Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame
Tony Blair defends Rwanda's role in DR Congo: Of course Tonny, you have always been a truth telling guy!!! I remember when you told us the ‘truth’ that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction.
President Kagame’s Thorn in the fresh : Rwandan exiled General Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa accuses Kagame of triggering the 1994 genocide
http://watchmanafrica.blogspot.com/2012/07/president-kagames-thorn-in-fresh.html
Impunity and Complicity in the Genocide in Rwanda and Congo: African Mercenaries for the American New world order system
Impunity and Complicity in the Genocide in Rwanda and Congo: African Mercenaries for the American New world order system
Obama requests immunity for Kagame - Rwanda Genocide and Congo wars
Kagame , The USA Darling and African economic model who violates human rights with impunity :The danger of running from one USA client state and hiding in another USA slave state : Former Kagame bodyguard attacked in Uganda
http://watchmanafrica.blogspot.com/2012/07/kagame-usa-darling-and-african-economic.html
When Rwandan Refugees Die like rats amidst Global silence: Rwanda Journalist Shot in Kampala
http://watchmanafrica.blogspot.com/2011/12/when-rwandan-refugees-die-like-rats.html
Mysterious deaths during Kagame’s Rwanda : Theogene Turatsinze the Managing Director of the Rwanda Development Bank from 2005-2007 dies mysteriously
BBC’s hatchet job on Rwanda
Monday, 13 October 2014 06:44 By Andrew M. Mwenda
And so it was that after a couple of text messages I decided to spare an hour to watch a documentary by the BBC titled “Rwanda: The Untold Story”. Everything the documentary claims to “reveal” in this “untold story” has been told before. Critics of President Paul Kagame and the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) have made these allegations for years. What was intriguing was the audacity of the BBC to give a platform to these allegations.
BBC is expected to be fair and balanced – or at least pretend to. Yet the documentary collects well-known genocide deniers and fugitive former Rwanda government officials for its cast. There is Filip Reyntjens, a Belgian academic who helped the Juvenal Habyarimana administration write its constitution. He is presented as the “world’s leading expert on Rwanda.” He is a well-known critic of Kagame and has not been in Rwanda in 20 years.
Others in the cast include Kayumba Nyamwasa, a renegade general living in exile in South Africa; and his friend Theogene Rudasingwa, a former director of cabinet in Kagame’s office. Kayumba even says Kagame “is a serial killer who enjoys killing his citizens.” Never mind that this “serial killer” is the only president of a poor country that has given nearly all his poor citizens medical insurance cover – oh, what a way to enjoy killing your citizens! I know how BBC works. It would never allow such a sentence to pass its editorial eye. So why did BBC allow this to pass against Kagame?
Neither can BBC justify itself by saying that the woman who did the documentary is not their employee. It is BBC that broadcast the documentary and bares full responsibility for all its accusations, lies and innuendoes. There is not a single person – whether a genocide survivor, an official of the government of Rwanda, or the RPF who is interviewed. It is a one-sided condemnation of Rwanda government, Kagame and the RPF.
The documentary sinks to the abyss when it presents two Americans it claims have done research on the genocide in Rwanda. One of them claims that of the one million people killed by the interahamwe militias during the genocide, only 200,000 were Tutsi. The other 800,000, this expert insinuates, were Hutus killed by the RPF. In short, the BBC is saying there were actually two genocides in Rwanda and the one against Hutus was the worst. The documentary does not ask this so called expert the basis of this wild claim.
The documentary has a man with a laptop who claims to have recorded a “telephone conversation” with a “top Rwanda government official” who offers him $1m to kill Kayumba. However, there is no effort to establish the voice on the phone and link it to a “top government official in Rwanda”. Why should anyone believe this is a genuine telephone conversation?
Another man claiming to have been Kagame’s bodyguard alleges it is the RPF that shot down Habyarimana’s plane. He claims to have been in the meeting where the decision was taken. But the documentary does nothing to show that he is was actually part of Kagame’s bodyguard. His claims are taken on face value. Is this journalism? As expected, Kayumba and Rudasingwa support this allegation but none of them presents a whit of evidence to support their position.
Everyone knows that Habyarimana had planned the genocide long before he died. Militias had been trained. Machetes had been procured. A propaganda campaign mobilising the general population had been on radio and newspapers for years. Lists of people to kill had been drawn. In January 1994, the UN Peace-keeping force commander in Rwanda, Gen. Romeo Dellaire, had sent a cable to UN headquarters in New York seeking permission to attack and destroy ammunitions depots that had been stocked with weapons to kill Tutsis. The beginning of genocide was a matter or time, not intent.
In that documentary, Kayumba and Rudasingwa represent the tragedy of African elites when they have fallen out of favour with a government. They allege that it is the shooting of Habyarimana’s plane that sparked off the genocide. Therefore, they conclude, RPF is fully or partly culpable for the genocide. First, even assuming (just for argument’s sake) that this claim has merit, why did they serve in the RPF for over ten years if they knew it was responsible for one of the worst human tragedies of the 20th century?
Although their opportunism is blinding, we should not miss what it reveals i.e. their political bankruptcy. Lacking a core message to sell to Rwandans, they retreat to false and wild accusations to appease interests that are prejudiced against Africa. Let us assume, again for argument’s sake, that RPF shot down Habyarimana’s plane: does that justify Hutu militants taking revenge on innocent Tutsi civilians – including women and children?
Habyarimana’s government was at war with Kagame’s RPF. If he had a chance to kill Kagame would Habyarimana have let it pass? In war, you are justified to kill your enemy. All too often, the leader of the enemy forces is the center of gravity and therefore a legitimate military target. Take him out, and the resistance may collapse. That was the reasoning behind President Barack Obama’s relentless pursuit of Osama Bin Laden. It is obvious therefore that RPF had a strong interest to kill Habyarimana. Even if they killed him, it would neither justify Habyarimana’s state machinery massacring innocent Tutsis nor make RPF responsible for the genocide.
The opportunistic claims of Kayumba and Rudasingwa thus amount to saying that Britain and France be held responsible for the Jewish holocaust because it is their declaration of war against Germany that sparked off World War Two and led Hitler to kill six million Jews. This tendency, to try and use the shooting down of Habyarimana’s plane to make RPF wholly or partially responsible for the genocide, has been a recurrent theme of the sympathisers of the Hutu supremacist government that massacred innocents.
Every mass murderer has been driven by some grievance – Hitler by the fear that Jews were taking over Germany. But you cannot massacre a million people and then claim it was because someone else annoyed you and he or she should therefore share your culpability. If we allowed this twisted logic, every criminal would claim someone else drove him/her to commit a crime.
The documentary itself is neither shocking nor surprising. What is both shocking and surprising is that, it was broadcast by the BBC. We need to know why BBC did this.
Articles by Andrew Mwenda's critics
THE MWENDA SELLOUT
http://www.investigator.co.ug/politics/1435-the-mwenda-sellout.html
Andrew Mwenda’s atheistic big bang solution to the D.R.Congo makes it to the New York times…Why? The USA loves intellectuals who can make obscurantist analyses that disguise their evil skirmishes in DR.Congo. They love Intellectuals like Mwenda that have the ‘skill’ to portray the D.R Congo Confusion as an essentially domestic one.
How American Neo-liberal elites sophisticatedly use their intellectual antics to legitimize USA client state dictatorships : American neo-liberal elite Andrew Mwenda stealthily blames Museveni’s dictatorship on the opposition .
THE FALL OF ANDREW MWENDA: How bribery turned a revered journalist into a vulgar propagandist
Andrew Mwenda is on Kagame’s payroll and unethical journalist
http://ugandansatheart.org/2010/03/05/andrew-mwenda-is-on-kagames-payroll/BBC’s hatchet job on Rwanda
How Britain’s leading institution has lent its services to the deniers of the genocide against the Tutsi
And so it was that after a couple of text messages I decided to spare an hour to watch a documentary by the BBC titled “Rwanda: The Untold Story”. Everything the documentary claims to “reveal” in this “untold story” has been told before. Critics of President Paul Kagame and the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) have made these allegations for years. What was intriguing was the audacity of the BBC to give a platform to these allegations.
BBC is expected to be fair and balanced – or at least pretend to. Yet the documentary collects well-known genocide deniers and fugitive former Rwanda government officials for its cast. There is Filip Reyntjens, a Belgian academic who helped the Juvenal Habyarimana administration write its constitution. He is presented as the “world’s leading expert on Rwanda.” He is a well-known critic of Kagame and has not been in Rwanda in 20 years.
Others in the cast include Kayumba Nyamwasa, a renegade general living in exile in South Africa; and his friend Theogene Rudasingwa, a former director of cabinet in Kagame’s office. Kayumba even says Kagame “is a serial killer who enjoys killing his citizens.” Never mind that this “serial killer” is the only president of a poor country that has given nearly all his poor citizens medical insurance cover – oh, what a way to enjoy killing your citizens! I know how BBC works. It would never allow such a sentence to pass its editorial eye. So why did BBC allow this to pass against Kagame?
Neither can BBC justify itself by saying that the woman who did the documentary is not their employee. It is BBC that broadcast the documentary and bares full responsibility for all its accusations, lies and innuendoes. There is not a single person – whether a genocide survivor, an official of the government of Rwanda, or the RPF who is interviewed. It is a one-sided condemnation of Rwanda government, Kagame and the RPF.
The documentary sinks to the abyss when it presents two Americans it claims have done research on the genocide in Rwanda. One of them claims that of the one million people killed by the interahamwe militias during the genocide, only 200,000 were Tutsi. The other 800,000, this expert insinuates, were Hutus killed by the RPF. In short, the BBC is saying there were actually two genocides in Rwanda and the one against Hutus was the worst. The documentary does not ask this so called expert the basis of this wild claim.
The documentary has a man with a laptop who claims to have recorded a “telephone conversation” with a “top Rwanda government official” who offers him $1m to kill Kayumba. However, there is no effort to establish the voice on the phone and link it to a “top government official in Rwanda”. Why should anyone believe this is a genuine telephone conversation?
Another man claiming to have been Kagame’s bodyguard alleges it is the RPF that shot down Habyarimana’s plane. He claims to have been in the meeting where the decision was taken. But the documentary does nothing to show that he is was actually part of Kagame’s bodyguard. His claims are taken on face value. Is this journalism? As expected, Kayumba and Rudasingwa support this allegation but none of them presents a whit of evidence to support their position.
Everyone knows that Habyarimana had planned the genocide long before he died. Militias had been trained. Machetes had been procured. A propaganda campaign mobilising the general population had been on radio and newspapers for years. Lists of people to kill had been drawn. In January 1994, the UN Peace-keeping force commander in Rwanda, Gen. Romeo Dellaire, had sent a cable to UN headquarters in New York seeking permission to attack and destroy ammunitions depots that had been stocked with weapons to kill Tutsis. The beginning of genocide was a matter or time, not intent.
In that documentary, Kayumba and Rudasingwa represent the tragedy of African elites when they have fallen out of favour with a government. They allege that it is the shooting of Habyarimana’s plane that sparked off the genocide. Therefore, they conclude, RPF is fully or partly culpable for the genocide. First, even assuming (just for argument’s sake) that this claim has merit, why did they serve in the RPF for over ten years if they knew it was responsible for one of the worst human tragedies of the 20th century?
Although their opportunism is blinding, we should not miss what it reveals i.e. their political bankruptcy. Lacking a core message to sell to Rwandans, they retreat to false and wild accusations to appease interests that are prejudiced against Africa. Let us assume, again for argument’s sake, that RPF shot down Habyarimana’s plane: does that justify Hutu militants taking revenge on innocent Tutsi civilians – including women and children?
Habyarimana’s government was at war with Kagame’s RPF. If he had a chance to kill Kagame would Habyarimana have let it pass? In war, you are justified to kill your enemy. All too often, the leader of the enemy forces is the center of gravity and therefore a legitimate military target. Take him out, and the resistance may collapse. That was the reasoning behind President Barack Obama’s relentless pursuit of Osama Bin Laden. It is obvious therefore that RPF had a strong interest to kill Habyarimana. Even if they killed him, it would neither justify Habyarimana’s state machinery massacring innocent Tutsis nor make RPF responsible for the genocide.
The opportunistic claims of Kayumba and Rudasingwa thus amount to saying that Britain and France be held responsible for the Jewish holocaust because it is their declaration of war against Germany that sparked off World War Two and led Hitler to kill six million Jews. This tendency, to try and use the shooting down of Habyarimana’s plane to make RPF wholly or partially responsible for the genocide, has been a recurrent theme of the sympathisers of the Hutu supremacist government that massacred innocents.
Every mass murderer has been driven by some grievance – Hitler by the fear that Jews were taking over Germany. But you cannot massacre a million people and then claim it was because someone else annoyed you and he or she should therefore share your culpability. If we allowed this twisted logic, every criminal would claim someone else drove him/her to commit a crime.
The documentary itself is neither shocking nor surprising. What is both shocking and surprising is that, it was broadcast by the BBC. We need to know why BBC did this.
- See more at: http://www.independent.co.ug/the-last-word/the-last-word/9398#sthash.i0lga2Sd.dpufAnd so it was that after a couple of text messages I decided to spare an hour to watch a documentary by the BBC titled “Rwanda: The Untold Story”. Everything the documentary claims to “reveal” in this “untold story” has been told before. Critics of President Paul Kagame and the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) have made these allegations for years. What was intriguing was the audacity of the BBC to give a platform to these allegations.
BBC is expected to be fair and balanced – or at least pretend to. Yet the documentary collects well-known genocide deniers and fugitive former Rwanda government officials for its cast. There is Filip Reyntjens, a Belgian academic who helped the Juvenal Habyarimana administration write its constitution. He is presented as the “world’s leading expert on Rwanda.” He is a well-known critic of Kagame and has not been in Rwanda in 20 years.
Others in the cast include Kayumba Nyamwasa, a renegade general living in exile in South Africa; and his friend Theogene Rudasingwa, a former director of cabinet in Kagame’s office. Kayumba even says Kagame “is a serial killer who enjoys killing his citizens.” Never mind that this “serial killer” is the only president of a poor country that has given nearly all his poor citizens medical insurance cover – oh, what a way to enjoy killing your citizens! I know how BBC works. It would never allow such a sentence to pass its editorial eye. So why did BBC allow this to pass against Kagame?
Neither can BBC justify itself by saying that the woman who did the documentary is not their employee. It is BBC that broadcast the documentary and bares full responsibility for all its accusations, lies and innuendoes. There is not a single person – whether a genocide survivor, an official of the government of Rwanda, or the RPF who is interviewed. It is a one-sided condemnation of Rwanda government, Kagame and the RPF.
The documentary sinks to the abyss when it presents two Americans it claims have done research on the genocide in Rwanda. One of them claims that of the one million people killed by the interahamwe militias during the genocide, only 200,000 were Tutsi. The other 800,000, this expert insinuates, were Hutus killed by the RPF. In short, the BBC is saying there were actually two genocides in Rwanda and the one against Hutus was the worst. The documentary does not ask this so called expert the basis of this wild claim.
The documentary has a man with a laptop who claims to have recorded a “telephone conversation” with a “top Rwanda government official” who offers him $1m to kill Kayumba. However, there is no effort to establish the voice on the phone and link it to a “top government official in Rwanda”. Why should anyone believe this is a genuine telephone conversation?
Another man claiming to have been Kagame’s bodyguard alleges it is the RPF that shot down Habyarimana’s plane. He claims to have been in the meeting where the decision was taken. But the documentary does nothing to show that he is was actually part of Kagame’s bodyguard. His claims are taken on face value. Is this journalism? As expected, Kayumba and Rudasingwa support this allegation but none of them presents a whit of evidence to support their position.
Everyone knows that Habyarimana had planned the genocide long before he died. Militias had been trained. Machetes had been procured. A propaganda campaign mobilising the general population had been on radio and newspapers for years. Lists of people to kill had been drawn. In January 1994, the UN Peace-keeping force commander in Rwanda, Gen. Romeo Dellaire, had sent a cable to UN headquarters in New York seeking permission to attack and destroy ammunitions depots that had been stocked with weapons to kill Tutsis. The beginning of genocide was a matter or time, not intent.
In that documentary, Kayumba and Rudasingwa represent the tragedy of African elites when they have fallen out of favour with a government. They allege that it is the shooting of Habyarimana’s plane that sparked off the genocide. Therefore, they conclude, RPF is fully or partly culpable for the genocide. First, even assuming (just for argument’s sake) that this claim has merit, why did they serve in the RPF for over ten years if they knew it was responsible for one of the worst human tragedies of the 20th century?
Although their opportunism is blinding, we should not miss what it reveals i.e. their political bankruptcy. Lacking a core message to sell to Rwandans, they retreat to false and wild accusations to appease interests that are prejudiced against Africa. Let us assume, again for argument’s sake, that RPF shot down Habyarimana’s plane: does that justify Hutu militants taking revenge on innocent Tutsi civilians – including women and children?
Habyarimana’s government was at war with Kagame’s RPF. If he had a chance to kill Kagame would Habyarimana have let it pass? In war, you are justified to kill your enemy. All too often, the leader of the enemy forces is the center of gravity and therefore a legitimate military target. Take him out, and the resistance may collapse. That was the reasoning behind President Barack Obama’s relentless pursuit of Osama Bin Laden. It is obvious therefore that RPF had a strong interest to kill Habyarimana. Even if they killed him, it would neither justify Habyarimana’s state machinery massacring innocent Tutsis nor make RPF responsible for the genocide.
The opportunistic claims of Kayumba and Rudasingwa thus amount to saying that Britain and France be held responsible for the Jewish holocaust because it is their declaration of war against Germany that sparked off World War Two and led Hitler to kill six million Jews. This tendency, to try and use the shooting down of Habyarimana’s plane to make RPF wholly or partially responsible for the genocide, has been a recurrent theme of the sympathisers of the Hutu supremacist government that massacred innocents.
Every mass murderer has been driven by some grievance – Hitler by the fear that Jews were taking over Germany. But you cannot massacre a million people and then claim it was because someone else annoyed you and he or she should therefore share your culpability. If we allowed this twisted logic, every criminal would claim someone else drove him/her to commit a crime.
The documentary itself is neither shocking nor surprising. What is both shocking and surprising is that, it was broadcast by the BBC. We need to know why BBC did this.
