3 30 /06 /2010 02:10 U.S. Woman with Rwandan origin, Munyenyezi Beatrice Was Falsely Accused of Rwanda Genocide Rape Crimes

U.S. Woman Falsely Accused of Rwanda Genocide Rape Crimes

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PUBLIC BRANDING OF GENOCIDAIRES

As in the 2009 asylum trials of Dr. Vincent Bajinya and three other Rwandan Hutu men in the U.K., and Dr. Leopold Munyakazi, in Maryland, VA, where all defendants are accused of being genocidaires, and similarly for other Rwandan asylum hearings in the U.S., Europe or Canada, anyone traveling to Rwanda on a discovery for the defense would not be able to investigate without government interference. Even cases at the ICTR in neighboring Arusha, Tanzania, have seen serious interference from the Rwanda regime. Similarly, ICE agent Thomas Brian Anderson would not have been able to travel to Rwanda without the direct involvement and highest authorization of the RPF regime, in collaboration with the U.S. State Department, and his actions were monitored from beginning to end.

Usually the RPF regime provides ‘handlers’ that manage investigations and spoon-fed investigators with information fabricated or cleared by the regime. Rwanda experts for the defense at asylum hearings, including ICTR lawyer Peter Erlinder and Filip Reyntjens, a Belgian Rwanda expert, have testified (as experts for the defense) to the problems of asylum cases and the interference by the Kagame regime in court cases in Rwanda, at the ICTR and abroad.

Dr. Vincent Bajinya was arrested in London, many years after he arrived and gained citizenship in England, and was framed by Fergal Keane, a British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) journalist who was also deceived by Rwandan officials.³⁵ Keane traveled to Rwanda and worked with RPF ‘handlers’—agents posing as civilians—to ‘discover’ and interview the ‘witnesses’ to Dr. Vincent Bajinya’s (et al.) supposed crimes.³⁶

Dr. Leopold Munyakazi was a professor employed at Goucher College in Maryland until 2008, when he was arrested by ICE agents after making a public speech decrying the abuses of the Kagame regime, the falsification of genocide charges and the lies of the official RPF genocide narrative.³⁷

Dr. Munyakazi was framed by the Kagame regime and publicly branded as a genocidaire by a short-lived NBC News television program that sought prime-time ratings by tracking down and ‘exposing’ supposed genocidaires. The program was titled The Wanted, and the morality of ‘good versus evil’ was underscored by the choice of the show’s commentator, Scott Tyler, an ex-Navy Seal, while the wanted man, Dr. Leopold Munyakazi, was their embodiment of evil. The zealous NBC News team acted as accuser, judge and jury against Dr. Munyakazi.³⁸

U.S. prosecutors in Rwanda asylum cases are generally very ignorant of the politics of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity in Rwanda, or they have been irreconcilably swayed by the propaganda of the Kagame regime and its partners, which is everywhere in the western media.³⁹

In two related U.S. court cases (where the Rwandan defendants’ hearings are underway and they do not wish to be named) two U.S. prosecutors traveled to Rwanda and later testified in court to that it was very easy to get the information they wanted, they did not need a clearance from the Rwanda government, and that they went to the countryside and met witnesses without government assistance or monitoring. They even went to prisons to talk to prisoners without Rwanda government help, they claimed, and reported to the court that conditions of prisoners were excellent.

While U.S. government prosecutors who have worked in Rwanda under these supposed ‘independent’ conditions have not been deposed under oath, their claims are impossible under the current military regime in Rwanda.

THE GENOCIDE RAPE CHARGE

Beatrice Munyenyezi’s husband, Shalom Ntahobari, and mother-in-law, Pauline Nyiramasuhuko, remain in detention at the ICTR in Arusha, Tanzania. Both have been on trial at the ICTR for more than ten years and are awaiting decisions on genocide and rape charges for more than a year now.

The same ‘Tutsi victims’ of rape who testified in the ICTR hearing against Shalom Ntahobari also allegedly testified in the case of Hutu businessman Désiré Munyaneza, the first alleged Rwanda genocidaire tried in Canada, who was convicted and sentenced to life in prison in October 2009. In Shalom Ntahobari’s case, the women could not even recognize the defendant in court, no matter their allegations of having been repeatedly raped.

Pauline Nyiramasuhuko was the first woman internationally charged with rape as a war crime or act of genocide. The former Minister of Family Affairs, she is accused of ordering Interahamwe militia to rape members of the Tutsi minority.

These rape charges were handed down immediately after then First Lady Hillary Clinton visited the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda (ICTR). When Ms. Clinton pledged $600,000 to be paid after the first ICTR rape conviction was delivered, indictments at the ICTR were modified to include rape charges against most top alleged genocidaires on trial.

The case against Pauline Nyiramasuhuko was sensationalized in an eight-page feature in the New York Times Magazine (September 15, 2002). Penned by Peter Landesman and titled “The Minister of Rape: How Could a Woman Incite Rwanda’s Sex-Crime Genocide?” the magazine ran an unflattering and blurred photo of Ms. Nyiramasuhuko’s bespectacled face on the cover.

“The 1994 genocide, one of the worst mass slaughters in recorded history,” Landesman later wrote in “Out of Madness, A Matriarchy,” another fictional account (also deploying the racist “madness” theme) this time in Mother Jones magazine, “was triggered by the assassination of Rwanda’s Hutu president, after a lengthy civil war between the Hutu-led government and the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front. It was a deliberate effort to eliminate the country’s Tutsi ‘problem’; books about Hitler and the Holocaust, and lists of potential victims, were later discovered in the offices of top government officials. In all, at least 1 million Tutsis and moderate Hutus died… Among the most nefarious tools of the genocide was a planned mass sexual assault on Tutsi women, with Hutu officials encouraging HIV-positive soldiers to take part in gang rapes.”⁴⁰

First, these numbers of Tutsi’s killed are highly disputed, and many of the Tutsis were killed by the RPF. Second, any ‘deliberate effort to eliminate the country’s Tutsi ‘problem’ was more the responsibility of the RPF than any other institution of power in Rwanda in 1994. Third, every western library and most all western human rights and media professionals, and academics, have books about Hitler, just as every western public and university library does. Fourth, these supposed genocide ‘lists’ have never been produced at the ICTR. Fifth, the reference to the Holocaust is part of the overall ‘genocide’ propaganda that defines the Tutsi minority as the sole proprietors of victim-hood in Rwanda and falsely defines them as “the Jews of Africa.”⁴¹

Finally, there was no “planned mass sexual assault on Tutsi women.”

Notwithstanding the fictions, when the allegations against a branded genocidaire are repeated they are often no longer presented as allegations, but as absolute fact.

For example, Emily Heroy, the founder and executive editor of Gender Across Borders—“a global feminist blog—regurgitated the 2002 ‘Minister of Rape’ story in 2009.⁴² “In 2002, Peter Landesman wrote an article in the New York Times about Nyiramasuhuko entitled ‘A Woman’s Work’ about her role in the genocide… Nyiramasuhuko ordered her son and militia to rape and kill thousands of women during the Rwanda genocide.”

The falsification of rape testimonies by Rwandan ‘survivors’ of genocide used to accuse opponents or critics or others targeted by the Kagame government has occurred before. Considering just one very significant example, supposed Tutsi ‘genocide survivors’ and ‘rape victims’ were used as witnesses against Rwandan Catholic Bishop Monsignor Augustin Misago.

Bishop Misago’s female Tutsi accusers cried on the witness stand in an effort to sway the court. They claimed to have been repeatedly raped by Misago over more than one day. When asked to identify a very remarkable physical feature of Bishop Misago’s anatomy, these women were proven to be fakes who falsified testimonies with Rwandan government support.

The London-based ‘non-government organization’ African Rights, co-founded by RPF agent Rakiya Omaar, helped frame Misago, who was subsequently arrested and jailed in 1999, but was cleared by the Rwandan Court of all genocide and rape charges in 2000.

Rakiya Omaar has worked since 1990-1991 as a paid agent of the RPF regime, always casting the Hutus as perpetrators and the Tutsis—especially the RPF Tutsi extremists—as the victims of the violence, creating a positive image for the RPF. She works freely in Rwanda, where she has a special office.⁴³

Rakiya Omaar also fabricated evidence against Beatrice Munyenyezi, Jean-Marie Vianney Higiro and Prudence Kantengwa.⁴⁴ Omaar reportedly traveled to the home village of Dr. Higiro and sisters and then produced documentation used by the western media, United Nations experts, the RPF regime, and by U.S. asylum courts, to accuse Dr. Higiro and Beatrice Munyenyezi of crimes. Family members were also intimidated and threatened in Rwanda.

One of the most suppressed facts about the realities of the RPF Tutsi extremists and their elite networks is the historical and contemporary existence of ubwenge (ou-WEN-gay)—a complex Kinyarwanda language term referring to wisdom, trickery, caution, cleverness, prudence, deceptions, lies, manipulations. It relates to the capacity to gain a clear understanding of situations and the capability to surround oneself with a network of profit generating social relations.

French author Pierre Péan discussed ‘ubwenge’ in his 2005 book Noires Fureurs, Blancs Menteurs (Black Furies, White Liars), noting that Tutsis were affected by a ‘lying culture’ and questioning the historiography of genocide in Rwanda. Péan alleged that Tutsis have systematically resorted to lying, while employing doubtful and fraudulent maneuvers, with the aim of misleading the international community relating to the accuracy of its genocide cause. Péan was immediately sued in French courts by S.O.S Racisme, an ‘anti-racism’ organization that has been very pro-Kagame and pro-RPF in France.

Ubwenge or the culture of deception was highly valued in traditional Rwanda, particularly in Tutsi aristocratic circles. Young Tutsi aristocrats were trained in ubwenge to help insure the Tutsi domination of Rwanda and the enslavement of the Hutu majority. By any name, the extremist RPF Tutsi regime and its leaders excel at ubwenge.

“They will bring into the U.S. court these women from Rwanda,” says Jean-Marie Vianney Higiro. “They will say ‘I was raped’ and they will cry. The jury will think this is spontaneous and the judge and jury will believe them. But the jury will not understand that this is an exercise in ubwenge. Some Hutus will also use ubwenge. In the RPF kingdom ruled by Paul Kagame there are people who train people to lie in court. They are used in different trials to lie and frame and accuse. Westerners and judges in western countries do not grasp this.”

Beatrice Munyenyezi’s case will join those of other Rwandans accused by the Kagame regime that are costing U.S. taxpayers millions of dollars for hearings that have historically involved fraud, disinformation, and U.S. government manipulation. The U.S. government is fighting its own judiciary in its effort to maintain the shiny clean façade masking the terrorism of the Paul Kagame government in Rwanda. This is not a successful entrepreneurial government, but an absolute military dictatorship whose grip of terror extends into the hearts and minds—as with Thomas Brian Andersen—of the United States of America.

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1. See, e.g., Dr. Helmut Strizek, Discredit the Hutu Population Forever, Report by Dr. Helmut Strizek, Expert Witness in “The Prosecutor v. Innocent Sagahutu,” Before the International Criminal tribunal For Rwanda, (Case No. ICTR 2000-56-I), entered into ICTR records October 30, 2008. [↩]
2. For a singular example of the western press reporting on her arrest, which has some factual errors but no context or balance, see: Joseph C. Cote, “Woman Allegedly took part in Genocide,” Nashua Telegraph, June 25, 2010. [↩]
3. The RPF (U.S. & U.K. & Israel backing) war crimes and genocide against Rwandan and Burundian refugees is well documented. In August 1996 there were an estimated 1.5 million refugees in eastern Zaire, and by November the estimated 500,000 to 750,000 Rwandan refugees that did not return to Rwanda under the illegal forced repatriation became the targets of a systematic manhunt by ADFL forces. See, e.g., Roberto Garreton, Special Rapporteur of the U.N. Human Rights Commission, “Report on the Situation of Human Rights in Zaire” No. E/CN.4/1996/66, June 29, 1996; Howard French, A Continent for the Taking: The Tragedy and Hope of Africa, Vintage Books, 2005; and Filip Reyntjens, The Great African War, Cambridge University Press, 2009; Gerard Prunier, Africa’s World War, Oxford University Press, 2009, p. 120-128; Wayne Madsen, Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa, 1993-1999, Edwin Mellen Press, 1999; and “International Non-governmental Commission of Inquiry into the Massive Violations of Human Rights Committed in the Democratic Republic of Congo (Former Zaire) 1996-1997,” Int’l Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development, 1998; DRC: What Kabila is Hiding: Civilian Killings and Impunity in Congo, Human Rights Watch, Vol. 9, No. 5(A), October 1997. [↩]
4. See Rwanda state newspaper Rwanda New Times propaganda republished at AllAfrica.com: Kennedy Ndahiro, “Rwanda Genocidaires Should Be Hunted Down and Punished,” February 26, 2010. [↩]
5. See: Human Rights Watch World Report 1999, December 1998, p. 62; and “Alleged Murderers of Sendashonga Mysteriously Die One After Another,” AfroAmerica Network, March 3, 2001. [↩]
6. “Feds Say NH Woman Involved in Rwandan Genocide,” AP, June 24, 2010. [↩]
7. See: Robin Philpot, Rwanda 1994: Colonialism Dies Hard, The Taylor Report and Robin Philpot, 2003. [↩]
8. See, e.g.: Ann Garrison, “Erlinder released as Rwanda cracks down on its own,” San Francisco Bay View, June 27, 2010; “Rwanda Repression Rises Ahead of Poll—Watchdog,” Reuters (AlertNet), June 27, 2010; “Rwanda: Stop Attacks on Journalists, Opponents,” Human Rights Watch, June 26, 2010. [↩]
9. See, e.g.: Reuters, “Rwanda Repression Rises Ahead of Poll—Watchdog,” AlertNet, June 27, 2010; “Rwanda ex-army chief Nyamwasa shot in Johannesburg,” BBC News, June 19, 2010. [↩]
10. “Rwandan Ambassador Flees Post,” The Amsterdam Post, March 19, 2010; Juma Kwayera, “Kagame in Spot as Spate of Killings Hits Rwanda,” The Standard, June 27, 2010. [↩]
11. Kristin Van Schie, “Rwandan General Shot by Asylum Seekers,” IOL News South Africa, June 29, 2010. [↩]
12. “Murder Stokes Rwanda Crackdown Fear,” AlJazeera, June 26, 2010. [↩]
13. Heidi Boghosian, “NLG Demands Immediate Release of Attorney Peter Erlinder,” National Lawyers Guild, May 28, 2010. [↩]
14. Josh Kron, “American Lawyer Denied Bail in Rwanda,” New York Times, June 7, 2010; Jeremy Herb and Kevin Diaz, “Rwanda Frees Peter Erlinder on Bail,” Star Tribune, June 17, 2010; Madeleine Baron, “Minn. law professor detained in Rwanda accused of threatening national security,” Minnesota Public Radio, June 1, 2010; Steve Karnowski, “Professor: Rwanda Officials Wanted Me to Disappear,” AP, June 24, 2010. [↩]
15. Josephine Whittaker, “Rwandan Opposition Leader Appears in Court,” Open Security, April 22, 2010; “Rwanda’s Election Opposition Leader Demands Protection After Mob attack in Rwanda,” VOA News, February 4, 2010; “Mob attacks Rwandan opposition leader in capital,” Reuters, February 3, 2010, (AlertNet). [↩]
16. Keith Harmon Snow, “The Rwanda Hit List: Revisionism, Denial & the Genocide Conspiracy,” 24-31 March 2010, The African Executive. [↩]
17. See: Patrick Karuretwa biography, Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy, Tufts University. [↩]
18. See: Patrick Karuretwa, “Not up for debate: Rwanda cannot excuse Peter Erlinder’s genocide denial,” Harvard Law Review, June 16, 2010. [↩]
19. See Keith Harmon Snow, “The US Sponsored ‘Rwanda Genocide’ and its Aftermath: Psychological Warfare, Embedded Reporters and the Hunting of Refugees,” Global Research, April 12, 2008. [↩]
20. Tiphaine Dickson, “Rwanda’s Deadliest Secret: Who Shot Down President Habyarimana’s Plane?: The most under-investigated of political assassinations,” Global Research, November 24, 2008. [↩]
21. See: Jean-Marie Vianney Higiro, “Rwandan Private Print Media on the Eve of the Genocide,” in Alan Thomson, Ed., The Media and the Rwanda Genocide, Pluto Press, 2007, and Jean-Marie Vianney Higiro and William Woodward, “The Commodification of Genocide in Ruanda Since 1994,” paper at the Seventeenth Annual ESHHS Conference held at Durham Castle, August 28-September 1, 1998. [↩]
22. David Boeri, “Evidence of Misconduct,” WBUR News, February 17, 2010. [↩] [↩]
23. See, e.g., “Open Letter to U.S. Attorney from Terek Mahana Support Committee,” March 13, 2010. [↩]
24. The author has provided expert testimony in two Rwandan asylum hearings in the United States in 2010. [↩]
25. The author has analyzed the U.S. State Department country reports on human rights for Rwanda, where the U.S. tolerates and abets violence, from 1993 to 2009, and has compared these to reports from countries that the U.S. does not like, in particular: Cuba, Sudan and Iran. [↩]
26. 2009 Country Report on Human Rights: Rwanda, U.S. Department of State, March 11, 2010. [↩]
27. Kenneth Roth, “The Power of Horror in Rwanda,” Los Angeles Times, April 11, 2009. [↩]
28. There is extensive documentation of assassinations in articles, books or ICTR documents by Jordi Palou Loverdes, Wayne Madsen, Luc de Temmerman, Filip Reyntjens, Dr. Helmut Strizek, Peter Erlinder, Christopher Black, Phil Taylor and others. See, e.g.: Filip Reyntjens, “Rwanda, Ten Years On: From Genocide to Dictatorship,” African Affairs, 2004, 103, 177–210: p. 197. See also: Keith Harmon Snow, “The Rwanda Hit List: Revisionism, Denial, and the Genocide Conspiracy,” The African Executive. [↩]
29. “Iwawa Island: Prison Camp or Paradise Vacation Spot?” NGO News Africa, May 1, 2010. [↩]
30. “Rwandans Flee into Burundi,” SAPA, October 1, 2009, and “Burundi: Stop Deporting Rwandan Asylum Seekers,” Human Rights Watch, December 1, 2009 [↩]
31. Find affidavit with article by Joseph C. Cote, “Woman Allegedly took part in Genocide,” Nashua Telegraph, June 25, 2010. [↩]
32. See, e.g.: Filip Reyntjens, “Manipulation and Falsification of ICTR Evidence: The Role of the Rwandan Government,” (Excerpts from Expert Report, Prosecutor v. Joseph Kanyabashi, Case No. ICTR-96-15-I); “An Open Letter to the U.S. Congress Regarding HR #1426,” BusinessWire, June 17, 2010; and “The Rwandan Genocide: Result of a Carefully Planned Military Operation.
    “Open Letter to President Kagame,” Global Research, June 3, 2009. [↩]
33. Laura Noy, “Finding Refuge in the Queen City,” NHPR, January 31, 2005. [↩]
34. See, e.g, “Kenya: Airlines Refuse to Fly Jamaican Home,” AllAfrica.com, January 6, 2010. [↩]
35. Fergal Keane, “Rwanda Genocide Suspect in UK,” BBC News. November 6, 2006. [↩]
36. keith harmon snow, “The US Sponsored ‘Rwanda Genocide’ and its Aftermath: Psychological Warfare, Embedded Reporters and the Hunting of Refugees,” Global Research, April 12, 2008. [↩]
37. While the article and the framework for the article are in many ways flawed, displaying the same tendencies toward a priori assumptions of guilt, please see, e.g.: Andrew Rice, “Doubt: A Professor, A Genocide, and NBC’s Quest for a Prime Time Hit,” The New Republic, August 12, 2009. [↩]
38. While the article and the framework for the article are in many ways flawed, displaying the same tendencies toward a priori assumptions of guilt, please see, e.g.: Andrew Rice, “Doubt: A Professor, A Genocide, and NBC’s Quest for a Prime Time Hit,” The New Republic, August 12, 2009. [↩]
39. See, e.g., Steven Da Silva, “Revisiting the ‘Rwandan Genocide’: Resurrecting Ghosts, or Exorcising Demons?”, Global Research, June 1, 2007. [↩]
40. Kimberley Acquaro and Peter Landesman, “Out of Madness: A Matriarchy,” Mother Jones, January/February 2003. [↩]
41. Even New York Times journalist (sic) Bill Berkeley, whose work deep in the pro-RPF, Pro-Tutsi establishment narrative, has criticized the ‘Jews of Africa’ characterization of the Tutsis: “As Stephen Heder was pointing out at lunch when we were talking earlier, the Tutsis were not the Jews of Africa. Philip Gourevitch… got it wrong in that regard. To put it in its crudest, simplest terms historically, the Tutsis were the bad guys.” Speaker series, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, March 6, 2002. [↩]
42. Emily Heroy, “International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda: Woman is Accused of Inciting Troops & Militia to Rape 1000s of Women,” Gender Across Borders, April 25, 2009. [↩]
43. See, e.g.: [1] Rakiya Omaar and Alex de Waal, “Death, Despair and Defiance,” African Rights, November 1994; [2] Rakiya Omaar, “Rwanda: Insurgency in the Northwest,” African Rights, 1998; [3] Rakiya Omaar, “Letter to Ambassador Mihnea Ioan Motoc, President of the United Nations Security Council,” African Rights, October 19, 2005; [4] Rakiya Omaar, “An Open Letter to His Holiness, Pope John Paul II,” African Rights, May 13, 1998. [↩]
44. Rakiya Omaar, Consultant to the Rwanda Demobilization and Reintegration Commission, Report for the RDRC on the Leadership of Rwandese Armed Groups in the DRC, December 2008, p. 215-217. [↩]

Keith Harmon Snow is a war correspondent, photographer and independent investigator, and a four time (2003, 2006, 2007, 2010) Project Censored award winner. He is also the 2009 Regent's Lecturer in Law & Society at the University of California Santa Barbara, recognized for over a decade of work, outside of academia, contesting official narratives on war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide while also working as a genocide investigator for the United Nations and other bodies. The first UCSB Regent's Lecturer, in 1960, was Aldous Huxley; other recipients include Margaret Mead, Peter Matthiessen and Meredith Monk. Read other articles by Keith, or visit Keith's website.

This article was posted on Tuesday, June 29th, 2010 at 8:30am and is filed under Crimes against Humanity, Democratic Rep. Congo, Disinformation, Genocide, Military/Militarism, Propaganda, Refugees, Rwanda, War Crimes.