U.S. Citizen Falsely Accused of Rwanda Genocide Rape Crimes
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Rwanda Genocide & Asylum Cases
First Published by Dissident Voice: 29 June 2010
Update: 12 August 2010
keith harmon snow

On June 24, 2010, U.S. agents in Manchester, New Hampshire
arrested Rwandan genocide survivor Beatrice Munyenyezi, a Hutu and a U.S.
citizen since 2004. Charged with lying on her immigration documents to conceal
her alleged major role in genocide in Rwanda, Ms. Munyenyezi is also charged
with rape as a war and genocide crime. Meanwhile, a federal prosecutor for the
case is known for misconduct, falsification of evidence and perjury. Is it a
crime to have a FACEBOOK profile? Is it a crime to use a computer?
The original one-sided story against Munyenyezi was published June 24, 2010 by Associated Press writer Lynne Tuohy, at the Concord Monitor, Concord NH, and was circulated widely by AP. On August 9, 2010, the Concord Monitor published a complete smear job accusing Beatrice Munyenyezi of milking U.S. taxpayers after her bankruptcy. The second article, also by Lynne Tuohy, demonstrates how racism by the writer and editors (AP) is used to whip up U.S. citizen's hatred against people of color, against Africans, and against refugees, meanwhile deflecting attention from the root causes of financial hardship in the US and suffering around the world.
So begins Beatrice Munyenyezi's personalized account as a
refugee who survived the slaughter of millions of people in Rwanda, in
Zaire/Congo, and in neighboring countries, between 1990 and 1998--always
erroneously defined as "the 1994 Rwanda genocide" where brutality is
universally attributed to the Hutu ethnic group and Tutsis are always the only
victims.
Ms. Munyenyezi has been transforming her ordeal of
unspeakable brutality and terror into a book tentatively titled Life in the
Middle of Nowhere: Surviving Genocide in Rwanda and Zaire. It is her version of
Surviving the Slaughter: The Ordeal of a Rwandan Refugee in Zaire (2004) a
renowned non-fiction book published in Europe by Marie Beatrice Umutesi, a Hutu
and genocide survivor.
On Thursday June 24, 2010, this project abruptly came to a
halt when Federal agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)
confiscated all of Ms. Munyenyezi's texts, notes, documents, computers and
other personal items. (ICE is the largest investigative agency in the U.S.
Department of Homeland Security.) Now her private testimony as a refugee and
survivor will likely be used against her in another case of politically
motivate genocide charges.
The U.S. Department of Justice has suggested that Beatrice
Munyenyezi might be deported to face genocide charges in Rwanda. But Ms.
Munyenyezi will be a milestone case: an international legal proceeding in the
United States involving a woman accused of rape as a genocide and war crime.
On June 24, 2010, Beatrice Munyenyezi (MOON'-yen-yezi) was
arrested in Manchester, New Hampshire (USA) and charged, according to U.S.
prosecutors, with "procuring U.S. citizenship unlawfully by misrepresenting her
activities during the 1994 Rwandan genocide."
According to the government of Rwanda, Beatrice Munyenyezi,
40, allegedly "participated in, committed, ordered, oversaw, conspired to,
aided and abetted, assisted in and directed persecution, kidnapping, rape and
murder during the Rwandan genocide of 1994."
These are generic genocide charges used by the Rwandan
military regime against all Hutus.[i]
According to U.S. prosecutors, Ms. Munyenyezi allegedly
concealed these facts in order to obtain immigration and naturalization
benefits and lied about her connection to the genocide when seeking
citizenship. Ms. Munyenyezi's husband and mother-in-law are in custody at the
International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda (ICTR) in Arusha, Tanzania on
genocide charges.[ii]
If convicted of the two counts of procuring U.S. citizenship
unlawfully, Munyenyezi faces up to 10 years imprisonment, followed by 3 years
of supervised release and a $250,000 fine, along with revocation of her U.S.
Citizenship.
Beatrice Munyenyezi survived the invasion of Byumba
Prefecture by Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) guerillas in 1990, and the years of
RPF persecution and genocide that saw entire Hutu villages in Byumba razed,
massacres of scores of thousands of people, and the internal displacement of
some 2 million Hutus--forced into a life-and-death refugee existence inside
Rwanda between October 1990 and April 1994.
Ms. Munyenyezi then survived the so-called '100 days of
genocide' in Rwanda from April to July 1994. She fled Rwanda with family
members on July 18, 1994, part of the massive exodus of millions of Rwandans,
mostly innocent Hutu women and children, after the RPF won the civil war in
Rwanda, to eastern Zaire (Dem. Rep. of Congo), where she survived the slaughter
of hundreds of thousands of Hutu civilians by the RPF.[iii]
Beatrice Munyenyezi fled from Congo to Kenya at the advice
of her brother, Jean-Marie Vianney Higiro, another U.S. citizen also being
hunted by the Kagame regime and its political, military and economic partners.[iv]
In Tanzania and Kenya she survived RPF agents hunting refugees and
assassinating dissidents (including former RPF official Seth Sendashonga).[v]
Evacuated to the United States in March 1998, Beatrice
Munyenyezi was first assisted by a Catholic charity in New Hampshire. She later
worked for the Manchester Housing and Redevelopment Authority, which owns and
manages 1,271 public housing apartments for low-income families, elderly, and
adults with disabilities, from March 2001 to March 2005. MHRA spokeswoman
Michelle Desmond would not comment on Ms. Munyenyezi's service record, but
Beatrice has regularly worked with other groups to assist refugees of many
nationalities. She taught herself English and pursued degrees at a local
community college and at the University of New Hampshire.
The Associated Press and other news outlets splashed Ms.
Munyenyezi's arrest across the news on June 24, 2010. "An estimated 800,000
people were murdered during the 1994 Rwandan Genocide, which took place over
the course of approximately 100 days," these outlets universally reported.[vi]
The official narrative on 'genocide'--distilled to the simple
sound-bite above--is maintained by the current government of Rwanda and its
military, political and economic partners to silence debate and manufacture a
version of events that protects the perpetrators and criminalizes victims like
Beatrice Munyenyezi and her family members.
President Paul Kagame runs the military dictatorship in
Rwanda with his closest military associates from the former Rwandan Patriotic
Front/Army (RPF), now known as the Rwanda Defense Forces. In October 1990, the
RPF guerrilla army invaded northern Rwanda from neighboring Uganda, backed by
the United States and Britain. Over the next four years the RPF terrorized
Rwandan civilians as they slowly seized the country and overthrew the
Hutu-majority government of President Juvenal Habyarimana.[vii]
Predominantly comprised of hardened Uganda guerrillas of the
Tutsi ethnicity who fought (1980-1985) to bring Uganda's strongman Yoweri
Museveni to power, these guerrillas, backed by London and Washington, have
perpetrated massive genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity on
millions of innocent civilians in Uganda, Rwanda and the Dem. Rep. of Congo.
Contrary to popular propaganda, the sound bite claiming that
the RPF 'stopped the genocide against Tutsis' in Rwanda is a gross
mischaracterization of the nature of genocide versus civil war in Rwanda. It is
also a sound bite that deflects attention from the RPF role in mass atrocities
in Rwanda and Congo. The Kagame regime is able to get away with anything it
wants--arrest and torture opponents, persecute refugees everywhere, plunder
minerals from Congo --because President Paul Kagame has provided the Pentagon
its biggest, centralized base for the Pentagon's U.S. Africa Command, AFRICOM.
PERSECUTING OPPOSITION AND SURVIVORS
On June 24, 2010, the Kagame regime in Rwanda violently
suppressed dissent in Rwanda as the three primary political parties standing in
opposition to President Paul Kagame and his Rwandan Patriotic Front saw their
members and leaders physically harassed, barred from leaving their residences,
and in some cases arrested. Reports were of 'mobs' of government
supporters--these are often rented crowds--at each location where the harassment
occurred.[viii]
This follows the June 19, 2010 assassination attempt in
South Africa of exiled Rwandan General Faustin Nyamwasa, who fled Rwanda after
being accused of opposing the Kagame government.[ix]
Nyamwasa is one of over 15 leading military officers and Ambassadors who have
been imprisoned or forced into exile in recent months.[x]
On June 29, 2010, South African Security Service (SASS)
arrested four men for the June 19 attempted murder Nyamwasa and all four men have
asylum in South Africa. Three of the four men have already surrendered asylum
papers for an investigation.[xi]
South African officials are withholding information about the nationality of
these bogus 'refugees'. However, initial reports have confirmed that these are Rwandan
nationals, former RPF soldiers and agents from the Directorate of Military
Intelligence (DMI), sent by President Paul Kagame and his chief operative
General James Kabarebe. The operation to assassinate Nyamwasa was run by a
former soldier of rank Captain while the actual shooter was a soldier who
formerly served under General Nyamwasa.
Authentic Rwandan refugees, asylum seekers, and true
genocide survivors have claimed for years that Rwandan intelligence agents are
infiltrated through the asylum process into foreign countries to assassinate or
otherwise neutralize perceived enemies, or anyone who speaks out against the
Kagame regime. INTERPOL should have arrested General Nyamwasa and Kabarebe,
indicted for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide by the Spanish
National Court, along with Paul Kagame, whose diplomatic immunity prevented his
indictment.
On June 24, Rwandan journalist Jean-Leonard Rugambage, from
an opposition newspaper, was shot dead by assailants when returning to his home
in Kigali.[xii]
On May 23, U.S. attorney and ICTR defense counsel Peter
Erlinder was arrested and illegally detained in Rwanda.[xiii] Mr. Erlinder
flew to Rwanda to represent his client Victoire Ingabire, a Hutu woman also
persecuted by the Kagame regime. Erlinder, charged with 'genocide denial' and
denied bail twice, was released on medical grounds after 21 days incarceration
but faces charges with punishment up to 25 years.[xiv]
Victoire Ingabire arrived in Rwanda in January 2010 to
contest the upcoming presidential elections. She and her aides were immediately
arrested and she has been charged with genocide denial and other thought
crimes.[xv]
The military and intelligence apparatus directly run by
President Paul Kagame maintains elite networks of death squads inside and
outside Rwanda. Tasked with hunting and neutralizing any dissidents, critics,
intellectuals, writers, human rights activists, or other 'opposition' to
Kagame's regime, these agents operate freely throughout Africa, Europe, Canada
and the United States. Anyone critical of the Kagame military regime is falsely
accused of involvement in genocide, 'genocide negationism' or 'genocide
denial'.[xvi]
RPF agents in the Boston, Massachusetts area, which is very
close to Manchester, New Hampshire, include Tufts University 'law scholar' Patrick
Karuretwa, a current member of the Rwandan Defense Forces, a former RPF
guerrilla, and a member of Paul Kagame's elite and brutal Republican
Presidential Guard.[xvii]
Paul Kagame has been a regular guest in Boston at Tufts' Fletcher School of Law
& Diplomacy, Boston University and Harvard: his power base in the U.S. is
Boston.
Karuretwa has been using the Harvard Law Record, a high
profile Harvard University student newspaper, to advance propaganda favorable to the Kagame regime
and to turn public opinion against legitimate Rwandan refugees and portray them
as genocidaires or genocide deniers.[xviii] (The Harvard
Law Record claims to be independent but would not respond to inquiries or
publish comments contrary to Karuretwa.)
The process of Karuretwa's admission to the United States
and enrollment and funding at Tufts University has not come under scrutiny by
the Department of Homeland Security. The Kagame government has infiltrated
agents into western countries posing as asylum seekers.[xix]
"The Kagame government is trying to frame my sister now,"
says Professor Jean-Marie Vianney Higiro. "They are trying to get to me. They
have tried to accuse me of lying on my immigration forms, but I was evacuated
from Rwanda [1994] as a family member of a U.S. citizen. Probably I will be
arrested soon."
Jean-Marie Vianney Higiro is a U.S. citizen who was
evacuated by the U.S. Embassy in Rwanda and U.S. marines from Bujumbura,
Burundi, on April 9, 1994.
The war in Rwanda was escalated by the Rwandan Patriotic
Front on April 6, 1994, after the plane carrying Rwandan president Juvenal
Habyarimana and Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira was shot down by the RPF
with surface-to-air missiles, killing both presidents, their chiefs of staff,
the French pilots and other top Rwandan and Burundian officials. The United
States and its allies, including the United Nations and the Rwanda Tribunal
(ICTR), have blocked all investigations into this major act of international
terrorism.[xx]
The Rwandan Patriotic Front and Ugandan People's Defense
Forces (UPDF) marched through Byumba Province clearing the land of its people,
whether Hutu or Tutsi. Attacks against Byumba began with the RPF invasion of
October 1990, another act of international terrorism that remains opaque and
unpunished, though it set the stage for the death of more than ten million
people in Central Africa since. Ninety-nine percent of Byumba was occupied by
the RPF and their scorched earth campaign to clear the land through massacres,
rapes, and forced displacement.
In their village in Byumba, the family home of Beatrice
Munyenyezi, Prudence Kantengwa and Jean-Marie Vianney Higiro, built by their
father with the help of Catholic missionaries in 1957, was destroyed by the RPF
in 1991.
"I was born in Northern Rwanda, a province of Byumba, a
place that perhaps many of you have never heard of," the introduction to Ms.
Munyenyezi's book continues. "Yes, it is in the middle of nowhere. It is a
place where your cry, echoes and echoes but still is not heard, a place where
you cry and the tears refuse to come, a place where you wait for someone,
anyone to come and save you, but instead the ghost of your failure, of your
misery shows up on your doorstep. No one can hear your cries, your sobs, for
you are alone."
Associate Professor of Communications at Western New England
College in Springfield, MA, Dr. Higiro is one of few remaining Hutu
intellectuals not arrested or killed by the RPF regime. He has been a constant
source of tension to Kagame, who in turn maintains intense pressure on the U.S.
government--its leading military and economic partner--to arrest Higiro.
Dr. Higiro was critical of both the Habyarimana and Kagame
governments, and he has published articles and given talks about the media
climate just prior to the events of April-July 1994, and about the
commodification of genocide used to advance the political and economic
objectives of the Kagame military regime and to hide the RPF's organized
criminal activities and war crimes in the Democratic Republic of Congo.[xxi]
Prior to April 1994, Higiro was director of the Rwandan
Information Office (ORINFOR). The RPF government has tried to arrest and
extradite Higiro since Dr. Higiro's refusal to accept the RPF government
appointment of Minister of Information, in July 1994, after seeing reports of
RPF massacres against scores of thousands of Hutus.
"They arrested my sister Prudence Kantengwa in Boston in
2008. Her case resulted in lengthy trials costing U.S. taxpayers a lot of
money. Now they have arrested Beatrice. But she [Beatrice] was not a government
official in Rwanda, she was not with the Interahamwe [militias], she is just a
young Rwandan woman who survived the genocide and made it to America."
FALSIFICATION OF EVIDENCE
Prudence Kantengwa was arrested in Boston in 2008. Also a
Hutu and the sister of Jean-Marie Vianney Higiro and Beatrice Munyenyezi, Ms.
Kantengwa applied for asylum in the United States in 2001, but she was
initially denied.
U.S. immigration judge Eliza C. Klein granted asylum to
Prudence Kantengwa against the U.S. government prosecutor's wishes. U.S.
immigration then appealed to the Immigration Review Board who confirmed Judge
Klein's ruling in June of this year.
But prior to the first favorable asylum ruling by Judge
Klein, the U.S. immigration prosecutors saw that the Kantengwa asylum case was
not going their way. ICE then arrested and accused Prudence Kantengwa of lying
on her visa application. The resulting U.S. Federal Criminal Court case is
ongoing.
Jeffrey Auerhahn is a U.S. prosecutor on Prudence
Kantengwa's criminal court case. In a high-profile organized crime murder case
in Boston, begun in 1985, U.S. prosecutor Jeffrey Auerhahn engaged in
misconduct and when deposed by the court in 2003 he lied about it. Auerhahn
went beyond misconduct to criminal behavior, including: {a} coercing a witness
into giving false testimony (suborning perjury); {b} falsifying evidence;
{c}
withholding exculpatory evidence from defense; and {d} lying before the court
(perjury). [xxii]
He is also named in an open citizen's letter seeking redress from the U.S.
prosecutor's office in Boston for FBI retaliation against Muslims who have
refused to work as FBI informants in the Muslim communities around Boston.[xxiii]
The case was investigated and reported in detail by Boston's
WBUR News journalists David Boeri, Lisa Tobin, Jesse Costa and Andrew Phelps.
"Federal Judge Mark Wolf called the conduct of Jeffrey Auerhahn 'A fraud upon
the court'," they reported.
U.S. prosecutor Jeffrey Auerhahn is one of two federal
prosecutors on the Beatrice Munyenyezi case, also a Federal Criminal Court case
because Beatrice Munyenyezi is now a U.S. citizen and the asylum system no
longer can be used against her. Auerhahn was never disciplined or disbarred for
his unscrupulous actions. The case raised troubling questions from
critics--including judges--who worry that withholding evidence has become a
tactic of some federal prosecutors.
"Unfortunately, this U.S. prosecutor Mr. Auerhahn is still
exhibiting the same misconduct in my case," says Prudence Kantengwa. "The
discovery process, which usually takes no more than 3 months, has taken
more than a year and is still going on because prosecutors have refused to
share the information they have that contradicts their allegations. And my
guess is that they are hiding written information--such as investigation made
about me which took 6 months before I was granted a visa to the US in 2001--and
plan to bring witnesses in collaboration with the Rwanda government [whom]
they have trained on what to fabricate against me."
Rwandan asylum hearings in the U.S., [xxiv] Canada and
Europe also suppress evidence that would exonerate the accused. Instead,
prosecutors and judges rely on disinformation and falsified evidence, including
the U.S. State Department's annual Country Report on Human Rights: Rwanda,
which are extraordinary documents that suppress critical facts and information
and advance very positive images of the Kagame regime: Not only is the Rwanda
Government cleansed of its crimes, it is applauded for its supposed attention
to the rule of law and recovery from an untenable political horror story:
genocide.[xxv],[xxvi]
U.S. asylum hearings also rely heavily on testimonies
collected by Rwandan military and intelligence officials using intimidation,
bribery, torture and the threat of being accused of genocide and tried before
the so-called 'people's courts' in Rwanda, the Gacaca courts.[xxvii]
Communities and family members in Rwanda are also retried for the same offenses
at Gacaca trials where intimidation is used to force a verdict that satisfies
the Kagame regime. People are also routinely disappeared in Rwanda, and
assassinated in other countries.[xxviii]
Young men and boys are forced to attend "re-education camps" on remote Iwawa
Island in Lake Kivu, heavily guarded by RDF soldiers, subject to
'thought-control' and psychological intimidation.[xxix]
In United States of America vrs. Francois Karake, et al, a
U.S. court dismissed all charges brought by the U.S. and Rwanda governments
against three Rwandan defendants, all Hutus, accused of the murder of two U.S.
and other tourists in Uganda's Bwindi National Park in March 1999. The
investigation spanned four years and involved the Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI). The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia
ascertained that the defendant's testimonies had been extracted through
physical torture with the involvement of U.S. agents. The prisoners were
incarcerated and interrogated at Kami Military Barracks, notorious for RPF
torture operations, in Rwanda.
Terror is a strong incentive to make people collaborate with
Rwandan government officials to produce convincing documentary 'evidence'. In
the fall of 2009, Human Rights Watch documented the case where more than 300
Rwandans fled southern Rwanda to Burundi in fear of being falsely accused of
genocide, sent back to Gacaca for retrial, or disappeared.[xxx]
"Jeffrey Auerhahn continues to work as a federal prosecutor
in Boston," WBUR News David Boeri reported in February 2010. "He's been praised
by the last U.S. Attorney. There's never been a public action by the Justice
Department to discipline him." [xxxi]
The evidence used by U.S. prosecutor Jeffrey Auerhahn
against Prudence Kantengwa was in part marshaled in Rwanda by investigator
Thomas Brian Andersen Jr., a special agent with U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE) in Boston, MA.
Agent Anderson traveled to Rwanda on U.S. taxpayer's money
to investigate the case of Prudence Kantengwa for the Federal criminal hearing.
In his notarized affidavit to the court, Andersen provides facts that seriously
discredit his claim to expertise on Rwanda or the case in question.
Paragraph 12: "The vast majority of the Hutu elite,
including the assassinated president, were from Byumba." President Juvenal
Habyarimana was from Gisenyi Prefecture, northwestern Rwanda, not Byumba
Prefecture, northeastern Rwanda; the vast majority of the Hutu elite did not
come from Byumba either; if anything Byumba was one of the least privileged
provinces even though it was considered as President Habyarimana's fiefdom.
Paragraph 12: "The prime minister, who was a member of the
RPF [Rwandan Patriotic Front] Tutsi party, was murdered." Prime Minister Agathe
Uwilingiyimana was a Hutu, never a member of the RPF party, but a member of the
MDR, or Mouvement Démocratique Républicain; further, the prime minister's
murder remains shrouded in questions about RPF and United Nations Assistance
Mission to Rwanda (UNAMIR) troop involvement as extensive ICTR trial documents
make clear; the assumption and allegation that she was murdered by Hutu
extremists is another example of the investigator's prejudice based on news
media, falsified stories, falsified human rights reports, and RPF propaganda;
Paragraph 12: "[Prudence] Kantengwa was married to Athanse
Munyemana, who was a minister in the extremist Hutu government." Athanse
Munyemana was never a Hutu government minister: he was a state intelligence
bureau official and a magistrate who could not have belonged to a political
party under the Rwandan constitution of 1991.
ICE AGENT THOMAS BRIAN ANDERSEN
In his June 2010 request for a warrant for search and
seizure of property belonging to Beatrice Munyenyezi, ICE special agent Thomas
Brian Andersen Jr. provided an affidavit that is a travesty of justice.[xxxii]
He does not anywhere discuss his relationship with the Rwandan government, but
nonetheless declares his independence from, for example, the Rwandan regime's
Directorate of Military Intelligence: it is impossible to pursue the
investigations he claims to have performed independently without the
involvement, oversight, or monitoring of the notorious DMI.
Agent Andersen does not elucidate his relationship to
Rwandan 'genocide survivor' organizations IBUKA ("remember") and AVEGA (Association
des Veuves du Genocide/Association of the Widows of Genocide), both known to be
populated with bogus 'survivors' coached, paid and protected by the RPF
government.[xxxiii]
Basing his statements from witnesses whom he purportedly
interviewed in Rwanda, purportedly without government interference, these being
people whom he claims are independent and authentic witnesses, authentic
genocide survivors and authentic convicted genocidaires, special agent Thomas
Brian Andersen then testified:
"I believe these witnesses are reliable because they are
eyewitnesses for whom it is a great personal risk to submit to being a witness
and because there is no motivation to provide false information, given that
many of these witnesses reside in Rwanda and have no contact with Munyenyezi."
The above statement indicates that Andersen has no
understanding of events in Rwanda in general, and, in particular, no
understanding of: [1] the politics of genocide accusations; [2] motivations
such as land, housing and other property disputes; [3] motivations such as
personal or economic rivalry; [4] intimidation, accusation and the threat of
physical violence used to coerce and fabricate witnesses and testimonies; [5]
financial and other incentives used to induce testimonies that suit the Rwandan
regime; [6] the motivations of Hutu prisoners accused or already convicted of
genocide to produce false testimonies against other Hutus.
The fact that witnesses 'reside in Rwanda' is not evidence
of their absence of bias, but rather evidence of their bias.
In particular, thousands of Ugandans currently occupy Rwandan homes and lands
taken by force by the RPF from previous landowners of both Hutu and Tutsi
ethnicity. (If agent Andersen went to Butembo in North Kivu province in the
neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo he would find thousands of Rwandan RPF
Tutsis occupying homes and lands there; it would be impossible and outrageous
to conclude that their presence in Congo substantiated evidence of their
veracity as 'witnesses' to events that took place in the local geographical areas
of their illegal occupation.)
Paragraph 11 of Andersen's affidavit reveals the real reason
that President Paul Kagame seeks to punish and imprison Beatrice Munyenyezi,
with ICE support, and why Rwandan officials are pressing the U.S. government to
intimidate, arrest and silence her:
"Over the several days in February 2006, Munyenyezi
testified in her husband's and mother-in-law's trials at the ICTR."
ICE agent Andersen offers 'evidence' of Beatrice
Munyenyezi's alleged criminality primarily based on guilt by association with
her husband and mother-in-law, both involved in ongoing trials at the ICTR.
Further, he alleges by association that Beatrice Munyenyezi, a witness who
testified in her family member's defense at these ICTR trials in 2006, is complicit
in genocide merely because she testified on her sister's behalf. Icing the cake
of injustice, special agent Andersen alleges in his affidavit (paragraph 11)
that Beatrice Munyenyezi committed perjury in her ICTR testimony. Finally, the modus
operandi of the Kagame regime and RPF military is to arrest, convict,
re-educate (through intimidation and terror) or disappear anyone who testifies
contrary to the wishes of the Kagame regime or contrary to the established
'Rwanda genocide' narrative, as did Munyenyezi.
In paragraph 12, agent Andersen claims that Beatrice
Munyenyezi manned roadblocks, organized killings, oversaw rapes, and gave
public speeches inciting mass murder and rape and all the standard crimes that
the Kagame regimes uses to criminalize Hutu people. On its face, the evidence
produced by agent Andersen appears irrefutable. However, Mr. Andersen does not
have all the facts, and it seems he has very few of them, and certain facts are
being reserved for the defense arguments of Beatrice Munyenyezi in a court of
law.
In attempting to make a case that Beatrice Munyenyezi lied
on her immigration forms, ICE special agent Thomas Brain Anderson adduced that
she was a member of the Rwandan political party Movement Republicain pour le
Developpment (MRND), the party of President Juvenal Habyarimana that has been
castigated as an extremist Hutu genocide organization, and she did not check
the box declaring her membership in ANY organization.
However, everyone in Rwanda was required to be a member of
the MRND party for many years, beginning in 1975, soon after President
Habyarimana seized power (1973), and lasting until 1991, when the Habyarimana
government opened political space for opposition parties. Also, the fact that
your brother and father are members of a certain political party does not
confirm that you are also a member of that political party, certainly not in
Rwanda, certainly not in the years between 1991 and 1994, when allegiances,
alliances and memberships were highly in flux and highly politicized.
Is special agent Thomas Brian Andersen a member of the
National Rifle Association? Timothy McVeigh was also a member. Does this make
agent Andersen an 'NRA extremist'? Is agent Andersen a democrat? Are his
siblings ALL democrats? Is his father a democrat? Of course, there is no
automatic inference of guilt attached to being a democrat or republican in the
U.S.--not like MRND membership in Rwanda has been criminalized--no matter the
involvement of democrats or republicans in advocating, authorizing and
supporting atrocities in foreign interventions. Finally, Did David Kaczynski
share the ideology of his brother, Dr. Theodore John Kaczynski? Quod erat
demonstrandum.
Additionally, any Hutu refugee fleeing the RPF terror
apparatus and genocide against Hutus would have been suicidal to identify
themselves as MRND members after July 1994. Further, the assumption or
suggestion that the U.S. State Department and its immigration and
naturalization service agents would be impartial towards Hutus is unreasonable,
and the immigration forms clearly take no account of the extreme conditions of
mistrust, terror and basic survival that genocide and war crimes survivors
(including Beatrice Munyenyezi) were subject to at the time.
In fact, special agent Andersen later confirms the U.S.
official who granted Beatrice Munyenyezi her naturalization status would not
have done so had he 'known the truth about' her statements--supposing she
admitted she was a member of the MRND party: he declared he would have denied
her application.
Special agent Thomas Brian Andersen also unreasonably
concludes that Beatrice Munyenyezi must have lied in answering the question
"have you ever committed a crime of moral turpitude"? Here Andersen jumps from
being an ICE investigator to judge and jury against Beatrice Munyenyezi with
this conclusive statement of absolutes:
"In fact, as described herein, Munyenyezi had participated
in the genocide, and had committed a number of individual crimes, including the
assistance of murder, rape, assault and theft, against the Tutsi minority."
An admission by Beatrice Munyenyezi of involvement in
genocide is not herein accepted to be amongst the 'truthful' statements that
Ms. Munyenyezi was mandated to provide.
Perhaps the most outrageous statement of all, and evidence
of special agent Thomas Brian Andersen's extreme psychological and paranoid
prejudices, applied herein against Rwandan genocide survivor Beatrice
Munyenyezi, is the Paragraph 28:
"In addition, on or about January 31, 2005, Munyenyezi was
interviewed by the New Hampshire affiliate of National Public Radio to discuss
the challenges which face African refugees in the Manchester, New Hampshire
area. During the interview Munyenyezi said that she escaped a war in Rwanda
with her family and husband. Munyenyezi described how there is discrimination
against her in New Hampshire as an African refugee, and she also described
herself as a 'fighter' against adversity."
Now it is a crime to be interviewed on National Public
Radio? Or, is it a crime to be interviewed on NPR in New Hampshire only?
Clearly it is a crime to 'escape a war' when the top officials for the victor's
of that war, the Rwandan Patriotic Front, have been internationally indicted
for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. But the coup de grace
comes in the possibility that the 'crime' or 'infraction' or violation that
Beatrice Munyenyezi has committed in special agent Thomas Brian Andersen's mind
is to have admitted so shamelessly that "she described herself as a 'fighter'
against adversity."[xxxiv]
The outrageous crimes of Beatrice Munyenyezi--or the
absurdities and paranoia of special agent Thomas Brian Andersen's mind--don't
stop there however. In paragraph 29:
"Munyenyezi also appears to use a computer to correspond with
others. An Internet search related to Munyenyezi reveals that on or about May
11, 2009 Munyenyezi submitted a story for publication to the National Endowment
for the Arts website related to how she is persevering after her experience in
Africa. In addition, a public Internet search as of June 21, 2010 reveals that
Munyenyezi has a FACEBOOK account and is virtually connected with several
on-line friends."
Is it the appearance of using a computer or the actual use
of a computer to correspond with others that agent Andersen finds
incriminating? Are Africans not supposed to know how to use computers, or is it
only Rwandan Hutus (even U.S. citizens) who are not supposed to use computers
and/or correspond with others? Is having a FACEBOOK profile one of Beatrice
Munyenyezi's crimes? Or is her crime that she is "virtually connected with
several on-line friends?"
Amongst the most egregious examples of the extreme biases of
special agent Thomas Brian Andersen--in favor of the current Rwandan Patriotic
Front regime, and against Beatrice Munyenyezi, a former Rwandan national and a
person of Hutu ethnicity, now a U.S. citizen, comes in Paragraph 35:
"Based on my training and experience and my discussions with
other agents who have investigated similar offenses, I have reason to believe
that people who were active participants in the Rwandan genocide were
themselves Hutu extremists and that they have maintained an active Diaspora
throughout the world in the hope of returning to Rwanda for the purpose of
overthrowing the current government and re-instituting the policy of genocide,
'to complete the work' of killing every last Tutsi. To promote that effort and
prove their long-term commitment to the cause--i.e., the extermination of the
Tutsi race--Hutu extremists, like Munyenyezi, maintain documents, photographs
and memorabilia, which link them to their past and their expected role in the
future. The documents, photographs and memorabilia are particularly important
to Hutu extremists because, to them, the items prove that the extermination of
Tutsi is an act of self-defense."
According to the above reasoning, every Hutu is a genocidaire;
every Hutu must be denied any memorabilia of their past or hope for the future;
and every Hutu dreams of exterminating Tutsis, and is nefariously plotting "the
extermination of the Tutsi race." This is evidence of special agent Thomas
Brian Andersen's psychological projection, conjecture, paranoia, indoctrination
and, worst of all, it exemplifies a psychological profile of an individual or group
of one ethnicity (white, Anglo-European) harboring a hostile racial
categorization and extreme racial prejudice that seeks to dehumanize all
members of a different ethnic group--the Hutus--comprised of millions of people
of color.
The FBI surveillance visit to the home of Beatrice
Munyenyezi and the subsequent ICE fishing expedition--secured through the arrest
warrant obtained through agent Andersen's affidavit--were clearly in search of,
for example, "photographs and memorabilia" that could be used to make an
Orwellian argument about "Hutu extremists, like Munyenyezi." Agent Andersen's
belief that any memorabilia found in the home of a Hutu person is by default
evidence of their intention to retake Rwanda by force and "overthrow the
current government" is paranoid, hysterical and delusional.
Thomas Brian Andersen shows his extreme hatred for 'Hutu'
people as a group. His prejudice is exhibited throughout the document,
beginning with his summary of Rwandan history, e.g. in paragraph 5, where his
encapsulation of hundreds of years of complex African history destroys all
context of Hutu-Tutsi relations in favor of the 'Tutsis as victims' narrative
advanced by the RPF and its allies. He demonstrates his lack of knowledge of
the simplest discernable facts, such as the October 1, 1990 date of the illegal
RPF invasion of Rwanda (in paragraph 6 he states: "In or about the early
1990's, the RPF invaded Rwanda"). He uses the label 'Hutu extremist' to mask
his hatred against Hutu instilled in him by the current government of Rwanda
and its one-sided historiography.
U.S. AGENT PERJURY, FBI DECEPTION
It appears that it can be reasonably established that Thomas
Brian Andersen committed perjury--at least once--in his affidavit signed June 22,
2010, and that the FBI used deception to gain access to Beatrice Munyenyezi's
home, under conditions of her trust and cooperation on an international matter
completely unrelated to her asylum status, with the intent of surveillance of
both Beatrice Munyenyezi and her sister Prudence Kantengwa.
In paragraph 36 agent Andersen states: "I am aware of the
close relationship between Munyenyezi and her sister Prudence Kantengwa. I am
also familiar with the ongoing proceedings before the Immigration Court related
to Munyenyezi's sister, Kantengwa, and I know that Munyenyezi had appeared in
court during those proceedings and was announced as a witness for her sister.
In addition, on January 13, 2010, the FBI visited Munyenyezi at her residence
at 73 Goffe Street, Manchester New Hampshire, and they were invited into the
home. While present, the FBI noticed that Kantengwa was present at the home,
and appeared to be living or at least sleeping there."
To begin with, agent Andersen is more than simply "familiar
with the ongoing proceedings before the Immigration Court related to
Munyenyezi's sister, [Prudence] Kantengwa," but he does not disclose these and
instead downplays his vested interests in both cases: He is also the ICE agent
who has investigated the Kantengwa case in Rwanda and his investigations,
affidavits and testimonies are evidence for the Kantengwa case in Boston. So
there is an absence of full disclosure in this affidavit to New Hampshire U.S.
Magistrate Judge Daniel J. Lynch, who is likely very unfamiliar with the Boston
cases or deeper issues.
Second, special agent Thomas Brian Andersen has added a very
curious footnote to his affidavit that begs explanation. From December 18, 2009
to January 10, 2010, Beatrice Munyenyezi was traveling to the ICTR in Arusha
(Tanzania), via Kenya, from/to the United States. On her return entry to the
U.S., Munyenyezi volunteered information about, apparently, Jamaican Muslim
cleric Sheikh Abdullah al-Faisal (Trevor William Forrest), who was detained in
Kenya during the same time period (creating a barrage of western mass media
stories about his supposed terrorist profile).[xxxv] As noted in
agent Andersen's peculiar footnote number 3, Beatrice Munyenyezi was
interrogated on her return to Boston Logan Airport on January 10, 2010:
Footnote: 3"At the time of her entry, Munyenyezi told the
Customs and Border Protection personnel that she had important information to
relate pertaining to someone she believes she saw in Kenya who had been in the
news recently as an associate of a contemporary terrorist group. Munyenyezi was
told that the FBI would follow up with her on a later date."
When FBI agents showed up at Beatrice Munyenyezi's
Manchester, NH home on January 13, 2010, it was not in the context of
ascertaining her asylum status, as ICE agent Andersen falsely indicates, but
rather as the follow-up to Munyenyezi's volunteered information at Logan
airport. The statement that FBI agents were "invited to her home" (paragraph
36) also misrepresents Munyenyezi's position: she was intimidated by the FBI
agents but even so she invited them into her home because she felt she had
nothing to hide. However, based on the above details, it seems that Beatrice
Munyenyezi had long since been under surveillance, and the "invitation to her
home" was used as a cover for FBI surveillance of Beatrice Munyenyezi, her
sister Prudence Kantengwa, and the 73 Goffe Street dwelling.
It seems that Beatrice Munyenyezi's attempt to demonstrate
her allegiance to the U.S. war on terror backfired and was used against her.
More importantly, it is clear that the search warrant of June 22, 2010 was used
for an ICE fishing expedition with the hope that something incriminating (a
computer, manuscript of surviving genocide, old photographs or other
memorabilia) might be discovered and used against either Beatrice Munyenyezi or
Prudence Kantengwa or both.
But the surveillance was much more comprehensive. FBI agents
were not only watching and photographing the Munyenyezi home, as agent Andersen
indicates, but they were also spying on her, she alleges, by planting
plain-clothes FBI operatives in her political science classes at the University
of New Hampshire, where she was enrolled in an advanced degree program, in the
spring of 2010.
Is Beatrice Munyenyezi a suspected terrorist? It appears
that all Hutus outside of Rwanda have been designated de facto 'terrorists' by
the U.S. government in its alliance with the Kagame regime.
Third, the evidence of Thomas Brain Andersen's perjury in
his June 22, 2010 affidavit comes in his paragraph 36 statement: "...and I know
that Munyenyezi had appeared in court during those [her sister Prudence
Kantengwa's immigration court] proceedings and was announced as a witness for
her sister."
However, Beatrice Munyenyezi was never a witness at the
immigration trial of her sister Prudence Kantengwa. Instead, the trial was
interrupted when U.S. prosecutor Mary Kelly noticed Beatrice Munyenyezi sitting
in the courtroom taking notes. The judge had no problem with note taking by
Beatrice Munyenyezi. U.S. prosecutor Mary Kelly then apparently complained that
she had planned to call Beatrice Munyenyezi as a witness. After discussions
with the defense lawyer for Prudence Kantengwa, and a few questions to Beatrice
Munyenyezi in a private chamber, the U.S. prosecutor dropped the issue of
Munyenyezi's presence in the courtroom. Munyenyezi was never registered as a
witness by either side, and she never testified.
ICE special agent Thomas Brian Andersen misrepresents the
presence of Beatrice Munyenyezi at her sister's immigration trial to exaggerate
a greater sense of collusion and conspiracy between these two 'Hutu
extremists', no matter that the two women are sisters, or that it is common for
someone to testify on behalf of a family member. If special agent Andersen was
present in the court on the day that Beatrice Munyenyezi appeared to support
her sister Prudence, either he was sleeping through this disturbance in court
proceedings or he lied directly. If he was sleeping, he obviously fabricated
this 'evidence' used as sworn testimony. If he was not present, then he used
hearsay--incorrect information related by someone else--as sworn testimony in his
affidavit.
An evaluation of the overall methodology employed by special
agent Andersen, according to his own affidavit, suggests he has little or no
training in international human rights and genocide investigations. Indeed, Mr.
Andersen has been with the Boston Bureau of ICE for approximately two years,
coming from five years duty with law enforcement in Vermont State. After less
than two years with ICE in Boston, Massachusetts, USA, special agent Thomas
Brian Andersen, a Vermont State cop, purports to have gained expertise on
Rwanda and 'genocide' (as related in paragraphs 5-21 of his affidavit) and the
operations of the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda that ICTR defense
attorneys--trained in human rights law, some having more than ten years
full-time and dedicated experience with ICTR trials and the government of
Rwanda--would never claim.
All the genocide charges in the Thomas Brian Andersen
affidavit signed June 22, 2010 are generic charges that have been leveled over
and over, against all Hutus, and Thomas Brian Andersen is not credible or
impartial: he should be rejected as a witness in all Rwanda hearings.
Instead, special agent Thomas Brian Andersen should be
deposed under oath and interrogated about his clandestine relationship to RPF
officials and RPF intelligence agents; he should be interrogated about his
relationship to the Rwanda 'genocide' front-organizations IBUKA and AVEGA; and
he should be interrogated about ties between ICE, the Department of Homeland
Security, and the Directorate of Military Intelligence and other secretive
organizations of the state of Rwanda.
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-feed 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.[xxxvi]
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.[xxxvii]
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.[xxxviii]
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.[xxxix]
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.[xl]
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 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."[xli]
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 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."[xlii]
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.[xliii]
"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.[xliv]
Rakiya Omaar also fabricated evidence against Beatrice
Munyenyezi, Jean-Marie Vianney Higiro and Prudence Kantengwa.[xlv]
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.
end
*
UPDATE 12 August 2010:
In the second Lynne Tuohy article -- Immigrant's Dream Dissolved Before Her Arrest -- also retitled, expanded and distributed nationally by the Associated Press as U.S. immigrant's dream ends with genocide allegation -- the media paints Beatrice Munyenyezi as an ungrateful scammer who did everything she could to take advantage of the U.S. system and exploit her neighbors.
Lynne Tuohy works for the extreme right Union Leader newspaper in Manchester, New Hampshire (one of America's most right-wing pro-war states).
"She lived here for probably two years without paying her mortgage," Lynne Tuohy cites Manchester neighbor Tom Prince to say. "[S] didn't pay her bills for a good two years. We all feel she took advantage."
"She knew nothing about owning a home," Prince said, the Tuohy continues. "She never said, 'Thank you.' "
Tom Prince wasn't the only neighbor that the Lynne Tuohy dug up to slander Beatrice Munyenyezi by suggesting that she exploited them for their physical labor.
"Next door neighbor Scott Silver helped with moving things, including her new wide-screen TV, and cleared her walkway of snow," Lynne Tuohy wrote, adding: Silver, a real estate agent, said he was shocked when Munyenyezi refinanced her modest home. He said she had consulted him in advance about refinancing, and he told her he didn't think she had a shot.
"How in the world she ever did that, I don't know," Silver said, according to Lynne Tuohy. "She knew how to work the system."
Blame the victim? The neighbors do that, through the mouthpiece of tabloid reporter Lynne Tuohy, and so it is these outstanding American citizens always willing to lend a hand who become the victims, while Rwandan Beatrice Munyenyezi is cast as the perpetrator of evil against their goodness.
"Federal prosecutors decline to say how Munyenyezi came to their attention," the article disingenuously closes. Of course, Lynne Tuohy, the Union Leader Corporation and the Associated Press are unable to figure anything out for themselves--even when handed the relevant information (sent to them) about how Beatrice Munyenyezi was framed.
What the racist U.S. news media don't report is that Beatrice Munyenyezi worked hard to try to make it in a country where the odds are stacked against people of color, doubly so against refugees, and triply so against Africans. Beatrice Muntyenyezi's real crime, we are led to believe, by inference and innuendo and the framing of these news articles, is that she is a black African refugee and a woman.
Lynne Tuohy, in her one-sided reportage, does not address how many Americans lost homes and lives due to the financial plundering of the U.S. by big capital interests, including, most likely, the owners of the extreme right Union Leader 'news' paper.
The purpose of the Lynne Tuohy article is clear: whip up American hatred against Rwandans, Africans, people of color more generally, and against refugees-- all in service to the U.S. governments support for nasty dictatorships and murderous client dictators.
[i] 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.
[ii] 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, http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/news/777888-196/woman-allegedly-took-part-in-genocide.html.
[iii] 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,
pp. 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.
[iv] 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, http://allafrica.com/stories/201002260117.html.
[v] 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, http://www.inshuti.org/sendash4.htm.
[vi] "Feds Say NH Woman Involved in Rwandan Genocide," AP,
June 24, 2010.
[vii] See: Robin Philpot, Rwanda 1994: Colonialism Dies
Hard, The Taylor Report and Robin Philpot, 2003.
[viii] See, e.g.: Ann Garrison, "Erlinder released as Rwanda
cracks down on its own," San Francisco Bay View, June 27, 2010, http://www.sfbayview.com/2010/erlinder-released-as-rwanda-cracks-down-on-its-own/; "Rwanda Repression Rises Ahead of Poll--Watchdog," Reuters
(AlertNet), June 27, 2010; "Rwanda: Stop Attacks on Journalists,
Opponents," Human Rights Watch, June 26, 2010, http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2010/06/26/rwanda-stop-attacks-journalists-opponents.
[ix] 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, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/10358171.stm .
[x] "Rwandan Ambassador Flees Post," The Amsterdam
Post, March 19, 2010, http://www.theamsterdampost.com/2010/03/19/rwandan-ambassador-flees-post/;
Juma Kwayera, "Kagame in Spot as Spate of Killings Hits Rwanda," The Standard,
June 27, 2010, http://www.standardmedia.co.ke/politics/InsidePage.php?id=2000012548&cid=289.
[xi] Kristin Van Schie, "Rwandan General Shot by Asylum Seekers," IOL News South Africa, June 29, 2010, http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?from=rss_South%20Africa&set_id=1&click_id=13&art_id=iol127780728751A245.
[xii] "Murder Stokes Rwanda Crackdown Fear," AlJezeera,
June 26, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2010/06/201062611354413266.html.
[xiii] Heidi Boghosian, NLG Demands Immediate Release of
Attorney Peter Erlinder, National Lawyers Guild, May 28, 2010, http://www.nlg.org/news/press-releases/nlg-demands-immediate-release-of-attorney-peter-erlinder/
.
[xiv] Josh Kron, "American Lawyer Denied Bail in Rwanda," New
York Times, June 7, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/08/world/africa/08rwanda.html;
Jeremy Herb and Kevin Diaz, "Rwanda Frees Peter Erlinder on Bail," Star
Tribune, June 17, 2010, http://www.startribune.com/local/stpaul/96570089.html?elr=KArks8c7PaP3E77K_3c::D3aDhUec7PaP3E77K_0c::D3aDhUiacyKUnciaec8O7EyUr;
Madeleine Baron, "Minn. law professor detained in Rwanda accused of threatening
national security," Minnesota Public Radio, June 1, 2010, http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2010/05/31/erlinder-health-issues/?refid=0&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+MPR_Life+(Life+from+Minnesota+Public+Radio;
Steve Karnowski, "Professor: Rwanda Officials Wanted Me to Disappear," AP,
June 24, 2010, http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gYTyrX9RQG_GC2aynCMf2afQHVIgD9GH8NHG0.
[xv] Josephine Whittaker, "Rwandan Opposition Leader
Appears in Court," Open Security, April 22, 2010, http://www.opendemocracy.net/opensecurity/security_briefings/220410;
"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) http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/LDE6122BQ.htm.
[xvi] keith harmon snow, "The Rwanda Hit List: Revisionism, Denial & the Genocide Conspiracy," 24-31 March 2010, The African Executive, http://www.africanexecutive.com/modules/magazine/articles.php?article=5101&magazine=275.
[xvii] See: Patrick Karuretwa biography, Fletcher School of
Law & Diplomacy, Tufts Univertsity, http://fletcher.tufts.edu/llm/students-2008-09.shtml
.
[xviii] See: Patrick Karuretwa, "Not up for debate: Rwanda
cannot excuse Peter Erlinder's genocide denial," Harvard Law Review,
June 16, 2010, http://www.hlrecord.org/opinion/not-up-for-debate-rwanda-cannot-excuse-peter-erlinder-s-genocide-denial-1.1492809#comment1052532 .
[xix] 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.
[xx] 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, http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=11133
.
[xxi] 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.
[xxii] David Boeri, "Evidence of Misconduct," WBUR News, February 17, 2010, http://www.wbur.org/specials/evidence-of-misconduct.
[xxiii] See, e.g., "Open Letter to U.S. Attorney from Terek
Mahana Support Committee," March 13, 2010, http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/Article_58883.shtml.
[xxiv] The author has provided expert testimony in two
Rwandan asylum hearings in the United States in 2010.
[xxv] 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.
[xxvi] 2009 Country Report on Human Rights: Rwanda,
U.S. Department of State, March 11, 2010.
[xxvii] Kenneth Roth, "The Power of Horror in Rwanda," Los
Angeles Times, April 11, 2009.
[xxviii] 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, http://www.rwasta.net/fileadmin/user_upload/dossiers/2008-Critique-Rapport-Mucyo-documents-annexes/20040400-Reyntjens.%20Rwanda.%20ten%20years%20on.April%202004.pdf.
See also: keith harmon snow, "The Rwanda Hit List: Revisionism, Denial, and the
Genocide Conspiracy," The African Executive, http://www.africanexecutive.com/modules/magazine/articles.php?article=5101&magazine=275.
[xxix] "Iwawa Island: Prison Camp or Paradise Vacation Spot?" NGO News Africa, May 1, 2010.
[xxx] "Rwandans Flee into Burundi," SAPA, October 1,
2009, and "Burundi: Stop Deporting Rwandan Asylum Seekers," Human Rights Watch,
December 1, 2009, http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/12/02/burundi-stop-deporting-rwandan-asylum-seekers.
[xxxi] David Boeri, "Evidence of Misconduct," WBUR News,
February 17, 2010, http://www.wbur.org/specials/evidence-of-misconduct.
[xxxii] Find affidavit with article by Joseph C. Cote, "Woman
Allegedly took part in Genocide," Nashua Telegraph, June 25, 2010, http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/news/777888-196/woman-allegedly-took-part-in-genocide.html.
[xxxiii] 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, http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13844.
[xxxiv] Laura Noy, "Finding Refuge in the Queen City," NHPR,
January 31, 2005.
[xxxv] See, e.g, "Kenya: Airlines Refuse to Fly Jamaican
Home," AllAfrica.com, January 6, 2010, http://allafrica.com/stories/201001060954.html.
[xxxvi] Fergal Keane. "Rwanda Genocide Suspect in UK," BBC News. November 6, 2006. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/nolavconsole/ifs_news/hi/newsid_6120000/newsid_6123000/nb_wm_6123042.stm>.
[xxxvii] 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.
[xxxviii] 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.
[xxxix] 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.
[xl] See, e.g., Steven Da Silva, "Revisiting the 'Rwandan
Genocide': Resurrecting Ghosts, or Exorcising Demons?", Global Research,
June 1, 2007, http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=5848.
[xli] Kimberley Acquaro and Peter Landesman, "Out of
Madness: A Matriarchy," Mother Jones, January/February 2003, http://motherjones.com/politics/2003/01/out-madness-matriarchy
.
[xlii] 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,
http://www.ushmm.org/genocide/analysis/details.php?content=2002-03-06
[xliii] 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.
[xliv] 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.
[xlv] 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, pp. 215-217.
Written by: keith harmon snow
Photography Credits: keith harmon snow
Categories: Immigration & Refugees, Rwanda, United States
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