by Kevin Jon Heller
Although clearly a step up from its genocidal predecessor, Kagame’s government in Rwanda is anything but progressive. According to the State Department, the government is responsible for — inter alia — illegal detention, torture, enforced disappearance, attempted assassinations of political opponents, restrictions on the freedom of speech and press, violence toward journalists and human rights advocates, discrimination against women/children/gays and lesbians, trafficking in persons, restrictions on labor rights, and use of child labor. The West has nevertheless generally preferred to ignore Kagame’s horrible human rights record, focusing instead on Rwanda’s supposed “economic miracle” since he took power (which, not coincidentally, has involved unprecedented friendliness toward Western multinationals.)
That said, I think the honeymoon is finally over. As the Guardian reports, Kagame’s longstanding — and remarkably flagrant — support for Bosco Ntaganda’s M23 rebel group in the Congo seems to have caught up with him:
The head of the US war crimes office has warned Rwanda‘s leaders, including President Paul Kagame, that they could face prosecution at the international criminal court for arming groups responsible for atrocities in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Stephen Rapp, who leads the US Office of Global Criminal Justice, told the Guardian the Rwandan leadership may be open to charges of “aiding and abetting” crimes against humanity in a neighbouring country – actions similar to those for which the former Liberian president, Charles Taylor, was jailed for 50 years by an international court in May.
Rapp’s warning follows a damning United Nations report on recent Rwandan military support for M23, an insurgent group that has driven hundreds of thousands of people from their homes since April as it has seized territory in the eastern DRC.
The group is led by Bosco Ntaganda, known as the Terminator, who was indicted by the international criminal court six years ago for war crimes including the forced recruitment of child soldiers. The UN report accuses Rwanda of shielding Ntaganda from justice.
On Saturday, Washington said it would halt some military aid to Rwanda after the UN report.
The aid freeze and Rapp’s public intervention mark a significant shift away from once-solid US support for Kagame, which was rooted in lingering guilt over international inaction during the 1994 genocide of Rwandan Tutsis.
Rapp, who previously served as chief prosecutor at the Rwanda genocide tribunal and later initiated the prosecution of Taylor over his crimes as president of Liberia in supporting rebels in neighbouring Sierra Leone, said Rwandan support for M23 and other armed groups “has to stop” because it “maintains the lawlessness and at the end of the day enables the ongoing commission of atrocities”.
“There is a line that one can cross under international law where you can be held responsible for aiding a group in a way that makes possible their commission of atrocities,” he said.
“Charles Taylor never set foot in Sierra Leone, and aided and abetted, and was convicted of aiding and abetting, the Revolutionary United Front with assistance that was substantial and, the judges said, without which the RUF could not have committed the atrocities to the extent they did commit them. Because of that evidence, Charles Taylor was convicted and sentenced to 50 years.”
Rapp said the evidence by the UN group of experts of Rwandan government support for M23 and other armed groups, including sending weapons and troops into the DRC, exposed Kagame and other senior officials to investigation for war crimes.
“At this stage, I’m not sure if we are there in terms of criminal conduct,” he said. “But if this kind of thing continued and groups that were being armed were committing crimes … then I think you would have a situation where individuals who were aiding them from across the border could be held criminally responsible.”
The UN report, by a group of experts appointed by the security council, said it had “found substantial evidence attesting to support from Rwandan officials to armed groups operating in the eastern DRC”, including shipping weapons and money to M23 in breach of a UN arms embargo and other sanctions.
“Since the earliest stages of its inception, the group documented a systematic pattern of military and political support provided to the M23 rebellion by Rwandan authorities,” it said.
The report said the Rwandan government gave “direct assistance in the creation of M23 through the transport of weapons and soldiers through Rwandan territory”, and recruited Rwandan youths, demobilised ex-combatants and Congolese refugees as M23 fighters.
It also offers evidence of “direct Rwandan Defence Forces (RDF) interventions into Congolese territory to reinforce M23″ and “support to several other armed groups”.
“RDF operational units are periodically reinforcing the M23 on the battlefield against the Congolese army,” it said.
Many M23 members formerly served in another Rwandan-backed militia, the National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP), which was responsible along with other militias for widespread atrocities over several years, including ethnic killings and mass rape. Ntaganda was the CNDP’s military chief.
The experts accuse Rwanda of shielding Ntaganda from prosecution by the ICC for war crimes.
“Rwandan officials have insisted on impunity for their armed group and mutineer allies, including ex-CNDP General Bosco Ntaganda,” they said.
Rapp’s very strong statement is important in a number of respects. First, and most obviously, it marks a dramatic change in US policy toward Rwanda. As this Guardian article explains at great length, the US initially did everything it could to prevent the report that Rapp cites from being publicly released. Now the report is the centerpiece of the US’s case against Kagame. Second, the statement is yet another signal of the growing partnership between the US and the ICC. As has been clear for some time, the US is now more than happy to work closely with the ICC when the interests of the two align (Darfur, Libya, Uganda, Congo). Third, the statement is a potent reminder of the ICTR’s failure — all too deliberate, as Lars Waldorf has explained — to investigate war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Kagame’s Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) during the conflict that ended the genocide and brought Kagame to power. The crimes that Kagame’s government is aiding and abetting in Congo are not within the jurisdiction of the ICTR, but they are in many ways the continuation of the RPF’s crimes in 1994. Had the ICTR taken those earlier crimes more seriously, it is reasonable to assume that Kagame would have felt less free to support M23 now.
Kagame’s response to Rapp’s statement was completely predictable: to blame the West for forgetting about the genocide. Remembering the genocide, however, does not mean ignoring Kagame’s authoritarian rule or overlooking his government’s crimes. Fortunately, the West seems increasingly inclined to agree.