Charles Onana explaining the Congolese crisis.
Jason Stearns, shielding the empire from scrutiny
Simon Fraser University assistant professor in International Studies and director of Congo Research Group Jason Stearns, author of two books on the Congo, Dancing in the Glory of Monsters and The war that does not say its name, recently wrote an article for the magazine Afrique XXI, Rwanda-RD Congo, La guerre des Récits whose main purpose seems to be to slander one of Africa’s leading historians, Charles Onana, in view of an upcoming political trial against Onana for genocide denial to be held this autumn in Paris.
One can only help but wonder why Stearns dedicates an entire article on the scholar, Onana, which in his previous book he liquidated in one sentence as a conspiracy theorist.[i] Associate professor in the Department of Environmental and Urban Change at York University in Toronto and geopolitical analyst Justin Podur’s 2021 book America's Wars on Democracy in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo reveals through a meticulous analysis the purpose of Stearn’s often misleading writing. Coming from an anti-imperialist angle Podur sees through the propaganda which Africanists such as Gerard Prunier, Michela Wrong and Jason Stearns amongst others relentlessly spew on the Great Lakes past and on-going genocides.
Podur explains: “ I use “Africanist” the way Edward Said used the word “Orientalist,” as someone who deploys tropes about Africans in a way that shields the empire from scrutiny. The Africanist, like the Orientalist, interprets the continent and its people for the Westerner, explaining the complexities and intricacies of the strange and different African mind.”
In a recent article by Podur Limited Hangouts:” Western Intellectuals Whitewash Horrific Crimes of CIA Asset Paul Kagame he brilliantly analyses Michela Wrong’s latest book and reveals how Africanists operate so as to obfuscate major crimes: ”The fact that the book has polarized the debate this way—leaving out the worst RPF (Rwandan Patriotic Front) crimes, most of the propaganda structure facilitating neocolonialism in the region, including the innocence of the West in the whole thing—is a master class of Africanist writing. Michela Wrong has shown how it is to be done.” Jason Stearns follows in her footsteps.
This hit piece on Charles Onana is also signed by Archie Macintosh, who is according to the article an independent researcher. A quick search on the internet reveals no author with this name and this character assassination as the only article ever written.
Stearns begins the article by explaining the lack of coverage of the Congolese war in eastern Congo as due to its complexity: “this is presented as too complex, with dozens of armed groups who fight for a myriad of reasons, often very local.” (emphasis mine) The term “local” is relentlessly repeated in Stearn’s writings so as to obfuscate what is an international proxy war in the Great Lakes region since 1990. Looking at another contemporary genocide, that of Palestinians in Gaza, could strife between local Palestinian factions be blamed for the on-going occupation and genocide in Gaza? Yet this absurd statement is repeatedly made by Stearns for eastern Congo’s war.
Stearns goes on to cite another misleading reason for the lack of coverage of the DRC war :“too peripheral to the interests of the superpowers.” Oh really? The richest country in the world, without whose minerals no green revolution would be possible, is of no interest to the superpowers? How disingenuous! [ii]
Silencing debate and ignoring historical archives
Stearns writes that there are no images of this on-going war (which is also inaccurate) and then states, quoting Susan Sontag’s book Regarding the Pain of Others , that war images can lead to a call for revenge.
Sontag’s book touches on many aspects of war photography as she contemplates its ethical value: “Why should we look at these photographs of faraway horrors if we are not able to do anything about what the images show? Such images ... [are] an invitation to pay attention, to reflect, to learn, to examine the rationalizations for mass suffering offered by established powers. Who caused what the picture shows? Who is responsible?"
Putting aside Stearns reductive reading of Sontag’s insightful book, following his line of thought it would thus have been better for the world to not have the daily images of another contemporary on-going genocide, the current Palestinian genocide, as the images could cause feelings of revenge or even violence? The daily images live streamed from Gaza are a documentation of the human rights abuses and are needed to record what has happened, a nation’s necessary collective memory which according to Sontag acts as an ethical remembering. Furthermore, seeing those images has prompted millions world-wide to protest peacefully against the daily slaughter in Gaza. Those images did not prompt violence, but rather made most people understand the degree of slaughter and inhuman human rights abuses committed by Israel in occupied Palestine, and pushed people to embrace acts of civil disobedience-many students at US universities tore up their end of year diploma’s protesting the US support of Israel, huge demonstrations were held world-wide, BDS campaigns launched, marches, debates and podcasts held, history books and poems written -calling for sanctions against Israel, a stop to US weapons deliveries to Israel and an end to this genocide. Those images also prompted South Africa in December 2023 to file a case against Israel at the International Court of Justice accusing it of committing genocide against the Palestinians.
Stearns then-after having stated that there are no images of Congo’s war-although there are many images available today and furthermore with his decades long work on the country, he could have contributed in rigorously documenting the weekly massacres visually - jumps from war photography to contradictory conspiracy-like narratives which “shape decision-making” but also “violence on the ground.” Whose decision making? Which violence? Which contradictory narratives? And most importantly what is the relation between photography and contradictory narratives?
Photography can be manipulated but is most often hard evidence difficult to push aside just as historical archives are useful primary sources for reconstructing historical events. Historian Charles Onana works almost exclusivity with historical archives and first-hand testimonies, whereas Stearns ignores historical archives and only uses quasi exclusively western secondary sources, sources which can be easily manipulated, contrary to archives, which unfiltered, are clear-cut documentary evidence.
Stearns conjures emotions ( references to pain, catastrophe, revenge and violence) so as to avoid historical facts and archival evidence, and is here also indirectly stating that narratives explaining the war should be silenced, as they may cause revenge or even violence. In this he is in lock step with western backed puppet Rwandan President Paul Kagameand his death squads which roam the world silencing, also by assassination, any critique of Rwanda’s totalitarian regime.
Kagame in a recent press conference in Kigali went as far as menacing writer Charles Onana as well as Presidential candidate Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza. Here is an extract of a 25 July 2024 press statement written by Madame Ingabire’s lawyers who claim Kagame’s comments are “defamatory, recklessly inflammatory and dangerous”: “ On 13 July 2024, the President conducted a press conference. At the conclusion of that press conference, he referenced activities that he alleged Madame Ingabire was involved in, including “spending [her] time shouting”, “fight[ing] with the evil insider her”, “work[ing] with people involved in the war in Eastern Congo”, and “wish[ing] or talk[ing] evil about Rwanda” before stating, “You know she will not end up well”. The President added, “They [people such as Madame Ingabire and Charles Onana] cannot be allowed to reach a level where their action can have negative consequences on the country or on Rwandans. When it comes to that level, we find an appropriate solution...When they tell lies, refute what they say. But if they cross the line the consequences are clear.” Kagame uttered these unacceptable mafia-like statements in Kinyarwanda and thus they are not picked up by main stream media. Ingabire’s lawyers state that the Rwandan government will be held accountable if Madame Ingabire comes to any harm.
Stearn’s use of false equivalence
In the first sub title of the article under review, “We are ready to fight”, Stearns writes that Congo should not blame Rwanda for all the violence in eastern Congo, calling this a “popular shortcut.” Dismissing a three decades long war of aggression which began in 1996 and which should have called for at the very least international sanctions towards the aggressors is mind-boggling, especially since Uganda was condemned by the International Criminal Court of Justice in 2005 for the crime of aggression against the Congo.
In May 2024 Tracy Walsh wrote an article Rwanda’s role in eastern DRC conflict: why international law is failing to end the fighting in The Conversation: “Twenty years ago,[iii] the DRC brought a claim against Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda to the ICJ. The claim concerned the kinds of violence we are seeing now. The claims against Uganda went ahead, because Uganda has consented to ICJ jurisdiction. In 2005, the ICJ ruled in the DRC’s favor, finding that Uganda was responsible for violence in the country. In 2022, the court ordered Uganda to pay US$65 million in reparations related to the 2005 ruling. The claim against Rwanda failed because the court determined it had no jurisdiction. Rwanda has not consented to ICJ jurisdiction. The ICJ thus had to consider whether other treaties Rwanda and DRC are parties to might give the court jurisdiction over the DRC’s claims. It determined they did not.”
If Rwanda and Uganda are not to be blamed for this on-going aggression in eastern Congo one wonders what all the three decades long peace process were addressing? The most recent peace process in Luanda established a cease-fire since the 4th of August which however Rwanda and its latest proxy militia in the region, the M23, is not respecting as its forces continue to wage war and recently reoccupied at the end of August 2024 Masisi (capturing the villages of Kaniro, Lukopfi as well as the Kisuma bridge situated less than 20 kilometers from the center of Masisi) and Rutshuru in North Kivu. The consequences on the local population are devastating.
The call for a ceasefire, with no preliminary international sanctions against Rwanda and Uganda to enforce it, is just as insufficient diplomatically as the repeated vague calls for a ceasefire in Gaza are without preliminary international sanctions, no red lines set or an arms embargo enforced towards Israel for its 76 years of aggression.
Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi’s denunciation of the Rwandan aggression, where he compares Kagame to Hitler, is identified as “hyperbole” by Stearns. For a war of aggression which has displaced today 7,2 million Congolese, (displacements which have been on-going for twenty eight years) and which has seen at least 10 million dead and weekly massacres, one cannot help but wonder what is so exaggerated about this affirmation: Kagame and his western allies have killed more people in the region than the Belgian King Leopold II, whose crimes described in Adam Hochschild’s King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa, are today abhorred.
Stearns then uses false equivalence by placing Rwanda’s claims on the same footing as the Congolese, blurring the lines between the aggressor and the aggressed. This is also done repeatedly in the war in Gaza where the analysis begins on 7 October 2023, obliterating decades of Israeli siege and occupation suffered by the Palestinians.
Fabricating pro-Kagame pretexts
Stearns does write, 30 years too late, that the FDLR rebel group (former Hutu refugees) in Congo is no longer a menace for Rwanda and should not be used as a pretext by Rwandan President Kagame to invade eastern Congo. However confidential EU and US reports, revealed in Onana’s books, show that the Hutu refugees were never a threat for Rwanda, that it was nonexistent as far back as 1994, a factor also corroborated by wikileaks cables, yet Stearns choses to ignore this archival evidence for decades, thus justifying Rwanda’s war of aggression in Congo.
However Stearns reinforces the second predominant false pretext used by Kagame since 1996 to invade eastern Congo (then Zaire), namely to come to the protection of the Tutsi living in Congo, known as the Banyamulenge.
In a recent exchange on twitter/X with Michela Wrong I wrote that she should address the erroneous fact she wrote in her book In the footsteps of Mr. Kurtz, namely that then vice governor of South Kivu Lwabanji Lwasi had stated at the onset of Rwanda’s invasion of Zaire on 24 October 1996 that “all Tutsis should leave the country as they were persona non grata.” As I was searching for the erroneous quote in her book to post on twitter-X and open a debate, I found myself blocked by her after Wrong called me a “sloppy reader.” She did however write what I contested (screenshot below) .
Twitter exchange with Michela Wrong and extract from her 2012 book In the Footsteps of Mr Kurtz: Living on the Brink of Disaster in the Congo
Vice governor Lwabanji Lwasi went in exile in Europe and eventually won a trial in Belgium that proved he had never said such xenophobic statements, but on the contrary had suggested that all ethnic groups (including the Tutsis living in Congo) should be moved further away from the border, by creating a humanitarian corridor in view of the imminent Rwandan invasion, camouflaged as a liberation movement. I filmed Lwasi’s detailed testimony on those events.
Stearns on this episode repeats the same lie: “The biggest panic, however, was stirred by the public declaration by the vice-governor of South Kivu in the first week of October 1996 that the Banyamulenge had six days to clear the Hauts Plateaux or would otherwise be considered rebels.” [iv]
This pretext of anti-Tutsi sentiment on the part of the Congolese is the distorted lens through which pro-Kagame and US empire apologists want people to read the crisis, so as to justify the on-going incursions in eastern Congo and shield their catastrophic agency in the region.
The gaslighting geopolitical playbook is also used by propagandists for the Gaza genocide: criticism of Israel’s genocide is equated with anti-Semitism, rather than anti-Zionism, overlooking that some of the most rigorous criticism on Israeli policies comes from Jewish journalists and scholars (Max Blumenthal, Norman Finkelstein, Ilan Pappé to name just a few amongst many).
Calling facts perceptions and perceptions facts
The next sub-section of the article is entitled A war of perceptions : here an outright war of aggression and occupation is reduced by Stearns to simple perceptions. Stearns gives three examples: the call by cardinal Fridolin Ambongo on Rwanda to put a halt to its expansionist aims and its systematic pillaging of Congolese natural resources (yet pillaging in Congo is documented by the UN Expert Panel on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources reports since April 2001,where the term illegal is crucial); the decision of singer Fally Ipupa to boycott Rwanda and no longer hold concerts there; Nobel Peace Prize winner and gynecologist Denis Mukwege’s call to sanction Rwanda. How or why should these examples be conceived as perceptions ?
Stearns goes on to state Rwandan perceptions : “it’s clear that the party in power in Rwanda feels unjustly accused.” Clear to whom? So, Rwandans are reduced by Stearns to the party in power? Stearns admits that there is no room for dissidence in Rwanda today, yet then goes on stating that “many Rwandans fear that the ethnic divisions of the past will be revived and that the spark will come from eastern DRC.” Stearns does not underscore the fact that the entire Rwandan population feels oppressed by the Kagame regime and that this is not due to any form of ethnic tension across the border, but has to do with the oppressive RPF party in power. How to move away from such a repressive regime is not a part of Stearn’s advocacy writing: again, he blames Congo to distract readers from the real problem, the Rwandan regime and its internal and external behavior.
America’s secret role in the Rwandan tragedy
The next section is called “Charles Onana’s conspiracy theories.” Stearns writes that Onana “published twenty-six books, at the rate of more than one per year for two decades”and without giving any details underscores that his work is of “disparate quality” and “dubious rigor.” To take just one example historian Eric Hobsbawm also wrote many books, often more than one per year, but this is seen as him being a prolific writer, not something one would criticize. Authoritative first-hand witnesses who have prefaced Onana’s books such as former President Thabo Mbeki, former French Defense Minister under Jacques Chirac, Charles Million or 1980 Nobel Peace Prize activist and artist Adolfo Pérez Esquivel are dismissed. One cannot help but notice how the content of these prefaces, in the Orientalist tradition, are completely omitted.
Maybe readers unfamiliar with Charles Onana’s work would be interested in knowing that his books span a wide range of African historical and geopolitical themes: his first book is on Central African Republic’s second President Jean-Bédel Bokassa written almost three decades ago in 1998; two books are on the role of the Senegalese Tirailleurs, a corps of African infantry in the French Army under colonialism; an investigation into President Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir‘s Sudan; the Ivorian crisis from 2002 to 2010 which eventually saw a UN-French regime change against a legitimate President Laurent Gbagbo; an investigation into a French psyops operation in 2004 in Ivory Coast known as Bouaké; Singer and actress Josephine’s Baker role in the fight against Hitler; African regional responses to Boko Haram, amongst others. Living in France he has also tackled themes relating to French policies, such as Palestine the French Malaise, revelations from the Elysée archives.
Onana’s publishing house Editions Duboiris is not as small as Stearns writes, and has published a variety of high profile authors, as well as a diversity of topics: the memories of the head of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda Jacques-Roger Booh Booh, as well as those of renown American civil rights activist Amelia Boynton Robinson or Theodor Michael Wonja, a black actor, survivor of the German Nazi camps; Einstein’s antiracism; the assassination of one of Africa’s leading independence fighters Cameroonian Félix-Roland Moumié recounted by his wife; a one to one interview with former President of the Comoros colonel Azali Assoumani etc.
Eight books by Onana are on the Great Lakes region, yet the focus is mainly on Rwandan history and Rwanda’s invasion of eastern Congo, each publication including new evidence obtained through newly released archival documents. Onana has investigated the assassination of two African Presidents, President Juvénal Habyarimana of Rwanda and President of Burundi Cyprien Ntaryamira on April 6 1994, the event known to have triggered the Rwandan tragedy; the shortcomings of the Arusha tribunal trials; the RPF’s war of aggression in Rwanda (1990-94) and then Zaire (1996) and the subsequent occupation of eastern Congo; the French role and its Operation Turquoise; Europe’s and America’s role in the Rwandan and Congo crisis. Jason Stearns, who has not published anything on Rwanda, acts as if he is an authoritative source on the subjects analyzed by Onana, which is misleading to say the least.
Stearns then accuses Onana of simplifying a complex topic by pointing to the central role the US and certain multinationals specialized in strategic and rare minerals played in the regime change in Rwanda (1990-94) as well as the invasion of Zaire in 1996. Helen Epstein in an article published in 2017 in The Guardian on America’s secret role in the Rwandan genocide writes: “US officials knew that Museveni was not honoring his promise to court martial RPF leaders. The US was monitoring Ugandan weapons shipments to the RPF in 1992, but instead of punishing Museveni, western donors including the US doubled aid to his government and allowed his defense spending to balloon to 48% of Uganda’s budget, compared with 13% for education and 5% for health, even as Aids was ravaging the country. In 1991, Uganda purchased 10 times more US weapons than in the preceding 40 years combined.” Such an incredible arms build-up should warrant further research. Barrie Collins has analyzed US diplomatic support in a ground-breaking 2014 book, Rwanda 1994: The Myth of the Akazu Genocide Conspiracy and its Consequences (Rethinking Political Violence) which shatters the reductionist, yet standard account of the Rwandan tragedy.
The primary role of multinationals in backing Congo’s wars has been extensively documented by scholars such as Alain Denault in Noir Canada or Patrick Mbeko in Le Canada dans les guerres en Afrique centrale: génocide & pillages des ressources minières du Congo par le Rwanda interposé, amongst countless other sources. Canadian mining companies Barrick Gold and Banro attacked the author Alain Denault for having written about this. The dramatic story of the judicial proceedings is told in the documentary Silence is Gold.
To be precise Stearns again misquotes Onana’s work as he writes : “According to him, the Congolese crisis has been orchestrated from the start by the Rwandan government, which itself is in the service of the United States, members of the French elite and multinationals.” Onana goes into detail reconstructing the Anglo-French rivalry at the end of the last century -a fact also elucidated by Former French Defense Minister Million’s preface in Onana’s latest book, Holocaust in the Congo, The international community’s omerta, now also available in English. French support of the Kagame regime only occurs much later under President Nicolas Sarkozy and the Macron Presidency.
The genocide that doesn’t say its name
Stearns then downplays the number of people who have died in Congo since 1996 asking readers to distinguish between those directly killed by the Rwandan invasions and those who died due to the consequences of war! The International Rescue Committee who conducted surveys in the region wrote in 2008 : “Conflict and humanitarian crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo have taken the lives of an estimated 5.4 million people since 1998 and continue to leave as many as 45,000 dead every month. (…) The conflict and its aftermath, in terms of fatalities, surpass any other since World War II," says the aid group's president, George Rupp. Congo's loss is equivalent to the entire population of Denmark or the state of Colorado perishing within a decade.” These astonishing numbers exclude civilians who died during the first brutal war from 1996-1998 and another 17 years of war in the region, up to this day. Furthermore, Stearns does not give any other possible statistics, nor alternative sources.
Stearns even questions the high number of 500,000 rapes, data which comes from Nobel Peace prize winner and gynecological surgeon Doctor Denis Mukwege who has worked with rape victims for now over two decades in the region! Stearns then writes that statistics on rape are rare! Yet a simple Wikipedia search reveals even higher estimates: “In 2011 alone it was estimated that there were up to 400,000 rapes. An article in the American Journal of Public Health gave an estimate of two million victims of rape by 2011.” Should Stearns not have felt compelled to look into such mass atrocities where rape is used as genocide, rather than debate the exact number of rapes? Has Stearns bothered to interview Mukwege or other doctors working in the region? One chapter in Onana’s recent book Holocaust focuses on rape victims, and their testimonies are immensely difficult to read due to the extreme suffering these women face. It should be read by everyone. Where are the international women’s human rights movements ? Why are these victims left alone? Who is their right mind would downplay such atrocities?
Furthermore, the quote on the above statistics which Stearns wrongly attributes to Onana is actually from the preface toHolocaust in the Congo, The international community’s omerta, written by former French Defense Minister Millon.
Holocaust dives the reader into the years preceding and following the fall of Congolese President Mobutu Sese Seko with the invasion of the Zaire (today Congo) in 1996 by the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo (AFDL) and the setting up of a system of occupation which is still in place to this day. Major events are reconstructed citing primary archival sources - spanning from US and French Presidential records, US national security agencies’ reports and memos, letters, congressional hearings, judicial trials, parliamentary inquiries and newspaper articles of the time- as well as interviews with key actors. Secondary sources are also widely cited, with a particular attention to a variety of less know emerging Congolese authors.
Stearns, ignoring the compelling new evidence revealed in Holocaust, concludes this part with further slander: “Few serious scholars consider this latest book a solid scholarly work.” Which scholars? It is the very lack of scholarly work on the region which prompted Onana to delve into archival sources.
Here is an extract by Justin Podur on the inadequacy of Stearn’s writings:
“American Congo specialist Jason Stearns, who worked on Congo for the UN and the International Crisis Group, says in his exotically titled 2011 book Dancing in the Glory of Monsters that he wants to “understand why war made more sense than peace, why the regional political elites seem to be so rich in opportunism and so lacking in virtue.”
He implies that he is seeking a systemic analysis. But what system is Stearns talking about? Since his object of study is regional political elites, it is not an international system. Stearns quotes “a Congolese friend and parliamentarian,” who says “in order to survive, we all have to be a bit corrupt, a bit ruthless. That’s the system here.” Describing doing business, Stearns talks of the “subtext” of an interview with a businessman, which was “this is the Congo – if we didn’t get our hands dirty once in a while, we would be out of business.” He continues that, “for many, cut-and-dry morality was out of place here.”
He provides a list of figures who failed because of their idealism: Etienne Tshisekedi, Wamba dia Wamba, Che Guevara—“the Congo has always defied the idealists.” Wamba dia Wamba is supposed to be an illustration of the “tragic state of Congolese leadership: even when a man with pristine political and ethical credentials tries to effect change, the results are poor. ”Stearns tops off the story of Wamba with a series of racist statements from unattributed expatriate workers. “The Congolese like fun and dancing,” “you can buy anybody here,” “they are like children.” Stearns doesn’t dispute these caricatures, though he calls them a “patronizing attitude” among “Indian, European, Arab, or American.” He simply takes these expatriates to task for refusing to “ponder why these alleged traits have developed.” Having accepted that there is some kind of corrupting influence that the Congo has, Stearns creates a straw man to knock down by saying the corrupting influence is not due to “some genetic defect in Congolese DNA... or even something about Congolese culture.”But what he offers instead? The dysfunction is apparently “deeply rooted in the country’s political history”—in slavery, colonialism, and Mobutu’s dictatorship which leaves idealistic leaders with “a lack of a popular base and the abject weakness of the state.” As a result, “the fiercest ideology or ethics that can be found in the country is ethnic.”
Sometimes, Stearns writes, “it seems that by crossing the border into Congo one abandons any sort of Archimedean perspective on truth and becomes caught up in a web of rumors and allegations, as if the country itself were the stuff of some post-modern fiction.” Stearns thinks this might be because of a “structural deficit,” with no free press, independent judiciary, or “inquisitive parliament.” “But it has also become a matter of cultural pride. People weave rumors and myths together over drinks or while waiting for taxis to help give meaning to their lives.” [v]
Can one leave a country’s history to such caricatural and racist analysis?
Stearns writes that Onana does use historical archives yet “it is rare that these sources actually support his assertions.” No names, or facts, or assertions, or examples are given.
One has the impression that Stearns does not want to win the debate, but only silence it by slander.
In a long series of twitter feeds attached to the article Stearns writes that of course Rwanda should be pressured, yet forgets that in this article he writes that Doctor Mukwege’s call for sanctions against Rwanda to stop the mass rapes is a perception.
Stearns describes the red-carpet reception Onana received in his recent trip to Congo by the Kinshasa University and the DRC government as “welcomed with bombast.”
Misallocation of responsibility for the Rwandan genocide
In the next section, “The Tutsi genocide deception”, Stearns attacks Onana’s analyses of the events in Rwanda 1990-94. Stearns writes “His version of events in Rwanda was contested in France: he was indicted in 2022 for publicly contesting the existence of crimes against humanity.” This is erroneous as Onana is being charged for genocide denial, and has never questioned the mass murder of Tutsis, as well as Hutus, in Rwanda.
It is three NGOs who filed the complaint against Onana: the International Federation of Human Rights, Survie and the French League of Human Rights. It is regrettable that human rights NGOs and think tanks waste time and money silencing a scholar! In a dystopian authoritarian country such as Rwanda today, where even the hero of the Hollywood movie Hotel Rwanda Paul Rusesabagina was arrested and charged with genocide denial, one also wonders what mimicking Rwanda’s policies has to say on these western NGOs behavior? Recent harrowing investigations by a group of 50 journalists from Forbidden stories, Rwanda classified, Investigating Kagame’s repressive regime, look into the dreadful state of journalism and life in today’s Rwanda, where genocide denial has become a tool to silence and repress any form of free speech or dissidence.
In a recent study by Director of the Democratizing Foreign Policy program at the Quincy Institute Benn Freeman, we see the dangerous degree of conflict of interest in scholarly work coming from think tanks which are often funded by military contractors. Many NGOs have been politically coopted, and took up biased stances with grave consequences for the countries concerned, such as Human Rights Watch on Ivory Coast.
This is not the first time Onana faces charges. In 2002 Onana published The Secrets of the Rwandan Genocide,Investigations on the Mysteries of a President, while Rwandan President Paul Kagame was being hailed by the international press as a hero for stopping the genocide, Onana accused him of having plotted the 6 April 1994 downing of the Presidential plane — the spark that lit the fires of the 100-day massacres. In 2002 President Kagame and the Rwandan state filed a defamation suit in Paris against Onana with the 17th Chamber of the Tribunal de Grande Instance (district court), but dropped the charges just 48 hours before the trial was set to start. Onana had accumulated 3,000 documents, as well as direct witnesses who had been on the ground during the tragedy, including UN personnell such as Colonel Luc Marchal, the Belgian commander of UNAMIR at the time, to testify at court sustaining the book’s findings.
Former head of the Rwandan Journalists’ Association Déogratias Mushayidi, a Tutsi survivor of the massacres and intellectual who wrote the 2002 book with Onana was imprisoned by Kagame in 2010 and has been in prison since. Following the 2002 book there have been major judicial complaints in both France and Spain, which have all accused the RPF of this major crime, as well as countless other testimonies.
It is important to emphasize that the book currently under attack - The truth about Operation Turquoise, when archives speak - is the fruit of a doctoral thesis obtained by Charles Onana in 2017 at the University of Lyon and endorsed by an international panel who recognized its scholarly value.
Onana does not say that a genocide did not take place, but rather denounces the misallocation of the responsibility for the genocide in Rwanda. So do many other scholars such as propaganda experts Edward S. Herman and David Peterson in Enduring Lies, The Rwandan genocide in the propaganda system 20 years later : “The institutionalizing of the Rwandan genocide (in history books, genocide studies, documentaries, the official history at the International Tribunal for Rwanda and even proclaimed by the UN security council in 2014) “has been the remarkable achievement of a propaganda system sustained by both public and private power, with a crucial assistance of a related cadre of intellectual enforcers.” They added that the journalistic malpractice on the current officially known version of events of the Rwandan tragedy tend to “ recite the institutionalized untruths as gospel while accusing critics of this version as genocide deniers.”
Stearns, who has not done any research on the Rwandan tragedy, tends to rely on outdated versions. Southwest University of Political Science and Law Professor of International Law Alexander Zahar defined the existing literature on Rwanda available in 2003 as poor and simplistic historical research: in a 2003 review of English-language publications on the Rwandan genocide Zahar, signaling works such as Philip Goureveitch’s We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families, Alison Des Forges’s Leave None to Tell the Story and Mahmood Mamdani’s When Victims become Killers, Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda, calls their accounts “naive, tendentious, and derivative, written in a judgmental or didactic style foreign to scholastic endeavors”. Zahar explains how these writers tend to “reduce national defense to criminal conspiracy, political disagreement to ‘tribal’ tension, and a war involving regular and irregular forces, to genocide.” [vi]
Demonizing all Hutus
Gerard Prunier, which Stearns often cites when referring to Rwandan history is an extremely biased source. Justin Podur in America's Wars on Democracy in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo[vii] analyzes the utter racism in Prunier’s advocacy writings:
“The Tutsis collectively knew, Prunier writes, “that among the Hutu many were totally unrepentant and hoped for a new occasion to kill again.” Prunier combines the unique Africanist ability to read minds with the most colorful prose as he describes what motivated the Hutus who joined the militias and killed Tutsi civilians: the militias “drew around them a cloud of even poorer people, a lumpenproletariat of street boys, rag pickers, car washers and homeless unemployed. For these people the genocide was the best that could ever happen to them.” (emphasis mine)
Rarely have I read something so appalling and racist. Such despicable writing allowed for a collective guilt to be placed on all Hutus to this day. It also contributed to US commentators such as Philip Gourevitch calling for a halt to feeding the over 1.2 million refugees living in make-shift camps in Zaire, by calling them all “genocidaires” ; it also allowed for the refugee camps to be bombed by the RPF regime.
Stearns writes concerning the Hutu refugees in Zaire that most returned from Zaire in 1996, omitting that the refugee camps were bombed (he writes that the camps were dismantled). This is highly unlikely and not corroborated by any sources: former UNHCR field officer Lino Bordin, who was on the ground at the time, estimates that “at least 800,000 Hutu refugees fled in the Congolese forest and were massacred by the AFDL (The Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire), an army made up of mainly Rwandan soldiers, well-dressed and armed with brand new weapons.” Bordin recalls that a group of Canadian technicians based in Entebbe Uganda, tasked with the mission to search for the Hutu refugees in Zaire via airplanes, would not allow him to travel with them and for over a month “used all sorts of excuses - such as there are clouds in the sky which hindered a good view- for not being able to track the refugees.” He also specified that French-led Operation Turquoise saved many lives, as the RPF “would have massacred all the Hutus had the French not intervened.”[viii] The forced repatriation of the Hutu refugees in Zaire by bombing was also illegal, considering the known Kibeho and other massacres in Rwanda targeting the Hutus, and thus was also a non-respect of the principle of non-refoulement, a part of customary international law. A heartbreaking film by Hubert Sauper Kisangani Diary, a Hutu massacre far away from Rwanda, documented the plight of these Hutu refugees in the Zairian forest.
In a paper written for UNHCR on 1 November 1994 Prunier denied the existence of a UN report, (the Gersoney report which documented RPF massacres) shielding the RPF from the heinous mass crimes they committed, and coming to the defense of Paul Kagame and the new regime which came to power through force and mass massacres. One can only help but wonder if these pro-RPF apologists had actually reported what was happening on the ground, how many lives would have been saved?[ix]
Congolese historian Patrick Mbeko has just published a book Rwanda : Malheur aux vaincus (1994-2024) - 30 ans de crime, de manipulations et d'injustice couverts par l'Occident, on the persecution of Hutus through lawfare world-wide to this day by the RPF regime, with the complicity of many western countries.
Further tropes and imprecisions
Washington’s “blindness” is another recurring trope Africanists use to shield the empire’s actions; this recurrent theme is repeated ad nauseum in their writings. Stearns here again uses this trope and writes that the Clinton administration ignored the RPF’s crimes due to “empathy for the trauma they had survived.”
Stearns calls Onana’s writing “pseudo-scientific,” a ludicrous statement when considering Stearn’s numerous imprecisions, factual errors and total lack of archival sources in his writing. Some more examples found in this article:Stearns cites a report on hate speech in Congo written by two Rwandan professors who work in a country with zero free speech, and whose country is occupying eastern Congo for now three decades. Stearns by depicting the Congolese resistance to the Rwandan occupation as hate speech is purposefully discrediting it. It’s like citing two Zionist professors on the Palestinian resistance, a resistance which is often reduced, so as to damage its reputation, to antisemitism! Blurring the distinctive meanings of antisemitism and anti-Zionism is the sole purpose of presenting such misleading affinities. In the case of the Congo Stearns misleadingly equates anti-Tutsi sentiments with opposition to a Rwandan occupation.Thus, Onana’s quote mentioning “traitors that should be fished out”, which is cited by Stearns out of context, actually refers to infiltrated Rwandan soldiers and proxy militias who attack the civilian population. Onana always underlines in his writings the importance of not confusing Tutsis with the Tutsi-led RPF regime.
Stearns rarely mentions the numerous and heinous crimes committed by these invading proxy armies since 1996 (RCD, CNDP, M23, ADF), thus shielding them from grave criminal responsibilities, and further obfuscating the international war of aggression. For example in a 2013 paper on the Banyamulenge Stearns writes: “This opposition to the RPF manifests itself today as resistance to the M23, which is perceived as a Kigali-led initiative.”[x] (emphasis mine) He also tries to conceal US diplomatic awareness on the direct link between Rwanda and these proxy rebellions: for example in his last book he writes that the US embassy in Kinshasa had “a deep suspicion, but no actionable intelligence on Rwandan backing of the CNDP.” Yet if one reads the 2008 WikiLeaks cable Stearns is referring to it’s actually Stearns himself briefing the US embassy and he states the very opposite: underscoring the direct links (funding, recruiting and fighting along) between Rwanda and the CNPD. [xi] ; Stearns claims that Onana says the Congolese national army does not commit any crimes when Onana is instead pointing out the very real problem in Congo of having “ an army within an army,” a concept developed by Congolese political scientist and security expert Jean-Jacques Wondo: countless foreign proxy militias were integrated into the national army via various peace process since 2003 (these former militia members would often take up positions in the same areas were they had acted as militias, subsequently defecting and creating new armed movements); Stearns speaks of an impending Islamist threat in Congo, yet another fabricated pretext for future military interventions, which is deceitful as the ADF is a Rwandan militia, as revealed in the detailed investigation by Boniface Musavuli in Congo’s Beni Massacres.
Onana cites testimonies of people who were spied on by women for the RPF regime, which is a well-known fact (and has nothing to do with race as Stearns writes in the article) : there is for example a 2019 reportage The spies amongst us by Canadian public broadcaster CBC where a young Rwandan woman is asking for refugee status in Canada, as she was forced to spy for the Rwandan state in exchange of a scholarship. Nowhere has Onana written that the Banyamulenge should “not have rights to Congolese citizenship” as Stearns claims, instead Onana reconstructs the complex history of this refugee community analyzing both Congolese archives, as well as those produced by this Tutsi diaspora ; Stearns uses guilt by association by citing racist caricatures and newspapers from the 1990s, or xenophobic statements made on some U tube video, where there is absolutely no link with Onana; Stearns cites a propaganda website where Onana is called a conspiracy theorist forgetting to mention that the same site, Conspiracy Tracker Great Lakes, also calls Stearns a conspiracy theorist (what the scholarly purpose is of presenting such a website remains a mystery) ; the expansionist ambitions on the part of Rwanda, which Stearns denies, were condemned by the US State Department on 2 May concerning the DRC and this August by the government of Congo Brazzaville, which may recede a contract that would give Rwanda large chunks of land, in what one NGO described as a breach of Congolese sovereignty; Stearns justifies (still!) Kagame’s latest crime of aggression and invasion of Congo by saying it is a reaction to Uganda’s and Burundi’s diplomatic rapprochement with Congolese President Tshisekedi (go figure?); documented illegal exploitation by illegal foreign militias is presented by Stearns as simple “corruption,”: I quote his absurd statement: “Apathy and the exploitative nature of the international system, not criminal intent, are likely the main culprits.” (emphasis mine)
Rwanda expert Filip Reyntjens calls the website Conspiracy Tracker Great Lakes a RPF propaganda tool.
Stearns finishes the article by again reducing an international war to a strife between a “mean Rwanda” (the brackets are his) and the Congo!
Nowhere are the many shattering revelations, which question the hegemonic narratives on the Great Lakes region, exposed in Onana’s numerous books discussed. Even the title of this article is misleading as Stearns speaks of “a war of narratives” between Rwanda and the Congo, whereas the real war of narratives is between pro-empire Africanists and New Historians. The later are certainly not reducible to just Charles Onana, but are a vast and growing number of scholars who embrace his same conclusions.
The main problem with Stearn’s writing is that he does not reckon with the vast amount of new historical archive material available. The history of Palestine and the Nakba was only rewritten recently by the New Historians such as Ilan Pappé thanks to the release of new Israeli archives. Another aspect that Onana, and New Historians on the Rwandan and Congolese history have in common with Ilan Pappé is the constant attempt to suppress their work: conferences are cancelled at the last minute as venues receive political pressure from lobbies set out to censor: ”words, just words alone, (…) are met with all the might of the pro-Israeli lobbies in Britain and the USA (…) it (Israel) will brand these activities as anti-Semitic, and tantamount to Holocaust denial.” [xii]
History can however only be captured when scholars debate, and silencing well-sourced narratives defeats its noble purpose and in these two cases, aides and abets the genocides to continue in Palestine and Congo.
30 August 2024
Notes:
[i] Jason Stearns, The war that does not say its name, Princeton University Press, 2021. p. 68 Stearns writes that “there is little evidence, as some argue, of a sadistic conspiracy to kill Congolese that sees Joseph Kabila as a stooge of Rwandan President Paul Kagame in a plot underwritten by the United States and Europe. This argument is relatively widespread, especially in the Congolese diaspora, and has been articulated by the French-Cameroonian pundit Charles Onana or Mobutu’s former advisor Honoré Ngbanda.” Actually, this argument is made by many journalsts, scholars as well as politicians, both Congolese and non-Congolese.
[ii] Many activists and human rights defenders are catching on to the direct link between mineral exploitation and the war, such as this recent campaign to boycott Appel. The Congolese government in the spring of this year via Amsterdam & Partners LLP law firm has been investigating allegations that minerals mined in Congo by several companies and armed groups are being smuggled out through Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi and used by Appel. The Rwandan-backed M23 rebels have recently seized the control of Rubaya, a key mining town for coltan in North Kivu, an essential mineral in mobile phones. Considering the wide use of the strategic minerals found in the region the companies involved are multiple and should be investigated.
[iii] From 1999 to 2022, the ICJ examined four complaints lodged by the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) concerning acts of armed aggression committed on its territory by Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi. On 31 January 2001, the DRC suspended its proceedings against Rwanda and Burundi maintaining only the complaint against Uganda ( Armed Activities on the Territory of the Congo (Democratic Republic of the Congo v. Uganda) , Judgment, I.C.J. Reports 2005, p. 168). This complaint was lodged in the context of a regional war, for which the UNSC had, since 1996, been leading one of its largest peacekeeping missions, the MONUSCO (formerly MONUC). Here https://guide-humanitarian-law.org/content/article/3/international-court-of-justice-icj/
[iv] Jason Stearns, Banyamulenge, Insurgency and Exclusion in the mountains of South Kivu, Rift Valley Institute, Usalama Project, 2013. p 20 (emphasis mine)
[v] Justin Pudor, America's Wars on Democracy in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, Palgrave Macmillan, 2021. pp 11-12
[vi] Alexander Zahar and Susan Rohol, The United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Genocide at the Millenium, Samuel Totten editor, 2005. p 221
[vii] Justin Pudor, America's Wars on Democracy in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, Palgrave Macmillan, 2021. p19
[viii] Author interview with former UNHCR staff member Lino Bordin, August 2024.
[ix] “When the media and international organizations talk about 'RPF excesses' they are both right and wrong. They are wrong when they include in these denunciations’ illegal seizure of property, arbitrary detentions, thefts and even killings. Most of these actions are not the result of deliberate policy, they are the result of a progressive loss of control and of creeping anarchy. But they are unfortunately also partly right. In this general confusion some groups remain coherent. And these include what one might call the 'Tutsi supremacists'. These are people, usually officers, who do not share Major-General Paul Kagame's philosophy of national reconciliation.” (emphasis mine) cit in Gerard Prunier, UNHCR, Writnet, 1 November 1994.
[x] Jason Stearns, Banyamulenge, Insurgency and Exclusion in the mountains of South Kivu, Rift Valley Institute, Usalama Project, 2013. p 46
[xi] Jason Stearns, The war that does not say it’s name, Princeton University Press, 2021. p 254 and Wikileaks, Un team criticizes Rwanda for CNDP Links, DRC for FDLR links, 30 October 2008. An extract: “ Stearns maintained that the team had found credible evidence that active duty Rwandan forces (RDF) personnel were in the DRC assisting the CNDP. (…) The CNDP, according to Stearns, operates a radio station in Gisenyi and there are several Gisenyi bank accounts, including two in the name of Nkunda's wife, that the team believes the CNDP uses to channel funds from Congolese exiles in Europe. Stearns said the team would soon send the GOR specifics on the accounts in writing. In one refugee camp in Rwanda, the CNDP is actively recruiting young men. Stearns added that at the camp, Rwandan police were present, as well as demobilized RDF soldiers. At the Virunga National Park, the team heard frequent testimony that "Kinyrwanda speaking soldiers, who also spoke English, but no French," operated in the area. In all these cases, Stearns stressed, Rwanda was, at the very least, "turning a blind eye." (…) Stearns said that the UN team strongly suspected that Tribert Rujugiro, one of the most powerful businessmen in Rwanda, was financing the CNDP. Rujugiro, who financed Kagame's RPA when it was fighting the Habyarimana regime, is reportedly very close to the Rwandan President. Stearns said the UN team had obtained a hard copy email, in which Rujugiro allegedly asked a Dubai contact to release $120,000 to pay CNDP soldiers. The UN team is trying to obtain the original email from Yahoo.”
[xii] Ilan Pappé, Lobbying for Zionism on both sides of the Atlantic, Oneworld Publications, London, 2024. p 9
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