Editorial cartoon by renown Congolese artist Tembo Kash on Charles Onana trial
Noam Chomsky used to write for a monthly magazine LOOT, Lies of Our Times, which often confuted The New York Times articles. LOOT actually became a watchdog of The New York Times. More recently, the NYT’s exposed fallacious coverage of the Palestine genocide, of which the article Screams without words, on alleged Hamas mass rape during the 7 October 2023 attack, is perhaps the most despicable. It was completely debunked by independent media such as The Grayzone’s Screams without proof: questions for NYT about shoddy ‘Hamas mass rape’ report, Mondoweiss and Electronic Intifada. The NYT reporting, far from being factual journalism, is often simply a mouthpiece for the US government, with all the hideous consequences that an unchecked government narrative can entail.
Adam Nossiter, who wrote a NYT article covering a recent trial in France, which accuses historian and investigative journalist Charles Onana and his editor Damien Serieyx of genocide denial for 16 sentences taken from Onana’s 2019 book “Rwanda, the Truth about Operation Turquoise — When the Archives Speak,” the focus of which is on the UN-mandated French Operation, is yet another example of NYT’s deceptive reporting.
Nossiter writes that Onana and Serieyx were convicted on the 9 December and must pay a fine to the three NGOs that sued them. Onana and Serieyx immediately appealed the decision of a guilty verdict. However, anyone who followed the trial knows that the plaintiffs were, not three, but seven NGOs, and a string of lawyers: Ibuka-France, Survie, the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), the International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism (LICRA), the Human Rights League (LDH France), the Collective of Civil Parties for Rwanda (CPCR) and the Rwandan Community of France. This disproportionate display of power at trial was underscored at the end of the proceedings by Damien Serieyx’s lawyer Pape Mbaye.
A 2017 French press law makes it illegal to deny an officially recognized genocide. This law, when applied to Rwanda, by only recognizing Tutsis as the victims, enforces a falsification of the country’s recent history which propaganda expert Edward S. Herman denounced in his 2014 book Enduring Lies: The Rwandan Genocide in the Propaganda System, 20 Years Later. The law thus imposes an apartheid on the victims that succumbed in the Rwandan tragedy: writing that also Hutus and Twa were killed as well is considered genocide denial in France, and in Rwanda where it can entail up to 25 years of prison. This law hinders reconciliation in Rwanda, where Hutus are not allowed to commemorate loved ones who died during the mass massacres, and even goes against what most Rwandans believe, namely true reconciliation is possible only if the county’s recent history is allowed to be told uncensored.
Nossiter’s imprecisions and outright factual errors are numerous: he writes that 19 (they are actually 16) “passages” were chosen by the plaintiffs to incriminate Onana, however, they are not passages but sentences, of which some are even cut in half; Onana does not deny the Tutsi genocide as Nossiter writes, and often throughout his book emphasizes that a Tutsi genocide occurred; Onana did not write that the genocide was “a scam”, but the sentence was taken out of context as it beings with Thiswhich refers to the preceding paragraph. Thus the “scam” Onana is referring to in this sentence is not the genocide, but the Rwandan Patriotic Front’s ( the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), the party in power in Rwanda today) claim, as early as 30 April 1994, to have solid evidence of a pre-existing plan to exterminate the Tutsi population on the part of the Habyarimana government. The sentence in question refers to the hasty characterization of events which was concocted during the massacres in Rwanda ; Nossiter falsely claims that the word genocide is always rendered in quotes in Onana’s book, when in fact the word is not placed in quotes throughout the book, except when Onana wants to draw attention to the term applied outside its legal definition. For example, Onana analyses when, how and by whom the term was introduced within the United Nations Security Council, when referring to the Rwandan crisis. An interesting historical exercise which can reveal the intentions of the various international actors throughout the tragedy. Onana has written seven other books investigating the Great Lakes region, where the term genocide, when referring to Rwanda, is not in quotes. This fact alone raises serious doubts on the justification for that particular accusation.
To say that Nossiter’s article is biased would be an understatement, as it only cites the plaintiffs’ point of view. For example, he underscores that the plaintiffs spoke of the importance of judicial notice for genocide, as proof of the planning of the genocide on the part of the Rwandan authorities, yet judicial notice for genocide is highly contested as a legal tool by many lawyers and international criminal law experts, as Onana’s witness, Congolese lawyer and former President of the lawyers' association of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, Hamuli Rety demonstrated at trial.
Nossiter cites African Great Lakes researcher Serge Dupuis’s critique of Onana’s book, yet a close reading of the critique shows that the analyses is feeble. For example, Dupuis claims that Onana’s sources rely only on the former Rwandan government or former French military involved in the Operation. This is incorrect as the sources are multiple ranging from United Nations, International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), United States government agencies, Elysée and French Defense Ministry archives, as well as numerous eyewitnesses of the events. Moreover, in a paper written by Serge Dupuis in 2014, On the planification of the Rwandan Tutsi genocide, Dupuis comes to the same conclusions as Charles Onana. On the evidence of the planning of the genocide Dupuis writes : “ In fact, the genocide of Rwandan Tutsis was not the result of a meticulous planning but the consequence of the conflict which opposed, between 1990 and 1994, the RPF and the Rwandan regime of the time” (…) “Let us recall here that in twenty years, during several very long trials that saw the prosecutor make planning his key area, trials that multiplied testimonies and documents, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), responsible for judging the "major" Rwandan génocidaires, never managed to prove "beyond all reasonable doubt" that there had been a prior agreement between the various accused, before April 6, 1994, "with a view to committing genocide." All of the facts mentioned, the evidence put forward and the testimonies presented were judged insufficient, or insufficiently reliable, by the judges of the tribunal to convince them of the existence of a genocidal conspiracy.”
“The RPF regime actually owes its international legitimacy to the official and manipulated version of recent Rwandan history, which depicts the RPF as the "liberator" of the Rwandan people and the valiant and victorious fighter against a planned genocide. A legitimacy that thus obfuscates its military march towards a regime change in violence, but which also obscures the authoritarian and repressive policies that it is pursuing today,” Dupuis writes. He also underscores: “It is appropriate at this stage to question the vigour with which the current Rwandan government and its supporters systematically attack all those who, researchers or observers, refute the thesis of planning prior to 6 April 1994. And this even though they explain that there were indeed in Rwanda at that time, not spontaneous massacres carried out in a context of the collapse of the State by a population terrorized by the war and made furious by the assassination of its president, but genocidal intentions and state policies. The recognition or not of the “pre” planning of the genocide seems to constitute a real “demarcation line” beyond which the accusation of genocide denial begins.” Dupuis could also easily be labeled a genocide denier if the draconian new French law was applied to this article of his.
None of the six plaintiffs’ witnesses were in Rwanda during the historical period under review, instead all 18 witnesses who came to testify in favor of Onana were all eyewitnesses present in Rwanda at the time and had first-hand knowledge of the events. Yet a factual reconstruction of the history under review, revealed by these first-hand, often high-level testimonies, was overlooked by both the judges and the Prosecutor, who showed no genuine interest at trial in engaging in their accounts.
Just one example of the many facts that came up at trial, which punched holes in the simplified, manichean version of the Rwandan tragedy which the recent French law has institutionalized as the official version: United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) Belgian commander of Kigali sector Colonel Luc Marchal testifiedthat many Tutsis living inside Rwanda told him they were afraid of the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF). Such a statement should raise many questions on the RPF’s role in the country’s genocide and their purported goal of saving Tutsis when they invaded the country. Yet the French judges and the prosecutor had no questions to ask on this point.
The seven ONGs presented dubious witnesses at trial. Perhaps the most compromised and thus inept at presenting an objective, unbiased testimony was the Ibuka-France witness, Lawyer Bernard Maingain, who at trial based his entire testimony on hearsay. Maingain has been a lawyer for Paul Kagame’s Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) since the late 1980s. Maingain was declared persona non grata in Burundi for falsifying evidence, by sending a video to French television channel France 3 in 2016 that was not filmed in Burundi, as evidence for anti-Tutsis attacks in the country. “Further analysis of the images broadcast revealed that the people visible in the video did not speak Kirundi but Hausa, spoken mainly in West Africa, and that the amateur images could therefore not have been filmed in Burundi,” reported the magazine Jeune Afrique. They also underscored: “Belgian lawyer Bernard Maingain, who defended four of the twenty-eight putschist soldiers and military personnel accused of having participated in the attempted coup d'état of 13 and 14 May 2015, was accused by Bujumbura of complicity in the coup d'état during the trial in December 2015.”
Supporting through the use of justice illegitimate attempts at regime change in Africa (or successful one’s such as the RPF’s 1990-94 war waged in Rwanda) seems to be Maigain’s criminal legacy: today he is using the same tactic in eastern Congo, where he incites ethnic hatred, by obfuscating the Congolese state’s denunciation of Rwanda’s illegal aggression in eastern Congo, documented by UN reports since 2001, with an alleged narrative of Congolese anti-Tutsi sentiments. People such as Maingain are extremely dangerous, as they construct a fallacious legal veneer so as to hide what are outright western backed destabilization policies in Africa.
In Rwanda the legitimate government was condemned at the ICTR in Arusha for its definition of the enemy as “those who take up arms against its government” (the document cited as evidence at the ICTR and in this trial was only released in November 2024 in its entirety),yet normally international law should sanction the crime of aggression. This was not the case for Rwanda. This same deception is used in eastern Congo today: the 12 million Congolese civilians who have been killed by western backed Rwandan proxies in the region since 1996 are omitted from main stream narratives on the Congolese war. The Congolese government is accused of being anti-Tutsi as it denounces this three decades long invasion of the country by Rwandan proxies. Yet it is not the aggressed country which should be accused if one follows international law, but the Rwandan government.
Maingain throughout his testimony cited information he received from a friend, former national bank governor Jean Birara. A wikileaks cable dating 1976 already portrayed Birara as being adamantly opposed to Juvénal Habyarimana, stating at the time that the Rwandan President wanted to kill him. The US state department thought his statement lacking in credibility. Maingain also participated in parallel meetings with the Rwandan opposition in Brussels, which could only have contributed in derailing the delicate Arusha peace process.
Harvard researcher and literature expert Bojana Coulibaly was perhaps the most shameful of the plaintiffs’ witness, as she has done no work on the region, but did find time recently to interview the Rwandan militia causing havoc in eastern Congo, M23, and only this militia. Whitewashing the RPF's totalitarian regime and its crimes seems to be her mission.
There was no attempt made to reach Onana or his lawyer for comments for this NYT article as Nossiter writes. Onana held a brief press conference on 11 October at the end of the hearings, easily available on line, as well as on the 9th of December, which Nossiter could have quoted.
At the 11 October press conference Onana underscored that Kagame and the US government managed to remove International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) Prosecutor Carla del Ponte from her post in 2003, when she wanted to look into the RPF mass massacres, an episode Del Ponte also recalls in her memoir. Onana also underscored that the eight-year inquiry made public in 2006, led by judge Jean-Louis Bruguière, who investigated the shooting down on 6 April 1994 of President Juvénal Habyarimana's plane over Kigali, was also derailed by political pressure. International arrest warrants were issued for nine Rwandan officials including the head of Rwanda's armed forces, James Kabarebe, and the army chief of staff, Charles Kayonga. Ibuka-France’s witness at this trial, Maingain, was Kabarebe’s lawyer. The conflict of interest is so outrageous that one wonders why Maingain was allowed to testify in this trial.
Onana filed a complaint against Kagame in October 2024 for death threats received. Yet Nossiter also omits this.
Nossiter’s article only contributes to the well-orchestrated smear campaign against author Onana. Already in August this year self-proclaimed Congo expert Jason Stearns wrote a misleading hit piece on Onana. Onana’s 2023 book Holocaust in the Congo, the international community’s omertà, may be the real reason powerful western interests are trying to silence the franco-Cameroonian researcher. The book outlines in detail the invasion of Zaire (now Congo) and the setting up of a system of occupation on-going to this day.
Nossiter writes : “ The court underlined “the danger of the line of reasoning of Charles Onana and his publisher” given the current volatility of the region.” Yet the volatile situation in eastern Congo has been so since the 1996 Rwandan invasion, on-going to this day. It is disingenuous on the part of Nossiter to cite the French court’s claim that the genocide in eastern Congo can be somehow impacted by Onana’s writings, and omit the three decades long Rwandan aggression.
Nossiter writes that Macron recognized the French involvement in the genocide, failing to highlight France’s need to reestablish diplomatic relations with Rwanda, as Rwandan soldiers in Mozambique are engaged by France for the protection of company TotalEnergies’s liquefied natural gas project. France also signed the EU memorandum with Rwanda, concerning rare minerals, in February this year, minerals that the country does not have, but steals in neighboring eastern Congo.
This plunder of Congo’s minerals has cost the life of 12 million Congolese since 1996 and the area today has 7,2 million internally displaced.
In its desperate search to reestablish diplomatic relations with Rwanda, France since President Nicolas Sarkozy’s government, has even allowed that its soldiers be harassed, via endless judicial proceedings which accused them of genocide in Rwanda during the Operation Turquoise. Yet Nossiter conveniently omits the on-going Paris Court of Appeal trial which a day after his NYT article was written, on 11 December 2024, after 18 years of judicial proceedings, rejected the accusations of complicity in genocide targeting the French army soldiers of the Operation Turquoise. The verdict was a no case to answer. Eighteen years of judicial proceedings in France came to the same conclusion as Charles Onana’s book.
Nossiter writes: “A U.N.-authorized French military intervention, named “Turquoise,” failed to stop the killing.” This in itself is a nonsensical sentence. The French Operation was implemented after the RPF took power in July 1994. Onana’s book, as well as countless other historical accounts, reveal how the RPF (but also the United States and Britain) blocked all possible UN interventions to stop the massacres. Furthermore, this humanitarian operation was the only one on the ground that focused on saving lives. Countless lives, amongst which 8,000 Tutsis in the Nyarushshi camp, which before the French arrival were protected by the Rwandan interim government (the same government accused of genocide), were saved.
Blaming France for the genocide was a clever US, British, Rwandan psyops to deflect attention from other on-going operations in Rwanda that intervened outside the UN mandated Operation Turquoise : the US Operation Support Hope, the UK Operation Gabriel and the Israeli Operation Interns for Hope. Why in 30 years has there not been an inquiry into these operations? One cannot help but question this silence and ask if it is due to the planning of yet another regime change, as Rwanda attacked Zaire (now Congo) two years later, in 1996. Did the Clinton administration assist two regime changes in the Great Lakes region which has and is still killing millions of civilians? What was Britain’s role ?
Criminologist and lecturer of Peace and Conflict Studies within the School of International Relations, University of St Andrews Hazel Cameron, in a 2012 article, British state complicity in genocide: Rwanda 1994 writes: “It is important to highlight that a quantity of documentary evidence relevant to this study remains classified by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.” There are however details in her article, whose sources are diplomatic cables from the time, that warrant further analysis. For example she writes : “When interviewed, one British government minister stated that the 6 of April 94, in a way, was not a shock at all" and indeed communications between Kampala and London some three days after the assassination reveal that the death of Habyarimana was perceived by British diplomatic staff as something of a positive development in terms of Rwandan politics.” Cameron also cites a disturbing cable from the British Embassy in Kampala to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) in London from 13 April 1994, a week after the massacres had begun: here Edward Clay, British High Commissioner in Kampala, states “ The RPF is acquiring the demeanor of a government in waiting” (..) their claim that only they can stop the massacres is plausible” and when referring to an updated UNAMIR mandate to be discussed at the upcoming UNSC meeting Clay writes: “ it would be premature to change the force’s character or mandate until the RPF have attained their military objectives.” No comment.
Blaming France was also a means to deflect from the RPF’s hideous crimes. The UNHCR Gersony report, which revealed the RPF’s mass massacres, was suppressed at the time, with pro-Kagame apologists such as researcher Gerard Prunier even writing that it most probably did not exist.
Onana’s book Rwanda, the Truth about Operation Turquoise — When the Archives Speak is derived from his PhD thesis sustained at the University of Lyon in 2017 and endorsed by an international panel who recognized its scholarly value. Nossiter, with the obvious purpose of discrediting Onana, writes that in 2000 (thus 17 years ago) this university was “suspected to be a hotbed of genocide deniers.” To try and smear Onana as a Jewish Holocaust denier is frankly obnoxious. Anyone familiar with Onana’s scholarly work knows that it focuses on pan Africanism, antiracism and neocolonialism: Onana wrote a book on actress and singer Josephine Baker and her contribution in the fight against Nazism; his publishing house Duboiris has made available in French the memoire of Theodor Michael Wonja, a black actor, survivor of the German Nazi camps; he has published the writings of renown American civil rights activist Amelia Boynton Robinson, as well as a book on Albert Einstein’s antiracism struggles while living in the United States.
Nor can his writings be dismissed as whitewashing the French military interventions in Africa: Onana wrote two volumes on the west African country Ivory Coast, criticizing the role of the French military in its illegitimate regime change in 2002-2011 as well as a French military psyops operation, Bouaké, in 2004.
Author and Rwanda expert Judi Rever wrote on the danger of a sanitized narrative as she cites Alex De Waal’s mea culpa for his reporting from Rwanda, in his article Writing Human Rights and getting in wrong: here De Waal admits he contributed in fabricating “the singular genocide narrative”, which he spun, not based on evidence, and which has become today “a license for despotism.” De Waal’s mea culpa does not seem genuine in light of his recurring weaponizing of the term genocide in the recent Ethiopian war, all while remaining silent on the on-going Amhara genocide in Ethiopia.
“Onana’s case is important for free speech rights in France and beyond. Should history be legally codified and enforced? Should dissenters be prosecuted? Who is to decide what is true and what is not?” writes Black Agenda Report journalist Ann Garrison.“Since seizing power in 1994, Rwandan President Paul Kagame and the Tutsi elite at the top of his totalitarian regime have kept a tight lock on the history of the Rwandan genocide. They have largely succeeded in relabeling it “genocide against the Tutsi” in order to retrench themselves in power. It’s a simple story, devoid of historical context, in which Rwanda’s demon Hutu majority conspired to commit genocide against its innocent Tutsi minority and the Hutus who tried to protect them,” Garrison reports.
For now nuance is outlawed by this 2017 French press law, with all the nefarious consequences it entails for academic research, freedom of speech, as well as Rwanda’s desperate need for reconciliation. This NYT article does a disservice to research, freedom of speech and authentic reconciliation based on truth.
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