While protecting Africa’s worst killer from prosecution is a stepping stone to becoming governor general, challenging Canada’s role in enabling ‘Africa’s Hitler’ is a death knell in left establishment politics. The system rewards those who assist power, which is particularly evident in international affairs.
Louise Arbour became a Supreme Court justice after guaranteeing impunity for an individual who played an important role in violently ousting three governments (Uganda 1986, Rwanda 1994 and Congo 1997). Canada’s new governor general did so “a few days after being summoned to a meeting with US Secretary of State Madeline Albright”, explains a review of Robin Philpot’s Rwanda and the New Scramble for Africa: From Tragedy to Useful Imperial Fiction.
Arbour suppressed evidence demonstrating that Rwandan dictator Paul Kagame’s RPF sparked the 1994 genocide. As chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) between 1996 and 1999, Arbour refused to investigate who assassinated Rwandan Hutu president Juvénal Habyarimana, Burundian Hutu president Cyprien Ntaryamira and many of the Rwandan Hutu military command, which sparked the genocidal killings.
In 1996 former ICTR investigator Michael Hourigan and his “National Team” of 20 investigators compiled evidence based on the testimony of three RPF informants who claimed, “direct involvement in the 1994 fatal rocket attack upon the President’s aircraft” and “specifically implicated the direct involvement of [Kagame]” and other RPF members. But, when Hourigan delivered the evidence to her in early 1997, Arbour was “aggressive” and “hostile,” according to Hourigan. Despite initially supporting the investigation surrounding who shot down the plane, the ICTR’s chief prosecutor now advised Hourigan that the “investigation was at an end because in her view it was not in our [ICTR] mandate.”
But the UN mandate for the ICTR was to “prosecute persons responsible for genocide and other serious violations of international humanitarian law committed in the territory of Rwanda and neighbouring States, between 1 January 1994 and 31 December 1994.” Investigating and prosecuting those responsible for the April 6, 1994, presidential assassination that led to hundreds of thousands of deaths unquestionably fell within that mandate, notes Judi Rever in “How Louise Arbour helped shield Paul Kagame from justice”. When the Globe and Mail presented her with the evidence she suppressed 20 years later Arbour admitted she refused to investigate whether Kagame shot down the plane.
Beside the evidence, a minimally competent investigator knew who blew up the plane. Within 24 hours of Habyarimana’s assassination the RPF had doubled the size of the territory it controlled. Six weeks later the RPF controlled half of Rwanda and a few weeks later they had two thirds of the country, including Kigali.
A French magistrate, Jean-Louis Bruguière, who spent eight years investigating the death of the three French nationals operating the presidential jet, issued nine arrest warrants for high-ranking RPF officials. Bruguière concluded that Kagame rejected the August 1993 Arusha Accords and that he needed Habyarimana’s “physical elimination” for the RPF to take power. Bruguière’s detailed investigation on behalf of the French family members of the jet’s crew showed that “due to the numerical inferiority of the Tutsi electorate, the political balance of power did not allow [Kagame] to win elections on the basis of the political process set forth by the Arusha Agreements without the support of the opposition parties. … [I]n Paul Kagame’s mind, the physical elimination of President Habyarimana became imperative as early as October 1993 as the sole way of achieving his political aims.”
If you accept the logic/evidence that Kagame, who was trained at the US Army Command College at Fort Leavenworth, shot down the presidential plane the long-planned Hutu genocide narrative falls apart. Instead, the individual hailed for ending the genocide becomes the one most responsible for the mass slaughter.
If Arbour would have pursued the mandate given to her by the UN Security Council it would have been far more difficult for Kagame and his backers in Washington, London and Ottawa to build the narrative used to justify his dictatorship and holocaust in Congo. Instead of viewing Arbour as a power-serving liberal imperialist, Elizabeth May, Al Neve and others have lauded her in recent days as a champion of human rights and international law. In a post describing her as “an excellent choice for the position of Governor General”, the NDP said “Louise Arbour has had a storied career in Canada and on the world stage. She prosecuted war criminals.” Except the biggest one. (She also refused to investigate NATO crimes in Yugoslavia, as I noted in the widely circulated “Please don’t romanticize background of new governor general”.)
While applauding Arbour for “prosecuting war criminals”, the NDP brass justified my exclusion from the party leadership race because I’ve challenged Arbour, Romeo Dallaire and other prominent Canadians’ role in Rwanda/Congo. In justifying my expulsion, the NDP vetting committee claimed I denied the Rwandan genocide. So did ‘left’ commentators Rachel Gilmore, Jake Landu and others after B’nai Brith put out a statement saying I denied the Rwandan genocide soon after I launched my campaign to lead the NDP.
I’m not the first writer to be hounded over the subject. When Robin Philpot ran under the Parti Quebecois’ banner in 2007, he was attacked aggressively for his writing challenging Arbour and other Canadians’ role in the Rwanda/Congo tragedy.
The system rewards those who assist power while punishing those who challenge it. In a profoundly unequal, imperialist system rot rises.
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