Rwanda’s foreign minister calls for Canada to prosecute journalists, lawyers and refugees on their behalf
Dr. Jean-Damascene Bizimana, Rwanda’s foreign minister, spoke in Ottawa on May 26, 2024. Image credit: YouTube/Minubumwe Rwanda (Rwanda’s Ministry of National Unity & Civic Engagement)
Written by: Marthad Umucyaba
Dr. Jean-Damascene Bizimana, Rwanda’s foreign minister, has called (28:24-34:15) for the arrest and convictions of journalist Judi Rever and lawyers John Philpot and Christopher Black, along with Rwandan Canadians “taking advantage of the privilege of their citizenship”, for ‘genocide denial’. This comes as the United Nations conceals their cover up of the Kagame-led Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) genocide committed against the Hutus and moderate Tutsis, along with and the false attribution of the victims as the perpetrators at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR).
The Canada Files reached out to John Philpot, Christopher Black, and Judi Rever. Judi Rever was not immediately available for comment. However, John Philpot and Christopher Black spoke to The Canada Files. They will have full interviews published on TCF’s YouTube channel this week. They detailed the criminal nature of the ICTR proceedings and NATO as a whole, and in particular, Canada’s mafioso-esque actions against all opposition to their fabricated narrative using the ICTR show trials.
Dr. Bizimana’s proposals to the government in essence were suggestions to Canada to crush political dissent within Canada and to continue covering up crimes of the Kagame-led Rwandan Patriotic Forces (RPF), of which Canada was fully part and parcel to. The support for genocide in Palestine by NATO is not new. NATO has always supported the ethno-supremacist and genocidal force in their operations. NATO has always worked to demonise and label their victims as criminals.
Rwanda is an early case study, in which NATO supported a genocide against an ethnic group, namely the Hutu and moderate Tutsis supportive of the government, and labelled them as the criminals, while the real perpetrators, the RPF, were treated as peacemakers and representatives of the ‘victims’, the Tutsi.
Dr. Bizimana’s allegation of ‘genocide denial’
In Dr. Bizimana’s tirade, he ‘detailed’ plans by the Habyarimana government to commit a genocide against the Tutsi from October 1990. This was based on a so-called statement from a French minister and also alleged that the partisans of Habyarimana’s Movement Revolutionnaire National pour le Développement (MRND) party were collecting data on Tutsis in the north of Rwanda. Interestingly enough, the noted military incursions, expulsions from homes, and anti-Hutu massacres by Dr. Bizimana’s political party, the RPF (3:25-11:15), were shamelessly denied, despite being the actual reason why villages were being monitored. It was a defensive response to RPF raids. Moreover, the alleged ‘genocide plan’ from the Habyarimana government was discovered to be a forgery by Christopher Black himself during the proceedings.
Noted among the individuals Dr. Bizimana was accusing of ‘negationism’ and ‘genocide denial’ were Christopher Black and John Philpot, attorneys who represented defendants at the ICTR and obtained favourable judgements. He claimed that the ‘evidence’ was well documented, and that ‘evidence’ had already condemned the Habyarimana government for its crimes against the Tutsis. Fundamental differences between Dr. Bizimana’s assertions and what actually transpired at the ICTR, including the judgements based on claimed ‘documented evidence’, was detailed by Christopher Black and John Philpot when they spoke with The Canada Files.
Convictions without evidence overturned on appeal
“We wanted to acquit him of everything, but we were pressured by the Americans to convict him [Ndindiliyimana] of something.” - Unnamed UN judge (according to Black)
General Augustin Ndindiliyimana, head of the Gendarmerie, the military police, and Protais Zigiranyirazo, the brother-in-law of President Habyarimana - represented by Black and Philpot respectively - saw most egregious ICTR charges dropped. Nevertheless, politically motivated minor convictions were rendered against Ndindiliyimana and Zigiranyirazo, due to US pressure. Upon appeal, the convictions were later thrown out.
During the discussion with John Philpot, he said for his case, the prosecution never had a single ounce of credible evidence concerning “planning”. In fact, not a single conviction involved planning, an essential element of proving genocide. No forensic evidence was ever presented either.
NATO criminality at the ICTR
Black and Philpot explained that no tangible evidence was ever actually presented at the trial of a genocide against the Tutsi. Ndindiliyimana and Zigiranyrazo, two key and important figures in the Rwandan government before the RPF takeover, were cleared of all charges after being provided with sufficient legal defence. Any forensic evidence would have pointed to the RPF’s culpability, which is also why not a single RPF officer testified either. There were, however, ‘witnesses’ for the prosecution regularly tortured by the RPF under NATO supervision, according to Black.
The witnesses were then ‘reminded’ to give the ‘correct’ and ‘rehearsed’ testimony in exchange for their lives or the lives of their families. The UN tried to obstruct the defence’s investigation into the background of the ‘witnesses’ (ie, RPF hostages), first by threatening to arrest the defence’s primary investigator (forcing them to leave the country and role), among other insidious methods, but eventually were forced to relent. The RPF verbally threatened to kill Black directly in 2007. A year later, it seems, at this point, that the NATO crime family felt Black’s defence of Ndindiliyimana was a nuisance. Note this conversation in 2008:
“I’m going to tell you something, and I want you to know who I am.” - CIA operative
“Okay” - Black
“I’ve been in American Army Intelligence in Iraq, I was then transferred to NATO headquarters in Brussels in Intelligence. Then I was transferred to the CIA. Then I was transferred here, as a member of the CIA but working this job as a cover” - CIA operative
“Oh. Well why did you tell me all that?” - Black
“I want you to take me seriously when I tell you what I’m about to tell you.” - CIA operative
“What are you going to tell me?” - Black
“If you don’t back off what you’re doing in the trial, we’re going to kill you.” - CIA operative
“Okay. And suppose I don’t?” - Black
“Look, we poisoned Milosevic. Your buddy, Milosevic? We poisoned him. And we poisoned Arafat. We can poison you. You won’t even know. We’re just telling you. You got the message.” - CIA operative
Black was poisoned in 2008 with botulism before the trial, and shortly after this conversation. If he had been slow in discovering it, he would have died.
There were suspicious figures around him at the time, which he felt could have been involved. Two Canadian police were working at the UN, by the names of Rejean Tremblay and Andre Delvaux. They were fired for corruption in Montreal, according to Black, and moved on to ‘UN work’ under Stephen J. Rapp, the chief prosecutor for the ICTR, who would later on become U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues. The allegation – not proven in any court – coming from people in Arusha, Tanzania – where the ICTR was based - Black says, was that these Canadian police were killing ‘inconvenient’ witnesses.
One of the witnesses alleged, by Black, to have been killed by the NATO ‘muscle’ from Montreal was Juvenal Uwilingiyimana in 2005. Juvenal Uwilingiyimana was a former Rwandan cabinet minister who refused to testify against the UN’s and NATO’s Rwandan political prisoners in the ICTR show trial, among them Mr. Zigiranyrazo and Agathe, the assassinated Prime Minister. This came despite what Uwilingiyimana said – in a letter to the ICTR’s lead prosecutor - was a direct threat to be killed, delivered by the NATO ‘muscle’/investigators from Montreal, in direct interrogations. The threat was outlined in a letter delivered to the UN prosecutor, which Black said the UN covered up:
Uwilingiyimana would disappear two weeks later, on November 21, 2005. In December 2005, his body would be found decapitated and with his hands cut off. Naturally, the UN chose to cover up the circumstances of his death.
The real genocide against the Hutu
Dr. Bizimana alleged that the ‘genocide against the Tutsi’ started on October 1, 1990. However, that was actually the time that the NATO-backed RPF massacres of the Hutu intelligentsia and leadership in the countryside began. The ‘monitoring of villages for Tutsi’, mentioned by Dr. Bizimana, was actually a defensive response to the regular raids by the youth trained by the RPF under the auspices of the Ugandan army. This was notably a few years after Mobutu had angered the NATO alliance by engaging in mining cooperation with China.
Black said the Americans and Canadians, primarily, but NATO in general, wanted Habyarimana to allow his country to be used as a launching pad against the Congolese with the aim of overthrowing Mobutu. Habyarimana refused, thus NATO began to support the RPF. Uganda, a long-time NATO ally, was armed by Britain, and the RPF was supported in attacking Rwanda as an arm of the Ugandan military, with full access to its equipment. At the same time NATO countries were sanctioning Rwanda exports of coffee and initiating an arms embargo to weaken the Rwandan military.
The anti-Hutu and anti-Bantu massacres by the RPF, from 1990 onwards, even deep into the Congo Wars of today, are in fact well documented even by the NATO crime family-run United Nations. So far, the amount of people killed by the RPF, with NATO backing, has exceeded 6 million in Congo, and over 2 million in the Ugandan invasion of Rwanda from 1990-1994.
The true nature of the FDLR
The Forces Démocratiques pour la Libération du Rwanda (FDLR), quite notably, mentioned frequently as a threat by Dr. Bizimana, has been an established pretext for Rwandan incursions into the Democratic Republic of Congo since 1996. As long as the lie of the ‘genocide against the Tutsi’ is repeated by the mainstream NATO press, and especially by the United Nations, Kagame will always have this pretext. This is because he will have the cover of dealing with the ‘genocidaires’, while the RPF is actually looting the Congo on a regular basis for the West through the UAE as an intermediary.
The FDLR military leadership are remnants of the military of the Habyarimana government, who have elected to use their colonially – training from Belgian army - acquired military knowledge to defend Hutu refugees from the RPF’s criminal acts of ethnic cleansing. The FDLR will also invade Rwanda when enough refugees gather in North and South Kivu to form a sufficient military force, and if (or when) there is an effective way to logistically supply an invasion.
‘Responsibility to Protect’, State repression, and the Truth
“We have information that they [the Rwandan Government] want to kill you here, in Canada.” - CSIS Operative
“That surprises me. Now that worries me. Ok. So, thanks for telling me but what are you going to do to protect me?” - Black
“Nothing. We’re not going to do anything.” - CSIS Operative
“So what am I supposed to do? You told me they might wanna kill me here and you’re not going to do anything to help me?” - Black
“We have limited resources, you know, what can we do?” - CSIS Operative
“You could do something.” - Black
“What we suggest, Mr. Black, if you want to be safe, perhaps it’s better for you to be quiet. Then you’ll be safe.” - CSIS Operative, in 2015
NATO’s use of genocide and ethnic cleansing to achieve geopolitical objectives, along with its colonial grip on the UN, were fundamental truths from the time of the breakup of the Soviet Union. The mass media propaganda machine of NATO has allowed it to lie shamelessly about its criminal designs and motivations, disguising them as an altruism or benevolent enforcement of ‘universal human rights’. The reality is that NATO was managed and run by white supremacists and fascists from the beginning. The conduct seen today in the DRC and Palestine by NATO’s proxies are only a surprise to everyone since the lie was successfully propagated after the Cold War ended.
The harsh truth is that NATO is a depraved fascist political organisation, with common characteristics for each member state: majority white with some racialized collaborators, anti-communist, pro-colonial, racist, and laden with white supremacist organisations that make up their elite military membership. Many apologists will argue that the member state depends on NATO to ensure its survival. However, if that turns out to be the case, then it proves that the state itself shouldn’t exist.
NATO is, from a fundamental standpoint, in favour of genocide and ethnic cleansing, and in favour of enforcing racial hierarchy in the world using this method with its own army, if necessary, and any willing collaborators. It stems from a belief in white supremacy that conveniently serves the interest of the elite ruling capitalist class that the states represent. ‘Universal Values’ is how NATO has spread the lies that sustain the hegemonic and racist system. And the lie of ‘Universal Values’ begins and ends with the lie of the ‘genocide against the Tutsi’.
Journalists and defence lawyers have already been targeted to perpetuate this lie. If Rwanda has its way, the myth of ‘Western Democracy’ will unravel ever more rapidly, to keep the lie going.
Marthad Shingiro Umucyaba (formerly referred to as Christian Shingiro) is a Rwandan-born naturalized Canadian expat. He is known for his participation in Communist/anti-imperialist national and international politics and is the radio show host of The Socially Radical Guitarist.
He is also a freelance web developer in Hong Kong, China, striving to provide “Socially Radical Web Design at a socially reasonable price”.
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