Kofi Annan

Quotes
[2010] U.S./U.N. cover-up of Kagame’s genocide in Rwanda and Congo by Juan Carrero The real news is something else: namely, that in a move that breaks the code of silence that has reigned within the U.N. for too many years, the High Commissioner for Human Rights reveals that the U.N. Security Council and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Kofi Annan before him – the same parties who less than a year ago accused some of us of financing the genocidaires – have actually spent more than a decade covering up the continuous genocide carried out by the RPF from Oct. 1, 1990, until today, which probably constitutes the largest one since the U.N. was founded!

One year after ICTY and ICTR chief prosecutor Carla Del Ponte (successor to Louise Arbour) opened what she called the “Special Investigation” of the RPF in 2002, she was terminated as chief prosecutor at the ICTR, despite taking her plea directly to Secretary-General Kofi Annan, whom Del Ponte called “inflexible” on the question. In her memoirs, Del Ponte recounts a June 2002 meeting with Kagame at his presidential abode in Kigali, during which Kagame, “fuming,” told her: “If you investigate [the RPF], people will believe there were two genocides….All we did was liberate Rwanda.” This was followed by a May 2003 meeting with Pierre-Richard Prosper, the Bush administration’s ambassador-at-large for war crimes, who, in Del Ponte’s words, “backed the Rwandans,” and “suggested that [she] surrender responsibility for investigating and prosecuting the alleged crimes of the RPF.” By the time Del Ponte was able to meet with Annan in New York in late July 2003, she told Annan, “This will be the end of the Special Investigation,” to which Annan replied: “Yes. I know.”
“It is clear that it all started when we embarked on these Special Investigations,” Del Ponte told an interviewer after her position with the ICTR ended, “pressure from Rwanda contributed to the non-renewal of my mandate.” Doubtless, pressure from other sources with a lot more clout with the Security Council played an even greater role. Former ICTR (and ICTY) spokesperson Florence Hartmann also recounts extensive interference by the United States, Britain, and Kagame’s RPF in every effort by the Office of the Prosecutor to investigate RPF crimes. Hassan Jallow, Del Ponte’s successor at the ICTR, has stated on the record that he does not believe the assassination of Habyarimana belongs within the ICTR’s mandate. Under his charge (from September 2003 on), the Office of the Prosecutor systematically dragged its feet when it came to the crimes of the RPF, always pleading a need to carry out “additional inquiries,” without ever bringing a single indictment. Through the end of 2008, 100 percent of the ICTR’s indictments for “serious violations of international humanitarian law” committed during 1994 have been brought against Hutu members of the former government and ethnic Hutus more generally, and none against members of the RPF, despite the ICTR’s Statute, making no distinctions on the basis of ethnicity or political allegiance. Neither the RPF’s violent takeover of Rwanda, its massacre of “10,000 or more Hutu civilians” per month in 1994, nor any of its other numerous postwar slaughters, have ever once been disturbed by criminal charges at the ICTR. [2009] Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo in the Propaganda System by Edward S. Herman and David Peterson

[2008] The Great Rwanda "Genocide Coverup" by Prof. Peter Erlinder   According to sworn affidavits placed in the ICTR record in early 2006, more than 10 years ago, ICTR Lead Investigative Prosecutor, well-respected Australian QC Michael Hourigan, recommended that Kagame, himself, be prosecuted for the assassination of Habyarimana. But, in 1997, then-Chief UN Prosecutor Louise Arbour of Canada ordered him to drop the Kagame investigation; to forget it ever happened; and, to burn his notes ! Hourigan resigned rather than comply and copies of his original notes are now part of the ICTR public record for all to see.
    The Hourigan affidavit makes clear that the "Rwanda Genocide"-- Cover-up has been going on for at least a decade....but the reasons for the cover-up did not become clear until late 2007, when a senior Clinton Administration diplomat, Brian Atwood, was confronted with UN documents describing a 1994 "cover-up" meeting with the Rwandan Foreign Minister in Kigali and the UN's Kofi Annan. According to the UN documents, U.S.-sponsored human rights reports by investigator, Robert Gersony, had documented massive military-style executions of civilians by Kagame's troops, during and after the final 90-days of the four-year Rwanda War.
    The former Rwandan Foreign Minister at the meeting, Jean Marie Ndagiyimana, testified at the ICTR that, rather than participate in the proposed "cover-up," he resigned and went into exile where he remains today. His ICTR testimony confirmed that Clinton's USAID Chief for Africa, Brian Atwood, and the chief of the UN Department of Peace Keeping Operations Kofi Annan, were both in his office in late October 1994 urging him to assist in the "cover-up" the war-crimes committed by Kagame's forces.
    The damning "Gersony Report" included first-hand evidence of tens of thousands of civilians being massacred by Kagame's troops in eastern Rwanda, later confirmed by similar reports by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. The U.N. Document (also in the ICTR record) says that Annan told the Foreign Minister that public knowledge of the Report would be "embarrassing to the UN" and the U.S. Former Clinton-diplomat, Brian Atwood, not only confirmed he was at the meeting, but explained that he had engaged Gersony, and that Gersony's findings of war-crimes being committed by Kagame were "an inconvenient truth" for both the United States and the UN.

[2007] The Gersony Report: It's Findings and more. In his findings, Mr. Gersony states he believes that the RPA committed genocide against Hutu in Kibungo, Butare, and parts of Kigali and between early April to mid-September 1994, the RPF killed between 25,000-45,000 Rwandans, both Hutu and Tutsi.....The report was so damaging to the UNHCR, RPF and UNAMIR that UN officials covered it up in October 1994, despite the fact UNHCR officials on the ground (on the order of UNHCR head Ms. Sagato Ogata) stopped encouraging Rwandan Hutu refugees to return to Rwanda because of the killings, as reported in the New York Times at the end of September. Mr. Gersony was instructed never to talk about it publicly.......The report was also potentially damaging to the United States, a strong supporter of the new Rwandan government. As described by Mr. Prunier in his book, then Undersecretary of State for Global Affairs Timothy Wirth was given orders by the State Department to discredit the report. Mr. Wirth travelled to Kigali and several places in New York, spreading disinformation by attacking Gersony's methodology and claiming it was a "Hutu conspiracy." He also delivered carefully crafted propagandic press statements.
......"By not publishing the Gersony report and other information about RPF´s massacres, a blank cheque was issued to continue the murders," said academic Rwandan expert Dr. Filip Reyntjens of the University of Antwerp to Denmark newspaper "Information" writer Gunnar Willum. Dr. Reyntjens went on to say in the article of 28 June 1999, "Publication of the report would have prevented the RPF to commit the massacre of over 200,000 Hutu refugees in Zaire," says Reyntjens. "The RPF has used the genocide to legitimate massacres on this civilian population.
......In his recent book on the Congo, Mr. Gerard Prunier said Kofi Annan told then VP Kagame, the late Seth Sendashonga (then Interior Minister), PM Faustin Twagiramungu, and President Pasteur Bizimungu the UN would withhold the report to allow the RPF government time to consolidate after providing them with a copy of the report.