Rakiya Omar serait-elle à la base du rapport des experts de l'ONU sur les FDRL?

Pour saisir les tenants et les aboutissants du rapport du Groupe d’Experts de l’ONU sur la RDC, lisez ci-après la lettre de Rakiya Omar au Conseil de Securité. Or, quand on sait que Rakiya Omar est rémunérée par Kigali pour ses basses oeuvres, on ne peut manquer de s'interroger sur l'objectivité de ce rapport. Lire également en fichier attaché l'article de Keith Harmon Snow sur la désinformation dans la régon des Grands Lacs.

Ambassador Mihnea Ioan Motoc
President of the United Nations Security Council
United Nations Headquarters
1^st Avenue and 46^th Street
New York, NY 10017

19 October 2005

Dear Ambassador Motoc, 

I am writing on behalf of the human rights organization, African Rights, to applaud the Security Council statement of 4 October 2005 deploring the failure of the Forces démocratiques pour la liberation du Rwanda (FDLR) to disarm and repatriate their members peacefully back to Rwanda, following the deadline of 30 September 2005 set by the Tripartite Joint Commission, and in accordance with the FDLR’s pledge in Rome of 31 March this year to lay down their arms. 

African Rights has devoted much of its resources and energy on Rwanda and the Great Lakes region over the past decade, and has published extensively on the political, economic, social and human consequences of the 1994 Rwanda genocide, including the wider impact on peace and security in the Great Lakes region. We therefore especially commend the Security Council’s decision to demand that the FDLR cooperate with the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), based in Arusha, Tanzania, with regard to arrests and transfer of indictees who remain at large. While the Tribunal’s work has made a contribution to achieving justice, those indicted by the ICTR reflect only a few of the leading perpetrators of Rwanda’s 1994 genocide. Many more remain at liberty throughout the world, residing, among other places, in Africa, Europe, Canada and the United States. A good number are believed to be living in the eastern region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) amongst the FDLR, either as fighters or supporters.

African Rights has spent 11 years gathering evidence concerning the identities and activities of the men and women who planned, incited and implemented the genocide in 1994, and their flight from justice into eastern DRC, among other destinations. We have also documented the regional repercussions of the continued presence of armed genocide suspects along Rwanda’s borders, beginning with the publication, as early as November 1994, of Death, Despair and Defiance, which names the key perpetrators and described all aspects of the genocide using hundreds of first-hand testimonies gathered during May-June 1994. In our 1998 book, Rwanda: Insurgency in the Northwest, we analyzed the organizational structure, leadership, political programme, and activities of FDLR insurgents (then known as the Liberation Army of Rwanda, or ALIR), as well as the nature of their local support both in eastern DRC and Rwanda. We looked closely at the attacks they launched across much of Rwanda’s north-western region in a sustained effort to destabilize the country, bringing further turmoil to a population already overwhelmed by the legacy of the genocide. In December 2000, The Cycle of Conflict: Which Way out in the Kivus? explored the dynamics of the conflict raging in eastern DRC, including the role of ALIR/FDLR in enflaming tensions in the Kivus and the views of local people about strategies for disarmament.

We have also investigated in depth the allegations against a number of individual genocide suspects believed once, or currently, to be residing in eastern DRC and elsewhere. Some have been arrested and are in the custody of the ICTR or indeed have already been convicted by the ICTR and courts elsewhere for their part in the genocide. But a far greater number have never faced justice for the terrible atrocities for which they bear responsibility. Below, we have included information on some of these prominent genocide suspects in eastern DRC, in order to emphasize, once again, the urgency of addressing the question of justice in order to establish a durable peace for the benefit of all the peoples of the Great Lakes region.

In addition to the security threat that this group poses to the region as a whole, these individuals continue to lead untroubled lives in eastern DRC and to defy the world with their liberty, 11 years after the genocide. This is an insult to the victims of the genocide and to the world community, a source of anguish and fear to the survivors of that genocide and a reminder to those working for justice in Rwanda and in the DRC of the responsibilities that lie ahead. The current international consensus which is developing around ending the continued presence of the FDLR in eastern DRC presents an opportune moment to address the important issue of justice in the Great Lakes region, and in so doing, to counteract the long-standing sense of impunity pervasive in the region.

We are, of course, aware that the Security Council statement of 4 October also applies to Ugandan rebels, including the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) which has brought the civilian population of northern Uganda to their knees through 19 years of massacres, abductions and forced dislocation. We commend President Joseph Kabila’s intention to disarm the LRA, in cooperation with the United Nations Mission in Congo, MONUC, and hope that the people of northern Uganda will no longer be stalked by violence.  

We are concentrating in this letter on the FDLR in part because that has been the focus of  our own work, and in part because all key international and regional players singled out the FDLR as a major factor rendering futile efforts to achieve lasting peace in the Great Lakes. The Security Council statement of 4 October, terming the failure of the  FDLR to return home “a serious threat to stability” echoes virtually every declaration which has been issued by the African Union (AU) and the Joint Commission for the past year. For example, in January 2005, the Peace and Security Council of the AU, meeting in Libreville, Gabon, declared that the ex-FAR and interahamwe in the Kivus “threaten the peace and security of the DRC and Rwanda, heighten the tension between the two countries and undermine the peace and transition processes in the DRC.” It went on to say that “the problem posed by the continued presence of the ex-FAR and interahamwe and other armed groups in Eastern DRC requires decisive action by the international community at large and Africa in particular, to effectively disarm and neutralize these armed groups.” It welcomed the statement by President Joseph Kabila that the DRC would help in the forceful disarmament of these groups, and called on the Security Council to strengthen MONUC, for example by reinforcing its mandate so that it could “contribute more effectively to the stabilization of the situation in Eastern DRC, including in the disarmament and the neutralization of the ex-FAR and interahamwe.” In recent days, the AU has been in talks to help forcibly repatriate the FDLR fighters, beginning with a reconnaissance mission to the DRC this month to examine how such a force would operate in practice. 

The Tripartite Agreement on Regional Security in the Great Lakes, which created the Tripartite Joint Commission, was signed by the DRC, Rwanda and Uganda in October 2004, with Burundi, the AU, the United Nations and the European Union as observers, and the United States as facilitator. From the outset, the importance of addressing the problems posed by the FDLR have been at the heart of discussions and decisions. The Tripartite Agreement asserted that the “primary objective” of the Commission was to “complete the tasks” outlined by the various agreements to end the fighting in eastern DRC, first in Lusaka in 1999, and in Pretoria and then Luanda in 2002, and “specifically those provisions relating to the tracking down, disarming, demobilization, repatriation, rehabilitation, and resettlement of the armed groups, with particular reference to the ex-FAR/Interahamwe present on the territory of the DRC.” When the United States Government decided to include indictees of the ICTR for its Rewards for Justice Programme in July 2002, it linked its decision to their membership of ALIR, adding that “these indictees continue to play a destructive role and are fuelling the war that has gripped the Great Lakes region of Africa for over half a decade.”   

It is not, of course, possible to give precise figures, but there are perhaps as many as 15,000 Rwandese rebels remaining in eastern DRC. Membership in the FDLR is heterodox. Some combatants, usually referred to ex-FAR, were military officers with the Rwandese Armed Forces (FAR) in 1994, charged with organizing the genocide in their region and inciting the population to carry out their orders. Others were militiamen. Many members were recruited only after the genocide, from refugee camps, or joined the FDLR during the insurgency in the northwest.

Apart from those living in the DRC, detailed below, there is substantial evidence of complicity in the genocide against some of the representatives and members of the FDLR in Africa, Europe and elsewhere. For example Dr. Augustin Cyimana who was, and may still be, chairman of the FDLR in Zambia, played a significant role in the killings in his native commune of Ntongwe, in the préfecture of Gitarama. Esdras Ruremesha, also a supporter of the FDLR in Zambia, took an active part in the killings in the Nyakabanda district of Kigali where he was living. Michel Twagirayesu, the president of the Presbyterian Church in Rwanda in 1994, orchestrated the massacres in his home area of Kirinda, in Kibuye, as detailed in the report we published in December 1998, The Protestant Churches and the Genocide. Twagirayesu is said to have lived among the FDLR in Masisi, North Kivu, for a long time and now lives in Zambia. François Bazaramba, the head of a Baptist youth training centre in Nyakizu, Butare, was one of the organizers of the genocide in Nyakizu, and himself participated in a huge-scale massacre on Mount Nyakizu on 16 April. He too has made his home in Zambia, and is active in FDLR affairs, and is also said to travel regularly to Denmark. In addition to the allegations concerning genocide, these men are also accused of waging an intense and relentless campaign to discourage Rwandese refugees from voluntary repatriation.     

At a meeting in New York on 16 September, the Commission formally welcomed Burundi as a full member and took on the name of the Tripartite Plus Joint Commission. African Rights regards this initiative as a positive step that will help Burundi to establish a relationship with its neighbours based on dialogue and co-operation. It is also an opportune moment to note the responsibility of the Burundian government to recognize and investigate the critically important role played by Burundian refugees in the Rwandese genocide, as well as the complicity of individual Burundian nationals, which African Rights has documented and publicized since 1994. Thousands of Burundians became refugees in Rwanda after the assassination of President Melchior Ndadaye in October 1993. Shortly afterwards, the arming and training of some of these refugees as interahamwe militiamen became an open secret, leading to protests by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. And when the genocide began in 1994, Burundian refugees participated in huge numbers in Gikongoro, Butare, Gitarama, Cyangugu and among other places, Bugesera. Given the short time they had been in Rwanda, and the fact that they lived in refugee camps, it is difficult for witnesses to name individual perpetrators. But this is not in itself an obstacle, if the political will exists, and we urge the new government of Burundi to tackle this question with the seriousness that it deserves.                     

On 31 March 2005, the leadership of the FDLR declared its intention to demobilize and repatriate its troops voluntarily to Rwanda. In its statement, released following negotiations facilitated by the Sant’Egidio community in Rome, the FDLR condemned the 1994 genocide, and committed itself to working with the instruments of international justice and fighting against “all ideology of ethnic hatred.” This was a significant break with the past, and held out the possibility of ending years of combat and turmoil.

The failure of the FDLR to live up to its commitments is disappointing, but not surprising. Unless the international community can implement, immediately and in a  robust manner, the many options which have been discussed this year at various sessions of the Commission’s meetings, the alternative is a return to war and strife, with all that this implies, not least for the war-weary and desperately impoverished population of eastern DRC. There is no realistic prospect that the FDLR will abide by the agreements it made in March in Rome of its own free will. The Joint Commission, and all the institutions and governments which have actively supported the peace talks and the work of the Joint Commission, including the Security Council and the UN more generally, must now act upon the decisions they made in the event that the FDLR continues to defy and challenge the international community. We address this matter more fully below in our recommendations.     

The political and military pressure which has been exerted on the FDLR to repatriate peacefully to Rwanda by the Secretary-General of the UN, Kofi Annan, the Security Council, MONUC, the African Union, the United States Government and the European Union is encouraging. Dealing conclusively with the FDLR fighters in eastern DRC will be integral to any proposed solution to the problem of insecurity in the Great Lakes region. Equally important is the need to address unresolved justice issues by arresting the genocide suspects indicted by the ICTR amongst the FDLR, and to bring to justice all members of the FDLR, wherever they may be, against whom there is substantial evidence of direct complicity in the genocide. African Rights strongly hopes that the Security Council will persevere to do all it can to resolve this pressing regional problem. The international community must not allow the passing of time to serve as an excuse to let genocide suspects walk free, and continue to hold the countries of the Great Lakes region as hostages to a bleak future of fighting, tension, instability, massive population displacements and misery.

Yours sincerely, 
Rakiya Omaar
Director

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