[A-List] Herman and Peterson on the Erlinder case

[Tony B.]

From:    davidepet at comcast.net

> Peter Erlinder Jailed by One of the Major Genocidaires of Our Eraâ?"Update
> [ 1 ]
>
>
>
> Edward S. Herman and David Peterson [ 2 ]
>
> The May 28 arrest of U.S. attorney and Chicago native Peter Erlinder by
> the Paul Kagame dictatorship in Rwanda reveals much about this regime that
> is routinely sanitized in establishment U.S. and Western media coverage
> and intellectual life. Â But if we use Erlinder's arrest to call
> attention to some less-well-known facts, a much grimmer scenario about
> Kagame than one that portrays him as the "man of the hour in modern
> Africa," who "offers such encouraging hope for the continent's future"
> (Stephen Kinzer),[ 3 ] comes to light.
>
>
>
> For one thing, Kagame does not like free elections, and he has avoided or
> emasculated them assiduously. Â Erlinder arrived in the capital city of
> Kigali on May 23 to take up the legal representation of Victoire Ingabire,
> a Hutu expatriate who had spent the past 16 years in The Netherlands. Â
> Upon her return to Rwanda in January, Ingabire was regarded as the leading
> opposition figure, even though her United Democratic Forces has yet to be
> allowed to register as an official party. Â The Kagame regime arrested her
> on April 21, and charged her with "association with a terrorist group;
> propagating genocide ideology; negationism and ethnic divisionism."[ 4 ]
> Â As 2010 is an election year in Rwanda (now scheduled for August 9), her
> arrest negates any meaningful challenge to Kagame's rule.
>
>
>
> Rwanda 's last election year was 2003. Â Opposition parties, candidates,
> and media wound-up harassed, shut-down, arrested, exiledâ?"even
> disappeared. Â Kagame's main rivals at the time, the Hutu former President
> Pasteur Bizimungu (1994-2000) and the Hutu former Prime Minister Faustin
> Twagiramungu (1994-1995), were both branded "divisionists," a kind of
> Kagame-speak that means they provided an alternative to the one-party
> Kagame rule. Â Bizimungu was arrested and jailed and eliminated from the
> political process altogether; Twagiramungu's name remained on the ballot,
> but his party, the Democratic Republican Movement, was abolished, many of
> his aides were arrested, Rwanda's state-controlled media smeared him
> relentlessly, and he was virtually prevented from campaigning.[ 5 ] Â Â
>
>
>
> Kagame won the 2003 election with a laughable 95% of the vote. Â The
> country's National Electoral Commission declared the process "free and
> fair," and its Supreme Court ruled that only two ballots out of the entire
> total cast had been miscounted. Â A spokesperson for UN Secretary-General
> Kofi Annan praised the "high voter turnout," and added that he "considers
> this election an important step towards the establishment of a pluralistic
> multi-party democracy in Rwanda . " The Bush White House congratulated
> "President Paul Kagame on his victory," and said that the "United States
> will work cooperatively with the government of Rwanda ."[ 6 ]
>
>
>
> Yet, in a country whose population then, as now, was majority Hutu by
> roughly a 6-to-1 margin over the Tutsi, it was only Kagame's intimidation
> and repression of Rwanda's civil society, and his election-rigging, that
> could have produced a landslide like this. Â Thus when in late April,
> Erlinder called the arrest of Ingabire a "carbon-copy of Kagame's tactics
> in 2003, when all serious political challengers were jailed or driven from
> the country," and likened the charges against her (now extended to himself
> as well) to "trumped-up political thought-crimesâ?¦arising from the
> 'crime' of publicly objecting to the Kagame military dictatorship and
> Kagame's version of Rwandan civil war history,"[ 7 ] this was what he
> meant.
>
>
>
> Erlinder is right. Â
>
>
>
> The Arusha Accords of August 1993[ 8 ] had stipulated that national
> elections be held in Rwanda by no later than 1995, but this was precluded
> by the military takeover of Rwanda by Kagame and his Rwandan Patriotic
> Front (RPF) from April through July 1994, which allowed the minority Tutsi
> faction (less than 15 percent of the population) to seize power by force.
> Â
>
>
>
> The accusation of "genocide denial" is a powerful weapon in the arsenal of
> the Kagame regime , with rival politicians or any other Kagame target who
> are so accused simply pushed out of the way. Â According to news accounts
> immediately following Erlinder's arrest, "A police spokesman, Eric
> Kayingare, said that Mr. Erlinder was accused of 'denying the genocide'
> and 'negationism' from statements he had made at the tribunal in Arusha,
> as well as 'in his books, in publications'."[ 9 ] Martin Ngoga, the
> Prosecutor General of the Kagame regime, told Agence France Presse that
> Erlinder "denies the genocide in his writings and his speeches. Worse
> than that, he has become an organizer of genocide deniers. If negating
> [the Tutsi genocide] is not punished in [the United States,] it is
> punished in Rwanda. And when he came here he knew that."[ 10 ]
>
>
>
> On June 4, formal charges were filed against Erlinder under a number of
> Rwandan laws, including the Law Relating to the Punishment of the Crime of
> Genocide Ideology.[ 11 ] Â The actual charges included "Denying and
> downplaying genocide through his publications and conferences," and
> "Spreading rumors that are capable of threatening the security of the
> Rwandan people."[ 12 ] Â
>
>
>
> Three days later, on June 7, Rwanda's High Court Judge Maurice Mbishibishi
> ruled that the prosecution's case against Erlinder was sufficiently
> serious to reject Erlinder's request for bail. Â The judge ordered
> Erlinder detained for another 30 days.[ 13 ]
>
>
>
> Rwanda 's Genocide Law criminalizes what it calls "creating confusion
> aiming at negating the genocide which occurredâ?¦" (Article 3(2)).
> Â Indeed, Rwanda's 2003 Constitution[ 14 ] even states that "Revisionism,
> negationism and trivialization of genocide are punishable by the law"
> (Article 13), and commits the Rwandan government to "fighting the ideology
> of genocide and all its manifestations" (Article 9). Â Â
>
>
>
> Among the evidence cited against Erlinder in court by Prosecutor Richard
> Muhumuza is Erlinder's contention that the "crime that triggered" the
> massive killings in Rwanda in 1994 was the shooting-down of the Falcon-50
> jet carrying then-Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana, then-Burundian
> President Cyprien Ntaryamira, and ten others on its approach to the
> Kanombe International Airport in Kigali on the evening of April 6 of that
> yearâ?"and that this crime was ordered by Paul Kagame. Â To this, the
> Prosecutor adds the fact that Erlinder cites the identical findings in
> 2006 of the French anti-terrorist Judge Jean-Louis Bruguière, and the
> findings of the Spanish Judge Merelles Abreu in 2008, both of whom
> requested that their government issue arrest warrants for the Rwandan
> Patriotic Front (RPF) members responsible for these events.[ 15 ] Â (As a
> Head of State, Paul Kagame enjoys immunity from arrest and prosecution.)
>
>
>
> In other words, the Kagame regime's case against Erlinder, at least as it
> was argued in court on June 4 and accepted by Judge Mbishibishi on June 7
> , amounts to the charge that Erlinder has defended his client, the Hutu
> former Rwandan Army Major Aloys Ntabakuze before the International
> Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) with a great deal of success, and that
> in so doing, Erlinder has helped to reveal the true face of the Kagame
> regime and the monumental violence that it brought not only to Rwanda, but
> to the whole of Central Africa over the past 20 years. Â As a May 31
> statement by Victoire Ingabire described her own predicament as well as
> Erlinder's: "A fair trial is being violated because international lawyers
> would fear that their [defense] motions will lead to indictments being
> issued against them for ideology of genocideâ?¦.[T]he defense or testimony
> to show the truth about the killings in Rwanda before, during and after
> the genocide would be taken as a proof of negation of the genocide. Â
> Then, the lawyers, experts' witnesses and factual witnesses would fear the
> intimidation and threats to be arrested because of their [efforts] to
> portray different views from Kagame's regime."[ 16 ]
>
>
>
> Of course, this is straight out of Kafka, as a compelling case can be made
> that Kagame and his RPF were the major genocidaires in Rwanda, and in
> alliance with Ugandaâ?Ts Yoweri Museveni dictatorship, with both under
> U.S. and U.K. protection, have extended and enlarged their genocidal
> operations to the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo. Â Peter
> Erlinder has never denied that mass-atrocities were committed in Rwanda in
> 1994, and that a large number of Tutsi were slaughtered. Â But in his
> seven years as a defense counsel before the ICTR, he has shown that a much
> larger number of Hutu were also slaughtered, and, more important, that it
> was the Tutsi Paul Kagame and his Tutsi insurgency, the RPF, that acted as
> both initiator and main perpetrator of the mass-bloodletting known as the
> "Rwandan genocide." Â
>
>
>
> This, ultimately, is what the political crime of "denying the genocide"
> really means: That Erlinder has marshaled convincing evidence drawn from
> sources that include U.S. and UN documents to show that the official
> version of this mass-bloodletting, long-since institutionalized within
> establishment U.S.-, Western-, and Kagame-friendly circles, is a
> fabrication â?"one that serves their interests in the greater Central
> Africa region and beyond, but not the historical record.
>
>
>
> One damning piece of evidence uncovered by Erlinder is an internal
> memorandum drafted in September 1994 for then-U.S. Secretary of State
> Warren Christopher (now archived at Erlinder's Rwanda Documents Project at
> the William Mitchell College of Law in Minnesota), in which Christopher
> was informed that a UN team on the ground in Rwanda "concluded that a
> pattern of killing had emerged" there, the "[RPF] and Tutsi civilian
> surrogates [killing] 10,000 or more Hutu civilians per month, with the
> [RPF] accounting for 95% of the killing."
>
>
>
> The memorandum "speculated that the purpose of the killing was a campaign
> of ethnic cleansing intended to clear certain areas in the south of Rwanda
> for Tutsi habitation. Â The killings also served to reduce the population
> of Hutu males and discouraged refugees from returning to claim their
> lands."[ 17 ] Â Despite this and similar evidence, not a single Tutsi
> member of Kagame's RPF responsible for these acts has ever been charged
> with a crime at the ICTR, while Kagame and his regime continue to bathe in
> Western adulation and support, and can arrest an American in Kagali who
> dared to expose Kagame's crimes on a charge of â?ogenocide denialâ?!
>
>
>
> We may recall that the reported (but contested[ 18 ]) massacre of  8,000
> military-aged men at Srebrenica in July 1995 led to genocide charges,
> imprisonment of many Serb officials and military personnel, and huge
> indignation in the West. Â Yet, here is an internal U.S. document
> alleging "10,000 or more Hutu civilians" butchered per month by Kagameâ?Ts
> forces to cleanse the ground for Tutsi resettlement, and not only is the
> leading butcher not imprisoned, but not a single Tutsi member of Kagame's
> RPF responsible for these acts has ever been charged with a crime at the
> ICTR. Â Meanwhile, Kagame and his regime continue to bathe in Western
> support and adulation, and even get away with charging the man who helped
> expose his regime's crimes with â?ogenocide denialâ?!
>
>
>
> Consider also the seven following material facts:
>
>
>
>
>
> 1. The â?ocrime that triggeredâ? the mass killings known as the "Rwandan
> genocide" was indeed the assassination of Hutu President Juvenal
> Habyarimana, when his Falcon-50 jet was shot down nearing Kigali on April
> 6, 1994. Â On April 30 of this year, the U.S. District Court for the
> Western District of Oklahoma issued a summons to Paul Kagame and nine
> other RPF members, notifying them that a "wrongful death and murder"
> lawsuit has been filed against them by the surviving widows of Habyarimana
> and Ntaryamira (then the President of Burundi). Â In the words of the
> lawsuit, "Gen. Kagame and the [RPF] resumed the war, without any
> provocation, with the assassinations of Presidents Habyarimana and
> Ntaryamira. Â From the standpoint of fixing central responsibility for
> the massacres that the assassinationsâ?¦ touched off, these acts were
> taken with full knowledge on the part of Gen. Kagame that resumption of
> the war would cause massive civilian casualties â?¦."[ 19 ] Â Â One of
> the three U.S. attorneys whose signature appears on the wrongful death and
> murder Complaint is Erlinder's. Â Four weeks-to-the-day later, the Kagame
> regime arrested Erlinder in Kigali. Â
>
>
>
> 2. It is now conclusively established that these political assassinations
> were carried out by Kagameâ?Ts forces. Â When International Criminal
> Tribunal for Rwanda investigator Michael Hourigan had assembled compelling
> evidence showing this, then-ICTR Chief Prosecutor Louise Arbour quashed
> his investigation on orders from U.S. officials. Â This official line of
> inquiry has been suppressed ever since, though it was amplified and
> confirmed by the French magistrate Jean-Louis Bruguière, whose own
> inquiry concluded in late 2006 that Kagame and the RPF, fully aware that
> they would lose the elections scheduled by the Arusha Accords due to the
> overwhelming majority enjoyed by the Hutu in the country, opted for the
> "physical elimination" of Habyarimana and reopening their assault on the
> Rwandan government to achieve their goal of an RPF-takeover of the
> country.[ 20 ] Â Although three consecutive U.S. presidential
> administrations (Clinton's, Bush's, and Obama's) and the establishment
> U.S. media have been wonderfully cooperative in keeping crucial evidence
> such as this on the â?ogenocideâ? out of public sight, the work of Peter
> Erlinder and his colleagues has been important in the struggle to bring it
> into the light of day and counter the Western party-line.
>
>
>
> 3. The important U.S. analysts Christian Davenport and Allan Stam also
> concluded that far more Hutu than Tutsi were killed during the period of
> the "Rwandan genocide" (April-July, 1994), and that killings on the ground
> in Rwanda actually â?osurgedâ? in each area attacked by Kagameâ?Ts RPF.[
> 21 ]
>
>
>
> 4. Allan Stam, a former U.S. Special Forces soldier as well as an
> academician, has pointed out that the Kagame-RFP military offensive
> following the triggering event of the "Rwandan genocide" (i.e., the
> shootdown of the Falcon-50 jet) were closely modeled on the U.S. ground
> invasion of Iraq three years earlier during the 1991 Gulf War, and that
> Kagame's forces went into mass action within one hour of this event.
> Kagame actually studied at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, some time prior to
> the RPF's final assault in April-July 1994, and has maintained very close
> ties to the U.S. military ever since. Â As Stam describes it: "Fort
> Leavenworth is the commander general staff college. Â This is where
> rising stars of the U.S. military and other places go to get training as
> they are on track to become generals. Â Â The training that they get
> there is on planning large scale operations. Â It's not planning
> small-scale logistic things. Â It's not tactics. Â It's about how do you
> plan an invasion. And apparently he did very well."[ 22 ]
>
>
>
> 5. Both before and during the â?oRwandan genocide,â? the United States
> pressed for the reduction of  UN troops in Rwanda. The Rwandan
> government went before the UN Security Council and urged more UN troops, [
> 23 ] but the presence of a larger contingent of UN troops on the ground
> clearly would have interfered with Kagameâ?Ts well-planned and executed
> military operations. This points up the likelihood that any pre-planned,
> organized mass killings were dominated by Kagameâ?Ts RPF, and that the
> U.S. government supported them. Â Â Â
>
>
>
> 6. Kagameâ?Ts forces established control of Rwanda within one hundred days
> of the triggering event, the assassination of President Habyarimana. Â
> This is wholly inconsistent with the standard notion that the RPF's was an
> unplanned defensive reaction, and that his ethnic group, the minority
> Tutsi, was the main victim of the "Rwandan genocide." Â
>
>
> 7. Kagame has used the excuse of pursuing â?o genocidaires â? to justify
> his regular invasions of the Congo. The casualties in these operations,
> coordinated with fellow dictator Yoweri Museveni, have run into the
> several-millions. We believe that Kagame has far outstripped Idi Amin as a
> mass killer (Aminâ?Ts killings are estimated at 100,000-300,000, whereas
> Kagameâ?Ts surely run well over a million civilians). Â But Kagame is
> servicing establishment U.S. and Western interests, and for the past 20
> years, he has, therefore, received a free-pass to rob and kill.
>
>
>
>
>
> "The prosecution of Peter Erlinder is not a political tactic, it is an act
> of justice," Rwanda's Foreign Minister Louise Mushikiwabo said after a
> Rwandan court denied Erlinder's request for bail on June 7. Â "[T]he
> fundamental issue at stake is whether Rwandans believe it is permissible
> for genocide defenders and deniers to threaten the hard-won stability and
> harmony they have built in the 16 years since the death of one million of
> their families, friends and neighborsâ?¦.[T]his needs to be understood:
> flagrant and orchestrated breaches of our Genocide Ideology laws will be
> met with the full force of the law."[ 24 ] Â Some days ea rlier, an
> editorial in Kigali's Sunday Times (a Kagame-regime mouthpiece) warned
> ominously: "His arrest in Kigali this week, on charges of Genocide denial,
> will go a long way to serve as a warning to all the revisionists and
> Genocide deniers out there, that there is no space for their trade on
> Rwandan territory."[ 25 ]
>
>
>
> These are the expressions of a minority dictatorship clinging to power
> through fear, intimidation, and deceit. Â Peter Robinson, a U.S. attorney
> serving as a defense counsel before the ICTR, notified the tribunal that
> the Kagame regime's prosecution of Erlinder had forced him to resign from
> his case. Â "I cannot defend my client under these conditions," Robinson
> told the New York Times . Â "As long as defense lawyers are subject to
> prosecution, we can't continue to participate in cases here."[ 26 ] Â
>
>
>
> A declaration issued by at least 40 lawyers who also defend clients before
> the ICTR denounced what it called the "criminalizationâ?¦of the rights of
> the Defense whereby anyone who is involved in the defense of an accused
> personâ?¦runs the same risks and is exposed to the same threats of being
> criminally categorized as a 'negationist' as defined in Rwandan
> legislation." Â In what amounts to the proclamation of a strike by the
> combined defense counsel at the ICTR, these lawyers accused the Kagame
> regime of taking "hostage" both Erlinder and the "rights of the Defense,"
> and "resolve[d] to postpone all activities, other than those which
> strictly conserve the interests of our mandates, until such time as the
> minimum conditions for the normal exercise of our missions have been
> restored by the removal of threats to themâ?¦."[ 27 ] Â
>
>
>
> Separately, Adama Dieng, the Registrar at the ICTR, was instructed to ask
> the ICTR's Office of Legal Affairs to determine whether any of the charges
> leveled against Erlinder by Rwanda "derives from the words [Erlinder]
> spoke and statements he made in his case before the ICTR." Â The Office
> of Legal Affairs responded in the affirmative, and "advised the [ICTR] to
> assert [Erlinder's] immunity without delay."[ 28 ] Â In what might prove
> to be the most decisive action yet in securing Erlinder's freedom from one
> of Kagame's jails, this caused Dieng to send a Note Verbale on behalf of
> the ICTR to the relevant authorities in the Rwandan government that
> asserts unequivocally: "The ICTR hereby notifies the Rwandan authorities
> that Professor Erlinder enjoys immunity and requests therefore his
> immediate release."[ 29 ] Â Â Â Â Â
>
>
>
> As of Wednesday, June 16, this is where Peter Erlinder's case stands.
>
>
>
> "Insecure governments are arresting Americans and accusing them of
> espionage, sowing dissent or treachery against the state," the editorial
> voice of the Chicago Tribune once said about a superficially similar case
> â?"the early 2009 arrest by the authorities in Iran of Northwestern
> University journalism school graduate Roxana Saberi .[ 30 ] Â Her arrest
> "[fit] an increasingly familiar plot line," the Tribune noted, like that
> of its former correspondent Paul Salopek, arrested by Sudanese authorities
> in 2006, the journalist Parnaz Azima and the academic Haleh Esfandiari,
> arrested by Iranian authorities in 2007, and the journalists Laura Ling
> and Euna Lee, arrested by North Korean authorities in 2009, each of them
> charged in one form or another with crimes against the stability and
> security of the arresting states. Â
>
>
>
> Each of these six individuals was eventually released, however. Â And in
> each case, the state that had arrested them â?"Iran, The Sudan, and North
> Koreaâ?"ranks at or near the top of the U.S. government's list of Official
> Enemies, making their arrests top-ranked concerns for the managers of U.S.
> foreign policy, and highly newsworthy events throughout the establishment
> media.
>
> Not so Peter Erlinder in Rwanda. Â As Christopher Black, a Canadian
> attorney and signatory of the ICTR Â defense counsels' declaration,
> observes: "The lack of outrage by the Obama administration and at the
> United Nations is maddening. Â It does not matter whether one believes
> the RPF version of events or the evidence of the reality of the war as set
> out in the trials at the ICTR. Â Surely Barack Obama and the UN
> Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon believe in free speech? Â Surely they
> accept that history must be reexamined continuously in light of new facts?
> The stench of hypocrisy is nauseating. We all know what would happen if an
> American dissident lawyer was arrested by the Iranians for disputing their
> version of the killings in Tehran in the aftermath of last year's
> presidential elections â?" the Obama crowd would be demanding his
> immediate release and more sanctions. But Obama and the Pentagon want to
> keep their three big bases in Rwanda, so nothing happens but a pro forma
> 'tut-tut' and then on to other business."[ 31 ] Â
>
> It is long overdue that the people of the United States and the rest of
> the Western world learn the truth about who was killing "10,000 or more"
> civilians per month in Rwanda (and went on to kill many times that in the
> neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo), and challenge their governments
> to stop supporting Paul Kagame's dictatorial rule. Â
>
>
>
> One good place to begin would be for the Obama administration to demand
> the immediate release of Peter Erlinder. Â During the week of June 7-11,
> Betty McCollum and Keith Ellison, two Democratic U.S. House members from
> Minnesota's 4th and 5th districts in the Minneapolis - St. Paul area,
> co-sponsored a draft resolution urging "President Paul Kagame to
> immediately release Professor Peter Erlinder from jail and allow him to
> return to the United States."[ 32 ] Â But at the time of this writing,
> the resolution appears buried inside the House Committee on Foreign
> Affairs.
>
>
> Regrettably, it is clear that, like its predecessors, the Obama
> administration values the U.S. military's "special relationship" with the
> Kagame dictatorship far more than it does the rights and welfare of an
> American lawyer unjustly imprisoned in Kigali. Â In keeping with its
> hypocrisy on human rights around the world â?" Obama's support for the
> 2009 Honduran coup and violent aftermath, for example, and for Israel's
> relentless grinding-down of the Gaza Palestinians, and recent attack on
> the Free Gaza Flotilla in international waters â?" the State Department's
> almost complete silence on the Erlinder case should surprise no one.[ 33 ]
> Â Â
>
> Even when Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was asked by a
> reporter with Africa Action to address Peter Erlinder's arrest, Clinton
> declined to state that Erlinder had been unjustly arrested, and declined
> to call for his release. Â Instead, almost the first words out of her
> mouth were: " We really donâ?Tt want to see Rwanda undermine its own
> remarkable progress by beginning to move away from a lot of the very
> positive actions that undergirded its development so effectively. We still
> are very, very supportive of Rwanda . The kind of development that has
> taken place in Rwanda is really a model in many respects for the rest of
> the continent."[ 34 ]
>
> Free Peter Erlinder .
>
>
>
>
>
> [ Edward S. Herman is professor emeritus of finance at the Wharton School,
> University of Pennsylvania and has written extensively on economics,
> political economy, and the media. Among his books are Corporate Control,
> Corporate Power (Cambridge University Press, 1981), The Real Terror
> Network (South End Press, 1982), and, with Noam Chomsky, The Political
> Economy of Human Rights (South End Press, 1979), and Manufacturing Consent
> (Pantheon, 2002). David Peterson is an independent journalist and
> researcher based in Chicago. Â Together they are the co-authors of The
> Politics of Genocide , recently published by Monthly Review Press (
> http://monthlyreview.org/books/politicsofgenocide.php ). ]
>
>
>
>
>
> ---- Endnotes ----
>
>
>
> [ 1 ] This is an updated and expanded version of our earlier article for
> MRZine by the title: " Peter Erlinder Jailed by One of the Major
> Genocidaires of Our Era ," May 29, 2010.
>
> [ 2 ] For a much more comprehensive development of the themes discussed
> here, see Edward S. Herman and David Peterson, " Rwanda and the Democratic
> Republic of Congo in the Propaganda System ," Monthly Review 62, May,
> 2010. Â Also see Herman and Peterson, The Politics of Genocide (New York:
> Monthly Review Press, 2010).
>
> [ 3 ] Quoting Kinzer's hagiographic words in A Thousand Hills: Rwanda's
> Rebirth and the Man Who Dreamed It (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2008),
> 337.Â
>
> [ 4 ] " Rwanda opposition chief held for 'genocide denial' ," Agence
> France Presse, April 21, 2010.
>
> [ 5 ] See, e.g., Declan Walsh, " Kagame is triumphant. But has the
> one-time visionary become Rwanda's latest autocrat? " The Independent ,
> August 26, 2003; James Astill, " Rwanda's electoral charade ," The
> Guardian , August 27, 2003 (as reprinted in the Sydney Morning Herald
> );Â " Rwanda donors uneasy after decisive victory ," Washington Times ,
> August 28, 2003;Â Grace Matsiko and Geoffrey Kamali, "A Look at Kagame's
> Landslide Victory," All Africa , September 3, 2003; and Kelly McPharland,
> "Rwandan leader inspires nervousness," National Post , September 13, 2003.
>
> [ 6 ] Cathy Majtenyi, " Rwanda's Electoral Commission Rejects EU Findings
> ," Voice of America Press Releases and Documents, August 29, 2003;
> "Rwanda's Supreme Court confirms Kagame's landslide victory," Agence
> France Presse, September 5, 2003; "UN chief welcomes smooth holding of
> Rwandan election," Xinhua News Agency, August 29, 2003; "U.S.
> congratulates Rwanda's Kagame on election victory," Agence France Presse,
> August 27, 2003.
>
> [ 7 ] Peter Erlinder quoted in " U.S. Lawyer to Defend Victoire Ingabire:
> First Female Presidential Candidate in Rwandaâ?"Jailed by President/Gen.
> Paul Kagame ," News Advisory, International Humanitarian Law Institute,
> April 23, 2010 (as posted to the BayView website).
>
> [ 8 ] See the Peace Agreement between the Government of the Republic of
> Rwanda and the Rwandese Patriotic Front, signed at Arusha on 4 August 1993
> ( A/48/824-S/26915 ), U.N. General Assembly, December 23, 1993. Â A total
> of seven documents were gathered together as the "Arusha Peace Accords,"
> the earliest the N'Sele Cease-fire Agreement dating from 1991.
>
> [ 9 ] Josh Kron and Jeffrey Gettleman, " American Lawyer for Opposition
> Figure Is Arrested in Rwanda ," New York Times , May 29, 2010.
>
> [ 10 ] " Rwanda arrests U.S. lawyer defending opposition figure ," Agence
> France Presse, May 28, 2010.
>
> [ 11 ] Law Relating to the Punishment of the Crime of Genocide Ideology (
> No. 18/2008 ), Codes and Laws of Rwanda, Ministry of Justice , Republic of
> Rwanda, July 23, 2008.
>
> [ 12 ] Charges in the case of Carl Peter Erlinder ( Court Decision No.
> RDP0312/10/TGJI/GSBO ), para. 1-2, transcript of the proceedings before
> Judge Maurice Mbishibishi in the Superior Court of Gasabo, June 7, 2010
> (as posted to the website of Robert Amsterdam). Â English translation
> provided by the defense attorneys Kennedy Ogeto et al ., June 8, 2010.
> Â Â
>
> [ 13 ] Ibid , para. 41. Â Â
>
> [ 14 ] See Constitution of the Republic of Rwanda , June 4, 2003, and its
> Amendments, as posted to the website of the Rwandan Ministry of Defense.
> Â Here we note that the word 'genocide' appears no fewer than 14
> different times in Rwanda's approx. 16,400-word-long Constitution.
>
> [ 15 ] See Court Decision No. RDP0312/10/TGJI/GSBO , June 7, 2010, para. 
> 6.
>
> [ 16 ] Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza, " The Arrest and Arbitrary Detention of
> Professor Peter Erlinder Is a Shame ," United Democratic Forces - Inkingi
> Chair, Press Release, Kigali, May 31, 2010 (as posted to the " Victoire
> Ingabire Umuhoza for President" Facebook page) . Â
>
> [ 17 ] George E. Moose, " Human Rights Abuses in Rwanda ," Information
> Memorandum to The Secretary, U.S. Department of State, undated though
> clearly drafted between September 17 and 20, 1994. Â This document is
> archived at the Rwanda Documents Project at William Mitchell College of
> Law, St. Paul, Minnesota, ICTR Military-1 Exhibit, DNT 264 .
>
> [ 18 ] See Edward S. Herman and David Peterson, " The Dismantling of
> Yugoslavia ," Monthly Review 59, October, 2007, esp. Sect. 5 and Sect. 6,
> 19-26. Â
>
> [ 19 ] John P. Zelbst et al ., Madame Habyarimana, Madame Ntaryamira, et
> al., v. Paul Kagame, et al. ( Case No. CIV-10-437-W ), United States
> District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma, April 30, 2010, para.
> 30.
>
> [ 20 ] See Jean-Louis Bruguière, Request for the Issuance of
> International Arrest Warrants , Tribunal de Grande Instance, Paris,
> France, November 21, 2006, 15-16 (para. 100-103).
>
> [ 21 ] See Christian Davenport and Allan Stam, Rwandan Political Violence
> in Space and Time , unpublished manuscript, 2004 (available at Christian
> Davenport's personal website > " Project Writings " ) ; and Christian
> Davenport and Allan C. Stam, " What Really Happened in Rwanda? "
> Miller-McCune, October 6, 2009 .
>
> [ 22 ] See Allan C. Stam, " Coming to a New Understanding of the Rwanda
> Genocide ," a lecture before the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy,
> University of Michigan, February 18, 2009. Â Beginning at approx. the
> 22:47 mark, Stam explains: "Now, moments later, the RPF -- literally
> moments, somewhere between 60 and 120 minutes after his plane is shot
> down, the RPF invades. Â Now, we could characterize this invasion as,
> 'Wow, a spontaneous reaction to go in and defend our allies'. Â The
> problem is, this invasion looks staggeringly like the United States'
> invasion of Iraq in 1991. Â It has exactly the same features. Â There is
> a central drive in this case due south towards Kigali, very much like the
> central drive towards Baghdad. Â There is the sweeping left-hook -- but
> in this case because the map is reversed there is the sweeping right-hook.
> Â This is a plan that was not worked out on the back of an envelope. Â
> Fifty-thousand soldiers move into action on two fronts, in a coordinated
> fashion, 'spontaneously'? Â Tsk."
>
> [ 23 ] In the words of Rwandan UN Ambassador Jean-Damascène Bizimana:
> "[T]he international community does not seem to have acted in an
> appropriate manner to reply to the anguished appeal of the people of
> Rwanda. Â This question has often been examined from the point of view of
> the ways and means to withdraw [UNAMIR], without seeking to give the
> appropriate weight to the concern of those who have always believed,
> rightly, that, in view of the security situation now prevailing in Rwanda,
> UNAMIR's members should be increased to enable it to contribute to the
> re-establishment of the cease-fire and to assist in the establishment of
> security conditions that could bring an end to the violenceâ?¦.The option
> chosen by the Council, reducing the number of troops in UNAMIRâ?¦, is not
> a proper response to this crisisâ?¦." Â See "The situation concerning
> Rwanda," UN Security Council ( S/PV.3368 ), April 21, 1994, 6.
>
> [ 24 ] " Republic of Rwanda Statement on the Bail of C. Peter Erlinder ,"
> BusinessWire, June 7, 2010.
>
> [ 25 ] " Genocide Deniers Have No Place in Rwanda ," Editorial, Sunday
> Times , May 30, 2010.
>
> [ 26 ] Josh Kron, " Bail for American Lawyer Is Refused Despite U.S.
> Pressure ," New York Times , June 8, 2010. Â
>
> [ 27 ] Statement and Appeal from Defence Lawyers Currently Practising at
> the ICTR , June 8, 2010 (as posted to the World News Journal website).
> Also see Josh Kron, " Lawyers Report Intimidation by Rwanda ," New York
> Times , June 13, 2010.
>
> [ 28 ] See Adama Dieng, Registrar, The Prosecutor v. Theoneste Bagosora et
> al . (ICTR-98-41-A), June 15, 2010, para. 5-6.
>
> [ 29 ] Adama Dieng, Registrar, Note Verbale (ICTR/RO/06/10/175), June 15,
> 2010. Â
>
> [ 30 ] " Free Roxana Saberi ," Editorial, Chicago Tribune , April 30, 
> 2009.
>
> [ 31 ] Christopher Black, Personal Communication, June 7, 2010.
>
> [ 32 ] U.S. Rep. Betty McCollum et al ., House Resolution 1426 (
> H.RES.1426 ), 111th Congress, June 8, 2010. Also see " McCollum Introduces
> Legislation Urging Rwandan Government to Immediately Release Peter
> Erlinder ," News Release, June 9, 2010.
>
> [ 33 ] In the 17 days from the date of Peter Erlinder's arrest on May 28
> through Sunday, June 13, we are able to document a total of five dates on
> which the U.S. Department of State's chief spokesperson, the Assistant
> Secretary Philip J. Crowley, mentioned the fact of Erlinder's arrest, or
> answered a question about it. Â These dates were May 28 , June 2 , June 3
> , June 4 , and June 8 . Â Typically, Â Crowley is perfunctory, his
> exchanges with the media limited to less than 200 words (usually much
> less), as when he stated on June 4 that "we continue to expect that the
> Rwandan authorities will accord him due process in a timely and
> transparent manner, and we look for a compassionate and expeditious
> resolution." Â Through June 13, no Obama administration official had
> stated publicly that Erlinder was unjustly arrested and detained, nor had
> any administration official insisted that the government of Rwanda release
> Erlinder immediately.
>
> [ 34 ] Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, " Diplomacy Briefing
> Series Conference on Sub-Saharan Africa ," U.S. Department of State,
> Washington, DC, June 14, 2010. Â
>
>
>
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> Â
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