"However, even better-intended anti-interventionist arguments sometimes parallel the primordialist oneswhen they extract situations in places like Rwanda from their complexhistories, then cast them as local problems which "outsiders" ought not meddle in. The West has already been "meddling" in Rwandan history for centuries, in ways directly linked to the conditions allowing the genocide to take place. From the very designations of Hutu and Tusti as separate class-ethnicities (unthinkable before colonial rule), to Rwanda's place in an unequal global economic system, to the inhuman impositions of structural adjustment programs which wracked the population in the early nineties after coffee prices plummeted, to the circumstances surrounding the signing of the Arusha accords, and on and on."
Even the better-intended pro-interventionist arguments sometimes parallel the primordialist ones when they claim that the problem lies in Rwanda rather than the west. Given the intervention you describe, not to mention the military intervention, the moment when close to a million Rwandans are being systematically slaughtered seems a pretty odd time to start thinking that the West is going to play a progressive role.
Now I know how deeply Clauswitz is out of fashion. Nowadays wars are put down to "culture". But I disagree. The war in Rwanda was over politcs, which as Lenin added, is concentrated economics. I object to the idea that there is a "killer culture" or a "culture of impunity" in Rwanda. Compare this discussion to the one which has been going on on a "culture of poverty". Rascist western superiority is not embodied so much in a "tribalist" explanation as a "cultural" one.
The discussion here started off with a discussion of war crime trials. The Tribunal for Rwanda is putting on trial ordainary soldiers or the mayors of small villages. These people, not the politicians, generals or bankers in the west or their stooges who ran the Rwandan government or the RPF are getting the blame.
Maybe you know something about the way war crimes trials operate that I don't. Below I am posting an edited version of a speech given by Phil Taylor, a legal investigator. I was at the original talk, and it was one of the most powerful speeches I have ever heard. Of course, if anyone can show me that the trials don't act this way I'm open to persausion, but I would particularly draw your attention to the final paragraph of Phil Taylor's talk.
Phil Taylor has acted as both defence investigator and legal observer at the genocide tribunal in Arusha, and does not like what he has seen and heard
'Where the devil do these people get their moral authority?'
I got to be an observer at the International War Crimes Tribunal, in Arusha, quite by accident. I was hired by a lawyer in Toronto to work as an investigator for the defence. I arrived there and I was ready to do what I always do, go to the prison and see the client to hear his story, to ask him what he would like me to do in the way of investigation, where his witnesses are etc. I did not get to go. I was not allowed to see our client for seven months. Our client had seen several people testify against him before I ever saw him. I have seen him now, but only with a prison guard present. This is improper, in the sense that the defence must be able to prepare before and during the trial to rebut witnesses.
I spent those seven months as an observer, seeing what the tribunal is all about. I have been there from day one, gavel to gavel, in the matter of the Bourgmestre of Taba Commune, Jean Paul Akayesu. It has been a very interesting exercise. In my account of the proceedings, I will characterise the language used, I am not claiming to be absolutely precise.
Inside the courtroom you see an army of people, rows of translators and investigators; and then at the prosecution bench you see at least four prosecutors, and directly in front of you you see three judges with a row of people called the Court Registrar and the Registrar's Assistants, who basically drive the court process. And then on the left hand side you see two guards, one prisoner, and usually one defence lawyer. The crime is genocide and there he sits with one lawyer.
The opening day was extremely interesting for all who think that War Crimes Tribunals are a great idea. It was a performance. All the media were there. It was a full house. Of course it is an empty house now. The President of the Court, Judge Kama from Senegal, announced that 'This is a historical occasion' - it was the first time since Nuremberg that such a body was called together, all of humanity was watching, the highest standards of justice were about to come to a region of the world that did not have the best reputation for that sort of thing, and the history books were going to be full of what they did today.
I heard the word 'history' so much that I almost got a rash. Then Mr Prosecutor got up and said 'I too am proud to be part of such a process, and it is a dream for Africa. At long last standards of justice are going to be applied - and we are going to sort out good and evil - to do the right thing', and again that 'I am part of history and very proud of it'.
Then the light went on over at the microphone of the accused. The judge is a fair-minded man, so he said 'Does Mr Akayesu want to say something?'. Akayesu stood up and he said 'I just wonder, could I have a lawyer of my own choice please?'. And the judge said 'Sit down. Today we are not going to talk about that. What we are talking about today is making history'.
Akayesu had two lawyers there that day and they had just arrived. Did they know Mr Akayesu? No. Never seen him before in their lives. They were what we call Duty Counsel. He said 'I do not want these people, I don't know them'. He is accused of genocide, about as good as you can get for heinous crimes. He faces the rest of his life in prison, and he has two lawyers that he does not know.
The tribunal has established the principle that if the accused is indigent [poor], it will choose who represents him. The court, not the accused, will name the defence lawyers. The accused can only have an opinion; and you know how nice it is when someone wants your opinion, particularly when they will make the decision.
When one of the main accused, Colonel Bagosora, fought successfully to fire his counsel who had not even been in touch with him, the counsel told the judges 'I was appointed by the Registrar not by Mr Bagosora. I have been in touch with the Registrar's office consistently'. The Registrar's office is not accused of genocide. Though Bagosora was able to dismiss his lawyer, the registrar still retained the power to appoint his successor.
Jean Paul Akayesu also went through this exercise with the court. When the judges said that they would consider his request to have a lawyer of his own choice in due course, he said he would defend himself. Now, people love to see a demon. They have come to court to glare at him and to hate him because they hear he is the embodiment of evil. Unfortunately, he gets up and talks and begins to question the witnesses and becomes a human being again. This became a problem for the court. For about a week he did his best to defend himself, and being an educated man, frankly I think he did rather well. Then the judges decided that, since he was defined as without funds he could not choose his own lawyer. Instead, the two court-appointed lawyers would formally and officially represent him. 'And by the way', they said, 'Since we have decided on the issue of representation that you can no longer defend yourself, sit down'.
The issue of racism behind the scenes is hotly debated in Arusha. The Registrar's Office suggested that I could not be a defence investigator because I was not from Africa. My response is 'That is how you feel, but it's none of your business'. If Mr Rutuganda wants to have an investigator all the way from Canada that is what he wishes to have. They have tried to play a kind of a race card. Almost every prosecution investigator is white and many of them, frankly, are from Canada. And they say to Mr Rutuganda, 'We have got an army of investigators from our system, we are going to nail you to the wall, but we think you ought to find a nice African investigator'. Well, he is a smart man, he understands that you fight fire with fire. He knows that a lot of the presuppositions of the counsels and prosecutors against him are going to come from a legal system that he does not know. So he wants people from that same system to combat the others.
Who asked the court to choose the lawyers for the accused and to cover it up by saying 'Well, you see, we are very pro-African'? There are many wonderful lawyers from all over the world, including Africa, who want to go there and be defence lawyers. The rules of the tribunal have been interpreted to mean that the Registrar will choose. Anybody who wants to see due process knows that whether you like it or not the accused should have somebody representing him that he believes in. At the end of the line it has got to be the accused who has this right.
In Arusha, hearsay evidence is allowed a great deal of the time. This, too, is extremely dangerous. People come into court and they say 'Jean Paul Akayesu incited a crowd on 19 April, he told them that the Tutsi were evil and they had to kill all the Tutsis'. Then the witnesses were asked, 'Were you there?'. 'No, no I wasn't there. But my friend was there, and my friend said he said so and so.' It is ridiculous that this kind of hearsay testimony is before the court.
This leads us to another problem with the evidence. The witnesses report that, well, he did not really say Tutsi, he said we have to fight Inkotanyi - which means something about collaborators with the Rwandan Patriotic Front - and he said we have to fight the Inyenzi - which means cockroach in Kinyarwanda. 'But we know what he meant.' All the time I keep hearing about racist propaganda, how the Hutu extremists said go and kill all the Tutsis. But you get into court, and somebody has actually to stand up and swear, and they tell you he said 'Inkotanyi', he said 'Inyenzi'.
Now it is time for the experts to appear. So Alison Desforges shows up, an American who is an expert on Rwanda. Of course, she does not speak the language but that is not really necessary when you are an expert. She was asked 'Ms Desforges do you speak Kinyarwandese?' ('Kinyarwandese' is deliberately wrong, it's what she was actually asked by the examiner), and she said, 'Well I can order bananas but I can't speak to talk philosophy'. She was asked what these words mean. She said they were code words, that were often used to mean Tutsi. She is an expert on the inner psyche of the Rwandese mind so she knows what they actually meant. You have to be very smart to catch people with their codes.
Then they brought in a Rwandan language expert. The prosecutor said 'There is evidence that on 19 April 1994, the accused told the crowd to fight the Inkontanyi and kill the Inyenzi. The word Inyenzi means cockroach but does it not also mean Tutsi?'. The linguist said 'I don't know. Inyenzi was a term developed in 1963, when the first group of Tutsi exile guerrillas called themselves Inyenzi. So the speaker might have meant that.' The Prosecutor asked, 'Could it not be that one of the meanings of the word Inkontanyi might be Tutsi?'. He replied 'You would have to know the context, and who was present, to know whether or not he said it to mean Tutsi and whether or not it was understood to mean Tutsi'.
The prosecutor got very frustrated with him, after all he was a prosecution witness, and said 'Perhaps you could take off your academic, linguist hat for a moment and speak to us as a Rwandan. If you were at a meeting on 19 April 1994 and you heard the speaker say 'Inyenzi' or 'Inkotanyi' is it not possible that you would have thought that he meant Tutsis?'. And the linguist said 'Well, I was not there. This is 1997 and that was 1994 and had I been there and had I heard it, were you to ask me what I had heard when I was there, I might be able to help you'. There was a kind of sigh in the room. Even the judges began to look out of the window. And then he said 'I don't think I can help you very much, maybe you could ask > me some more questions'. And they said 'That's fine, you have been very helpful'. In other words go away.
Anyone who reads about this case will be told that there was this hateful racist propaganda. Maybe there was, but be very careful. There is no persuasive evidence that Akayesu said 'I want you to kill all the Tutsis'. We do not even know if he was at the 19 April meeting. Nobody is able to say what he did or what he said. What the experts are able to do, since they are brilliant at interpreting language, is to say he meant Tutsis based on hearsay evidence. That is the kind of ugly situation the tribunal is getting itself into.
Why are we not more sceptical in this world? My experience of working as an investigator for lawyers is that I hear all kinds of terrible things, I see front page pictures of evil men being dragged thorough the streets with handcuffs on. But when I get to court, nine times out of ten what I hear does not quite fit with what the front page told me.
I do not know how they qualify these expert witnesses to testify. For instance, a reporter and a photographer from a British newspaper and someone from Médecins Sans Frontières are testifying in the case of Jean Paul Akayesu. Their words will be weighed against him and he will be sentenced to life or not. He was the Bourgmestre of Taba Commune. None of the three had ever been to Taba Commune. None of the three had ever seen Mr Akayesu. None of the three claimed any knowledge of him. Instead they were atmosphere witnesses, giving shocking evidence on what it was like in Rwanda in 1994.
The person from Médecins Sans Frontières testified that he had seen horrendous things, that he went to a church where people had been massacred, and that he had employees who were murdered. I believe him, absolutely. He said that MSF does not believe in getting involved in court cases because they want to remain independent, but in this case because of the horrible things he had seen he had come here to testify. He was extremely righteous in his testimony, determined to give us a picture of great mayhem. But I would ask MSF, why do you want to go into a courtroom and give evidence about horrible crimes, when you say that you have never seen the accused, you have never been in Taba Commune and have no knowledge about what went on there, but you are going to help them create the scene?
Do you know what is going to do the most damage to the accused? It is the evidence of the experts. The expert witness is the deadliest witness of all, because when you listen to the evidence of the eyewitnesses in Taba Commune I do not think you are very convinced that Mr Akayesu is a leader of a genocide. But when you let Alison Desforges come into the courtroom and spend two weeks telling the story about what happened (she does not know either by the way - she was not in Tabua), by the time that story is over you feel like convicting Mr Akayesu.
Incidentally Alison Desforges interrupted her testimony, because a dear friend of hers had passed away and she was so upset that she was not able to testify as an objective witness, she had to go to the funeral in Kigali. It was the funeral of a minister in the government of General Paul Kagame. I found that a little troubling, her credentials are supposed to be those of a neutral human rights activist from the USA.
Where the devil do these people get their moral authority? They get it from the United Nations Security Council. They say that we are ending the Culture of Impunity. Apparently a conference somewhere produced this term. But although I had not heard about the Culture of Impunity, I grew up in it. In the United States we had slavery, we annihilated the Indians, we took over the land of Mexico, we dropped a bomb for their own good on the Japanese. But we have examined our conscience and forgiven ourselves. Of course such a privilege is not extended to Africans - they would just misuse it the way they did with their independence.
Hillary Clinton flew into Arusha to talk about the issue of rape as a war crime. They flew these very well paid investigators into Arusha to make up a conference to talk about this matter. She pointed out that her husband's administration had given $675 000 for investigations of sexual crimes under the war crimes tribunal. As a result, in the Akayesu trial we suddenly started hearing about rape. Nobody had accused Akayesu of rape, or ordering rape, but he got caught up in the process.
Coinciding with the visit of Hillary Clinton, a woman came into the court and said she was raped in a field by a Hutu extremist and she knew who it was. She was asked what this had to do with Mr Akayesu. She confirmed that he was not present and that no-one had said he was involved, but she said he should have known - he was the bourgmestre and he should have done something. In Toronto people get raped without blaming it on the mayor. Hillary Clinton's conference was a sham that was folded up and went away as soon as she flew out of Arusha. It was simply a platform for Hillary. But at the tribunal it has had an impact because now we are getting all this evidence about rape as a war crime.
This is the reality of the Arusha set up. It is always teetering on the verge of complete farce. The accusation of genocide has very effectively eliminated the Hutu people, the Rwandan people in fact, from a political process. It has taken politics into the courtroom, and it has permitted a general > who runs the government in Kigali and has more than 100 000 prisoners to be portrayed as a champion of justice in Central Africa.
I think there is a problem with people who are enthusiastic about the tribunal. I live on the defence side of the law. I am not much of an enthusiast for prosecutors. It seems to me that the state is sufficiently powerful without the assistance of well-meaning liberals or anybody else. I have found that a lot of Canadians whom I know as defence lawyers are working as prosecutors in Arusha and they are very happy about it, very smug, very comfortable. And it bothers me because in Canada they are in defence lawyer associations and they sneer when the word prosecutor is mentioned, 'the Crown' etc. But they get over there into Arusha and they are suddenly enthusiastic about being prosecutors. I think that is a symptom of something that may be amiss in this whole exercise.
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