Somebody (the ever acerbic Mark Twain?) long ago advised against arguing with a certain category of people as onlookers may not tell the difference. And I concur. But I also concur that when you don’t answer such people according to their folly, in their own eyes they may see wisdom. I’m not one to engage in trading indignities, don’t get me wrong. But, on observation of developments in this region, I must confess I’m afflicted by these contradictions. These incessant spinners of reports of blatant lies on Rwanda, should they be ignored?
Personally, I think they should. Only, unfortunately, that’s exactly what they want. They craft their reports in such a way that you, as an aid-recipient, cannot argue with them. So they don’t argue; they don’t address themselves to you. They talk over your head, as if you do not exist, and address themselves to a power beyond you that matters to them. It’s a power that holds the key to the piggy bank and they assume it matters to you, too. And for their ability to get easier access to that power, they must talk for you. So, pander to their whims and they’ll talk in your favour. Reject their condescending manner and they’ll write a “report”.
What they have never considered is that there may be some societies that can go any length, climb the highest mountain, depend on the last of their self-generated crumbs or fight to the last man to defend their dignity if it is in the least compromised. In the least. It is as serious as that and it has happened before, even when conditions have been worse. If your memory needs jogging, think the bush war of 1990-1993, the genocide of 1994. And so Rwanda refuses to pander to any whim from anywhere in this world of uneven societies. Big or small, strong or weak, rich or poor, each society must be treated as equal. Rwanda refuses to be subjugated.
And this refusal may be bearing dividends. Methinks their ill intentions are being exposed.
When Rwanda trashed the UN Group of Experts’ (GOE) report, littlest evidence by littlest counter-evidence, no one can deny that there was general hush-hush among those piggy-bank controllers. These were the sanctified members of the donor community who reserve themselves alone the title of Security Council. They listened, understood and knew who was fabricating lies. And knew that that ‘who’ was not Rwanda.
But of course there was no acknowledgement, least of all apology. Rwanda hadn’t expected any, in any case. Still, it was telling that Western news outlets started to shift their focus on the possibility of the “operationalisation” of the recommendations by the International Conference for the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR) in Kampala, Uganda. They started to predict “no breakthrough”, the usual negatives, but at least from false accusations they passed on to speculation, where they could not claim mastery. None can be master over what’s only probable.
However, the biggest dividend may yet be to come. When the GOE’s report was found to be full of glaring holes and reputations of those experts hung in the balance, now one of their fellow report-spinning organisations has seized a thin chance to come to their rescue and the news shrill is in resurgence.
Last Tuesday Human Rights Watch (HRW) rushed out a report cataloguing M23’s war crimes that read like the operational manual of Forces Démocratiques de la Libération du Rwanda (FDLR – a blasphemy against ‘democracy’, an insult to ‘liberation’). The accuracy of these allegations aside, what the report doesn’t say is more damning. But even more damning, if more there could be, is that HRW spells out exactly the same crimes and gives the same evidence as those given by GOE and keeps mum exactly where the other did. If there are medals for scaling the heights of absurdity, I don’t know where the Olympics boss is looking!
By now, even a child who in 1996 was born on the remotest spot of this earth can today recite the trail of abuses the FDLR has inflicted on the hapless citizens of the D.R. Congo. Yet HRW can see crimes committed by M23 in less than four months when for the last 18 years it has failed to notice similar crimes committed by FDLR, the DRC army, the array of seemingly uncontrollable rebel outfits and, lately, MONUSCO. With the saddest of ironies being that all that misery is playing out under the uncaring – complicit? – gaze of the DRC government. One would even be tempted to believe that, like this vampire syndicate in which HRW takes pride of place, the DRC government thrives on the misery of its citizens.
Whereas it is big business for these vampire organisations, what’s in it for DRC? It would be laughable if it didn’t involve our Congolese brothers and sisters. When DRC bleeds, especially with the tacit indifference of its leaders, Rwanda bleeds, too.
To think that Rwanda can roll her reputation in this dirt is not to know Rwandans. Rwandans are too proud a people to involve themselves in the filthy business of turning their brothers and sisters into the laughing stock of Western organisations. If for nothing else, to spite these loathsome organisations that like to pass themselves off as saviour servers of African rights when they are known to be here solely to scavenge on African miseries – even engineering them where they are not.
Even if it be of public-relations value to these organisations, let Rwanda take the argument to them. My humble submission: put their lie to the test; it cannot but wilt under the scorch of sustained scrutiny.
