[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 6]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page 7763]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         DEVELOPMENTS IN RWANDA

                                 ______
                                 

                       HON. CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH

                             of new jersey

                    in the house of representatives

                         Thursday, May 21, 2015

  Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, in 1994, the east African 
nation of Rwanda experienced one of the most horrific genocides in 
modern times. An estimated 800,000 Rwandans--mostly ethnic Tutsis and 
moderates among the ethnic Hutus were brutally murdered in a state-
backed extermination campaign that lasted for months.
  Hutu-Tutsi tensions date back to colonial times, when the Belgians 
created a superior class composed of Tutsis, shutting out Hutus from 
government jobs and higher education despite Hutus comprising about 85% 
of the population. In 1959 and 1960, tensions among the Hutus exploded 
in a campaign that left 20,000 Tutsis dead and created 300,000 Tutsi 
refugees.
  As with this earlier genocide, the international community watched 
largely from the sidelines during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda as the 
death toll rose from April until July of that year until the Rwandan 
Patriotic Front or RPF defeated the Hutu-led government military. More 
than two million mostly-Hutu refugees flooded into the Democratic 
Republic of the Congo, leading to continuing problems in that country. 
The RPF-led Rwandan government has criticized the United Nations for 
sheltering Hutu participants in the genocide and for allowing them to 
arm in refugee camps.
  Over the years, the RPF has used the guilt of the international 
community as a shield to prevent criticism of its action. U.N. 
Ambassador Samantha Power referred to Ambassador Susan Rice and her 
colleagues in the Clinton administration in the 1990s as Bystanders to 
Genocide. She quotes Rice in the 2002 book as saying, ``If we use the 
word `genocide' and are seen as doing nothing, what will be the effect 
on the November congressional election?'' Part of Rice's team during 
those years was Gayle Smith, current nominee to head the U.S. Agency 
for International Development.
  As far back as May 1998, I chaired a hearing that included testimony 
about the willful U.S. neglect in preventing the Rwandan genocide. As 
recounted in an issue of the New Yorker magazine at the time, a high-
ranking Rwandan informant had warned the U.N. leadership, including 
Kofi Annan, and the United States about preparations for killings 3 
months before they began. The recipients apparently did not act on that 
information.
  Furthermore, the United States has been accused not merely of 
inaction, but also of obstructing preemptive multilateral efforts to 
quell the crisis. Some have alleged that, in the words of Refugees 
International president Lionel Rosenblatt, ``The ball was not only 
dropped by the United States, it was blocked by the United States.''
  Paul Kagame, now President of Rwanda, was hailed as one of ``Africa's 
new leaders'' by Rice and her team during the 1990s, and there has been 
no apparent change in their high opinion of him since then despite what 
Deputy Assistant Secretary Robert Jackson describes as several public 
administration statements related to human rights concerns and ongoing 
dialogue with the Rwandan government.
  Kagame has been considered a hero on the international stage, and has 
long been immune to public criticism. However, human rights reports 
about abuses in Rwanda have grown over the years. The most recent State 
Department human rights report about Rwanda accuses the government of 
``targeting of political opponents and human rights advocates for 
harassment, arrest and abuse.'' Many observers note the constraints on 
freedom of expression that criminalizes public criticism of the RPF and 
its policies, as well as outlawing public discussion of ethnic issues. 
In that vein, the RPF has used charges of ``genocide ideology'' and 
``divisionism'' as well as national security concerns, to justify 
prosecution of opposition political figures and journalists and prevent 
human rights organizations from reporting on events in their country.
  In recent years, there are credible reports that the RPF government 
has commissioned assassins to kill dissidents living in exile who 
criticize the government or attempt to form political associations or 
parties.
  Several years ago, our committee Chairman Ed Royce was told by Paul 
Russessabegina of Hotel Rwanda fame that the Rwandan Government had 
targeted him and was behind several attempts on his life in Belgium.
  In early 2014, former Rwandan intelligence chief Patrick Karegeya who 
had been living in exile in South Africa, was found murdered in his 
hotel room in Johannesburg.
  Karegeya was one of two dissidents, one of the witnesses at a hearing 
I held yesterday--former Rwandan Major Robert Higiro--says he was asked 
to have killed. The assassination plot he revealed was investigated and 
substantiated in a series of articles in Canada's Globe and Mail 
newspaper, which interviewed Rwandan exiles in South Africa and 
Belgium.
  Since 2012, I have chaired a series of hearings on the violence 
perpetrated by various militias in eastern DRC. Perhaps the best known 
of them, the so-called M23, was supported by Rwanda. This Congress has 
enacted restrictions on some military assistance to Rwanda in response 
to its involvement in militia activity in the DRC and involvement in 
resource smuggling from that country, as uncovered in several U.N. 
reports.
  These charges of serious human rights and other abuses would be 
troubling in any case, but Rwanda is a country that has enjoyed 
significant U.S. and international support. By largely avoiding 
criticism of Rwandan human rights issues, the Bush and Obama 
administrations raised appropriations to Rwanda from $39 million in 
FY2003 to $188 million in FY2014. This largely has involved funding of 
health, food security and other socioeconomic projects, as well as 
support for Rwandan participation in international peacekeeping.
  Rwanda is the sixth largest troop and police contributing country in 
the U.N., with more than 4,000 troops, more than 400 police, and 13 
military observers in seven U.N. missions, including: the African 
Union-United Nations Hybrid Operation in Darfur (UNAMID); the U.N. 
Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS); the U.N. Stabilization Mission in 
Haiti (MINUSTAH); the U.N. Mission in Liberia (UNMIL); the U.N. Interim 
Security Force in Abyei (UNISFA); the U.N. Operation in Cote d'Ivoire 
(UNOCI), and the U.N. Integrated Peace-building Office in Guinea-Bissau 
(UNIOGBIS).
  Rwanda, due to donor aid, political stability and favorable investor 
policies, has grown by an average of 8% annually over the past decade. 
It is considered one of the recipient countries most able to achieve 
results from aid programs. Yet donors began reducing or redirecting 
funds in 2012 because of Rwanda's role in supporting M23. The growing 
reports of human rights abuses also are leading to greater caution 
among donor nations about directly supporting the Rwandan Government.

                          ____________________