The above photo, taken by Keith, is a survivor and soldier of the Forces for the Democratic Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) standing guard during “peace negotiations” with the United Nations (UN) in the eastern Congo.
To be clear, a lot of Rwandans were murdered during “the 100 days” of April 1994. Probably hundreds of thousands more than the official account.
That’s not where the myth(s) are found.
There was no genocide between the Hutus and Tutsis.
The standard model of the Rwandan genocide… has been carefully contrived to serve Western interests, covering up their own roles and emphasizing a one-sided story of ethnic hatred.
Edward Herman and David Peterson (co-authors, The Politics of Genocide)
Quick background
The myth(s) are a multilayered consequence of US-backed propaganda and international confusion resulting from deliberately skewed reporting.
Put another way, the mainstream narrative is that the Hutu-led government orchestrated an ethnically-driven genocide of Tutsis (with a few moderate Hutus thrown in for good measure). We are told that around one million “cockroach” Tutsis were murdered by the Hutus after the aircraft carrying President Juvénal Habyarimana was shot down on 6 April.
Except that, well, it’s nonsense, and Hotel Rwanda is a propaganda piece.
For example, Hutus—not Tutsis—made up the majority of those slaughtered.
What actually happened was a multipronged, violent coup d’état backed by various international interests including Uganda and the United States. A genocide was one limb of the entire body. A Western-backed civil war was another limb.
Paul Kagame, coincidentally, has been the president ever since.
In Rwanda, as in many other places, the truth has been sacrificed to a convenient story, where Western powers maintain their innocence while obscuring their own complicity in the events.
Noam Chomsky
Keith’s photos
Keith Harmon Snow, a former lecturer at the University of California, is an award-winning photojournalist and war correspondent.
Here are some of his harrowing—but beautiful—photos from his time in Central Africa.
He has spent a considerable amount of time in various African countries—including Rwanda and Uganda—and has a profoundly deep knowledge of Rwanda’s history, politics, and culture.
Few people know as much as he does about what happened. He knows so much, in fact, that he’s banned from entering Rwanda.
The international community presents the Rwandan genocide as a simple Hutu against Tutsi narrative, which oversimplifies the causes and consequences and covers up the RPF’s responsibility in the massacre of civilians.
Faustin Twagiramungu (former Rwandan Prime Minister)
Podcast
Search for Jerm Warfare in your podcast app or click here
⚠️ At around 36 minutes, he says that the Inyenzi launched a series of attacks against the Juvenal Habyarimana Hutu-majority government in the 1960s. This is an error. He meant to say the Grégoire Kayibanda Hutu-majority government.
If you think about it for a few seconds, the official narrative makes no sense.
Which is often the case, I’ve found.
The media’s the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that’s power. Because they control the minds of the masses.
Malcolm X
