“Afrique positive” published an article titled General Kabarebe’s claim on the UN Mapping Report, Rwandan refugees, and Dr. Mukwege. Its author, Masako Yonekawa, describes herself as a member of the Japanese NPO RITA-Congo, and claims “to counter-argue about Gen. Kabarebe’s allegation of the causal relationship between Rwandan refugees’ repatriation and UN Mapping Report, as well as Dr. Mukwege’s intention” for his advocacy. But rather than provide evidence to counter Gen Kabarebe’s position, Yonekawa only regurgitates the revisionist history Mukwege has been promoting even before he got the attention of the Nobel Prize Committee in 2018. At the onset, Yonekawa’s credibility comes into question as she repeats the bizarre claim that Gen. Kabarebe threatened Dr. Mukwege. Anyone who understands Kinyarwanda (and clearly this excludes her) would know that at no point during his contribution did he threaten Mukwege. If Yonekawa really wanted to know what Kabarebe said she would have consulted an interpreter, one who was not part of the circles which are hostile to Rwanda’s government and are spreading this fake claim. What is true, however, is that General Kabarebe denounced these same circles which, with the complicity of Doctor Mukwege, intend to use the latters newly-minted fame and the international reach it provides him to try to intimidate Rwanda on the basis of a UN draft report that was leaked to the press in August 2010; a report whose allegations were withdrawn from the final report published in October 2010 as its authors failed to substantiate them (allegations). Yonekawa fails to mention this when she recklessly refers to the “UN Mapping Report of 2010,” when she means the draft, not the final report. Only a dishonest, agenda-driven individual would ignore the final report and keep preferring its shoddy, never adopted version. Similarly, it is bizarre that Yonekawa and company choose to describe General Kabarebes thoughts as a threat to the life of Dr. Mukwege. They are happy to “counter-argue” Gen Kabarebe’s claims but they want to deny him the right to respond to the invented allegations leveled against Rwanda in the court of public opinion. Brandishing the Nobel Peace Prize as an attestation of Dr. Mukweges integrity is like trying to claim that Alfred Nobel - a man who became rich manufacturing instruments of death was a man of peace. If that is the basis of arguing that Mukwege and his supporters should not be challenged for their alliances and positions, and dubious allegations, Yonekawa, and her friends will find many who do not agree. Obviously, as a commander on the field, General James Kabarebe is one of the most knowledgeable army officers on the matter at hand. But the fact that those making wild allegations want to accuse without having to face scrutiny means that what they are after is not the truth, which raises questions about their true motive. Among their key motives is the one suggested by Kabarebe in his contribution to the discussion they misrepresent, which is why they want to shut him up. Indeed, Yonekawa is no exception to the rule in joining this caravan of propagandists whose bulk is made up of revisionists and deniers of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. As the saying goes, the devil is in the details. Only a shameless revisionist would dare to describe the RPF as “the principle (sic) actor responsible in mass killings from 1990 onwards”, as Yonekawa writes in her article. In her view, the principal actor responsible for mass killings from 1990 is not the government that conducted the genocide against Tutsi, but the liberation movement that stopped the genocide. Again, these are the motives that Gen Kabarebe was unmasking with precise clarity that Yonekawa and her fellow revisionist lunatics now see as a threat. In other words, the threat is not towards Mukwege; the truth that Kabarebe was stating is the threat that provoked his denouncing by Yonekawa, Judi Rever, and the Jambo offspring of a long line of genocidaires. Yonekawa is not done, however. “Refugees have categorically refused to return to Rwanda due to their strong fear and trauma of the RPF,” she affirms, without explaining why more than 3,200,000 refugees were repatriated from Zaire, Burundi, Tanzania, and Uganda between 1994 and 2003, the vast majority on a voluntary basis. Moreover, more than 600,000 refugees were repatriated during what UNHCR described as the largest and swiftest repatriation in memory just after the dismantling of the mammoth refugee camps just across Rwandas border in Zaire by the intervention of the RPA (Rwandan Patriotic Army). This intervention was conducted when it emerged that international actors had failed to disarm the genocidal forces which not only controlled the camps but were rearming, conducting recruitment and military training in the camps, launching attacks inside Rwanda, and killing genocide survivors and any refugee, primarily used as human shields, who dared to return home, as described in an amnesty international report. These attacks were waged by those whom Yonekawa, for reasons underscored by Gen Kabarebe regarding people like her, does not consider as “the principle (sic) actors of mass killings from 1990 onwards.” Here’s what the situation was like according to the Amnesty International report based on the declaration of the chief of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights office in Rwanda who stated publicly on 14 April 1995: Dozens of people have been killed in these attacks from across the border since the end of January...It was reported yesterday that there was another incursion that resulted in casualties...The motivations for the attacks vary...[and include] killing as a punishment of people who have returned to Rwanda without permission of the refugee camp authorities...[and] killing of people who appear to be cooperating with the Rwandese government, for example, those who have handed over their weapons or have given information about who took part in the genocide... Like all revisionists, Masako Yonekawa fails to mention that many of those who still refuse to return today participated in the killings during the genocide against the Tutsi in 1994 and fear to face justice. Nonetheless, as FARDC keeps up its operations in eastern Congo against armed groups such as the FDLR, some combatants and their dependents continue to throng to Rwanda. In other words, there are no more threats against Dr. Mukwege than there are against Rwandan refugees. What Ms Yonekawa chooses to falsely call refugees are diehard remnants of the FDLR and other hardcore genocidaires fearful of being forced to return to Rwanda and their inevitable day in court to answer for their roles during the genocide. Undeniably, there are two factors preventing any real refugees there might still be from returning home. First, a constant drumbeat of propaganda that aims to keep these refugees in fear in which the shoddy 2010 draft mapping report (leaked before its final version was published) is the central argument in this propaganda. It cements the invented narrative beloved of the genocidaires and their supporters like Mukwege, Rever, Yonekawa, and similar genocide deniers and revisionists, that the RPA targeted civilian populations in Zaire on the basis of their belonging to the Hutu ethnic group. As a result, the propagandists keep telling them that being a Hutu is enough to get killed by the government in Rwanda. However, the proponents of the leaked draft mapping report fail to explain why so many refugees, including genocide perpetrators, were repatriated and now live peacefully in Rwanda. Second, what’s taking place is a hostage situation like the one described by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights office in 1995. When refugees succeed at escaping from the jaws of fear and control of their captors and attempt to repatriate, they face reprisals and a death sentence from the terror groups still operating in eastern DRC. Moreover, when military operations – like the ones currently conducted by the FARDC – threaten to completely wipe out these terror groups, a gaggle of politically-driven NGOs, which view instability as the essential milk cow on which to build careers and get rich, attempt to resurrect the leaked mapping draft report to stoke hostility towards any cooperation between the governments of DRC and Rwanda. Such attempts to cooperate have been sabotaged time and again. This is the real threat they see in Gen Kabarebe. Mukwege and Yonekawa are merely playing their part in this conspiracy.
