Regarding Giles Foden’s article (The UK’s view of Rwanda is deeply ignorant – I once fell prey to it myself, 24 May), he is right about that ignorance, but not necessarily for the reasons he provides. Congo’s crisis is directly tied to the role of the west – including the UK, the US and EU members states – and their complicity in the 1994 Rwandan genocide against the Tutsi.
France in particular enabled the creation of an escape route and safe haven in Congo during the French Operation Turquoise in 1994 for the Hutu supremacists who organised and implemented the Rwandan genocide. This enabled them to regroup in Congo and continue to massacre Tutsis within Congo and in Rwanda, and to attack and kill Hutus who do not share their genocidal ideology in both countries. China and Russia also were complicit in the genocide, along with the UN system as a whole. The consequences are still felt – and disastrously so – 28 years later.
Foden speaks of the importance of recognising complexity, and he is right. However, acknowledging complexity should not replace honest accounting of the role of the UK, France and other powers in enabling the Congo crisis in the first place, and for their ongoing grave violations of international human rights law, including the UK and France protecting and sheltering rather than prosecuting perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide.
The Congo crisis has its origins in the Rwandan genocide, and that crisis grew exponentially because of the policies and practices not only and primarily of Rwanda – as Foden argues – but of the UK, the US, the EU, and other world powers. It is easy to point fingers at Rwanda, but that needs to be complemented at a minimum with a hard look in the mirror.
Dr Noam Schimmel
University of California, Berkeley
