On February 6, 2008 judge Fernando Andreu Merelles issued an indictment against 40 top officials of the RPF (Rwandan Patriotic Front) which has ruled Rwanda in a totalitarian way since 1994. For a period of many years, and within the framework of the complaint filed by the International Forum for Truth and Justice in the African Region of the Great Lakes, the judge of the 4th Court of the Audiencia Nacional, Spain’s National Court, centered his investigation on finding those responsible for the death of millions of Rwandan and Congolese people as well as for the murder of 9 Spanish missionaries and volunteers who had been inconvenient witnesses of some of the massacres perpetrated by the RPF. In early 2009, however, the judge went a step further and turned his attention on the pillage of natural resources taking place in Congo. The magistrate asked U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon for the evidence on which the U.N. itself had based its three reports that attributed responsibility for the pillage primarily to Rwandan president Paul Kagame, a group of mining multinational companies linked to him as well as three other major co-defendants.

Months have gone by since that request but the judge has not heard a single word from the U.N. Rather, it has been our Foundation, which filed the lawsuit, who has gotten a response: the U.N. Secretary General has set up a panel of experts to carry out an investigation about the funding of the Democratic Liberation Forces of Rwanda (FDLR), the guerrilla group still operating in Eastern Congo and which, according to the RPF and its powerful godfathers, is made up –of course! –of mass murderers. The institutions funding our small Foundation have just received a letter signed by Dinesh Mahtani, the coordinator of the above-mentioned Panel of Experts which was established pursuant to Resolution 1857 (2009). The letter demands that these institutions turn over all documents concerning their funding to us since “the Group has obtained reliable information from several independent sources implying that [our organization] could have provided help to the armed group mentioned above.”

We have long known that the leaders of RPF are extremely worried about the Spanish lawsuit. But we deem it regrettable that the U.N. goes along with this corrupt game, serving as its watchdog. This comes as no surprise to us, though. Since its founding, the U.N. has been doing this in Central Africa, following guidelines from the United States. The U.N.’s serious culpability as instrument in the hands of this big power and of some of its Anglo-Saxon or Belgian allies has long been documented and proven with regard to the murder of Congolese prime minister Patrice Lumumba and the coup d’état which brought Mobutu to power. Yet nothing has been done since then. Due precisely to the scope and import of what the U.N. stands for, the impunity this institution enjoys represents by far the most scandalous in our day and age. History is repeating itself. The U.N.’s impunity in the trail of those crimes has now allowed it to reoffend, practicing impunity once again…Read more