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[AfricaRealities.com] UN Appoints Rwandan General as Head of Darfur Peacekeeping Despite His Senior Rank During Rwandan-Backed Rebellion in Congo | Foreign Policy Journal
UN Appoints Rwandan General as Head of Darfur Peacekeeping Despite His Senior Rank During Rwandan-Backed Rebellion in Congo
by Judi Rever December 19, 2015 2 Comments This is not the first dubious appointment of Rwandan generals to major UN peacekeeping operations.
Army chief of staff Major General Frank Mushyo Kamanzi lays a foundation stone for a health center in Mubare, Rwanda (Rwanda Government) The United Nations has hired a Rwandan general to head a peacekeeping force in Darfur, despite his previous role as army chief of staff at the height of a deadly, Rwandan-backed insurgency in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). On Monday the United Nations and the African Union jointly announced that Rwandan Lieutenant General Frank Mushyo Kamanzi had been appointed force commander of UNAMID, a hybrid mission that provides security and humanitarian assistance in war torn Sudan. The decision was taken despite General Kamanzi having served as one of the most senior military figures in Rwanda when the country supplied troops and weapons to a brutal militia in eastern Congo. General Kamanzi was named army chief of staff in July 2012, just as Rwanda stepped up efforts to recruit soldiers, including children, and provide arms, ammunition and fighters for the M23, which was eventually routed by a UN intervention brigade.
Kamanzi was responsible for 'command, control and management' of Rwandan army services when M23 militia members were accused of the worst atrocities. At the time, M23 members slaughtered and raped Congolese civilians, and pillaged a string of communities in the DRC, according to Human Rights Watch and UN staff. One of the militia's warlords, Bosco Ntaganda, is now facing war crimes charges at the International Criminal Court. In November 2012, the UN's Group of Experts concluded that "Rwandan officials exercised overall command and strategic planning for M23." Their report said Rwanda clearly violated the arms embargo and sanctions regime. Despite these findings and General Kamanzi's senior position during that period, the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) said Friday he was properly screened and the UN did not have any specific information on him breaking international or humanitarian law. "In line with the 2012 policy on Human Rights screening of UN personnel for senior appointments, the UN screened Lt Gen Mushyo Frank Kamanzi, the recommended candidate for the post of Force Commander for UNAMID, against available information from throughout the UN system" a UN peacekeeping official said. "In the absence of specific information on Lt Gen Kamanzi's involvement in violations of international human rights or humanitarian law, DPKO recommended the candidate for appointment. As per standard practice, if anyone has further information, we ask them to share it with the UN," the official added. DPKO relies in part on the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) to conduct its screening for candidates. Requests for a comment from the OHCHR this week went unanswered. This is not the first dubious appointment of Rwandan generals to major UN peacekeeping operations. From 2009 until 2013, Rwandan General Patrick Nyamvumba served as UNAMID force commander, despite evidence gathered at a UN tribunal that he headed a death squad targeting Hutu civilians during the genocide. "Nyamvumba should have been charged with war crimes," a former investigator with the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) told this journalist. "Many people gave testimony against him. We had enough evidence to indict him 25 times over." "We were told to stop our investigations," he said. "The United Nations and the ICTR were all about politics," he lamented. Nyamvumba ran the notorious Training Wing during the genocide and reported directly to Paul Kagame, head of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPA) and now president. The ICTR investigator called Kagame's army 'highly disciplined.' "Nothing was done by the RPA or by any soldier that was not approved by 'number 1,'" he said, referring to the president. "Kagame is ready to kill any Hutu. But anyone else who gets in his way or bothers him will disappear," said the former investigator, who worked on major ICTR cases prosecuting Hutu génocidaires and for the Special Investigations Unit that probed RPA crimes. Another Rwandan general hired to head a UN force in Mali, has also been linked to war crimes committed against civilians. Former colleagues said Major General Jean Bosco Kazura, who served as force commander of the UN stabilization mission MINUSMA until December 2014, was deputy commander of Nyamvumba's death squad that operated in the prefectures of Byumba and Kibungo during the genocide in areas cleared of former Rwandan Hutu army forces. Under their supervision, thousands of Hutu men, women and children were rounded up and murdered, some dumped in mass graves and others brought to Akagera National Park where they were burned and incinerated, according to testimony from former Tutsi officers. The officers said that after the genocide, Generals Nyamvumba and Kazura also oversaw the transport of Hutu male recruits from all areas of Rwanda to killing grounds near the Gabiro training barracks and in other areas of Akagera Park, which were off limits to NGOs and UN personnel. In 2008, UN peacekeeping came under fire for renewing the contract of Lieutenant General Emmanuel Karenzi Karake as deputy commander of UNAMID, months after he'd been indicted by Spain in a case of universal jurisdiction. The Spanish court charged Karake with war crimes and genocide committed in Rwanda and the DRC when he headed Kagame's Directorate of Military Intelligence from 1994 until 1997. Rwanda, Paul Kagame, Congo, UN
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T he FDLR Pretext Collapses Under the Weight of Documented Plunder Introduction: A Battle That Tells the Truth When Rwandan-backed RDF/M23 forces fought with extraordinary ferocity to seize and hold Rubaya — a remote mining town in North Kivu, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo — the stated justification was security. Kigali's consistent public line has been that its military presence in the DRC is a response to the threat posed by the Forces Democratiques de Liberation du Rwanda (FDLR), an armed group whose leaders include individuals linked to the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi. This narrative has been accepted, qualified, or left insufficiently challenged by Western governments and multilateral institutions for over a decade. The Battle of Rubaya strips that narrative bare. What unfolded in Rubaya was not a counter-insurgency operation against genocidal remnants. It was a sustained military campaign — reinforced by the Rwanda Defence Forces (RDF), prosecuted at sign...
http://www.inyenyerinews.org/amakuru-2/rwandas-major-john-sengati-assassinated-in-gitarama-rwanda/ Rwanda's Major John Sengati assassinated in Gitarama, Rwanda May 12, 2013 by Rwema IT Webmaster Leave a Comment By: Jennifer Fierberg Rwandans are saddened by the death of Major John Sengati who was assassinated in Gitarama (appx 50km from Kigali) on May 10th, 2013. John Sengati was a retired Major, and ADC to Gen. Kayumba Nyamwasa from 1993 to 2001. After Gen Kayumba went to UK to further his studies, Major John Sengati was appointed Commanding Officer (C.O.) of Garrison Force that was in charge of the security to VIPs under the Ministry of Defense. Around 2007, he went to study at Kigali Institute of Technology (KIST) while he was still an active member of the RDF. According to local reports , in 2009 Major Sengati's land was redistributed in Karama to local residents. Around 2010 he was forced to retire from the army, because he was considered to be loyal and ...
How Paul Kagame Uses Diplomats' "Bury Your Head in the Sand" Strategy as a Green Light to Continue Rwanda's War in the DRC Africa Realities Media | 17 July 2026 The purpose of this article is to expose a deliberate and systematic strategy: Paul Kagame's years-long practice of creating events — diplomatic dinners, RPF party meetings, genocide commemorations, international business forums and RPF Bureau Politique addresses — to which he invites foreign ambassadors and the world's business and political elite for one purpose: to explain, justify, and defend Rwanda's military invasion of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Everybody who follows this region knows the strategy now. The same narrative. The same arguments. The same defiance. At one event he tells the Trump Administration to go to hell. At the next he says those sanctioning him will leave power and he will remain. At the RPF Bureau Politique of 17 July 2026, he tells ambassadors that the on...
ANALYSIS AND INVESTIGATION Introduction: The Myth and the Man Behind the Myth There is a version of Paul Kagame that exists in the conference halls of Davos, in the pages of Western magazines, in private hotel meetings in London, Paris and Washington, and on the sleeves of European football shirts. In this version, Kagame is a visionary. A builder. A disciplined African moderniser. A leader who pulled a broken country from the ashes of genocide and turned it into what admirers often call the “Singapore of Africa”. In this version, Rwanda is clean, efficient, safe, investment-friendly and orderly. Kagame is presented as the African leader the West wants to believe in: controlled, polished, pro-market, security-focused and comfortable in elite Western spaces. Then there is the Rwanda that many Rwandans, exiles, journalists, opposition figures and human rights organisations describe. In this Rwanda, YouTubers and online commentators are jailed for what they say. Critics die in custo...
The FDLR Myth: How Rwanda Weaponises a Diminished Threat to Justify Occupation Investigation Exposes Contradictions in Rwanda's Security Narrative For over a decade, Rwanda has justified its military presence in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo by citing threats from the FDLR, a Hutu militia group linked to the 1994 genocide. But an investigation into FDLR's actual capabilities, Rwanda's military operations, and patterns of violence reveals a narrative that does not match reality. The FDLR threat, whilst real, has been systematically exaggerated and manipulated to justify objectives that have nothing to do with the militia group. Introduction The Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) occupies a central position in Rwanda's justification for military intervention in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. For more than two decades, Rwandan authorities have portrayed the militia group as an existential threat requiring sustaine...
Ndabona mu bo Francois Hollande avugana n'abo Kagame wenyine niwe utarimo. Nimwisomere namwe: http://www.slate.fr/story/90909/hollande-telephone-politique-etrangere#xtor=RSS-2 From: "Samuel Desire sam4des@yahoo.com [Democracy_Human_Rights]" <Democracy_Human_Rights@yahoogroupes.fr> To: DHR <Democracy_Human_Rights@yahoogroupes.fr>; Rwandalibre Group <rwandalibre@yahoogroups.com> Sent: Tuesday, 12 August 2014, 21:08 Subject: *DHR* A qui François Hollande téléphone-t-il? Et qui reçoit-il à l'Elysée? A qui François Hollande téléphone-t-il? Et qui reçoit-il à l'Elysée? [VISUALISATION] http://www.slate.fr/story/90909/hollande-telephone-politique-etrangere#xtor=RSS-2 Envoyé par : Samuel Desire <sam4des@yahoo.com> ...
Kigali wants Washington to punish Congo too. But a ceasefire that leaves the occupier in place is not peace; it is occupation without noise. African lives are not worth less. African deaths are not normal. Western interests must never become a licence to kill African people. Introduction: A Familiar Complaint On 29 June 2026, Rwanda’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Olivier Nduhungirehe, sat before the cameras of France 24 and declared that his country was “disappointed by the increasingly biased US mediation” in the conflict with the Democratic Republic of Congo. He asked why sanctions had targeted only Rwanda. He called the measures unfair, one-sided and counterproductive. Weeks earlier, President Paul Kagame had told Jeune Afrique that sanctions and threats were insults thrown at Rwanda, and accused Washington of exerting heavy pressure on Rwanda while treating the DRC more delicately. The grievance sounds reasonable until you remember where you have heard it before. Since 2022, the Kr...
This article identifies the central obstacle to accountability for Paul Kagame’s actions in Rwanda and the Great Lakes region: the powerful global network of political leaders, former presidents, diplomats, philanthropists, religious figures, businesspeople, international institutions, sporting organisations, advisers and paid lobbyists that has promoted, legitimised, defended and protected him for three decades. This is a problem-identification article. It asks why Kagame has remained internationally influential and protected despite serious and extensively documented allegations concerning Rwanda’s military actions in the Democratic Republic of Congo, political repression, extraterritorial operations, mineral exploitation and the treatment of political opponents, journalists and critics. The answer is that Kagame has built an international network that gives him political access, diplomatic protection, commercial partnerships, institutional legitimacy, favourable media coverage, ...
Kagame’s Global Protection Network: Lobbying, Silence and Western Complicity: From 1990 to 2026. More at: https://www.africarealities. com/2026/07/the-empire-of- kagames-global-friends.html
French State-Sponsored Racism Without Limits Against the Hutu in France France does not simply remember the Rwanda genocide. It owns it. For three decades, the French state has sponsored and enforced a racist political order — criminalising Hutu identity, silencing African expertise, enforcing a one-sided judicial record and reproducing the same ethnic hierarchy Belgium imposed on Rwanda under colonialism. This is not a failure of memory. It is state-sponsored racism without limits, dressed in the language of historical accountability. African lives are not worth less. African deaths are not normal. Western interests must never become a licence to kill African people. Introduction: Racism as Policy The genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda was real. Between April and July 1994, following an invasion of Rwanda launched by the RPF from Uganda on 1 October 1990, initially under the command of Major-General Fred Rwigyema and subsequently led by Paul Kagame after Rwigyema was killed ...
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