Photo: Back during my volunteering days with UN peacekeeping (2007). An African Union Summit is scheduled to be held in Kigali, Rwanda this July 2016. Among the invited guests is Sudan's Omar El-Bashir. When asked about receiving the wanted president, Mr. Paul Kagame, the leader I consider to be the most productive in Africa due to his country's record time economic achievements, reportedly said he will welcome anyone that the African Union invites. Adding that he has "no business with the International Criminal Court." As we all know, the court has an international arrest warrant for Mr. Bashir. However, after the 94 genocide that saw a million tutsi's killed, Rwanda is the country that blamed the international community for inaction on genocide and genocidaires. The East African country has recently introduced to the United Nations what will be called "The Kigali Principles: A set of rules that allow UN commanders to take immediate action to defend civilians coming under attack. As a person formerly involved in peacekeeping, I know how important this is to the job. Many times communities get frustrated because the UN failed to intervene even when it was on site. Almost 40 countries have already signed up for this significant peace-keeping break-through that has been initiated by Rwanda. Furthermore, Rwanda has dispatched a large contingent in Sudan's volatile Darfur region. The Rwandan army is at the very scene of the very crimes Mr. Bashir is accused of. By the time I ended volunteering for the UN and AU in Darfur, over 60 peace-keepers had been killed in the course of duty while protecting civilians mostly in IDP camps and villages. Nigerian soldiers were the biggst casualties followed by Rwanda. I witnessed one gruesome incident in July 2008 when six Rwandan peacekeepers and one Ugandan police officer were killed as more than 200 heavily armed men in about 40 armed Toyota trucks similar to those used by ISIS, descended on our convoy. Together with some colleagues in the Public Information department we later collated mission data and established that government soldiers had conducted that attack where about 27 other peace keepers where injured. Surveillance and monitoring showed that soldiers had most-likely changed into rebel clothes after leaving their barracks at a nearby city, and returned there-in immediately after their attack and back in official uniform. Furthermore the government news agency (SUNA) had the count of six dead just an hour after the incident. The reason they missed the seventh body is because the Ugandan police man's badly burnt remains had immediately been picked by the UN vehicle that was following the AU military pick up truck on which the police officer and the six soldiers were travelling. It could therefore have only been the attackers who provided the state news agency with that incorrect body count since the armed group was obviously not aware of the seventh casualty which we had taken with us. Politics meant that our information was shelved somewhere along our UN reporting line and AU command chain. That is the day I decided to leave the UN & AU. I couldn't perpetrate that impunity after personally surviving death from that attack. In the firefight our driver was badly shot in the abdomen. I had to pull him to the rear seat and ask the colleague in the other front seat to jump at the steering and speed off. Like good soldiers, the Rwandese peace-keepers who had their vehicle destroyed, had taken defensive positions behind rocks and desert dunes, and fought back while our lead South African Armoured Personnel Carrier escort literally bulldozed off the rebels Toyota technicals from the UN convoys way while firing its mounted machinegun until the weapon run out of ammunition. The rescue only came the next day when the Deputy Force commander Gen. Karenzi personally flew by helicopter to the scene early in the morning, only to find the six soldiers bodies. The truth is that they had fought bravely. It is only after they also completely run out of ammunition, and reportedly had even attempted to fight man to man, that they were ultimately shot at point blank range by these Sudan Armed Forces soldiers in rebel disguise. It is incomprehensible to me that Rwanda, the one country with the most recent genocide history, a country with strict laws against genocide perpetrators, and the strictest laws against genocide denial as seen during opposition leader Victoire Ingabire's trial, 2013, plus the country whose soldiers I saw fighting to the death in the course of preventing further genocide by Uncle Omar in Sudan's Darfur region, that same Rwanda is today welcoming El Bashir to the African Union HUMAN RIGHTS SUMMIT. I wonder what "Kigali Principle" is behind their handshake.
by Hussein Lumumba Amin 18/05/2016
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