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Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the most populous city in Canada, with a population of 2,731,571 in 2016. Current to 2016, the Toronto census metropolitan area (CMA), of which the majority is within the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), held a population of 5,928,040, making it Canada's most populous CMA. Toronto is the fastest growing city in North America, and is the anchor of an urban agglomeration, known as the Golden Horseshoe in Southern Ontario, located on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. Toronto is an international centre of business, finance, arts, and culture, and is recognized as one of the most multicultural and cosmopolitan cities in the world.
Ontario is one of the 13 provinces and territories of Canada and is located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province accounting for 38.3 percent of the country's population, and is the second-largest province in total area. Ontario is fourth-largest jurisdiction in total area when the territories of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut are included. It is home to the nation's capital city, Ottawa, and the nation's most populous city, Toronto, which is also Ontario's provincial capital.
An amicus curiae is someone who is not a party to a case and may or may not have been solicited by a party and who assists a court by offering information, expertise, or insight that has a bearing on the issues in the case; and is typically presented in the form of a brief. The decision on whether to consider an amicus brief lies within the discretion of the court. The phrase amicus curiae is legal Latin.
McMaster University is a public research university in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. The main McMaster campus is on 121 hectares of land near the residential neighbourhoods of Ainslie Wood and Westdale, adjacent to the Royal Botanical Gardens. It operates six academic faculties: the DeGroote School of Business, Engineering, Health Sciences, Humanities, Social Science, and Science. It is a member of the U15, a group of research-intensive universities in Canada.
Osgoode Hall Law School, commonly shortened to Osgoode, is the law school of York University in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The school was originally founded by the Law Society of Upper Canada, and named for William Osgoode, an Oxford University graduate and barrister of Lincoln's Inn who was the first to serve as the Chief Justice of Upper Canada. The school signed an agreement of affiliation with York University in 1965 following a decision by the provincial government requiring all law schools to be affiliated with a university.
York University is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is Canada's third-largest university, and it has approximately 52,300 students, 7,000 faculty and staff, and 295,000 alumni worldwide. It has eleven faculties, including the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, Faculty of Science, Lassonde School of Engineering, Schulich School of Business, Osgoode Hall Law School, Glendon College, Faculty of Education, Faculty of Health, Faculty of Environmental Studies, Faculty of Graduate Studies, the School of the Arts, Media, Performance and Design, and 28 research centres. The Keele campus is also home to a satellite location of Seneca College.
Career
Relating to the Rwandan War, 1990 to 1994
Black has written several articles about the role of the ad hoc war crimes tribunals as instruments of US war policy and regarding the 1994 conflict in Rwanda, arguing that its standard interpretation as a genocide of the country's Tutsi population is incorrect based on the evidence presented at the trials at the ICTR. He notes that the Tutsi-led Rwandese Patriotic Front conducted a war of aggression from Uganda against Rwanda with US and British support from 1990, and presents the evidence that the RPF was responsible for the 1994 shoot down of the presidential plane which killed the Hutu presidents of Burundi and Rwanda. Black also argues, based on the evidence in the trials and research by many academics that many of the deaths which occurred in the resulting upheaval were perpetrated by RPF members, rather than by the extremist Hutu groups which have generally been held responsible for the country's descent into chaos.
Genocide is intentional action to destroy a people in whole or in part. The hybrid word "genocide" is a combination of the Greek word γένος and the Latin suffix -caedo. The term genocide was coined by Raphael Lemkin in his 1944 book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe;
The Tutsi, or Abatutsi, are a social class or ethnic group of the African Great Lakes region. Historically, they were often referred to as the Watutsi, Watusi, Wahuma, Wahima or the Wahinda. The Tutsi form a subgroup of the Banyarwanda and the Barundi people, who reside primarily in Rwanda and Burundi, but with significant populations also found in Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Tanzania.
The Hutu, also known as the Abahutu, are a Bantu ethnic or social group native to the African Great Lakes region of Africa, an area now primarily in Burundi and Rwanda. They mainly live in Rwanda, Burundi, and the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, where they form one of the principal population divisions alongside the Tutsi and the Twa.
Black defended General Augustin Ndindiliyimana the former chief of staff of Rwanda's Gendarmerie or National Police Force, and highest ranking Rwandan military officer, before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Arusha, Tanzania who was acquitted of all substantive charges against him in 2011 but convicted of genocide based on simple failure to punish some subordinates for alleged crimes. He was acquitted of dozens of charges that he ordered massacres, failed to protect civilians, conspiracy to commit genocide, or was personally involved in killing Tutsis. The ICTR ordered his release after having already spent 11 years in prison as the judges found he had risked his life to save Tutsis, including hiding 37 Tutsi orphans at his home in Kigali along with several Tutsi priests, supported the Arusha Accords, opposed massacres, did all he could to achieve peace and was himself targeted as a possible RPF agent and was forced to flee Rwanda in June, 1994. Readers can refer to the judgement at the ICTR website. Black, and other defence lawyers, went on strike in early 2004, claiming that the tribunal was being used for political ends and that a fair hearing was impossible. He has been the subject of several death threats as a result of his work at the Rwanda tribunal and the subject of threats and intimidation from the current RPF Rwandan regime and the CIA, which was reported to the President of the ICTR. Black also acted as counsel on the appeal made by General Ndindiliyimana from his convictions. General Ndindiliyimana was acquitted of all remaining charges by the Appeals Chamber of the ICTR on February 11, 2014.
Augustin Ndindiliyimana is a former Rwandan General and Chief of the Rwandan National Gendarmerie. He was convicted of genocide by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda but he was acquitted by the tribunal upon appeal.
The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda was an international court established in November 1994 by the United Nations Security Council in Resolution 955 in order to judge people responsible for the Rwandan genocide and other serious violations of international law in Rwanda, or by Rwandan citizens in nearby states, between 1 January and 31 December 1994.
Arusha is a city in north eastern Tanzania and the capital of the Arusha Region, with a population of 416,442 plus 323,198 in the surrounding Arusha District. Located below Mount Meru on the eastern edge of the eastern branch of the Great Rift Valley, Arusha has a temperate climate. The city is close to the Serengeti National Park, the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, Lake Manyara National Park, Olduvai Gorge, Tarangire National Park, Mount Kilimanjaro, and Arusha National Park on Mount Meru.
Black acted as legal counsel to the FDU-Inkingi Rwandan political party and the Rwanda National Congress, who were joined by the Congolese civil society groups Approdec and Congonova, on August 17, 2012 when they presented a complaint to the prosecutor's office of the ICC in The Hague seeking an ICC investigation of and the laying of criminal charges against Paul Kagame and other Rwandan military officers for war crimes committed by them in assisting the M23 group in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The Rwanda National Congress (RNC) is Rwandan opposition group in exile, established in the United States on 12 December 2010. Prominent founders included Dr. Theogene Rudasingwa, Gen. Kayumba Nyamwasa, Gerald Gahima, and Patrick Karegeya. Karegeya was murdered on 31 December 2013. Rudasingwa and Gahima has since left the organization.
Paul Kagame is a Rwandan politician and former military leader. He is currently the President of Rwanda, having taken office in 2000 when his predecessor, Pasteur Bizimungu, resigned. Kagame previously commanded the rebel force that ended the 1994 Rwandan genocide. He was considered Rwanda's de facto leader when he served as Vice President and Minister of Defence from 1994 to 2000. He was re-elected in August 2017 with an official result of nearly 99% in an election criticized for numerous irregularities. He has been described as the "most impressive" and "among the most repressive" African leaders.
The March 23 Movement, often abbreviated as M23 and also known as the Congolese Revolutionary Army, was a rebel military group based in eastern areas of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), mainly operating in the province of North Kivu. The 2012 M23 rebellion against the DRC government led to the displacement of large numbers of people. On 20 November 2012, M23 took control of Goma, a provincial capital with a population of one million people, but was requested to evacuate it by the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region because the DRC government had finally agreed to negotiate with them. In late 2013 Congolese troops, along with UN troops, retook control of Goma and M23 announced a ceasefire, saying it wanted to resume peace talks.
Relating to the former Yugoslavia
Black, along with other jurists criticized the imprisonment of Slobodan Milošević at the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague and argues that the ad hoc war crimes tribunals are illegitimate under the UN Charter and used by the Americans as show trials for their political objectives. He met with Milošević on many occasions and acted as a legal adviser only. He is a vice-chair of the International Committee for the Defence of Slobodan Milosevic and the Chair of its Legal Committee which included lawyers Ramsey Clark and Jacques Vergès and playwright Harold Pinter. He argues that, based on the evidence that the former Serbian leader was completely innocent of the charges brought against him. Black argued that the evidence was clear and unequivocal that Milošević was consistently committed to a multi-ethnic Yugoslavia during his time in government. He is engaged by the widow of President Milosevic, Mira Markovic, to investigate the death of President Milosevic and the responsibility of the ICTY, UN and Nato for his death. In March 2013 he, along with well-known Russian international lawyer, Alexander Mezyaev, called for an international public inquiry into the circumstances of the death of President Milosevic.[1]
Slobodan Milošević was a Yugoslav politician who served as the President of Serbia from 1989 to 1997 and President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia from 1997 to 2000. He led the Socialist Party of Serbia from its foundation in 1990 and rose to power as Serbian President during efforts to reform the 1974 Constitution of Yugoslavia in response to the marginalization of Serbia and its political incapacity to deter Albanian separatist unrest in the Serbian province of Kosovo.
The Hague is a city on the western coast of the Netherlands and the capital of the province of South Holland. It is also the seat of government of the Netherlands.
William Ramsey Clark is an American lawyer, activist and former federal government official. A progressive, New Frontier liberal, he occupied senior positions in the United States Department of Justice under Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, notably serving as United States Attorney General from 1967 to 1969; previously he was Deputy Attorney General from 1965 to 1967 and Assistant Attorney General from 1961 to 1965.
Black has argued that the leaders of NATO should themselves be brought before the tribunal for war crimes, and was one of a group of Canadian lawyers, led by Professor Michael Mandel of Osgoode Hall Law School, who laid war crimes charges against all Nato leaders and officers in 1999 for the bombing of Yugoslavia and criticised Louise Arbour, former prosecutor of the ICTY and ICTR because of her cooperation with NATO leaders during the 1999 bombing of Serbia and because, as Chief Prosecutor at the Rwanda War Crimes Tribunal she stopped the investigation into the murder of the Hutu Presidents of Rwanda and Burundi on April 6, 1994 when their plane was shot down by anti-aircraft missiles after Arbour learned that the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) were responsible, a fact confirmed by both her lead investigator, Australian lawyer Michael Hourigan and as contained in the Hourigan Report, a UN document, now an exhibit in the Military II trial, ICTR. Black says that Arbour stopped the investigation on the orders of the US. He also led[clarification needed] evidence at the ICTR that US forces were directly involved in the fighting in Rwanda during 1994 and that claims by President Clinton to the contrary are false.
Black has also assisted the legal team of Dr. Seselj, the head of the Serbian Radical Party, also held in detention by the ICTY.
Black has wrriten many essays and articles for a wide range of journals including the Toronto Star, Globe and Mail, Canadian Dimension, Counterpunch, Global Research, New Eastern Outlook, Z Magazine, Mediterranean Quarterly, Monthly Review, Izvestia, Politika, Sanders Research, and others, and has been interviewed on BBC, CBC, Radio Havana, RT, Sputnik, Toronto Star, Junge Welt, Times of India, and many others.
Black has been a guest lecturer on international law at Upper Canada College in Toronto, the Russian Academy of Sciences, and several law schools in Moscow, the University of Michigan, McMaster University, the University of Bonn, and has lectured to citizens groups in Canada, USA, Germany, Belgium, Austria, Britain, France, Italy, Cuba, Greece. He has also been a plenary speaker at the Rhodes World Forum-Dialogue of Civilizations, at Rhodes, Greece, in 2014 and 2015 and is a Rhodes Forum Mentor and is a member and a legal expert of the DOC Research Institute in Berlin. In 2015 he was a speaker at a seminar on international relations and world peace at the Russian Foreign Ministry in Moscow organised by the Chairman of the Duma, the Gorchakov Public Fund and the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Black is also a minor poet and has had his poetry published in Russia, the United States and Canada and on his blog, One Voyce of the World.
Côte d'Ivoire
On October 12, 2013, at a conference held in Paris, Black joined the international committee for the defence of Charles Ble Goude, former cabinet minister in the government of Laurent Gbagbo of Côte d'Ivoire, who faces charges in Côte d'Ivoire and before the ICC. The purpose of the committee is to monitor the developments in the Goude case, ensure a fair trial in either venue, to provide support for the defence as required and to educate the world public about the events in Côte d'Ivoire that led to the foreign backed putsch in 2010.[2][3][4]
Related Research Articles
The Rwandan genocide, also known as the genocide against the Tutsi, was a mass slaughter of Tutsi and moderate Hutu in Rwanda, which took place between 7 April and 15 July 1994 during the Rwandan Civil War.
Colonel Théoneste Bagosora is a former Rwandan military officer. He is chiefly known for his key role in the 1994 Rwandan genocide, for which he has been sentenced to life imprisonment by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). In 2011, the sentence was reduced to 35 years' imprisonment on appeal. He will be imprisoned until age 89.
Augustin Bizimungu is a former general in the Rwandan Armed Forces (FAR). On 16 April 1994, at the start of the Rwandan genocide, he was appointed chief of staff of the army and promoted to the rank of Major-General.
Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM) was a Rwandan radio station which broadcast from July 8, 1993 to July 31, 1994. It played a significant role during the April–July 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi.
Pauline Nyiramasuhuko is a Rwandan politician who was the Minister for Family Welfare and the Advancement of Women. She was convicted of having incited troops and militia to carry out rape during the Rwandan genocide of 1994. She was tried for genocide and incitement to rape as part of the "Butare Group" at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in Arusha, Tanzania. In June 2011, she was convicted of seven charges and sentenced to life imprisonment. Nyiramasuhuko is the first woman to be convicted of genocide by the ICTR, and the first woman to be convicted of genocidal rape.
Jean-Paul Akayesu is a former teacher, school inspector, and Republican Democratic Movement (MDR) politician from Rwanda. He was the mayor of Taba commune in Gitarama prefecture from April 1993 until June 1994.
Simon Bikindi was a Rwandan singer-songwriter who was formerly very popular in Rwanda. His patriotic songs were playlist staples on the national radio station Radio Rwanda during the war from October 1990 to July 1994 before the Rwandan Patriotic Front took power. He was tried and convicted for incitement to genocide by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in 2008. He died of diabetes at a Beninese hospital in late 2018.
Hassan Ngeze is a Rwandan journalist best known for spreading anti-Tutsi propaganda and Hutu superiority through his newspaper, Kangura, which he founded in 1990. Ngeze was a founding member and leadership figure in the Coalition for the Defence of the Republic (CDR), a Rwandan Hutu Power political party that is known for helping to incite the genocide.
Tharcisse Renzaho is a Rwandan soldier, former politician and war criminal. He is best known for his role in the Rwandan genocide.
François-Xavier Nzuwonemeye is a former Rwandan soldier, who is chiefly known for his role in the Rwandan genocide.
Kangura was a Kinyarwanda- and French-language magazine in Rwanda that served to stoke ethnic hatred in the run-up to the Rwandan Genocide. The magazine was established in 1990, following the invasion of the rebel Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), and continued publishing up to the genocide. Sponsored by the dominant MRND party and edited by founder Hassan Ngeze, the magazine was a response to the RPF-sponsored Kanguka, adopting a similar informal style. "Kangura" was a Rwandan word meaning "wake others up", as opposed to "Kanguka", which meant "wake up". The journal was based in Gisenyi.
Ferdinand Nahimana is a Rwandan historian, who was convicted of participating in the Rwandan genocide.
On the evening of 6 April 1994, the airplane carrying Rwandan president Juvénal Habyarimana and Burundian president Cyprien Ntaryamira, both Hutu, was shot down with surface-to-air missiles as it prepared to land in Kigali, Rwanda. The assassination set in motion two of the bloodiest events of the late 20th century: the Rwandan genocide and the First Congo War.
Emmanuel Rukundo is a Rwandan Roman Catholic priest who in 2009 was convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) for his participation in the 1994 Rwandan Genocide.
United Nations Security Council resolution 1503, adopted unanimously on 28 August 2003, after recalling resolutions 827 (1993), 955 (1994), 978 (1995), 1165 (1998), 1166 (1998), 1329 (2000), 1411 (2002), 1431 (2002) and 1481 (2003), the Council decided to split the prosecutorial duties of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) which had previously been under the responsibility of one official, Carla Del Ponte, since 1999.
Rwandan genocide denial is the assertion that the Rwandan genocide did not occur in the manner or to the extent described by scholarship. The Rwandan genocide is widely acknowledged by genocide scholars to have been one of the biggest modern genocides, as many sources point to the sheer scale of the death toll as evidence for a systematic, organized plan to eliminate the victims.
Thomas Kamilindi, author of Journalism in a Time of Hate Media, describes hate media as a form of violence, which helps to demonize and stigmatize people that belong to different groups. This type of media has had an influential role in the incitement of genocide, with its most infamous cases perhaps being Radio Televizija Srbije during wars in Yugoslavia, Radio Télévision Libre des Milles Collines (RTLM) during the Rwandan Genocide and Nazi Germany’s Der Stürmer.
Violence during the Rwandan genocide of 1994 took a gender-specific form when, over the course of 100 days, up to half a million women and children were raped, sexually mutilated, or murdered. The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) handed down the first conviction for the use of rape as a weapon of war during the civil conflict, and, because the intent of the mass violence against Rwandan women and children was to destroy, in whole or in part, a particular ethnic group, it was the first time that mass rape during wartime was found to be an act of genocidal rape.
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