Gersony Report

Last updated May 17, 2021

Gersony Report is the name given to the 1994 findings made by a team under Robert Gersony, which was under contract to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and identified a pattern of massacres by the Rwandan Patriotic Front rebels during and after their military victory in the civil war in post-genocide Rwanda. The findings were suppressed by the United Nations and involved governments for political reasons, and its existence was denied. No final written report was ever completed, though purported early written documentation has been leaked. The validity of Gersony's purported findings continue to be disputed.

Research

Robert Gersony, a freelance American consultant who had extensive experience in war zones in Africa, particularly Mozambique and Somalia, was hired by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to conduct a refugee survey in preparation for encouraging Rwandans who had fled the country in the wake of the Rwandan genocide and rebel victory in the Rwandan Civil War to return home.^[1] Gersony and his assistants began the work broadly sympathetic to the new government of the mostly-Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), as was common among those who saw the effects of the genocide.^[2] In the course of their fieldwork, the three-person team became convinced that the RPF had carried out "clearly systematic murders and persecution of the Hutu population in certain parts of the country."^[3]

The team were granted free travel by the RPF, who expected the refugee study to help their efforts to repatriate refugees, and saw more of the country and talked to more people than any other foreigners in Rwanda at that time. Specifically, between 1 August and 5 September 1994 the Gersony team visited 91 sites in forty-one of the 145 communes of Rwanda, mostly in the areas of Kibungo, Gisenyi and Butare. They further gathered information on about ten other communes and carried out interviews in nine refugee camps in surrounding countries. Over the course of their work, the team conducted more than two hundred individual interviews and conducted another one hundred small group discussions.^[3]

Purported findings of the team include the alleged 2 August massacre of about 150 civilians attempting to cross back into northwest Rwanda from Zaire by the RPF, as well as systematic arrest and apparent forced disappearance of a large number of men in Gisenyi. In Butare, part of Kigali, and Kibungo to the south and southeast, the team reported indiscriminate massacres of civilians who had come to meetings convened by local government authorities, house-to-house killing of civilians, organized searches to kill civilians who were hiding in the brush, and ambushes of civilians attempted to flee across the border into Burundi. The report concluded that "the great majority of these killings had apparently not been motivated by any suspicion whatsoever of personal participation by victims in the massacres of Tutsi in April 1994."^[3] Gersony's personal conclusion was that between April and August 1994, the RPF had killed "between 25,000 and 45,000 persons, between 5,000 and 10,000 persons each month from April through July and 5,000 for the month of August."^[3]

Findings reported

Gersony reported his findings to Madame Sadako Ogata, UNHCR High Commissioner, who in turn informed Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali. Boutros-Ghali sent then-Assistant Secretary General Kofi Annan and UNHCR Africa director Kamel Morjane to Kigali.^[4] Upon his arrival, Annan and several subordinates were briefed by Gersony, who stated that he recognized that his conclusions were opposite to that otherwise found by the UN but that he was willing to stake his 25 year reputation on its validity. The UN officials and Gersony then had a meeting with Minister of the Interior Seth Sendashonga, Minister of Foreign Affairs Jean Marie Vianney, and Prime Minister Faustin Twagiramungu, who stated that it would be impossible for the government to kill 30,000 people secretly, that it was unlikely that the RPA would travel with hoes, machetes and clubs as contended in the report, and that the President himself had gone to investigate reports of RPA atrocities along the Tanzanian border and had found no evidence and concluded that Hutu extremists in the Tanzanian camps were inciting fear in the refugee population.^[5]

Shaharyar Khan, UN Special Representative to Rwanda, who was present at the meeting with the government officials, would express his belief that an elevated level of revenge killings had occurred in border regions but that, "I do not accept Gersoni's [ sic ] conclusion that the killings are part of a 'pre-ordained, systematic massacre ordered from the top.'"^[5] Annan expressed his belief that killings were ongoing but that he hoped the killings were not deliberate and promised the officials that the UN would embargo Gersony's findings to give the new government a chance to gain control of the situation.^[4] General Guy Tousignant, head of the UN Assistance Mission for Rwanda, was more blunt to other ministers he later met, informing them that Gersony was probably correct and that the killings must stop. In the meantime, UNHCR, who had commissioned the report, stopped its repatriations of refugees back into Rwanda.^[3]

The contents of Gersony's findings were leaked to the international press, infuriating the RPF government.^[6] Great Lakes historian Gérard Prunier writes that the UN promised the Rwandan government that they would embargo the document and instructed Gersony to never discuss their findings.^[7] Alison Des Forges, Rwanda expert for Human Rights Watch and publisher of some of the key materials on the 'Gersony report', goes further in writing that Gersony was told to not write a report and that his entire team was told to keep silent about their findings.^[8]

A three and a half-page memorandum was drafted for internal use, from which a two-and-a-half page memo was prepared for the special rapporteur on Rwanda of the UN Human Rights Commission. When the special rapporteur attempted in April 1996 to learn more about Gersony's findings, he received the reply, "We wish to inform you that the 'Gersony Report' does not exist. [emphasis in original]"^[3]

Gersony himself has kept his word to never publicly discuss his findings, resulting in the 'Gersony Report' achieving "an almost mythical dimension."^[4] In 2006, Lieutenant Colonel Thomas P. Odom, a former US military attache in Rwanda, sharply disputed the 'Gersony Report', asserting that no report was ever produced, that no UN officers had ever corroborated Gersony's account and that subsequent investigative visits had not confirmed its findings. Odom stated of two prominent Rwanda experts, "Even authors I respect enormously such Alison des Forges and Gérard Prunier go too far in lending credence to these accusations," and characterized the relevant work done by Des Forges as "largely hyperbolic guesswork built on doubtful sources."^[9] Former Canadian Intelligence Officer, Dr. Phillip Drew, who was also tasked to follow up on some of the contents of the Gersony report, agrees with Odom. Noting that his team included forensic entomologists, Drew reported that while bodies were found in some of the locations identified by Gersony, close inspection of several locations around Kibungo concluded that the bodies had been in place since mid-April to early May 1994. Thus claims that stated the RPF was conducting mass murder in these locations in August could not be substantiated. ^[10]

In September 2010, a website released what is claimed to be an internal UN written summary of the oral presentation made by Gersony, as well as several field reports made by his team during the course of their research.^[11]

Footnotes

↑ Prunier 2009, p. 15.
↑ Footnotes by Gérard Prunier based on personal interview of Gersony conducted in 1998. Prunier 2009 , p. 373.
1 2 3 4 5 6 Des Forges 1999.
1 2 3 Prunier 2009, p. 16.
1 2 ICTR-98-41-T Defense Exhibit DK-112, October 14, 1994 Outgoing Code Cable MIR from Shaharyar Khan to Kofi Annan regarding Gersoni (sic) "Report", (admitted Nov. 16, 2006) http://www.rwandadocumentsproject.net/gsdl/collect/mil1docs/index/assoc/HASHc166/6f755cde.dir/doc84106.PDF
↑ "Rwanda Asks U.N. to Probe New Atrocities", New York Times , September 24, 1994.
↑ "[Annan] also promised that the UN would embargo the document to give the new government a chance to stabilize. The report was indeed embargoed: its very existence was denied and Gersony was instructed never to talk about it publicly. ...My own uneasiness with the Gersony Report spurred me into some direct research when I went back to Rwanda for the first time after the genocide in January 1995. It was unfortunately not very difficult to find massacre witnesses, even if one had to go through a wall of lies." Prunier 2009 , p. 16
↑ "In New York, Boutros-Ghali ensured that there would never be a written document to call into question the efficacy of the U.N. presence or the behavior of the Rwandan forces. Gersony was told to write no report and he and his team were directed to speak with no one about their findings." Des Forges 1999.
↑ Lieutenant Colonel Thomas P. Odom USA (ret.), ""Guerrillas From the Mist: A Defense Attaché Watches the Rwandan Patriotic Front Transform from Insurgent to Counter Insurgent"" (PDF)., Small Wars Journal Volume 5, July 2006, pp. 6–7.
↑ Dr. Phillip Drew -personal papers>.
↑ Robert Gersony (11 October 1994). "Summary for UNHCR Presentation Before Commission of Experts, 10 October 1994: Prospects for Early Repatriation of Rwandan Refugees Currently in Burundi, Tanzania and Zaire" (PDF). United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees . Retrieved 2010-09-20.

Related Research Articles

Juvénal Habyarimana was a Rwandan military officer who served as the second president of Rwanda, from 1973 until 1994. He was nicknamed "Kinani", a Kinyarwanda word meaning "invincible".

Paul Kagame is a Rwandan politician and former military leader. He is the sixth and current president of Rwanda, having taken office in 2000. Kagame previously commanded the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a Uganda-based rebel force which invaded Rwanda in 1990 and was one of the parties of the conflict during the Rwandan Civil War and the Rwandan genocide. He was considered Rwanda's de facto leader when he served as Vice President and Minister of Defence under President Pasteur Bizimungu from 1994 to 2000.

The United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) was established by United Nations Security Council Resolution 872 on 5 October 1993. It was intended to assist in the implementation of the Arusha Accords, signed on 4 August 1993, which was meant to end the Rwandan Civil War. The mission lasted from October 1993 to March 1996. Its activities were meant to aid the peace process between the Hutu-dominated Rwandese government and the Tutsi-dominated rebel Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF). The UNAMIR has received much attention for its role in failing, due to the limitations of its rules of engagement, to prevent the Rwandan genocide and outbreak of fighting. Its mandate extended past the RPF overthrow of the government and into the Great Lakes refugee crisis. The mission is thus regarded as a major failure.

The Rwandan Patriotic Front is the ruling political party in Rwanda. Led by President Paul Kagame, the party has governed the country since its armed wing defeated government forces, winning the Rwandan Civil War in 1994.

The Interahamwe is a Hutu paramilitary organization active in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda. The Interahamwe was formed around 1990 as the youth wing of the National Republican Movement for Democracy and Development, the then-ruling party of Rwanda, and enjoyed the backing of the Hutu Power government. Being clandestinely infiltrated by RPF Inkotanyi soldiers, the Interahamwe was secretly used by RPF of Kagame since 1992 until the end of the genocide. The Interahamwe, led by Robert Kajuga, were the main perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide, during which an estimated 500,000 to 1,000,000 Tutsi, Twa, and moderate Hutus were killed from April to July 1994, and the term "Interahamwe" was widened to mean any civilian bands killing Tutsi.

The Rwandan genocide occurred between 7 April and 15 July 1994 during the Rwandan Civil War. During this period of around 100 days, members of the Tutsi minority ethnic group, as well as some moderate Hutu, were slaughtered by armed militias. The most widely accepted scholarly estimates are around 800,000 to 1,000,000 Tutsi deaths.

Opération Turquoise was a French-led military operation in Rwanda in 1994 under the mandate of the United Nations.The "multilateral" force consisted of 2,500 troops, 32 from Senegal and the rest French. The equipment included 100 APCs, 10 helicopters, a battery of 120 mm mortars, 4 Jaguar fighter bombers, 8 Mirage fighters, and reconnaissance aircraft. The helicopters laid a trail of food, water and medicine enabling refugees to escape into eastern Zaire. Opération Turquoise is controversial for two reasons: accusations that it was an attempt to prop up the genocidal Hutu regime, and that its mandate undermined the UNAMIR.

The Rwanda Defence Force is the national army of Rwanda. The country's armed forces were originally known as the Rwandan Armed Forces (FAR), but following the stopping of the 1994 Genocide against Tutsis, the victorious Rwandan Patriotic Front (Inkotanyi) created a new organization and named it Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA). Later, it was renamed to its current name.

Rwandan Civil War 1990–1994 conflict in Rwanda

The Rwandan Civil War was a large-scale civil war in Rwanda which was fought between the Rwandan Armed Forces, representing the country's government, and the rebel Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) from 1 October 1990 to 18 July 1994. The war arose from the long-running dispute between the Hutu and Tutsi groups within the Rwandan population. A 1959–1962 revolution had replaced the Tutsi monarchy with a Hutu-led republic, forcing more than 336,000 Tutsi to seek refuge in neighbouring countries. A group of these refugees in Uganda founded the RPF which, under the leadership of Fred Rwigyema and Paul Kagame, became a battle-ready army by the late 1980s.

The Kibeho massacre occurred in a camp for internally displaced persons near Kibeho, in south-west Rwanda on April 22, 1995. Australian soldiers serving as part of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda estimated at least 4,000 people in the camp were killed by soldiers of the military wing of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, known as the Rwandan Patriotic Army. The Rwandan Government estimated the death toll to be 338.

The Great Lakes refugee crisis is the common name for the situation beginning with the exodus in April 1994 of over two million Rwandans to neighboring countries of the Great Lakes region of Africa in the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide. Many of the refugees were Hutu ethnics fleeing the predominantly Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), which had gained control of the country at the end of the genocide. However, the humanitarian relief effort was vastly compromised by the presence among the refugees of many of the Interahamwe and government officials who carried out the genocide, who used the refugee camps as bases to launch attacks against the new government led by Paul Kagame. The camps in Zaire became particularly politicized and militarized. The knowledge that humanitarian aid was being diverted to further the aims of the genocidaires led many humanitarian organizations to withdraw their assistance. The conflict escalated until the start of the First Congo War in 1996, when RPF-supported rebels invaded Zaire and sought to repatriate the refugees.

Fred Gisa Rwigyema was a Rwandan politician and military officer. He was the founder of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a political and military force formed by Rwandan Tutsi exile descendants of those forced to leave the country after the 1959 Hutu Revolution.

The Amahoro Stadium, officially known as Amahoro National Stadium, is a multi-purpose stadium in the Gasabo district of Kigali, Rwanda. With a capacity of 25,000, it is the largest stadium in Rwanda and hosts football matches, concerts, and public events. The football clubs Armée Patriotique Rwandaise F.C. and Rayon Sports F.C. are the tenants. The venue is also sometimes used for rugby union.

Seth Sendashonga was the Minister of the Interior in the government of national unity in Rwanda, following the military victory of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) after the 1994 genocide. One of the politically moderate Hutus in the National Unity Cabinet, he became increasingly disenchanted with the RPF and was eventually forced from office in 1995 after criticizing government policies. After surviving a 1996 assassination attempt while in exile in Kenya, he launched a new opposition movement, the Forces de Résistance pour la Démocratie (FRD). Sendashonga was killed by unidentified gunmen in May 1998. The Rwandan government is widely believed to be responsible for the assassination.

Robert Gersony is an American consultant known for his reports on conflict-affected countries, in particular in Africa. His most famous work, the 1994 "Gersony Report", was never actually finished. The "Gersony Report" was suppressed by the United Nations, who had originally commissioned it, because it had reached the politically embarrassing conclusion that the Rwandan Patriotic Front, which had taken control of the country after the Rwandan genocide, was carrying out politically-motivated mass killing. The Anguish of Northern Uganda, a report commissioned by the US Embassy in Kampala, is arguably the most cited source on the Lord's Resistance Army insurgency.

United Nations Security Council resolution 1011, adopted unanimously on 16 August 1995, after recalling resolutions 918 (1994), 997 (1995) and 1005 (1995) on the situation in Rwanda, the Council suspended the arms embargo against the Government of Rwanda.

United Nations Security Council resolution 1029, adopted unanimously on 12 December 1995, after recalling previous resolutions on Rwanda, including Resolution 872 (1993), Resolution 912 (1994), Resolution 918 (1994), Resolution 925 (1994), Resolution 955 (1994), Resolution 965 (1994), Resolution 978 (1995) and Resolution 997 (1995), the Council extended the mandate of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) for a final time, ending 8 March 1996, and adjusted its mandate.

The role of France in the Rwandan genocide of 1994 has been a source of controversy and debate both within and beyond France and Rwanda. France actively supported the Hutu-led government of Juvénal Habyarimana against the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front, which since 1990 had been engaged in a conflict intended to restore the rights of Rwandan Tutsis both within Rwanda and exiled in neighboring countries following over four decades of anti-Tutsi violence. France provided arms and military training to Habyarimana's youth militias, the Interahamwe and Impuzamugambi, which were among the government's primary means of operationalizing the genocide following the assassination of Juvénal Habyarimana and Cyprien Ntaryamira on April 6, 1994.

Massacres of Hutus during the First Congo War refers to the mass killing of Rwandan, Congolese, and Burundian Hutu men, women, and children in villages and refugee camps then hunted down while fleeing across the territory of Democratic Republic of Congo from October 1996 to May 1997.

In Praise of Blood: The Crimes of the Rwandan Patriotic Front is a 2018 non-fiction book by Canadian journalist Judi Rever and published by Random House of Canada; it has also been translated into Dutch and French. The book describes alleged war crimes by the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), Rwanda's ruling political party, during its ascent to power in the 1990s.

References

Prunier, Gérard (2009). Africa's World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-537420-9.
Des Forges, Alison (March 1999). "The Gersony Mission section of The Rwandan Patriotic Front chapter". Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda. Human Rights Watch. Retrieved 2009-02-24.