Today, due to the ongoing conflict in Congo, the region is reeling with streams of refugees (IDPS) and the responsibility of maintaining displacement camps for Congolese who cannot or will not go home. Why not go home? They fear persecution by remnants of the genocide army (FDLR) that fled from Rwanda to Congo in 1994 after killing up to one million. The government of Congo, almost 1200 miles away by road in Kinshasa, has shown no ability to care for the refugees. Like the early American frontier, Congo has been plundered and manipulated by foreign interests in search of its mineral and trade wealth. China and the United States are big players.
The resulting chaos has fostered the emergence of dozens of rebel armies over the years. When the M23--now the Congolese Revolutionary Army-- rebel group formed in April 2012, it posed a threat both to the government of Congo and to the United Nations "peacekeeping force," MONUSCO. MONUSCO has been unable to keep the peace despite a budget allocation of $1.4 billion per year. The threat of a successful rebel army that could possibly topple the government was a greater threat than imaginary Salem witches. The M23 was all too real, and someone had to be blamed. See Time Magazine article: "The UN Debacle in Eastern Congo."
Simple-minded Puritan villagers in Salem believed the hardships and conflicts permeating daily life were the work of the Devil. The United Nations Group of Experts also had to find a scapegoat, and the scapegoat became Rwanda.
These reports are filed every year; usually with different authors. Media tends to ignore the bulk of the reports, even though they can be an excellent source of reliable information. The 2011 report is recognized as being generally reliable. There are strict guidelines regarding methodology, transparency, verified documentary evidence, and independent verifiable sources. All of these requirements are in question in the 2012 report.
It can be reasonably demonstrated that the accusations present in the 2012 report would never hold up in court. Rwanda hired a law firm to compile a rebuttal and you can read it here. The most egregious charge against the document is that its principal coordinator authored a paper in which he demonstrated clear bias in favor of the perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide (FDLR). The paper was scrubbed from the Internet when his impartiality was challenged, but you can read it here on this Russian cache.
The repetition of false accusations never makes them true, but if they are repeated long enough and without rebuttal they can morph into "fact." Once the lie or misinformation has been spread, selective perception takes over in the psyche depending on whether one believes the lie. Information is unconsciously filtered through personal bias and first impressions.
The coordinator of the Group of Experts, Stephen Hege, produced a second leaked report that is a perfect example of using selective perception to spread accusations that are unproven.
The crux of the second document, dated November 26, 2012, is that rebel soldiers were seen in the captured city of Goma "marching through downtown dressed in a combination of RDF (Rwanda) and new M23 (rebel) uniforms."
Anyone can go online and order uniforms, made in China, that match camouflage patterns worn by regional armies. Does that mean if you see a soldier in a pattern worn by US military that the United States is supplying the rebel army?
Is this US issue? Rwandan? Chinese? (Photo courtesy of M23)
A critical analysis will ask why this photo, freely available on the Internet, of the commander of the M23 rebels wearing US patterns was left out of the report. Reason? It does not fit the narrative developed and nurtured by a biased panel.
US colors by M23
Colonel Vianney Kazarama, M23/CRA (Photo Permission from M23)
Selective perception is evidenced in this document supposedly showing "M23 combatants marching into Goma wearing RDF uniforms." Again anyone can order this pattern from acu.com.
How can we fight bias, megalomaniacal investigators, and selective perception?
Perhaps it is time to bring Kyra Sedgwick's Brenda Leigh Johnson (The Closer), out of retirement. The Group of Experts would not have a prayer facing her withering questioning.
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