Hungry for Truth, Peace and Justice

The UDF-INKINGI condemn the decision to sell 10,000 hectares for bio-fuel production to the detriment of people's food security in Rwanda

Benoit Ndagijimana
Deputy Secretary General
UDF-INKINGI
Brussels, November 9, 2009

Also available in French.

The Rwandan Government Council presided by President Paul Kagame decided during its meeting held on October 28, 2009, to allot 10,000 hectares of lands located in the Eastern Province to a U.S. company “Global Eco-Fuel” and a British company “Eco-Fuel Positive” for the plantation of jatropha curcas intended to produce bio-diesel.

This iniquitous decision is made when prices of food commodities are increasing every day, where many Rwandans barely have one meal a day and display obvious undernourishment and that at least 60% of households in the rural areas of Rwanda suffer from different degrees of food insecurity. This decision poses additional harms to the Rwandan peasants already afflicted not only by current land expropriation underway since July 1994 but also by forced villagization and technocratic regionalization of crops, to the sole benefits of the bureaucratic and wheeler-dealer oligarchy on power in Kigali and whose prominent members also happen to absentee landowners.

Furthermore, Rwandan farmers already have a crucial lack of lands for food crops. An average family farm is about 0.5 to 0.75 hectare that provides food for 3 to 5 people. The population density on arable lands is currently up to 700 inhabitants per square kilometer in Rwanda. The scarcity of arable or pastoral lands constitutes the main cause of spiral disputes and conflicts in Rwanda. The lands that the Kagame regime decided to sell to the above mentioned American and British firms for 49 years could provide food for 15, 000 to 20,000 families or 60,000 to 100,000 people.

The Rwandan farmers have always faced land scarcity. To cope with it the usually relied on marginal lands and used ingenious methods such as combination of crops to avoid forced immigrations towards neighboring countries. Given such circumstances, the Kagame regime's propaganda, spread by the pro-government newspaper “The New Times”, claiming that jatropha curcas plantations may be installed on marginal lands or lands with low productivity, is both cynical and irresponsible.

Supporters of jatropha curcas whose seeds are very toxic to humans and cows and other animals, convey the image of a crop without negative impacts on food security and a crop that may instead provide additional income to farmers and promote sustainable development. This is lie propaganda. Experiments carried out at the international level by organizations and independent research centers in India, Nicaragua, Mozambique or Madagascar [1] show, to the contrary, that jatropha curcas constitutes a threat to food security and does not provide additional income due to its high cost maintenance and its low yields that have been observed.

The ultra-liberal policies of the Kagame regime presented under the umbrella of “Green Revolution” supposedly designed to “prove that he is capable of exporting food in the region” have worsened hunger in Rwanda where nearly a quarter of Rwandans suffer from hunger and where the same proportion of children leave elementary school for the same reasons.

Meanwhile, farmers who actively oppose these cynical politicies continue to be deprived of their economic rights and some of them their rights to life. For instance, in Cyuve, Musanze District, Northern Province, municipal leaders ordered villagers to destroy any crop except for maize, which has been chosen for this year season in this locality. Until recently, Mrs. Kangeyo Elinade, a peasant villager from Kagarama-Gabiro-Mahembe-Nyamasheke was abused to death simply because she was opposed to the destruction of her banana plantations. However, History teaches us that wherever land or agrarian reforms were decreed and have been implemented by force, they failed badly.

In April 2009, during his visit at the Kirehe hospital located near the border with Tanzania, Paul Kagame expressed himself in the following terms with a feigned cynicism: “I do not understand how in our time, adults can suffer from kwashiorkor”. He had just visited adult people that were hospitalized for advanced malnutrition. At these words, a simple peasant who happened to be there by accident replied: “With a single crop, especially intended for commercialization, without beans, sweet potatoes or cereals, it is impossible for all of us to resist famine.

The UDF-INKINGI condemn in the strongest terms such a decision but also such brutal and anti-people policies characteristic of the Kagame regime and request all Rwandan peasants to oppose them by all legitimate means. They call the Rwandan population in general and the Rwandan civil society in particular to support Rwandan farmers in their struggle aimed at acquiring the right to sustain their subsistence first instead of satisfying predatory appetites of the bureaucratic and wheeler-dealer oligarchy of Kigali.

Should the UDF-INKINGI get governmental responsibilities, they will abrogate this decision and distribute the lands back to the peasants. They will implement an agricultural policy aimed to primarily fight against food insecurity and achieve food self-sufficiency first then to export.

Finally, the UDF-INKINGI request the Rwandan people to do everything they can to free themselves from the yoke of the Kagame regime, a regime that shows the most disregard to their problems and with plain unvarnished priority serves foreign interests.

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[1] See the study published in Mozambique and funded by the following NGOs: Alliance Sud, Arbeitsgruppe Schweiz Kolumbien, Basler Appell gegen Gentechnologie, Bio Suisse, Bread for Caritas, Berne Declaration, Agenda of Lent, EPER Kleinbauern Vereinigung Pro-Natura, BE Juso-Reformierte Kirchen SWISSAID, Terre des Hommes, and Uniterre.
(http://www.bfa-ppp.ch/de/deutsch/generalarchiv/single-news//article/8/114/)

posted by Mamadou Kouyate @ 11:13 PM