March 24, 2010
Also available in French.
For the moment, silence reigns. Perhaps some discomfort! Faced with escalating murderous Rwandan authorities, faced with the cascade of Rwandan soldiers and diplomats fleeing abroad, faced with the many persecutions of political opponents, faced with the arbitrary arrests of citizens of Rwanda in their countries and abroad, Western powers that support the Kigali regime are low profile. Yet, the lives of many Rwandans, both inside and outside, are more than ever threatened. Regardless of they are whether Hutu or Tutsi. Since the days of single-parties, Africa has never experienced a dictatorship as ferocious and cruel as the one in Kigali. An unsustainable situation that is truly unbearable for all the victims of the 1994 Rwandan tragedy.
My friend and colleague Deo Mushayidi is one of those victims. Yesterday, he was a member of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF). Today, he is a victim of the RPF regime. Yesterday it was Hutu extremists who slaughtered the members of his family; today it is the ruling Tutsi extremists who are plotting to assassinate him. Given the gravity of the situation, I could not stand idly by. If I react with this text now, it is because I want to support my friend who was kidnapped and sent to the firing squad.
Two weeks Deo Mushayidi was arrested in Tanzania before being deported in Kigali, the new African capital of authorized crime. I did not react in haste. I wanted to know exactly what he had done and what he was accused of. After several days of waiting, Paul Kagame’s regime, spat its venom, accusing Deo Mushayidi for ''endangering state security". This charge has been served during his first appearance before a judge in Kigali. Then, the charge was swollen with other charges: "disturbing public order, forgery, association with a terrorist group, genocide revisionism and divisiveness". A tutsi victim as Deo Mushayidi could not expect less of the self-appointed spokesmen of the Tutsi. Rwandan hills are now governed by those impostors.
Under what circumstances was Deo Mushayidi arrested? Who took the decision to send him to Kigali? Under which international convention has he been handed over to Rwandan authorities, or more exactly to Paul Kagame?
The least we can say is that nothing is clear in this case. But the very political decision to send Deo Mushayidi in Rwanda is an incitement to murder exiled Rwandan political opponents. This initiative particularly put at risk all the Tutsis who refuse to submit to Paul Kagame’s bloody authoritarianism.
My friend Mushayidi has indeed become an opponent of the regime of Paul Kagame after having actively campaigned for the RPF in Switzerland during the early 90s. Until 1994, before the takeover by Paul Kagame, he was the representative of the RPF in Geneva. Upon his arrival in Kigali, he was among the first few Tutsi who quickly understood the reality behind this new Rwanda regime led by Paul Kagame.
It was in 1999, in Washington, that I first met Deo Mushayidi. Careful, measured and critical, Deo is a professional journalist and an open minded person. At the time, he was running a newspaper in Kigali and chaired the Rwandan Journalists Association.
One evening in my hotel room in Washington, Deo Mushayidi warned me against the image the Western media gave to Paul Kagame and his regime. He knew well, having worked with him and seen him act. I was already investigating the role of Paul Kagame in the terrorist attack of April 6, 1994 against the plane of former Rwandan president, Juvenal Habyarimana. A terrorist attack in which the Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira, and the entire French crew were killed. Deo Mushayidi had agreed to cooperate in the investigation despite the huge risks he incurred in Kigali. During a dinner in the United States, he told me at length about the crimes committed by the Tutsi rebels during the takeover of Kigali and the multiple killings of Hutus in 1995, 1996 and 1997. He had also reported the plan to murder the former president of the Rwandan parliament Joseph Sebarenzi, a Tutsi who fought against the regime of arbitrariness in the Rwandan parliament. "Kagame told me he wanted Sebarenzi death. Because he feared that the speaker of parliament, well respected, would overshadow him". Joseph Sebarenzi fled Rwanda and is now exiled in the United States.
Deo Mushayidi told me about other projects to murder opponents such as the Tutsi journalist Jean Pierre Mugabe, also a refugee in the United States now, with whom I shared a lot on the record of the terrorist attack and the violent methods of Paul Kagame. Deo Mushayidi had also spoken of assassination threats against him. He was calm but concerned. We had stayed in touch and I tried to encourage him as much as I could. The climate in this country was atrocious and it remains as such.
The following year, in March 2000, my phone rings. It Deo Mushayidi who calling me from the French Embassy in Kigali. With a calm but anxious voice, he said he is in danger. "Do not worry, he says, a French friend made arrangements to evacuate me in Europe. I gave him your phone number in case I need something. As soon as I arrive in Europe, I call you, he concluded". I was indeed reassured to know that my friend was in the premises of the French Embassy. It was at this time, the most reliable place for his safety. The following days were difficult because I did not know if Deo Mushayidi would succeed in leaving Kigali unhindered. But a week later I received another phone call. It was him again on the line. He had finally arrived in Europe and was far from Paul Kagame’s henchmen. I was thrilled that my friend was out of danger.
If I relate this episode today it’s because I think my friend has been delivered to those who tried to assassinate him in 2000. Were all these efforts to get him out of Kigali made in vain? Can the French officer who saved Deo from the gang of death be heard by Mr Bernard Kouchner, French Minister of Foreign Affairs, or Mr. Nicolas Sarkozy who both appreciate Paul Kagame so much? For my part, I thank the French for extending the life of Deo Mushayidi and allowing him to fight for ten years for the truth and justice in his country. During the trial that Paul Kagame had filed against me in Paris in 2002 out of our book on the bombing of April 6, 1994, Deo Mushayidi came to support me. He always argued against the many attacks have been the subject for daring to highlight Kagame’s crimes against the Hutu, Tutsi and Congolese. When he fled to Belgium in 2000, he left journalism to continue his fight in politics. He continued to advocate fairness and justice for all victims (Hutu and Tutsi alike) of the 1994 Rwandan Genocide. In 2008 he published, along with former Rwandan Defense Minister General Emmanuel Habyarimana, a former collaborator of Paul Kagame now exiled in Switzerland, a memorandum that was sent to the Security Council. That memo was extremely documented (with among other many highly classified documents) and explained Paul Kagame’s involvement in the plundering of the natural resources of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), in the terrorist attack against President Juvenal Habyarimana and many other crimes. Deo Mushayidi has always advocated for peace and reconciliation among Rwandans. An approach that the current government of Rwanda completely rejects.
Yesterday, the Hutu were accused by Paul Kagame, of having "planned genocide" against Tutsis. Today, my Tutsi friend is accused by the same regime of Paul Kagame of terrorism and denial of "Tutsi genocide." However, Deo Mushayidi has never held a Kalashnikov like Paul Kagame, he never shoot down a president’s aircraft as did Paul Kagame, he never killed his staff as did Paul Kagame, he never killed either Hutu or Tutsi, as did Paul Kagame, he never advocated separatism between Rwandans as does Paul Kagame. He never invaded the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and butchered millions of Congolese as Paul Kagame’s army has and continues to. He never plundered the DRC as Paul Kagame has for nearly thirteen years. Yet, it is Deo Mushayidi who is now on the accused dock or should I say in the death row in Kigali. And I note with curiosity but hope, the lukewarm enthusiasm international media showed handling the case of Deo Mushayidi. I am surprised at the heavy silence of Belgium, a country that had welcomed my friend and granted him political asylum. I looked, thoughtfully, at the few gestures Human Rights organizations, usually so quick to harass, on the orders of Paul Kagame, so-called for "Hutu genociders”. Do they perhaps get my Tutsi friend mixed up with some a poor Hutu that deserves, as former RPF Rwandan president, Pasteur Bizimungu, to disappear in jail to protect this criminal gang in power in Kigali? Do they also see Mushayidi as "genocider" or "divisive" and a "revisionist"? Since the regime said he was "terrorist" and all at once, perhaps there are still some brainless to believe it. In reality, my friend pays for his assistance in my investigation into the terrorist attack of April 6, 1994, for his involvement in the investigative work that led to the memorandum of 2008 and for his public positions, as Tutsi victim and former member of the RPF against the Kagame regime. The charges of the Rwandan military dictatorship against Deo Mushayidi are simply fabricated and arbitrary.
Given the weak consensus of the European Union, the leading provider of public funds to the repressive and autocratic regime in Kigali, I would like to believe, for my part that my friend will not stay very long or forever in the hands of the gang of death that now prevails on Rwanda and the DRC.
Note:
Charles Onana is Author of:
-The Secrets of the Rwandan genocide, Paris, Editions Duboiris, 2002
(in collaboration with Mushayidi Deo)
-The secrets of international justice, Paris, Editions Duboiris, 2005
-These Tutsi killers at the heart of the Congolese tragedy, Paris, Editions Duboiris, 2009
Why is it that Tutsis are always the victims? We forget that Hutus have been victims for much longer...and if violence begets violence, Rwanda seems to be living the theory.
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