Hungry for Truth, Peace and Justice

Rwanda's opposition lays down challenge to Kagame

By AFRICA REVIEW Writer
Friday, June 4 2010

Rwanda’s opposition Green Party intends to set up a Truth and Justice Commission to bring about “genuine reconciliation” between Tutsis and Hutus if it gets power, says a manifesto circulated by by its leader Frank Habineza on Thursday.

The party has also thrown its backing behind opposition leaders Victoire Ingabire and Bernard Ntaganda, who the Rwandan Government has accused of propagating “divisionism” and “genocide ideology.”

Like the Green Party itself, Ms Ingabire's Inkingi party has been denied registration. In addition, she has been hauled in court on "genocide ideology" charges and ordered to be confined to Kigali until the case is completed.

Though Mr Ntaganda's party, Imberakuli, has so far escaped the fate of deregistration, sometime back, he was ousted as its leader in a circus-style power struggle which some observers blame on machinations of the ruling RPF party.

Court defence

An American lawyer who had come to lead Ms Ingabire’s court defence, Prof Peter Erlinder, has also been arrested on similar “genocide ideology” charges.

“We believe that the law on genocide should be clarified so that it is not used as a pretext to freeze political expression and constitutional guarantees,” declared Mr Habineza.

While acknowledging that the Tutsi were targetted in a big way during the 1994 genocide, the Green Party holds that “many more Hutus” were also killed by the ousted government and also by the RPF soldiers.

According to Mr Habineza, those who committed those killings should be punished as well.

Ms Ingabire had caused outrage within the Rwandan Government when, upon her return from Europe earlier this year, she visited Kigali’s genocide memorial and remarked that Hutus had been victims as much as anybody else and deserved to be memorialised.

President Paul Kagame is a Tutsi and his ruling RPF party is often characterised by its critics as being controlled by Tutsis. Since coming to power in 1994, the RPF has outlawed all ethnic references, especially regarding the Hutu majority.

Ms Ingabire and Mr Ntaganda are both Hutu and they have encountered sustained official hostility since they declared they would run against President Kagame in this year’s presidential election.

Better hypocrites

Additionally, the government has sought to link the two opposition politicians to the FDLR Hutu rebels fighting the regime from eastern Congo. But according to Mr Habineza, the FDLR issue is a political problem, which cannot be resolved using military might.

“It needs political answers and the Green Party has those answers,” he said.

Indeed, the genocide left a twisted form of political identity in its aftermath, whereby seemingly innocuous utterances can carry grave connotations, and also where the masking of true feelings, especially by the Hutu, has become a daily routine.

In Mr Ntaganda’s case, he first landed in trouble at an inaugural press conference last year when he remarked in passing that his party, Imberakuli, would “work for the majority” of Rwandans.

In the prevailing post-genocide psychology, that was read by the government as a coded reference to the Hutu majority, which in this case was probably true.

Jailing opposition

But according to Mr Habineza, resorting jailing opposition leaders like Ms Ingabire will solve nothing. “Political harassment, intimidation, imprisonment and forcing people into exile will not reduce the political tension. It will only increase it,” he said.

And in a loaded allusion to what the government is facing, he added: “Freezing the political space will not force people in their hearts to love or belong to RPF. They will only learn how to become better hypocrites, which is dangerous for the future of Rwanda as a nation.”

Despite some reported problems in the tightly-controlled military, President Kagame has shown no inclination of bending to the opposition pressure. He recently demonstrated his hardline when he closed down two privately-owned newspapers.

Still, the arrest of Prof Erlinder, has surprised many people who did not expect the RPF would want to provoke negative attention from the US, which has largely been sympathetic to the regime since President Kagame took power.

posted by Mamadou Kouyate @ 12:33 AM