Hero of 'Hotel Rwanda' is declared enemy of the state
Man who saved Tutsis during the genocide says 'the government is coming after me'
By Daniel Howden, Africa Correspondent
The Independent
Friday, 29 October 2010
Photo:
Paul Rusesabagina is in fear for his life.
GETTY IMAGES
More pictures
The man made famous by the film Hotel Rwanda and credited with saving more than 1,200 Tutsis during the 1994 genocide said yesterday that he fears for his life after the country's President made him "an enemy of the state".
Paul Rusesabagina, a former hotel manager currently living in Brussels where he says his home has been repeatedly ransacked, will be charged in Rwanda with links to a terrorist group.
Rwanda's chief prosecutor said this week that Mr Rusesabagina has been financing commanders in the FDLR, a rebel army across the border in the Democratic Republic of Congo made up from ethnic Hutus responsible for the 1994 genocide.
Mr Rusesabagina, who was portrayed by Don Cheadle in the acclaimed 2004 film has denied sending any money to the region and accused the government in Kigali of seeking to silence its critics. "They are coming after me," he told The Independent. "While I'm in Brussels I remain in danger, they're following my every step."
The winner in 2005 of the highest civil honour in the US, the Presidential Freedom Medal, said he was nearly killed three years ago in a car crash he claims was an attempted assassination. His home in the Belgian capital has been ransacked three times. The latest burglary was last week, during which he says a number of documents in Kinyarwandan, the language spoken primarily in Rwanda, were stolen.
Mr Rusesabagina has been one of the highest-profile critics of the government of Paul Kagame, who was re-elected earlier this year after a campaign marred by the killing of dissidents and a crackdown on opposition groups.
His Hotel Rwanda-Rusesabagina Foundation has called for a Truth and Reconciliation process in the country and warned that government oppression could lead to a fresh genocide in the Great Lakes region.
"Rwanda has become a big open prison where Kagame is the chief warden," said Mr Rusesabagina. "There is no free man in that country."
The anticipated charges are based on evidence provided by captured rebel commanders, Rwandan prosecutor Martin Ngoga said on Tuesday. "Those who want to continue considering him as a hero can go on. We consider him a serious criminal suspect who has been financing FDLR and we are challenging whoever speaks on his behalf to tell us whether he never sent money to these FDLR commanders we have in custody."
After the release of Hotel Rwanda Mr Rusesabagina was celebrated as a hero and humanitarian around the world. This stoked resentment in government circles in Kigali where the president has referred to him as "the Hollywood-made hero".
Mr Rusesabagina said accusations that he has been funding rebel groups were "fabrications" and that he would be happy to face trial in Belgium if necessary, where he is now a citizen. "I'm not surprised that they would go as far as making things up, even documents, they are very cunning," he said.
The move against another high-profile critic of the Kagame government comes at a time of rising concern for human rights and democracy in Rwanda. Until recently Mr Kagame was credited with overseeing a miracle in the mountainous nation as it quickly recovered from 100 days of ethnic slaughter that killed nearly one million people. A country made infamous by one of the worst atrocities of the late 20th century has steadily become better known for gourmet coffee, gorilla tourism and its ambitions to be a central African hub for hi-tech industries.
Mr Kagame, who led the Tutsi rebel forces that overthrew the Hutu government in 1994 and effectively ended the genocide, was widely seen as a disciplined and effective modernising force. That lustre has been lost in the past 12 months amid a crackdown against all opposition before elections in August. Newspapers were closed, credible opposition groups were prevented from registering to take part and dissidents, including a journalist and an opposition leader, killed.
In the absence of serious opposition the President won by a landslide. The Rwandan government denied involvement in any of the attacks or killings and vowed to fully investigate any criminal actions. Since the vote there has been no let-up in the pressure on Mr Kagame's critics and the best known of the opposition leaders, Victoire Ingabire, was re-arrested earlier this week and is facing a possible life sentence over an alleged terrorist plot.
Mr Kagame has also fallen out with the United Nations recently after it issued a report which accused his government of conducting mass killings of ethnic Hutus across the border in Congo. A draft of the UN report was leaked prior to publication amid fears that Kigali would succeed in having references to the attacks as "genocidal" removed from the final document.
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Former Rwandan Envoy Calls for International Pressure on President Kagame
Former ambassador to the U.S. Theogene Rudasingwa says opposition leader Victoire Ingabire is a freedom fighter who should not be in jail
By James Butty
Washington, D.C.
VOA News
27 October 2010
A former Rwandan ambassador to the United States and former chief of staff to President Paul Kagame has called on Rwandans to continue their peaceful resistance to what he called Mr. Kagame’s state-sponsored terrorism.
This comes as a Rwandan court Tuesday denied bail to opposition leader Victoire Ingabire, who was arrested earlier this month on charges of forming a terrorist group.
Rwandan Opposition Leader Victoire Ingabire
Theogene Rudasingwa told VOA that Ingabire is a freedom fighter who should not be in jail.
“My comment is first of all to ask why she should be in jail because Ingabire is not a terrorist as they charged her. In My opinion, I think she’s a freedom fighter, and she’s paying a price for that,” he said.
In denying Igabire a bail Tuesday, the court said she could continue her activities and endanger state security if she were let out of jail on bail.
Rudasingwa said the court’s explanation fits the pattern of the kinds of accusations that President Kagame normally makes against his opponents.
“It’s not only Ingabire who has been called a terrorist. If you are not charged with terrorism, they say you are a criminal, you’re corrupt; they call you a genocidal. So it really fits the pattern, and the only crime that this innocent lady has committed is to speak up against the brutality of President Kagame,” Rudasingwa said.
Ingabire said through her supporters that she plans to appeal the court’s decision.
But Rudasingwa said the chances for winning an appeal in Rwandan courts are very limited.
“It simply shows that as for now Kagame has converted the country into a virtual prison, and I think he takes pride in being its chief prison guard. It’s not Ingabire who is a terrorist. It’s rather the Rwandan people versus state terrorism that is being imposed on them by President Kagame,” Rudasingwa said.
Rudasingwa called on President Kagame to release Ingabire and all political prisoners.
He also called on the international community to continue to put pressure on President Kagame to allow fundamental freedoms to flourish in Rwanda.
“We call upon the international community for whom Kagame depends for his excesses to put pressure on him indeed to make sure that he allows for fundamental freedoms to thrive in the country,” he said.
With what he called “many crimes hanging on the neck of President Kagame”, Rudasingwa said the international community should also make sure that Mr. Kagame accounts for what former envoy said are crimes being committed against the Rwandan people.
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Masters of deceit: 25 years of the Hima-Tutsi empire
By Timothy Kalyegira
The Uganda Record
Monday, 12th July 2010
Photo:
Finalists of the Miss Rwanda beauty pageant in Kigali, Aug. 1, 2008.
Since 2005 for Uganda and 2010 for Rwanda, the two governments that rose to power as part of a western-based effort to secure Anglo-American interests and influence in East-Central Africa, have come under a blaze of criticism and re-consideration of what they stand for.
The BBC World Service, in their "The World Today" news hour this morning, Tuesday July 20, 2010, remarked that "A sense of unease is creeping in the international community over Rwanda".
This is a far cry from the unquestioning support that the RPF government received starting in 1990 and intensifying after they seized state power in July 1994.
In July 1985, when the UPC government of President Milton Obote suddenly was overthrown in a military coup, the National Resistance Army (NRA) guerrillas led by Yoweri Museveni got a new lease on life.
By mid August, the NRA had cut off western Uganda and established their own quasi-government. Five months later, in Jan. 1986, they took over power in Uganda. Looking back 25 years since the events of July 1985 and what has transpired since then, we have to wonder: how did this happen?
How did scores of millions of people get so deceived by the NRA, by Museveni? Fighting alongside and in the NRA in 1985 were Tutsi refugees in Uganda since 1959.
Five years later, in 1990, these Tutsi would invade their mother land Rwanda under the name the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) and start a guerrilla war that would lead them to power.
There is so much that we now know about the NRA and RPF that many had no clue about 25 years ago. The dictatorial tendencies, the grizzly massacres they committed against civilians and the armies they fought, the frightening skill they have in concealing the truth of their deeds. Something about this stealth is virtually unknown in the last 100 years of African history.
The NRA-RPF charm school
To understand the mind frame of Museveni dating back to the late 1960s, it takes more than just an advanced western education and this is what the FBI agents in Uganda to investigate the July 11, 2010 bombings are about to discover.
They will be met by warm, charming, smiling, well-educated Ugandan military and security officials who will sound and seem so decent and sincere.
That is why the Uganda Record has urged in its memo to the FBI on July 19, 2010 that the FBI carry along lie detector kits during their meetings with Ugandan security officials.
Wait for the FBI's comments in Kampala as they get underway with their investigations of the bombings. Museveni and his men are capable of charming even these FBI agents.
These are some of the most cunning and deceptive men in the world.
I remember a summit in March 1994 at the Lake Victoria Hotel in Entebbe between President Museveni and Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana. I was a news reporter at Kampala's Capital Radio and had come to cover the press conference with Catherine Watson, the wife of the New Vision Editor-in-Chief William Pike.
In the hotel's parking lot just before we left for Kampala, the Commanding officer of the Presidential Protection Unit (the forerunner to today's PGB), Lt. Col. Godfrey Akanga Byaruhanga, joined us and started up a chat with Watson.
He was warm, well-dressed, likable, sounded sincere and I could see how taken up Catherine Watson was by that show of charm. During the first few days of the RPF war, in Oct. 1990, Watson and several other western journalists held regular briefings with one of the RPF's commanders, Major. Dr. Peter Bayingana.
He came across as charming, well-educated, principled, and easily swept the foreign journalists off their feet.
When Museveni first came to power in Jan. 1986, millions of Ugandans still remember how magnetic he appeared. They had never seen anything like this since independence. He was a charmer, spoke off-cut, in an astonishingly natural and unscripted, witty, almost vulgarly down-to-earth way.
He would describe himself as "a fellow" and speak of how comfortable he could sleep on grass or on a cheap bed built in one of the many Kampala slums. He would wipe his face with his cap. There was something raw, real, immediately appealing about this man. Millions were charmed by the sight of the new head of state before them.
The first RPF commander, Maj. Gen. Fred Rwigyema was very much like Museveni and another of those NRA-RPF commanders, Gen. Salim Saleh, Museveni's younger brother.
Affable, easily accessible, handsome, humble in many ways, Rwigyema was a major star in Kampala after the NRA came to power.
In 1989, when the Kampala football club, SC Villa, won the national league title, Rwigyema who was an ardent Villa fan celebrated with his bodyguards by firing AK-47 rifle gunshots in the air at Nakivubo Stadium.
This wild, undisciplined act was forgiven and even treated with amusement by the public, because "That is Fred!" When many Ugandans think of Rwigyema, they think of his friend Salim Saleh. Same charm, relaxed air, man-of-the-people style, football fan, undisciplined in a way that, rather than attract condemnation, causes people to smile.
Another of the top commanders, Maj. Gen. Kahinda Otafiire, is from that FRONASA-NRA-RPF charm school of bad boys. He speaks in the same vulgar and direct way Museveni does, does not seem to care about the way he dresses or how he is perceived.
A few days after Museveni took power, the Daily Nation newspaper of Kenya published a large front-page photograph of Janet Museveni, his wife, declaring that this was the new First Lady of Uganda.
If showed a young, beautiful Janet Museveni and somehow, in the minds of the Daily Nation editors and Kenyans who saw that photograph, represented a fresh political beginning for Uganda.
Even to this day, 25 years later, the army of the gullible is still large. A senior Daily Nation Managing Editor and former Editor of the Daily Monitor, Charles Onyango-Obbo, recently waxed enthusiastically on his Facebook page about meeting President Kagame and "his beautiful wife" Jeanette Kagame in Kigali.
Many women in Kampala often spoke of liking the late Brig. Noble Mayombo, the ruthless Chief of Military Intelligence, because "he's cool!" or "He looks boyish".
In late 1985, as Museveni toured the "liberated" NRA areas in Mbarara and other places, his mistress Winnie Byanyima by his side, in military uniform, driving Museveni, many residents of Mbarara were charmed by this couple --- the humorous NRA commander and the beautiful young Byanyima in his company, looking cool and having fun.
These NRA-RPF "hunks: and their beautiful wives charmed their way into the hearts of many more people and by that, they became the hope of a new Africa.
By 1994, following the RPF's victory in Kigali and President Yoweri Museveni's prestige and military credentials at an all-time high, word started making it into the public and popular imagination that this radical former student of Dar-es-Salaam University was set to create a Hima-Tutsi empire that would span East and Central Africa and re-create the old Bachwezi empire of the 14th century.
Many Bahima in Uganda spoke of how a Seer of old had foretold that a young man would rise to power in Uganda and perform wonders. This man, it was now concluded, was Museveni.
To some degree, the Uganda Record can understand the incredulous reactions by many Ugandans at its suggestion that Museveni could actually mastermind the bomb blasts in Kampala. He seems so decent, so commonsensical, so rational, how can he do that?
It was not just gullible Ugandans who were swept away by the Hima-Tutsi charm offensive. Many western diplomats, politicians, academics, and others became blinded by the smooth-talking, easygoing Museveni and his NRA commanders and RPF protégées.
This was deception on a worldwide scale.
25 years later, with regular reports of assassinations in Kagame's Rwanda, fleeing RPF Tutsi officials, the brutality meted out to the Hutu from 1990 to the present, the reports of abnormal brutality in Museveni's security agencies, observers are starting to pick up the pieces of the shattered illusions and asking: How did we get so deceived for so long?
NRA-RPF wars: Victory by deception
In Sept. 1990, the RPF started to assemble Ugandan army lorries at Kololo Airstrip in Kampala ready to invade Rwanda.
Trucks covered in Red Cross tarpaulins in Mbarara town in western Uganda set off for the border with Rwanda. Foreign diplomats did not realize this.
During the early years of the RPF invasion of Rwanda, RPF officers and men dressed up in Ugandan army uniform would accompany western diplomats to the Uganda-Rwanda border and point to RPF soldiers, also in Ugandan uniform, as proof that the RPF had pulled back from Rwanda. The western diplomats would believe that, unable to distinguish between a Ugandan from, say, Ankole and a Rwandan Tutsi.
During the 2006 general election in Uganda, in many parts of Ankole, NRM supporters dressed up as illiterate peasants and claimed, under the watchful eye of European Union observers, that they needed the help of their educated relatives on how to vote. The European observers and diplomats fell for the trick.
Throughout the 1981 to 1985 Luwero Triangle civil war in western Uganda, this method was used with great success by the NRA rebels.
The late former President Milton Obote was one of the very few people with a complete working picture of the Museveni method.
In Oct. 2004, the then Daily Monitor Managing Director Conrad Nkutu dispatched the then Political Editor Andrew Mwenda to Lusaka, Zambia to interview Obote in a series of autobiographical narratives.
In the one published by the Daily Monitor on April 15, 2005, Obote put this method into its historical perspective:
"Museveni has for the last twenty three years [speaking in 2004] fought different enemies in different parts of Uganda…In all these wars, the adversaries are different, the theatre of war different, the period different. There are only two elements that are constant: Museveni on the one hand and massive atrocities on the other….It is Museveni who employs atrocities against civilians to achieve military victory, but in a more subtle way by ensuring that his adversary instead takes blame for Museveni's atrocities."
"At the burial of [UPC stalwart] Adonia Tiberondwa recently [on December 28, 2004], Maj. Gen. Kahinda Otafiire, for example, revealed that the National Resistance Army rebels used to wear UPC colours and then go into villages in Luwero and kill people in order to make the people think these were actions of the UPC government. Otafiire was boasting of the "tricks" NRA employed to win support in Luwero, but was also revealing the sinister side of Museveni and his insurgents..."
"The truth is that most of the soldiers in the army who were committing atrocities were Museveni's people. And whenever we zeroed in on them, they would run to join him in the bush in Luwero. Take the example of [Colonel] Pecos Kutesa. He had an interview with William Pike on Capital Radio in Kampala in [January] 1995 in a programme called Desert Island Discs. He told Pike that he was in UNLA but as an NRA infiltrator whose mission was to undermine the credibility of the army from within.
"Pecos Kutesa's testimony is instructive of how Museveni personally orchestrated the killings of innocent people and the harassment of civilians not just in Luwero but other parts of Uganda as well during the 1980s. His testimony is also important because it fits very well with what Otafiire and Lt. Gen. Elly Tumwine have confessed. Let us listen to Pecos Kutesa, whose interview on Capital Radio I have kept as my evidence. He told Pike that he used to be at a roadblock in Konge [in Makindye-Lukuli in Kampala]. As a lieutenant, he was the man in charge of that roadblock.
"According to Pecos Kutesa's own testimony on Capital Radio, Konge roadblock was the most notorious in harassing civilians, robbing them of their money and killing some. Kutesa says reports reached army headquarters of his harassment of the civilians and Oyite Ojok summoned him to Kampala for disciplinary action. He ran to the bush." (Daily Monitor, April 15, 2005)
On Nov. 19, 1991, just over a year into the RPF guerrilla war, the government-owned Radio Rwanda in Kigali broadcast a news report that said "rebels [the RPF] have been intensifying their activities along the Rwandan border with Uganda. The rebels are alleged to be backed by the Ugandan army and the report accused the rebels of shelling Ugandans so that Rwandan armed forces would be blamed."
The RPF guerrillas, just as they had done under their mentor Museveni in Luwero, fought a war largely by deception and somehow, nobody seriously questioned their claims.
In a news story, the new-defunct Democratic Party newspaper, The Citizen, in Jan.1991 explained how the RPF was fighting its war, in the same way that Obote outlined to the Daily Monitor of April 15, 2005:
"The Rwandese government has denied allegations that its troops abducted four Ugandans on 28 December 1990 at Mugali in [the] Katuna area. In a statement issued by the Rwandese embassy in Kampala on 31st December 1990, Rwanda's government accused the rebel RPF of perpetuating these crimes in the border area with the aim of antagonising the relationship between the two neighbouring states...The Rwandese government statement revealed that RPF rebels had acquired some Rwandese armed forces uniforms and since they are fluent in Kinyarwanda pose as Rwandese government troops. 'This RPF sinister scheme was brought to the attention of President Museveni at Cyanika summit on 20th November 1990'...Again people residing along River Kagera are reported to be scared by floating bodies. The bodies are believed to be from the Rwanda side of Akagera National Park" (The Citizen, January 3, 1991)
The phenomenon of this FRONASA-NRA-RPF deceit that goes undetected for years and even decades will require a whole subject of special study.
To be able to understand and penetrate the minds of men like Museveni and Kagame and their aides and lieutenants requires more than an Ivy League education.
It requires an understanding of the Bachwezi and Bahima-Tutsi-Babiito cultural myths and histories, the role that witchcraft and the says of Seers and other "abaraguzi" (fortunetellers) have often played in the history of these East-Central African Hamitic kingdoms and cultures.
It also requires an in depth understanding of Marxist-Maoist guerrilla warfare and finally, the special level of cruelty that Africans, behind their exterior friendliness and sense of family, are capable of.
It also requires an understanding of the subject of demonology and whether certain people are possessed by evil spirits, as Middle Ages and ridiculous as this might seem to the modern mind.
One has to be able to understand that a Uganda government official, with a Master's degree, in a top military or security or political office, can be and indeed often is what in Uganda is termed a "muyaye", a smooth, shady, uncouth, deceiving, greedy person and that public officials in Museveni's government should not be taken at the face value of their offices.
One must know that, unlike in Europe or America, presidents like Museveni or Kagame or NRA-RPF officers like Rwigyema, Mayombo, Lt. Gen. Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa, Gen. James Kabareebe, Emmanuel Ndahiro, Gen. Salim Saleh, Maj. Gen. Jim Muhwezi, Gen. Charles Kayonga, Kahinda Otafiire, Amama Mbabazi, think with much more cunning than usual.
They can tell outright lies or conceal the truth, with a charming smile and humility, to a respected western diplomat. The western diplomat or journalist will be won over in five minutes.
To understand the RPF-NRA rulers of the region today requires much more than what CNN, BBC, Reuters, Al-Jazeera, the New York Times or an Oxford or Harvard University education can give. One almost needs to think like a devil to understand how these devils operate.
To understand what has been going on in Rwanda, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Burundi since 1985 requires a level of cunning and detailed knowledge and in-depth research and understanding of how deceptive this Great Lakes region of Africa is, that the Uganda Record doubts that even the FBI or CIA have.
Where all conventional education and western news formats fail, one might have to consult a Seer to probe into Museveni's or Kagame's hidden thoughts, to get first-hand intelligence on what is about to happen or on deadly evil and sensitive secrets hidden from the world's view.
Otherwise, the scale of the cruelty, corruption and evil that Yoweri Museveni unleashed on Uganda and Central Africa since 1971 will remain one of history's least-understood secrets.
BAIL HEARING FOR MS. VICTOIRE INGABIRE UMUHOZA AFTER TWELVE DAYS IN CAPTIVITY
By Sylvain SIBOMANA
FDU-INKINGI,
Secretary General
October 25, 2010
KIGALI-The bail hearing of the Rwandan opposition leader, Ms. Victoire INGABIRE UMUHOZA, started today in GASABO Court House. The official criminal charge is the formation of a terrorist organisation with the aim to disrupt the territorial security of Rwanda. The Prosecutor backed by his prepared key witness tried to convince the Court that end 2007 and early 2008 the defendant carried on suspicious contacts with a rebel group FDRL and its deserters in order to create a terrorist organisation. The evidence displayed in court is a mishmash of emails and a transfer of about 2000 US dollars effected by a third party not related to the defendant. The link to Victoire INGABIRE was not established.
The same criminal charge was levelled in the April 2010 bail hearing but the Prosecutor claims that even if the facts are old the current confessing state witness brought more light and that the definition of the criminal charge is new. The prosecutor failed to explain why they never pressed charges against their witness for forgery and the use of fake identity documents. He failed to substantiate whether the defendant has violated any of the previous bail conditions. To the question whether the Prosecutor, by basing the arrest of Ms. Victoire INGABIRE on arranged confessions from one witness known for forgery, lack of credibility and himself accused of the same criminal charges, is not in a blatant violation of article 59 of the Criminal Code Procedure, he explained that Major Vital UWUMUREMYI is a defendant as well, pleading guilty, begging for mercy and not a witness.
All the eyes are turned to the decision of the Court tomorrow 15:00. Another big test for the independence of Justice in Rwanda.
We call upon the government to open up the political space and to release Ms. Victoire INGABIRE and all the opposition leaders from prisons.
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The Kigali central prison known as "1930" has finished making room for Ms. Victoire Ingabire
Rwanda opposition leader denied bail: prosecutor
By Agence France Presse
October 26, 2010
KIGALI-A court in Rwanda Tuesday denied bail to Victoire Ingabire, an opposition leader arrested earlier this month, a statement from the prosecutor's office said.
"The Gasabo Intermediate Court refused Victoire Ingabire bail on charges that include collaborating with a terrorist organisation," the statement said.
"In public, Victoire Ingabire masquerades as a politician. But behind the scenes she operates as a terrorist leader and financier," chief prosecutor Martin Ngoga was quoted as saying.
Ingabire, the leader of the unregistered United Democratic Forces (FDU), was arrested October 14 in Kigali on the basis of information given by a former military officer for "organising a terrorist group".
According to police, the officer, who was arrested the day before Ingabire on the Rwanda-DR Congo border, said he had received her assistance to "set up a military wing of the FDU".
"Mr Ngoga said that Ms. Ingabire's personal safety is assured throughout the judicial process and that she will receive a fair trial," the statement said. Ngoga thanked countries in the region for their collaboration and urged other countries from which Rwanda had requested information, including Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the United States to cooperate in what he called "this far-reaching terrorist investigation".
Ingabire, who has appealed the court decision, was first arrested in April on accusations of associating with a terrorist group, denying genocide, promoting genocide ideology and division.
Key among those accusations is her alleged association with the DR Congo-based Hutu rebels Kigali blames for involvement in the genocide.
After her release, she was placed under police investigation and barred from travelling outside the capital Kigali pending trial.
Authorities also barred her attempts to register the FDU and run for the August 9 presidential election which was resoundingly won by President Paul Kagame.
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Did Tony Blair discuss with Paul Kagame about Victoire Ingabire’s imprisonment?
Bail rejected for Ms. Victoire INGABIRE after 13 days of torture
By Eugene NDAHAYO
SUPPORT COMMITTEE FOR FDU-INKINGI
President
Brussels, October 26, 2010
Photo:
Ms. Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza (hundcuffed ) appears at Gasabo Intermediary Court on October 25, 2010 with Major Vital Uwumuremyi (not handcuffed) her co-accused.
Major Vital Uwumuremyi, known for forgery and use of fake identity documents, was the only prosecution's witness in this bail hearing for Ms. Ingabire.
Today, the GASABO Court rejected the bail for the detained opposition leader, Victoire INGABIRE, tortured and humiliated by the jailers. The Court decision is officially based on worries that the security of the state might be in danger if the defendant is free. It is a political decision, and not justice. The politically motivated charges keep on coming over at an alarming rate as the regime and its secret police are manufacturing or recycling new accusations all the time. On October 6th 2010, President Paul KAGAME informed the public that the political space is full and occupied. It is clear, there is no room left in politics in Rwanda, only in jail. It's very sad indeed for our country, its leadership, our people, our partners and the friends of Rwanda. Where do they think this country is heading to? Can't they really see how close to the brink of chaos, our country is?
In the history of humanity, dictatorships have found resources, demagogic propaganda and lobbies to shield their powers and fool people and the world until disintegration. It has been always a small group of people, committed and ready to loose everything, who, by their determination and courage set the dawn of a new order. We are not alone. Those who genuinely support peace, justice and democracy will be on our side.
All genuine opposition parties have been beheaded. Their leaders are either in jail, either in exile, or buried. Shame on those who continue to ignore the cries of our people. There will never be stability in a country where there is no independent justice, no neutral security institutions, no freedoms and no rule of law. Speak it out, your silence is lethal! “History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamour of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people” said Martin Luther King, Jr.
We call for an immediate release of Ms. Victoire INGABIRE, the Chair of FDU-INKINGI; Mr. Bernard NTAGANDA, the Chair of the Social Party IMBERAKURI, and other political prisoners. We expect all the partners of Rwanda to seriously discuss with General Paul KAGAME the need for a real political space in our country and its future.
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Who was Behind the Rwandan Genocide? The Rwandan Patriotic Front's Bloody Record and the History of UN Cover-Ups
By Christopher Black
September 14, 2010
On August 26, the French newspaper Le Monde revealed the existence of a draft UN report on the most serious violations of human rights in the Democratic Republic of Congo over an eleven-year period (1993-2003).1 The massive draft report states that after the Rwandan Patriotic Front's takeover of Rwanda in 1994, it proceeded to carry out "systematic and widespread attacks" against Hutu refugees who had fled Rwanda to neighboring Zaire (now the DRC) as well as against the Hutu civilian population of the DRC in general. Crucially, it concludes that the pattern of these attacks "reveal[s] a number of damning elements that, if they were proven before a competent court, could be classified as crimes of genocide."2
The draft report was leaked to Le Monde out of the plausible fear that its most damning facts and charges against the armed forces of the Rwandan Patriotic Front and President Paul Kagame would be expunged prior to its official release. Sure enough, one week later, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navanethem Pillay announced that the official report's release would be delayed until October 1 "to give concerned states a further month to comment on the draft," and even "offered to publish any comments alongside the report itself."3
Such an unprecedented offer by the UNHCHR follows from a number of factors, including the role that Rwandan troops play in UN peacekeeping operations, and the fact that earlier this year, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon appointed Kagame to serve along with Spain's Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero as co-chairs of a new Millennium Development Goal Advisory Group. According to the New Yorker's Philip Gourevitch -- who, after Alison Des Forges, did as much as anyone to sell the official version of the 1994 "Rwanda genocide" to the West, and clearly remains on very friendly terms with the Kagame dictatorship -- "top Rwandan officials [have been speaking] freely and on the record about their efforts to have the draft report quashed." As Rwanda's Minister of Foreign Affairs Louise Mushikiwabo confided in Gourevitch, "If it is endorsed by the U.N. and it's ever published, . . . if the U.N. releases it as a U.N. report, the moment it's released, the next day all our troops are coming home. Not just Darfur, all the five countries where we have police."4
A third, no doubt more decisive factor is that the Kagame dictatorship is a client of the United States and "acts as a mercenary for U.S. interests in Africa," as Glen Ford observes; the current conflict between this dictatorship and the UN "threatens to reveal the United States' role as enabler in the deaths of as many as six million people while Washington's allies occupied and looted the eastern regions of the Democratic Republic of Congo."5 It is Washington's ties to Kagame' RPF, ultimately, as well as London's and Brussels', that public discussions of the draft UN report should turn the spotlight on.
But this is not the first such report to have been drafted by the UN -- nor is it the first one to be covered up. As early as October 11, 1994, Robert Gersony, an employee of the U.S. Agency for International Development then attached to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, made an oral presentation to the UN Commission of Experts on Rwanda. Gersony had been dispatched to survey the situation inside Rwanda to determine if conditions were right for a return of the Hutu refugees who had fled the RPF. Instead he found that the RPF had been committing systematic massacres of the Hutu population in Rwanda starting in April 1994 and continuing through the date of his presentation.
On page 4 of the UN record of Gersony's oral presentation, we read:
"Significant areas of Butare Prefecture, Kibungo Prefecture, and the southern and eastern areas of Kigali Prefecture have been -- and in some cases were reported to remain as early as September -- the scene of systematic and sustained killing and persecution of the civilian Hutu populations by the [Rwandan Patriotic Army]. These activities are reported to have begun, depending on location, between April and July 1994, immediately following the expulsion from each area of former Government military, militia and surrogate forces. These [Rwandan Patriotic Army] actions were consistently reported to be conducted in areas where opposition forces of any kind -- armed or unarmed -- or resistance of any kind -- other than attempts by the victims of these actions to escape -- were absent. Large scale indiscriminate killings of men, women and children, including the sick and elderly, were consistently reported."
And on page 6 we also learn that "an unmistakable pattern of systematic [Rwandan Patriotic Army] conduct of such actions is the unavoidable conclusion of the team's interviews."
The Gersony report is identified in a cover letter dated October 11, 1994, from one Francois Fouinat to Mrs. B. Molina-Abram, the Secretary to the Commission of Experts on Rwanda. In this brief letter, Fouinat explains:
"We refer to the UNHCR's briefing to the Commission of Experts on Monday, 11 October 1994.
"As requested by the Commission, we are forwarding herewith a written summary of Mr. Gersony's oral presentation and copies of some field reports sent to UNHCR Headquarters by UNHCR Field Offices.
"We are confident that as agreed by the President of the Commission of Experts, these documents will be treated as confidential and only be made available to the members of the Commission."
I possess copies of these two UN documents from October 1994 because they are part of the evidence-base at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, where I serve as the lead defense counsel for Hutu former General Augustin Ndindiliyimana, once the Chief of Staff of the Rwanda Gendarmerie. The documents were found by my legal assistant purely by chance while scanning the prosecution's Electronic Disclosure System, which contains hundreds of thousands of documents that are not indexed in any order. My assistant came across them as part of a package of material organized by Robert Gersony himself while he was assigned to the UNHCR. It must be assumed that Mr. Gersony thought the documents relevant, as they affected the fate of the Hutu refugees.
At the ICTR, the brief cover letter by Francois Fouinat bears the index number "R0002906." The next 14 pages of R0002906 contain the Gersony report and are numbered sequentially with an 'R' -- prefix number used by the ICTR for documents contained in its Rwanda files.
Because I possess the series of ICTR documents beginning with R0002906, I also have in my possession an even more astonishing document the true historical significance of which has once again been underscored by the leaked UNHCHR report: Namely, the copy of a letter from Paul Kagame to his fellow Tutsi Jean-Baptiste Bagaza of Burundi, dated August 10, 1994.
Let me share with you an exchange that took place on November 18, 2008 in the Military II trial at the ICTR.6 What was said in court that particular day explains how these documents came to light. I was one of the speakers.
Mr. Black,7
"Mr. President, before I do that -- that takes place, I have something which I would like to raise of great importance, I think.
"Yesterday my legal assistant found by accident, something, I think of grave importance for this Tribunal and for the world. It's a letter from General Paul Kagame dated the 10th of August 1994 to Jean Baptiste Bagaza, . . . in Burundi. It's marked 'confidential'.
"I didn't have time to make copies, so I want to read it to you. It has an 'R'-number. R0002905. It's in French, so please bear with me to make a loose translation. It says -- it's only one page and it is short:
'Dear Brother Jean Baptiste Bagaza, we have the greatest honour to extend our sincere gratitude to you both for your financial and technical support in our struggle that has just ended with the taking of Kigali.
'Rest assured that our plan to continue shall be pursued as we agreed at our last meeting in Kampala. Last week I communicated with our big brother Yoweri Museveni and decided to make some modifications to the plan. Indeed, as you have noted, the taking of Kigali quickly provoked a panic among the Hutus who fled to Goma and Bukavu. We have found that the presence of a large number of Rwandan refugees at Goma and the international community can cause our plan for Zaire to fail. We cannot occupy ourselves with Zaire until after the return of these Hutus. All means are being used for their return as rapidly as possible. In any case, our external intelligence services continue to crisscross the east of Zaire and our Belgian, British and American collaborators, the rest of Zaire. The action reports are expected in the next few days.
'Concerning the Burundi plan, we are very content with your work to ensure the failure of the policies of FRODEBU. It is necessary to paralyze the power of FRODEBU until the total ruin of the situation in order to justify your action that must not miss its target. Our soldiers will be deployed, this time, not only in Bujumbura, but in the places you judge strategic. Our elements stationed at Bugesera are ready to intervene at any moment. The plan for Burundi must be executed as soon as possible before the Hutus of Rwanda can organize themselves.
'In the hope of seeing you next time at Kigali, we ask you to accept, dear brother, our most respectful greetings'.
General Paul Kagame
Minister of Defence
(signed by his assistant Mr. Rwego8)
"The importance of this letter if you have grasped it fully cannot be overstated. It means the attack on Rwanda from 1990 was not the prime objective of Kagame and his collaborators. Zaire was always the prime objective. That their excuse for the attack on Rwanda about establishing democracy and return of refugees, was completely false. That the invasion from Uganda had only one purpose: to clear the path through Rwanda to Zaire. That the return of refugees, as many witnesses have stated, was not for humanitarian reasons, but to clear the path for the invasion of Zaire. It means that the Americans, British, particularly with Kagame and Museveni, planned the invasion of Zaire [sic] in 1994, probably before that. It means that the excuse given for the invasions of Congo since this letter was written to clear the 'Interahamwe' or 'genocidaires' is completely false. No mention is made of 'Interahamwe'. No mention is made of 'genocide'. It means, since this was received, it looks like a date stamp of this tribunal, 8th December 1994, that the Prosecutor of this Tribunal has been hiding information indicating a conspiracy to commit a war of aggression against Congo-Zaire, Zaire and all of the war crimes have flowed from it since and the continuation of those wars in Congo now begun 14 years ago, if not longer. And that the principal parties are the principal parties stated in this letter. It indicates that the prime target, Hutus in Rwanda and Burundi, that they want to suppress the Hutu population in order to carry out their plan. Democracy was never their concern. And it indicates that the Prosecutor was in -- had information in a territorial and temporal jurisdiction of this Tribunal under rule -- under Statute-Article 1. That they are also concerned with war crimes committed in neighboring states.
"So, here you have the smoking gun, the letter, planning the invasion of Zaire with the Americans and British. And it confirms our theory all the way through this trial that the Belgians were involved with those other countries. And again, there must be -- and this, as a colleague pointed out, is page 8 of 12. So where are the other eleven pages of -- what other letters do they have in their hands? And again, it indicates that these men have been stitched up, falsely accused, in order to clear them out of the way so this plan can take place. If this is published in the New York Times or Washington Post, the whole picture of the war in Rwanda and the wars in Congo would change.
"So I ask the Prosecutor, once again, where is that file? And in fact I would like them to produce the indictment against Kagame9 because I want to see what he's been charged with, exactly what crimes and where. So, again, I ask for this file to be produced and I ask why they have not acted. Mr. Jallow and Louise Arbour and everybody else have been protecting the RPF which has now resulted in millions of deaths in the Congo and continues up till today and what is going on in Congo now.
"And I state openly that the Prosecution office is complicit with this invasion of Congo and is responsible themselves for all those murders in Congo because they've hidden this for a long time and they could have exposed it many years ago and stopped the invasions.
"If the international community, that is, other than the United States and the Britain, had been aware of what was going on, it would never have taken place. But they sit there and they accuse us, my client, and the other officers here of committing crimes, they knew what they were doing in Zaire. I don't think they can even shave and look in the mirror in the morning."
Mr. President,10
"Counsel, having said all of that, why don't you send this to the New York Times?"
Black,
"It will be sent . . . whether they publish it I do not know."11
In the days after this letter was exposed the prosecution accused the defence of having fabricated the letter and raised questions about its authenticity.
I replied, first, that the letter bears a sequential ICTR index number with an 'R'-prefix -- the prefix used for Rwanda documents.
Second, as mentioned above, this letter was found among the package of material organized by Robert Gersony while assigned to the UNHCR.
Third, the letter was date-stamped "December 8, 1994" by the ICTR. Presumably, this was its date of receipt by the ICTR.
Fourth, it is also noteworthy that the letter that we know was created no later than December 8th 1994 speaks of moving the Hutus out of the way in Zaire and this is exactly what happened. First the UN tried to force them back into Rwanda and partly succeeded. But the mass of refugees refused to return, so in 1996 the attacks on the Hutu refugee camps began, forcing them to flee into the Congo forest. There is a lot of testimony by Hutus who were either forced at gunpoint to return to Rwanda or experienced the manhunt against them conducted by the RPF and its allies.
Fifth, the letter is further authenticated by noting that the addressee (the Burundian Tutsi Jean Baptiste Bagaza) did in fact carry out a coup d'état in Burundi against a more moderate Tutsi and turned against the Hutu political group called Front pour la Démocratie au Burundi (FRODEBU, or Front for Democracy in Burundi). Unquestionably, Bagaza and Kagame were allies. According to the testimony of expert witness Dr. Helmut Strizek before the ICTR:
Q. "Very well, doctor, let's move toward the end. What clarification would you like to make on the relationship between Bagaza and Kagame when the president's aeroplane was shot down?"
Strizek. "If my memory serves me right, Bagaza had left the country, and I think returned after or before the assassination of Ndadaye. Bagaza was a hardliner, a Tutsi hardliner, so there was an alliance between the two of them, and they wanted to prevent a Hutu president from being in charge of Burundi."
. . . . . . . . . . . .
Strizek. "Jean-Baptiste Bagaza was a Hima or Tutsi president of Burundi who took power when he overthrew President Micombero, who had been responsible of anti-Hutu genocide in 1972. He was in power for some time. . . .
"In my opinion, it's quite clear that Bagaza and Kagame follow the same line."12
Sixth, the man whose signature appears on the letter on behalf of Paul Kagame, Mr. Rwego, confirmed to a member of the defence team that he did in fact sign it.
The accidental discovery of this August 10, 1994 letter from Paul Kagame to his "Dear Brother Jean Baptiste Bagaza" was met with an immediate reaction by the prosecution, who accused the defence of fabricating it, pointing out a typo in the letterhead. But this line of criticism failed, as it was shown that there are other letters in existence from the RPF on the same stationary, with the same typo in the letterhead, and these letters are regarded as authentic.
That someone regarded the letter as authentic and dangerous is highlighted the fact that I was followed by a Tanzanian police officer the night after I produced it in court and was forced to complain about this surveillance in court the next day. Yet the prosecution continued its attacks on the letter's authenticity, even though the document came from the files of the prosecutor. And this important revelation during the Military II trial was never reported in the mass media -- though I did send it to many journalists, including the New York Times.
Now that the draft UN report on the atrocities committed by the RPF in the Congo has been leaked, the findings of the very first UN report of RPF atrocities against the Hutus beginning in 1994 should also be recognized and addressed.
The UN must explain why the record of that 1994 presentation by Robert Gersony was marked "confidential" and why the latest draft UN report does not refer to it.
The prosecutors at the ICTR must explain why they hid these documents from the defence for nearly 15 years, and why, even though they have these documents in their possession, they have never once used these documents to bring charges against a single member of the RPF.
Last, Paul Kagame and his American, Belgian, and British collaborators must explain the meaning of the letter -- and in particular, the meaning of the phrase, "plan for Zaire."
Notes:
1 Christophe Châtelot, "L'acte d'accusation de dix ans de crimes au Congo RDC," Le Monde, August 26, 2010. For some additional news reports, see: "UN Uncovers Possible Genocide in Congo: Report," Agence France Presse, August 26, 2010; David Lewis, "Rwandan Army May Have Committed Genocide -- UN Report," Reuters, August 26, 2010; Judi Rever, "UN Lawyer Says Congo Butchery Resembled Rwandan Genocide," Agence France Presse, August 27, 2010; Michelle Faul, "UN Draft Report: Rwandan Army Attacks on Refugees in Congo in the 1990s Could Be Genocide," Associated Press, August 27, 2010; "DR Congo Killings 'May Be Genocide' -- UN Draft Report," BBC, August 27, 2010; Max Delany, Rwanda Dismisses UN Report Detailing Possible Hutu Genocide in Congo Christian Science Monitor, August 27, 2010; Chris McGreal et al., "Leaked UN Report Accuses Rwanda of Possible Genocide in Congo," The Guardian, August 27, 2010; Xan Rice, "Returning Refugees: Lush Land the Prize That Could Reignite Ethnic Conflict in DRC," The Guardian, August 27, 2010; Howard French, "U.N. Report on Congo Offers New View of Genocide Era," New York Times, August 28, 2010; Colum Lynch, "U.N. Says Rwandan Troops Carried Out Mass Killings in '90s," Washington Post, August 29, 2010.
2 See "Report of the Mapping Exercise documenting the most serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law committed within the territory of the Democratic Republic of the Congo between March 1993 and June 2003," UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, draft report dated June, 2010, para. 517.
3 "UN Report on Rights Violations in DR Congo to Be Released Next Month," UN News Center, September 2, 2010.
4 Philip Gourevitch, "Rwanda Pushes Back Against UN Genocide Charges," New Yorker Blog, August 27, 2010.
5 Glen Ford, "Rwanda Crisis Could Expose U.S. Role in Congo Genocide," Black Agenda Report, September 1, 2010.
6 The Military II trial concerns the joint trial of General Augustin Bizimungu, Chief of Staff of the Rwandan Army, General Augustin Ndindiliyimana, Chief of Staff of the Rwandan Gendarmerie, Major Nzwonyemeye, Commander of the Reconnaissance Battalion, and Captain Sagahutu , Commander, Squadron A of the Reconnaissance Battalion.
7 Let the record show that I have written here exactly what I said in court. The translation in the trial transcripts is a bit garbled, and I have corrected the text accordingly.
8 Reference ICTR document number R0002905, letter dated August 10th, 1994, date stamped by the ICTR 8th December, 1994. Marked as page 8 of 12.
9 Defence counsel had been informed by a member of the prosecution that an indictment exists against Paul Kagame for war crimes and is being held by the ICTR for the appropriate time. In order to determine whether this was correct information the defence counsel several times asked the prosecution to provide that indictment as it would affect the defense. The prosecution never denied its existence and the defence was advised to bring a motion to request it.
10 Judge Asoka Da Silva of Sri Lanka, Presiding Judge, Tria, Chamber III, ICTR.
11 Transcript, Military II Trial, November 18th, 2008, pages 1-3.
12 Transcript, Military II Trial, November 24th, 2008, page 62, lines 19-24; and page 63.
Christopher Black serves as Lead Counsel for the Hutu former General Augustin Ndindiliyimana, Chief of Staff, Rwanda Gendarmerie, in Military II trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.
Christopher Black is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Global Research Articles by Christopher Black.
Sign the Petition: Call Upon the US to Urgently Intervene in Rwandan Political Crisis
PETITION:
Call Upon the US to Urgently Intervene in
Rwandan Political Crisis
Targeting:
The President of the United States, The U.S. Senate, and The U.S. House of Representatives.
Started by:
Jean Paul Mihigo
The United States has the ability and should urgently intervene in the Rwandan Political Crisis to prevent genocide and help for immediate release of the leaders of opposition parties Ms. Victoire INGABIRE, Mr. Bernard NTAGANDA and all political yet innocent prisoners.
Petition Text:
Alarming Political Crisis in Rwanda
Greetings,
Your Excellencies,
I strongly call for urgent intervention of the United States in the Rwandan Political crisis before another genocide can happen. Your immediate intervention would help defuse the current political crisis in the country and help achieve sustainable peace in the Great Lakes Region of Africa.
Jailed since almost two weeks, Ms. Victoire Ingabire is submitted to ill-treatment, and has been denied access to basic necessities in a clear violation of her fundamental human rights including foods, and sleep. She has been denied to receive visits from the Red Cross, her friends, her family and acquantancies. Her jailers have reportedly kept all basic necessity supplies away from her, including blanket, a mattress, clothes, hygiene items and everything else. Mr. Ntaganda has been kept in the same prison conditions for more than 2 months.
Ms. Victoire INGABIRE and Mr. Ntaganda do not believe in violence and war, that is the reason why they have made non violence, their motto. That's the reason why they sacrificed themselves for democracy, justice and the peace of all Rwandans.
For recommendation, the US should consider a change of US policy toward Rwanda by withholding budgetary and military support to president Paul Kagame’s regime unless it complies with democratic principles, respects human rights and guarantees of freedom of any kind to all its citizens.
The intimidation, harassment and arrest of the FDU-INKINGI Chairperson has been a pretext to reject the registration of the party, and to halt Ms. Victoire INGABIRE in her quest to challenge General Paul KAGAME in the rigged presidential election. She has officially and publicly questioned the legitimacy of the election's result, as did a number of foreign countries. She also publicly called for accountability and the end of impunity which the regime is enjoying despite war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity committed both in Rwanda and in the Democratic Republic of Congo as recently charged by the United Nations.
I am convinced that the only solution in the growing social and political tension in Rwanda depends more on the resolution of the internal political problems, this is why I request you to please urgently intervene in the Rwandan Political crisis.
Thank you very much for your kind help.
Sincerely,
Jean Paul Mihigo
[Your name]
Click
here to sign the petition.
Thank you.
Did Tony Blair discuss with Paul Kagame about Victoire Ingabire’s imprisonment?
By Ambrose Nzeyimana
The Rising Continent
October 21, 2010
Agence France Presse (AFP) reported this week that Tony Blair, the former British prime minister, visited Rwanda on Sunday and Monday. The visit happened just after two major events in Rwandan politics which, if not carefully managed, could damage irreversibly the image of Paul Kagame, the Rwandan president, his country, and particularly many world personalities who have been closely associated with the rebuilding of Rwanda after the 1994 genocide. These events could as well have a negative resonance on the views of citizens of Rwanda and more widely the Great Lakes region about countries and foreign leaders backing the Rwandan president.
The two events are in order of importance and chronology the publication of the UN report titled, ‘Report of the Mapping Exercise documenting the most serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law committed within the territory of the Democratic Republic of the Congo between March 1993 and June 2003,’ which was published on October 1st, and the imprisonment on October 14th, of the main Rwandan opposition politician Victoire Ingabire, leader of FDU-Inkingi.
Officially, Blair was in Kigali to praise Paul Kagame and his government on the progress they may be making towards the MDGs. But knowing the setbacks that Paul Kagame experienced in Madrid during the UN Conference on the MDGs in the month of July, when the Spanish prime minister refused to stand along side him because of the crimes he is accused of, and then the massive public demonstration against him in New York during the annual general assembly of the UN, this early September, consequently the Blair’s visit must have had a different agenda.
At this stage there can only be speculations about what they may have discussed related to the mentioned important recent occurrences in Rwandan politics. Could Blair have told Kagame to go friendlier with his political opponents? This may be a possibility. Is it likely that the former British prime minister may have also advised that he would continue to help as much he could on the accusations bound in the
UN report about Kagame’s forces in Congo? This is another eventuality.
Whatever they may have discussed which didn’t come out publicly, must have been very important. The reason for that understanding is because many other foreign personalities had talked to Paul Kagame before. The way he had reacted to their arguments came out in his speech on Wednesday October 6th, during the swearing-in of his recently nominated government. At the time he arrogantly indicated that he didn’t want to receive lessons from anyone on how to lead his country. He apparently knows best what is good for Rwanda.
Glen Ford explains why the situation is critical and may have probably demanded the intervention of Tony Blair. ‘The leaked UN report cannot be put back in the bottle. Kagame, who labels all critics “genocidaires” or apologists for genocide, is exposed as “the greatest mass killer on the face of the earth, today,” as described by Edward S. Herman, co-author of The Politics of Genocide. Kagame’s mentors and funders in the U.S. government, who aided and abetted his genocide in Congo, must be held equally accountable – if not more so, since United States corporations derive the greatest benefit from Congo’s blood minerals, and the U.S. military gains the most advantage from Rwandan and Ugandan services as mercenaries at America’s beck and call in Africa.’
Will Paul Kagame listen to Tony Blair’s arguments if the latter did recommend him what best should be done in the face of the current situation, or will he continue to reply, ‘I don’t care,’ as we know him for his trademark kind of answer? Time will tell.
Related Materials:
Rwanda on target to meet health development goals: Blair
DRC: Mapping human rights violations 1993-2003
Rwanda Crisis Could Expose U.S. Role in Congo Genocide
The Kigali central prison known as "1930" has finished making room for Ms. Victoire Ingabire
By Jean Bosco Gasasira
Umuvugizi Newspaper
October 22, 2010
The Umuvugizi newspaper has just learned that the Kigali central prison, which is mostly known as “1930”, received orders to make room for Ms. Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza, who would soon be detained there uncommunicado, in total isolation. It is expected that while in prison, Ms. Ingabire would surely suffer from the most atrocious ill-treatments and would be subjected to major psychiatric abuses due to solitary confinement.
The news from Kagame’s security services also tell us that Ms. Ingabire could be subjected to serious abuses which, according to our informants, could be of the same magnitude as the ones former President Pasteur Bizimungu suffered from when he was in this same prison, known as “1930”, a prison that left him in a state of total deafness!
The other news indicate that Ms. Ingabire’s trial has already been finalized. She could appear in court as soon as early next week. The provivision of granting her a provisional release on bail as provided by the law will not apply in her case because Rwandan tribunals might have already received orders from Kagame’s secret services that they should not release her, allegedly due to the seriousness of the charges she is being accused of. Such an aspect would also strongly apply against her prior to inflicting her a life sentence in prison.
Additional news in our possession indicate that the judges have been instructed to knowingly ignore some legal aspects especially because Ms. Ingabire’s co-accused is the only witness who is supposed to testify against her. According to the Rwandan criminal law and in normal circumstances, it is not allowed that a co-defendant be also considered as a witness at the same time. However, the news currently in our possession indicate that, even though Kagame's lawyers and judges are fully aware of such a fact, they would have to ignore it, mostly owing to political pressures and firm orders received from above.
The news also indicate that such secret services, especially the military intelligence services, have been strongly instructed to find and/or fabricate other witnesses from either the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) or from Ms. Ingabire’s political party, the United Democratic Forces (FDU-INKINGI). Such witnesses could make it much easier for the prosecution to indict this politician with trumped up charges in order to show both the international community and the Rwandan people that this lady had a plot to disrupt the country’s stability, hence their green light to ill-treat her and politically eliminate her.
Note:
This article has been translated from its original version in Kinyarwanda by Mamadou Kouyate. A translated French version is also available on Democracy Human Rights Group. Only the Kinyarwanda version shall prevail.
Related Materials:
Did Tony Blair discuss with Paul Kagame about Victoire Ingabire’s imprisonment?
Rwandan Secret Services’ Plan to Eliminate Victoire Ingabire
Rwanda: Opposition, Western Union Money Transfer and Terrorism
OPEN LETTER TO MADAM VICTOIRE INGABIRE UMUHOZA, THE OPPOSITION LEADER ARRESTED IN RWANDA
THE POLITICALLY MOTIVATED DETENTION OF VICTOIRE INGABIRE STILL GOING ON. TODAY IS HER 7th DAY IN JAIL
La prison dite “1930” a fini d’apprêter la chambre qui recevra madame Ingabire
Par Jean Bosco Gasasira
Le Journal Umuvugizi
22 Octobre 2010
Les nouvelles qui parviennent au journal Umuvugizi indiquent que la prison centrale de Kigali a reçu l’ordre de préparer la chambre où sera enfermée , isolée, madame Ingabire victoire Umuhoza . Il est prévue qu’elle y subisse des forts mauvais traitements et qu’elle va connaître de grands soucis car enfermée seule.
Les nouvelles qui parviennent au journal Umuvugizi en provenance des services de sécurité du président Kagame nous indiquent par ailleurs que cette dame pourrait être sujet de graves maltraitances qui , selon nos informateurs , pourraient être de la même ampleur que celles qu’a subies l’ancien président Bizimungu quand il était dans cette prison dite « 1930 » et qu’il a quitté en état de surdité.
D’autres nouvelles indiquent que le procès de madame Ingabire a déjà été finalisé de telle sorte qu’elle pourrait comparaître devant le tribunal dès la semaine prochaine , et la possibilité de libération provisoire telle que prévue par la loi ne sera pas possible , car les tribunaux auraient déjà reçu les ordres par les services de renseignement qu’ils ne doivent pas la libérer , soi-disant à cause de la gravité des faits qui lui est reprochés, et cet aspect servira également à lui infliger un emprisonnement à perpétuité.
Les autres nouvelles que nous avons pu avoir et que les juges ont reçu l’ordre de ne pas trop tenir compte des aspects légaux, car le co-accusé d’Ingabire est le même qui temoigne contre elle. D’habitude il n’est pas permis qu’un témoin soit en même temps co-accusé, mais les nouvelles qui nous parviennent indiquent que les hommes de loi de Kagame , même s’ils sont au courant de ce fait , devront l’ignorer pour des raisons politiques et d’ordres venus d’en haut.
Les nouvelles indiquent que ces services , spécialement les renseignements militaires ont reçu l’ordre de trouver (fabriquer) d’autres témoins du FDLR et du parti de Victoire Ingabire (FDU-Inkingi) qui pourront aider l’accusation à charger de mensonges cette politicienne afin de montrer aux étrangers et aux rwandais que cette dame avait pour but de perturber la tranquillité du pays et ainsi pouvoir la maltraiter et l’éliminer politiquement.
Note:
Cet article est une traduction libre du texte original en Kinyarwanda. Seule la version en Kinyarwanda fait foi.
Source:
Democracy Human Rights Group
Articles portant sur le même sujet:
Plan d’Elimination d’Ingabire Victoire par les Services Secrets Rwandais
LA DÉTENTION POUR DES MOTIFS POLITIQUES DE Mme VICTOIRE INGABIRE CONTINUE. AUJOURD'HUI C’EST SON 7ème JOUR EN PRISON
Rencontre avec la fille de Victoire Ingabire
Rwanda : opposition, Western Union et terrorisme
In Memory of Melchior Ndadaye
By Nkunda Rwanda
The Cry for Freedom in Rwanda
October 21, 2010
When I tweeted in honor of the commemoration of Melchior Ndadaye, it immediately dawned on me that many of my virtual friends may have no prior knowledge about this guy and what he stood for. Much of what is written about the Great Lakes region, for good or worse, has predominantly focused on Rwanda. In fact, only recently has the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) penetrated the media’s radar. Many continue to wonder, and for good reasons, why a civil war that has a death toll six times higher than Rwanda, was largely ignored by the western media and its victim’s completely written off. These are intractable questions that I cannot pretend to have answers for. I can only tell the tales.
Following independence from the Belgians, power in Burundi, remained consolidated within the structures of the Tutsi community comprising roughly 15 per cent of the population. The oppressed Hutu majority maintained resistance and Burundi soon became amok with ethnic violence.
The first major killings occurred in 1972. In what scholars have often described as a “selective genocide”, a conservative figure of 100,000 Hutus were murdered by the Tutsi dominated army. The targeted were mostly Hutu intellectuals, business men and local school teachers. The renowned scholar on Burundi, René Lemarchand, has noted that, “to speak of “selective genocide” in describing the outcome of such large scale political violence seems scarcely an exaggeration”. These killings would later have a radical impact on the future of the great lakes region.
In 1988, another 20,000 people perished. As in the previous massacre, the victims died under the hands of the ruling Tutsi military. Massive migrations ensued and millions of Hutus fled to Rwanda which was at this time under the control of a Hutu regime. Others fled towards Tanzania and west to the Democratic Republic of Congo. But the resistance was not over yet, only the method took a new shift.
Melchior Ndadaye was born in 1953 in the town of Murama. While training as a teacher, his education was interrupted by the 1972 massacres. To avoid being killed, he fled to Rwanda where he was able to pursue university education at the National University of Rwanda.
Ndadaye helped found the Burundi students organization, a movement of exiled Hutu students. He was also among the founders of the Workers Party in 1979 for which he served as president. He returned to Burundi in September 1983, ready for a non-violent struggle against a corrupt and elite Tutsi government led by the military dictator, Jean-Baptiste Bagaza. However, he remained underground until 1992, when the new military leader, Major. Jean Pierre Buyoya accepted political reforms. He later formed the Front for Democracy in Burundi (FRODEBU) which was soon registered.
Although a man of the people, he was largely unknown in Burundi as his political programs had been greatly hindered. The Tutsi establishment might have underestimated his charm. In June 1993, the three other predominately Hutu parties endorsed his candidature. Ndadaye won the presidential elections with “a crushing victory” garnering 65% of the votes. His party scooped 61 out of the 81 seats. This was the first ever, democratic election in Burundi. And Ndadaye became the first Hutu president of republic of Burundi.
It is now well understood that Ndadaye took a more cautious approach and was negatively branded a “moderate” within his Hutu support base. He wanted to resolve the deep ethnic divides facing the new democracy. He named Slyvie Kinigi, a Tutsi woman politician, as his Prime Minister and gave a third of his cabinet posts to the Tutsi dominated Union for National Progress (UNP). Although he was president, the military was still controlled by a group of Tutsi extremists. His tolerance and slow reaction might have caused his eventual demise.
Barely a hundred days into his presidency, Ndadaye’s home was besieged by members of the Tutsi military. Along with three members of his cabinet, Ndadaye was bayoneted to death.
His death sparked deadly protests around the country. It also marked the beginning of a deadly and protracted civil war, lasting more than ten years. The civil war is believed to have cost an additional 100,000 lives. Both sides, Hutu and Tutsi, lost their kins.
Ndadaye is today remembered as the founding father of Burundi’s reconciliatory democracy. His blood is the fountain for Burundi’s rebirth. His legacy of active non-violence should serve as an example to future leaders in this region. It is the only way to build a system that is not based on ethnic exclusion.
In the case of Rwanda, we can draw inspiration from the resilience of this man. But we can also learn from his desire to forgive his enemies.
The incarceration of Mme. Ingabire Victoire and that of other free thinkers, is the beginning of a movement that will culminate in the freedom for all Rwandans. She is following in Ndadaye’s tradition by refusing to pick up arms. And she is ready to pay the price as there can be no gain without pain and no crown without the cross. Ultimately, though, only love and forgiveness will save our motherland.
UN-backed court urges Rwanda not to summon US lawyer
By Kezio-Musoke-David
Reuters
Oct 22, 2010
KIGALI (Reuters) - The Tanzania-based international tribunal hearing the cases of Rwandan genocide suspects urged the central African nation on Friday not to prosecute a U.S. lawyer over a charge of genocide denial.
Rwanda's chief prosecutor Martin Ngoga on Wednesday said American lawyer Peter Erlinder could be summoned within two weeks. Denying the 1994 genocide, during which about 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus were butchered to death, is a crime in Rwanda.
Roland Amoussouga, spokesman for the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), said Rwanda would have to respect Erlinder's court immunity if the charges related to his work at the tribunal.
"Rwanda has the right to go ahead and prosecute Erlinder. However, they have also committed to respect the functional immunity he has at the tribunal," Amoussouga told Reuters by telephone from the court's base in Arusha.
"Prosecution can only go on if it is in relation to his private work and not with work related to the ICTR," Amoussouga said.
Rwanda arrested Erlinder on charges of genocide denial in May when he flew to the country to defend opposition leader Victoire Ingabire, who had been arrested over accusations of belonging to a terrorist group and promoting genocide ideology.
Erlinder was released on bail on health grounds a month later although the charges remained. Ngoga said at the time the charges related remarks made in earlier statements and publications but did not cite specific comments.
Ngoga said Rwanda would turn to Interpol if Erlinder failed to respond to an eventual summons.
"He is a lawyer and he knows the consequences of jumping bail," the chief prosecutor told an ICTR news conference on Wednesday.
Under a 2003 law, persons condemned for denying or grossly minimising genocide, attempting to justify genocide or destroy evidence related to it are liable to a minimum of 10 years and a maximum of 20 in prison.
Rwanda last week re-arrested Ingabire who was barred from standing in August's presidential election which Kagame won by a landslide.
Members of her unregistered United Democratic Forces (UDF) party fear for her health and said she had been visited by a paramedic on Friday. "We call again for a medical parole without any further delay," UDF said in a statement.
Related Materials:
ICTR Confirms Peter Erlinder’s Functional Immunity from Arrest or Prosecution
US lawyer discusses expected charges in Rwanda
Ingabire: "Kagame should assume his responsibility"
The Kagame Regime: Myth versus Reality
By Peter Erlinder
Black Star News
October 22nd, 2010
Photo:Professor Peter Erlinder shown with Victoire Ingabire
[Global: Africa Commentary]
After arresting would-be Presidential candidate Victoire Ingabire six days ago, Rwanda’s Chief Prosecutor Martin Ngoga announced he intends to prosecute me for “genocide denial” based on articles written in the U.S. and published on the internet.
Rwanda authorities jailed me in May; I was released after an international campaign. Ingabire is now in the same cell.
I was Ingabire's lawyer and UN Rwanda Tribunal Defense Counsel. Before my arrest, former U.S. President Bill Clinton and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair helped create the myth that that the Kagame dictatorship had changed. Both Madame Ingabire and I were misled; reality of the situation in Rwanda has become clear.
After my release, the banning of all serious political opposition, the beheading of the vice-President of the Green Party, Madame Ingabire’s arrest, the assassination of journalists, the attempted assassination of Gen. Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa, Mr. Kagame’s former Chief of Staff who defected to South Africa, the assassination of another ICTR defense counsel and Kagame’s “election” with 93% of the vote caused the Obama White House to question the state of democracy in Rwanda for the first time, issuing a statement which in part read:
"We remain concerned, however, about a series of disturbing events prior to the election, including the suspension of two newspapers, the expulsion of a human rights researcher, the barring of two opposition parties from taking part in the election, and the arrest of journalists...Democracy is about more than holding elections...A democracy reflects the will of the people, where minority voices are heard and respected, where opposition candidates run on the issues without threat or intimidation, where freedom of expression and freedom of the press are protected....stability and growing prosperity ... will be difficult to sustain in the absence of broad political debate and open political participation."
On August 28, LeMonde and The New York Times leaked a 600-page UN report detailing crimes of Kagame’s troops in the Congo between 1993-2003, including genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. The same crimes Chief ICTR Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte’s says were committed by Kagame’s troops Rwanda in 1994. Her 2009 memoirs explain how she was fired by the State Department in 2003 when she refused to follow U.S. orders not to prosecute Kagame’s RPF, despite having evidence of their crimes, including the assassination of two presidents.
These UN documents also confirm that the evidence that acquitted my client of "conspiracy and planning to commit genocide" in a Feb. 2009 ICTR Judgment, described a much larger reality about the actual source of 30 years of violence in Central Africa. And, if there was no long-term planning and conspiracy, the victor’s story of the “Rwandan genocide” must be re-examined. This is my "crime."
But, my prosecution has larger implications, as well. If UN immunity does not apply to any prosecution of defense counsel by the Kagame government, a government the former Chief ICTR Prosecutor and the UN, itself, both confirm is led by criminals and has been committing mass crimes for decades, meaningful representation of any UN Tribunal defendants will be impossible.
"Speaking Truth To Empower."
Rwanda: A Coward General Is Desperately Fighting Against Unarmed Woman
By Oscar Nkurunziza
Democracy Human Rights
October 22, 2010
Today, it is the 8th day since Paul Kagame launched the offensive against Ms. Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza, 42, a mother of 3 children. Ms. Ingabire’s unique crime is to have decided to return to her homeland after 16 years in exile to begin a nonviolent struggle against impunity and for democracy in Rwanda.
Before the arrest of Ms. Ingabire, General Kagame ordered his troops to surround her house for several days. She only was in possession of a cell phone and a laptop as her only weapons. During that time, Kagame’s secret services were finalizing the preparation of Major Vital Uwumuremyi, the former rebel who must accuse Ms. Ingabire of forming a terrorist organization.
Reliable sources from Kigali tell us that in order to trap Ms Ingabire, Kagame’s secret services had put the infamous former rebel on multiple identities allegedly on Ingabire’s services. The same sources indicate that these secret services have already set up secret weapon hideouts in several locations throughout Rwanda and have already provided the names of such locations to Major Vital Uwumuremyi.
Now that this so-called "key witness" has confessed and apologized, the next step will be to reveal the infamous weapon hideouts but also the plans to attack Rwanda. These plans have been carefully prepared by Kagame’s secret services but will be attributed to Ms. Ingabire in court. These are the so-called “irrefutable evidences” that may send Ms. Ingabire straight to prison for life (possibly 7 years maximum, Kagame’s second term!).
One may wonder why Paul Kagame is so afraid of Ms. Victoire Ingabire. It is indeed shameful and ridiculous for a General who leads an army of more than 200,000 soldiers, an army that is believed to be the best equipped in Africa, to resort to such an arsenal deployment against a woman who just relies on a cell phone and a laptop as her only weapons. Paul Kagame knows very well that the charges against Ms. Ingabire have been fabricated by his own secret services. He also knows that such a crusade against Ms. Ingabire is pure comedy. Frankly, does this General really have advisers? Did he seek advice from Tony Blair, Louis Michel or Bernard Kouchner before embarking on such a ridiculous war against Ms. Ingabire?
In Diaspora, Rwandan women (and some men!) are upset; they hardly manage to sleep. We see them in front of several Rwandan embassies, in front of some international institutions, on the streets, etc. They demand the immediate and unconditional release of Ms. Victoire Ingabire who embodies their struggle as mothers who are deeply concerned about the future of their children.
To sum up, Paul Kagame has truly become a coward General who is fighting against an unarmed woman and his acts may curse him! This is indeed his very last war which he is surely prone to lose.
He who has ears ought to listen!
Note:
This article has been translated from its original French version by Mamadou Kouyate. Only the French version shall prevail.
Related Materials:
OPEN LETTER TO MADAM VICTOIRE INGABIRE UMUHOZA, THE OPPOSITION LEADER ARRESTED IN RWANDA
Rwandan Secret Services’ Plan to Eliminate Victoire Ingabire
Ingabire: "Kagame should assume his responsibility"
In Memory of Melchior Ndadaye
