PETITION IN FAVOR OF DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS IN RWANDA
By Women for Truth and Reconciliation in Rwanda
November 13, 2009
Support Democratic Elections in Rwanda
Appuyez des Élections Démocratiques au Rwanda
View signatures
Category: Politics
Region: Rwanda
Target: President Barack Obama; Prime Minister Gordon Brown
Background (Preamble):
The present petition can be signed by individuals or organizations, whether Rwandan or non-Rwandan. It is grounded on a long list of references, such as
- The Norwegian Institute of Human Rights/NORDEM Report 12/2003, Rwanda: Presidential and Parliamentary Elections 2003, p.45
- Amnesty International, Rwanda: Run-up to presidential elections marred by threats and Harassment, Press release, august 22, 2003
- Human Rights Watch, Burundi: Review Rwandans’ Asylum Claims, Government Should Cease Expulsions of Rwandans Seeking Refugee Status, October 16, 2009
- President Barack Obama’s speech in Accra, Ghana, July 11, 2009
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La présente pétition peut être signée par des personnes physiques ou morales, rwandaises ou non-rwandaises. Elle s'appuie sur plusieurs références dont notamment
- Parlement européen, Commission du développement et de la coopération, Rapport de la délégation ad hoc pour l'observation des élections présidentielles du lundi 25 août 2003 au Rwanda, 5 septembre 2003, p.7
- Amnesty International, Rwanda- Les menaces et les actes de harcèlement se multiplient à l’approche des présidentielles, Bulletin d'information 196/2003, p.2
- Human Rights Watch, Burundi : Les autorités doivent examiner les demandes d'asile des Rwandais, 16 octobre 2009
- Discours du Président Barack Obama à Accra, Ghana,
11 juillet 2009
Petition:
PETITION IN FAVOR OF DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS IN RWANDA
To the attention of:
- His Excellency Barack Obama, President of the United States of America
- His Excellency Gordon Brown, Prime Minister of Great Britain
The next Rwandan presidential elections will not be due until August 9, 2010, but there is already an upsurge in political violence, showing that the Kigali regime is readying a replica of the electoral masquerade of August 25, 2003, which was denounced by independent observers and by different human rights organizations. Assassinations, arbitrary arrests, as well as other forms of persecution of opponents are on the rise, and new waves of refugees continue to swell daily the ranks of millions of Rwandans confined in exile by General Paul Kagame's totalitarian regime. Everything ominously points to a likely flare up of electoral violence throughout the country as was the case in Kenya 2 years ago, and to a repeat of the massive electoral fraud of 2003 which was backed by the Electoral Commission under full control of the Rwandan Patriotic Front.
Since the United States of America and Great Britain are Rwanda’s largest bilateral aid donors, we urge your excellencies to use your undeniable power to bring the Rwandan government to sit down with its entire armed and non-armed opposition, whether inside or outside of Rwanda, in order to jointly set up ideal conditions for free, transparent, pluralistic, and truly democratic elections. To quote President Obama, Rwanda "does not need a strongman; it needs strong institutions" . Yes, you can help the Rwandan people regain their full civil and political rights and spare them additional bloodbaths by giving dialogue a chance – one thing that has been terribly missing in Rwanda's tragic political history.
This petition is submitted November 13, 2009 by WTRR - Women for Truth and Reconciliation in Rwanda, Texas, USA.
Contact: Antoinette Uwimpundu, Spokesperson
E-mail: auwimpundu47@yahoo.com
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PÉTITION POUR DES ÉLECTIONS PRÉSIDENTIELLES DÉMOCRATIQUES AU RWANDA
À l’attention de :
-Son Excellence monsieur le Président des Etats-Unis d’Amérique, Barack Obama
-Son Excellence monsieur le Premier ministre de la Grande Bretagne, Gordon Brown
Les prochaines élections présidentielles rwandaises sont prévues le 9 août 2010 mais déjà, les violences politiques s’intensifient et montrent que le régime de Kigali s’apprête à rééditer la mascarade électorale du 25 août 2003 qui a été dénoncée par les observateurs indépendants et des organisations de défense des droits de la personne . Les assassinats , les arrestations arbitraires ainsi que d’autres formes de persécution des opposants se multiplient et de nouveaux flux de refugiés grossissent quotidiennement les rangs de millions de rwandais condamnés à l’exil par le régime totalitaire du Général Paul Kagame. Tout présage de grandes violences électorales à l’échelle nationale comme cela a été le cas au Kenya il y a deux ans, ainsi que la répétition des fraudes massives de 2003 cautionnées par la commission électorale complètement contrôlée par le Front Patriotique Rwandais.
Étant donné que les États-Unis et la Grande Bretagne sont les plus grands fournisseurs d’aide bilatéral au Rwanda, nous vous demandons, Excellences, d’user de votre indéniable influence pour inciter le gouvernement rwandais à s’asseoir avec toute son opposition, armée et non armée, de l’intérieur et de l’extérieur, en vue de mettre conjointement sur pied les conditions propices à des élections libres, transparentes, pluralistes et véritablement démocratiques. Pour citer le Président Obama, le Rwanda « n’a pas besoin d’homme fort, mais d’institutions fortes » . Oui, vous pouvez contribuer au rétablissement de tous les rwandais dans leurs droits civiques et politiques et éviter d’autres bains de sang en donnant la chance au dialogue qui a cruellement fait défaut dans le tragique passé politique du Rwanda.
La présente pétition est émise le 13 novembre 2009 par WTRR – Women for Truth and Reconciliation in Rwanda, Texas, USA
Contact: Antoinette Uwimpundu, Porte parole
Courriel : auwimpundu47@yahoo.com
Sign the petitionNote:The Support Democratic Elections in Rwanda
Appuyez des Élections Démocratiques au Rwanda petition to President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Gordon Brown, was written by WTRR and is hosted free of charge at GoPetition.
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The UDF-INKINGI condemn the decision to sell 10,000 hectares for bio-fuel production to the detriment of people's food security in Rwanda
Benoit Ndagijimana
Deputy Secretary General
UDF-INKINGI
Brussels, November 9, 2009
Also available in French.
The Rwandan Government Council presided by President Paul Kagame decided during its meeting held on October 28, 2009, to allot 10,000 hectares of lands located in the Eastern Province to a U.S. company “Global Eco-Fuel” and a British company “Eco-Fuel Positive” for the plantation of jatropha curcas intended to produce bio-diesel.
This iniquitous decision is made when prices of food commodities are increasing every day, where many Rwandans barely have one meal a day and display obvious undernourishment and that at least 60% of households in the rural areas of Rwanda suffer from different degrees of food insecurity. This decision poses additional harms to the Rwandan peasants already afflicted not only by current land expropriation underway since July 1994 but also by forced villagization and technocratic regionalization of crops, to the sole benefits of the bureaucratic and wheeler-dealer oligarchy on power in Kigali and whose prominent members also happen to absentee landowners.
Furthermore, Rwandan farmers already have a crucial lack of lands for food crops. An average family farm is about 0.5 to 0.75 hectare that provides food for 3 to 5 people. The population density on arable lands is currently up to 700 inhabitants per square kilometer in Rwanda. The scarcity of arable or pastoral lands constitutes the main cause of spiral disputes and conflicts in Rwanda. The lands that the Kagame regime decided to sell to the above mentioned American and British firms for 49 years could provide food for 15, 000 to 20,000 families or 60,000 to 100,000 people.
The Rwandan farmers have always faced land scarcity. To cope with it the usually relied on marginal lands and used ingenious methods such as combination of crops to avoid forced immigrations towards neighboring countries. Given such circumstances, the Kagame regime's propaganda, spread by the pro-government newspaper “The New Times”, claiming that jatropha curcas plantations may be installed on marginal lands or lands with low productivity, is both cynical and irresponsible.
Supporters of jatropha curcas whose seeds are very toxic to humans and cows and other animals, convey the image of a crop without negative impacts on food security and a crop that may instead provide additional income to farmers and promote sustainable development. This is lie propaganda. Experiments carried out at the international level by organizations and independent research centers in India, Nicaragua, Mozambique or Madagascar [1] show, to the contrary, that jatropha curcas constitutes a threat to food security and does not provide additional income due to its high cost maintenance and its low yields that have been observed.
The ultra-liberal policies of the Kagame regime presented under the umbrella of “Green Revolution” supposedly designed to “prove that he is capable of exporting food in the region” have worsened hunger in Rwanda where nearly a quarter of Rwandans suffer from hunger and where the same proportion of children leave elementary school for the same reasons.
Meanwhile, farmers who actively oppose these cynical politicies continue to be deprived of their economic rights and some of them their rights to life. For instance, in Cyuve, Musanze District, Northern Province, municipal leaders ordered villagers to destroy any crop except for maize, which has been chosen for this year season in this locality. Until recently, Mrs. Kangeyo Elinade, a peasant villager from Kagarama-Gabiro-Mahembe-Nyamasheke was abused to death simply because she was opposed to the destruction of her banana plantations. However, History teaches us that wherever land or agrarian reforms were decreed and have been implemented by force, they failed badly.
In April 2009, during his visit at the Kirehe hospital located near the border with Tanzania, Paul Kagame expressed himself in the following terms with a feigned cynicism: “I do not understand how in our time, adults can suffer from kwashiorkor”. He had just visited adult people that were hospitalized for advanced malnutrition. At these words, a simple peasant who happened to be there by accident replied: “With a single crop, especially intended for commercialization, without beans, sweet potatoes or cereals, it is impossible for all of us to resist famine.
The UDF-INKINGI condemn in the strongest terms such a decision but also such brutal and anti-people policies characteristic of the Kagame regime and request all Rwandan peasants to oppose them by all legitimate means. They call the Rwandan population in general and the Rwandan civil society in particular to support Rwandan farmers in their struggle aimed at acquiring the right to sustain their subsistence first instead of satisfying predatory appetites of the bureaucratic and wheeler-dealer oligarchy of Kigali.
Should the UDF-INKINGI get governmental responsibilities, they will abrogate this decision and distribute the lands back to the peasants. They will implement an agricultural policy aimed to primarily fight against food insecurity and achieve food self-sufficiency first then to export.
Finally, the UDF-INKINGI request the Rwandan people to do everything they can to free themselves from the yoke of the Kagame regime, a regime that shows the most disregard to their problems and with plain unvarnished priority serves foreign interests.
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[1] See the study published in Mozambique and funded by the following NGOs: Alliance Sud, Arbeitsgruppe Schweiz Kolumbien, Basler Appell gegen Gentechnologie, Bio Suisse, Bread for Caritas, Berne Declaration, Agenda of Lent, EPER Kleinbauern Vereinigung Pro-Natura, BE Juso-Reformierte Kirchen SWISSAID, Terre des Hommes, and Uniterre.
(http://www.bfa-ppp.ch/de/deutsch/generalarchiv/single-news//article/8/114/)
The added value of FDU-INKINGI
By Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza
President, FDU-INKINGI
Lausanne, November 8, 2009
Since its inception in 2006, our party, FDU-INKINGI demarcated itself from other political parties in Rwanda, by a progressive, pragmatic, proactive and innovative learning approach. We especially learned a lot from our mistakes. This allowed us to build a political project whose consistency and strength are marked firstly by the ancient and present history of our country on one hand and by the values which must characterize our political actions on the other hand. I surely think that until now, we are the only political organization to have clearly defined both our target group and the founding values of our political actions.
First of all, the party FDU-INKINGI defined their main target which is the suburban and rural world. Indeed, aware that the rural population represents over 80% of the Rwandan population and that an increasing number of citizens are afflicted by current campaigns of land expropriation and live in the periphery of urban centers, the party FDU-INKINGI is determined to be a strong voice of these voiceless people.
In terms of values, they include, beyond all fundamental freedoms, the rule of law, equality and freedom, individual autonomy, solidarity, popular participation, duty of memory, decentralization and sustainable development.
The party FDU-INKINGI is aware that the genocide and crimes against humanity committed between 1990 and 1996 have left severe wounds that are difficult to heal within the Rwandan population. Lessons must be learned, without taboos or subterfuge. It is imperative for us to establish institutions that guarantee, as the apple of one’s eyes, the right to life and personal safety and protect groups against the national obsession with collective disappearance. And it is through the highly inclusive Inter-Rwandan Dialogue, which we will immediately convene, that such an institutional formula should be found. Additionally, justice must be done, but it must be done for all. The Gacaca courts have been instrumentalized by those who would like to derail the work of truth, memory and reconciliation. The party FDU-INKINGI is convinced that these infamous courts, which are a complete perversion of the Rwandan custom and culture should be abolished without delay. A classic court would then take over all pending cases. The judicial system must be cleaned up. It must be totally independent from the executive branch and must reflect in its composition and its philosophy the best interests of the nation.
This issue raises another one, the political institutions. Instead of being instruments of oppression, as they appear today, the party FDU-INKINGI aims at installing political institutions that provide reassurance and reflect a genuine national solidarity by establishing a concordance democracy, decentralization of powers, a political participation at the grassroots level and the rise of a free civil society. All liberticidal laws, such as the current law on the press, political parties and NGOs, will be repealed and put to taste the participative democracy.
State institutions should inspire confidence from the whole population. In particular, the security forces must be depoliticized and serve instead of one person or one political party, but the whole nation.
On the economic plan, the party FDU-INKINGI believes that the gray matter and the central geolinguistic position (Kinyarwanda, Kiswahili, French, even though the current government pays no attention to these three languages, and English) are the main resources to build a national wealth. A small country, with no oil, no coveted natural resources, must invest within its boundaries and abroad in the areas where it can demonstrate a comparative advantage: communications, civil engineering, agricultural engineering, renewable energy, banking and insurance industries, tourism niches and healthcare.
In particular, agricultural policy must promote family ownerships and seek food security. Monoculture should not be a rule and needed agricultural reforms should not be abruptly imposed. Such agrarian reforms must convince producers in the agricultural sector about the correctness of the policy of choice.
Concerning education, the party FDU-INKINGI is in favor of a compulsory schooling system up to 16 years of age and a functional literacy program for adults will be launched on a large scale. The current system of financing higher education is elitist. We will generalize vocational skill trainings for at least 70% of the youth with 18 years of age.
Health is not a commodity. The party FDU-INKINGI intends to install a more important medical coverage on a large scale, with the proliferation of healthcare centers. A plan for free healthcare to the poor must be put in place. It is unacceptable that a patient be denied healthcare due to lack of income.
The party FDU-INKINGI will link political decisions to the extent of long-term effects on future generations as well as any new operating license to environmental impacts. Our future generations should absolutely not inherit from us a catastrophic legacy on biodiversity. After the deforestation of the Mutara locality, the Nyungwe and Gishwati forests must jealously be protected. Each district, with the full participation of young people, will be invited to plant as many trees as there are births per year.
The image of Rwanda abroad has been severely tarnished for its military adventures in the DRC. Currently, the country solely inspires distrust. The party FDU-INKINGI will work to normalize relations with all neighbors and resolve all disputes that constitute the root cause of such distrust. It is in this context that the refugee problem will be a priority for our political agenda. Also political and economic integration in the cultural and economic spaces much wider will constitute the mainstay of our foreign policy. This approach is meant to allow brighter prospects for young people who will provide technical expertise and enjoy a true cultural integration free of the horrors of ethnic fundamentalism.
That is, in summary, the added value that the party FDU-INKINGI brings to the Rwandan people compared to other political parties that operate inside Rwanda or abroad. However, I know that many of you would particularly like to know why we decided to participate in the upcoming presidential elections. Therefore, ask all of your questions and if I can convince you, it will be my turn to ask you to support us.
It’s now time for questions.
Thank you.
ICTR: Rwanda Genocide Ruling Overturned
By Lakemedia.blogs.com
The UN tribunal hearing cases from the 1994 Rwandan genocide has freed a man who had been sentenced to 22 years.
Protais Zigiranyirazo, the brother-in-law of ex-Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana, had been found guilty of organising a massacre of 1,000 people.
But the appeals court judge said there had been serious errors in his trial and his conviction in 2008 violated "the most basic principles of justice".
Reporters say Mr Zigiranyirazo looked stunned and relieved by the ruling.
"God is great and justice has been done. I am very happy," he told the BBC's Great Lakes service.
Mr Habyarimana's plane was shot down on 6 April, 1994, sparking the 100-day massacres in which an estimated 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed.
Mr Zigiranyirazo was accused of leading a convoy that attacked Tutsis who were seeking refuge on a hill a few days after the genocide began.
But Judge Theodor Meron said the trial judgment had "seriously erred in its handling of the evidence", AP news agency reports.
Mr Zigiranyirazo told the BBC he would be seeking compensation for the eight-and-half years he had already spent in detention.
Rwanda's justice minister told the BBC the government was very unhappy about the decision, but could not reverse the judgement.
The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), based in Tanzania, was set up to try high-profile genocide cases.
Kenya warning
Meanwhile, the US ambassador for war crimes, Stephen Rapp, has called on the Kenyan authorities to arrest a key genocide suspect.
The BBC's East Africa correspondent Will Ross says officials at the ICTR have long maintained that Felicien Kabuga is hiding in Kenya and that the Nairobi government is protecting him.
Mr Rapp said he had received fresh reports that Mr Kabuga was in Kenya.
"The latest response of government authorities is, 'Oh he's left.' The ICTR says if he's left show us the evidence. And they say, 'Well we're still looking for that evidence,'" Mr Rapp said.
"If you are still looking for the evidence you cannot honestly say that he has left," he said.
The calls for Hutu people to exterminate the Tutsis during the genocide were broadcast over Radio Mille Collines, which was headed by Mr Kabuga, a wealthy businessman.
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Ignace Murwanashyaka arrested in Germany
By BBC News
November 17, 2009
Police in Germany have arrested two Rwandan militia leaders on suspicion of crimes committed in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Ignace Murwanashyaka, the leader of the FDLR rebel group, and his aide Straton Musoni were held on suspicion of crimes against humanity and war crimes.
FDLR leaders fled to DR Congo after the Rwanda genocide in which some 800,000 people - mostly ethnic Tutsis - died.
The FDLR's presence in DR Congo has been at the heart of years of unrest.
The arrests come as UN peacekeepers continue to help the Congolese army battle the FDLR (Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda).
The operation has been underway since January but the FDLR remains active.
The FDLR is accused of funding its arms purchases by smuggling gold and other minerals from areas it controls in the North and South Kivu provinces, just across the border from Rwanda.
Mr Murwanaskyaka, 46, was arrested in the city of Karlsruhe, while 48-year-old Mr Musoni was held in the Stuttgart area, German prosecutors said in a statement.
The statement said that the pair were the leader and deputy leader of the FDLR.
"The accused are strongly suspected, as members of the foreign terrorist organisation FDLR, of committing crimes against humanity and war crimes," it said.
It added that "FDLR militias are believed to have killed several hundred civilians, raped numerous women, plundered and burned countless villages, forcing villagers from their homes and recruiting numerous children as soldiers".
'Brutal crimes'
Lobby group Human Rights Watch (HRW) has welcomed the arrests.
"Our research clearly indicates that Mr Murwanashyaka has a powerful influence over the FDLR militia who have deliberately targeted and killed hundreds of civilians in eastern Congo and that he is directly linked to the crimes," said HRW DR Congo expert Anneke Van Woudenberg.
"Mr Murwanashyaka's arrest on war crimes and crimes against humanity is a welcome step to bringing justice for these brutal crimes," she added.
Mr Murwanashyaka, an ethnic Hutu, has lived in Germany since before the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.
He has always denied that his men, believed to number 5-6,000, were involved in the genocide and says they are fighting to bring democracy to Rwanda.
He was among 15 people whose assets were frozen by the Security Council in 2005 on suspicion of involvement in war crimes in Rwanda or DR Congo.
The FDLR's presence in eastern DR Congo has led to years of fighting in the region, and Rwanda's Tutsi-dominated government has twice invaded, saying it is trying to wipe them out.
Some FDLR leaders have been accused of involvement in the Rwandan genocide.
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Focus on The ICTR: The Defence Perspective
By Olivier Nyirubugara
http://www.olny.nl/
17 November 2009
The UN International criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) has a few years to go and discussions about its legacy for the International Criminal Law has started. While some perceive that Tribunal as a major advancement, others, including defense laywers, who have been defending genocide suspects for last fourteen years, think that this ICTR and other ad hoc courts, have created a regrettable precedent.
"The ICTR has been a big mistake", said Kenyan defense attorney Kennedy Ogetto. He was speaking in The Hague, The Netherlands on 14 November 2009 in a three-day self-sponsored conference. Over 100 people, mostly Rwandans, but also foreigners coming from all over the world listened to frustration- marked presentations by the lawyers and other scholars and experts.
The ICTR is illegal
The legality of the ICTR is still being discussed, even as the Court’s closure is drawing near. In this regard, the laywers and scholars who spoke during the conference converge to qualify the setting up the ICTR by the Security Council as an abuse of power.
‘No ad hoc criminal court should be created by the UN Security Council’, said, Austrian Philosophy professor Hans Koechler , adding that justice should not be administered by the five super-powers with the veto right. Veteran French Laywer, Roland Weyl agrees:
‘All the tribunals set up by the Security Council are marked by a fundamental international illegality’, he said. He explained that the sole task of the Security Council is to keep and restore peace. ‘The setting up of criminal tribunals is … a prerogative of the General Assembly in its full sovereignty’, he concluded.
Fabricated Truth
The ICTR was set up in late 1994, only months after the genocide that claimed over a million lives among the Tutsi minority. However, many speakers questioned this version, qualifying it as incomplete.
‘Contrary to what took place in Germany where the State clearly persecuted the Jews, what happened in Rwanda is a sui-generis genocide’, said German Historian Helmut Strizek. For him, the vacuum that was created in April 1994 led to what he called a ‘spontaneous genocide’.
‘The ICTR is contributing to the fabrication of distorted truth’, said French author and investigative journalist Pierre Péan in an interview on 14 November. Péan is author of Blancs menteur, noirs fureurs, a 2005 controversial book dedicated to what he calls Tutsi connections in France. He was accused of racial hatred against the Tutsi, whom the book allegedly presents as liars.
Joint Criminal Enterprise
British International Criminal Law scholar and Sorbone professor John Laughland holds that prosecuting and trying suspects in groups in criminal courts undermines the rule of law. The ICTR office of the prosecutor has been using the Joint Criminal Enterprise doctrine to put former government leaders, and former military commanders in groups. According to Laughland and other lawyers, the aim is to prove that a conspiracy took place.
‘The notion of plan is far from contributing to reconciliation’, said Laughland during the conference. He suggested that it would rather fuel conflict and violence as different groups would hasten to have their own plans. He added that in times of armed conflicts, as in Rwanda between 1990 and 1994, ‘crimes might have dictated by the violence of the other side’.
Beth Lyons, another defense lawyer, refers to the Joint Criminal Enterprise as, ‘the nuclear bomb for the prosecutors because with it they can encapsulate all their theories of conspiracy’. In her words, that doctrine tortures Law and Justice.
Acquitted but…
So far, the ICTR has acquitted a few suspects. However, according the laywers, acquittal does not mean so much. The post-prison life seems to be a psychological prison, to paraphrase Malian lawyer Seydou Doumbia. He presented about the ICTR acquitted who are still to be reinserted back into normal life. While some managed to find countries accepting to grant them asylum, many others are still in so called ‘safe houses’ in Arusha, Tanzania. Yet others found their families dislocated and, on top of that, could not find jobs as no one want to employ a genocidaire. ‘ Yet these are people who committed no crimes’, said Doumbia.
His colleagues Sadikou Alao from Benin and John Philipot from Canada, presented about the convicts in Benin jails and in the inmates in ICTR Detention facility, respectively. Their situations is mostly marked by uncertainty and worries, especially as to their fate after the ICTR closure now scheduled in 2012.
Reports and interviews on the 14-16 conference can be found on www.olny.nl
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Protais Zigiranyirazo acquitted by the ICTR
Rwanda: “Genocide Planning” Again Rejected at ICTR
NEWS RELEASE
November 17, 2009
Contact: ICTR Association des Avocats de la Défense (ADAD)
Me. John Philpot: 0755352931 (Arusha)/ 514-844-4655 (Can.)/jphilpot@videotron.ca
Me. Beth Lyons: 201-295-3103 (U.S.)/ bethlyons@aol.com
Prof. Peter Erlinder: 31(0)70 345 92 00 (Hague) 651-271-4616 (U.S.)/peter.erlinder@wmitchell.edu
"Genocide Planning" Again Rejected at ICTR
ARUSHA, TZ – Nov. 17.09 – The Bureau of the ICTR Defense Lawyers Association (ADAD) applauds the Appeal Chamber rejection of charges of “genocide planning” in acquitting Protais Zigiranyirazo, the brother-in-law of Rwandan President Habyarimana whose assassination in April 1994 triggered the violence that swept Rwanda, which has been portrayed as a “long-planned genocide.”
Allegations that close associates of Habyarimana, (labeled the Akazu or “small house” in Kinyarwanda) were engaged in a conspiracy to kill “Tutsis and moderate Hutus” were rejected by the court for the second time in less than a year. The acquittal adds to growing evidence that Kagame and the RPF has conducted a successful disinformation campaign to de-legitimize the former Rwandan government, and to deflect attention from their own crimes in Rwanda and the Congo. In December 2008 the NY Times and most recent of four Reports by UN Experts detailed the occupation and illegal theft of Congo resources by Rwanda and Uganda since the 1996 invasion, which has resulted in some 6-million civilian deaths.
The Appeal Chamber acquittal follows the December 2008 Military-1 Trial Chamber Judgement, published in Feb. 2009, acquitting four high-ranking military officers guilty of “conspiracy to commit genocide,” including Colonel Theoneste Bagosora, the alleged “author of the genocide.” After 7-years of trial, the court found that Prosecutor’s evidence was explained by normal military planning in the course of the war that raged for 4-years, following the 1990 invasion of Rwanda from Uganda, by the RPF army of current Rwandan President Paul Kagame.
The Zigiranyirazo acquittal was announced on the same day that the ICTR defense concluded a three-day conference at The Hague that highlighted the fact that ICTR Prosecutor Del Ponte publicly stated in 2003 that she had evidence to prosecute the current government. All of the 80 ICTR accused are associated with the former Rwandan government. None of the “victors” of the four-year Rwanda civil war have been charged by the ICTR, although both France and Spain have charged more than 40 members of the current Rwandan government for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, including current President Paul Kagame.
According to Del Ponte, she was removed from her ICTR post by the US and UK when she refused to follow instructions from the US State Department to drop all investigations of Kagame and RPF crimes because they were important allies of the US in Africa. The continuing “cover-up” of RPF crimes was furthered by her successors Chief Prosecutor Abu-Bakr Jallow and his deputy Steven Rapp, the current U.S. war crimes ambassador.
ADAD calls for ICTR trials to be halted; ICTR convictions to be reviewed by an independent UN Commission; and, conditional release of detainees pending completion of a full investigation of manipulations of the ICTR by Security Council members.
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More Missing Puzzle Pieces for Inquiring Minds or Possibly Trolls
