The dictator Kagame at UN

The dictator Kagame at UN
Dictators like Kagame who have changed their national constitutions to remain indefinitely on power should not be involved in UN high level and global activities including chairing UN meetings

Why has the UN ignored its own report about the massacres of Hutu refugees in DRC ?

The UN has ignored its own reports, NGOs and media reports about the massacres of hundreds of thousands of Hutu in DRC Congo (estimated to be more than 400,000) by Kagame when he attacked Hutu refugee camps in Eastern DRC in 1996. This barbaric killings and human rights violations were perpetrated by Kagame’s RPF with the approval of UK and USA and with sympathetic understanding and knowledge of UNHCR and international NGOs which were operating in the refugees camps. According to the UN, NGO and media reports between 1993 and 2003 women and girls were raped. Men slaughtered. Refugees killed with machetes and sticks. The attacks of refugees also prevented humanitarian organisations to help many other refugees and were forced to die from cholera and other diseases. Other refugees who tried to return to Rwanda where killed on their way by RFI and did not reach their homes. No media, no UNHCR, no NGO were there to witness these massacres. When Kagame plans to kill, he makes sure no NGO and no media are prevent. Kagame always kills at night.

29 Apr 2009

The power of horror in Rwanda

The power of horror in Rwanda

Fifteen years ago, efforts at genocide killed about 800,000 Rwandans. Now that tragedy is providing the government with a cover for repression.
by
Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch

April 11, 2009

Rwanda has a long way to go. Despite the facade of occasional elections, the government essentially runs a one-party state. And ironically, it is the genocide that has provided the government with a cover for repression.
During a gruesome three months in 1994, about 800,000 Rwandans were murdered as part of a calculated effort by a group of Hutu extremists to eradicate the country's Tutsi population.
The genocide ended only with the military victory of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, a rebel group founded by Rwandan exiles who ousted the Hutu extremists. The front's austere and savvy commander, Paul Kagame, now serves as Rwanda's president.
In the 15 years since the extremist government was ousted, Rwanda has become an island of stability in a volatile region. The economy is booming, the distinction between Hutu and Tutsi is officially downplayed, and ethnic and political violence has been largely eradicated. Kigali, the capital of a country that likes to portray itself as the Switzerland of Africa, is orderly and manicured.
But Rwanda has a long way to go. Despite the facade of occasional elections, the government essentially runs a one-party state. And ironically, it is the genocide that has provided the government with a cover for repression. Under the guise of preventing another genocide, the government displays a marked intolerance of the most basic forms of dissent.
There is no meaningful opposition. The press is cowed. Nongovernmental organizations are under attack. When parliamentary elections held last September produced a whopping 92% victory for Kagame's ruling party, evidence collected by the European Union and Rwandan monitors suggested that the government actually inflated the percentage of opposition votes so as to avoid the appearance of an embarrassing Soviet-style acclamation.
One tool of repression has been the gacaca courts -- informal tribunals run without trained lawyers or judges -- which the government established at the community level to try alleged perpetrators of the genocide. The original impetus was understandable: Rwandan prisons were overpopulated with tens of thousands of alleged genocidaires and no prospect of the country's regular courts trying them within any reasonable time. The gacaca courts provided a quick, if informal, way to resolve these cases. In theory, members of the community would know who had or had not been involved in the genocide, but in reality the lack of involvement by legal professionals has left the proceedings open to manipulation.
Today, 15 years after the genocide, people are still coming forward and accusing their neighbors of complicity in it, suggesting that gacaca has morphed into a forum for settling personal vendettas or silencing dissident voices. The prospect of suddenly being accused of past participation in the genocide, with little legal recourse against concocted charges, is enough to make most people keep their heads down in the political arena.
The government says it will close the gacaca courts in June. But the government has another tool of control -- the crime of "genocide ideology." Formally adopted last year, the law outlawing "genocide ideology" is written so broadly that it can encompass even the most innocuous comments. As many Rwandans have discovered, disagreeing with the government or making unpopular statements can easily be portrayed as genocide ideology, punishable by sentences of 10 to 25 years. That leaves little political space for dissent.
Pressing the government to amend these repressive laws and practices is not easy, as I discovered in recent meetings with senior officials from the prime minister on down. They are understandably sensitive about political invective that can lead to renewed ethnic slaughter, but the public faces the very real danger that any political criticism of the government will be construed as fomenting genocide.
Western governments, guilt-ridden at not having stopped the genocide and impressed by Rwanda's stability and economic growth, have been all too willing to close their eyes to this repressive sleight of hand.
But Kagame's strategy is shortsighted and dangerous. He claims to be building a society in which citizens are only Rwandans, not Tutsi or Hutu, but his repression of civil society means that avenues to forge alternative bonds among people are limited. That makes it more likely that in moments of tension Rwandans will resort to their ethnic identity, as so often happens in repressive societies.
The challenge for world leaders 15 years after Rwanda's genocide is to overcome guilt and look beyond the enforced peace to convince Kagame and his government to build the foundation for more organic, lasting stability.
The best way to prevent another genocide is to insist that Kagame stop manipulating the last one.


http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/04/11/power-horror-rwanda

Rwanda: Restore BBC to the Air

Growing Media Restrictions Cast Doubt on Nation’s Commitment to Free Speech
April 27, 2009

This suspension of the BBC reflects the Rwandan government's growing crackdown on free speech. If Rwanda is truly committed to the fundamental right of free expression, it should allow differing viewpoints on genocide issues and related government policies.
Georgette Gagnon, Africa director at Human Rights Watch (New York) - The Rwandan government should immediately reverse its suspension of the Kinyarwanda radio service of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), Human Rights Watch said today. The Rwandan minister of information, Louise Mushikiwabo, justified the suspension on the grounds that the program amounted to a "blatant denial of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi of Rwanda" and called it "unacceptable speech."

Up to 800,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutu were killed by the extremist elements in the majority Hutu population during the genocide. It ended with the military victory of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a Tutsi rebel group founded by Rwandan exiles and led by Paul Kagame, now the president. Since the genocide, the Kagame-led government has sought to portray an image of national unity in Rwanda and it allows no public references in any form to Hutu or Tutsi ethnicity.
"This suspension of the BBC reflects the Rwandan government's growing crackdown on free speech," said Georgette Gagnon, Africa director at Human Rights Watch. "If Rwanda is truly committed to the fundamental right of free expression, it should allow differing viewpoints on genocide issues and related government policies."
The BBC's suspension is part of a broader pattern of increasing government interference in the Rwandan media, including threats to suspend major media outlets such as the BBC and Voice of America and the banning of independent Rwandan journalists from government news conferences.
The BBC suspension on April 25, 2009 occurred after the station broadcast a coming attraction for its weekly program Imvo n'imvano ("Analysis of the Source of a Problem") that was to include a debate on forgiveness among Rwandans after the genocide. The advance segment included comments by a former presidential candidate, Faustin Twagiramungu, opposing the government's attempt to have the country's entire Hutu population apologize for the genocide, since not all Hutu people had killed Tutsi or otherwise participated in the genocide.
It also included a man of mixed Hutu-Tutsi ethnicity questioning why the government had refused to allow relatives of those killed by the RPF forces to grieve for their loved ones. According to estimates from experts working for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, the group's soldiers killed between 25,000 and 45,000 people between April and August 1994.
The suspension comes days before Rwanda is to host a regional conference celebrating "World Press Day," to be attended by high level delegates from the East African Community. The theme of this year's event is the role of media in reconciliatory dialogue.
"Meaningful and open discussion on the genocide and its aftermath could help foster reconciliation and stability in Rwanda," said Gagnon. "Repressive restrictions on such discussions by branding them as ‘unacceptable speech' may achieve the opposite."
This suspension of the BBC reflects the Rwandan government's growing crackdown on free speech. If Rwanda is truly committed to the fundamental right of free expression, it should allow differing viewpoints on genocide issues and related government policies. Georgette Gagnon, Africa director
Recent legislation, currently awaiting presidential approval, proposes to ban all national journalists without a university degree or certificate in journalism. Most independent Rwandan journalists have neither. The legislation would make defamation a criminal offense in addition to other civil and administrative sanctions, and would impose a wide range of restrictions on gathering and reporting information.
In March, the UN Human Rights Committee expressed concerns over reports that the Rwandan government had subjected journalists critical of government policies to intimidation and harassment and had charged other journalists with "divisionism," a crime vaguely defined under Rwandan law as spreading ideas that encourage ethnic animosity between the country's Tutsi and Hutu populations. "Divisionism" is often used interchangeably with the term "genocide ideology" - a crime that was first adopted into Rwanda's law in 2008 but that the government has used for at least five years to punish expression of any ideas that could lead to genocide. The government lodged complaints against the BBC radio station in 2004 after a parliamentary report accused it of propagating "genocide ideology." Rwanda's international donors and human rights organizations have criticized the terms as too sweeping and punishing speech that is intended neither to incite violence nor to deny the existence of the genocide.
The UN committee urged the Rwandan government to guarantee freedom of expression for the press and all citizens in accordance with the government's international obligations under Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
In August 2008, shortly before Rwanda's parliamentary elections, the country's information minister warned the BBC that it would be suspended it if failed to abandon its "non-factual reporting." BBC journalists from the Kinyarwanda service have been excluded from several government events since that time.
During World Press Day celebrations in Kigali in May 2008, the government removed three leading independent journalists - Charles Kabonero of Umuseso, Jean Bosco Gasasira of Umuvugizi, and Jean Grober Burasa of Rushyashya - from the celebrations and barred them from all official news conferences. The journalists were also prohibited from interviewing government officials, with both prohibitions continuing to this day. A diplomatic incident occurred in September 2008 when a scheduled news conference marking the signature of a new US Millennium Challenge Corporation partnership agreement with Rwanda had to be cancelled by the US embassy in Kigali because the Rwandan government refused to allow the three journalists to attend.
In late 2007, the government accused a BBC journalist, Yusuf Mugenzi, of exacerbating ethnic differences through the Imvo n'imvano program, which brings together leading - and at times controversial - figures from the Rwandan diaspora. Government officials accused the program of giving airtime to "genocide fugitives," referring to the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), a Hutu rebel group based in eastern Congo, some of whose members took part in the 1994 genocide and continue to threaten stability in the region. The government also warned that BBC's license might not be renewed if the program did not assume a more positive tone.
"Rwanda's targeting of the media, including the suspension of the BBC, calls into question Rwanda's respect for press freedom," said Gagnon. "With presidential elections scheduled for 2010, it is critical that the government guarantee free and fair discussion of issues, failing which Rwanda cannot be viewed by it partners as a thriving democracy."

http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/04/27/rwanda-restore-bbc-air

Genocide Memorial Site to be constructed in London

Wednesday, 29th April 2009

Source: The New Times

Joseph Habineza the Minister of Sports and Culture in parliament yesterday.

BY EDWIN MUSONI

The Minister of Sports and Culture has said that the government is in its final stages of putting up an International Memorial Site of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in London, United Kingdom.
Addressing Parliament yesterday, Minister Joseph Habineza said, “we have acquired a big piece of land and we are now in talks with experts who will put up the memorial.”
He added that the government is yet to decide what will be put in the memorial and that the information will be about Rwanda’s history and the 1994 Genocide.
“Experts have wished to have some art crafts made in the form of human limbs while others have thought of airlifting some remains from here to the London memorial but we intend to maintain the originality,” said Habineza.
He also told lawmakers that the memorial will not only serve as a symbol of remembrance of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, but also as a tool to educate the Westerners who will visit the monument.
Details of the London memorial site came up in Habineza’s response to MPs’ queries on the damning status of memorial sites across the country.
The parliament had quizzed him and Foreign Affairs Minister Rosemary Museminali over the same issue late last month but they failed to satisfy them and were requested to re-appear before the House to shed more light through a written submission.
In a similar development, before starting his presentation on the situation of memorial sites in the country, Habineza requested the parliament to stand and observe two minutes of silence honouring the Tutsi massacred in the 1994 Genocide.

Ends

Human Rights Watch calls on Rwanda to reinstate BBC broadcasts

Accessed: 28-April-2009

APA-Kigali (Rwanda) The Rwandan government should immediately reverse its suspension of the Kinyarwanda radio service of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), Human Rights Watch said Tuesday in a protest statement, expressing growing media repression and casting doubts on the country´s commitment to free speech.
The Rwandan Minister of Information and government spokesperson, Louise Mushikiwabo, last Saturday order the suspension of BBC programmes in Rwanda, justifying that the United Kingdom government´s mouth-piece programs especially those in Kinyarwanda, amounted to a "blatant denial of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi of Rwanda" and called it "unacceptable. "

The UK government is the major single donor to the Rwandan government with more than 60 million pounds sterling injected annually as direct budget support. Over one million people were killed during the 1994 genocide in just 100 days targeting mainly the minority Tutsis. It ended with the military victory of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a rebel group founded by Rwandan exiles and led by Paul Kagame, now the president.

Since the genocide, the Kagame-led government has sought to portray an image of national unity in Rwanda and it allows no public references in any form to Hutu or Tutsi ethnicity.
"This suspension of the BBC reflects the Rwandan government´s growing crackdown on free speech," said Georgette Gagnon, Africa director at Human Rights Watch in a statement also availed to APA. "If Rwanda is truly committed to the fundamental right of free expression, it should allow differing viewpoints on genocide issues and related government policies."

The world rights body adds that the BBC´s suspension was part of a broader pattern of increasing government interference in the Rwandan media, including threats to suspend major media outlets such as the BBC and Voice of America and the banning of independent Rwandan journalists from government news conferences.

The BBC suspension on April 25, 2009 occurred after the station broadcast a coming attraction for its weekly program Imvo n´imvano ("Analysis of the Source of a Problem") that was to include a debate on forgiveness among Rwandans after the genocide. The advance segment included comments by a former presidential candidate, Faustin Twagiramungu, opposing the government´s attempt to have the
country´s entire Hutu population apologize for the genocide, since not all Hutu people had killed Tutsi or otherwise participated in the genocide.

"Rwanda´s targeting of the media, including the suspension of the BBC, calls into question Rwanda´s respect for press freedom," said Gagnon. "With presidential elections scheduled for 2010, it is critical that the government guarantees free and fair discussion of issues, failing which Rwanda cannot be viewed by it partners as a thriving democracy."

SN/daj/APA
2009-04-28

26 Apr 2009

U.S./U.K. Allies Grab Congo Riches and Millions Die

U.S./U.K. Allies Grab Congo Riches and Millions Die
2001-03 UN Expert Reports

By Prof. Peter Erlinder

Global Research, November 4, 2008


Once again, the suffering of African people caught up in a war that makes little sense to non-Africans has made the front pages in western media, as more than a million people have been displaced in the past week by renewed fighting in the Eastern Congo.2 For most Americans who don’t pay much attention to the details of African history and politics, the humanitarian disaster in the Congo has exploded into public consciousness, as if the 25-year war to control Central Africa began only yesterday.
The “ Congo story” Behind the Headlines
But, in fact, the human rights disaster that the people of the world are watching on our TV screens is just the most recent human tragedy in a 25 year struggle for economic and political dominance in Central Africa that has been raging since the decline and eventual collapse of the Soviet influence in Africa in the 1980’s and early 1990’s. A sad fact of the 20th Century is that, even after the end of formal “colonialism” in the mid-20th Century, ruling African elites in virtually every African nation have looked to one or more powerful “sponsors” in the developed world to gain or retain power. And, to grab the personal wealth that goes with political/military power in Africa.
In Africa, “government” is a well-accepted avenue for trained and educated African elites to get ahead economically, without having to immigrate to more developed nations outside of Africa . Few major private multi-national economic entities are based in Africa , and “para-statal” government monopolies or government-approved contracting with private foreign sources of capital from the developed world are the main sources of economic development in many African countries. The result is that political and military power is inevitably entwined with economic benefit for those who manage to achieve state-power whether by the ballot, or by force.3
In addition, direct support from industrialized nations in the form of “aid” must be funneled through governmental agencies. And, even today, “donor income” from the industrialized world makes up a large portion of the budgets of nearly every African nation.4 And, after the end of support from the Soviet Bloc in about 1990, local leaders were forced to choose between Anglo-American aid and investment or from former colonial masters that comprise the EU countries, at least until China began developing economic relations with African nations within the past few years.5
“Blood Diamonds,” Leonardo DeCaprio’s recent film, makes the point that every lengthy war in Africa is possible only with support from foreign governments or private interests (or both)…..which necessarily have designs on African resources in return. And, so it is with the 25-year war for control of the riches of Central Africa, of which the humanitarian disaster in the Congo is the most recent example.
The recent British/French “diplomatic initiative” to discuss yet another ceasefire with Congo’s President Kabila and Rwanda’s Paul Kagame, makes absolutely clear who the real protagonists are in this most recent eruption of the war in the Congo.6 It is now generally understood that the Congo “rebels” are closely-enough connected to Kagame’s Rwanda that it is more important to negotiate with him than with Gen. Laurent Nkunda, the titular leader of the Congolese-tutsi “rebel” army.
But, the connections between the suffering in the Congo and either Rwanda or Uganda are rarely discussed in mainstream media, least in the English-speaking world. And, to the extent we are informed about the reasons for the Congo War at all, we are told that Gen. Nkunda is at war “to protect the tutsi minority.” That the continued fighting as something to do with the 1994 “ Rwanda genocide.” And, that “hutu genocidaires” have to be rooted out of the Eastern Congo to protect both Congolese “tutsis” and the territory of Rwanda , itself.
However, it has been more than 14 years since Kagame seized complete power in Rwanda, which means that anyone under 30 could not have been directly involved in the 1994 events in Rwanda that Kagame’s government calls the “Genocide”. Today’s teenage combatants were either children or not yet born, when civilians-killed-civilians in Rwanda in 1994. At most, Gen Nkunda is fighting the “children of the genocidaires”…and the scope of the fighting as reached far beyond the limited areas near the Rwandan border where anti-government Rwandan-refugees (both tutsi and hutu) are actually located.
And, even without considering the wars in Uganda and Rwanda that lasted from 1981 to 1994, at least, there can be no dispute that the Congo war has been raging since 1996…which means that the war is not only inter-generational…but must be funded from outside Africa in a “Blood Diamonds”-like scenario….and it is.
Origins of the Congo War: 2001-03 UN Experts’ Reports
In fact, evidence has long existed that the war in the Eastern Congo , between 1996 and today, has little or nothing to do with “ethnicity” or capturing “genocidaires.”7 Like “weapons of mass destruction” used to justify another war of aggression by the U.S. on Iraq.….“ethnic” and “response to the genocide” have been used by both Uganda and Rwanda to justify a war of aggression, waged for economic reasons, described in the UN Experts Reports. Not coincidentally, Uganda and Rwanda are two of the largest recipients of US and British economic and military assistance in Africa.8 Wars initiated by Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni and Rwanda’s Paul Kagame, have raged in Central Africa since Museveni’s 1981 invasion to seize power in Uganda,9 which the Red Cross reported had killed at least 300,000 civilians by the time he took power in 1986.10
The real reasons for the ongoing war in the Congo is described in great detail in several United Nations Security Council Expert Reports,11 make clear that war and massive civilian deaths in the Eastern Congo since 1996 have little, if anything to do with “tribalism,” “ethnicity,” or even the “Rwanda genocide.” But, rather, have everything to do with the rape of the Congo’s resources by the militaries of Rwanda and Uganda and their local surrogates.
According to three separate UN Security Council Reports, issued between 2001 and 2003, war on the Congo began when Uganda and Rwanda made common-cause with local Congolese leader Laurent Kabila, and other Congolese elites, to control the vast resources of the Eastern Congo in 1996. The UN Reports show that that since, the 1996 invasion and a second invasion in 1998, Rwanda and Uganda have become the major trading centers for diamonds, precious metals and other natural resources that are not found in either country.....but which exist in great quantities in the Congo.12 As of 2003, the UN Security Council Reports put the cost of civilian lives at some 3 million (the current estimate is more than 5 million lives….so far).
The Rwanda/Uganda Rape of the Congo Continues Today
For more than 3 decades, the “anti-Communist” credentials of the former Congolese Joseph Mobutu had protected him from western criticism during the Cold War, despite his brutal kleptocracy that had been matched only by vicious pre-independence colonial rule of Belgian King Leopold.13 But, after the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990’s and Mobutu became politically expendable, Uganda/Rwanda-supported “Congolese rebels” replaced him with Laurent Kabila in 1997 and Kabila agreed to a treaty that split economic dominance of the Eastern Congo between Uganda and Rwanda in the areas adjacent to their own borders.
By 1998, however, Uganda and Rwanda invaded Eastern Congo again, after the new President Kabila began attempting to reclaim military and economic influence in the areas of his country controlled by Rwanda and Uganda . Unlike 1996, Kabila had made alliances with other African nations that opposed the foreign-supported aggression against the Congo and troops from Angola , Zimbabwe and Namibia entered the war in support of the Kabila government. Despite a 1999 Lusaka peace treaty, which also provided for the creation of MONUC (UN Observer Mission in the Congo ), the war continued. In 2000, while the U.S. media was distracted by the Bush/Gore campaign, the Uganda/Rwanda began vying for control over portions of the Congo and the long-standing alliance split over control of the resources of the Eastern Congo.14
UN Experts: Decades-long Congo Resources Rape
By January 2001, this “first world war of Africa ” had killed more than 3 million people, Laurent Kabila was assassinated and was replaced by his son, Joseph. For many years, the Rwandan government had claimed that its interests in the Congo was protection from “genocidaires” hiding in the Congo…but the falsity of this claim was exposed in July 2001, when the UN Security Council received its first preliminary report on the exploitation of Congo’s resources. The first, interim report documents the plunder of coffee, timber, diamonds, gold and “coltan” (the largest supply of grey gold can be found in the Congo) by Rwandan and Ugandan forces in the areas each controlled.15
Another more extensive report in October 2002 documented the seizure of banks, sugar refineries, mines and provides the names of local leaders and war-lords with ties to Uganda and Rwanda…as well as describing the ties between both “hutu” and “tutsi” Rwandans who were working together to enrich themselves, and their Rwandan and Ugandan sponsors, at the expense of the indigenous Congolese.16 And the October 2003 Security Council Report states:
“….The Rwandan Defense Forces (RDF) still play an important but highly discreet role in the [RCD-Goma’s] operations….” And, that the Rwanda-linked network in the Eastern Congo had the objective of “…permanent, autonomous control over the territory of the eastern DRC…” (citing training operations and lines of communication to Kigali).17
By 2008, the MONUC “peacekeeping-observer” mission has grown to 17,000 troops, the largest in UN history, but its Spanish military commander resigned last week “for personal reasons” after only a month in his post when Kagame/Nkunda troops over-ran Congolese military posts18and war-torn Congolese began stoning UN forces for failing to protect them.19 But MONUC is the creation of the UN Security Council. But, U.S and Britain have Security Council veto-power that can prevent more aggressive options, as also occurred during the Rwanda War in 1994, when the US/UK prevented UN-military opposition to Kagame and Museveni’s military adventures.
A History of Big Power-Central Africa Disinformation
Although the real reasons for the Congo War have been well-documented by UN Security Council sources, as well as the fact that US/UK surrogates are getting rich in the Congo, neither the United States nor Britain have much of an interest in helping critics and Human Right activists “connect the “dots” that link Yoweri Museveni/Kagame’s 1986 military-takeover of Uganda or Paul Kagame’s military-takeover of Rwanda in 1994, with the horror that has engulfed the Congo since the joint Rwanda/Uganda invasion of 1996. The indisputable evidence of the Museveni/Kagame/Nkunda “axis of evil” in Central Africa has rarely, if ever, seen the light of day.
After Museveni seized power in 1986, Uganda became, and remains, a major recipient of British aid to Africa, as well as the beneficiary of British military training and armaments.20 After Museveni took power, the CIA also established its major African electronic listening post in Kampala, Uganda’s capital. And, Kagame’s long-standing Pentagon ties can be traced to the 1980’s and he was actually had been receiving U.S. officer training in Ft. Leavenworth Kansas which he returned to Uganda, then Rwanda, to lead the 1990 invasion. His reputation in U.S. military circles remained intact when he seized power in 1994,21 during his first invasion of the Congo in 199622 AND during the 1998 second Congo invasion.23
By the time of the 1996 Congo invasion, the Rwandan military had been receiving U.S. military training for at least two years (and perhaps more) and Kagame’s Pentagon ties had been established for at least ten years. Today Britain remains Uganda ’s largest foreign patron. And, U.S. support as swelled the Rwandan army from 7,000 Belgian/French-trained troops under the previous government when Museveni/Kagame invaded in 1990,24 to an estimated 70,000 to 100,000 U.S.-trained and armed troops in 2007.25
But, the mutually-beneficial relationships between the U.S. and Britain and their African surrogates goes both ways. Not only are Rwandan and Ugandan elites basking in the Congo’s stolen wealth, but “private contractors” from both countries are two of the largest contingents of military-mercenaries in Iraq26 and in Darfur, where the Chinese-supported Sudanese government has rejected US/UK investment and have been labeled “genocidaires” in a far less-bloody conflict than the Rwandan/Ugandan adventure the Congo.27 Ugandan troops28 are also part of the U.S.-Ethiopian “Christian” occupation of “Muslim” Somalia29….which was the greatest humanitarian tragedy in Africa before last week….30 when the Congo War disaster reached the headlines, again.
Casual visitors to Uganda and Rwanda can’t help but notice that both Central African countries are better off than their neighbors, both economically and in terms of social organization. Compared to other African countries that lack close relationships to wealthy sponsors, these two, small, densely-populated nations appear to be outposts of calm and relative prosperity on a continent.31 But, the fact is that the relative prosperity and calm in Museveni’s militarized Uganda and Kagame’s militarized Rwanda has come at the terrible price of more than 5 million Congolese lives, as documented by the UN Reports.
“Piercing the Veil” of US/UK Central Africa Disinformation
There is now no doubt that , when Ugandan Major Paul Kagame invaded Rwanda in 1990, he was accompanied by nearly 25% of the Ugandan army32 and Ugandan complicity has been confirmed by formerly confidential US and UN files at the UN Tribunal for Rwanda. And, like other African wars, the cost of supporting the Museveni/Kagame 4-year war of attrition must have come from outside the country. And, most probably, the massive support must have come from or been known by Uganda ’s main foreign sponsors, the US and UK. As one former U.S. State Department source has stated:
“Either Museveni was misusing (the U.S. support ) he was receiving and was not being called to account…or he was using it for the purpose intended.”33
Previously classified U.S. and UN documents and testimony, now in evidence at the UN Rwanda Tribunal, show that Kagame, himself, touched off the “Rwanda genocide” by assassinating former Rwandan President and launching an assault to seize power within minutes after shooting down President Habyarimana’s plane on the night April 6, 1994.….long before any of the alleged civilian killings began, in response to the assassination. The well-planned and organized “blitzkrieg” controlled the eastern-third of the country by the third week in April, and civilian killings were reported to the UN in the Kagame-controlled area days later.34
Even former UN Rwanda Tribunal Chief Prosecutor, Swiss Judge Carla del Ponte,35 and former Chief Investigator, Australian Barrister Michael Hourigan have called for the UN Rwanda Tribunal to prosecute Kagame.36 And, even though both France and Spain have issued INTERPOL warrants for Kagame and his associates,37 he continues to receive invitations to speak at prestigious institutions in the US and Britain, where the INTERPOL warrants have been ignored.38
The Rwanda/Congo “Genocide” Connections
Perhaps most important, at least from an American perspective, recently de-classified UN39 and State Dept documents show that U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher had reports of massive civilian killings by Kagame’s no later than September 1994.40 And, despite the evidence in contemporaneous UN and US documents, the U.S. has permitted Kagame’s crimes to be blamed on others…and to be re-characterized by Kagame and the ICTR as a “genocide” committed by Kagame’s enemies.41 Which, if true, would make the Rwanda War the first in history in which only the losing side in the war committed crimes and atrocities. A WWII analogy would to blame the Japanese, not only for their own crimes, for U.S. bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, too, or blaming the Germans for the fire-bombing of Dresden, the massacres on the Eastern Front and the sack of Berlin.
The former UN Chief Prosecutor Del Ponte has publicly described how she was to the State Department in the summer of 2003 by Bush Ambassador for War Crimes, Pierre Prosper. Prosper, also a former ICTR Prosecutor, told her that she must drop all investigations of Kagame’s crimes, or risk being removed from office. When Judge Del Ponte insisted that the evidence required that he be prosecuted for war crimes and genocide, she was removed from her office at the Rwanda Tribunal within 90 days, at the insistence of the U.S. and Britain.42
And, now that we know (from the 2001-03 UN Security Council and UN original UN Rwanda documents) that we have been the victims of a disinformation campaign, when it comes to the origins and reasons for the Congo War. If the role of Rwanda and Uganda in the Congo have been distorted, how can we be sure of Kagame’s version of how he came to power in Rwanda in 1994, as a “saviour”…when the Security Council knew that, less than two years later, Kagame and Museveni invaded the Congo to enrich themselves and are responsible for more than 5 million deaths since that time?”
Either the 2001-03 Reports are wrong….and former UN Chief Prosecutor Del Ponte is wrong….and the UN Chief Investigator Hourigan is wrong….or the story of the Congo War, as well as the “Rwanda Genocide” must be re-investigated… and re-written. But we need not start a debate before the research into original, contemporaneous documents is more complete than it is now.
Some the answers about the “Rwanda Genocide” are in the formerly classified documents now in evidence at the UN Tribunal for Rwanda , but which have received no more attention than the 2001-03 UN Security Council Experts’ Reports that detail the Ugandan and Rwandan rape of the Congo . The evidence exists in publicly accessible archives of the UN Security Council and Rwanda Tribunal….just waiting to be read!43
Notes
1 Prof. Peter Erlinder, ICTR Lead Ntabakuze Defence Counsel, Past-President, National Lawyers Guild, NY, President of ICTR (International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda)-ADAD (Association des Avocats de la Defense), Wm Mitchell College of Law, St. Paul, MN 55105/651-290-6384.
2 www.cnn/2008/World/Africa/10/31.
3 See examples of Uganda and Rwanda seizure of resources in the Congo described in: 2001 UN Security Council Report of the Panel of Experts on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and Other Forms of Wealth of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, (S/2001/1146); 2002 UN Security Council Report of the Panel of Experts on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and Other Forms of Wealth of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (S/2002/1146, October 12, 2002); UN Security Council Report of the Panel of Experts on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and Other Forms of Wealth of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (s/2003/1146, October 20, 2003).
4 Uganda is the fourth largest recipient of British aid. See, D. Blair: “British Ally behind world’s bloodiest conflict” infra.
5 Council of Foreign Relations Backgrounder. www.cfr.org/publication/9557.
6 BBC World News, Nov. 1, 2008; www.cnn/2008/World/Africa/10/31
7 In 2001, Human Rights Watch reported that Rwanda’s troops in the Congo outnumbered Congolese forces by nearly 4-1, that Rwanda controlled an area 15 times larger than Rwanda, itself, and that claims of ethnic conflict were merely a cover for Rwanda’s invasion. www/hrw.org/background/Africa/Rwanda/13101 .
8 Blair, David, UK Telegraph, April 29, 2006: “British Ally behind world’s bloodiest conflict”, http://www.telegraph.co.uk:
One of Britain's closest allies in Africa is stoking the flames of anarchy in the Democratic Republic of Congo by arming brutal militias in return for gold and mineral wealth.…The flow of weapons from Uganda breaches a UN arms embargo imposed on eastern Congo in 2003 and expanded to cover the entire country last year. At the same time British aid to Uganda totals £70 million this year, of which £30 million goes directly into the coffers of President Yoweri Museveni's government.…Mr Museveni…is the fourth largest recipient of British aid in Africa….
9 Paul Kagame was Museveni’s Chief of Military Intelligence during the 1981-86 war, and after. Colin Waugh, Paul Kagame and Rwanda, (McFarland, London 2004) p. 25.
10 Id. p. 35. See, Mamdani, Mamood: When Victims Become Killers, (Kampala, Fountain 2001).
11 See, 2001 UN Security Council Report of the Panel of Experts on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and Other Forms of Wealth of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, (S/2001/1146); 2002 UN Security Council Report of the Panel of Experts on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and Other Forms of Wealth of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (S/2002/1146, October 12, 2002); 2003 UN Security Council Report of the Panel of Experts on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and Other Forms of Wealth of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (s/2003/1146, October 20, 2003).
12 Blair, David, UK Telegraph, April 29, 2006: “British Ally behind world’s bloodiest conflict”, http://www.telegraph.co.uk:
….Uganda invaded its giant neighbour in 1998, helping to start Congo's civil war. This has escalated to become the bloodiest conflict seen anywhere in the world since 1945. Some 3.9 million people have died, according to one survey, with most succumbing to war-induced starvation and disease.…. Official figures from the Bank of Uganda show that the country has become a significant gold exporter - despite possessing scarcely any gold of its own. Thus in 2004, the bank reported domestic gold production of only 1.4 tons - but gold exports of 7.3 tons….
13 The earlier Belgian exploitation of the Congo is described by Adam Hochschild, King Leopold’s Ghost, 1998.
14 Note 4, infra.
15 2001 UN Security Council Report of the Panel of Experts on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and Other Forms of Wealth of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, (S/2001/1146).
16 2002 UN Security Council Report of the Panel of Experts on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and Other Forms of Wealth of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (S/2002/1146, October 12, 2002).
17 2003 UN Security Council Report of the Panel of Experts on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and Other Forms of Wealth of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (s/2003/1146, October 20, 2003).
18 www.france24.com/en/20081027. Spanish general commanding UN troops in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Lieutenant General Vicente Diaz de Villegas y Herreria, resigned after less than a month as rebel forces of ethnic Tutsi warlord Laurent Nkunda wrested control of a strategic camp in east DRC from government forces.
19 www.MONUC.org/news/October-28-2008.
20 Uganda is the fourth largest recipient of British aid. See, D. Blair: “British Ally behind world’s bloodiest conflict” supra.
21 In April 1994, U.S. Col. Jim McDonough, (US Special Forces commander in Rwanda 1996-97, while the first invasion of the Congo was underway) considered Kagame, “….an intellectual figure. I would rate him as a first class operational fighter.” Washington Post, April 27, 1994.
22 Id.
23 U.S. Major Anthony Marley, Kagame’s class-mate at Ft. Leavenworth, was the U.S. representative to the 1993 Rwanda peace negotiations, the Arusha Accords wrote:
One reason why American officials are enamored with Rwandan Vice-President Paul Kagame is that he knows how to communicate with them in a quintessentially ‘American’ way…”
Monograph no. 35: Peace and Security in Africa, Symposium on International Peace and Security, Sept. 3, 1998, cited in Waugh, Paul Kagame and Rwanda (MacFarland, London 2001) p. 222.
24 ICTR Military-1 exhibit DB 71: Sept 1993 UNAMIR Reconnaissance Report of Gen. Dallaire.
25 http://en.wikidpedia.org/wiki/lists_of_countries_by_armed_forces. (Wikipedia lists 61,000 regular troops, but does not count reserves, national police or surrogate forces operating in the Congo).
26 Angelo Asama (Kampala), January 1, 2007, “Ugandans in Iraq: Soldiers of Misfortune”, http://www.monitor.co.ug.
27 Rwanda has supplied 2500 of some 10,000 UN-Darfur troops but has threatened to withdraw because the Rwanda commander, Gen. Karake, has been indicted by Spanish Judge Andreu for genocide and war crimes in February 2008. “Rwanda mulls withdrawal of peace troops from Darfur” Mail and Guardian, July 25, 2008.
28 Reuters, Oct. 16, 2008 -- Some 3,000 peacekeepers from Uganda and Burundi are in the capital Mogadishu -- part of a planned 8,000 strong AU mission.
29 USA Today, January 8, 2007: A Christian-led nation...Ethiopia has received nearly $20 million in U.S. military aid since late 2002…more than any country in the region except Djibouti...the U.S. and Ethiopian militaries have "a close working relationship," Pentagon spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Joe Carpenter said...
Reuters, Oct. 16, 2008 -- 3,000 peacekeepers from Uganda and Burundi are in the capital Mogadishu -- part of a planned 8,000 strong AU mission.
30 "Humanitarian crisis in Somalia is worse than Darfur", International Herald Tribune, Nov. 20, 2007. Quoting UN sources.
31 Kinzer, A Thousand Hills: Rwanda’s Rebirth and the Man Who Dreamed It, (John Wiley, Hoboken N.J. 2008).
32 Mamdani, Mamood: When Victims Become Killers (Kampala, Fountain, 2001).
33 Personal interview with author, Arusha, TZ, July 1, 2006.
34 Military-I exhibit DNT 218, Ruzibiza, The Secret History of Rwanda, (Paris, 2005).
35 Hartmann, Paix et chatiment les gueres de la politique (Flamarion, Paris 2007).
36 ICTR defence evidence in Military-I, Exhibit DNT 365. March 8.2007 Affidavit of QC Michael Hourigan (and supporting affidavit of Amadou Deme):
In late January or early February 1997 members of the National Team were approached by three (3) informants (either former or serving member of the RPF) claimed direct involvement in the 1994 fatal rocket attack on the President’s aircraft. Their evidence specifically implicated the direct involvement of President Paul Kagame, members of his administration and military. The informants also advised that the Kagame administration was actively involved in covert operations aimed at murdering high profile ex-patriot Rwandans – one such murder was the death of Seth Sendashonga in Nairobi.
37 See Bruguiere Indictment, November 2006, charging RPF leaders for the assassination of former President Habyarimana, and recommendation that Kagame be prosecuted at ICTR. See also, Andreu Indictment, February 8, 2008 charging 40 RPF leaders, including Paul Kagame, with crimes committed during 1994, including the assassination of former President Habyarimana and genocide.
38 Kagame was recently honored at M.I.T. in August 2008 and has travelled to the U.S. received since the INTERPOL warrants were issued in 2007 and 2008.
39 ICTR Military-I exhibit DNT 259. May 17, 1994 UNCHR Report of RPF killings at Rusomo Bridge to Tanzania, over Kagera River, in southeastern Rwanda.
40 ICTR Military-I defense Exhibit DNT 258:Amnesty International, Rwanda: Reports of killings and abductions by the Rwandese Patriotic Army, April-August 1994, October 20, 1994; ICTR Military-I defense Exhibit DNT 261: Human Rights Watch, Absence of Prosecution, Continued Killings, Sept. 1994.
41 ICTR Military-1 Evidence, DNT 264: Memorandum from the Undersecretary of State for Africa George F. Moose to “the Secretary” (U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher under President Clinton) reports a briefing on September 17, 1994:
A UNCHR investigative team that spent July and August in Rwanda (i.e. Gersony - author) has reported systematic human rights abuses by the GOR (i.e. RPF) forces – including systematic killings – in the south and southeast of the country. The team has concluded that the GOR (RPF author) is aware of these reprisals against Hutu civilians and may have sanctioned them….
42 See, Hartmann, Paix et chatiment: les guerres del la politique. (Flammarion, Paris, 2007) pp. 261-72. See also, Del Ponte, War Criminals and Me (2008).
43 Many of the ICTR documents can be found on the Tribunal Website at: www.ictr.org. Additional documents placed in evidence in the Ntabakuze Military-1 case, as well as selected commentary, can be found at the site created by the author: www.rwandadocumentsproject.net.

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Four men freed after court rules they would not get fair trial

Four men freed after court rules they would not get fair trial

Four men accused of taking part in the 1994 Rwandan genocide have been freed by a British court after their lawyers said they would not face a fair trial if they were extradited to Africa.
Their release coincided with commemorations in Rwanda to mark the 15th anniversary of the atrocity, which began on 6 April.
Judges in the High Court in London ruled there was "a real risk [the men] would suffer a flagrant denial of justice" if returned to Rwanda for trial. Under UK law, genocide and war crime offences commited before 2001 cannot be prosecuted here.
Vincent Bajinya, who had changed his name to Brown, Celestin Ugirashebuja, Emmanuel Nteziryayo and Charles Munyaneza were arrested in London, Essex, Manchester and Bedford and had been held in custody since December 2006 under a memorandum of understanding in which Rwanda waived the death penalty.
All four are accused of killing, or conspiring with or aiding and abetting others to kill, members of the Tutsi ethnic group "with the intent to destroy in whole, or in part, that group".
Lord Justice Laws and Lord Justice Sullivan allowed their appeals against the Home Secretary Jacqui Smith's extradition orders. The judges said there was evidence that defence witnesses were afraid to give evidence.
The judges declared: "We conclude that if [the four] were extradited to face trial in the High Court of Rwanda, the appellants would suffer a real risk of a flagrant denial of justice by reason of their likely inability to adduce the evidence of supporting witnesses."
The judges also ruled there was a real risk" of [government] interference with the judiciary" in Rwanda.
They refused the Rwandan Government, represented by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), leave to appeal to the House of Lords against the ruling. A spokeswoman for the CPS said the ruling ended the extradition process.
All four cases had been considered by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, based in Tanzania, but the files were given to the Rwandan Government for further investigation in 2005.
Lord Gifford QC, who appeared for Munyaneza, said the case had revealed "an emerging international consensus that there is no fair trial in Rwanda".
Frank Brazell, a solicitor for Vincent Brown, welcomed the decision: "We are hugely pleased with the result. The central issue they have found is that there is clearly no prospect of these men having a fair trial in Rwanda."
He said Mr Brown, a British national and qualified doctor who had worked for a charity training nurses, would be released from custody immediately.Mr Brazell said the issue of compensation would be discussed in due course.
People suspected of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity can only be prosecuted in the UK if the acts were committed overseas after 2001, when the International Criminal Court Act was enacted.
The Aegis Trust, which is responsible for the Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre in Rwanda, where 250,000 victims are buried, has been lobbying MPs and Lords to amend the UK law.
Dr James Smith, the chief executive of the trust, said: "For survivors, this verdict couldn't come at a worse time. It destroys hope. It demonstrates that the suspected killers of their families enjoy freedom in Europe. The impunity of genocide suspects is a denial of justice for the survivors.
"If British courts cannot extradite these men to Rwanda, the British Government should immediately amend UK law to enable the prosecution of suspected mass murderers."
A CPS spokesman said: "Although the High Court upheld the District Judge's findings that there was evidentially a prima facie case against each defendant, the finding in relation to the real risk of a flagrant violation meant their extradition could not continue.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/genocide-suspects-freed-after-court-rules-they-would-not-get-fair-trial-1666123.html

'I was a doctor in Rwanda, not a mass killer'

'I was a doctor in Rwanda, not a mass killer'

Dr Vincent Brown, who won a battle last week to stop his extradition on genocide charges, speaks exclusively about his two-year ordeal
By Andrew Johnson
MARCO LONGARI /AFP/ GETTY
Reign of terror: The remains of nearly 30,000 people are uncovered near Kigali
Vincent Bajinya had already left one nightmare behind. He had seen first hand the horrors of the civil war in Rwanda as a doctor in the capital, Kigali, and was forced to flee when the genocidal madness that overtook the country in 1994 looked like it would catch up with him.
Twelve years later, however, after rebuilding his life in Britain and changing his name to Vincent Brown, out of nowhere his second nightmare began. As he parked his car outside the refugee charity where he worked, Dr Brown was "ambushed" by a BBC camera team.
What, they asked, did he say to allegations that he helped organise some of the horrendous murders that took place when an estimated one million people were slaughtered in just 100 days?
"I was stunned," Dr Brown told The Independent on Sunday in his only newspaper interview. "I was aghast. I was accused on that BBC programme of being a killer. Even now I have not been able to get over it."
He was suspended from his job and then arrested, spending the next 27 months in Belmarsh prison while he fought the desperately slow extradition process. He was released only on Wednesday after the High Court ruled he would not face a fair trial in Rwanda and that there was "substantial doubt" over the allegations.
Although Dr Brown, a Hutu, was not a critic of the Rwandan government – now dominated by the minority Tutsis – he claims that simply successfully rebuilding his life was enough for the authorities to try to bring him back and lock him up – potentially for life.
The Rwandan government's allegations, made 12 years after the event, relied, for example, on witnesses who had never mentioned his involvement when the killings were originally investigated several years ago. He was accused of two killings in different parts of the country at the same time.
"It's a tendency for the Rwandan government to use genocide to destroy any perceived opponents outside Rwanda," he said. "If you're trying to get on with your life, you may get a good job – you flourish – [but] they find a way of destroying you and the best way is to use genocide."
Although Britain has no extradition agreement with Rwanda, the Home Office granted a special certificate to allow the extradition of Dr Brown and three other co-accused.
"When I was arrested in 2006 I was maybe thinking I go and come back the following day," Dr Brown continued. "I did not expect to be in there for 27 months.
"Because the charges against me are pure fabrication there was no prospect of a fair trial in Rwanda, so it was a double stress, not knowing if I can win the case, and knowing that if I go back, I'm facing ill treatment."
Dr Brown has consistently said he would be happy to face trial in this country, and so clear his name. The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), however, says it has no jurisdiction to do this.
Dr Brown's QC, Alun Jones, disagrees. He argued in the extradition proceedings that more trials of suspected international criminals should take place here as opposed to protracted extradition cases which often fail, and that the provisions in the International Criminal Court Act allow for trials for genocide.
"I suspect that the reason for failing to try the Rwanda suspects in the United Kingdom is that the authorities accept there is not the faintest hope that a conviction could ever be obtained," he said.
"Of course we can try the men here. The problem is not a lack of jurisdiction. It is that neither UK nor international law provides any mechanism for deciding where a case should be tried which could be tried in more than one state, and we too readily opt for extradition not trial."
He pointed out that there are at least four other suspects in Belmarsh who have not been tried because the CPS is trying to extradite them. Abu Hamza has been locked up for four years, and another terror suspect, Khalid al-Fawwaz, has been waiting extradition to America for 10 years.
"I was not involved in any political movement," said Dr Brown. "I was just a medical doctor treating everybody who came to see me. During the civil war I continued to do my job.
"I fled after the assassination of the President [which sparked the genocide] because the Rwandan Patriotic Front was reportedly killing Hutus.
"I drove my car to Congo. I had my wife and one son. All I took was my certificates and my family. I left my parents behind. Even now for the past 14 years I was not able to see them. I've just talked to them over the phone.
"You don't know where you will end up. You don't choose. When I ended up in Britain I didn't think I could ever be accused of killing anybody. I just wanted to get on with my life."
Dr Brown arrived in this country in 2000. Unable to find work as a doctor because of the rules of the General Medical Council, he took a job working with a refugee charity.
"I'm married with two children," he added. "My son is now 17 and my daughter 12. I've missed two years of them growing up. I was always very anxious about what was happening with them. They could visit once a week. That was the only pleasure for the past 27 months."
Yet Dr Brown is surprisingly forgiving. "I'm angry against the people who falsely accused me," he said. "But I'm not trying to settle any scores. And I have no resentment against the British Government. They arrested somebody who was accused of terrible crimes and it was right to do so."

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/i-was-a-doctor-in-rwanda-not-a-mass-killer-1667629.html

Rwanda accused win UK court case

Four men have won a High Court battle to halt extradition to Rwanda where they face mass murder charges.
Senior judges ruled that there was "a real risk" they would suffer "a flagrant denial of justice".
All four are wanted in connection with the 1994 genocide in which 800,000 people were killed in 100 days.
The men deny involvement in the genocide and say they would not receive a fair trial if they were forced to return to Rwanda.
Anti-genocide campaigners condemned the court's decision, saying that it sent a message to the Rwandan people that the suspected killers of their families could "walk free with impunity".
The court ordered the four men, who have been held in custody since December 2006, be released.
They are: Dr Vincent Bajinya, from north London; Charles Munyaneza, from Bedford; Celestin Ugirashebuja from Essex; and Emmanuel Nteziryayo, of Manchester.
“ This decision demonstrates to the Rwandan people that the suspected killers of their families can walk free with impunity ”
Dr James Smith of the Aegis Trust
The men are accused of killing, or conspiring with or aiding and abetting others, to kill members of the Tutsi ethnic group "with the intent to destroy in whole, or in part, that group".
Mr Munyaneza, Mr Ugirashebuja and Mr Nteziryayo were said to be mayors of local communes who allegedly organised killings in their areas while Dr Bajinya was allegedly a militia organiser in Kigali.
At an extradition hearing in 2007, a court heard allegations that Dr Bajinya, who changed his name to Vincent Brown when he became a British citizen, had been part of the "inner circle" of then Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana.
After the president died in a plane crash in 1994 Dr Bajinya - a former member of the Rwandan governing MRND party - was claimed to have attended key "genocide meetings" where plans to murder hundreds of thousands of Tutsis were planned.
The court was told Dr Bajinya then went on to become a leader in the Interahamwe militia, which was to spearhead the slaughter.
Court papers alleged he ordered the militia to cut a suspected Tutsi "into pieces so that he would not recover".
Dr Bajinya is also accused of personally interrogating a Tutsi woman about where her fellow "inyenzi" - or cockroaches - were before a militia man shot her dead.
Appeal refused
Lord Justice Laws and Lord Justice Sullivan, sitting at London's High Court, allowed the appeals by Dr Bajinya and his three co-defendants against the extradition ruling by Home Secretary Jacqui Smith because, the judges said, there was evidence that defence witnesses in Rwanda were afraid to give evidence in the men's favour.
The judges added: "We conclude that if (the four) were extradited to face trial in the High Court of Rwanda, the appellants would suffer a real risk of a flagrant denial of justice by reason of their likely inability to adduce the evidence of supporting witnesses."
The judges also ruled there was a real risk "of executive (government) interference with the judiciary" in Rwanda.
They refused the Rwandan government, represented by the Crown Prosecution Service, permission to appeal to the House of Lords against their ruling.
The judges' decision is thought to be the first time an English court has ever blocked an extradition request from a foreign government on the grounds that it would violate Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which safeguards the right to a fair trial.
Lord Justice Laws described it as "an important and anxious case". Lord Gifford QC, who had appeared for Mr Munyaneza, said the case had revealed "an emerging international consensus that there is no fair trial in Rwanda".
'Legal loophole'
However there was criticism that a legal loophole had allowed four suspected mass murderers to walk free.
Dr James Smith of the Aegis Trust, which campaigns against genocide told the BBC that the UK government should change the law to allow British courts to prosecute crimes against humanity.
He said: "If the High Court is unable to allow extradition because the legal system in other countries does not meet its high standards, then the government should revise and amend legislation to allow proceedings in this country.
"As it stands this decision demonstrates to the Rwandan people that the suspected killers of their families can walk free with impunity in Europe."
Frank Brazell, a solicitor representing Vincent Brown aka Dr Bajinya, welcomed the judges' ruling, saying: "We are hugely pleased with the result.
"The central issue they have found is that there is clearly no prospect of these men having a fair trial in Rwanda.
"The primary reason is the likelihood of political interference affecting the approach taken by the judges of Rwanda to a case of this kind.
"Obviously this is linked to interference with witnesses and the inability to call defence witnesses because of government or judicial interference."
He said Mr Brown, a British national and qualified doctor who had worked for a charity training nurses, would soon be released from custody.
He has been held since 28 December 2006. Asked if Mr Brown would now seek compensation, Mr Brazell said the issue would be discussed in due course.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/uk/7989534.stm

Published: 2009/04/08 15:37:50 GMT

© BBC MMIX

The government has removed British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) local language (Kinyarwanda) programmes from the airwaves.

KIGALI - The government has removed British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) local language (Kinyarwanda) programmes from the airwaves.

This was confirmed by Information Minister Louise Mushikiwabo by phone late Saturday because, as she put it, the BBC programmes despite repeated written and verbal protests from Government, consistently showed total disregard for Rwanda’s unity and reconciliation efforts.
“This action by Government was prompted by one of their programme called Imvo n’Imvano this morning which was previewed last night,” Mushikiwabo said.
Alarmed by what she had heard in the preview, the Minister stressed that she immediately contacted BBC on the issue expecting them to reconsider “after hearing from us” but, the latter took no heed.
“In the programme, you have some of the most outrageous statements,” Mushikiwabo noted, pointing to what she said were suggestions that there was a double Genocide and, that the bodies of Rwandans found floating in the waters of Lake Victoria, in Uganda, “were victims of the Rwanda Patriotic Front.”
“We are lodging a very strong and serious protest to the BBC leadership. What we heard (on the programme) was Genocide denial and insensitive. This is extremely serious and, we cannot tolerate it as government.”
A subsequent Government press release, which The New Times has seen, notes that the “divisive and disparaging nature” of these programmes — as they stand today — is no longer acceptable, in light of the hard-earned peaceful coexistence of the people of Rwanda over the last 15 years.
“Parts of today’s “Imvo n’Imvano” show as broadcast in a trailer on BBC’s airwaves on the evening of April 24, and the subsequent show on April 25 amount to blatant denial of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi of Rwanda, and constitute unacceptable speech,” reads part of the statement.
“Rwanda believes in difference of opinion and enforces press freedom in its laws and practices, which is why the Government of Rwanda has patiently continued to seek common ground and cooperation on the part of the BBC Great Lakes leadership,” it concludes.
The government has for some time been requesting the broadcaster not to give Genocide deniers airtime to no avail.

Source: The New Times Newspaper

25 Apr 2009

UN-backed court fails to prove Rwanda genocide planned: analysts

UN-backed court fails to prove Rwanda genocide planned: analysts

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5i3wGtJlVTHqTwkBxwE5d_hUqur0g


NAIROBI (AFP) — The acquittal of Rwanda's ex-army colonel Theoneste Bagosora by the UN war crimes tribunal of conspiracy to commit genocide marks the court's failure to prove the massacre was planned, analysts said Friday.
Bagosora, jailed for life by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) Thursday, had been accused by prosecutors of being the "brains" behind the 1994 genocide when some 800,000 people were killed in a 100-day spree.
The former Rwandan defence ministry chief of staff was sentenced alongside two co-defendants of "genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes," but acquitted of conspiring to commit genocide before April 7, 1994.
Nonetheless, the court upheld that Bagosora, 67, was the Rwanda's de facto army chief after the April 6, 1994 downing of a plane carrying then president Juvenal Habyarimana, an act believed to have triggered the genocide.
To date no suspect has ever been convicted by the Tanzania-based ICTR on conspiracy accusation despite charging nearly all the suspects with the crime.
"This means that nobody organised the genocide, that it would be a crime without a perpetrator and without premeditation," said Filip Reyntjens, a lecturer at Belgium's Anvers university and an expert prosecution witness in Bagosora's case.
"Thus the genocide was spontaneous. This is very worrying," Reyntjens told AFP.
For Andre Guichaoua, also an expert ICTR witness, "to dare say with humility that there is no sufficient evidence in Bagosora's case to prove conspiracy is a ruling with huge consequences, moreso politically."
However, the court ruled that some of the accused had a role in the formation of militia, distribution of arms and compiling lists of those suspected to be close to then Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) rebels or those opposed to the government of the day.
But it did not establish whether the activities were aimed at killing Tusti civilians with the aim of committing genocide, according to court documents.
ICTR chief prosecutor Hassan Bubacar Jallow charged that Bagosora and three other ex-army officers, one of whom was cleared of all charges, were involved in a conspiracy that began in late 1990 when hundreds of Tutsis were arrested after an attack by the RPF.
The conspiracy became more explicit the following year when the accused, part of a 10-member panel formed by Habyarimana, worked towards the "definition of the enemy", Jallow argued.
The panel met to explore ways of "defeating the enemy militarily, politically and through the media," with the enemy being the Tutsis.
"ICTR's failure is not wholesome. A senior figure was tried and convicted on Thursday. But even then, despite all the resources at its desposal, the ICTR has not decoded the planning of the genocide. This is sad," Reyntjens said.
There is a "lack of will by the tribunal ... which did not accomplish its task to the end," said Guichaoua.
"To me Bagosora was delegated to, he was not in control," Guichaoua explained.
"This means that the ICTR does not want to go up to the top ... but not wanting to know who assassinated Juvenal Habyarimana or pursue the crimes of senior RPF leaders, the court is thus morally handicapped," he added.
The tribunal, formed in late 1994 to try masterminds of the massacre, has also been faulted for failing to pursue alleged genocide perpetrators within the RPF which took power in 1994.

Human Rights abuses by the Rwanda National Police

His Excellence Mr. Sheikh Mussa Fazil HARERIMANA January 2, 2009

Minister of Internal Security N : 001H/PK/019
Republic of Rwanda
P.O Box 446 Kigali – RWANDA

His Excellence,

I am writing on behalf of the Organization for Peace, Justice and Development in
Rwanda (OPJDR), Inc. based in the United States, to express our concern about the
Human Rights abuses by the Rwanda National Police (RNP) following the selectively
mass arrests after the grenade attacks in Kigali on December 28, 2008.
Following the attacks on grenades by unknown assailants last Sunday night of December
28, 2008 around 8:30 pm, at Kinamba-II junction and at “Six Heures à Six Heures” bar
successively, and left at least sixteen people with minor injuries, among them seven were still admitted at Kigali University Hospital by next day, OPJDR is deeply concerned by the way the Rwanda government is handling the situation.
According to the “New Times”, a pro-government news paper, as appeared at
http://www.newtimes.co.rw/index.php?issue=13760&article=12088. Right after the
attacks, the police proceeded by selectively arresting more than 370 of Hutu population from nearby precincts including those living in Kiyovu, Gisozi, Gasave, Nyabugogo,Kimisagara, Kiruhura, Gatsata, Muhima and Kacyiru.

OPJDR is concerned by the discriminatively arresting only one ethnic group without any leading investigation done. One can wonder the basis of those arrests. Does this mean 5830 West Thunderbird Rd, Ste B8-PMB207 Glendale, AZ 85306
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OPJDR is non-profit and apolitical. Its mission is to promote the respect of human rights and Cultural, educational, and economic development in the Great Lakes Region of Africa.
that only Hutus are suspicious for such attacks? How two grenades tossed in two spots in a city could involve more than 370 arrests and in addition from only one ethnic group?

OPJDR urges the government of Rwanda and especially the Rwanda National Police to
improve its human right abuse records and therefore cease the ethnic discrimination and make use of their true impartiality in their quest to protect all Rwandan population from all walks of lives.

Sincerely,

Pascal Kalinganire
Coordinator General

CC:
Excellency Mr. Ban Ki-Moon
United Nations Secretary-General
UN Headquarters, Room S-3800
New York, NY 10017, EEUU
Fax: +1 212-963-2155
Honorable Condoleeza Rice
Secretary of State
US State Department
Washington, DC 20520

Excellency Mr. Kenneth Roth
Executive Director
The Director of Human Rights Watch
350 Fifth Avenue, 34th floor
New York, NY 10118-3299 USA
Tel: 1-(212) 290-4700, Fax: 1-(212) 736-130
Honorable Irene Khan
Secretary General
Amnesty International
1 Easton Street
London, United Kingdom
WC1X0DW, UK
This

Letter to President Obama: Instability in the Great Lakes Region of Africa

Your Excellency President Barack H. Obama February 3, 2009

President of The United States of America Nº: 003/PPK/029
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
Ref.: Instability in the Great Lakes Region of Africa

Your Excellency President,

We, the Organization for Peace, Justice and Development in Rwanda (OPJDR), a nonpolitical
and not for profit organization based in Delaware, US, congratulates you in this
historic presidency that comes with a sense of unprecedented optimism and hope that
you have inspired in all of us as well as around the world. Since October 1990, the
population in the Great Lakes region of Africa, which is our area of focus with a
particular emphasis on Rwanda, lives in an endemic situation of insecurity, misery and
hopelessness. Your message of change and optimism gives the population in the Great
Lakes Region of Africa, a reason to hope and deeply believe in your goodwill to bring a
brighter future not only to America but also to other countries around the world.
The state of the misery in Great Lakes Region of Africa has started on that fateful day of
October 1, 1990 with a war that was imposed on Rwanda by a group led by Ugandan
military officers of Rwandese origin including its own Department of Military
Intelligence chief, then Major Paul Kagame who later on became Major General and
President of Rwanda. At the time, Rwanda did demonstrate how it was waging a war
against its neighbor Uganda while the latter insisted that it was rather renegade
elements of its military that had invaded Rwanda. And later the international
community came to be persuaded that it was Rwandan refugees, grouped under the
Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) and its military wing, Rwanda Patriotic Army (APR), who
were claiming to return to their homeland. The conflict culminated on April 6, 1994
5830 West Thunderbird Rd, Ste B8-PMB207 Glendale, AZ 85306
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OPJDR is non-profit and apolitical. Its mission is to promote the respect of human rights and
Cultural, educational, and economic development in the Great Lakes Region of Africa.
when a presidential jet was shot down near Kigali International Airport, killing
everyone on board including the President of Rwanda Juvenal Habyarimana and the
President of Burundi Cyprien Ntaryamira and their close aides. This terrorist act
performed by the RPF ignited the Rwanda genocide and constituted a short path for
RPF/RPA to seize power in Kigali in July 1994.
Few years later, in 1996, the same playbook was used to attack the then Zaire, the
Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where an obscure group from the Tutsi tribe of
Rwandese origin, known as Banyamulenge, decided to take their fight to Kinshasa, the
capital city, and capture the entire country with a strong support from General Paul
Kagame of Rwanda and Yoweri Museveni, President of Uganda. Since then, there has
not a single day of peace in the region. Very often, the Rwandan, DRC and Great Lakes
region of Africa issues are presented as being problems either between two major ethnic
groups, Hutu and Tutsi, or simply of regional nature. Many key observers in the region
concur that there has been almost 6 millions of human souls that have perished in that
region so far, essentially in Rwanda and DRC since the invasion of Rwanda on October
1st, 1990 and from the subsequent proxy armed conflicts that followed until today.
In his interview on Europe 1 channel on October 2nd, 2007, the French Foreign and
European Affairs Minister, Mr. Bernard Kouchner stated that during the 1990 – 1994
Rwandan war, France has confronted a significant resistance through a multiform
nature of a battle of influence in the region with an aim on the biggest prize of DRC from
Belgians, British and Americans. Historically, DRC has often been coveted by
developed countries for its tremendous natural resources and one of the main tools to
accomplish that has been to promote corruption and support leaders who will ease the
external access to those resources. For many concerned Africans and friends of Africa,
they don’t cease to wonder when will Africa, in particular its Great Lakes region, break
from the cycle of violence and build solid democracies that will subsequently generate
long term development. The spiral of unacceptable violence, massive corruption,
5830 West Thunderbird Rd, Ste B8-PMB207 Glendale, AZ 85306
PHONE: (603) 623-7945 & (602) 412-3787 www.opjdr.org
OPJDR is non-profit and apolitical. Its mission is to promote the respect of human rights and
Cultural, educational, and economic development in the Great Lakes Region of Africa.
injustice practices and the winner takes all attitude has embarked Rwanda and DRC in a
ticking bomb environment.
Your Excellency Mr. President, some of the two keys points of your campaign have been
to reign in the lobby system as well as prevent unnecessary wars and promote
democracy and justice around the world. On January 21, 2008, Judge Fernando Andreu
Merelles, of the Central Court in Madrid, Spain, after several years of investigations,
indicted 40 high ranked Rwandans officers, including General Paul Kagame, currently
president of Rwanda, for having ordered, participated or executed killings and other
atrocities against children, women and other civilians in Rwanda and DRC between
1990 and 2004. Prior to the Spanish indictments, one recalls that on November 17, 2006,
the French anti-terrorist Jean-Louis Bruguiere, of the Paris Court of Serious Crimes
indicted General Paul Kagame and nine other high ranking officers in his entourage for
the shooting down of the President Juvenal Habyarimana’s jet on April 6, 1994, igniting
the genocide in Rwanda. So far, little have been done to arrest those indicted. They
continue to enjoy the protection of the Government of Rwanda while the developed
countries and the United Nations looked on or continue to provide economic and
political support to Kigali’s regime as if 6 millions people murdered do not deserve
justice. The traumatized people in the Great Lakes region of Africa implore you to lift all
US political and economic supports to President Kagame, so he and his aides can
respond to the charges against them before the court of law. These actions will pave a
way for an environment aimed on promoting truth, dialogue, justice and democracy in
Rwanda, and by the way preventing Kagame to continue his dangerous agenda of
disseminating proxy wars in DRC.
On December 12, 2008, a United Nations (UN) report on the current crisis in Congo
stated that the main rebel leader, Major General Laurent Nkunda, was being essentially
supported by President Kagame of Rwanda. Within weeks after the publication of that
report, some European countries including Netherland and Sweden suspended their
assistance to Rwanda while United Kingdom is reconsidering his cooperation with
5830 West Thunderbird Rd, Ste B8-PMB207 Glendale, AZ 85306
PHONE: (603) 623-7945 & (602) 412-3787 www.opjdr.org
OPJDR is non-profit and apolitical. Its mission is to promote the respect of human rights and
Cultural, educational, and economic development in the Great Lakes Region of Africa.
President Kagame’s regime. It is under these criticisms and pressures that President
Kagame looked into ways to remove the spotlight on him by working out a joint military
campaign between Rwanda and DRC to curb down the rebellion activities in the Eastern
Congo. On January 20, 2009, while in Washington DC, and in most countries and cities
around the world, we were celebrating a historic moment in US democracy, General
Paul Kagame ordered his army to invade once again the Democratic Republic of Congo.
By the 23rd, the Rwandese Defense Forces (RDF) declared that they had the main rebel
leader, Major General Laurent Nkunda in their custody. Furthermore, according to a
New York Times article of January 24th, 2009, several demobilized Rwandan soldiers
recently revealed that there was a secret operation to slip Rwandan soldiers into Congo
to fight alongside General Nkunda. Since the Rwandese Defense Forces entered the
DRC, UN soldiers and other humanitarian personnel have been denied access to the
area. OPJDR fears that innocent civilians specially Rwandan refugees who fled the
regime of Paul Kagame and now living in the area are being massacred in a closed door
scenario, far from cameras and other stream media.
The pivotal question for the Great Lakes region of Africa is: Will General Kagame
continue to rage wars in DRC or other neighboring countries in total impunity? We
strongly believe that helping Rwanda facing its own destiny by decisively asking
President Kagame to open the country political process, to allow Rwandans of all origins
talk the Truth about its recent past, in all inclusive Dialogue and Reconciliation, will
pave the way toward democracy that could start on a stronger footing. Currently the
Rwanda’s political environment is dominated by the ex-rebellion movement, the
Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF) which has refused from opening up to a Dialogue with
the opposition political parties or civil society groups despite their multiple requests.
We believe that the United States can provide a significant assistance to this remediation
and OPDJR is available to give more details on hopelessness life of people in Great

Lakes region of Africa.
5830 West Thunderbird Rd, Ste B8-PMB207 Glendale, AZ 85306
PHONE: (603) 623-7945 & (602) 412-3787 www.opjdr.org
OPJDR is non-profit and apolitical. Its mission is to promote the respect of human rights and
Cultural, educational, and economic development in the Great Lakes Region of Africa.
Again congratulations for your historic inauguration as the 44th President of United
States of America.

Sincerely,
Pascal Kalinganire
Coordinator General
.

Statement on the UK High Court Judgementagainst the extradition of genocide suspects to Rwanda

Statement on the UK High Court Judgement
against the extradition of genocide suspects to Rwanda

by:

Action Group for Peace and Justice in Rwanda
A Community Interest Company
PO Box 49993, London SE5 5DJ
Email: agpjr6@yahoo.co.uk
Web: www.agpjr.org



PRESS RELEASE 4/AGPJR/April 2009
London 11 April 2009

Action Group for Peace and justice in Rwanda (AGPJR) has welcomed the judgement of the High Court of 8 April 2009 which dismissed the request of the Rwandan Government to extradite Messrs Vincent Brown, Charles Munyaneza, Emmanuel Nteziryayo and Celestin Ugirashebuja to Rwanda on allegations that they were involved in the genocide of Tutsi in Rwanda in 1994.

The judges of the High Court, after consideration of the argument and evidences from the defence lawyers of the defendants and statements from the prosecutors representing the Rwandan Government and the UK Home Office, concluded that the accused would not have a fair trial if they were returned to Rwanda. The judges ruled that “if they were extradited to face trial in the High Court of Rwanda, the appellants would suffer a real risk of a flagrant denial of justice by reason of their likely inability to adduce the evidence of supporting witnesses.” In addition, the judges found that the persistent interference of the Government of Rwanda in the judiciary does “not promise well for the judiciary’s impartiality and independence.”

This ruling is a clear example of the independence of the UK judiciary system. One should remember that the appeal at the High Court came after Mr Anthony Evans, a District judge at the City of Westminster Magistrates Court, had recommended, in June 2008, the extradition of the defendants to Rwanda, despite the overwhelming evidence which clearly showed that the accused would be denied a fair trial if they were tried in Rwanda. After reviewing this case in August 2008, the Home Secretary ordered their extradition to Rwanda and based her decision on the only willingness of the Rwandan government to comply with the obligations in the Memorandum of Understanding between Rwanda and the United Kingdom. The latter was forged just before the arrest of the defendants in December 2006.

AGPJR condemns the genocide and other acts of genocide committed against the Rwandan people in and around 1994. Those and ONLY those who were involved in those horrendous crimes, whether they are Hutus or Tutsis, should face trial. Unfortunately, the post-genocide Rwandan justice system seems to have been put in place as retaliation instrument with a strong Hutu bias. It is there to administer punishment to only Hutus without proving beyond doubt that they were involved in the Rwandan genocide. After 15 years since the Rwandan genocide, more than a hundred thousand people are still kept in prison. Most of them are without charges and have been denied justice.

Those who tell the truth about the genocide or come to the defence of the genocide suspects are all labelled by the Rwandan government as ‘genocidaires’, revisionists, ‘negationists’ or supporters of a genocide ideology, whether they are Rwandans or foreigners. What is more troubling is that these vague concepts have been incorporated in the Rwandan law and are used to track down or undermine those who do not share the views of the current Rwandan government.

The UK High Court has extensively documented that there is no prospect of a fair trial for the defendants in Rwanda. During the hearing process of this extradition case it appeared that most of the written accounts presented by the prosecution witnesses in support of the Rwandan government request were fabricated and often contradictory or exaggerated to fit the purpose sought by the Rwandan government that these defendants were highly ranked and were politically involved in the planning and the execution of the genocide.

Rwanda needs an independent and impartial justice which can address the long lasting problem of impunity and promote peace and reconciliation among the Rwandan population. There is an urgent need for a judicial system with an objective to search for the whole truth surrounding the Rwandan tragedy and find those responsible, irrespective of their ethnic background.

AGPJR believes that a proper administration of an independent and impartial justice, where the presumption of innocence and the absolute right to challenge, without fear, the prosecution witnesses are guaranteed, can open up the horizons of a durable peace in Rwanda.

AGPJR also remains optimistic that the truth about the Rwandan genocide will be revealed and that justice will prevail.

Dr Alexis Ndibwami
Secretary

Letter to the Rwandan Minister of Internal Security

Letter to the Rwandan Minister of Internal Security

His Excellence Mr. Sheikh Mussa Fazil HARERIMANA April 20, 2009

Minister of Internal Security Nº:008/HJ/PK/2009

P.O. BOX 446 Kigali-Rwanda
His Excellency,

I am writing on behalf of the Organization for Peace, Justice and Development in
Rwanda (OPJDR), Inc. to express concern about the arrests and lack of
due process regarding the following people: Augustin Buzizi, Protais Dusabimana, and Lucien Nyangwabona.

Augustin Buzizi, 63 years old and a retired teacher was arrested on April 12, 2009 for
harboring genocide ideology accusations. On the eve of the commemoration of the
genocide, a number of Rwandan citizens residing in the cell of Gatsilima of the sector of
Kiyombe, district of Nyagatare, Northern Province were arrested for unspecified charges.
Buzizi wrote a letter to Rwandan authorities including Domitille Mukantaganzwa, the
Executive Secretary of Gacaca Courts to inform them of the abuses committed by local
authorities against these citizens.

On April 12, 2009 the authorities of the sector of Kiyombe held a public meeting in the
cell of Gitenga where Buzizi lives to commemorate the genocide. The meeting was also
attended by the representatives of the Rwanda Defense Forces (RDF). Local authorities
invited Buzizi to give his own testimony regarding the genocide. In his testimony, Buzizi
stated that ethnic groups in Rwanda and their peaceful coexistence are historical realities.
He added that European colonization introduced ethnic divisions and that those ethnic
divisions still exist today. He remarked that the different political regimes including the
post genocide government did not do much to minimize or abolish ethnic divisions. He
concluded that if French troops had not intervened in Rwanda, Tutsis would have wiped
out Hutus.

After this meeting Buzizi was immediately arrested by local authorities and taken to the
prison of Rukomo.The director of the High School of Cyondo who was present at the meeting spoke to
defend Buzizi’s views. He was also arrested.
Protais Dusabimana, son of Tatien Bwabuhe, was arrested in Umutara about two years
ago. Since then, he has been in the prison of Ntsinda without charges.
Lucien Nyangwabona, son of Rwamulinda was arrested two years ago. Nyangwabona is
from Rushaki, Northern Province and worked for the Rwandan customs in Kibungo until

OPJDR is non-profit and apolitical. Its mission is to promote the respect of human rights and
Cultural, educational, and economic development in the Great Lakes Region of Africa.
his arrest. Sources close to him suggest that his supervisor ordered him to sign documents
he was unauthorized to sign so he could get rid of him and replace him with a Tutsi. The
next day after signing those documents, he was arrested and his job was given to a Tutsi.
He has spent over two years in jail at the prison of Rwamagana.
Our organization recommends that you conduct an independent investigation into the
three cases mentioned above. Credible reports gathered by our organization indicate that
recently a score of people have been arbitrary arrested in the cell of Gatsilima and their
whereabouts remain unknown. We call on you to investigate those cases as well and
make public your findings to ensure that their rights are respected.
Sincerely,
Pascal Kalinganire
Coordinator General

Copies:
Honorable Mr. Kenneth Roth
Executive Director of Human Rights Watch
350 Fifth Avenue, 34th Floor
New York, NY 10118-3299
USA
Tel: 1-(212) 290-4700
Fax: +1-212-736-1300
Email: hrwnyc@hrw.org
Honorable Mrs. Irene Khan
Secretary General of Amnesty International
1 Easton Street
London, United Kingdom
WC1X0DW, UK
Tel.: +44-20-74135500
Fax : +44-20-79561157
Honorable Mr. Gareth Evans
President and Chief Executive
International Crisis Group
149 Avenue Louise
Level 24
B-1050 Brussels
Tel: +32-2-502 90 38
Fax: +32-2-502 50 38

Rwanda 1994: Colonialism dies hard

Rwanda 1994: Colonialism dies hard

The Taylor Report is pleased to bring you Rwanda 1994: Colonialism dies hard, the english translation of Robin Philpot's book Ça ne s’est pas passé comme ça à Kigali
Text from the back cover:
Right thinking people would have us blindly believe the Official Story that the Rwandan tragedy was simply the work of horrible Hutu génocidaires who planned and executed a satanic scheme to eliminate nearly a million Tutsis after a plane crashed in the heart of dark Africa on April 6, 1994. On the other hand, former UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali declared to the author that the “Rwandan genocide was 100 percent American responsibility. How can such contradictory interpretations coexist?
Robin Philpot’s vast and methodical research, extensive interviews, and close analysis of events and popular writings on the subject shows not only that the Official Story is false, but that it was edified in an aim to cover-up the causes of the tragedy and to protect the criminals responsible for it. What’s more, to make us believe that Story, the Story tellers have unfailingly reproduced those literary traditions, clichés, and metaphors that provided the underpinnings of slavery, the slave-trade, and colonialism.

http://www.taylor-report.com/Rwanda_1994/
The Taylor Report is pleased to bring you Rwanda 1994: Colonialism dies hard, the english translation of Robin Philpot's book Ça ne s’est pas passé comme ça à Kigali
Text from the back cover:
Right thinking people would have us blindly believe the Official Story that the Rwandan tragedy was simply the work of horrible Hutu génocidaires who planned and executed a satanic scheme to eliminate nearly a million Tutsis after a plane crashed in the heart of dark Africa on April 6, 1994. On the other hand, former UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali declared to the author that the “Rwandan genocide was 100 percent American responsibility. How can such contradictory interpretations coexist?
Robin Philpot’s vast and methodical research, extensive interviews, and close analysis of events and popular writings on the subject shows not only that the Official Story is false, but that it was edified in an aim to cover-up the causes of the tragedy and to protect the criminals responsible for it. What’s more, to make us believe that Story, the Story tellers have unfailingly reproduced those literary traditions, clichés, and metaphors that provided the underpinnings of slavery, the slave-trade, and colonialism.
http://www.taylor-report.com/Rwanda_1994/


Rwanda: Obscuring the Truth About the Genocide

http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/rwanda/2008/0813rwanda.htm

By Barrie Collins
Spiked
August 13, 2008
Last week, the Rwandan government published the findings of its commission of inquiry into the role France played in the Rwandan genocide of 1994. It found French diplomats, military leaders and politicians – including former president François Mitterand – complicit in the genocide.
Considering that the current Rwandan leadership has vilified France ever since it launched its bid to seize power in Rwanda in October 1990, eventually winning power in July 1994, it is not surprising that it should now up the stakes against its long-time enemy. The new strongman of Rwanda, President Paul Kagame, is fortunate that he has unswerving support from the United States, Britain and Belgium, and a cheerleading media in these countries which can be counted upon to give his report into France’s role in the genocide maximum impact.
But the truth is that France’s major mistake was to find itself on the wrong side of the moral parable that has been imposed by Western observers on Rwanda’s recent tragic history. A war that was complicated by considerable international intervention has become over-simplified into a morality tale of good versus evil, in which France has been branded as part of the ‘evil side’. Such a simplification further obscures the truth about what happened in Rwanda in 1994, and whitewashes the role of Western intervention more broadly.
According to the moral parable of Rwanda, the good guys were the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), which invaded Rwanda in 1990 because it had no other means of protecting the persecuted minority of ethnic Tutsis inside Rwanda and of making the then Hutu-led government accept the right of return of Rwandan Tutsis living abroad as refugees. The bad guys were in the Rwandan government and armed forces. When the international community had helped Rwandans achieve a negotiated settlement, the worst elements among the bad guys drew up a plan to secure Hutu domination once and for all by planning and then implementing genocide against Rwandan Tutsis.
By the time the good guys – the RPF – had fought them off, their evil mission had been largely completed. Hundreds of thousands of Rwandan Tutsis were dead. Genocide had occurred, and the Western world had simply looked on passively. The United States refused to label the war that took place as a genocide in order to resist the clamour for international intervention to save lives. France was the only force on the United Nations Security Council to respond by sending in French forces under Operation Turquoise. But France’s real motivation was not to save lives, but to shore up its erstwhile allies: the bad guys. The French helped them escape Rwanda so that they would not have to answer for their crimes.
A moral analysis like this is compelling because it provides a clear pathway through a maze of complicating factors. For journalists, this moral signposting of the Rwandan genocide leads the way to great copy about the bravery of the heroes and the moral turpitude of the villains. For governments, it provides the crucial element of legitimacy that is the essential underpinning of their right to rule. The Rwandan regime under Paul Kagame depends on this version of events for its support and survival. And so do its principal sponsors, the United States and Great Britain.
As the force that relieved Rwanda from genocide, the RPF - whose leadership currently runs Rwanda - has exploited this version of events to remind Western governments that they failed to live up to the ‘Never Again’ principle that was the driving force behind the passing of the Genocide Convention at the United Nations in 1948. While they battled the genocidaires in 1994, the Western world simply looked on. Except France, that is. But as a supporter of the former, pre-RPF regime, France’s motives for intervening were highly questionable.
It may be the most widely told story of Rwanda, but this version of events is deeply flawed. While the US may have been embarrassed by this account, appearing less than heroic during the months of Rwanda’s greatest torment, it is far easier for it to live with this embarrassment than to be confronted with the facts of how it did intervene in this region of Africa in the early 1990s and since Kagame came to power.
The ‘plane crash’ debate
In fact, the three most influential Western players in Rwanda at this time – the US, France and Belgium – all intervened in ways that created the conditions that made mass slaughter inevitable. Contrary to the prevailing version of events, after its initial deployment of troops defending Rwandan leaders against the RPF’s October War in 1990, by means of Operation Noroît, France recognised that the US and Uganda were behind the RPF and had no desire to become isolated as the sole defender of the Rwandan government. So it increasingly made its military support conditional upon the government’s commitment to serious negotiations with the RPF. According to an informant from the French Ministry of Cooperation, France’s decision to disengage was already evident in 1990: ‘We did not want to remain alone…there were great powers behind the RPF. Uganda could send 30,000 to 40,000 soldiers.’ (1)
The Kagame government’s latest salvo against France, in the shape of its commission report fingering the French for their support for the genocide, is in fact part of an increasingly desperate search for political legitimacy. The weakest point of the Rwandan moral parable is the question of what caused the re-eruption of the war in 1994 and the subsequent descent into mass slaughter. The start of the bloodiest stage of the war is far more complicated than the moral storytellers – who blame it on the then evil government’s determination to secure Hutu domination – would have us believe.
It was an act of international terrorism that triggered the return to war. In early April 1994, an aeroplane carrying Hutu President Juvénal Habyarimana was blown out of the sky by a missile attack that had been planned for several months. Apologists for the RPF have tried hard to blame the attack upon hardline Hutu conspirators, but they have produced nothing of substance to back up this claim. Rather, there is an accumulating amount of evidence that the RPF was responsible for the missile attack – and it is this evidence that has put the current RPF government, led by Kagame, on the back foot. It is the government’s defensiveness on this issue that lies at the heart of the current France-bashing.
The UN’s own investigator, Michael Hourigan, first came across compelling evidence of the RPF’s responsibility for assassinating President Habyarimana and the other unfortunate occupants of his plane. However, it appears that under pressure from Washington, the UN agreed to shut down its investigation into the missile attack. Another UN investigator, Robert Gersony, came across evidence of RPF atrocities and was also silenced; the UN even stated that his report ‘did not exist’.
These inconvenient truths threatened to muddy the clear waters of moral certainty that the Rwandan parable provides. The Rwandan regime has lived behind the shield of international powers which have worked hard to keep the matter of the plane shooting off the agenda. For all of its 13 years of operation, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), whose brief is to establish the truth of what happened in 1994, has ruled that the matter of the President Habyarimana’s assassination (which it chooses to refer to simply as a plane ‘crash’) is not within its remit. When one of the ICTR’s chief prosecutors, Carla Del Ponte, expressed her desire to dust off the investigation into the allegations against the RPF, stating that ‘if it is the RPF that shot down the plane, the history of genocide must be rewritten’ (2), she was abruptly relieved of her position and moved to The Hague.
Del Ponte’s successor at the ICTR, the Gambian Hassan Bubacar Jallow, subsequently confirmed that the shooting down of the aircraft is ‘not a case that falls within our jurisdiction’ (3). It is ironic that the ICTR’s first chief prosecutor, Richard Goldstone, has expressed his view that the plane attack does fall within the remit of the court and ought to be investigated. ‘It is clearly related to the genocide, by all accounts [it was] the trigger that started the genocide and it would have been very, very important from a justice point of view, from victims’ point of view, to find out.’ (4)
However, the ICTR’s deputy prosecutor, Bernard Muna, felt cavalier enough about the issue to tell the ICTR’s legal adviser, Kingsley Moghalu, that ‘after all, there was a state of war, and Habyarimana could be considered a legitimate target’ (5). This is an extraordinary statement from such a senior figure. The missile attack was, among other things, a deliberate violation of Article 1 of the Arusha Accords of 4 August 1993, which stated: ‘The war between the Government of Rwanda and the Rwandan Patriotic Front is over.’
Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the secretary-general of the UN at the time of the Rwanda tragedy, is also emphatic about the cover-up of the investigation into the plane shooting: ‘It is a very mysterious scandal. Four reports have been made on Rwanda: the French Parliament Report, the Belgian Senate Report, Kofi Annan’s UN report, and the Organization of African Unity report. All four say absolutely nothing about the shooting down of the Rwandan president’s plane. That just goes to show the power of the intelligence services that can force people to be quiet.’ (6)
Building upon the evidence received by the UN investigator Michael Hourigan, the French judge Jean-Louis Bruguière conducted his own enquiry on behalf of the family of the French pilot who died in the missile attack, along with the presidents of both Rwandan and Burundi and senior government and military figures. Bruguière’s report is thoroughgoing and detailed. I have interviewed one of the several RPF dissidents who briefed the judge: Aloys Ruyenzi. A former member of Kagame’s guard, Ruyenzi states categorically that he was in the room when Kagame gave the order to shoot down the president’s plane, and names all those who were present. The meeting was between 2pm and 3pm on 31 March 1994 (7). The Kagame government reacted in its customary fashion to these revelations about the shooting down of the plane: it launched a character assassination of all the Rwandan contributors to Bruguière’s report, and condemned Bruguière for being, well, French.
Western complicity: what about the US?
Yet there is more than the legitimacy of the Rwandan government at stake in this latest retelling of the moral parable on Rwanda. The RPF would not have sustained its war without diplomatic support from Washington. The US intervened to legitimise the RPF’s war, even though the justifications for it had by that time proven to be baseless. The first invasion in 1990 was timed, not to force a reluctant Rwandan government to allow refugees to return, but to disrupt arrangements already in place to accommodate returning refugees.
Rather than being a desertion from the Ugandan military (the RPF leadership were in top positions in the Ugandan state), the invasion of Rwanda in 1990 was a joint Ugandan-RPF venture. President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda was keen to have an ally in power south of the border. More importantly, he wanted to be rid of his Rwandan refugee ‘problem’. The issues of land occupation by Rwandans, and suspicions about the leverage that Rwandans in top official positions enjoyed in the Ugandan government, had generated Museveni’s first political crisis since he took power in 1986.
Behind Uganda was its closest international ally and sponsor, Washington. It was US intervention, in the person of secretary of state for African affairs Herman Cohen, which chose not to condemn the RPF’s invasion and Uganda’s support for it, but rather to support the military recovery of the RPF upon its initial defeat. Cohen coerced President Habyarimana not only to negotiate a ceasefire with the RPF, but to enter negotiations with it in order that a stake for the RPF in a new government be agreed.
By July 1992, Rwanda no longer had a single-party regime but a coalition government and a new democratic constitution. The constitution guaranteed freedom of political organisation and prohibited discrimination on any grounds, ethnic or otherwise.
Of course, it takes more than a constitution to bring about democracy, but it was a promising start and presented another opportunity for the US to tell its Ugandan ally Museveni to pull the plug on the RPF or face the end of the privileged ‘New African Leader’ status that it had bestowed upon him. There was nothing to prevent the RPF from campaigning for support inside Rwanda alongside the other opposition parties. Nothing except the fact that the RPF was feared and loathed by the majority of Rwanda’s population. And yet, Washington was happy for the RPF to intensify its war. In February 1993, the RPF violated the Arusha ‘peace process’ with its heaviest offensive to date. It is arguably the case that if there had not been French forces around the capital Kigali, the RPF may have succeeded in seizing power at that time. The offensive resulted in thousands of deaths and the displacement of nearly a million people, living in miserable conditions in makeshift camps. This offensive did more than anything else to generate hatred for the RPF and, tragically, for the local Tutsi population who were assumed to be in league with the overwhelmingly Tutsi RPF.
How human rights lobbyists boosted the RPF
The RPF had violated the negotiations process with another round of death and destruction. But thanks to coordinated human rights lobbying, the RPF returned to the negotiating table unapologetic about its own conduct and full of moral indignation at the evils of the Rwandan government. A suspiciously well-timed human rights report was published in 1993, accusing the Rwandan government of gross violations of human rights. Some of its authors even accused it of genocide. The government had been responsible for atrocities against civilians in response to the RPF’s initial invasion, and had admitted to them. It objected to the report’s bias: the investigators had made only a token effort to investigate allegations of atrocities committed by the RPF, spending only a few hours interviewing people in the presence of RPF soldiers.
Thanks in large measure to the impact of this report, the RPF was able to take the moral high ground and use the negotiations as a vehicle for translating its military gains into political gains. RPF intransigence and military strategy was facilitated in no small measure by the human rights crusade that was launched against the Habyarimana-led coalition government.
But France, too, played a vital role in prodding the Rwandan government to reach a political settlement with the RPF. According to the French writer Agnes Callamard, it was not just pressure from the US that was applied to get Habyarimana to sign the Arusha Accords in 1993 – ‘it is doubtful if Habyarimana would have signed the peace accords, which gave heavy concessions to the RPF, without pressure and guarantees from the Elysée through François Mitterand’s personal emissaries, and possibly from representatives of the Military Mission of Cooperation, specifically Général Huchon, Colonel Cussac – the French military attaché and head of the French military Assistance Mission in Rwanda, and his assistant, Lieutenant Colonel Maurin.’ (8)
Having secured a virtual coup in the 1993 negotiations – the RPF had won 50 per cent command of the envisaged unified army and enough seats in the proposed transitional government to block anything that was against its interests – the RPF had emerged as the strongest party. The problem it now faced was the scheduled elections where its unpopularity would have been exposed. Local elections in the demilitarised zone that was created in the wake of the February 1993 offensive pointed the way – the RPF was massively defeated at the hands of the former ruling party.
Faced with the prospect of being downsized to a small party by the Rwandan electorate, and with clear support from the US and Belgium, it would appear that the RPF’s interests could only be further advanced with a return to the battlefield. With the promised departure of French forces from Kigali in December 1993, the military path to the capital was clear. What was needed by the RPF was a justification for resuming the war.
The Rwandan war re-erupts
The assassination of President Habyarimana by means of the missile attack upon his plane set off a round of killings of opposition political figures by elements of Habyarimana’s Presidential Guard on one hand, and killings of members of the former ruling party by the RPF on the other. Massacres of Tutsi civilians by Hutu militia soon followed in Kigali, and then spread across the country. But, contrary to the conventional story, RPF forces were on the march long before any massacres occurred.
Peter Erlinder, the lead defence council for the ICTR, stated categorically in a letter to the Canadian prime minister in 2006 that the final offensive of the RPF was ordered by Kagame within minutes of learning of the successful missile attack, ‘long before any retaliatory, civilian killings had occurred anywhere in Rwanda’ (9).
Three years of mounting fear, insecurity and material deprivation (much of Rwanda was by this time in the grip of famine) came to a head. Rwanda’s hastily (but constitutionally) appointed government of surviving ministers fled the capital. The army was pinned down in one losing encounter with the RPF after another. In these anarchic conditions, Rwanda’s defenceless Tutsi population bore the brunt of murderous hatred generated by an ethnically polarising war.
The RPF won the war and took power in July 1994. Africa then witnessed the largest mass exodus in its history. Over two million Rwandans voted with their feet and moved to former Zaïre and Tanzania. The United States, Britain and Belgium in particular rushed to recognise the new regime in Kigali.
Even greater numbers were still to die. The new Rwandan regime’s invasion of various refugee camps and its forced repatriation of refugees, the massacre of internally displaced people in Kibeho in April 1995, and two invasions of what became the Democratic Republic of Congo by the ruling RPF – all of this has brought the death toll of civilians to a level that is the highest of any conflict since the Second World War. The number of ministers leaving the new government and later dying in mysterious circumstances continues to rise. Accountability on the part of the Rwandan regime for these violations is waived by its sponsors in Washington, London and Brussels. Whenever challenged on these matters, officials from these capitals will reply that this was the force that liberated Rwanda from genocide, and continued Western backing for it is necessary to ensure that the genocidaires never return to power.
The truth behind the moral parable
But facts are stubborn things. Bruguière’s charges will not go away. The matter of the assassination of two heads of state is the Achilles heel of the Rwandan government. If the RPF’s responsibility for the plane shooting as a planned move towards reigniting the war in Rwanda is proven, what can be said about the diplomatic protection given to the RPF by the US and other Western powers? How can the leader of the ‘war against terror’ – America – explain its suppression of the facts about the assassination of two heads of state? What do we make of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda’s brief to foster reconciliation by establishing the truth and ending a culture of impunity?
In The Times last week, Linda Melvern wrote about ‘a large room in the French Embassy in Kigali filled floor to ceiling with shredded documents. This was probably the paper trail that might have revealed the depth of involvement between the Elysée Palace and the Hutu faction responsible for massacring hundreds of thousands of Tutsi and opposition Hutu’ (10). Holding on to the moral parable of Rwanda and endorsing Kigali’s invective against France may work for now. But facts – about the start of the war, the actions of the RPF, and the role of Western intervention more broadly in pushing Rwanda to the brink – are stubborn things…
Footnotes
(1) ‘French Policy in Rwanda’, A Callamard included in The Path of a Genocide: The Rwanda Crisis from Uganda to Zaïre, H Adelman and A Suhurke, Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, 1999, p. 178, note 19
(2) Interview with Carla Del Ponte, Aktuelt, 17 April 2000. Cited in Le drama rwandais : Les aveaux accablants des chefs de la Mission des Nations Unies pour l’Assistance au Rwanda, E Karemera, Editions Sources du Nil, 2006
(3) Bush and Other War Criminals Meet in Rwanda: The Great “Rwanda Genocide” Coverup, P Erlinder, Global Research, 20 February 2008
(4) April 6th 1994 Attack Fits ICTR Mandate – Goldstone, Hirondelle News Agency, accessed 12 December 2006
(5) Rwanda’s Genocide: The Politics of International Justice, K Moghalu, Palgrave Macmillan, 2005 p.52
(6) Second Thoughts on the Hotel Rwanda, Philpot, R, Race and History, 26 February 2005
(7) ‘Major General Paul Kagame behind the shooting down of late Habyarimana’s plane: an eye witness testimony, 2nd Lt. Aloys Ruyenzi Press release, 18 January 2005 (Ruyenzi re-affirmed his statement to the author in an interview in Paris)
(8) ‘French Policy in Rwanda’, A Callamard included in The Path of a Genocide: The Rwanda Crisis from Uganda to Zaïre, H Adelman and A Suhurke, Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, 1999, p.163
(9) Open letter to Prime Minister Harper: Regarding state visit of current President of Rwanda, P Erlinder, 6 April 2006 (Copy passed on to author by Erlinder. Emphasis in the original)
(10) The murky truth about France and genocide, L Melvern, The Times, 8 August 2008

-“The enemies of Freedom do not argue ; they shout and they shoot.”

The principal key root causes that lead to the Rwandan genocide of 1994 that affected all Rwandan ethnic groups were:

1)The majority Hutu community’s fear of the return of the discriminatory monarchy system that was practiced by the minority Tutsi community against the enslaved majority Hutu community for about 500 years

2)The Hutu community’s fear of Kagame’s guerrilla that committed massacres in the North of the country and other parts of the countries including assassinations of Rwandan politicians.

3) The Rwandan people felt abandoned by the international community ( who was believed to support Kagame’s guerrilla) and then decided to defend themselves with whatever means they had against the advance of Kagame’ guerrilla supported by Ugandan, Tanzanian and Ethiopian armies and other Western powers.

-“The enemies of Freedom do not argue ; they shout and they shoot.”

-“The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish.”

-“The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.”

-“I have loved justice and hated iniquity: therefore I die in exile.”

The Rwanda war of 1990-1994 had multiple dimensions.

The Rwanda war of 1990-1994 had multiple dimensions. Among Kagame’s rebels who were fighting against the Rwandan government, there were foreigners, mainly Ugandan fighters who were hired to kill and rape innocent Rwandan people in Rwanda and refugees in DRC.

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SUMMARY : THE TRAGIC CONSEQUENCES OF THE BRITISH BUDGET SUPPORT AND GEO-STRATEGIC AMBITIONS

United Kingdom's Proxy Wars in Africa: The Case of Rwanda and DR Congo:

The Rwandan genocide and 6,000,000 Congolese and Hutu refugees killed are the culminating point of a long UK’s battle to expand their influence to the African Great Lakes Region. UK supported Kagame’s guerrilla war by providing military support and money. The UK refused to intervene in Rwanda during the genocide to allow Kagame to take power by military means that triggered the genocide. Kagame’s fighters and their families were on the Ugandan payroll paid by UK budget support.


· 4 Heads of State assassinated in the francophone African Great Lakes Region.
· 2,000,000 people died in Hutu and Tutsi genocides in Rwanda, Burundi and RD.Congo.
· 600,000 Hutu refugees killed in R.D.Congo, Uganda, Central African Republic and Rep of Congo.
· 6,000,000 Congolese dead.
· 8,000,000 internal displaced people in Rwanda, Burundi and DR. Congo.
· 500,000 permanent Rwandan and Burundian Hutu refugees, and Congolese refugees around the world.
· English language expansion to Rwanda to replace the French language.
· 20,000 Kagame’s fighters paid salaries from the British Budget Support from 1986 to present.
· £500,000 of British taxpayer’s money paid, so far, to Kagame and his cronies through the budget support, SWAPs, Tutsi-dominated parliament, consultancy, British and Tutsi-owned NGOs.
· Kagame has paid back the British aid received to invade Rwanda and to strengthen his political power by joining the East African Community together with Burundi, joining the Commonwealth, imposing the English Language to Rwandans to replace the French language; helping the British to establish businesses and to access to jobs in Rwanda, and to exploit minerals in D.R.Congo.



Thousands of Hutu murdered by Kagame inside Rwanda, e.g. Kibeho massacres

Thousands of Hutu murdered by Kagame inside Rwanda, e.g. Kibeho massacres
Kagame killed 200,000 Hutus from all regions of the country, the elderly and children who were left by their relatives, the disabled were burned alive. Other thousands of people were killed in several camps of displaced persons including Kibeho camp. All these war crimes remain unpunished.The British news reporters were accompanying Kagame’s fighters on day-by-day basis and witnessed these massacres, but they never reported on this.

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25,000 Hutu bodies floated down River Akagera into Lake Victoria in Uganda.

25,000  Hutu bodies  floated down River Akagera into Lake Victoria in Uganda.
The British irrational, extremist, partisan,biased, one-sided media and politicians have disregarded Kagame war crimes e.g. the Kibeho camp massacres, massacres of innocents Hutu refugees in DR. Congo. The British media have been supporting Kagame since he invaded Rwanda by organising the propaganda against the French over the Rwandan genocide, suppressing the truth about the genocide and promoting the impunity of Kagame and his cronies in the African Great Lakes Region. For the British, Rwanda does not need democracy, Rwanda is the African Israel; and Kagame and his guerilla fighters are heroes.The extremist British news reporters including Fergal Keane, Chris Simpson, Chris McGreal, Mark Doyle, etc. continue to hate the Hutus communities and to polarise the Rwandan society.

Kagame political ambitions triggered the genocide.

Kagame  political  ambitions triggered the genocide.
Kagame’s guerrilla war was aimed at accessing to power at any cost. He rejected all attempts and advice that could stop his military adventures including the cease-fire, political negotiations and cohabitation, and UN peacekeeping interventions. He ignored all warnings that could have helped him to manage the war without tragic consequences. Either you supported Kagame’ s wars and you are now his friend, or you were against his wars and you are his enemy. Therefore, Kagame as the Rwandan strong man now, you have to apologise to him for having been against his war and condemned his war crimes, or accept to be labelled as having been involved in the genocide. All key Kagame’s fighters who committed war crimes and crimes against humanity are the ones who hold key positions in Rwandan army and government for the last 15 years. They continue to be supported and advised by the British including Tony Blair, Andrew Mitchell MP, and the British army senior officials.

Aid that kills: The British Budget Support financed Museveni and Kagame’s wars in Rwanda and DRC.

Aid that kills: The British Budget Support  financed Museveni and Kagame’s wars in Rwanda and DRC.
Genocide propaganda and fabrications are used by the so-called British scholars, news reporters and investigative journalists to promote their CVs and to get income out of the genocide through the selling of their books, providing testimonies against the French, access to consultancy contracts from the UN and Kagame, and participation in conferences and lectures in Rwanda, UK and internationally about genocide. Genocide propaganda has become a lucrative business for Kagame and the British. Anyone who condemned or did not support Kagame’s war is now in jail in Rwanda under the gacaca courts system suuported by British tax payer's money, or his/she is on arrest warrant if he/she managed to flee the Kagame’s regime. Others have fled the country and are still fleeing now. Many others Rwandans are being persecuted in their own country. Kagame is waiting indefinitely for the apologies from other players who warn him or who wanted to help to ensure that political negotiations take place between Kagame and the former government he was fighting against. Britain continues to supply foreign aid to Kagame and his cronies with media reports highlighting economic successes of Rwanda. Such reports are flawed and are aimed at misleading the British public to justify the use of British taxpayers’ money. Kagame and his cronies continue to milk British taxpayers’ money under the British budget support. This started from 1986 through the British budget support to Uganda until now.

Dictator Kagame: No remorse for his unwise actions and ambitions that led to the Rwandan genocide.

Dictator Kagame: No remorse for his unwise actions and ambitions that led to the  Rwandan genocide.
No apologies yet to the Rwandan people. The assassination of President Juvenal Habyarimana by Kagame was the only gateway for Kagame to access power in Rwanda. The British media, politicians, and the so-called British scholars took the role of obstructing the search for the truth and justice; and of denying this assassination on behalf of General Kagame. General Paul Kagame has been obliging the whole world to apologise for his mistakes and war crimes. The UK’s way to apologise has been pumping massive aid into Rwanda's crony government and parliement; and supporting Kagame though media campaigns.

Fanatical, partisan, suspicious, childish and fawning relations between UK and Kagame

Fanatical, partisan, suspicious, childish and fawning relations between UK and Kagame
Kagame receives the British massive aid through the budget support, British excessive consultancy, sector wide programmes, the Tutsi-dominated parliament, British and Tutsi-owned NGOs; for political, economic and English language expansion to Rwanda. The British aid to Rwanda is not for all Rwandans. It is for Kagame himself and his Tutsi cronies.

Paul Kagame' actvities as former rebel

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This blog reports the crimes that remain unpunished and the impunity that has generated a continuous cycle of massacres in many parts of Africa. In many cases, the perpetrators of the crimes seem to have acted in the knowledge that they would not be held to account for their actions.

The need to fight this impunity has become even clearer with the massacres and genocide in many parts of Africa and beyond.

The blog also addresses issues such as Rwanda War Crimes, Rwandan Refugee massacres in Dr Congo, genocide, African leaders’ war crimes and crimes against humanity, Africa war criminals, Africa crimes against humanity, Africa Justice.

-The British relentless and long running battle to become the sole player and gain new grounds of influence in the francophone African Great Lakes Region has led to the expulsion of other traditional players from the region, or strained diplomatic relations between the countries of the region and their traditional friends. These new tensions are even encouraged by the British using a variety of political and economic manoeuvres.

-General Kagame has been echoing the British advice that Rwanda does not need any loan or aid from Rwandan traditional development partners, meaning that British aid is enough to solve all Rwandan problems.

-The British obsession for the English Language expansion has become a tyranny that has led to genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, dictatorial regimes, human rights violations, mass killings, destruction of families, communities and cultures, permanent refugees and displaced persons in the African Great Lakes region.


- Rwanda, a country that is run by a corrupt clique of minority-tutsi is governed with institutional discrmination, human rights violations, dictatorship, authoritarianism and autocracy, as everybody would expect.