Fw: *DHR* Forget Gaddafi. Blair's NEW best friend is a despot guilty of even bloodier slaughter

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1363166/Forget-Gaddafi-Blairs-NEW-best-friend-despot-guilty-bloodier-slaughter.html#ixzz1IahWVDD0 Forget Gaddafi. Blair's NEW best friend is a despot guilty of even bloodier slaughter Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1363166/Forget-Gaddafi-Blairs-NEW-best-friend-despot-guilty-bloodier-slaughter.html#ixzz1Fn7AnVms By Paul Scott Last updated at 12:49 AM on 5th March 2011 One morning a month ago, amid the kind of hearty backslapping and synthetic bonhomie at which he is so adept, Tony Blair played host to a select group of bankers for what is known in the business as a 'billion dollar breakfast'. As is so often the case these days, the principal criterion for gaining admission to the event at a luxurious Swiss hotel — and some much sought-after 'face time' with the great man himself — was that you should be very seriously rich. Mr Blair, tight-grinned and tanned in a trademark open-necked white shirt and dark suit teamed, oddly, with a pair of Australian riding boots, was in his element, holding court as red-waistcoated staff poured Buck's Fizz and coffee for the invited international money men. Scene of horror: The skulls of victims of the Rwandan massacres At the former Prime Minister's side throughout was a rake-thin and bespectacled black man whom Blair was conspicuously keen to introduce to the assembled movers and shakers. Not surprising, perhaps, given that the event — at which Mr Blair was officially the chairman — was arranged in sole honour of Paul Kagame, the president of the African state of Rwanda. And this being Mr Blair, the subject on his lips throughout the stylish meeting, held during the World Economic Forum in Davos, was cold, hard cash. Or, more to the point, how much he could persuade the super-rich investment bankers to plough into businesses in his close friend Mr Kagame's emerging economy. It is a task to which Mr Blair is devoting much of his time. Both he and his wife Cherie are regular guests of Kagame, flying in on a fabulously luxurious private jet (of which more later) and staying in a smart suite at the Rwandan capital Kigali's finest lodgings, the Serena Hotel. Their relationship, it has to be said, is something of a love-in. Mr Blair describes Kagame, a former rebel soldier in the once war-torn country, as a 'visionary leader' and 'great friend'. For his part, the grateful Kagame has called on his people to name their children after his new English chum. Meanwhile, Mrs Blair recently paid a misty-eyed tribute to his regime's promotion of the rights of women. Which, one imagines, must have put an ironic smile on the face of one of Rwanda's leading female journalists, Agnes Nkusi Uwimana, now languishing in Kigali's grim Central Prison. Last month, the newspaper editor began a 17-year sentence for publishing critical articles in the run-up to the country's blatantly fixed presidential elections last August that saw Kagame — the country's leader since 2000 — returned to office with a 93 per cent majority. Friends: Tony Blair greets Rwandan President Paul Kagame inside No 10 in December 2006 while he was still Prime Minister Another writer on her paper was jailed for seven years. Meanwhile, their paper was summarily closed down by presidential order. Indeed, the increasingly dictatorial Kagame has now closed down all the independent media outlets the country once had. No wonder Amnesty International has condemned the jailing, while the White House recently attacked Kagame's growing political suppression. Even so, Miss Uwimana and her journalist colleague can count themselves lucky. Others have suffered much worse fates. The sham elections, at which 53-year-old father-of-four Kagame banned the two major opposition parties from standing and stood against three members of his own ruling coalition, were marred by the mysterious deaths of some of his political opponents and critics. In June, the acting editor of another newspaper was shot in the face and killed. The journalist, Jean-Leonard Rugambage, was silenced because he exposed corruption involving Kagame and claimed he had uncovered the government's involvement in the attempted murder of a former Rwandan army general exiled in South Africa. Worse was to come. A month later, the vice-president of the country's Democratic Green Party, which had been due to stand against the president's Rwandan Patriotic Front ruling party, went missing before his almost decapitated body was discovered. Kagame's government denied any involvement. In October, the woman leader of the central African country's most prominent opposition party, FDU-Inkingi, was jailed under new defamation laws brought in by Kagame to stifle opposition. Then, two months ago, four exiled political rivals who used to be part of Kagame's inner circle, but now accuse him of corruption, were jailed by a court for up to 24 years in their absence. Which makes Mr Blair's congratulatory letter to Kagame, hailing his 'popular mandate' after the vote, seem a bit of a sick joke. Blair's robust backing for his latest dodgy friend bears striking similarities to his long-time support of Libya's Colonel Gaddafi, to whom he shamelessly cosied up during his time as PM, and to whom he has remained close ever since. Presidents Robert Mugabe, centre of Zimbabwe and Paul Kagame, right, at an African Union summit in 2007 But could Kagame prove to be even more of an ill-advised friend? Damning evidence is beginning to emerge that he ordered the systematic genocide of tens of thousands of rival Hutu civilians in revenge for the massacre of up to 800,000 of his Tutsi people in three months of bloodshed in 1994. In October, the United Nations published a damning 550-page report which detailed the mass rape and torture of Hutu civilians after the Tutsi army, led by Kagame, chased fleeing Hutus into the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo. Witnesses to the atrocities claim there were ritual beheadings, while women and children were set alight, bludgeoned with hammers and shot. The UN has said that Kagame may face trial for war crimes. Even so, Blair remains defiantly behind the increasingly despotic leader. Two months ago he launched a passionate defence of him, saying: 'I am a believer in and a supporter of Paul Kagame.' At the same time, he is said to have rolled his eyes when a Washington-based journalist questioned him about the scathing UN report into the Rwandan regime. Blair has installed a team of handpicked advisers from his personal charity, the African Governance Initiative — which he set up in 2008 to assist three African countries — at the very heart of the corrupt president's administration. Massacre: A Rwandan soldier looks at hundreds of skulls displayed at the Bisesero memorial in the west of the country The young team of between eight and ten aides, led by a Yale graduate, have taken up key roles in the President's personal office, working for the country's prime minister, in the cabinet office and on the Rwanda Development Board. Which does rather invite the question — just what is in all this for Blair himself? Well, as is so often the case with the former Labour leader, the line between charity and personal aggrandisement is often more than a little hazy. Take, for example, those flights Blair has made into Rwanda on a sumptuous private jet. The plane is one of two blue-and-white Bombardier BD-700 Global Express jets — costing  £30 million each — owned by the ruler of a country where 60 per cent of the people live in poverty. In a bid to cover up the millions he has splurged on the aircraft, Kagame's government set up a private investment company, registered in South Africa, as a front. However, official records reveal that all the directors of the company, founded in May 2008, work for the president. Just to make the whole thing even more fishy, the planes, whose registrations are ZS-ESA and ZS-XRS, are piloted by South Africa crews and operated by a private jet company based at Lanseria airport near Johannesburg. Blair, who has amassed an estimated £50 million fortune since leaving Downing Street in June 2007, is said to have made at least three flights across three continents in one of the planes. Friends: Blair with Gaddafi at his desert base outside Tropoli while he was Prime Minister in 2007 As long ago as 2009, he was spotted using one of the jets to attend meetings in Israel, Zurich and Abu Dhabi, before being flown into Kigali for a meeting with President Kagame. At the time, Blair had personally corralled a group of European investment bankers in a bid to persuade them to speculate in Rwanda's emerging IT and bio-fuels industries. Quite what Blair was doing accepting the flights, which would have cost in excess of £500,000 if he were paying himself, is anyone's guess. His trips to Israel can be explained by his duties as the West's unpaid Middle East peace envoy. But his regular trips to Switzerland and Abu Dhabi are usually about further lining the pockets of his well-cut trousers. For three years, Blair has acted as £500,000-a-year adviser on 'development and trends in the international political environment' for Swiss insurer Zurich. Meanwhile, he is often required to fly to Abu Dhabi in his £1 million-a-year capacity as consultant to the United Arab Emirates' super-rich sovereign wealth fund Mubadala. None of which sounds exactly charitable. Kagame casts his vote at a polling station in elections last year And there is also further reason to suspect the lines between Blair's twin roles as money-maker and the new self-appointed saviour of Africa are being stretched to something approaching breaking point. Last August, Blair, who pumped millions of pounds of aid into Rwanda during his time as PM, published a lengthy self-congratulatory article about his African charity work — which involves him helping to secure investment — on his personal website. As one of many such glowing tributes to himself, it was, understandably, barely noticed at the time. But hidden away in a question and answer session is a fascinating admission about the structure of his charity, the Africa Governance Initiative. Describing how the charity works in Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Liberia, Mr Blair stressed first that he deals directly with each country's leader. Then he added: 'The second thing is that AGI then hire a team of young people to come and live in the country — from JP Morgan, or they may have been in Downing Street or in the American system.' Seasoned Blair watchers will know, of course, that he is a senior adviser to JP Morgan, a major U.S. investment bank, which pays him a reported £2 million a year to brief it on 'the political and economic changes that globalisation brings'. No doubt his paymasters at the bank are grateful that Mr Blair is able to put its young executives in on the ground floor of the fast-expanding Rwandan economy. In recent months, Mr Blair has come in for flak over the 'opaque' nature of a complex network of companies set up to control his business interests, because they exploit a loophole that means he can keep his earnings from his business interests and his appearances on the international lecture circuit a secret. Figures from one of his charities, however, reveal the scope of his influence. Three months ago, a Sainsbury family charity, the Gatsby Foundation, declared it had paid £992,000 into Blair's Windrush charity. The money was, it said, for charitable projects in Rwanda. Meanwhile, The Gates Foundation, set up by Microsoft founder Bill Gates, says it paid £1.5 million to Windrush in 2008 for similar projects in Sierra Leone. Friends of the former Prime Minister defend him by saying he personally likes Kagame and believes his country's brutal recent history means allowances must be made for him. But one source close to Mr Blair told me this week: 'Tony's got a blind spot when it comes to this guy. He is surprisingly easily charmed, and Kagame has gone out of his way to be a very generous host with plane rides and things. 'But Tony's credibility has taken an absolute kicking over Gaddafi and, frankly, he can ill afford to get tied up with another dangerous nutcase.' Surely, even the discredited and morally dispossessed Mr Blair can see that getting into bed with one bloodthirsty tyrant is regrettable, but two starts to look downright careless. __._,_.___

London’s Gaddafi-funded university: business as usual in the UK

London's Gaddafi-funded university: business as usual in the UK This is not unusual in the UK higher learning institutions. In addition to Tony Blair, the London School of Economics is connected to undemocratic regimes where there are fragrant human rights abuses.  Such countries include Rwanda and many other countries in Asia and the Middle East. This is why teaching about international issues in most UK universities  focus on Asia and the Middle East. This is corruption that has been going for many years among UK universities.   Most UK Universities have been awarding Honoris Causa Doctorates to dictators and other individuals on the basis of the money they give to these universities. Most people believe that the Gaddafi's son may have bought his degrees from the London School of Economics without passing his exams and dissertations. In the UK, with money everything is possible! More at: http://www.france24.com/en/20110304-london-school-economics-lse-gaddafi-university-business-donations-howard-davies-uk

UK foreign aid re-focused. But, this isn't enough!

It is good news that UK has now re-focused their foreign aid to poorer countries. UK must acknowledge the negative impacts of their foreign aid to developing countries: Over the last   decade, UK has campaigned for promoting the budget support which has contributed to fuel wars and ethnic violence in the African Great lakes Region starting from Tanzania, Uganda, and Rwanda to Democratic Republic of Congo. UK foreign aid has been used to buy weapons to fight these wars. UK does not recognise the political opposition voices based in the UK and in aid recipient countries. UK aid budget support is used to run foreign governments, the military apparatus and the Parliament whose members are not chosen on the basis of democratic principles. UK  has been campaigning for the  removal of foreign aid conditionalities and the current revolt and  un unrest in several countries is the result of this UK policy. Where the condition of human rights have been clearly specify in memorandums of cooperation between UK and  aid recipients,  UK deliberately ignore human rights abuses and continue to pump  money to governments that are expected to respect all terms and conditions of the foreign aid provided. This is the case in Rwanda. UK  foreign aid benefit local elite than the poorer in many countries  where the Head of the Government  is paid a salary and benefits  five time than the  UK Prime Minister. UK has been providing aid based on competition with other nations rather than on the basis of the real needs of aid recipients and the UK funding capabilities. More at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-12599969

UN Mapping report on Crimes in D.R.Congo; Capitol Hill Advocacy objectives

UN Mapping report on Crimes in D.R.Congo; Capitol Hill Advocacy objectives



Posted on February 27, 2011

In an interview with Ann Garrison of KPFA radio on the upcoming congressional briefing on March 2, AFJN Policy Analyst, Bahati Jacques said: "Our goal is to rally U.S. support for justice for the crimes committed by the Rwandan, Ugandan, and Burundian armies and their Congolese collaborators in the war against Congo in 1996 to 2003. Also we want the U.S. to take a clear stand on this issue, supporting the UN Mapping Report recommendations to set up an investigation to determine whether the targeted and massive killing of Congolese, Burundian, and Rwandan Hutu were a genocide." Listen or read the full interview here

(http://afjn.org/focus-campaigns/promote-peace-d-r-congo/71-policy-objectives/935-un-mapping-report-on-crimes-in-drcongo-capitol-hill-advocacy-objectives.html)

Kagame is worse than Ghadafi

Actually, Kagame is worse than Ghadafi; his anger for absolute power


is rather terrible. In this article below, I talk about that ego and

how he tries to achieve that through dirty mwars on his genuine

critics.....


Kagame’s ego and the dirty war against Kayumba, Karegeya


Last month, The New times, Kigali’s main pro-government daily quoted

The Executive Secretary International Conference on the Great Lakes

Region (ICGLR), Ambassador Liberata Mulamula as seeking regional

cooperation of governments in a bid to have former RDF Generals, Gen.

Nyamwasa Kayumba and Col. Patrick Karegeya arrested and extradited to

Rwanda’. The official expressed that such, if achieved would be a

positive development as regards regional stability.

Such a statement was not a surprise from the Lady, whose husband, a

Tanzanian Engineer, George Mulamula is a proud beneficiary of Kagame’s

regime as an employee in Kigali-not to be personal, just to get to

facts. Yes, he has been employed by the government of Rwanda, serving

in various offices.

First, he was an ICT lecturer at Kigali Institute of Science and

Technology (KIST), then to Rwanda Information and Technology Authority

(RITA), and an advisor in the ministry of Infrastructure in Kigali.

From there, he moved to the President’s office and then to the

National University of Rwanda as an ICT expert. He did consultancy

work with Rwanda Investment and Export Promotion Agency (RIEPA),

before being appointed the Principal Deputy CEO of Rwanda Development

Board (RDB). He now works with the ministry of Trade and Commerce.

The motivation of Amb. Mulamula, can be traced there in. She

basically, wants to use the regional office to do the donkeys work for

her husband’s patron Kagame and his regime in persecuting the critics

of the regime- a clear signal of conflict of interests.

Kagame’s big role in regional instability

Amb. Mulamula knows about everything that has been going on in the

region pertaining instability especially in the DRC, and the big role

played by Kagame as he tries to consolidate his power in Kigali and

the region. She certainly, as Col. Patrick Karegeya mentioned while

responding to the official in question, how Kagame has ‘created,

dismantled and recreated armed rebel groups in the Democratic Republic

of Congo to ‘satisfy his ego and demonstrate his power’ , but,

Mulamula still has the impudence to underline the exiled generals as

the major threat to regional security. How?

Col. Patrick Karegeya mentioned the CNDP, which Kagame created, armed,

and later disbanded at will as an example, and it is one, many have

first information about. There are several others. Kagame, not his

critics are to blame for regional instability; it’s a fact raised in

Col. Karegeya’s response, and indeed is one, that majority of citizens

in the great lakes region will tell.

Criminalizing dissent

It is true, and with-in the good understanding of Lady Mulamula, that,

the charges leveled against the two exiled generals and their

colleagues, Rudasingwa and Gahima were political rather than issues of

security. The four were subjected to the charges following their

public criticism of Kagame in a highly publicized document, Rwanda

Briefing as well as in many press interviews. Instead of looking at

the issues of human rights and freedoms that should be guaranteed to

Kagame’s critics, Mulamula uses the regional office to assert that

criticizing Kagame is a crime that deserves regional attention. What a

shame?

In response to Mulamula’s call, Col. Patrick Karegeya said thus;

“We would affirm once again that we are not in any way connected to

any armed groups operating in the DRC. The fact that we are not

involved in carrying out criminal activities against the Rwandan state

can be verified with the Government of the state that has granted us

asylum. We are trained lawyers and long serving military officers who

have a demonstrated record of opposition to the support of armed

groups that have caused so much human suffering among the people of

the DRC and the region at large.”


Hunting victims


In fact, the two generals are victims of Kagame’s ‘terrorism’. In

february last year, shortly after he fled from Rwanda, Gen. Kayumba

was a target of an assassination plot widely believed to have been

planned by Kagame’s secret agents in Johannesburg, South Africa, a

country whose government granted the two officers asylum, another

confirmation that they cannot be viewed as terrorists in any form. Col

Karegeya as if he had to, labored to remind Mulamila about this as he

noted;

“It is inconceivable that a person of your stature and

responsibilities could recommend that individuals against whom

President Paul Kagame’s government has carried out multiple

assassination attempts be returned to Rwanda to serve sentences

imposed after sham trials in absentia. We regret that the Rwandan

Government has manipulated its partners in the CEPGL to agree to the

use of the common institutions of the states of our region as

instruments of repression and persecution.”



But, the government of Kigali was not done, really this month; they

paraded a former FDLR Combatant, one Bisengimana, who was forced to

allege that the exiled generals were planning to re-energize FDLR.

This yet was just another of Kagame’s tactics to tarnish the image of

his critics, attract sympathy from the international community, as he

continues to pursue his other policies of satisfying his personal gain

and establishing his authoritarian rule. Rwandans are familiar with

such actions and politics, Mulamula is familiar with it too, but, she

will go on and ask that the generals, not Kagame’s actions be the

center of focus.

Kagame’s ego and crackdown on critics



It’s worth noting here that while responding to the official, Col.

Karegeya on behalf of the two generals, reminded the Executive

Secretary of the regional conference, that, instead of pursuing

innocent critics of Kagame’s authoritarian rule, they ‘should be

demanding the unconditional release of the large number of political

prisoners now languishing in Rwanda’s official and unofficial

detention centres, including former minister and Social Democratic

Party leader Charles Ntakirutinka, FDU-Inkingi President Victoire

Ingabire, PS-Imberakuri Bernard Ntaganda, Deo Mushaidi and former

presidential candidate Dr Theoneste Niyitegeka.’



He also, urged the international community to continue to demand

justice for the politically motivated killings of Kagwa Rwisereka

(Vice President of the Democratic Green Party), journalists, Jean

Leonard Rugambage (Deputy Editor of the Umuvugizi newspaper) and Mr

John Rutayisire, who are just a few examples of ‘our compatriots who

have been assassinated by agents of the state for political reasons in

the recent past.’

That certainly, is the call majority of Rwandans under the bondage of

Kagame’s dictatorship would make at this point in time to the likes of

Mulamula and the international Community. These few examples of

Kagame’s crackdown on dissent emphasize his out and out violent and

bloody approaches to feeding his ego and quest for absolute power.

Rwandans ask UK Members of Parliament to follow through British prime minister's new foreign policy on dictators Posted on February 25, 2011 by therisingcontinent| Leave a comment On February 25th, 2011, a group of Rwandans living in UK organised a public protest in front of the UK Parliament. They requested from Members of the British Parliament to put pressure on Paul Kagame, president of Rwanda, for the unconditional release of all political prisoners held in Rwandan prisons. Among the detainees are Mrs Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza, Chairperson of FDU-Inkingi in prison since October 14th, 2010 Me Bernard Ntaganda, Chairperson of PS-Imberakuri in prison since June 24th, 2010 and sentenced to 4 years in prison Mr Deogratias Mushayidi, President of PDP-Imanzi sentenced to life imprisonment Dr Theoneste Niyitegetse, former presidential candidate of 2003 elections imprisoned since then Charles Ntakirutinka Founder of PDR-Ubuyanja in prison for more than 10 years Journalist Agnes Uwimana Nkusi, sentenced to 17 years in prison Journalist Saidati Mukakibibi, sentenced to 7 years in prison And thousands more detained in inhuman conditions in Rwandan prisons for their political opinions Participants to the protest also denounce politically motivated sentences of 24 and 20 years in prison made in abstentia by the High Military Court in Kigali against General Kayumba Nyamwasa, Colonel Patrick Karegeya, Dr Théogène Rudasingwa et Dr Gerald Gahima. David Cameron, the UK Prime Minister publicly admitted recently in Kuwait that Britain and the West made "false choices" to support oppressive regimes that trampled on human rights. 'As recent events have confirmed, denying people their basic rights does not preserve stability – rather the reverse," said the Prime Minister. As a logic consequence of that new reality and understanding, protesters would like to see Britain translating such change of foreign policy by stopping immediately their unconditional support to Paul Kagame's regime. It has abused Rwandans and other populations of the Great Lakes region in the millions. They would also want to see Britain use its leverage position towards the Rwandan government to push for political reforms before it becomes too late for peaceful change. Asked by BBC World Service how they intended to proceed since in the past Britain has never considered officially Rwanda to be a dictatorship, Ambrose Nzeyimana, who represented the protesters, replied that Rwandans knew too well how oppressive and atrocious Kagame's regime was. He added that they were planning to work with individual members of parliament to get the issue tabled during question time for ministers at the House of Commons. Such approach has successfully worked in the past. They don't see why it wouldn't work this time; particularly when one takes into account social uprisings across the Middle East and North Africa against dictatorial regimes. (http://therisingcontinent.wordpress.com/2011/02/25/rwandans-ask-uk-members-of-parliament-to-follow-through-british-prime-minister%e2%80%99s-new-foreign-policy-on-dictators/)