Rwanda History: Political Prisoner: Rwanda’s Former Presidential Candidate Victoire Ingabire’s Speech Crimes

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.

9 Jan 2014

Political Prisoner: Rwanda’s Former Presidential Candidate Victoire Ingabire’s Speech Crimes | Global Research

http://www.globalresearch.ca/political-prisoner-rwandas-former-presidential-candidate-victoire-ingabires-speech-crimes/5364349?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=political-prisoner-rwandas-former-presidential-candidate-victoire-ingabires-speech-crimes

Political Prisoner: Rwanda's Former Presidential Candidate Victoire Ingabire's Speech Crimes

By Ann Garrison

Global Research, January 09, 2014

Black Agenda Report 7 January 2014

Region: sub-Saharan Africa

Theme: Law and Justice

The Obama administration and its European allies lavish praise, weapons and money on Paul Kagame's military and ethnic dictatorship in Rwanda. Meanwhile, Victoire Ingabire, a woman of peace, languishes in Kagame's prisons. If she were president, "there would be a major change in how Rwandans and Congolese live as neighbors, because that would be the end of Rwanda invading Congo."

Nearly 60% of Rwanda's Members of Parliament are women, and the country is commonly praised for empowering women. In October 2011, Rwandan President Paul Kagame's delirious state newspaper even suggested that he deserved that year's Nobel Peace Prize more than the three African women who won, because of his "good practices" to "guarantee a future devoid of gender imbalance." Trouble with this theory is that Madame Victoire Ingabire, the one woman who dared to challenge Paul Kagame by attempting to run against him in 2010, has been in prison ever since. On Friday, December 13th, while Kagame was in South Africa to pay his last respects to Nelson Mandela, his Supreme Court upheld Victoire's conviction and extended her sentence from eight to fifteen years.

Rwanda's Supreme Court justices, 42% of whom are women, agreed with the lower court's ruling that Victoire conspired to form an armed group to overthrow the government of Rwanda, but Human Rights Watch and many others called the charges politically motivated and the European Parliament called for justice and said that the lower court had not met international judicial standards. I myself spoke to Victoire for Pacifica's KPFA Radio-Berkeley many times in 2010 and I've never known anyone so opposed to armed conflict or committed to the rule of law. Her conviction for this would be a howler if she weren't facing another twelve years in prison and her family weren't facing their fourth Christmas without her.

Victoire speaks fluent Dutch, French, Kinyarwanda, and English, but pronounces "dialogue" and "debate" with a distinct and adamant French accent. After the 2010 release of the UN Mapping Report documenting President Kagame's army's war crimes, crimes against humanity, and even genocide against Hutu refugees in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, she told KPFA that the mandate of the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda should be expanded to include crimes in Congo. Instead, she herself went to prison five days later.

Other prisoners who testified to joining her in a conspiracy to form an armed group were granted release for time served on the same day her own conviction was upheld.

President Obama?

No one would seem to be more respectful of the West's nominally revered democratic institutions and civil liberties than this Rwandan political prisoner, Victoire Ingabire, so why have President Obama and the U.S. State Department remained so silent about her case? Neither President Obama nor British Prime Minister David Cameron hesitated to make it known that they had warned President Kagame not to send reinforcements across Rwanda's western border to his M23 militia in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), when M23 finally faced defeat by the Congolese army and UN Force Intervention Brigade. So why have they not, like the European Parliament, called on Rwanda, their longstanding ally and "military partner" to respect judicial standards in Ingabire's case?

Many reasons, no doubt, including former President Bill Clinton's determination to protect his longtime friend Paul Kagame and their mutual determination to preserve the received history of the Rwandan Genocide and ensuing Congo wars and conflict. Another may be Victoire's opposition to their longstanding plan to make Rwanda, or at least its modern capital city Kigali, the "Singapore of Africa," a banking, technology, and minerals processing hub and multinational corporate gateway to the resource riches of the DRC. In 2010, during her thwarted attempt to run for president, Victoire said:

"The rural population in Rwanda has been neglected for the last 16 years and, instead of the Singapore model of development, which gives the lion's share to a tiny, urban privileged elite, I would invest in agriculture, I would invest in rural roads and health networks. I would review the land management and I would give priority to the subsistence food crops, rather than cash crops which benefit mostly traders from urban areas. For example, if people cultivate only maize – if you ask them to cultivate only maize for export – what will they eat? This is why I will give priority to enough food to my people."

Like Tanzanian President Jacaya Kikwete, Victoire stands for negotiation with armed Rwandan refugees in Congo, who have been the Kagame regime's excuse for invading and plundering that country for years.

"Victoire Ingabire does not believe in invading the neighbors," said Rwanda Genocide survivor and Friends of the Congo activist Claude Gatebuke. "So Victoire's case is very significant, not only for Rwanda, but also for Congo. If Victoire Ingabire were allowed to run for president in Rwanda, and she won, there would be a major change in how Rwandans and Congolese live as neighbors, because that would be the end of Rwanda invading Congo."

Imagine that. After almost 20 years, and millions of Congolese and Rwandan refugees dead.

Speech crime

The lower court also upheld Victoire Ingabire's conviction for several speech crimes.

1) "Spreading false rumors" intended to incite the public to rise up against the state.

Enough said, I hope, for anyone who believes in free speech. Or anyone who understands that Rwanda is an authoritarian spy state that has engaged in a war of aggression in neighboring Congo for nearly 20 years.

2) "Minimizing" the 1994 Rwandan Genocide.

In 2010, Victoire went to the Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre, and said that Hutu as well as Tutsi victims should be remembered there. The history of the Rwandan Genocide, codified in Rwanda's Constitution, is that it was only Hutu extremists' "Genocide Against the Tutsi."

Before she went to prison, Victoire told KPFA listeners," My party and I have never denied the genocide, by the UN understanding, because the Resolution 955 from UN says that in Rwanda was genocide against the people of Rwanda . . . there was genocide against Tutsis and moderate Hutus. We don't have to forget that. Yes, there was genocide and all people involved should be brought to the court. But, before, during, and after the genocide, other Rwandese people were killed. Hutus and Tutsis were killed. Is this denying genocide? I don't feel so."

It's difficult to rationally argue with this, because the 1991 Rwandan census, as documented by Ed Herman and David Peterson in The Politics of Genocide, reported a Rwandan population of 7,590,235, including 645,170 Tutsis, more than 300,000 fewer than the million Tutsis commonly reported to have died in the genocide. And because Ibuka, Rwanda's Tutsi genocide survivors group, has claimed that some 300,000 of these 645,170 Tutsis survived. President Kagame would therefore seem to have a lot of bones on display in his genocide memorial sites that he can't properly account for as the result of his Constitutionally codified "Genocide Against the Tutsi."

Ever since I began to try to untangle this story, with my own focus on U.S. responsibility for backing the Kagame regime, Rwandan Hutu people have told me that they simply want to be able to bury and openly mourn their dead, that this is what they must do to heal and reconcile. Others have told me that they want all the bones buried, not displayed in memorial museums, because it's not normal in Rwanda to display the bones or body parts of the dead for tourists or anyone else.

To many Rwandans, that is what Victoire Ingabire represents. Acknowledging, remembering, mourning, and burying all the dead.

Quite a few Rwandans appeared out of cyberspace to respond to my 2010 report,Rwanda's packed prisons and genocide ideology law. Some were absolutely furious, others deeply relieved, just because another writer in the U.S., which has been the dominant power in the region since the Rwanda Genocide and Congo Wars, was trying to make sense of this. At that point I realized how bitterly ethnically polarized Rwanda remains, despite the government's claim that ethnicity no longer exists there. One reader who appreciated the report left this unforgettable statement in the comments section:

"I am from Kiyombe in Byumba. RPF [Rwandan Patriotic Front] came in 1991 and called all the people from our village for a security meeting. After people had gathered at the soccer pitch of Kiyombe, Mr. Hitler Kagame ordered his military to bomb the gathering. I escaped and went through the tea plantation and found my way to Uganda. Ever since I have never returned to Rwanda but I am still considered a genocide denier or genocidaire. Why? Simply because I am a Hutu and I don't even have rights to go back to Rwanda and bury my family and relatives in dignity. Do you know how old I was then? Just 16. I survived but it is me and me alone."

After reading that, I turned to maps and found Kiyombe and Byumba, near the Ugandan border which the RPF, led by General Paul Kagame, had crossed in 1990. And, which this young man then crossed all alone a year later, running in the other direction as a refugee. I also found the tea plantation that he said he had escaped through, and the tea processing plant nearby.

Ann Garrison is an independent journalist who contributes to the Black Star News, Counterpunch, Global Research, and the San Francisco Bay View Newspaper, and produces radio for KPFA-Berkeley and WBAI-New York City. She can be reached on her website, anngarrison.com, or at ann@afrobeatradio.com.

Articles by:Ann Garrison

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

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’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.

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.

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.

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.

Susan Rice: a cheater, irresponsible and corrupt woman

Susan Rice: a cheater, irresponsible and corrupt woman: US and UN have supported and protecting the Rwandan dictator and war criminal Paul Kagame who has ordered and supported the death of almost 8 million people both in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Ms. Susan Rice has been at the forefront of trying to shield the Rwandan government, and Mr. Kagame in particular, from international censure, even as several United Nations reports have laid the blame for civilians massacred and genocide of Hutu community in DR Congo. Susan Rice advised Bill Clinton not to intervene in Rwanda to prevent the massacres of civilians by Kagame’s war and to prevent genocide in Rwanda and DR Congo. UK, Uganda and US opted to provide more arms, intelligence, media and diplomatic support to Kagame’s guerrilla war, which contributed to massacres of civilians and genocide of hutu and tutsi in Rwanda and DR Congo.

"British budget support killed our dads, mums, uncles and aunts, our sisters and brothers..."

Guilty of not speaking English: Tears, rapes, bloodshed, terror and horrors as the result of Museveni and Kagame’s liberation for the expansion of the East African Community to create a regional super state, of the British influence and of the English language to francophone countries of the African Great Lakes Region. British’s poor judgement of their geo-strategic ambitions and British endless and chronic rivalries against the French have led to human rights abuses and the killings of millions of innocent people in the Great Lakes Region.

Kagame’s licence to kill Hutu Refugees in DR.Congo

General Nkunda’s wars supported by Kagame through the British Budget support.

Museveni, Kagame and Nkunda ’s wars in D.R. Congo were funded by the British taxpayer’s money through the budget support and by the British private companies that illegally exploit minerals in D.R.Congo. The assassination of President Juvenal Habyarimana by Kagame was the only gateway to access to power in Rwanda, to help Museveni and the British create and Anglophone super state that includes Rwanda, Burundi and D.R.Congo and to continue the fighting for the regime change in DR.Congo that will lead to easier access to minerals in RD Congo and to the implementation of the UK and Museveni’s plans for East African Political Federation.

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· Never be discouraged from being an activist because people tell you that you'll not succeed. You have already succeeded if you're out there representing truth or justice or compassion or fairness or love(Doris Haddock).

· And you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free [John 8:32].

· Tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

· The harder you try to suppress the truth, the more inevitable it is that it will find a way to come out. (Arianna Huffington).

· You cannot kill the truth. You cannot kill justice. You cannot kill what we are fighting for (Jean Dominique).

· Whenever you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth (Arthur Conan Doyle).

· I'm not going to give up. I can't give up. Not as long as the truth is out there( David Duchovny)

· Truth stands, even if there be no public support. It is self-sustained” (Gandhi).

. The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold (Aristotle)

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9 Jan 2014

Political Prisoner: Rwanda’s Former Presidential Candidate Victoire Ingabire’s Speech Crimes | Global Research

Political Prisoner: Rwanda's Former Presidential Candidate Victoire Ingabire's Speech Crimes

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

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

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

Kagame political ambitions triggered the genocide.

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

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

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

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