SUMMARY : THE TRAGIC CONSEQUENCES OF THE BRITISH BUDGET SUPPORT AND GEO-STRATEGIC AMBITIONS
· 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.
The history of UK involvement in Rwandan war, tragedies and development: from Lynda Chalker to David Cameron
The history of UK involvement in Rwandan war, tragedies and development: from Lynda Chalker to David Cameron
The history of UK involvement in Rwandan tragedies, then Rwandan development started from Lynda Chalker a British Conservative politician who was Member of Parliament for Wallasey from 1974 to 1992. She served as Minister of State for Overseas Development at the Foreign Office, in the Conservative government from 1989 to 1997.
The PM David Cameron visited Rwanda in 2007. He visited Rwanda with 100 people including 43 Tory volunteers, who stayed in Rwanda for one month to work on petty aid projects and to teach English. Andrew Mitchell MP, the current Secretary of State for International Development was part of the group. The only experience he has in international development affairs is Rwanda. He promised Kagame that British aid will double foreign aid to Rwanda if the Conservatives win the elections. Most of British top officials have visited Rwanda since the war ended. The current Kagame presidential campaign has been witnessed and supported by Conservative MPs who have been in Rwanda during this presidential campaign. They justify their presence that they went in the country to distribute 2,000 English dictionaries and computers.
Before the genocide, the British government did not have any economic or diplomatic relations with Rwanda. There was no British Embassy in Rwanda. They just came immediately after the war to continue to provide support to Kagame's regime as they did during Museveni and Kagame’s invasion to Rwanda. There was no project funded by the British government in Rwanda. No single penny was given to the former Rwandan government.
The British have had to wait the arrival of Kagame to help Rwandan people. The UK budget support system was designed mainly for Rwanda and was extended to other countries. Some other countries have been under pressure from DFID to use the budget support system as the effective way of providing aid to developing countries. In Rwanda, the budget support is provided to run Kagame’s government, the Rwanda non-elected parliament, to by new weapons and to run Rwandan military apparatus, to expand the number of Embassies aboard, to send Tutsi children to study in the UK and America, to run quangos and to pay consultancy allocated to each Rwanda ministerial department. Aid given to Rwanda is taken back to UK through various channels including Kagame’s paid advertisements to the Guardian and Financial Times Newspapers. Other funds from British foreign aid return to UK through consultancy.
The controversial genocide law that is being used by Kagame to kill, harass, intimate and oppress his political opponents and journalists was created from scratch by the British consultants. The recent Rwandan government’s report about the assassination of President Habyarimana was sponsored by the British Government. About $135,000 from the budget support to Rwanda was paid to British consultants from United Kingdom’s National Defence Academy ( Cranfield University) to provide a dodgy report to support the Rwandan government claims. The report concludes that the President was assassinated by the Hutus.
http://mutsinzireport.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/DASSR_Report_FINAL_inc_Analysis_130309[1].pdf
As the result of this massive aid, Kagame took Rwanda to Commonwealth and imposed English Language to the Rwandan people. A recent book that I read confirms that British never provide aid for nothing. They support the countries that speak English or willing to abandon the French Language. British argue and wrongly disseminate the propaganda that Rwanda’s economic development started with the arrival of the British in the country. They do not recognise the achievements of Rwanda before the genocide. They deliberately ignore the contributions from former Rwandan development partners ( now replaced by the British) before the genocide and since the independence. The UK media and politicians have been every active in exaggerating Kagame’s achievements to justify British’s generous involvement in Rwanda. Kagame is ‘God’ for the British media and politicians.
Charity starts at home:
While the UK’s Conservative Government is cutting public budget expenditure that could lead to thousands of jobs loss in the public services and increased poverty due to benefits cuts, no budget cuts are planned for the Department of International Development because the whole strategic framework of DFID is based on Rwanda. Because DFID has to keep the level of aid to Rwanda, no cuts should be made on DFID’s budget. Kagame is assured to receive British taxpayer money to keep Kagame’s government running, to pay Rwandan civil servants and military personnel, to run the parliament and to open new embassies abroad. While David Cameron has continued to bully people who are being paid than him in the UK, Kagame’s monthly salary is twice more than the British PM’s salary. Kagame has private jets and ranches in different parts of Rwanda, which David Cameron cannot afford in the UK.
The British royal family’s policy at work: mass death in Rwanda by Linda de Hoyos
Before April, Rwanda had an approximate population of 7.2 million. As of September, up to 1 million people have been killed inside Rwanda. According to estimates supplied by the U.S. Agency for International Development (AID), 2,576,000 people are displaced inside Rwanda, including 1.3 million in the former French Safe Zone in the southwest corner of the country. Another 2,223,000 people are refugees outside of Rwanda—1,542,000 in Zaire, 210,000 in Burundi, 460,500 in Tanzania, and 10,500 in Uganda. That is, 5,799,000 people, or 80.6% of the population, have been killed or uprooted. The RPF is ruling from the capital city of Kigali over an emptied country. Water arid electricity systems are destroyed. Up to 50% of health employees and teachers have been killed. The Ugandan shilling is now the currency of choice. Food production is at 66% of the normal, with the country receiving less than 75% of its aid requirement. Rwanda has been obliterated, torn to pieces, its traumatized and emaciated population scattered to the winds. As EIR has documented (Aug. 19, 1994), the destruction of Rwanda is the handiwork of Ugandan dictator Yoweri Museveni and Lady Lynda Chalker.
The destruction of Rwanda begins not with the April 6,1994 murder of President Juvenal Habyarimana, but with the British-backed invasion of Rwanda by the top echelons of the Uganda Army in October 1990. According to one source in Kampala, 95% of the RPF was in the Uganda Army. And Museveni’s National Resistance Army (NRA), itself trained by the British, Americans, and North Koreans since Museveni took power in 1986, is the source of supplies and money for the RPF.
The leaders of the RPF are identical to the top echelons of the Ugandan Army: Ugandan minister of state for defense was the RPF’s David Tinyefuza; Paul Kagame, current defense minister of Rwanda Under the RPF, was head of intelligence and counterintelligence in the Ugandan Army; the RPF’s Chris Bunyenyezi was the former commanding officer of the NRA’s 306th Brigade, notorious for the atrocities committed against Uganda’sTeso. Museveni also had a hand in the Oct. 23, 1993 coup against Burundi President Melchior Ndadaye, whose election had ended 31 years of Tutsi military rule in Burundi. According to some sources, Museveni planned the coup in a meeting in Entebbe which included the RPF’s Paul Kagame.
Two coup ringleaders, Major Bucokoza and Lt. Paul Kamana, were in Kampala, openly carousing with Ugandan officers, from late October 1993 to February 1994, and, according to Burundi sources, they are both now with the RPF. The attempted coup in Burundi resulted in the murder of President Ndadaye, and the mass slaughter of up to 100,000 Hutus and Tutsis in fratricidal warfare. Museveni is not acting on his own. His links to the British royal family run through two interlinked personages: Lady Lynda Chalker, Minister of Overseas Development and a favorite of Lady Margaret Thatcher, and Tiny Rowland, chairman of Lonrho, who reportedly introduced Chalker to the higher echelons of London society. The on-the-ground British case officer for Museveni is reportedly one William (Mike) Pike, editor of New Vision, a daily financed by Rowland. Pike is believed to report directly to Chalker. Chalker was the first foreigner to meet Museveni once he took power in Kampala. Museveni and Chalker have been “very luwie-duvvie,” as one British source put it.
A British East Africa expert further complained that Lady Chalker “spends a lot of time, a disproportionate amount of time, in the Horn of Africa and Uganda.” Soon after the RPF victory in Rwanda, Chalker visited Uganda for a four-day tour hosted by Museveni, before tripping over to Goma, Zaire, to view the refugees.
On the latter experience, Chalker told the press, “Of course, when one comes face to face with death . . . in their hundreds, or as in Goma, in their thousands, I feel it. But I don’t allow it to affect my judgment.” Museveni, the marcher lord On Dec. 11,1992, Africa Analysis reported that the minutes of a meeting which took place in late 1992 at the State House in Entebbe had reached Kenyan intelligence. The minutes showed that Ugandan President Museveni was prepared to give full logistical and political support to insurgencies aimed at the governments in Rwanda, Kenya, and Sudan. Attending the meeting were Museveni, Col. John Garang of the S udan People’ s Liberation Army, unidentified commanders of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (Ugandan Army), and representatives of the armed wing of the Kenya Democratic Party opposition to Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi. The meeting points to Museveni’s role as the British marcher lord in East and Central Africa.
The immediate goal for the British royal family is to use Uganda, which was first leveled by the British-sponsored barbarian Idi Amin (1972- 40 Special Offprint EIR November 1994 79) and has now become the major British financial and political outpost in the region, as the springboard for recolonization of the region. The gameplan is: Destroy Rwanda and Burundi, turning the remains into satellites of Ugandan (British) domination; destroy Kenya by overthrowing President Moi and instigating tribal warfare; and seize mineralrich eastern Zaire. According to Africa Analysis, “Museveni told the RPF commanders at the Entebbe meeting that he would do his utmost to stall the Arusha peace talks in order to buy time for them to build sufficient firepower to storm Kigali.” That mission has now been accomplished. On Kenya, Lady Chalker has worked to create a tribally based opposition to Moi, with the armed wings of these operations supplied by Museveni. Chalker has repeatedly cut British aid to Kenya, and informed Moi in February 1992, in what she called “very frank, straight talks,” that “the only way to come to grips with the security problem in northern Kenya is to deploy troops under U.N. coordination.” Uganda is arming the rebels in Zaire. The British are now demanding that the troops of the former Rwandan government move deeper into the interior of Zaire, away from the mass of Rwandan refugees. According to an Oct. 2 report of U.N.
Special Representative to Rwanda Shahryar Khan, this may require “an international operation under Chapter 7 of MAP 6 Rwanda invasion routes the U.N. Charter—which allows for use of force”—on Zairean soil. Strongman behind the SPLA Uganda is the major source of supply for John Garang’s SPLA. The remaining SPLA stronghold in Sudan is Nimuli, near the Ugandan border, which is supplied from the Nimuli park on the border with Sudan and Kidepo Valley park in northern Uganda. Kidepo is also the site for SPLA training and the SPLA headquarters. According to Ugandan sources, food, gasoline, and supplies are stored for Garang at the Mbuya military barracks, and the supplies are delivered by the NRA 4th Division. Museveni has attempted to procure sophisticated weapons for Garang. In August 1992, Museveni’s private secretary, Innocent Bisangwa-Mbuguje, and Ugandan Ambassador to the United States Stephen Kapimpina Katenta-Apuuli were arrested in Orlando, Florida, for illegally attempting to buy 400 TOW anti-tank missiles and 34 TOW launchers for $18 million.
The weapons were bound for the SPLA, through the border towns of Nimule or Kaya in northern Uganda. In spring 1994, a Nigerian commercial plane developed engine trouble at Lanark, Cyprus, while carrying missiles reportedly from Israel to Uganda. Museveni and Garang are old school buddies, both trained KEY TO MAP 6 The 1990 RPF/Ugandan army invasion of Rwanda was staged in the Gorilla park of Uganda on the border of Rwanda and Zaire 1. It proceeded through the Volcans park in Rwanda 2, directly opposite the Gorilla park in Uganda. The Akagera park in Rwanda 3, bordering Kenya and within a few miles of the Ugandan border, was the other invasion route. Although the 1990 invasion failed, the Uganda military and RPF continued to control large areas of the Volcans park of Rwanda, and used that park as a base for raids farther into Rwanda. The RPF also held parts of the Virunga park in Zaire 4, which borders both the Volcans park of Rwanda and the Gorilla park of Uganda. Periodic efforts by the Rwandan military to flush out the Uganda guerrillas through shelling both parks were unsuccessful, and vehemently condemned by international conservation agencies including the World Wildlife Fund. The WWF manages the “Gorilla protection program” within the tri-border Virunga, Gorilla, and Volcans parks.
The WWF program was initiated just months before the 1990 Ugandan invasion. The Uganda/RPF invasion of April 1994 came largely through the Akagera park. o EIR November 1994 Special Offprint 41 at Dar Es Salaam University in Tanzania, where the curriculum had a definite Maoist bent. Tiny Rowland is a mutual friend. Speaking on a British Broadcasting Corp. newscast in Nairobi, Kenya in March 1993, Rowland declared that he is a member of Garang’s SPLA and had been since 1984, reported the South African Weekly Mail. As the Weekly Mail explained, “Southern Sudan has an undeveloped oil industry and Lonrho is interested in a project to bring oil out in a pipeline leading through Kenya— where Rowland has important interests—to Mombasa, instead of through the Red Sea port of Port Sudan as the Khartoum government has planned.” The SPLA is advised by Dr. Mansur Khalid, a former foreign minister of Sudan, who is now employed by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in Nairobi, Kenya. The UNDP officer in Uganda, who is also reportedly involved in support operations for Garang, is one Hans Farelius, a former Protestant missionary. Farelius is reported to have moved to Kampala in 1989 from Uppsala, Sweden. In Uppsala, he aided Museveni, who came to Sweden for retooling in 1985-86, before taking power in Entebbe. Unlike the rest of Africa’s leaders, Museveni has not come under pressure to democratize.
Says one London source: “The British are very much behind this government. You know there is no condition at all on democratization. The President doesn’t even pretend [to be] for this, and he is still a darling of the West Chronology Rwanda-Uganda genocide 1986: Yoweri Museveni comes to power in Uganda, after a five-year guerrilla war. Museveni’s benefactors during the guerrilla war included Tiny Rowland, chairman of the London- Rhodesia Corp. (Lonrho), and Moshood Abiola, the Nigeria magnate operating on behalf of ITT. 1989: Leaders of the Ugandan Army, including the current vice president of Rwanda, Paul Kagame, are sent to Fort Leavenworth U.S. Army Command and Staff College. August-September 1990: Rwandans of Uganda Army group in southwestern Uganda are led by Ugandan Maj.- Gen. Fred Rwigyema in preparation for invasion of Uganda. Oct. 1,1990: Rwandan Patriotic Front section of Ugandan Army invades Rwanda through Akagera Park. Oct. 27,1990: Cease-fire, as RPF is repelled by French paratrooper force from the outskirts of Kigali. 1991: RPF invades again, coming through Virunga Park, seizing the town of Ruhengeri, causing mass exodus of over 200,000 refugees.
RPF then pulls back, occupying the entire eastern portion of the Virunga Park, from where it sends continual artillery barrages onto the Rwandan plain. 1992: As RPF incursions continue, Habyarimana government begins organizing militias in the countryside; begins to raise military from 5,000 troops to 40,000. February 1993: RPF invades Rwanda, taking control of a chunk of territory in the north, killing 40,000 Hutus. Mass exodus of refugees from the area. June 1, 1993: Melchior Ndadaye is elected first Hutu President in Burundi, in first national elections. August 1993: Arusha Accords, negotiated between Habyarimana government and RPF, under U.S. and British auspices, grant RPF 50% of commander and officer posts in Army and 40% of the troops, and seven cabinet posts. September 1993: U.N. sends peacekeeping force to Rwanda to oversee implementation of Arusha Accords. Oct. 23, 1993: Attempted coup in Burundi by Tutsidominated military. Ndadaye is murdered, with up to 100,000 Hutus.
More than 700,000 Hutus flee Burundi. International press gives no notice. December 1993: RPF moves 600 troops into Kigali under Arusha Accords. January 1994: British Defense Department African strategists are reportedly moved off their concentration on Angola and put on Rwanda. March 1994: Another slaughter of Hutus in Burundi, up to 40,000 killed. April 6, 1994: Plane carrying Rwandan President Habyarimana and Burundi President Ntaryamira is brought down by three rockets, killing all on board. Mass killings by Rwandan government troops erupt in Kigali; RPF begins invasion from Virunga and Akegera Parks. April 19, 1994: U.N.
peacekeeping troops (2,500 Belgian forces) withdraw. May 1994: U.N. imposes arms embargo on Rwandan government, as mass slaughter continues throughout the country. June 21, 1994: France gains U.N. approval to send troops to Rwanda. French troops set up Safe Zones, nearly clashing with RPF forces. July 12,1994: 1 million Rwandans flee to Zaire. July 15, 1994: RPF is in effective control of Rwanda, with exception of French Safe Zones. July 22-27,1994: Lady Lynda Chalker, British Minister of Overseas Development, visits Uganda. July 29, 1994: President Clinton pledges U.S. humanitarian aid operation to Rwandan refugees, to be carried out by U.S. military. A survey taken by the group Doctors without Borders in the first week of August shows that 80,000 people, at least, had died in the Zaire camps since mid-July—8% of those in camps. Aug. 22,1994: French troops leave protected zone. Sept. 29, 1994: Relief workers from U.N. High Commission on Refugees, Doctors without Borders, the German Red Cross, Oxfam, Concern, Assist, and Care Australia, and from Sweden and South Korea begin to pull out of the Rwandan refugee camps in Zaire. 42 Special Offprint EIR November 1994
Lynda Chalker, Baroness Chalker of Wallasey PC (née Bates; born 29 April 1942) is a British Conservative politician who was Member of Parliament for Wallasey from 1974 to 1992. She served as Minister of State for Overseas Development at the Foreign Office, in the Conservative government from 1989 to 1997
http://news.jonzu.com/z_tag/linda
Rwanda Fake Report: A Rebuttal of the Mutsinzi Commission Report, By: Kanyarwanda Veritas on: Sun 17 of Jan., 2010 09:14 GMT
http://freeuganda.org/article91-Rwanda-Fake-Report
Bloodshed and whitewash: Britain and the Rwanda genocide
by Mark Curtis
published in Red Pepper, March 2004
The invasion of Iraq and the Hutton report are two sides of the same coin: the former shows that policies are made by a tiny cabal of people around the prime minister, impervious to public influence; the latter shows that this cabal is protected from serious accountability. Britain's political system, clearly more totalitarian than democratic, can enable policy-makers to get away with murder, as the events of ten years ago show.
Next month is the tenth anniversary of the Rwanda genocide that killed a million people. There has been astounding silence on one aspect of this slaughter - the culpability of British policy-makers.
A planned campaign of slaughter was launched by extremist Hutus in April 1994 to eliminate members of the Tutsi ethnic group and political opponents. The UN security council, instead of beefing up its peace mission in Rwanda and giving it a stronger mandate to intervene, decided to reduce the troop presence from 2,500 to 270. This decision sent a green light to the killers showing that the UN would not intervene.
It was Britain's ambassador to the UN, Sir David Hannay, who proposed that the UN reduce its force; the US agreed. Both were concerned over a repetition of the events in Somalia seven months before when the UN peace mission had spiralled out of control. The Nigerian ambassador pointed out that tens of thousands of civilians were dying and pleaded to reinforce the UN presence. But the US and Britain objected, suggesting that only a token force of 270 be left behind.
The Rwandan government was sitting on the security council at the time, as one of ten non-permanent members. So British and US policy was reported back to those directing the genocide.
General Romeo Dallaire, commander of the UN force in Rwanda, was pleading for reinforcements and later spoke of "inexcusable apathy by the sovereign states that made up the UN, that is completely beyond comprehension and moral acceptability". He complained that "my force was standing knee deep in mutilated bodies, surrounded by the guttural moans of dying people, looking into the eyes of dying children bleeding to death with their wounds burning in the sun and being invaded by maggots and flies".
The following month, with perhaps hundreds of thousands already dead, there was another UN proposal - to despatch 5,500 troops to help stop the massacres. This deployment was delayed by pressure mainly from the US ambassador, but with support from Britain. Dallaire believes that if these troops had been speedily deployed, tens of thousands more lives could have been saved. The US also ensured that this plan was watered down so that troops would have no mandate to use force to end the massacres.
The US and Britain also argued that before these troops could be deployed, there needed to be a ceasefire, even though one side was massacring innocent civilians. The Czech republic's ambassador confronted the security council saying that wanting a ceasefire was "like wanting Hitler to reach a ceasefire with the Jews". He later said that British and US diplomats quietly told him that he was not to use such inflammatory language outside the security council.
Britain and the US also refused to provide the military airlift capability for the African states who were offering troops for this force. The RAF, for example, had plenty of transport aircraft that could have been deployed.
Britain also went out of its way to prevent the UN using the word "genocide" to describe the slaughter. Accepting this would have obliged states to "prevent and punish" those guilty under the Geneva Convention. In late April, Britain, the US and China, secured a resolution rejecting use of the term genocide. A year after the slaughter, the Foreign Office sent a letter to an international inquiry saying that it still did not accept the term genocide, seeing discussion on whether the massacres constituted genocide as "sterile".
All this information is in the public domain and has been brilliantly pieced together by journalist Linda Melvern in her book Rwanda: A People Betrayed. There has been virtual complete silence by the media and academics. An article just published in the journal African Affairs, by Melvern and Paul Williams of the University Birmingham, is the only academic analysis of Britain's role in the slaughter.
Parliament has never been too bothered either. A debate in the House of Commons only took place two months after the slaughter began and there have been no parliamentary reports or even serious questions posed to the Ministers involved: Prime Minister John Major, Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd, Defence Secretary Malcolm Rifkind and Overseas Development Minister Lynda Chalker. Many of these figures continue to be happily interviewed by the media on their view of the moral and military issues involved in invading Iraq.
The British role in the genocide was more than turning a blind eye - Whitehall went out of its way to ensure the international community did not sufficiently act, and thousands more died as a result. Ten years on, Britain's secretive and elitist political system continues to protect a previous generation of policy-makers like Hutton is protecting the current one. The public is not allowed even to have sufficient scrutiny over decision-making, let alone influence. Without fundamentally democratisating policy-making, and discarding its totalitarian features, what future horrors lie in stall?
Mark Curtis is author of Web of Deceit: Britain's Real Role in the World (Vintage, 2003). His website is www.markcurtis.info
The history of UK involvement in Rwandan tragedies, then Rwandan development started from Lynda Chalker a British Conservative politician who was Member of Parliament for Wallasey from 1974 to 1992. She served as Minister of State for Overseas Development at the Foreign Office, in the Conservative government from 1989 to 1997.
The PM David Cameron visited Rwanda in 2007. He visited Rwanda with 100 people including 43 Tory volunteers, who stayed in Rwanda for one month to work on petty aid projects and to teach English. Andrew Mitchell MP, the current Secretary of State for International Development was part of the group. The only experience he has in international development affairs is Rwanda. He promised Kagame that British aid will double foreign aid to Rwanda if the Conservatives win the elections. Most of British top officials have visited Rwanda since the war ended. The current Kagame presidential campaign has been witnessed and supported by Conservative MPs who have been in Rwanda during this presidential campaign. They justify their presence that they went in the country to distribute 2,000 English dictionaries and computers.
Before the genocide, the British government did not have any economic or diplomatic relations with Rwanda. There was no British Embassy in Rwanda. They just came immediately after the war to continue to provide support to Kagame's regime as they did during Museveni and Kagame’s invasion to Rwanda. There was no project funded by the British government in Rwanda. No single penny was given to the former Rwandan government.
The British have had to wait the arrival of Kagame to help Rwandan people. The UK budget support system was designed mainly for Rwanda and was extended to other countries. Some other countries have been under pressure from DFID to use the budget support system as the effective way of providing aid to developing countries. In Rwanda, the budget support is provided to run Kagame’s government, the Rwanda non-elected parliament, to by new weapons and to run Rwandan military apparatus, to expand the number of Embassies aboard, to send Tutsi children to study in the UK and America, to run quangos and to pay consultancy allocated to each Rwanda ministerial department. Aid given to Rwanda is taken back to UK through various channels including Kagame’s paid advertisements to the Guardian and Financial Times Newspapers. Other funds from British foreign aid return to UK through consultancy.
The controversial genocide law that is being used by Kagame to kill, harass, intimate and oppress his political opponents and journalists was created from scratch by the British consultants. The recent Rwandan government’s report about the assassination of President Habyarimana was sponsored by the British Government. About $135,000 from the budget support to Rwanda was paid to British consultants from United Kingdom’s National Defence Academy ( Cranfield University) to provide a dodgy report to support the Rwandan government claims. The report concludes that the President was assassinated by the Hutus.
http://mutsinzireport.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/DASSR_Report_FINAL_inc_Analysis_130309[1].pdf
As the result of this massive aid, Kagame took Rwanda to Commonwealth and imposed English Language to the Rwandan people. A recent book that I read confirms that British never provide aid for nothing. They support the countries that speak English or willing to abandon the French Language. British argue and wrongly disseminate the propaganda that Rwanda’s economic development started with the arrival of the British in the country. They do not recognise the achievements of Rwanda before the genocide. They deliberately ignore the contributions from former Rwandan development partners ( now replaced by the British) before the genocide and since the independence. The UK media and politicians have been every active in exaggerating Kagame’s achievements to justify British’s generous involvement in Rwanda. Kagame is ‘God’ for the British media and politicians.
Charity starts at home:
While the UK’s Conservative Government is cutting public budget expenditure that could lead to thousands of jobs loss in the public services and increased poverty due to benefits cuts, no budget cuts are planned for the Department of International Development because the whole strategic framework of DFID is based on Rwanda. Because DFID has to keep the level of aid to Rwanda, no cuts should be made on DFID’s budget. Kagame is assured to receive British taxpayer money to keep Kagame’s government running, to pay Rwandan civil servants and military personnel, to run the parliament and to open new embassies abroad. While David Cameron has continued to bully people who are being paid than him in the UK, Kagame’s monthly salary is twice more than the British PM’s salary. Kagame has private jets and ranches in different parts of Rwanda, which David Cameron cannot afford in the UK.
The British royal family’s policy at work: mass death in Rwanda by Linda de Hoyos
Before April, Rwanda had an approximate population of 7.2 million. As of September, up to 1 million people have been killed inside Rwanda. According to estimates supplied by the U.S. Agency for International Development (AID), 2,576,000 people are displaced inside Rwanda, including 1.3 million in the former French Safe Zone in the southwest corner of the country. Another 2,223,000 people are refugees outside of Rwanda—1,542,000 in Zaire, 210,000 in Burundi, 460,500 in Tanzania, and 10,500 in Uganda. That is, 5,799,000 people, or 80.6% of the population, have been killed or uprooted. The RPF is ruling from the capital city of Kigali over an emptied country. Water arid electricity systems are destroyed. Up to 50% of health employees and teachers have been killed. The Ugandan shilling is now the currency of choice. Food production is at 66% of the normal, with the country receiving less than 75% of its aid requirement. Rwanda has been obliterated, torn to pieces, its traumatized and emaciated population scattered to the winds. As EIR has documented (Aug. 19, 1994), the destruction of Rwanda is the handiwork of Ugandan dictator Yoweri Museveni and Lady Lynda Chalker.
The destruction of Rwanda begins not with the April 6,1994 murder of President Juvenal Habyarimana, but with the British-backed invasion of Rwanda by the top echelons of the Uganda Army in October 1990. According to one source in Kampala, 95% of the RPF was in the Uganda Army. And Museveni’s National Resistance Army (NRA), itself trained by the British, Americans, and North Koreans since Museveni took power in 1986, is the source of supplies and money for the RPF.
The leaders of the RPF are identical to the top echelons of the Ugandan Army: Ugandan minister of state for defense was the RPF’s David Tinyefuza; Paul Kagame, current defense minister of Rwanda Under the RPF, was head of intelligence and counterintelligence in the Ugandan Army; the RPF’s Chris Bunyenyezi was the former commanding officer of the NRA’s 306th Brigade, notorious for the atrocities committed against Uganda’sTeso. Museveni also had a hand in the Oct. 23, 1993 coup against Burundi President Melchior Ndadaye, whose election had ended 31 years of Tutsi military rule in Burundi. According to some sources, Museveni planned the coup in a meeting in Entebbe which included the RPF’s Paul Kagame.
Two coup ringleaders, Major Bucokoza and Lt. Paul Kamana, were in Kampala, openly carousing with Ugandan officers, from late October 1993 to February 1994, and, according to Burundi sources, they are both now with the RPF. The attempted coup in Burundi resulted in the murder of President Ndadaye, and the mass slaughter of up to 100,000 Hutus and Tutsis in fratricidal warfare. Museveni is not acting on his own. His links to the British royal family run through two interlinked personages: Lady Lynda Chalker, Minister of Overseas Development and a favorite of Lady Margaret Thatcher, and Tiny Rowland, chairman of Lonrho, who reportedly introduced Chalker to the higher echelons of London society. The on-the-ground British case officer for Museveni is reportedly one William (Mike) Pike, editor of New Vision, a daily financed by Rowland. Pike is believed to report directly to Chalker. Chalker was the first foreigner to meet Museveni once he took power in Kampala. Museveni and Chalker have been “very luwie-duvvie,” as one British source put it.
A British East Africa expert further complained that Lady Chalker “spends a lot of time, a disproportionate amount of time, in the Horn of Africa and Uganda.” Soon after the RPF victory in Rwanda, Chalker visited Uganda for a four-day tour hosted by Museveni, before tripping over to Goma, Zaire, to view the refugees.
On the latter experience, Chalker told the press, “Of course, when one comes face to face with death . . . in their hundreds, or as in Goma, in their thousands, I feel it. But I don’t allow it to affect my judgment.” Museveni, the marcher lord On Dec. 11,1992, Africa Analysis reported that the minutes of a meeting which took place in late 1992 at the State House in Entebbe had reached Kenyan intelligence. The minutes showed that Ugandan President Museveni was prepared to give full logistical and political support to insurgencies aimed at the governments in Rwanda, Kenya, and Sudan. Attending the meeting were Museveni, Col. John Garang of the S udan People’ s Liberation Army, unidentified commanders of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (Ugandan Army), and representatives of the armed wing of the Kenya Democratic Party opposition to Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi. The meeting points to Museveni’s role as the British marcher lord in East and Central Africa.
The immediate goal for the British royal family is to use Uganda, which was first leveled by the British-sponsored barbarian Idi Amin (1972- 40 Special Offprint EIR November 1994 79) and has now become the major British financial and political outpost in the region, as the springboard for recolonization of the region. The gameplan is: Destroy Rwanda and Burundi, turning the remains into satellites of Ugandan (British) domination; destroy Kenya by overthrowing President Moi and instigating tribal warfare; and seize mineralrich eastern Zaire. According to Africa Analysis, “Museveni told the RPF commanders at the Entebbe meeting that he would do his utmost to stall the Arusha peace talks in order to buy time for them to build sufficient firepower to storm Kigali.” That mission has now been accomplished. On Kenya, Lady Chalker has worked to create a tribally based opposition to Moi, with the armed wings of these operations supplied by Museveni. Chalker has repeatedly cut British aid to Kenya, and informed Moi in February 1992, in what she called “very frank, straight talks,” that “the only way to come to grips with the security problem in northern Kenya is to deploy troops under U.N. coordination.” Uganda is arming the rebels in Zaire. The British are now demanding that the troops of the former Rwandan government move deeper into the interior of Zaire, away from the mass of Rwandan refugees. According to an Oct. 2 report of U.N.
Special Representative to Rwanda Shahryar Khan, this may require “an international operation under Chapter 7 of MAP 6 Rwanda invasion routes the U.N. Charter—which allows for use of force”—on Zairean soil. Strongman behind the SPLA Uganda is the major source of supply for John Garang’s SPLA. The remaining SPLA stronghold in Sudan is Nimuli, near the Ugandan border, which is supplied from the Nimuli park on the border with Sudan and Kidepo Valley park in northern Uganda. Kidepo is also the site for SPLA training and the SPLA headquarters. According to Ugandan sources, food, gasoline, and supplies are stored for Garang at the Mbuya military barracks, and the supplies are delivered by the NRA 4th Division. Museveni has attempted to procure sophisticated weapons for Garang. In August 1992, Museveni’s private secretary, Innocent Bisangwa-Mbuguje, and Ugandan Ambassador to the United States Stephen Kapimpina Katenta-Apuuli were arrested in Orlando, Florida, for illegally attempting to buy 400 TOW anti-tank missiles and 34 TOW launchers for $18 million.
The weapons were bound for the SPLA, through the border towns of Nimule or Kaya in northern Uganda. In spring 1994, a Nigerian commercial plane developed engine trouble at Lanark, Cyprus, while carrying missiles reportedly from Israel to Uganda. Museveni and Garang are old school buddies, both trained KEY TO MAP 6 The 1990 RPF/Ugandan army invasion of Rwanda was staged in the Gorilla park of Uganda on the border of Rwanda and Zaire 1. It proceeded through the Volcans park in Rwanda 2, directly opposite the Gorilla park in Uganda. The Akagera park in Rwanda 3, bordering Kenya and within a few miles of the Ugandan border, was the other invasion route. Although the 1990 invasion failed, the Uganda military and RPF continued to control large areas of the Volcans park of Rwanda, and used that park as a base for raids farther into Rwanda. The RPF also held parts of the Virunga park in Zaire 4, which borders both the Volcans park of Rwanda and the Gorilla park of Uganda. Periodic efforts by the Rwandan military to flush out the Uganda guerrillas through shelling both parks were unsuccessful, and vehemently condemned by international conservation agencies including the World Wildlife Fund. The WWF manages the “Gorilla protection program” within the tri-border Virunga, Gorilla, and Volcans parks.
The WWF program was initiated just months before the 1990 Ugandan invasion. The Uganda/RPF invasion of April 1994 came largely through the Akagera park. o EIR November 1994 Special Offprint 41 at Dar Es Salaam University in Tanzania, where the curriculum had a definite Maoist bent. Tiny Rowland is a mutual friend. Speaking on a British Broadcasting Corp. newscast in Nairobi, Kenya in March 1993, Rowland declared that he is a member of Garang’s SPLA and had been since 1984, reported the South African Weekly Mail. As the Weekly Mail explained, “Southern Sudan has an undeveloped oil industry and Lonrho is interested in a project to bring oil out in a pipeline leading through Kenya— where Rowland has important interests—to Mombasa, instead of through the Red Sea port of Port Sudan as the Khartoum government has planned.” The SPLA is advised by Dr. Mansur Khalid, a former foreign minister of Sudan, who is now employed by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in Nairobi, Kenya. The UNDP officer in Uganda, who is also reportedly involved in support operations for Garang, is one Hans Farelius, a former Protestant missionary. Farelius is reported to have moved to Kampala in 1989 from Uppsala, Sweden. In Uppsala, he aided Museveni, who came to Sweden for retooling in 1985-86, before taking power in Entebbe. Unlike the rest of Africa’s leaders, Museveni has not come under pressure to democratize.
Says one London source: “The British are very much behind this government. You know there is no condition at all on democratization. The President doesn’t even pretend [to be] for this, and he is still a darling of the West Chronology Rwanda-Uganda genocide 1986: Yoweri Museveni comes to power in Uganda, after a five-year guerrilla war. Museveni’s benefactors during the guerrilla war included Tiny Rowland, chairman of the London- Rhodesia Corp. (Lonrho), and Moshood Abiola, the Nigeria magnate operating on behalf of ITT. 1989: Leaders of the Ugandan Army, including the current vice president of Rwanda, Paul Kagame, are sent to Fort Leavenworth U.S. Army Command and Staff College. August-September 1990: Rwandans of Uganda Army group in southwestern Uganda are led by Ugandan Maj.- Gen. Fred Rwigyema in preparation for invasion of Uganda. Oct. 1,1990: Rwandan Patriotic Front section of Ugandan Army invades Rwanda through Akagera Park. Oct. 27,1990: Cease-fire, as RPF is repelled by French paratrooper force from the outskirts of Kigali. 1991: RPF invades again, coming through Virunga Park, seizing the town of Ruhengeri, causing mass exodus of over 200,000 refugees.
RPF then pulls back, occupying the entire eastern portion of the Virunga Park, from where it sends continual artillery barrages onto the Rwandan plain. 1992: As RPF incursions continue, Habyarimana government begins organizing militias in the countryside; begins to raise military from 5,000 troops to 40,000. February 1993: RPF invades Rwanda, taking control of a chunk of territory in the north, killing 40,000 Hutus. Mass exodus of refugees from the area. June 1, 1993: Melchior Ndadaye is elected first Hutu President in Burundi, in first national elections. August 1993: Arusha Accords, negotiated between Habyarimana government and RPF, under U.S. and British auspices, grant RPF 50% of commander and officer posts in Army and 40% of the troops, and seven cabinet posts. September 1993: U.N. sends peacekeeping force to Rwanda to oversee implementation of Arusha Accords. Oct. 23, 1993: Attempted coup in Burundi by Tutsidominated military. Ndadaye is murdered, with up to 100,000 Hutus.
More than 700,000 Hutus flee Burundi. International press gives no notice. December 1993: RPF moves 600 troops into Kigali under Arusha Accords. January 1994: British Defense Department African strategists are reportedly moved off their concentration on Angola and put on Rwanda. March 1994: Another slaughter of Hutus in Burundi, up to 40,000 killed. April 6, 1994: Plane carrying Rwandan President Habyarimana and Burundi President Ntaryamira is brought down by three rockets, killing all on board. Mass killings by Rwandan government troops erupt in Kigali; RPF begins invasion from Virunga and Akegera Parks. April 19, 1994: U.N.
peacekeeping troops (2,500 Belgian forces) withdraw. May 1994: U.N. imposes arms embargo on Rwandan government, as mass slaughter continues throughout the country. June 21, 1994: France gains U.N. approval to send troops to Rwanda. French troops set up Safe Zones, nearly clashing with RPF forces. July 12,1994: 1 million Rwandans flee to Zaire. July 15, 1994: RPF is in effective control of Rwanda, with exception of French Safe Zones. July 22-27,1994: Lady Lynda Chalker, British Minister of Overseas Development, visits Uganda. July 29, 1994: President Clinton pledges U.S. humanitarian aid operation to Rwandan refugees, to be carried out by U.S. military. A survey taken by the group Doctors without Borders in the first week of August shows that 80,000 people, at least, had died in the Zaire camps since mid-July—8% of those in camps. Aug. 22,1994: French troops leave protected zone. Sept. 29, 1994: Relief workers from U.N. High Commission on Refugees, Doctors without Borders, the German Red Cross, Oxfam, Concern, Assist, and Care Australia, and from Sweden and South Korea begin to pull out of the Rwandan refugee camps in Zaire. 42 Special Offprint EIR November 1994
Lynda Chalker, Baroness Chalker of Wallasey PC (née Bates; born 29 April 1942) is a British Conservative politician who was Member of Parliament for Wallasey from 1974 to 1992. She served as Minister of State for Overseas Development at the Foreign Office, in the Conservative government from 1989 to 1997
http://news.jonzu.com/z_tag/linda
Rwanda Fake Report: A Rebuttal of the Mutsinzi Commission Report, By: Kanyarwanda Veritas on: Sun 17 of Jan., 2010 09:14 GMT
http://freeuganda.org/article91-Rwanda-Fake-Report
Bloodshed and whitewash: Britain and the Rwanda genocide
by Mark Curtis
published in Red Pepper, March 2004
The invasion of Iraq and the Hutton report are two sides of the same coin: the former shows that policies are made by a tiny cabal of people around the prime minister, impervious to public influence; the latter shows that this cabal is protected from serious accountability. Britain's political system, clearly more totalitarian than democratic, can enable policy-makers to get away with murder, as the events of ten years ago show.
Next month is the tenth anniversary of the Rwanda genocide that killed a million people. There has been astounding silence on one aspect of this slaughter - the culpability of British policy-makers.
A planned campaign of slaughter was launched by extremist Hutus in April 1994 to eliminate members of the Tutsi ethnic group and political opponents. The UN security council, instead of beefing up its peace mission in Rwanda and giving it a stronger mandate to intervene, decided to reduce the troop presence from 2,500 to 270. This decision sent a green light to the killers showing that the UN would not intervene.
It was Britain's ambassador to the UN, Sir David Hannay, who proposed that the UN reduce its force; the US agreed. Both were concerned over a repetition of the events in Somalia seven months before when the UN peace mission had spiralled out of control. The Nigerian ambassador pointed out that tens of thousands of civilians were dying and pleaded to reinforce the UN presence. But the US and Britain objected, suggesting that only a token force of 270 be left behind.
The Rwandan government was sitting on the security council at the time, as one of ten non-permanent members. So British and US policy was reported back to those directing the genocide.
General Romeo Dallaire, commander of the UN force in Rwanda, was pleading for reinforcements and later spoke of "inexcusable apathy by the sovereign states that made up the UN, that is completely beyond comprehension and moral acceptability". He complained that "my force was standing knee deep in mutilated bodies, surrounded by the guttural moans of dying people, looking into the eyes of dying children bleeding to death with their wounds burning in the sun and being invaded by maggots and flies".
The following month, with perhaps hundreds of thousands already dead, there was another UN proposal - to despatch 5,500 troops to help stop the massacres. This deployment was delayed by pressure mainly from the US ambassador, but with support from Britain. Dallaire believes that if these troops had been speedily deployed, tens of thousands more lives could have been saved. The US also ensured that this plan was watered down so that troops would have no mandate to use force to end the massacres.
The US and Britain also argued that before these troops could be deployed, there needed to be a ceasefire, even though one side was massacring innocent civilians. The Czech republic's ambassador confronted the security council saying that wanting a ceasefire was "like wanting Hitler to reach a ceasefire with the Jews". He later said that British and US diplomats quietly told him that he was not to use such inflammatory language outside the security council.
Britain and the US also refused to provide the military airlift capability for the African states who were offering troops for this force. The RAF, for example, had plenty of transport aircraft that could have been deployed.
Britain also went out of its way to prevent the UN using the word "genocide" to describe the slaughter. Accepting this would have obliged states to "prevent and punish" those guilty under the Geneva Convention. In late April, Britain, the US and China, secured a resolution rejecting use of the term genocide. A year after the slaughter, the Foreign Office sent a letter to an international inquiry saying that it still did not accept the term genocide, seeing discussion on whether the massacres constituted genocide as "sterile".
All this information is in the public domain and has been brilliantly pieced together by journalist Linda Melvern in her book Rwanda: A People Betrayed. There has been virtual complete silence by the media and academics. An article just published in the journal African Affairs, by Melvern and Paul Williams of the University Birmingham, is the only academic analysis of Britain's role in the slaughter.
Parliament has never been too bothered either. A debate in the House of Commons only took place two months after the slaughter began and there have been no parliamentary reports or even serious questions posed to the Ministers involved: Prime Minister John Major, Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd, Defence Secretary Malcolm Rifkind and Overseas Development Minister Lynda Chalker. Many of these figures continue to be happily interviewed by the media on their view of the moral and military issues involved in invading Iraq.
The British role in the genocide was more than turning a blind eye - Whitehall went out of its way to ensure the international community did not sufficiently act, and thousands more died as a result. Ten years on, Britain's secretive and elitist political system continues to protect a previous generation of policy-makers like Hutton is protecting the current one. The public is not allowed even to have sufficient scrutiny over decision-making, let alone influence. Without fundamentally democratisating policy-making, and discarding its totalitarian features, what future horrors lie in stall?
Mark Curtis is author of Web of Deceit: Britain's Real Role in the World (Vintage, 2003). His website is www.markcurtis.info
Rwanda: After elections, what next ?
Rwanda: After elections, what next ?
Rwanda: Facing life in jail, the woman who dared to take on Paul Kagame
Stability in Rwanda is based on political repression, opposition leader Victoire Ingabire tells Daniel Howden
Victoire Ingabire had expected to spend this weekend campaigning.
Instead, she will spend it under house arrest in Kigali, preparing her defence for a trial that could end with a life sentence. Ms Ingabire returned to Rwanda in February to contest Monday's presidential election. She had not expected to win against Paul Kagame, the soldier who has run Rwanda since 1994, but she did think she would at least be able to stand against him.
"When I came back the plan was to register my party and participate," she told The Independent in a telephone interview from the Rwandan capital.
But the authorities have stopped that from happening. "I have no freedom, the police follow me wherever I go. I cannot leave Kigali, they have taken away my passport," she said.
As Rwanda goes to the polls on Monday the international community is being asked to look again at a country fêted for its miraculous recovery from a genocide remembered as one of humanity's great collective failures. Sixteen years ago, the world stood by while 800,000 people were butchered in 100 days in what the United Nations says was a planned extermination campaign of one ethnic group, the Tutsis, by ethnic Hutu extremists.
Mr Kagame's Tutsi-led Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) has controlled the country since it invaded and ended the genocide. It has missed few opportunities to remind the rest of the world of their failure to act in 1994.
Ms Ingabire and other dissidents are now warning that the international community is in danger of failing Rwanda once again, with its unquestioning support of a president she says has become a dictator. "I don't understand the attitude of Rwanda's allies and donors," said Ms Ingabire.
"They see the growing tension and they do nothing. We have a big crisis brewing inside the country and this sham election won't resolve it."
The election campaign has been marred by murders, kidnappings, media closures, unexplained grenade attacks and a series of assassinations of Rwandan dissidents and their supporters abroad. Opposition parties without links to the ruling RPF party have been refused registration, their members have been harassed, intimidated and, in several cases, jailed.
There is little doubt Mr Kagame, who has spent £2m during a one-sided campaign, will win by a landslide. The only candidates standing against him are ruling party "stooges", according to critics. Foreign donors – who provide more than half of Rwanda's budget – have been wrongfooted by the apparently sudden instability in what is held up as an African model.
In a region hobbled by endemic graft, Rwanda is the exception. It has far less corruption than its neighbours, according to the recent East Africa corruption index from Transparency International. Its gross domestic product has doubled since 1994 and the president is hailed by outsiders for his "vision" and "dynamism".
However, a report by independent experts on Rwanda's bid to join the Commonwealth said that Mr Kagame had become an expert at manipulating Western guilt over the genocide and was running "an army with a state".
"People say there's stability in Rwanda but this stability is based on repression," said Ms Ingabire. "We need stability based on freedom.
"I don't understand how democratic countries can remain friends with a government that doesn't allow democracy. The democratic UK is supporting a dictatorship."
The President's would-be rival has been charged with genocide denial under a law criminalising those who spread genocide ideology. The law has been condemned by independent experts as a tool for silencing anyone who disagrees with the official account of what happened 16 years ago.
A Hutu, Ms Ingabire lived outside the country for 16 years and worked as an accountant in The Netherlands, where she set up the United Democratic Forces party. She is accused of channelling funds during that time to the FDLR, an armed Hutu group operating in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). She is said to have met FDLR officials in Spain in 2006.
She doesn't deny this, but says the meeting was attended by many groups from the Rwandan diaspora, including officials from the governing RPF.
"This doesn't mean that we collaborate with the FDLR," she said. She's also accused of twice meeting Hutu genocidaires in the DRC capital – this she does deny, insisting she was in Kinshasa to meet government officials.
The Rwandan government has cited a UN report last year that found diaspora members of Ms Ingabire's party had been in phone contact with FDLR military leaders. But it didn't specify the nature of this contact or suggest she herself had made contact.
"I don't have any links to the FDLR," she insisted. "I don't believe in violence and war is not the solution to the problems that face this country."
Her first speeches upon her return were controversial because she asked for an investigation into Tutsi reprisal killings during and after the genocide.
"I agree that there was a genocide by Hutu extremists against the Tutsis, that is the reality. The people who did this need to be jailed. But there were also other crimes against humanity, including the killing of Hutus." The mother of three does not expect a fair trial. A US attorney who came to Kigali to lead her defence was also jailed briefly and accused of genocide denial. She has appealed for an international inquiry into the murder of a journalist critical of the government and the assassination of the deputy leader of Rwanda's Green Party – killings the government now says were carried out by disaffected members of the diaspora. "Rwanda's history is a cycle of violence," said Ms Ingabire. "I understand the [Tutsis'] fear of the Hutus but not all Hutus were killers.
"We have to stop fear among Rwandan people, to make sure no one can lose their life because of their ethnicity or their political beliefs."
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/facing-life-in-jail-the-woman-who-dared-to-take-on-paul-kagame-2045908.html
Rwanda: Facing life in jail, the woman who dared to take on Paul Kagame
Stability in Rwanda is based on political repression, opposition leader Victoire Ingabire tells Daniel Howden
Victoire Ingabire had expected to spend this weekend campaigning.
Instead, she will spend it under house arrest in Kigali, preparing her defence for a trial that could end with a life sentence. Ms Ingabire returned to Rwanda in February to contest Monday's presidential election. She had not expected to win against Paul Kagame, the soldier who has run Rwanda since 1994, but she did think she would at least be able to stand against him.
"When I came back the plan was to register my party and participate," she told The Independent in a telephone interview from the Rwandan capital.
But the authorities have stopped that from happening. "I have no freedom, the police follow me wherever I go. I cannot leave Kigali, they have taken away my passport," she said.
As Rwanda goes to the polls on Monday the international community is being asked to look again at a country fêted for its miraculous recovery from a genocide remembered as one of humanity's great collective failures. Sixteen years ago, the world stood by while 800,000 people were butchered in 100 days in what the United Nations says was a planned extermination campaign of one ethnic group, the Tutsis, by ethnic Hutu extremists.
Mr Kagame's Tutsi-led Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) has controlled the country since it invaded and ended the genocide. It has missed few opportunities to remind the rest of the world of their failure to act in 1994.
Ms Ingabire and other dissidents are now warning that the international community is in danger of failing Rwanda once again, with its unquestioning support of a president she says has become a dictator. "I don't understand the attitude of Rwanda's allies and donors," said Ms Ingabire.
"They see the growing tension and they do nothing. We have a big crisis brewing inside the country and this sham election won't resolve it."
The election campaign has been marred by murders, kidnappings, media closures, unexplained grenade attacks and a series of assassinations of Rwandan dissidents and their supporters abroad. Opposition parties without links to the ruling RPF party have been refused registration, their members have been harassed, intimidated and, in several cases, jailed.
There is little doubt Mr Kagame, who has spent £2m during a one-sided campaign, will win by a landslide. The only candidates standing against him are ruling party "stooges", according to critics. Foreign donors – who provide more than half of Rwanda's budget – have been wrongfooted by the apparently sudden instability in what is held up as an African model.
In a region hobbled by endemic graft, Rwanda is the exception. It has far less corruption than its neighbours, according to the recent East Africa corruption index from Transparency International. Its gross domestic product has doubled since 1994 and the president is hailed by outsiders for his "vision" and "dynamism".
However, a report by independent experts on Rwanda's bid to join the Commonwealth said that Mr Kagame had become an expert at manipulating Western guilt over the genocide and was running "an army with a state".
"People say there's stability in Rwanda but this stability is based on repression," said Ms Ingabire. "We need stability based on freedom.
"I don't understand how democratic countries can remain friends with a government that doesn't allow democracy. The democratic UK is supporting a dictatorship."
The President's would-be rival has been charged with genocide denial under a law criminalising those who spread genocide ideology. The law has been condemned by independent experts as a tool for silencing anyone who disagrees with the official account of what happened 16 years ago.
A Hutu, Ms Ingabire lived outside the country for 16 years and worked as an accountant in The Netherlands, where she set up the United Democratic Forces party. She is accused of channelling funds during that time to the FDLR, an armed Hutu group operating in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). She is said to have met FDLR officials in Spain in 2006.
She doesn't deny this, but says the meeting was attended by many groups from the Rwandan diaspora, including officials from the governing RPF.
"This doesn't mean that we collaborate with the FDLR," she said. She's also accused of twice meeting Hutu genocidaires in the DRC capital – this she does deny, insisting she was in Kinshasa to meet government officials.
The Rwandan government has cited a UN report last year that found diaspora members of Ms Ingabire's party had been in phone contact with FDLR military leaders. But it didn't specify the nature of this contact or suggest she herself had made contact.
"I don't have any links to the FDLR," she insisted. "I don't believe in violence and war is not the solution to the problems that face this country."
Her first speeches upon her return were controversial because she asked for an investigation into Tutsi reprisal killings during and after the genocide.
"I agree that there was a genocide by Hutu extremists against the Tutsis, that is the reality. The people who did this need to be jailed. But there were also other crimes against humanity, including the killing of Hutus." The mother of three does not expect a fair trial. A US attorney who came to Kigali to lead her defence was also jailed briefly and accused of genocide denial. She has appealed for an international inquiry into the murder of a journalist critical of the government and the assassination of the deputy leader of Rwanda's Green Party – killings the government now says were carried out by disaffected members of the diaspora. "Rwanda's history is a cycle of violence," said Ms Ingabire. "I understand the [Tutsis'] fear of the Hutus but not all Hutus were killers.
"We have to stop fear among Rwandan people, to make sure no one can lose their life because of their ethnicity or their political beliefs."
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/facing-life-in-jail-the-woman-who-dared-to-take-on-paul-kagame-2045908.html
16 Oct 2009
Reconstructing Rwanda: 15 Years After Genocide. A Tribute to Alison Des Forges
Reconstructing Rwanda: 15 Years After Genocide. A Tribute to Alison Des Forges.
Speakers include: Tom Porteous, Anneke Van Woudenberg, Carla Ferstman, Paul Gready, Kersty McCourt, Jens Meierhenrich, Karen Murphy and Don Webster. 20 March 2009
http://www.sas.ac.uk/643.html
Panel 1: Human Rights & Civil Society
Speakers: Tom Gibson, Amnesty International; Anneke Van Woudenberg, Human Rights Watch; Professor Paul Gready, University of York; Kerstin McCourt, Danish Institute of Human Rights
Panel 2: State Authority & Local Agency
Panel 3: Foreign Relations
Panel 4: Reconciliation
Panel 5: Post-Genocide Justice
Panel 2: State Authority & Local AgencyPanel 3: Foreign RelationsPanel 4: ReconciliationPanel 5: Post-Genocide Justice
Speakers include: Tom Porteous, Anneke Van Woudenberg, Carla Ferstman, Paul Gready, Kersty McCourt, Jens Meierhenrich, Karen Murphy and Don Webster. 20 March 2009
http://www.sas.ac.uk/643.html
Panel 1: Human Rights & Civil Society
Speakers: Tom Gibson, Amnesty International; Anneke Van Woudenberg, Human Rights Watch; Professor Paul Gready, University of York; Kerstin McCourt, Danish Institute of Human Rights
Panel 2: State Authority & Local Agency
Panel 3: Foreign Relations
Panel 4: Reconciliation
Panel 5: Post-Genocide Justice
Panel 2: State Authority & Local AgencyPanel 3: Foreign RelationsPanel 4: ReconciliationPanel 5: Post-Genocide Justice
The fallacy and mystery of the British foreign aid
Andrew Mitchell: Achieving value for money in aidhttp://www.conservatives.com/News/Speeches/2009/10/Andrew_Mitchell_Achieving_value_for_money_in_aid.aspx
“giving aid to Russia is simply ridiculous”.
“signing off a 240,000 pounds grant to set up a Brazilian dance troupe in Hackney” is a waste of British taxpayer’s money.
“giving 38 million pounds of aid to China, a country which spent 20 billion pounds on hosting the Olympics” is arrogance toward Chinese people.
But, giving aid to Kagame and Museveni to massacres Rwandans and Congolese people and to destabilize the whole Africa Great Lakes Region is criminal.
Kagame is crying for being imposed by the British to accept their foreign aid. Kagame has consistently played down the role of aid in economic development while more than 60 % of his country annual budget is from foreign aid, mainly from the British ‘s taxpayer’s money.
So, what is the rationale for the British to impose their aid to countries that do not need it.
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