RWANDA:Letter to William Penn University President to Protest Against Inviting President Paul Kagameto Address the Commencement

I am writing to express my very serious concern over your plans to invite Paul Kagame to your William Penn University to address your commencement on 12 May and to bestow on him your honour of Humane Letters. I suspect you are unaware of his horrendous human rights record to this day and, given the seriousness of the evidence, that he is likely to end of in the same situation as Charles Taylor. (This is not to mention the corruption in the government: I am just involved in a recent case where a Rwandan has fled to the UK. He was in charge of the National Tender Board and saw it all.) We ask you to seriously consider cancelling his invitation, because I am sure it was extended in total innocence of the situation in Rwanda. So that you can assess who is writing this appeal, I attach a brief biographical note.

Since September 2011, the Fahamu refugee Programme has been actively engaged iin a campaign to convince host States and the UN High Commissioner for refugees (UNHCR)  not to invoke the cessation clause. An article in the monthly Fahamu Refugee Legal Aid Newsletter, that will go out tomorrow, is attached. You can see it and past issues on www.frlan.org and http://frlan.tumblr.com/.  We had a petition signed by more than 200 organizations and individuals by December and UNHCR has now postponed the deadline to June 2013. This is not enough.

Here in Britian, the Metropolitan Police have had to warn Rwandans that they could not protect them from the death threats they had been receiving from agents of the Rwandan government  (Rwandan exiles warned of assassination
threat by London police: Two dissidents living in London told that Rwandan government poses imminent risk to their liveshttp://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/20/rwanda-exil...); a similar incident just happened in Sweden. In Uganda they have shot a Rwandan journalist and there are many more credible threats against Rwandan refugees.

If you doubt my words, I could mention dozens of books and articles reviewing the human rights record of Kagame from the time of the genocide in 1994 and since. My I suggest just one such scholar, Filip Reyntiens ("Reyntjens Filip" <filip.reyntjens@ua.ac.be>), who spends a great deal of time in court on behalf of recent asylum seeker in Europe. There are many others I could refer to you as well.

I would be glad to discuss the matter in greater detail, but I would suggest you check HRW and Amnesty reports, the UN Mapping Report, the Gareton Report - even a recent State Department's representative's report, to help you see what a very serious mistake it would be to encourage this

With best regards,

Dr. Barbara E. Harrell-Bond, Director
Fahamu Refugee Programme
298 Banbury Road, Flat 2
Oxford OX2 7ED
Phone: +44 (0) 1865 424 697
Mobile: 07906203368
Skype: Barbara.Harrellbond
www.frlan.org
www.fahamu.org
http://frlan.tumblr.com/

In September 1993, UN General Romeo Dallaire reported to UN Secy Gen. Bourtros Ghali in his Report of the Reconnaisance Mission to Rwanda (International Humanitarian Law Institute, St. Paul, Jan 2012).  That the RPF was the militarily dominant force in Rwanda and had almost seized power in February 1993, being transformed from 2,000 defeated Ugandan troops to 20-25,000 well-armed, trained, and provisioned light infantry.

 

This transformation occurred, according to Dallaire in the remote Virunga mountains in Uganda, without visible means of support....the Reconnaisance Report is available on Amazon.  Dallaire also reports that, after confering with all parties....the population of Rwanda includes 660,000 Tutsis...slightly more than the 600,000 plus reported in the 1990 census.  

 

After the genocide, the victorious army and government  like every war ever fought gave the victors the chance to tell the story of the war, and the RPF Tutusi-survivors organization reported in 1995 that 300,000 Tutsi survived the genocide.

 

This means that some 300-350,000 Tutsis were killed in the genocide....a horrific number to be sure....However, Mr. Kagame's government and his supporters tell us 800,000-1,000,000 mainly Tutsi were killed...when he speaks at the graduation ceremony...would you please research my figures and inquire how this is possible? 

 

Davenport of Notre Dame and Stam at U Mich did so when employed by the ICTR prosecution and concluded twice as many Hutus and Tutsi were killed in Rwanda.  www.genodynamic.org.

 

Also, in December 2011....the supposed "mastermind of the genocide" Col Bagosora received his final appeal judgement...like all national military leaders, including my client he was acquitted of planning or conspiracy to commit any crimes BEFORE the assassination of the two presidents....which means he was not invovled in that either.  He WAS convicted of failing to properly supervise troops on April 7/8/9...that's all.  The british press has called it "a genocide without a brain"

 

Kagame arrest me...and would have imprisoned me for life....because the contents of this email are "genocide denial....citing the Judgements of the UN Tribunal that exculpate the defeated was my crime.  Kagame issued a standing "wanted dead or alive" order to all Rwanda ambassadors and top military officers in October 2010...last week the Amb to US and UN still were attempting carry out the order through getting UN intermediaries to get my wife to Rwanda....this is for keeps and is not just an academic exercise....even an academic stumbles on documents ala Julian Assange. 

 

Please read the Oct 2010 UNHCHR mapping report to get a flavor of the massive crimes since the 500,000 killed in the Luwero Triagle in Uganda in the 1980's when Kagame helped Museveni seized power.  You are consorting with a criminal....but please, do not believe me.  Check the sources.

 

Please note sources in the attached article and let me know, if....after this graduation....your campus has interest in developing a deeper understanding of what actually did happen in Rwanda....with the victor's slant which in history is much too common, as we know.  See also, the largest researchable database of daily UN and US reports of the Rwanda genocide, which confirms the narrative that acquitted the top miitary and government leaders of conspircy and is the basis for the article. www.rwandadocumentsproject.net 

 

Prof. Peter Erlinder

University of Chicago Law School, Bigelow Fellow

Director, International Humanitarian Law Institute

c/o Wm. Mitchell College of Law

St. Paul, MN 55105