Rwanda: The allies of Rwanda’s leader are blind to the truth

From NGO News Africa

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A dictator is one how has a fierce stranglehold on the country, keeping its people in poverty and shrouded in ignorance.  Further, a dictator is one who holds complete autocratic control and rules absolutely and often oppressively. Despite his outward appearance, this is the clear definition of the Rwandan political leader, President Paul Kagame.
The Us, France and other foreign allies have strong diplomatic relationship with Rwanda. The US Government continues to stick their head in the sand to the horrifying situation within Rwanda, as they did during the 1994 genocide, and continues to support President Paul Kagame, known dictator of Rwanda. Why does the US ignore the desperate situation brewing inside of a country led by a tyrant while so many innocent people inside and outside of the Rwanda believe the country is on the verge of another genocide?  There are many governments in exile from Rwanda waiting to have an opportunity for  a free and fair election in order to return to Rwanda and create a safer place for the lives of all who live there.
There is very little freedom in this small but powerful country.  Young boys are being held as prisoners on Iwawa Island, dozens of people are being killed for voicing opposing political opinions, journalists are disappearing and whole news organizations are being shut down for speaking out against the Rwandan Government. During the August 2010 election no other political parties were allowed to register their platforms in order to be considered for the election.  Two opposing political leaders sit in prison today and a third was found beheaded back in August.  The ruling party of Rwanda has denied any connection to the ongoing question about their involvement in the murder as well as in the Kigali bombings but the evidence to support these claims is overwhelming yet the West and other supporters continues to turn a blind eye to the atrocities he continues to inflict upon his people.
The most disheartening point in all this support is the support that comes from the American “mega-churches.”  The people of Rwanda deserve the support of these religious organizations but in order to receive this help the churches have to express support for Paul Kagame.  A simple web search will turn up photo op’s of Paul Kagame with author and mega-church leader Rick Warren.  How can a Christian leader like Rick Warren support a man who, at his core, is murdering his own countrymen? I desperately urge Rick Warren to change his views of the leader of Rwanda and learn how to support the innocent Rwandan lives as opposed to their callous dictator.
A crack in the veneer of support began to seep through with President Obama’s reaction to the August 2010 election in Rwanda which ended with the re-election of Paul Kagame by an overwhelming 93% of the votes.  The Obama administration stated, after the election, that they have much concern over the legitimacy of the elections and urged the Rwandan government to develop a fair and democratic government.  They further acknowledged the violence leading up to the elections including the dismantling of two newspapers, the disappearance of journalists, the murder of an oppositional party who was not allowed to register for the election as well as the subsequent arrest and imprisonment of other political leaders who attempted to register their party.  Rwanda has a long history of imprisoning those they claim to be dissidents or genocide supporters yet never giving them a fair trial or any chance at a diplomatic process.  Just this week, the Rwandan courts have asked for 35 year sentences for two former military officials from Rwanda for committing crimes that there is no proof of.  These men are in exile now and many have come to their defense stating the charges are completely fabricated.
In September, the UN high commission for human rights issued a monumental document on the crimes committed in the DRC. The report claims to have “damning evidence” that, Kagame’s forces committed genocide against Hutu refugees in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
Tony Blair, like other supporters of this murderous regime did not say a word when this report was released. As a matter of fact, they were right to keep quiet considering that Britain, under Blair, was the largest donor to Rwanda when the countries forces were committing these massacres in the DRC. Given this past failure, it would make more sense for Mr. Blair to undergo some soul searching and possibly apologize to the Rwandan people and the great lakes community in general.
To claim that Mr. Blair supports a man that is responsible for the vast share of violence that has affected the lives of thousands, is both criminal and obtuse.
Recent events in Rwanda have shown that Kagame is losing control over the country. There is clear and growing dissent within the ranks of the Tutsi ruling elites. The military—the backbone of Kagame’s state—is deeply fragmented.
The UN, France and the other allies must take a closer look into what Kagame is really doing to his fellow countrymen.  How can they continue to support a vicious dictator who murders for sport and has damaged the people of Rwanda for generations to come? To what benefit is this diplomatic relationship? Please, supporters of President Kagame, take your head out of the sand and stop seeing only what you want to see. Stop supporting Kagame out of guilt for not acting during the 1994 genocide.
As Anwar Sadat said, “He who cannot change the very fabric of his thought will never be able to change reality, and will never, therefore, make any progress.”
By: Jennifer Fierberg, MSW

Related articles

• Tony Blair defends support for Rwandan leader Paul Kagame (guardian.co.uk)
• US Politicians could learn about social media from those in Rwanda (customerthink.com)
• France investigates Kagame allies (bbc.co.uk)
• Rwanda genocide archive unveiled (bbc.co.uk)

Missing Rwandan opposition figure beheaded in grisly attack

A senior opposition figure in Rwanda who went missing earlier this week has been found dead near the border of Burundi, officials in Rwanda said today.

The body of Gakwe Rwisereka, the Vice-President of the controversial Democratic Green Party was found by his family today by the banks of a river, nearly beheaded.

Mr Rwisereka had gone missing earlier this week and his car was found abandoned on Tuesday, Mr Rwisereka’s keys, IDs, and passport still inside.

His body was found nearby today. It is the latest of a series of setbacks to befall the Green Party, which has not yet been able to register for presidential elections coming in August, and the latest setback in general for weak and disorganized opposition politics in Rwanda.

“It is very scary now,” said Frank Habineza, President of the Green Party.

Mr Habineza said that Mr Rwisereka had been threatened before he disappeared and that Mr Habineza himself has also received death threats.

“We have called for the police and the government of Rwanda to find out the cause of his death,” said Mr Habineza. “The ball is in their hands.”

Police in Rwanda confirmed the death to reporters in Kigali, but said that there was suspicion that the murder may have been tied to a robbery.

“His body was found this morning,” said Eric Kayiranga, a spokesperson for the Rwandan police, “along with a long knife. It was a kind of machete.”

Both police and Mr Habineza said that it was too early to guess the cause or motive for the death, but that investigations were ongoing. The Green Party has been in the government’s crosshairs since its formation and trying to challenge President Paul Kagame in upcoming presidential elections slated for August.

The party says that it has been blocked from formally registering by the government despite making six attempts and has also been racked by political infighting within the group.

Unlike other political parties FDU-Inkingi and PS-Imberakuri, the Green Party has not built its base around ethnic differences or Hutu populism, and is instead made up mostly of former ruling-party members who grew up, like President Kagame, as Tutsi refugees in Uganda.

Mr Rwisereka was born in Rwanda, but like other Tutsis fled the country in the 1960s with his family, and was raised in the Congo.

Since then, some say that he has maintained close relations with other Congolese Tutsi, many of whom supported rebel leader Laurent Nkunda, who was arrested by Rwanda last year.

According to media in Rwanda, the Green Party maintains links to many ruling-party insiders, including general Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa, who fled Rwanda earlier this year and was shot in an apparent assassination attempt in South Africa last month.

The death of Mr Rwisereka is the latest calamity to hit the challenging party.

While four candidates — including the incumbent President Kagame – are registered to stand for election this August, the country’s most controversial and vocal opposition figures have been blocked from formally registering their candidacy, and many politicians have been arrested.

Victoire Ingabire, a female candidate who returned to Rwanda in January after over 16 years in exile, was arrested last April and charged with espousing genocide ideology and working with rebel groups. Bernard Ntaganda, another politician charged with promoting ethnic divisionism, was arrested in June, and has been denied bail, despite going on a hunger strike in prison.

Rwandan President Kagame Approved Assassination of Umuvugizi’s Editor

Rwandan President Kagame Approved Assassination of Umuvugizi’s Editor

Published by Rwanda-Info Chief Editor

From a safe house, journalist who survived assassination attempt tells Daniel Howden the truth about Paul Kagame’s rule

Paul Kagame, Rwanda’s President and leader of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, salutes his supporters

Jean Bosco Gasasira is in hiding. Instead of running a newspaper in the Rwandan capital, Kigali, reporting on the political assassinations that have plagued the country of late, he spends his time moving between safe houses in neighbouring Uganda, trying to avoid the same fate himself.

According to police in Kampala he was the victim of an attempted assassination last week; in the same week, his friend and co-editor of the banned newspaper, Umuvugizi, Jean Leonard Rugambage, was shot dead in Kigali.

Now Mr Gasasira believes that agents working for Rwanda’s government are trying to kill him. Speaking from a safe house near Kampala, Mr Gasasira told The Independent that Rwandan intelligence services were on a killing spree, and alleged it was with the knowledge of President Paul Kagame himself. “I know it, I don’t doubt it. The explanations are just Kagame’s excuses,” he said. Speaking of the recent attempt to abduct him in Uganda, he added: “I know it was his people.”

“He owns the opposition and now he wants his own media,” Mr Gasasira said of the president. He says the president is using “the sword and the gun” against his opponents in the media and elsewhere and that Rwanda was on its way to becoming a “one man state”. Rwanda’s ambassador in Kampala said the allegations were “nonsense” and Rwandan officials described accusations that the government had ordered the killing as “baseless”.

Before his death, Mr Rugambage was investigating the shooting of a dissident Rwandan general in Johannesburg. On 19 June Lieutenant General Kayumba Nyamwasa was targeted by a gunman in the South African city, but survived the attack. Rwandan officials described allegations that they had commissioned the killer as “preposterous”. But someone is out to kill Rwandan dissidents.

Events as far apart as Johannesburg, Kampala and Kigali have revealed increasing political tensions within one of Africa’s most enigmatic emerging democracies. To many outsiders, Rwanda, under Mr Kagame’s presidency, has become one of the more dynamic and hopeful countries in the region.

Sixteen years on from the genocide that seared the landlocked central African nation into the world’s collective consciousness, Kigali is talked of as a future IT hub for Africa, economic growth is strong, and peace, for the most part, is holding. As reward for this, Rwanda was welcomed into the Commonwealth of nations this year despite its Francophone background.

To its critics, though, Rwanda has become an “army with a state” – an authoritarian government led by a cabal of soldiers from the former rebel Rwandan Patriotic Front. With little more than a month to go before the second elections are held since the end of the 1994 genocide, the calm surface of Rwanda’s stability and progress has been broken and a violent struggle for control of the country has been revealed.

A number of former ministers have been forced into asylum, while many other former colleagues of Mr Kagame were now under official and unofficial house arrest inside Rwanda, Mr Gasasira claims. “He has ministers in jail, the former speaker from parliament has gone into asylum,” he said.

Rosette Kayumba, the dissident general’s wife, has described how a lone gunman approached their car in broad daylight in Johannesburg 12 days ago and fired at her husband. She says she is certain that the killer was sent by Paul Kagame’s government. Formerly a close aide to the Rwandan leader, Lt-Gen Kayumba fled into exile in February after falling out with him.

The Rwandan government has strongly denied any role in the attack. Umuvugizi, an opposition newspaper in Rwanda, was investigating possible government links to the killing when its editor in exile was tracked down in neigbouring Uganda.

On 22 June Mr Gasasira was confronted by six men in Kampala. He managed to flee to his house, from where he called police. Ugandan authorities described their response as a rescue. Two days later his co-editor, Mr Rugambage, was shot dead in Kigali by two men who then fled the scene in a car.

Speaking this week, Mr Kagame said he had ordered his police, intelligence services and army to find the journalist’s killers. “We will not rest until we get to the bottom of this and make it clear to everyone,” he said. Two arrests have since been made and police said they believed the suspects’ motive had been connected to genocide charges against Mr Rugambage. He was tried and acquitted and authorities said the killing was likely a revenge attack.

But the murder is being investigated by its perpetrators, according to Mr Gasasira. “I’m 100 per cent certain this was done by the Rwandan intelligence service,” he said.

In South Africa, three men appeared in court this week charged with the attempted murder of Lt-Gen Kayumba. None of the accused is Rwandan and they each have previous records for handling stolen goods. Two more men, one of them thought to be Rwandan, have been released and there are fears that the incident, which created tension between South Africa and Rwanda, may be written off as an attempted robbery. The dissident general was a long-time confidante who served as the army chief of staff.

Mr Gasasira says that conflicts within Rwanda’s all powerful army are behind the dissident attacks. With Mr Kagame in absolute control of the democratic process, the only threat would come from the military, he states.

The relationship between Lt-Gen Kayumba and the president deteriorated as Mr Kagame became more autocratic. Mr Gasasira decided to leave Rwanda after his newspaper was banned in April as part of a crackdown on dissent. In February 2007 he was brutally assaulted in Kigali by three men armed with iron bars. The attack, which put him in a coma and left him with permanent health problems, followed articles in Umuvugizi critical of the ruling party, the Rwandan Patriotic Front.

[The Independent]

Editor blames security forces after Rwandan journalist shot dead

Presidential hopeful Victoire Ingabire said she had been denied the right to appear on the ballot. Photograph: Jason Straziuso/AP

David Smith, Africa correspondent

The murder of a Rwandan journalist has raised fears of a violent crackdown on freedom of the press and political opposition after his colleagues claimed the killing was a state-sponsored assassination.

News of the killing came as a leading challenger to the president, Paul Kagame, said she had been barred from standing in August's election.

The acting editor of Rwanda's Umuvugizi newspaper, Jean Leonard Rugambage, died in hospital on Thursday night after he was shot by two men who then fled in a car.

The paper's exiled editor, Jean Bosco Gasasira, said security forces had carried out the attack because Rugambage had been investigating the state's alleged role in the shooting of an exiled Rwandan general in South Africa last weekend.

"I'm 100% sure it was the office of the national security services which shot him dead," Gasasira told the Voice of America.

Gasasira said that Rugambage had complained he was under constant surveillance, but had ignored his colleague's warnings to leave Rwanda for his own safety. "I told him to cross and flee Rwanda into Uganda to see how we can handle the issue. But unfortunately they killed him before," he said.

Gasasira moved to Uganda in April after Umuvugizi and another weekly paper were suspended for six months by Rwanda's press council for inciting opposition to the government. Umuvugizi sought to circumvent the ban by publishing online instead.

Recent crackdowns have heightened concerns about an authoritarian approach to independent media and political dissent in Rwanda as it prepares for its second presidential election since the 1994 genocide.

Tensions were further raised today when Victoire Ingabire, a Hutu opposition candidate, said she was being denied the right to appear on August's election ballot because she had been charged with denying the genocide had occurred.

The opposition parties FDU-Inkingi, headed by Ingabire, and the Democratic Green party of Rwanda claim the government has prevented them from registering their parties and exercising their political rights.

"The ruling party, RPF, has indeed shown to the Rwandan people and the international community that it is too scared to compete with the real opposition and has rather resorted to getting stooge candidates to compete with," said Ingabire and Green party leader Frank Habineza.

Ingabire's party and other opposition parties tried to demonstrate against Rwanda's electoral commission yesterday , but police shut down the protest, saying it was illegal. About a hundred people were arrested, Ingabire said.

Police also arrested another presidential contender, Bernard Ntaganda, on suspicion of attempted murder.

A spokesman Eric Kayiranga said: "[He] has not been charged yet, we will continue working on it. We are still collecting evidence."

Kagame is widely expected to win a second seven-year term in the elections on 9 August. He has held de facto power since 1994 when his guerrilla force took over after ending the massacres of some 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

Kagame is robust in his defence of Rwanda's economic growth, arguing in a recent Guardian interview: "Your model of democracy, why should it be suitable for me?"

South Africa is investigating whether the Johannesburg shooting of Lieutenant General Kayumba Nyamwasa, accused of terrorism by Rwanda, was politically motivated, as intensifying speculation holds. Nyamwasa is recovering in hospital and four suspects are under arrest