Africa Great Lakes Democracy Watch: RWANDA UK BLAIR

Africa Great Lakes Democracy Watch

Welcome to Africa Great Lakes Democracy Watch Blog. Our objective is to promote the institutions of democracy,social justice,Human Rights,Peace, Freedom of Expression, and Respect to humanity in Rwanda,Uganda,DR Congo, Burundi,Sudan, Tanzania, Kenya,Ethiopia, and Somalia. We strongly believe that Africa will develop if only our presidents stop being rulers of men and become leaders of citizens. We support Breaking the Silence Campaign for DR Congo since we believe the democracy in Rwanda means peace in DRC. Follow this link to learn more about the origin of the war in both Rwanda and DR Congo:http://www.rwandadocumentsproject.net/gsdl/cgi-bin/library

Showing posts with label RWANDA UK BLAIR. Show all posts

Saturday, June 11, 2011

UK aid cash helped African dictator buy himself a £30m jet Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2002319/UK-aid-cash-helped-African-dictator-buy-30m-jet.html#ixzz1P1B1ht3q

From MAILOnline Written by IAN DRURY

Costly purchase: Uganda president Yoweri Museveni spent £30m of British aid on a private jet

British aid money was used by an African dictator to buy a £30million jet, it emerged last night.

Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni bought the top-of-the-range Gulfstream G550 private plane in the same year ministers gave his poverty- ravaged country £70million.
During the same period Uganda also received around £57million from the UK through the European Union.
The autocratic 67-year-old leader – currently facing criticism for launching a violent crackdown against protesters demanding an Egyptian-style uprising – received the cash under the Labour government in 2008-09.
Mr Museveni, who fought an election with posters depicting him as Rambo, bought the new 562mph plane while millions of civilians struggled to feed themselves.
The Gulfstream G550 can carry 18 passengers in comfort and has been dubbed the ‘world’s most versatile and stylish ultra-long-range jet’.
The revelation highlights the controversy of hard-pressed British families being asked to fork out higher taxes to pay for spurious aid projects.
The EU has been criticised by auditors for failing to measure the impact of the handouts, with much of the money lining the pockets of corrupt regimes.
The Government has carried out a sweeping review of how aid money is distributed and spent. In future, funding will be targeted on sectors, such as health and education.

Top of the range: The Gulfstream G550 is described as the 'world most versatile and stylish long-range jet' and can carry 18 passengers

But International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell is facing a backlash for expressing his desire to make the UK a ‘development superpower’.
Ministers are increasing aid spending by 34 per cent to £12billion at a time of austerity at home and Prime Minister David Cameron will again defend the policy at an event on Monday.

Last night Lord Ashcroft, the Tory peer who uncovered the use of public money to buy the jet, said it was vital that the review tightened up the rules on how developing nations spent aid money.

Discovery: Lord Ashcroft found out that public money had been used to buy the jet

He said: ‘The UK needs to be very careful before giving budgetary support to avoid extravagance such as this. It is simply a joke. We must make sure these things do not happen again as they appeared to happen too easily under Labour.’
Chris Heaton-Harris, a Tory MP and former MEP, said: ‘Government-to-government aid without proper checks just does not work. We need to be absolutely sure that every penny of UK taxpayers’ money given in aid alleviates poverty and provides good value.’
President Museveni was involved in the war that deposed brutal tyrant Idi Amin in 1979 and has led Uganda since 1986.
But recently the ex-guerilla fighter has been dogged by charges of corruption.
In 2005, health charities suspended some grants to Uganda, citing alleged financial mismanagement and last year the EU cut budget support to Uganda amid serious fears the regime was pocketing funds.
His presidential election victory in 2006 was condemned after the arrest on treason and rape charges of his main rival, Dr Kizza Besigye.
And in April, Mr Museveni’s military police attacked protesters amid growing unrest sparked by rising food and fuel prices.
A source close to Mr Mitchell said: ‘This issue dates back to the previous Labour government, who simply weren’t tough enough on waste and inefficiency.
‘There has been an overhaul of the aid programme since then.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2002319/UK-aid-cash-helped-African-dictator-buy-30m-jet.html#ixzz1P1ALZV3J

Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Rwanda's Bad Press: Police Report State Assassins on British Soil

KPFA Radio News, 05.29.2011: British and U.S. reactions to Scotland Yard's report of Rwandan state assassins on British soil.

Transcript:

Click Here to Watch the BBC Video about Kagame hitman in UK
KPFA Weekend News Anchor Anthony Fest: And in news from Southeastern Africa, the BBC reported this month that British Police had contacted two Rwandan exiles living in London to say that they were in danger of being assassinated by agents of the Rwandan government. KPFA's Ann Garrison has the story.

KPFA/Ann Garrison: BBC Newsline reported the London Metropolitan Police warning to two Rwandans living in London during the third week of May.

BBC Newsline: The Metropolitan Police have taken the extraordinary step of warning two British citizens from Rwanda, living in London, that they’re at risk of being assassinated by the Rwandan government. Legal notices were sent to a former Lib Dem candidate, Rene Mugenzi, and Jonathan Musonera. We’ve spoken with both men. Now it’s understood that a Rwandan suspected of being part of the plot against the exiles was prevented from entering Britain last week.

KPFA: Mugenzi went to Amnesty International last year with evidence that Rwandan President Paul Kagame’s Rwandan Patriotic Army was guilty of massacring 8,000 Rwandan Hutu people in an Internally Displaced Persons, or IDP, Camp in Southwestern Rwanda, in 1995, while UN peacekeepers stood by. Their allegations add to the body of evidence challenging the official Rwandan government history of the Rwanda Genocide and its aftermath.

BBC Newsnight
BBC Newsline’s host asked British MP Malcolm Bruce, Chair of British Parliament’s International Development Select Committee how he could continue to justify the British government’s plan to extend another $83 million pounds in aid to Rwanda:

BBC Newsline Host: We heard from the commentator there that there’s worsening repression, that rivals have been killed, that there’s a climate of fear, and we continue to give $83 billion pounds of aid to this country. Can we justify that?

KPFA: Rwandan are refugees and exiles in the U.S. repeated the same question, as did their Congolese refugees and exiles, who hold Rwandan President Paul Kagame and his Rwandan Patriotic Front regime responsible for invading, occupying, and plundering the resource rich eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, in the ongoing conflict that has cost upwards of six million lives since 1996.

The U.S. is, like Britain, a major donor to Rwanda, one of its principle military partners on the African continent.

Rwandan American Law Professor Charles Kambanda
St. John’s University Law Professor Charles Kambanda, a Rwandan dissident, exile, and former member of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, says that the Rwandan Army is the most influential institution in Rwanda, that most of its top officers are trained by the U.S., and that the U.S., as the “brain of the Rwandan army,” will bear primariy responsibility for whatever happens next in that country.
For Pacifica, KPFA and AfrobeatRadio, I'm Ann Garrison.
(See the BBC Newsline report at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zXN4eZO2_g .)

Monday, May 30, 2011

Paying wages to Kagame’s guerrilla fighters from Ugandan and British taxpayer’s money.

From the UK-AFRICA Blog
General Paul Kagame was the Chief of Military Intelligence of the Ugandan National Resistance Army, which is funded by the UK government. Kagame had all necessary resources to plan his invasion to Rwanda, with the support by Ugandan army and paid mercenaries from Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, Soudan, Ethiopia to fight against the former Rwandan small army. As a refugee ( as he claimed to be), Kagame was travelling around the world to prepare his war against Rwanda, a peaceful country. His multiple foreign trips on different Ugandan diplomatic passports with different names were used to transfer the money in his multiple foreign accounts on different names to purchase weapons and to get the support from the UK and other western sponsors. These trips were funded by the UK's aid aimed at to tackling poverty in Uganda. Kagame and his 20,000 fighters were paid as regular civil servants or soldiers through the UK's aid and Uganda taxpayer’s money since 1986 to 1998. Most Kagame's fighters were still on the Uganda payroll until 2000. After the war, hundreds of Kagame's fighters were sent to the UK to apply for refugee status. During the war, the former Rwandan government could not afford to purchase weapons because of having been restricted to do so by IMF and the World Bank under the Rwanda Structural Adjustment Programme. Furthermore, the UN Security Council imposed the former Rwandan Government an army embargo that weakened their position to fight the war while Kagame was receiving arms and ammunitions from the UK arms dealers and from the Ugandan army funded by the UK aid.

Rwanda: The Sinister Offensive of a Regime in Decline

From UK-AFRICA BLOG

By Emmanuel Hakizimana, Ph.D.

President of the Rwandan Congress of Canada

LONDON - MARCH 8: Queen Elizabeth II shakes ha...

Kagame and the Queen of England

Also available in: Français.

On May 13, 2011, BBC Radio broadcast information according to which two Rwandan nationals living in London had just been warned by British police that their lives were in danger. In a warning notice sent to each of them, police wrote: “Reliable intelligence states that the Rwandan Government poses an imminent threat to your life. The threat could come in any form.” Two weeks earlier, the London newspaper The Independent published an article stating that the British intelligence service MI5 had issued an advisory notice to the Ambassador of Rwanda to the United Kingdom, Ernest Rwamucyo, warning him that British aid to Rwanda would be cut if he did not cease to threaten and intimidate Rwandan nationals living in Great Britain. That aid amounts to more than CAN$130 million.

The reports have caused considerable concern among members of the Rwandan community living in the West and more particularly those residing in Commonwealth countries including Canada. Indeed, they never imagined that the Kigali regime would dare to export insecurity to countries that are its biggest supporters. It will be remembered that those countries disregarded the recommendations put forward in a report by the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative and agreed to allow Rwanda to join the Commonwealth a little over a year ago.

The campaign of terror further illustrated by the events in London seems to be part of a strategy that was initiated by General Paul Kagame a few months before the presidential elections of August 2010 and was escalated following the release in October 2010 of the United Nations mapping report on crimes committed in Congo between 1993 and 2003. According to the report, the army of President General Paul Kagame committed war crimes, crimes against humanity and possibly crimes of genocide against Hutu refugees in Congo and Congolese citizens.

The strategy basically has two concomitant areas of focus. The first is a vast diplomatic campaign in Western countries primarily intended to demonize opponents of the current Rwandan regime and denounce the UN mapping report. The second is the assassination of opponents, real or imagined, as well as independent journalists who reveal the criminal activities of the Kigali regime.

As part of the diplomatic offensive, a large Rwandan delegation led by Senator Aloysie Inyumba (recently appointed Minister of Gender and Family) toured Europe in November 2010. Another arrived in Canada in the second half of May 2011 for a series of conferences organized in conjunction with the Embassy of Rwanda in Ottawa. At the same time, Paul Kagame is scheduled to personally visit Chicago in the United States from June 10 to 12, 2011.

The recent events in Great Britain fall within the political assassinations component of the strategy, which was revived a few months before the presidential elections of August 2010 and continues to this day. It began with the decapitation of Green Party Vice-President André Kagwa Rwisereka, the assassination of independent journalist Léonard Rugambage and the assassination attempt in South Africa on General Kayumba Nyamwasa. It has now spread to Western countries.

Rwandan nationals who fled General Paul Kagame’s regime and settled in Canada take the recent events in London very seriously. They now know that the Rwandan regime can also carry out a campaign of terror in Canada and elements abound to indicate that their fear is not unfounded. First, there are precedents on Canadian soil. In 1998, a former Red Cross employee was the victim of an attempted murder because he had witnessed massacres perpetrated against Rwandan Hutu refugees by Paul Kagame's army. The incident was made public in an article published in La Presse on January 29, 1998. Next, the fact that Canada is the only Western country not to take legal action against the killers of Canadian citizens living in Rwanda (including Father Claude Simard and Father Guy Pinard) is not likely to deter Paul Kagame from sowing terror on Canadian soil. Finally, the initiative by Rwandan authorities to carry out a campaign of terror in Great Britain when that country ranks first among providers of aid to Rwanda shows that no country, not even Canada, can delude itself into believing that the Kigali regime will not dare to carry out terrorist attacks on its territory.

Many members of the Rwandan community in Canada fled Paul Kagame’s regime for different reasons. Some are survivors of his crimes against humanity, as revealed by the UN mapping report referred to above. Others, including journalists, jurists and human rights activists, were singled out because they denounced human rights violations and other abuses. All arrived broken-hearted and wanted nothing more than to live in peace and thrive in their host countries. The campaign of terror waged today by the Kigali regime is plunging them back into the world of terror they fled. Canada should take action immediately and warn Rwandan authorities against organizing terrorist activities on Canadian territory. At stake are the safety and security of all Canadians.

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.

Rwandan exiles warned of assassination threat by London police

Rwandan assassin 'sent to kill dissidents in UK

British Police Warn Rwandan Dissidents of Threat

Rwanda: State terrorism tolerated for long by the international community

DRC: Mapping human rights violations 1993-2003

BBC Newsnight - Claims that the Rwandan government is plotting assassinations in the UK

Update on the Kagame Killing Machine in the UK & BBC Expose