Africa Great Lakes Democracy Watch: RWNDA-NYAMWASA

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 RWNDA-NYAMWASA. Show all posts

Thursday, December 2, 2010

Brussels, 6th December 2010 – Paul Kagame very last visit to Europe

Image via Wikipedia

by therisingcontinent|

Africans, and particularly people from the Great Lakes and specifically Rwandans and Congolese living in Europe, have a moral duty towards their respective compatriots in ensuring protection of their rights whenever and wherever they can. With the background of continuing tragedies in Rwanda and Democratic Republic of Congo, the visit of Paul Kagame this early December to Brussels should be such an opportunity.
The call for a general mobilisation of Rwandans and Congolese living in Europe and particularly in Belgium, to come out in big number to show to the Rwandan president how they feel about his crimes, must give him a sign of times to remember for as long he rules over Rwanda. We reproduce here an invitation to participate to that act of solidarity as prepared and published on different online networks by The Association Jambo.
Paul Kagame in Brussels – Congolese and Rwandans: Rise up against tyranny and impunity this Monday, December 6th, 2010.

The association JAMBO calls Rwandans and Congolese of Europe to rise up against tyranny and impunity this Monday, December 6th, 2010 at 12:30 Rue Mont des Arts 1000 Brussels, Belgium. (Http://www.jamboasbl.com/)
Between 6 and 8 million Congolese and Rwandan civilians mostly women and children were massacred during the past 20 years in the Great Lakes. It is more or less the greatest conflict’s death toll the world has experienced since the Second World War.
It is with this particularly gruesome background that the main responsible for this tragedy that continues today, General Paul Kagame, was invited to the European Development Days. Responsibility for its army, RPA, has been clearly demonstrated by various reports and by the numerous testimonies of survivors of these atrocities. The latest being a report of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights published on October 1st, 2010, accusing its troops of committing in Congo war crimes, crimes against humanity and acts if produced in front of a court could probably be considered as genocide. Already in 2002 an expert report (GRIP) addressed to the UN highlighted and estimated at millions of dead in Congo explaining that ‘These deaths are a direct consequence of the occupation by Rwanda and Uganda.’
Against this backdrop, several associations of Rwandan and Congolese diaspora in Belgium of which ASBL Jambo is part invite members of both communities and all other citizens of the world guided by fairness, justice and freedom to come and express their outrage and denounce described situation.
Rwandan associations insist more particularly on the fact that June 24, 2010, hundreds of Rwandans in Kigali had come out against their fear and denounced violations of human rights they are still victims of today. That demonstration was violently repressed and leaders of political parties who called for it, Me Bernard Ntaganda and Victoire Ingabire are currently imprisoned in Rwanda. The latter was subject to torture during her first days of detention.
The Rwandan diaspora has a unique opportunity to relay the warning cries of their compatriots in a country where freedom of expression is permitted, at the risk if it fails to do so, create a definitive break between citizens still present in Rwanda who suffer oppression in their everyday life and the Rwandans in exile who, even though they still suffer intimidations and harassment from Kagame’s regime, were lucky to escape.
Rwandan and Congolese people have suffered enough over the course of their recent history. They deserve better from Rwanda to head a regime that continues to oppose deliberately citizens to each other and who, despite human losses already recorded in the region, continues to detain, torture or kill any critical voice. The prevailing situation continues and above all to be the source of instability in the region and poses to the region risks of a resurgence of extreme violence.
How many rebel movements present in neighboring Congo currently which are not funded by Rwanda and Uganda?
The EU must assume its responsibilities, like Jose Louis Zapatero in July 2010 who refused to accept General Kagame and then said no to holding a double discourse which is to publicly advocate a message of peace and condemn the most serious violations of human rights while at the same time receiving backstage with honors perpetrators of atrocities.
The association Jambo and its partners have requested from Belgian authorities to arrest any immediate members of the delegation of the Rwandan president who would be within the scope of arrest warrants against officials of the Kigali regime, issued in 2008 by the Spanish courts for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.
Come express your feelings against Kagame’s regime loudly, it is time to turn the darkest pages of our past. There is an urgent need to rebuild our promising country, economically, politically and especially socially.
The association Jambo
Coordinator
Placide Kayumba

Sunday, November 7, 2010

Kagame vs opposition: For how long will the ‘genocide ideology’ myth survive?

Image via Wikipedia

Adaoted from Newsline

Recently, I was chatting with a friend who works with a leading Civil Society Organization in the Great Lakes region and she told me of a discussion she had
with a certain western diplomat.

She said that the diplomat reasoned that many of those opposing Kagame’s regime, especially those abroad were either genocide suspects or genocide ideology propagators and that by advocating for the rights, the civil society was endangering its credibility. Sounds logical,
doesn’t it?
But, a deep analysis of the goings-on in Kigali, especially Kagame’s leadership style and the much talked about oppression of his regime will bring you close to
the fact that there is not an ounce of logic or reality in the diplomat’s reasoning. Not surprising, there could be many who think like the diplomat and they have all the airtime to publicize the gimmicks, but as reality sinks in, the dilemma fizzles.
So, what is the reality? Or, to be clear to the reader, what does the writer think about such insinuations. Well, ‘sharp’ as he is, after taking power Kagame knew that he would employ the 1994 genocide and the ‘genocide ideology’ as effective tools to tighten grip on power by silencing the majority Hutus in case they wanted to oppose him.

That, he did very well. And also considering that Kagame knew very well that under his command his forces had massacred Hutus (majority women and children), he knew that those macabre actions would return to haunt him one day. This has come to pass as evidenced in the recent UN Mapping Report.
So Kagame readied himself with the ‘two tools’, the genocide and ‘genocide ideology’, weapons he knew he would unleash against all who would want to expose the dark side of things about Rwanda and his regime, prominent among them the former President Pastuer Bizumungu and until recently, Victoire Umuhoza Ingabire.

It worked and over time Kagame has, with reasonable success, tried to hoodwink the international community and other people around the world that his Hutu critics are nothing more than mere genocide suspects and apologists, some of who flee, escaping the long arm of justice.

But this hoax was not to survive the test of time as the number of Tutsis fleeing his autocratic rule soon outnumbered the Hutus, in effect exposing the smear campaign he had waged against the Hutus. The leading independent media houses that Kagame shut down were almost all managed by Tutsis. And, one of the opposition parties whose members suffered persecution in Rwanda, is the Green Party which was founded and led by Tutsis. Its deputy President, Rwisereka Kagwa who was murdered early this year was a Tutsi. Was he a genocide apologist? Only Kagame knows. But again, against such background one of his best conjured tricks had burst.

So, challenged by the sudden downturn of events, the ‘crafty’ Kagame and his loyalists stepped up the ante, and now resorted to experimenting different smear campaigns against the Tutsi and Hutu critics.

He began spending heavily, employing diverse means of propagating stories about his successes in Rwanda, and also re-igniting the ‘genocide ideology ‘ myth, tricks that some, like the diplomat mentioned earlier in this article seems to have fallen for.
But most people did not fall for the trickery, reminding him time and again that the current leading critics against his autocratic rule are Tutsi comrades formerly in government, led by the former army-chief of staff, Gen. Nyamwasa Kayumba, his former close friend and spy guru, Patrick Karegeya, and the two brothers, Gerald Gahima and Dr. Theogene Rudansingwa .

These men fought against the genocide alongside Kagame, but have been courageous enough to expose his repressive rule and one wonders whether they have all of a sudden turned into genocide apologists. It beats logic. But, may be it doesn’t and Kagame still thinks he has the monopoly of confusing a few minds around. But again his actions beg the question: for how long, will Kagame thrive on preaching the Genocide and the mythical genocide ideology?
Well, your guess is as good mine.

The writer is the Editor-in-Chief of The Newsline.