Rwanda genocide: Opposition claims 'forced exhumations'

By Mary Harper BBC Africa analyst

Hundreds of thousands of people died in the genocide

A Rwandan opposition party has accused the government of forcing people to exhume the bodies of relatives killed during the 1994 genocide.

The authorities say the remains should be brought together at memorial sites so people never forget the killings.
Some 800,000 ethnic Tutsi and moderate Hutus died in the 100-day genocide.
Despite repeated requests by the BBC neither the information minister nor Rwanda's Commission Against Genocide Ideology have responded to the claims.
'No choice'
A representative of the newly-formed opposition Rwandan National Congress, Jonathan Musonera, said that he had personally been affected by the government's order.
"The authorities issued instructions for us to dig up the remains of our relatives and take them to the genocide memorial sites," he said.
"My family refused, but the government said if we didn't do it, they would send prisoners to exhume the remains.
"We had no choice. My relatives dug up the bodies and gave them to the authorities who took them to the memorial sites."
Mr Musonera said exhuming the remains of his family has haunted him and that he believes they deserve to be buried with dignity at a place where they can be visited by those who survived.
But the Rwandan Genocide Survivors Association, which is close to the government, supports the policy of exhuming the remains.
"All the remains should be kept at memorial sites so that we can keep showing that the genocide happened," said Jean-Pierre Dusingizemungu, the head of the association.
He added that the bodies should be preserved properly so that they can be displayed in this way for a long time.
There are several genocide memorial sites in Rwanda. The biggest, in the capital Kigali, displays the skulls and other remains of some 200,000 people.
The authorities want the remains of every victim to be shown in public to emphasise the scale and horror of the genocide.
But many of those being asked to dig up the remains of those they lost 17 years ago, would prefer for them to rest in peace

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Spanish President Zapatero Warned Against Working with Criminal Kagame

Spanish President Zapatero Warned Against Working with Criminal Kagame

by David O'Brian

Madrid, Spain.

by AfroAmerica Network

http://www.afroamerica.net/AfricaGL

Spanish Citizens have asked their President, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, to decline his appointment by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon to serve as Co-Chair of the UN Millennium Development Goals Initiative along with the Rwandan Dictator, General Paul Kagame. The key initiators of the petition against the appointment, Joan Carrero, president, Fundació S´Olivar and Bernat Vicens, president, Drets Humans de Mallorca, argue that the UN is a corrupt institution and that President Zapatero risks to go down in history as the President of Spain who shook the bloody hands and sat the same table with one of the worst criminal in human history.

The authors of the petition to the Spanish President write: “Mr. Zapatero: this denunciation is not against you, but rather for your sake. It’s the denunciation made by people who are deeply disappointed with your behavior concerning this current major conflict, a conflict in which nine Spanish nationals were murdered following orders from Kagame. It’s the denunciation by people who back then voted for you and even now don’t want to see you stoop so low. Don’t yield once again, Mr. President. Not this time, please. It would be far too humiliating. Be wary of those people who, whether outside or even inside your inner circle, lead you to such embarrassing situations. Don’t insult so many of us Spaniards who understand the meaning of what you are about to do. Now you can’t say you weren’t informed. Or is it, rather, that you are paying off some ‘favor’ to those who call the shots in the world?

Mr. Zapatero, don’t be co-chair of the Millenium Goals with Kagame, don’t go down in history as the accomplice of such a fiend and his extremely powerful godfathers in their operations of global pillaging and deceit. They will be brought to light in the short run. Don’t lend them a hand, don’t stain your own hands with innocent blood. This attempt to clean up the image of this thug Kagame and of his criminal pillage of Congo is so blatant and preposterous that it will most certainly backfire.”

RPF War Crimes, Crimes against Humanity, and Crimes of Genocide

RPF War Crimes, Crimes against Humanity, and Crimes of Genocide

1. The Ruhengeri city attack of January 23, 1991: The RPF staged a night attack on the city of Ruhengeri, resulting in heavy civilian casualties and heavy property damage. The RPF opened the gates of Ruhengeri prison, freeing many prisoners and enrolling them as fighters. The RPF also engaged in heavy looting activity in the city, and a reported 400 people were forced out of their homes to help carry the loot. These 400 civilians were all killed afterwards, along with another 100 civilians around the city as the RPF retreated back into the volcano forest. (Abdul J. Ruzibiza, Rwanda, L’Histoire Secrete, 2005, p. 132)

1. The Butaro massacre of May 199
2. 2: At Rusasa in the commune of Butaro, in the province of Ruhengeri, the RPF attacked displaced people on a small island in the swamps of Rugezi, destroying their shelters and killing their goats and sheep. 150 people were reportedly killed in this attack. (Testimony provided by witnesses, still living)

1. The notorious Ruhengeri and Byumba massacre of February 8, 1993: The RPF staged a major attack in several communes of the Provinces of Ruhengeri and Byumba, killing many people and inflicting heavy damage on state and privately-owned property. During this attack, the RPF killed a total of 24,400 people in Ruhengeri, and of 15,800 in Byumba. (James K. Gasana, Rwanda: du parti-Etat a l’Etat garnison, 2002, p. 185)

1. The political assassination of May 18, 1993: The RPF is reported to have killed Emmanuel Gapyisi, a prominent political leader from the south and vice president of the MDR party. He was one of the most clear-minded and respected leaders of the MDR party. His killing removed a powerful RPF opponent because Gapyisi was very critical of RPF violent methods and practices. But this also was an extremely reckless crime capable of plunging the country into widespread violence between southerners and northerners especially if the former came to believe the latter had killed their man. Gapyisi’s killing was among the first in a wave of assassinations nationwide targeting Hutu political leaders, including businessmen, mayors, parliamentarians, and leading up to the assassination of Gatabazi, Bucyana, and finally President Habyarimana. An investigation is needed to clear the mystery of these assassinations once and for all.

1. Other crimes and terrorist acts: Throughout the year of 1993, Rwanda experienced a major spike in acts of armed banditry, grenade attacks and mini-bus taxi explosions in several parts of the country. According to several credible witnesses, among them former RPF officer Lieutenant Abdul Rizibiza now in exile in Norway, the acts were the work of infiltrated RPF hit squad members and spy operatives all belonging to the “RPF Network”, who were assigned to spreading violence and insecurity, thus rendering the country ungovernable in a bid to overthrow the government and seize power by force. (Abdul J. Ruzibiza, Testimony of Abdul Ruzibiza, March 14, 2004)

IV. RPF CRIMES FROM JANUARY 1, 1995 TO PRESENT (NOVEMBER 8, 2006)

RPF War Crimes, Crimes against Humanity, and Crimes of Genocide (January 1,1995 – Present: November 8, 2006):

1. The gruesome Kibeho massacre of April 17-23, 1995: an estimated 4000 internally displaced people were reported killed on the orders of Major General Paul Kagame when army units collectively fired on the Kibeho camp that was estimated to shelter about 100,000 people, indiscriminately killing unarmed men, women, children, and many elderly. Paul Kagame, then vice president and minister of defense, reportedly had established his local operations headquarters in nearby Butare to closely supervise the siege and dismantling of the Kibeho camp. It took one full night of non-stop body disposal by truck towards the Nyungwe forest for mass incineration (many areas of the site were cordoned off for supposed “security and military reasons”) before the RPF allowed journalists, independent observers and UN monitors, to access the site. (Paul Jordan, Witness to Genocide – A Personal Account of the 1995 Kibeho Massacre, 1998; Abdul J. Ruzibiza, Rwanda, L’Histoire Secrete, 2005)

This was a well-publicized massacre brazenly carried out by the RPF government, in the presence of the UN military contingent from Zambia and officials from NGO’s assisting these refugees, and many pictures of which were taken and made public. The simple question, then, is why hasn’t there been any independent inquiry so that the perpetrators can be officially identified and punished?

1. The deadliest year of 1996: the year of the infamous mass murder of refugees in Zaïre (currently the Democratic Republic of the Congo) and forced deportation of refugees: The RPA army carried out perhaps the most brutal and genocidal campaign in modern history by attacking the sprawling refugee camps in Goma and Bukavu in Zaïre, home to an estimated 1 to 2 million Rwandan refugees. There is little doubt that among these refugees were those who had participated in the mass killings inside Rwanda 2 years before. But the RPA army put the guilty and the innocent in the same bag, and indiscriminately fired on the camps and crowds of unarmed fleeing refugees, especially women, children and the elderly who were the weakest and unable to run fast, hunting down many of them like beasts deep into the tropical Zairian forest all the way to Tingi Tingi and Mbandaka. By all accounts, it is estimated this whole operation claimed the lives of 400,000 Rwandan refugees. While this operation was underway, the RPA army undertook one of the biggest deportation campaigns ever, by forcibly (i.e. against their will) airlifting an estimated 700,000 refugees back to their respective original communes in Rwanda. Then the RPF started a long-running criminal process of killing these returnees, as a result of which about 50% of the returnees are not living today. These horrific crimes, both in Zaïre and in Rwanda, were executed with orders received from their leaders. (Testimony provided by witnesses, still living; Marie Beatrice Umutesi, Fuir ou Mourir au Zaire: Le vécu d’une réfugiée Rwandaise, 2000)

The International Center for Human Rights and Democratic Development (CIDPDD), in teaming with the African Association for the Defense of Human Rights in DRC (ASADHO), concluded that “It appears pertinently that the Rwandan government can be held accountable for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and acts of genocide” in their document entitled “Report of inquiry by the international non-government commission on human rights violations in DRC (former Zaire) 1996-1998”, 1998, p.78.

1. The slaughter of the Nyarutovu wedding, January 18-19, 1997: In the night of January 18-19, 1997, the RPF attacked and killed each and every one of the guests, including the bride and groom and their parents, at a civil wedding in the home of Major Laurent Bizabarimana in Nyarutovu in the northern province of Ruhengeri. 50 people were collectively slaughtered that night. Major Laurent Bizabarimana and his family had recently returned from Zaire during the massive forced deportation by the RPF, and became victims of a brutal RPF nationwide campaign inside Rwanda to eliminate “genocidaire elements” from among these returnees. (Testimony provided by witnesses, still living)

1. The horrors of the Nyakinama Cave, October 23-28, 1997: RPA soldiers are reported to have pursued and killed 8,000 unarmed civilians, especially women, children and the elderly who were too weak to run who had sought refuge in the cave of Nyakinama, in the commune of Kanama, to escape indiscriminate shootings and bombings by the RPA in the area. RPA soldiers reacted by lobbing grenades and other explosives into the cave, then went on to seal off the entrance of the cave with rocks and gravel so no one would be able to come out. ( Amnesty International, The dead can no longer be counted, report, December 1997)

1. The Hutu Christmas massacre of Kayonza, December 23-25, 1998: In the evening hours of December 23, 1998, a passenger on a mini-bus taxi from Kigali got off near Nyagatare, and suddenly fired a gun into the air before running off into the hills of near-by Ngarama. The next day, people woke up to road blocks at Kayonza and Musha, and to military security sweep operations in the surrounding communes of Ngarama, Muvumba, Murambi, Kayonza, and Bicumbi. All taxis to and from Kigali were stopped and carefully screened for Hutus, who were ordered out before the taxis were allowed to resume their journey. These Hutus were then all executed using guns or used up hoes, then loaded up onto trucks and shipped to humming incineration centers in the Mutara region, with the ashes later dispersed into the Akagara National Park. An estimated 5,000 innocent civilians, including the cousin of one witness, perished in this macabre 2-day operation. (Testimony provided by witnesses, still living)

1. The brutal reprisal campaigns against Abacengezi (1997-2000) and the ethnic cleansing of the Mutara region (1995 and after): From 1997 to around 2000, the RPF faced an increased number of cross-border raids from Zaire into Rwanda carried out by remnants of the previous army who called themselves “Abacengezi” (or inroad specialists). Each time they attacked, the RPA army responded by unleashing a brutal reprisal campaign targeting the civilian population, especially in the northwestern provinces of Ruhengeri and Gisenyi, in order to break the will of the insurgents, many of whom originated from these provinces. More than 50,000 people were killed in many communes of these 2 provinces from 1997 to 2000. In the meantime, the RPF returned to the Mutara region in the northeast and started where it had left off in cleansing the area of all ethnic Hutus. The RPF decimated native Hutus, as well as other Hutus who had immigrated into this once under-populated area from other parts of the country in search of land and new jobs during the 1960’s, 1970’s, and 1980’s. The Mutara region is now the new all-Tutsi land of Rwanda, complete with farms and cattle ranches for the Tutsi herders. There have been reports that these ranching activities, in search of grazing pasture, have led to severe encroachments into the adjacent Akagera National Park, destroying the ecosystem of the area and the natural habitat of many wild animals. (Testimony provided by witnesses, still living)

V. OTHER ALLEGED RPF CRIMES

1. The crime of denying people their right to seek medical treatment overseas: Since taking power in July 1994, the RPF has put in place a criminal policy of systematic non-issuance of medical treatment exit visas for people it wants to punish for multiple reasons. These are mostly people who have voiced their criticism of the government or the army, or are perceived to be in the political opposition, etc. One of the most glaring cases is that of Father Andre Sibomana, former Editor of the independent newspaper “Kinyamateka”, and a former interim Bishop of the Diocese of Kabgayi after the assassination of Bishop Thaddee Nsengiyumva in June 1994. He was a staunch social justice advocate and human rights activist known for his editorials denouncing the excesses of the RPF regime. He was never allowed to seek expert medical treatment overseas, and succumbed to his illness in Kabgayi at the young age of 43 on March 7, 1998. Dr. Jean Bagiramenshi, a veterinarian who worked for the government and later consulted for the World Bank, was another victim of this policy. He suffered from multiple ailments, including kidney malfunction and gout, and may have had liver problems as well. He was prevented several times from seeking medical treatment out of Rwanda on his own money, and by the time he was allowed to leave, it was too late. He died in Belgium in 2005. Investigations must be carried out to determine how many people have fallen victim to this criminal policy. (Testimony provided by witnesses, still living)

1. RPF death squads on the trail of opponents inside and outside Rwanda: On May 5, 1998, former Interior Minister Seth Sendashonga was assassinated in Nairobi, Kenya; on October 6, 1996, Colonel Theoneste Lizinde and businessman Augustin Bugirimfura were assassinated in Nairobi, Kenya; in the night of February 14-15, 1999, former CEO of Rwanda African Continental Bank (BACAR) Pasteur Musabe was assassinated in Yaounde, Cameroon. Inside Rwanda, former Council of State president Vincent Nsanzabaganwa was assassinated on February 14, 1997; former presidential advisor Assiel Kabera was gunned down on March 5, 2000; on April 7, 2003, parliamentarian Leonard Hitimana was assassinated, and no inquiry has been conducted. Two weeks later on April 23, 2003, Colonel Augustin Cyiza was abducted and killed. Edouard Mutsinzi, former editor of “Le Messager” newspaper in Kigali, was abducted and beaten up, with his ribs broken, his eyes taken out, and his brain damaged so bad that he lives in a vegetative state in Belgium. All the victims were either critics of the government or potential compromising witnesses in possession of top state secrets. These crimes and many others were reported to have been committed by RPF death squad members assigned to do the dirty work against RPF opponents in different world capitals. They must be investigated, and their perpetrators brought to justice.

1. The cruel and inhumane use of prisoners in de-mining operations: The RPF has been reported sending hundreds to Hutu prisoners to their immediate death by forcing them to run in areas where landmines are suspected of having been planted by the ousted army, especially in the Bugesera region. These allegations must be fully investigated and prosecuted. (Testimony provided by witnesses, still living)

1. The cruel and inhumane treatment and exploitation of Rwandan prisoners in the Congo war for the profit of President Paul Kagame: During the Congo war and the occupation of Eastern DRC by the RPA, reports abounded about Rwandan prisoners being sent to die at the forefront of a brutal war of occupation and exploitation of the DRC. There were also numerous reports that hundreds, maybe thousands, of Rwandan prisoners were sent to RPA-occupied areas of the Congo to work as forced labor in the digging of minerals, especially Coltan, gold and diamonds, for the top brass members of the RPA army, starting with President Paul Kagame himself. This was a flagrant violation of international laws governing prisoners and a despicable trampling of human dignity. A full investigation and prosecution of these crimes is warranted. (Testimony provided by witnesses, still living)

VI. FINAL OBSERVATIONS

1. When this RPF crime compendium is released, I expect the RPF government to hit back with blanket accusations, without any proof, that I am a “revisionist and a negationist of the Rwandan genocide”, and that “I harbor an ideology of genocide and divisionism”. The international community must take a very close and careful look at such character assassination, and in many cases outright persecution, of all real and perceived contrary opinion holders and political opponents, social justice advocates and human rights critics in Rwanda by the RPF government, and find a proper way to address it.

1. The present compendium was conceived as an effort to document most reported and under-reported crimes by the RPF organization as a predominantly Tutsi rebel group and government with a view to bring to light its apparent share of responsibility in the whole Rwandan tragedy. Even though it places a premium on seemingly forgotten Hutu casualties, this document did not and does not intend to belittle Tutsi and Twa casualties of the Rwandan genocide. All sons and daughters of Rwanda, as well as foreigners who perished in this tragedy were a terrible loss to humanity and must be equally mourned and remembered, regardless of their ethnicity. We need to know with certainty who massacred the Bagogwe Tutsi sub-clan of Gisenyi in 1991 and 1992. We need to know with certainty who butchered the Banyamulenge Tutsis and Bagobwe Tutis sheltered at Mudende camps in August, November, and December 1997. We need to know with certainty who killed the American, British, Australian and New Zealand tourists at Bwindi National Park in Uganda in 1999. Who killed the Spanish volunteers in Rwanda in 1997 and in Congo in the following years? Who abducted, mutilated and killed former Rwandan cabinet minister Juvenal Uwiringiyimana before dumping his body in a Brussels canal in December 2005? Was he or not a victim of the RPF death squad in Europe as widely suspected? The overall goal of this document is to lift the cloud of mystery and secrecy hanging over the Rwandan tragedy. It is to fight impunity and help bring equitable justice to Rwanda: whoever killed a Tutsi must pay, whoever killed a Hutu must pay, whoever killed a Twa must pay, and whoever killed a foreigner must pay.

1. Rwandan President Paul Kagame is now widely believed to be behind the shooting down of the aircraft carrying President Juvenal Habyarimana on that fateful night of April 6, 1994. In that capacity, he is the suspected triggerman of the Rwandan genocide of 1994 and the architect of the genocide after 1994. Kagame outright denies these allegations. But a better way to refute the charges and clear his name once and for all is to allow an independent investigation to look into these crimes. Of course Kagame will never request such an independent investigation, because he knows he is guilty. That’s why we ask the UN to mandate the ITCR to investigate these tragedies not covered by the current mandate.

1. The provinces of Byumba and Ruhengeri did not experience the wave of genocidal killings that engulfed the rest of the country in April 1994, because they were already under RPF control. Yet, the vast majority of families currently living in these regions (about 80% of all inhabitants of these areas) are made up of widows and orphans, who tell stories of their husbands and fathers having been killed by the RPF. International non-government organizations (NGO’s) have been prohibited by the RPF government to go into these areas and assist these widow-run families to move ahead, and to mend the traditional family nucleus and the social fabric which have been completely shattered. Families in these areas with a member in the previous government army have been especially targeted and hit the hardest by the RPF. The simple question is this: why has the international community remained blind in the face of such blatant brutalization of human life? From 1990 to 1994, a reported 400,000 people have died in these areas. Who killed them?

1. Reports have circulated that many extremist RPF members in Kigali and other cities had large caches of weapons in their residences, and had dug up very deep pits in their backyards a few months before the genocide. What was the purpose of these weapons and pits? There have been reports that in the ceasefire months leading up to April 1994, many RPF youths received extensive fire arms training in the CND parliament building housing the RPF battalion, and at the RPF headquarters in Mulindi. Also, it is no secret that while the ruling MRND party had the Interahamwe militia, the MDR party had the JDR (Democratic Republican Youth) militia, and the PSD party had the Abakombozi militia, the RPF had a youth militia of its own that inflicted as much damage as the other militias. An independent inquiry of these facts is needed, and witnesses are available to testify openly.

1. The killings in Rwanda in 1994 were called genocide. Today, the killings in Darfur are being denounced as genocide. The killings in Zaire from 1996 to 2001, which took the lives of more than 4 million innocent lives, were called just that: killings. Where is the logic? Some of the perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide have been punished, and from all indications the perpetrators of the Darfur genocide will be punished, since the setting up of an International Criminal Tribunal for Darfur is already in the works. That’s all good. But when are we going to have the International Criminal Tribunal for Congo? When will the perpetrators of the Zairian killings be punished? Never mind calling the Zairian killings genocide, can their perpetrators at least be punished? There are countries which do not have a total of 4 million inhabitants. That’s a lot of people to kill and live freely ever after. We all know beyond a doubt that the RPF committed these killings. You, the international community, can you tell us who you hold responsible for these wholesale massacres? For the same crimes, there must be the same punishments.

1. More than 50% of current inmates in Rwanda have no official criminal charges against them, but continue to be kept in jail and out of active life. The government keeps the inmates on meager meals that must be supplemented with additional food rations from their families, or they will die from hunger – when they do not succumb to torture so rampant under different forms inside official prisons throughout the country and inside hidden unofficial torture centers. In most cases, women, including those educated, cannot keep a paying job because they need 2 to 3 hours per day to go feed their husbands in jail. No employer will agree to so much time off every day. This means that for the 100,000 married men in prison, there are 100,000 women not working, or a total of 200,000 people not actively contributing to the economy. With an average of 4 children per Rwandan household, that’s a total of 400,000 children nationwide that lack parental guidance and money to attend school. And all of a sudden, the grim picture of the legacy of the RPF regime comes into full focus: the pauperization and illiterate-ization of an entire generation of Rwandans. If this is not slow genocide, then genocide does not exist. Truthfully, there are 5 main factors of genocide: bad leadership, bad media, impunity, poverty, and lack of education. Today, all these 5 genocide factors are in place in Rwanda. The height of injustice in Rwanda can be summed up this way: many innocent Hutu civilians are in jail, while all criminal RPF elements are free. Where is the UN while all of this is happening? There cannot be any possible reconciliation in any nation where one part of the population is having a field day at the expense of the other part of the population on its knees.

1. Joseph Matata, a Rwandan human rights advocate who heads the Brussels-based “Center against Impunity and Injustice in Rwanda”, has reported that about 100 ex-FAR military officers are jailed at the Kibungo military prison since April 1999. An additional 37 or so ex-FAR military officers remain unaccounted for, while many other former comrades have been summarily executed [Report of April 14, 1999]. The “official” political parties in Rwanda today function under the umbrella of the so-called “Forum of Parties” where the RPF is sole master. In view of all this, the question is this: Does the Arusha Peace Agreement of August 1993, painfully reached between the then-RPF rebels and the then-government, and which called for a merger of the 2 fighting armies and free political activity in Rwanda, have any relevance left?

1. Contrary to RPF claims, there is no peace in Rwanda. That explains why far too many Rwandans continue to flee overseas and are easily granted asylee or refugee status. How long is the RPF going to use genocide as a pretext to stifle democracy and entrench one of the most predatory dictatorships ever? Political opposition is completely muzzled. How long will the people of Rwanda continue to die a slow death? Former President Pasteur Bizimungu and his collaborators, such as Charles Ntakirutinka, are rotting in jail for having started a political party. In fact, in Rwanda there is no shortage of political prisoners, prisoners of opinion, prisoners of hate, prisoners of race, etc., and Colonel Stanislas Biseruka, reporter Dominique Makeri, and Colonel Patrick Karegeya are only a handful in a long list. You, the ICTR, whose original mandate was to reconcile the Rwandan people among other things, what is going to be your legacy for Rwanda when your time expires?



1. The recent brutal killing of many businessmen among them Fulgence Nsengiyumva of Gitarama, aged 49, by the RPF government army on August 6, 2006 must be condemned vehemently. His wife is being persecuted for reclaiming the confiscated truck that belonged to him, and their 5 innocent children will be traumatized for the rest of their lives. The recent arrest, search and strip of old women in an open market place by RPF police in broad day light as a way to humiliate and force all old and barefoot women to never set foot in a market place again, is abhorrent and must be condemned vehemently. The on-going campaign to ban bicycles and motorcycles from cities, especially Kigali, as well as the on-going campaign to raze all banana plantations, is an act of economic depredation on the Rwandan population by its RPF government and will result in the starvation of the masses. It must be condemned vehemently. The on-going campaign to expel from Kigali city all the poor, all AIDS orphans, all war widows and war invalids, is criminal. It all started with a seemingly simple desire to take the poor away from the city, then the campaign targeted the bare-foot crowd, then those wearing sandals and slippers, then the pedestrians, then the bicyclists, and finally the motorcyclists. Who is it going to be next? There is clearly a pattern of criminal exclusion that must be condemned. In reality, this whole campaign is an empty attempt by RPF rulers to project to visitors and donors the deceptive impression that Kigali in particular, and Rwanda in general, are well-managed to deserve more financial aid. Chasing all these poor people away from the city without addressing the root cause of their misery is a window dressing, whitened-sepulcher, or sweep-under-the-rug type of approach to development, and it obviously can’t help any poor Rwandan. It can’t fool any foreign donor country either. So the simple question to the United Nations is this: why are the people of Rwanda being so toyed with, persecuted and killed by their own government in this fashion and nothing is being done about it?

1. Finally, what is Presidential Immunity? It seems to mean that someone can kill all the people he or she wants, and not worry about any consequences as long as he or she is president of a given country! We are in the 21st century, and humanity sure can come up with better laws.

VII. GENERAL CONCLUSION:

The above list of RPF crimes is by no means exhaustive. There are reports of countless RPF crimes before 1994, in 1994, and after 1994 that could not be compiled in this document. For example, in the small eastern town of Muhura as the RPF marched onto Kigali in the Spring of 1994, General Paul Kagame himself is reported not only having given direct orders to fire on crowds of wandering displaced people, but also having personally sprayed bullets into these crowds with his own machine gun. An investigation of this massacre is needed, and witnesses are available to tell the story.

Currently, there is a general, state-sponsored crime being perpetrated by the RPF government against an entire segment of the Rwandan population, specifically Hutus, through the infamous Gacaca Courts. The RPF government is attempting to incriminate the biggest number of Rwandans possible by officially labeling them “killers” or “genocidaires”, thus ostracizing them from public life and creating a caste of second class citizens or “untouchables”. Gacaca trials are an age-old, small-courts-type Rwandan tradition designed to settle only misdemeanors, such as stealing a cow, a goat, or chickens, and minor land disputes between neighbors. By its nature, a Gacaca trial does not require judges and jurors to have law school training and degrees, only common sense. Conversely, the crime of genocide is so grave by nature that it cannot be tried in a Gacaca court, with semi-literate judges and jurors, and with no legal defense, without being diminished and debased.

The justice system in place wants detainees to admit to the crime of killing if they want to be freed. Then, they head to a local Gacaca court where they not only must confess (and explain) their crimes but also reveal and denounce other killers. Anything short of this is a half-confession and not acceptable, and the suspect must go back to jail. In other cases, witnesses are produced from the woodwork to incriminate suspects for crimes they never committed. Very clearly, there is an attempt here on the part of the RPF government to humilia te and exterminate an entire people.

I, Paul Rusesabagina, personally know of specific cases where this has happened. The international community must condemn this abhorrent system and demand its immediate abolition.

Source: Iwacu1.com

RPF War Crimes, Crimes against Humanity, and Crimes of Genocide

RPF War Crimes, Crimes against Humanity, and Crimes of Genocide

1. The Ruhengeri city attack of January 23, 1991: The RPF staged a night attack on the city of Ruhengeri, resulting in heavy civilian casualties and heavy property damage. The RPF opened the gates of Ruhengeri prison, freeing many prisoners and enrolling them as fighters. The RPF also engaged in heavy looting activity in the city, and a reported 400 people were forced out of their homes to help carry the loot. These 400 civilians were all killed afterwards, along with another 100 civilians around the city as the RPF retreated back into the volcano forest. (Abdul J. Ruzibiza, Rwanda, L’Histoire Secrete, 2005, p. 132)

1. The Butaro massacre of May 199
2. 2: At Rusasa in the commune of Butaro, in the province of Ruhengeri, the RPF attacked displaced people on a small island in the swamps of Rugezi, destroying their shelters and killing their goats and sheep. 150 people were reportedly killed in this attack. (Testimony provided by witnesses, still living.If you want to know some of the names of people killed by RPF during this time click here.. If you want a PDF Doc click here.

1. The notorious Ruhengeri and Byumba massacre of February 8, 1993: The RPF staged a major attack in several communes of the Provinces of Ruhengeri and Byumba, killing many people and inflicting heavy damage on state and privately-owned property. During this attack, the RPF killed a total of 24,400 people in Ruhengeri, and of 15,800 in Byumba. (James K. Gasana, Rwanda: du parti-Etat a l’Etat garnison, 2002, p. 185)

1. The political assassination of May 18, 1993: The RPF is reported to have killed Emmanuel Gapyisi, a prominent political leader from the south and vice president of the MDR party. He was one of the most clear-minded and respected leaders of the MDR party. His killing removed a powerful RPF opponent because Gapyisi was very critical of RPF violent methods and practices. But this also was an extremely reckless crime capable of plunging the country into widespread violence between southerners and northerners especially if the former came to believe the latter had killed their man. Gapyisi’s killing was among the first in a wave of assassinations nationwide targeting Hutu political leaders, including businessmen, mayors, parliamentarians, and leading up to the assassination of Gatabazi, Bucyana, and finally President Habyarimana. An investigation is needed to clear the mystery of these assassinations once and for all.

1. Other crimes and terrorist acts: Throughout the year of 1993, Rwanda experienced a major spike in acts of armed banditry, grenade attacks and mini-bus taxi explosions in several parts of the country. According to several credible witnesses, among them former RPF officer Lieutenant Abdul Rizibiza now in exile in Norway, the acts were the work of infiltrated RPF hit squad members and spy operatives all belonging to the “RPF Network”, who were assigned to spreading violence and insecurity, thus rendering the country ungovernable in a bid to overthrow the government and seize power by force. (Abdul J. Ruzibiza, Testimony of Abdul Ruzibiza, March 14, 2004)

IV. RPF CRIMES FROM JANUARY 1, 1995 TO PRESENT (NOVEMBER 8, 2006)

RPF War Crimes, Crimes against Humanity, and Crimes of Genocide (January 1,1995 – Present: November 8, 2006):

1. The gruesome Kibeho massacre of April 17-23, 1995: an estimated 4000 internally displaced people were reported killed on the orders of Major General Paul Kagame when army units collectively fired on the Kibeho camp that was estimated to shelter about 100,000 people, indiscriminately killing unarmed men, women, children, and many elderly. Paul Kagame, then vice president and minister of defense, reportedly had established his local operations headquarters in nearby Butare to closely supervise the siege and dismantling of the Kibeho camp. It took one full night of non-stop body disposal by truck towards the Nyungwe forest for mass incineration (many areas of the site were cordoned off for supposed “security and military reasons”) before the RPF allowed journalists, independent observers and UN monitors, to access the site. (Paul Jordan, Witness to Genocide – A Personal Account of the 1995 Kibeho Massacre, 1998; Abdul J. Ruzibiza, Rwanda, L’Histoire Secrete, 2005)

This was a well-publicized massacre brazenly carried out by the RPF government, in the presence of the UN military contingent from Zambia and officials from NGO’s assisting these refugees, and many pictures of which were taken and made public. The simple question, then, is why hasn’t there been any independent inquiry so that the perpetrators can be officially identified and punished?

1. The deadliest year of 1996: the year of the infamous mass murder of refugees in Zaïre (currently the Democratic Republic of the Congo) and forced deportation of refugees: The RPA army carried out perhaps the most brutal and genocidal campaign in modern history by attacking the sprawling refugee camps in Goma and Bukavu in Zaïre, home to an estimated 1 to 2 million Rwandan refugees. There is little doubt that among these refugees were those who had participated in the mass killings inside Rwanda 2 years before. But the RPA army put the guilty and the innocent in the same bag, and indiscriminately fired on the camps and crowds of unarmed fleeing refugees, especially women, children and the elderly who were the weakest and unable to run fast, hunting down many of them like beasts deep into the tropical Zairian forest all the way to Tingi Tingi and Mbandaka. By all accounts, it is estimated this whole operation claimed the lives of 400,000 Rwandan refugees. While this operation was underway, the RPA army undertook one of the biggest deportation campaigns ever, by forcibly (i.e. against their will) airlifting an estimated 700,000 refugees back to their respective original communes in Rwanda. Then the RPF started a long-running criminal process of killing these returnees, as a result of which about 50% of the returnees are not living today. These horrific crimes, both in Zaïre and in Rwanda, were executed with orders received from their leaders. (Testimony provided by witnesses, still living; Marie Beatrice Umutesi, Fuir ou Mourir au Zaire: Le vécu d’une réfugiée Rwandaise, 2000)

The International Center for Human Rights and Democratic Development (CIDPDD), in teaming with the African Association for the Defense of Human Rights in DRC (ASADHO), concluded that “It appears pertinently that the Rwandan government can be held accountable for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and acts of genocide” in their document entitled “Report of inquiry by the international non-government commission on human rights violations in DRC (former Zaire) 1996-1998”, 1998, p.78.

1. The slaughter of the Nyarutovu wedding, January 18-19, 1997: In the night of January 18-19, 1997, the RPF attacked and killed each and every one of the guests, including the bride and groom and their parents, at a civil wedding in the home of Major Laurent Bizabarimana in Nyarutovu in the northern province of Ruhengeri. 50 people were collectively slaughtered that night. Major Laurent Bizabarimana and his family had recently returned from Zaire during the massive forced deportation by the RPF, and became victims of a brutal RPF nationwide campaign inside Rwanda to eliminate “genocidaire elements” from among these returnees. (Testimony provided by witnesses, still living)

1. The horrors of the Nyakinama Cave, October 23-28, 1997: RPA soldiers are reported to have pursued and killed 8,000 unarmed civilians, especially women, children and the elderly who were too weak to run who had sought refuge in the cave of Nyakinama, in the commune of Kanama, to escape indiscriminate shootings and bombings by the RPA in the area. RPA soldiers reacted by lobbing grenades and other explosives into the cave, then went on to seal off the entrance of the cave with rocks and gravel so no one would be able to come out. ( Amnesty International, The dead can no longer be counted, report, December 1997)

1. The Hutu Christmas massacre of Kayonza, December 23-25, 1998: In the evening hours of December 23, 1998, a passenger on a mini-bus taxi from Kigali got off near Nyagatare, and suddenly fired a gun into the air before running off into the hills of near-by Ngarama. The next day, people woke up to road blocks at Kayonza and Musha, and to military security sweep operations in the surrounding communes of Ngarama, Muvumba, Murambi, Kayonza, and Bicumbi. All taxis to and from Kigali were stopped and carefully screened for Hutus, who were ordered out before the taxis were allowed to resume their journey. These Hutus were then all executed using guns or used up hoes, then loaded up onto trucks and shipped to humming incineration centers in the Mutara region, with the ashes later dispersed into the Akagara National Park. An estimated 5,000 innocent civilians, including the cousin of one witness, perished in this macabre 2-day operation. (Testimony provided by witnesses, still living)

1. The brutal reprisal campaigns against Abacengezi (1997-2000) and the ethnic cleansing of the Mutara region (1995 and after): From 1997 to around 2000, the RPF faced an increased number of cross-border raids from Zaire into Rwanda carried out by remnants of the previous army who called themselves “Abacengezi” (or inroad specialists). Each time they attacked, the RPA army responded by unleashing a brutal reprisal campaign targeting the civilian population, especially in the northwestern provinces of Ruhengeri and Gisenyi, in order to break the will of the insurgents, many of whom originated from these provinces. More than 50,000 people were killed in many communes of these 2 provinces from 1997 to 2000. In the meantime, the RPF returned to the Mutara region in the northeast and started where it had left off in cleansing the area of all ethnic Hutus. The RPF decimated native Hutus, as well as other Hutus who had immigrated into this once under-populated area from other parts of the country in search of land and new jobs during the 1960’s, 1970’s, and 1980’s. The Mutara region is now the new all-Tutsi land of Rwanda, complete with farms and cattle ranches for the Tutsi herders. There have been reports that these ranching activities, in search of grazing pasture, have led to severe encroachments into the adjacent Akagera National Park, destroying the ecosystem of the area and the natural habitat of many wild animals. (Testimony provided by witnesses, still living)

V. OTHER ALLEGED RPF CRIMES

1. The crime of denying people their right to seek medical treatment overseas: Since taking power in July 1994, the RPF has put in place a criminal policy of systematic non-issuance of medical treatment exit visas for people it wants to punish for multiple reasons. These are mostly people who have voiced their criticism of the government or the army, or are perceived to be in the political opposition, etc. One of the most glaring cases is that of Father Andre Sibomana, former Editor of the independent newspaper “Kinyamateka”, and a former interim Bishop of the Diocese of Kabgayi after the assassination of Bishop Thaddee Nsengiyumva in June 1994. He was a staunch social justice advocate and human rights activist known for his editorials denouncing the excesses of the RPF regime. He was never allowed to seek expert medical treatment overseas, and succumbed to his illness in Kabgayi at the young age of 43 on March 7, 1998. Dr. Jean Bagiramenshi, a veterinarian who worked for the government and later consulted for the World Bank, was another victim of this policy. He suffered from multiple ailments, including kidney malfunction and gout, and may have had liver problems as well. He was prevented several times from seeking medical treatment out of Rwanda on his own money, and by the time he was allowed to leave, it was too late. He died in Belgium in 2005. Investigations must be carried out to determine how many people have fallen victim to this criminal policy. (Testimony provided by witnesses, still living)

1. RPF death squads on the trail of opponents inside and outside Rwanda: On May 5, 1998, former Interior Minister Seth Sendashonga was assassinated in Nairobi, Kenya; on October 6, 1996, Colonel Theoneste Lizinde and businessman Augustin Bugirimfura were assassinated in Nairobi, Kenya; in the night of February 14-15, 1999, former CEO of Rwanda African Continental Bank (BACAR) Pasteur Musabe was assassinated in Yaounde, Cameroon. Inside Rwanda, former Council of State president Vincent Nsanzabaganwa was assassinated on February 14, 1997; former presidential advisor Assiel Kabera was gunned down on March 5, 2000; on April 7, 2003, parliamentarian Leonard Hitimana was assassinated, and no inquiry has been conducted. Two weeks later on April 23, 2003, Colonel Augustin Cyiza was abducted and killed. Edouard Mutsinzi, former editor of “Le Messager” newspaper in Kigali, was abducted and beaten up, with his ribs broken, his eyes taken out, and his brain damaged so bad that he lives in a vegetative state in Belgium. All the victims were either critics of the government or potential compromising witnesses in possession of top state secrets. These crimes and many others were reported to have been committed by RPF death squad members assigned to do the dirty work against RPF opponents in different world capitals. They must be investigated, and their perpetrators brought to justice.

1. The cruel and inhumane use of prisoners in de-mining operations: The RPF has been reported sending hundreds to Hutu prisoners to their immediate death by forcing them to run in areas where landmines are suspected of having been planted by the ousted army, especially in the Bugesera region. These allegations must be fully investigated and prosecuted. (Testimony provided by witnesses, still living)

1. The cruel and inhumane treatment and exploitation of Rwandan prisoners in the Congo war for the profit of President Paul Kagame: During the Congo war and the occupation of Eastern DRC by the RPA, reports abounded about Rwandan prisoners being sent to die at the forefront of a brutal war of occupation and exploitation of the DRC. There were also numerous reports that hundreds, maybe thousands, of Rwandan prisoners were sent to RPA-occupied areas of the Congo to work as forced labor in the digging of minerals, especially Coltan, gold and diamonds, for the top brass members of the RPA army, starting with President Paul Kagame himself. This was a flagrant violation of international laws governing prisoners and a despicable trampling of human dignity. A full investigation and prosecution of these crimes is warranted. (Testimony provided by witnesses, still living)

VI. FINAL OBSERVATIONS

1. When this RPF crime compendium is released, I expect the RPF government to hit back with blanket accusations, without any proof, that I am a “revisionist and a negationist of the Rwandan genocide”, and that “I harbor an ideology of genocide and divisionism”. The international community must take a very close and careful look at such character assassination, and in many cases outright persecution, of all real and perceived contrary opinion holders and political opponents, social justice advocates and human rights critics in Rwanda by the RPF government, and find a proper way to address it.

1. The present compendium was conceived as an effort to document most reported and under-reported crimes by the RPF organization as a predominantly Tutsi rebel group and government with a view to bring to light its apparent share of responsibility in the whole Rwandan tragedy. Even though it places a premium on seemingly forgotten Hutu casualties, this document did not and does not intend to belittle Tutsi and Twa casualties of the Rwandan genocide. All sons and daughters of Rwanda, as well as foreigners who perished in this tragedy were a terrible loss to humanity and must be equally mourned and remembered, regardless of their ethnicity. We need to know with certainty who massacred the Bagogwe Tutsi sub-clan of Gisenyi in 1991 and 1992. We need to know with certainty who butchered the Banyamulenge Tutsis and Bagobwe Tutis sheltered at Mudende camps in August, November, and December 1997. We need to know with certainty who killed the American, British, Australian and New Zealand tourists at Bwindi National Park in Uganda in 1999. Who killed the Spanish volunteers in Rwanda in 1997 and in Congo in the following years? Who abducted, mutilated and killed former Rwandan cabinet minister Juvenal Uwiringiyimana before dumping his body in a Brussels canal in December 2005? Was he or not a victim of the RPF death squad in Europe as widely suspected? The overall goal of this document is to lift the cloud of mystery and secrecy hanging over the Rwandan tragedy. It is to fight impunity and help bring equitable justice to Rwanda: whoever killed a Tutsi must pay, whoever killed a Hutu must pay, whoever killed a Twa must pay, and whoever killed a foreigner must pay.

1. Rwandan President Paul Kagame is now widely believed to be behind the shooting down of the aircraft carrying President Juvenal Habyarimana on that fateful night of April 6, 1994. In that capacity, he is the suspected triggerman of the Rwandan genocide of 1994 and the architect of the genocide after 1994. Kagame outright denies these allegations. But a better way to refute the charges and clear his name once and for all is to allow an independent investigation to look into these crimes. Of course Kagame will never request such an independent investigation, because he knows he is guilty. That’s why we ask the UN to mandate the ITCR to investigate these tragedies not covered by the current mandate.

1. The provinces of Byumba and Ruhengeri did not experience the wave of genocidal killings that engulfed the rest of the country in April 1994, because they were already under RPF control. Yet, the vast majority of families currently living in these regions (about 80% of all inhabitants of these areas) are made up of widows and orphans, who tell stories of their husbands and fathers having been killed by the RPF. International non-government organizations (NGO’s) have been prohibited by the RPF government to go into these areas and assist these widow-run families to move ahead, and to mend the traditional family nucleus and the social fabric which have been completely shattered. Families in these areas with a member in the previous government army have been especially targeted and hit the hardest by the RPF. The simple question is this: why has the international community remained blind in the face of such blatant brutalization of human life? From 1990 to 1994, a reported 400,000 people have died in these areas. Who killed them?

1. Reports have circulated that many extremist RPF members in Kigali and other cities had large caches of weapons in their residences, and had dug up very deep pits in their backyards a few months before the genocide. What was the purpose of these weapons and pits? There have been reports that in the ceasefire months leading up to April 1994, many RPF youths received extensive fire arms training in the CND parliament building housing the RPF battalion, and at the RPF headquarters in Mulindi. Also, it is no secret that while the ruling MRND party had the Interahamwe militia, the MDR party had the JDR (Democratic Republican Youth) militia, and the PSD party had the Abakombozi militia, the RPF had a youth militia of its own that inflicted as much damage as the other militias. An independent inquiry of these facts is needed, and witnesses are available to testify openly.

1. The killings in Rwanda in 1994 were called genocide. Today, the killings in Darfur are being denounced as genocide. The killings in Zaire from 1996 to 2001, which took the lives of more than 4 million innocent lives, were called just that: killings. Where is the logic? Some of the perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide have been punished, and from all indications the perpetrators of the Darfur genocide will be punished, since the setting up of an International Criminal Tribunal for Darfur is already in the works. That’s all good. But when are we going to have the International Criminal Tribunal for Congo? When will the perpetrators of the Zairian killings be punished? Never mind calling the Zairian killings genocide, can their perpetrators at least be punished? There are countries which do not have a total of 4 million inhabitants. That’s a lot of people to kill and live freely ever after. We all know beyond a doubt that the RPF committed these killings. You, the international community, can you tell us who you hold responsible for these wholesale massacres? For the same crimes, there must be the same punishments.

1. More than 50% of current inmates in Rwanda have no official criminal charges against them, but continue to be kept in jail and out of active life. The government keeps the inmates on meager meals that must be supplemented with additional food rations from their families, or they will die from hunger – when they do not succumb to torture so rampant under different forms inside official prisons throughout the country and inside hidden unofficial torture centers. In most cases, women, including those educated, cannot keep a paying job because they need 2 to 3 hours per day to go feed their husbands in jail. No employer will agree to so much time off every day. This means that for the 100,000 married men in prison, there are 100,000 women not working, or a total of 200,000 people not actively contributing to the economy. With an average of 4 children per Rwandan household, that’s a total of 400,000 children nationwide that lack parental guidance and money to attend school. And all of a sudden, the grim picture of the legacy of the RPF regime comes into full focus: the pauperization and illiterate-ization of an entire generation of Rwandans. If this is not slow genocide, then genocide does not exist. Truthfully, there are 5 main factors of genocide: bad leadership, bad media, impunity, poverty, and lack of education. Today, all these 5 genocide factors are in place in Rwanda. The height of injustice in Rwanda can be summed up this way: many innocent Hutu civilians are in jail, while all criminal RPF elements are free. Where is the UN while all of this is happening? There cannot be any possible reconciliation in any nation where one part of the population is having a field day at the expense of the other part of the population on its knees.

1. Joseph Matata, a Rwandan human rights advocate who heads the Brussels-based “Center against Impunity and Injustice in Rwanda”, has reported that about 100 ex-FAR military officers are jailed at the Kibungo military prison since April 1999. An additional 37 or so ex-FAR military officers remain unaccounted for, while many other former comrades have been summarily executed [Report of April 14, 1999]. The “official” political parties in Rwanda today function under the umbrella of the so-called “Forum of Parties” where the RPF is sole master. In view of all this, the question is this: Does the Arusha Peace Agreement of August 1993, painfully reached between the then-RPF rebels and the then-government, and which called for a merger of the 2 fighting armies and free political activity in Rwanda, have any relevance left?

1. Contrary to RPF claims, there is no peace in Rwanda. That explains why far too many Rwandans continue to flee overseas and are easily granted asylee or refugee status. How long is the RPF going to use genocide as a pretext to stifle democracy and entrench one of the most predatory dictatorships ever? Political opposition is completely muzzled. How long will the people of Rwanda continue to die a slow death? Former President Pasteur Bizimungu and his collaborators, such as Charles Ntakirutinka, are rotting in jail for having started a political party. In fact, in Rwanda there is no shortage of political prisoners, prisoners of opinion, prisoners of hate, prisoners of race, etc., and Colonel Stanislas Biseruka, reporter Dominique Makeri, and Colonel Patrick Karegeya are only a handful in a long list. You, the ICTR, whose original mandate was to reconcile the Rwandan people among other things, what is going to be your legacy for Rwanda when your time expires?



1. The recent brutal killing of many businessmen among them Fulgence Nsengiyumva of Gitarama, aged 49, by the RPF government army on August 6, 2006 must be condemned vehemently. His wife is being persecuted for reclaiming the confiscated truck that belonged to him, and their 5 innocent children will be traumatized for the rest of their lives. The recent arrest, search and strip of old women in an open market place by RPF police in broad day light as a way to humiliate and force all old and barefoot women to never set foot in a market place again, is abhorrent and must be condemned vehemently. The on-going campaign to ban bicycles and motorcycles from cities, especially Kigali, as well as the on-going campaign to raze all banana plantations, is an act of economic depredation on the Rwandan population by its RPF government and will result in the starvation of the masses. It must be condemned vehemently. The on-going campaign to expel from Kigali city all the poor, all AIDS orphans, all war widows and war invalids, is criminal. It all started with a seemingly simple desire to take the poor away from the city, then the campaign targeted the bare-foot crowd, then those wearing sandals and slippers, then the pedestrians, then the bicyclists, and finally the motorcyclists. Who is it going to be next? There is clearly a pattern of criminal exclusion that must be condemned. In reality, this whole campaign is an empty attempt by RPF rulers to project to visitors and donors the deceptive impression that Kigali in particular, and Rwanda in general, are well-managed to deserve more financial aid. Chasing all these poor people away from the city without addressing the root cause of their misery is a window dressing, whitened-sepulcher, or sweep-under-the-rug type of approach to development, and it obviously can’t help any poor Rwandan. It can’t fool any foreign donor country either. So the simple question to the United Nations is this: why are the people of Rwanda being so toyed with, persecuted and killed by their own government in this fashion and nothing is being done about it?

1. Finally, what is Presidential Immunity? It seems to mean that someone can kill all the people he or she wants, and not worry about any consequences as long as he or she is president of a given country! We are in the 21st century, and humanity sure can come up with better laws.

VII. GENERAL CONCLUSION:

The above list of RPF crimes is by no means exhaustive. There are reports of countless RPF crimes before 1994, in 1994, and after 1994 that could not be compiled in this document. For example, in the small eastern town of Muhura as the RPF marched onto Kigali in the Spring of 1994, General Paul Kagame himself is reported not only having given direct orders to fire on crowds of wandering displaced people, but also having personally sprayed bullets into these crowds with his own machine gun. An investigation of this massacre is needed, and witnesses are available to tell the story.

Currently, there is a general, state-sponsored crime being perpetrated by the RPF government against an entire segment of the Rwandan population, specifically Hutus, through the infamous Gacaca Courts. The RPF government is attempting to incriminate the biggest number of Rwandans possible by officially labeling them “killers” or “genocidaires”, thus ostracizing them from public life and creating a caste of second class citizens or “untouchables”. Gacaca trials are an age-old, small-courts-type Rwandan tradition designed to settle only misdemeanors, such as stealing a cow, a goat, or chickens, and minor land disputes between neighbors. By its nature, a Gacaca trial does not require judges and jurors to have law school training and degrees, only common sense. Conversely, the crime of genocide is so grave by nature that it cannot be tried in a Gacaca court, with semi-literate judges and jurors, and with no legal defense, without being diminished and debased.

The justice system in place wants detainees to admit to the crime of killing if they want to be freed. Then, they head to a local Gacaca court where they not only must confess (and explain) their crimes but also reveal and denounce other killers. Anything short of this is a half-confession and not acceptable, and the suspect must go back to jail. In other cases, witnesses are produced from the woodwork to incriminate suspects for crimes they never committed. Very clearly, there is an attempt here on the part of the RPF government to humilia te and exterminate an entire people.

I, Paul Rusesabagina, personally know of specific cases where this has happened. The international community must condemn this abhorrent system and demand its immediate abolition.

Source: Iwacu1.com

The Hidden Story Behind Rwanda's Tragedy

Editor's Note: The Op-Ed is written by a Canadian attorney who represents a defendant before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in Arusha, Tanzania, on war crimes charges. The attorney offers a counter-view to the one-sided representation of the Rwanda narrative. Readers are encouraged to submit their comments and reactions.


Rwanda before 1990 was considered the Switzerland of Africa, a model of social development.

The result of the 1959 social revolution that deposed the Tutsi monarchy and aristocracy and freed the majority Hutu population from serfdom and a lifetime of humiliation was the establishment of a collective society in which both Hutus, and Tutsis as well as Twas lived together in relative harmony.

Tutsis were members of the government, its administration, present in large numbers in the education system, the judiciary and controlled most of the large private commercial companies in Rwanda.

The Rwandan army was a multiethnic army composed of both Hutus and Tutsis and it stayed a multiethnic force even when the Rwandan Army was forced by the invaders from Uganda to retreat into the Congo forest in July 1994 because it ran out of ammunition due to the Western embargo on arms and supplies.

Rwanda descended into chaos in 1990 when the self-described Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) forces launched a surprise attack on October 1, 1990 from Uganda. In fact, every one of the men and officers of that invasion force were members of the Ugandan national Army.

It was an invasion by Uganda disguised as an independent force of “liberation”. Liberation from what, has never been stated.

Initially the justification put out by the RPF was that of attaining the return of Tutsi “refugees” from Uganda to Rwanda. However, that problem had been resolved by an agreement between the RPF, Uganda, Rwanda, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) and the OAU a few weeks earlier. The Rwandan government had agreed to the return of all those Tutsis in Uganda who wanted to return to Rwanda.

That accord required that Tutsi representatives of the refugees travel to Kigali for a meeting to determine the mechanics of that population movement, and how to accommodate all those people in a small country. They were expected at the end of September 1990. They never arrived.

Instead of civilians returning in peace, Rwanda was viciously attacked on October 1, 1990 by a force that unleashed unbridled savagery. During that invasion the RPF forces of the Ugandan Army slaughtered everyone in their path, Hutu or Tutsi. Tens of thousands of innocent civilians, the majority Hutu, were butchered. These crimes have never been accounted for.

The RPF’s favorite method was the bayonet or knife with which they disembowelled men and women or to tied their hands behind their backs and smashed their skulls with hoes, the farm tool iconic of the Hutu peasantry.

After several weeks of intense fighting, the RPF forces were destroyed by the small Rwandan Army and the remnants fled, on US instructions, back into Uganda to regroup and reorganize.

The RPF still never justified this aggression and the needless slaughter of civilians in a peaceful country. Individual Tutsis had always been allowed to return to Rwanda from the early 1960s and several times the Rwandan government invited them all to return. However the Tutsi aristocracy, jealous of its lost power and which viewed the Hutus as nothing but subhuman, refused to return unless their absolute power was restored. This the people of Rwanda, even the Tutsis who remained in the country, refused.

In the 1960s and early 1970s various Tutsi groups in Uganda and elsewhere had organized terrorist raids into Rwanda in which they murdered without pity anyone they caught. These raids were repelled by Rwanda’s tiny armed forces. The years that followed were a period of development and peace for Rwandans. Even though one of the smallest and poorest countries in the world it had the best road system, healthcare, and education systems in Africa. Until the late 1980s it prospered and received help from both the socialist countries of the USSR, North Korea and China and West Germany, France and Israel and others.

Some Tutsis in Uganda became involved in the civil wars there between the socialist Milton Obote and the US- and UK puppet Yoweri K. Museveni who was supported by the West to get rid of socialism in Uganda. By 1990 Tutsis composed a large section of the Ugandan Army and all the senior officers of the RPF were high officers in the Ugandan Army, the National Resistance Army. Paul Kagame himself was one of the highest-ranking officers in the intelligence services of the Ugandan army and was notorious for enjoying torturing prisoners.

Rwanda until 1990 was a one party socialist state. The ruling party the National Movement For revolutionary Development (MRND) was not considered a party as such but rather a social movement in which everyone in society took part through local elections and the mechanism of consensus much like the system in Cuba.

The fall of the Soviet Union led to pressure from the West, notably the United States and France to dismantle the one party state system and permit multiparty democracy.

The President, Juvenal Habyarimana, instead of resisting, agreed to a change in the constitution and in 1991 Rwanda became a multiparty democracy. The fact the Rwandan government did this in the middle of a war is more than remarkable. It was also an offer of peace. The RPF, since its abject failure in 1990, had changed its strategy from a frontal assault to the tactics of terrorism.

The RPF likes to refer to this phase as the guerrilla. However, it was not the guerrilla of a liberation struggle like the FLMN in Vietnam or the FARC in Colombia. It was instead a mirror image of the Contras campaign of terrorism conducted against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. Its purpose was not to make revolution. Its purpose was to overthrow the 1959 revolution. And, like the contras, the RPF was supported by the United States.

This was clear from the beginning of the war.

When the RPF launched their attack, President Juvenal Habyarimana was in Washington, lured out of the way, by the State Department. The evidence that the US was aware of and supported the October surprise attack was the US Administration’s offer to Habyarimana of asylum in the United States if he surrendered power to the RPF.

Habyarimana refused and immediately flew back home. There was no condemnation of the Ugandan-RPF aggression by the United States, a matter which France raised at the United Nations, or any of its allies despite the big noise they made at the same time about the advance of Iraqi forces into Kuwait. Further, the Rwanda ambassador to the UN, then on the Security Council, filed a protest in the Security Council but the US had it taken off the agenda.

In fact the US and its allies supported the aggression against Rwanda from the beginning and US Special Forces operated with the RPF from the beginning. Recently, while former president Bill Clinton was in Toronto, he denied any involvement in Rwanda--this is one of the big lies of the century. Clinton and George W. Bush are up to their necks in the blood of the Rwandan and Congolese people.

With the arrival of multiparty democracy in 1991, the RPF took full advantage and created several front parties to take away support from the popular MRND. These parties though claiming to represent different political views in fact were, in the main front parties for the RPF.

The press was expanded and many of the new papers were financed by and acted as mouthpieces for the RPF. At the same time as these parties sprang up, criticizing the government, the RPF continued its terror campaign: planting mines on roads that killed Hutu and Tutsi alike; assassinating politicians and officials; and, blaming it, with the help of various NGOs funded by western intelligence agencies, on the government.

In 1992 a coalition government was formed with the RPF or its front parties seizing control of key ministries and appointing the prime minister. Through these agents they also controlled the civilian intelligence services that they then began to dismantle. The RPF engaged in a “talk and fight” strategy. Always agreeing to a ceasefire, pressing for more power, then launching new attacks on civilians. The most egregious was their breaking of the ceasefire and their major offensive in February 1993 in which they seized the major town of Ruhengeri in the process murdering 40,000 civilians most of them Hutu.

The Rwandan Army, even though hamstrung by the civilian ministries that were controlled by the RPF, managed to drive the RPF back. Finally in August 1993 the Arusha Accords were signed under pressure from the United States and its allies in which the RPF obtained major concessions in return to the formation of a broad-based transition government to be followed by general elections.

However, they knew they could not win such elections as the RPF was not only unpopular with the majority Hutu population it did not even enjoy the support of many internal Tutsis whose lives and businesses had been destroyed by the war they did not see a need for.

Instead of preparing for elections the RPF prepared for their final offensive. As far back as December 1993, UN reports document the massive build-up of men and weapons coming in from Uganda. The UN force that was deployed supposedly to ensure a peaceful transition; in fact, it was a cover for the US and its allies to assist in this build up.

General Roméo Dallaire, the Canadian general in charge of the UN force hid this build up from the Rwandan army and the President. The build-up was accompanied by death threats against the president.

According to an account of Habyarimana’s last conversation with president Mobutu Sese Seko of what was then Zaire, just two days before he was murdered, Assistant U.S. Secretary of State for African Affairs Herman Cohen had, in October 1993, told Habyarimana, that unless he ceded all power to the RPF they were going to kill him and drag his body through the streets.

These threats were punctuated by the murder of the first Hutu president of neighboring Burundi, Melchior Ndadaye, by Tutsi officers in October 1993 in which Kagame and the RPF also had a hand; the officers who committed the murder, including Lieutenant Paul Kamana, later fled to Uganda. Ndadaye was in office a mere four months, having won the country’s first free elections. In the aftermath of that murder 250,000 Hutus were massacred by the Tutsi army of Burundi and hundreds of thousands of Hutus fled to Rwanda.

The result of the 1993 offensive was that one million Hutus fled the terror of the RPF in northern Rwanda towards the capital, Kigali, so that by April 1994 over a million refugees were encamped close to the capital and hundreds thousands more in camps in the south all fleeing RPF terror.

The RPF did all it could in 1994 to paralyse the functioning of the government, to exacerbate racial tensions, and prepare for war.

Then on April 6, 1994 they launched their final surprise attack by shooting down the presidential plane returning from a meeting in Tanzania that Uganda’s Museveni had arranged. In fact it is known that Museveni’s half-brother general Salim Saleh was at the final meeting at which the date for the shoot down was agreed.

The missile attack killed Habyarimana, as well as Burundi’s new Hutu president Cyprien Ntayamire, and Rwanda’s military chief of staff, and others on board. This was the first massacre of 1994 and it was a massacre of Hutus by the RPF.

The RPF then immediately launched attacks across Kigali and the north of the country. In the sector of Kigali known as Remera they killed everyone on the night of the 6th and the 7th, wiped out the Gendarme camp there, wiped out the military police camp at Kami and launched a major attack against Camp Kanombe, Camp Kigali and the main gendarme camp at Kacyriu.

The Rwandan government and army called for a ceasefire the same night and next day. The RPF rejected the call. The Rwandan government asked for more UN help to control the situation. Instead, the US arranged that the main UN force be pulled out while flying in men and supplies to the RPF using C130 Hercules aircraft.

The Rwandan Army, short of ammunition and unable to contain the RPF advances even offered an unconditional surrender on April 12th. The RPF rejected even this offer and instead shelled the Nyacyonga refugee camp where the one million Hutu refugees were located provoking their flight into the capital.

The effect of one million people flooding into a small city that itself was under bombardment cannot be described. The RPF used this flood of people to infiltrate its men behind army lines. This created panic among the Hutu population that began killing anyone they did not recognize. It was clear that the RPF was not interested in saving lives, even Tutsis, but in seizing total power and did not want to negotiate at all.

The late Dr. Alison Des Forges, the American who was considered a noted scholar on Rwanda, in her testimony in the Military II trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in 2006 testified that the RPF claim that they attacked to stop a “genocide” was a myth; just propaganda to justify their attempt to seize power by force of arms.

She also testified that the Rwandan government did not plan and execute genocide. This accords with the testimony of General Dallaire who also confirmed an earlier statement that there was no planned genocide by the government as did the deputy head of Belgian Army intelligence, Col. Vincent, who also testified at the ICTR that the idea of a genocide was a fantasy.

The fighting in Kigali was intense. UN officers –confirming what has been said by Rwandan and RPF officers who have testified— state that the RPF was launching hundreds of Katyusha rockets every hour round the clock while the Rwandan Army ran out of hand grenades in the first few days and was reduced to fighting the RPF with hand made explosives.

The vaunted RPF could not take Kigali. The siege of Kigali lasted three months and only ended when the Rwandan Army literally ran out of ammunition and ordered a general retreat into the Congo forest.

RPF officers have stated that the RPF killed up to two million Hutus in those 12 weeks in a deliberate campaign to eliminate the Hutu population. The Akagera River, the length of which was under RPF control throughout, ran red with the blood of the Hutus massacred on its banks.

The RPF claimed these were Tutsis but there were no Tutsis in that area and only the RPF had access to that area. Robert Gersony, of USAID in a report to the UNHCR in October 1994, filed as an exhibit at the ICTR, stated that the RFP carried out a systematic and planned massacre of the Hutu population. Please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Gersony

As the Rwandan Army, including Tutsi officers within that army and men retreated into the Congo forest, the Hutu population, in fear for their lives fled with them in their millions. In local villages, Hutu neighbours attacked Tutsis in revenge for the murder of Hutus or fearing death at their hands. Tutsis also attacked Hutus. It was total war just as the RPF wished. The RPF later pursued the Hutus through the Congo forest between 1996 to 1998 and killed hundreds of thousands and possibly millions. They were shelled, machine gunned, raped, cut to pieces with knives. Accounts of that trek are difficult to bear.

The RPF was assisted in its offensive by the United States. The UN Rwanda Emergency office in Nairobi was in fact manned by US Army officers and acted as the operational headquarters of the RPF and gave them intelligence on Rwandan Army movements and actions and directions.

Prudence Bushnell the U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs telephoned the Rwandan Army chief of staff in May 1994 and told him that unless he surrendered he must know that he was fighting the United States of America and would be defeated. US Special Forces fought with the RPF. There is also evidence that Belgian forces of the UN were involved as an intercepted radio message from Kagame to his forces in the field refers to the help they had received from the Belgians.

There is also evidence that Canadian forces were also involved and Atoine Nyetera a Tutsi prince, who was in Kigali in that period testified for the defense in the Military II trial and stated that not only were there no massacres committed against Tutsis by the Rwandan Army but that it was the RPF that began the massacres after they took Kigali and began killing Hutus.

Nyetera testified that despite the claim by the RPF of being a Tutsi liberation group, when he saw their long columns enter the capital he saw that most of them were Sudanese, Eritreans, Ethiopians, Tanzanians and others speaking Swahili or Sudanese languages, in other words, mercenaries.

Several RPF officers have testified at the ICTR and stated that they fled the Kagame regime as they had been promised that they fought for liberation of the Tutsis. However, when they wanted to take over the streets of Kigali to stop reprisals against Tutsis by Hutu civilians the junior officers were forbidden to do so, putting the lie to Kagame’s claim that he attacked to save Tutsis.

These officers testified that Kagame wanted deaths to justify his war. The RPF could have controlled large parts of Kigali as they had at least 15,000 men in or near the capital opposed to 5,000 Rwandan Army forces. Instead Kagame used his men to ethnically cleanse the rest of the country of the Hutu population.

The Rwanda War was a total war. All means were used to destroy that country and the Hutu people. The ultimate objective, the resources of the Congo. The US agreed to support the RPF in return for the RPF acting as a US proxy force to invade the Congo and seize its resources.

The US now has several military bases in Rwanda and the country is nothing more than a US and UK colony run by thugs who keep control of the majority of the people by intimidation, murder and disinformation.

None of this could have happened if those in the UN such as Kofi Anan, then in charge of the Department of peacekeeping operations, had done his job. None of this could have happened without the connivance of the NATO
countries and Uganda, from where the invasion was launched.

Ultimately, the prime responsibility rests with the United States of America and in particular the regimes of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush and now President Barack Obama. As Boutros Boutros-Ghali, then UN Secretary General, stated to Canadian historian Robin Philpot in 2004: “The United States is one hundred percent responsible for what happened in Rwanda.”


Toronto-based Christopher Black is a Barrister and International Criminal Lawyer. He is Lead Counsel, General Augustin Ndindiliyimana, Chief of Staff, Rwandan Gendarmerie. International Criminal Tribunal For Rwanda (ICTR).

Please feel free to post your comments directly or submit to milton@blackstarnews.com for posting.

Is the Nairobi UN Agency For Refugees A Kagame's Proxy To Harass Rwandan Hutu Refugees?

Since the attacks of a Tutsi led rebel movement that invaded Rwanda from Uganda in 1990s, some Rwandans have been on the move for over 20 years now. These are the population of the North Eastern Rwanda in the region used to be known as Byumba Prefecture. The rebels' attacks forced the people who had known nothing else but peace of working on their ancestors' farms over centuries. When the Tutsi led rebellion movement called Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) started shooting in the hills of Gatuna and Kagitumba. the people from the neighboring communes took up their mats and started an endless journey which would later take them to various countries around the world this including Kenya.

When the millions of Rwandans fled their homeland majority of them being Hutus who had been branded genocidaires by western media and the USA and UK who simply did it not because this people deserved the name as a Law Professor Peter Erlinder explains on this American National TV interview, but simply because of the fight of rare minerals only found in that region and these two countries wanted to remove the Hutu regime which was friendly to France and enthrone their own guy armed and trained in Arkansas in United States.

After the RPF soldiers invaded DRC the former Zaire in October 1996 in the bid to destroy the Hutu refugee camps in Eastern DRC such as Kibumba,Mugunga, Lac Vert, Kaihindo, Gatare, NRA, Nyangezi and other small camps in the region of Kivu. Other many refugees were forced back to Rwanda under the gun's nozzle. Others entered the Ituli forest or walked their way into Uganda and later ended in Kenya. There is another group that crossed the Lake Tanganyika into Tanzania joining other Rwanda refugees who had been there since 1994. Later the Tanzania government which supported the RPF to overthrow the regime of Habyalimana since 1990s responded to RPF plea to repatriate Hutu refugees who were living in Tanzania. Thousands of refugees were also forced back to Rwanda under the gun's nozzle. Many of them sustained injuries from the brutality of Tanzanian forces who also have some Tutsi people inscribed into the army as Tanzanians. It was their own good time to revenge against their enemy Hutus who are alleged to have massacred hundred of thousands of Tutsis in 1994.

Like it happened in 1996 in Eastern DRC, when the Tanzanian government forced Rwandan Hutu refugees to go back to Rwanda in 1997, there is a group that managed to escape and went to Kenya hoping to have protection. Though there are many incidents where many refugees have been harassed by the police in Kenya, most of the cases are not customized to Rwandan refugees in Kenya alone. Kenyan police all refugees without selecting one community of refugees because they do as they ask for bribe. This also happens to Kenyan citizens when they do not give bribe to the police.

Rwandan refugees living in Kenya have a peculiar problem that they face which is not common to other refugees from other countries living in Kenya. The Rwandan hutu refugees unlike other refugees from DRC,Southern Sudan, Ethiopia, Burundi, and Somalia.

The Nairobi United Nations High Commission for Refugees Office has been associated with corruption of all sorts from the staff asking sex from women, money, and other services the UNHCR officer might want to so that they give them resettlement or even a mere paper locally known as Protection Mandate which has a serial number. This paper does not help a lot though in some instances it might help the holder. Most of Rwandan refugees living in Kenya do not have any document others were even denied to register with UNHCR on unknown or unjustified reasons. Refugees from Rwanda have been the victims of the western manufactured genocide term to explain the Rwandan massacre of 1994. The RPF has spent a lot of money bribing some of the Nairobi UNHCR staff in order to deny Rwandan Hutu refugees documents so that they d not benefit from the protection that the Kenya government provides to refugees. The reason underlying this psychological torture is that when Rwanda under RPF leadership does not want any Hutu refugee to be outside of Rwanda because of the following reasons:

1. Most of the RPF regimes authorities have lived in exile since 1959 when the Hutu majority ended the Tutsi monarchy rule of 400 years. This people went into exile in different countries where they benefited from the UN assistance to refugees and attended different prestige schools. Other did business in different countries and later they used this privilege of being refugees to fund-raise in order to come back to Rwanda to remove a democratically elected government of Habyaliman who was from the Hutu tribe. The RPF members do not want people to live in exile because they will not have access to them in order to control whatever they say about the RPF regime. Therefore it is good for the RPF to pay a lot of money bribing the UNHCR staff to not give Rwandan Hutu refugees the Mandate documents so that they do not have any access to any kind of assistance.
2. RPF knows very well that if they manage to influence the UNHCR Nairobi office to not provide any kind of help by denying them protection letter, then it will be easy for the RPF government to convince this refugees to go back in the so-called "Voluntary Repatriation" like the ones that took place in Zambia, Congo Brazaville, and Gabon in July 9,1997.
3. If the Rwandan refugees are not going to have legal documents in Kenya, then they are going to be harassed by the police, their children will not be able to go to school, the parents will not be able to do some business or secure any kind of job in order to take care of their families. This means that the family will become dysfunctional then it will have no option except to risk and go back to Rwanda for the sake of the children so that the children can have access to education whereas the father is jailed by the RPF being accused of being in exile for so long.
4. RPF and UNHCR entered into agreement of denying legal documents to mostly the men and young men even those who have schooled in Kenya do not have document because Kagame asked that they be denied UNHCR document in order for them to go back to Rwanda where around 200,000 of Hutus are in different jails around the country.

Many Rwandan refugees living in Kenya have written many letters of complaints to the UNHCR Head-Quarter in Geneva but there is very little if any that the UNHCR high command has done to address the situation of Rwandan refugees in Kenya. When I was doing my research on the situation of African Refugee in the Great Lakes Region I also came across another surprising dubious chain of trickery operated by the UNHCR in conjunction with RPF regime. This was based on the complaints that while interviewing refugees living in slums around Nairobi. There is another organization that has its headquarter in New York,USA called Mapendo International. This organization was formed by some USA Philanthropists who had witnessed the unfair treatment of refugees in Africa. The organization used the story of a Munyamurenge woman by the name of Rose Mapendo who survived what they call a Congo genocide. First when you read this story is a touching story like all refugees' stories from the Great Lakes Region. The only difference is that Mapendo's Story talks about surviving the Congolese Genocide. When I read about Mapendo Surviving a Congolese Genocide she is not talking about the human atrocities which has characterized the Eastern DRC. The story of Mapendo International does not end there because the Rose Mapendo who is an organization's ambassador spends her time going around North America fundraising for the organization telling her story of surviving the Congo Genocide which talks about how Banyamulenge have been brutally killed but she never talks about the story of General Nkunda who is also a Munyamulenge of how he has been killing children and raping women in Masisi.

Another sad story behind Mapendo International it is its famous segregation in assisting refugees at its office in Nairobi. I had an opportunity to talk with various refugee communities living in Nairobi. I came to learn that Mapendo clients who mostly happen to be people from Tutsi community across Lake Kivu or the Banyamulenge Community as they are known in Eastern Congo, have a "password" for the interviews when they go to present their cases to Mapendo for initial refugee assistance and resettlement.

Only Banyamulenge refugees who pass the interviews after being asked whether they are Hutus or Tutsis. When you go for an interview with Mapendo International in Nairobi and you are a refugee from other community especially when you are a Hutu refugee even if you are from DRC, your case is rejected. I met a couple of Rwandan and Congolese refugees who preferred to call themselves Tutsis or Banyamulenge so that they could qualify for the Mapendo International assistance. Most of the refugees I talked on my trip to Nairobi, they all share one thing that Mapendo International should change its name to Mapendo 4 Banyamurenge and remove itds name international or the clause talking about the refugees in Africa because it has been proven that it only serves Banyamulenge and Tutsis from Rwanda who change and get the "password" that qualify them to get resettled to North America.

To verify the story I went with them to Umoja Estate and Kariokor in Nairobi where most of Mapendo clients stay as they wait before being relocated to North America. There were over a 100 refugees from Rwanda and some few of them from Congo DR who are also Banyamulenge the community that Mapendo Rose comes from. Most of the people here in this estate are Rwandans that we all know that they served in RPF liberation war in 1993. A few weeks later, they went for orientation sponsored by International Organization for Migration IOM at Safari Park Hotel where the refugees in transit to North America spend few weeks learning the new culture. Then after three weeks of September, 2008, this refugees mixed with some former RPF military of Kagame who had just arrived in Nairobi in February, 2008 took the plane at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi heading to New York.

After my three months investigation about the refugee business in Africa I discovered that some organizations such as UNHCR,Mapendo Intl and other relief agencies are not only playing the Kagame politics of sidelining innocent Hutu refugees in the region but also working hard to widen the gap of genuine reconciliation among Rwandans. I later took my flight back to Australia and decided to publish this story so that maybe the International community in charge of UNHCR and other refugee agencies should act to ensure that there egalitarianism in serving this deprived community of East Africa. I myself having lived in Kenya I know very well the injustice and unfair treatment of refugees from the Great Lakes especially Rwandans refugees undergo in the hands off UNHCR Nairobi Office.