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The “right and proper tale ” would have it that the Rwandan Patriotic Front under the brilliant military and political leadership of current Rwandan President Paul Kagame, who along with many fellow officers was trained in the best American and British military academies, ended the genocide by taking Kigali on the fourth of July 1994 and by forming a new government on July 19, 1994. A patriotic liberation movement with the right friends puts an end to the worst crime imaginable, similar to the Holocaust, and all that happens on the fourth of July.
The first problem with this part of the right and proper tale is that Kigali was not taken on the fourth of July. The decisive battle that allowed the RPF to take the capital city of Rwanda was fought on July 2. Paul Kagame marched into Kigali on July 3. Wasn’t Paris liberated when Charles de Gaulle marched in on August 25, 1944? Nobody changed that date to make others happy. But for Rwanda, important people in influential positions preferred the fourth of July. So that day chosen. It was also important not to be too close to July 1, which was Rwandan Independence Day since 1962 and still a powerful symbol of the social revolution that now had to be erased from people’s memories. The victors then just had to declare the fourth of July the new Rwandan National Day and for the pipers to play the tune. Everybody knows of course which tune was to be played.
The second problem is that the massacre of civilians did not end with the victory of the Rwandan Patriotic Front. Civilians have been massacred in Rwanda steadily ever since and massacres have continued even more seriously in the neighbouring Congo.
The choice of the fourth of July may be a minor point, but in politics nothing is left to chance, especially not the symbols. Hopefully, it will be like an alarm bell that might lead people re-read the right and proper tale with an eye out for those optical illusions so often used to distort and misinform.
The army led by Paul Kagame was never a liberation army. Most people knew that from the beginning. The Rwandan Patriotic Front and its leader were more like the paid arsonist masquerading as firemen than the patriot who saved the people from the fire as the official story would have us believe.
President Kagame with daughter
Ange Kagame
ivan kagame
Until October 1, 1990, the troops that invaded Rwanda were uniformed soldiers in Ugandan National Army who marched to the orders of Yoweri Museveni, President of Uganda and commander in chief. The invading troops consisted mainly of Rwandans who had lived in Uganda since the social revolution and independence of Rwanda in 1962. They had been at war in Uganda since 1981 as part of the guerrilla forces known as the National Resistance Army until it took power in Uganda in 1986 and Yoweri Museveni became President.
On September 28, 1990, 4000 Ugandan soldiers and officers, including former army Commander and Ugandan Defence Minister Fred Rwigyema left their barracks fully equipped with weapons and vehicles. They travelled hundreds of kilometres in Uganda to the Rwandan border and attacked the few Rwandan border guards on October 1. They then advanced some 70 kilometres into Rwanda. By October 4, the invading troops were within 70 kilometres of the Rwandan capital Kigali.
Everywhere in the world, that attack on October 1 would be described as an invasion of one country by another. It was not an incursion, nor a civil war, nor an increase in ethnic tension. The word is invasion. In legal terms and according to principles established at the Nuremberg trials that are so often referred to in the Rwandan tragedy, that invasion is no less than the worst war crime because it is a crime against peace. However, that invasion has been at best trivialized ever since it happened, at worst omitted altogether from the tale of events. One of the worst examples was a long article in the New York Times Magazine on September 15, 2002, entitled The Minister of Rape. Not a word is mentioned about the invasion. We only learn that “tensions increased in 1990.” 5
A crime of that magnitude should normally have provoked a sharp international reaction, especially considering that when Ugandan troops invaded, Rwandan President Habyarimana and Ugandan President Museveni were both in New York for a UNICEF meeting. Moreover, two days earlier, on September 28, President Habyarimana told the United Nations General Assembly that his government would offer citizenship and travel documents to all Rwanda refugees wherever they were and that it would repatriate all those who wanted to return to Rwanda.
International reports on the invasion hinted that the invading army had taken or was about to take Kigali. American authorities jumped suspiciously quickly to offer President Habyarimana political asylum in the United States. Moreover, according to a story that is surely not very right and proper but still stubbornly tenacious, the late Rwandan president met the United States Ambassador in Kigali before leaving the country and asked him if the United States had any information about an invasion by Uganda. The Ambassador offered to make some intelligence inquiries–the CIA–and then informed President Habyarimana that there was no such information and that he could safely go to New York.
On learning of the invasion, the Rwandan president immediately returned home but stopped off in Belgium where, suspiciously, he also received an offer of asylum. Belgian news reports amplified the invaders’ military success. Meanwhile, Ugandan President Museveni remained in the United States even though his army had just suffered the worst mutiny in its history that involved troops, officers and military equipment. Though he is an army man to the very core and the champion of professional and disciplined armies that Africa supposedly needed so badly, the president of Uganda decided to sit back in New York while a whole section of his cherished army revolted and invaded another country wearing their Ugandan uniforms.
The same Yoweri Museveni had become the darling of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and United States Diplomacy since the middle of the 1980s. He was another of the former leftist guerrilla leaders who came over to the gospel of good governance, structural adjustment, privatization and, judging by the turn of events, the remodelling of African geography. The United States saw Uganda as a rampart against Islamic fundamentalism in Sudan, and its president Yoweri Museveni as a trustworthy ally to aid US covert operations in Southern Sudan. Former President Jimmy Carter described Museveni as “one of Africa’s most important leaders”. Madeleine Albright spoke of him as “a beacon of hope for Africa”, whereas the journalist with the New Yorker, Philip Gourevitch promoted him for years as the “éminence grise of the new leadership in central Africa”, before making a surprising flip-flop in May 2003 when he called him an “arsonist masquerading as a fireman” in a confusing article on the Congo. 6
President Museveni unconvincingly distanced himself from the invasion by pleading ignorance and surprise and by complaining about how his officers and comrades-in-arms, who became the commanders of the RPF, had tricked him in October 1990. Though totally disingenuous, Museveni’s excuses satisfied his friends in the “international community”. “The truth of the matter is,” he declared in a 1991 address, “that these people conspired, took us by surprise, and went to Rwanda, which was not particularly difficult…. We had some information that the Banyarwanda in Uganda were up to something, but we shared it with the Rwandan government. They actually had, or should have had, more information because, after all, it was their business, not ours, to follow up who was plotting what.” 7
The eminent President Museveni would like us to believe that the intelligence agency of one country–Rwanda in this case–should spy and monitor all the movements and actions of entire regiments of another country’s army–Uganda–and take the necessary action to prevent mutiny, revolt and aggression against neighbours. Let’s apply the infallible logic to other countries on other continents. What would happen if Cuba or Mexico did to the United States what Museveni said Rwanda should have done to Uganda? And what if they took action to protect themselves from U.S. interference? What if Ireland did the same in the United Kingdom? Or Algeria in France? France in Canada? India in Pakistan? China in Vietnam? It is obviously ridiculous. Are we expected to believe him just because it is in Africa?
Countries that spy on each other as Museveni suggested Rwanda should have done are asking for war. Yet we are invited to believe that the Rwandan government made a serious mistake by not spying on the Ugandan army and by not intervening to prevent it from invading Rwanda. That error was so serious that the “new éminence grise of Africa” Yoweri Museveni was justified in not punishing the mutineers in his army.
The man who refused to punish the senior officers who mutinied in his own army is the same man that US diplomacy, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund adored particularly because of his unbending leadership and his vision of a professional and disciplined army in Africa. All of Museveni’s speeches convey the message of a professional and disciplined army. He talked that way before and after he took power in Uganda, before and after the invasion of Rwanda in 1990, before and after the Rwandan Patriotic Front took power in Kigali. Museveni knew what he was talking about. He took power in 1986 after a long guerrilla war, and then, between 1986 and 1990, he mercilessly suppressed revolt in his army.
In his address five years after taking power and four months after the invasion of Rwanda, Museveni left no doubt about his views on military discipline. “As you know, we have dealt very harshly with discipline. There is a very strict code of conduct for the National Resistance Army and a mechanism for dealing with wayward soldiers. No soldier is spared, whatever his rank may be.” 8
One month before the invasion of Rwanda, in August 1990, President Museveni addressed Ugandan army officers including, undoubtedly, those who were already preparing to invade Rwanda. His subject was combating counterrevolutionary insurgency and his main message was the importance of discipline, loyalty, military training, unity and the size of the army. He also made a plea in favour of using military intelligence however it may be obtained. All these elements converge in the fight against insurgency. 9
A month after making this speech, the strict disciplinarian, raised and trained in a world of conspiracies and rebellion, sat passively watching his own troops mutiny and invade Rwanda, thereby threatening peace and security throughout central Africa. These were not a few low-ranking officers. Entire regiments invaded, led first by Uganda’s former Defence Minister Fred Rwigyema, killed in the invasion, and then by the Ugandan Chief of Military Intelligence, Paul Kagame, who quickly returned from the United States where Museveni had sent him for military training. The invading Ugandan troops that would soon be known as the Rwandan Patriotic Army comprised many senior officers, 150 middle level officer and even some of President Museveni’s own bodyguards.
In the next three and half years, Museveni continued to watch “passively” as his former troops went in and out of Uganda as they liked. Uganda became the conveyor of men, munitions and materiel to an army dedicated to overthrowing the Rwandan government. Despite Uganda’s obvious implication in this war, no imperial power ever once threatened to punish President Museveni or to cut off support to his country.
Yoweri Museveni’s August 1990 address to the officers of the Ugandan National Resistance Army on “How to fight a Counterrevolutionary Insurgency” reads like a blueprint for the invasion and war that some of his officers were soon to conduct in Rwanda against President Habyarimana. The difference is that Museveni’s officers would soon become be calling themselves Rwandan “insurgents” or “rebels”. 10
“We had to reject the concept of ‘a small but efficient’ army…” he said. “This notion is nothing but suicidal. Insurgents do not have to do much, but they will have succeeded in their devices if they simply terrorize the population, stop them from producing wealth for the country, dismantle the network of civil administration and block communications. Once the state does not stop insurgents from doing this on a large scale, the country will rapidly lose income and find it impossible to support the army… Insurgents will be in a position to create a situation of strategic stalemate or even to launch a strategic counteroffensive to seize state power.”
That is exactly what happened between 1990 and 1994. Moreover, shortly after the Ugandan officers led the October invasion of Rwanda, President Museveni demanded that Rwanda agree to a cease-fire and negotiate with the insurgents, now called the Rwandan Patriotic Front. That was the “strategic stalemate” he had talked about in his August 1990 address.
Rwanda is so tiny. What in the world would the United States want in such an insignificant remote place?
The notion that Africa is, at best, on the fringe of the international community, at worst, completely cut off from it, has been common currency for centuries. Africa is supposedly of no interest to major powers in the world, except as a means to soothe guilty consciences or to receive charity and benefit from the altruism of those powers. That idea is deep-rooted. Former Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien echoed it in April 2002 shortly before the G8 Summit at Kananaskis when he announced that Africa would become part of the international community in the twenty-first century. It seems to have escaped Jean Chrétien that most African countries had been members of the United Nations since becoming independent in the 1960s.
In 1885, when Europe was set to pounce on Africa, the official British position was that of the “reluctant empire” that was compelled to leave the hallowed isles to look after Africa. Historians consolidated this idea. In a famous address first published in 1883, J.R. Seeley observed that the expansion of England in America and Asia was perceived to be almost accidental. It was “an empire acquired in a fit of absence of mind”. 11 Subsequently, historians showed that England was not as selfless as it let on and that expansion of the empire closely followed British commercial expansion – the flag followed commerce.
The same image of the “reluctant empire” prevails in all descriptions of the United States in central Africa at the end of the twentieth century, and now in the twenty-first. Moreover, the U.S. State Department carefully and successfully cultivated that image, which could be summed up as follows: We don’t want to be there, we don’t want to be forced to intervene, we have no interests there, we are only the honest broker working for the good of humanity.
The proof that the United States succeeded in imposing that image is the virtual absence of publications dealing critically with the United States’ strategic goals in Africa. Discussion of the American role is always couched in talk of democracy, human rights, good governance, trade, and the American determination not to repeat the Somalia fiasco during which 18 U.S. soldiers were killed. Washington has adopted exactly the same tack in its approach to Liberia.
Although former UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali was not convinced of the United States’ strategic interest in Rwanda – “I have no real information to that effect”, he told me in a November 2002 interview” – he has nod doubt about the Congo. “In the Congo, yes, absolutely! There’s tremendous wealth there.” Boutros-Ghali added that British intelligence services were very active in the region through Ugandan President Museveni. He also pointed out that the 1898 Fashoda incident, which is seen as a French defeat in Africa, “still dominates people’s minds”. 12
Facts contradict the image of the “reluctant empire. For the United States, Uganda as well as Rwanda and Burundi became increasingly important both for economic and strategic reasons in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
The importance of building a front to counter the expansion of Islam in Africa through the Sudan cannot be underestimated. Uganda had a strong, experienced army and was led by a president willing to work for the Americans. U.S. support for the Christian rebellion in southern Sudan was funnelled through Kampala and with the help Museveni’s army. South Africa at that time was also unpredictable. Despite official American anti-apartheid position, South Africa remained an important ally and Washington was concerned about what might happen should that country be lost as an ally.
When Ugandan troops invaded Rwanda, the future leader Paul Kagame, who had been Uganda’s Chief of Military Intelligence, was training at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, under the International Military Education and Training program known as IMET. In fact, the majority of Ugandan military personnel sent to the United States through the IMET program would soon become commanders of the Rwanda Patriotic Front.
IMET was established in the mid 1970s. It is described as an “instrument of influence” by which the United States is able to affect the internal and external policy behaviour of recipient military institutions and governments in a manner congenial with U.S. foreign policy interests. 13 The IMET program, and a modern version known as Enhanced-IMET, was also used to prepare Rwandan troops for the invasion of Zaire starting in 1996.
The United States obviously placed much hope in Yoweri Museveni’s Uganda. In addition to the military links, American non-military aid to Uganda between 1989 and 1992 totalled $183 million, which was twice what the United States granted to Rwanda during the same period.
It has been said that the invasion of Rwanda by Ugandan troops in 1990 was aimed at Kinshasa not Kigali. The war that has followed in the Congo and the scramble by Western corporations for control of the vast Congolese natural resources makes that interpretation very plausible. The British and the Americans have coveted resources in eastern Congo since the end of the nineteenth century. With President Mobutu’s health failing and his grip on power weakening, the void foreseen whet the appetite of an American empire giddy after fall of the Soviet Union.
Since the war began in the Congo in 1996, the rush of American, Belgian, Canadian, British and French corporations for diamonds and gold and other natural resources in the region has been widely documented and denounced. An internet search with the words “Congo AND diamonds”, “Congo AND gold mines” or “Congo AND coltan” produces numerous reliable studies with figures and details on the corporations that have snatched up Congolese wealth. Before the war, these resources belonged to Zaire and were a major source of income. Now they are under the direct control of foreign corporations protected by proxy armies set up since the 1996 invasion.
The economic determinism of these documents is their main weakness. Their eloquent and detailed descriptions of how American and European interests have taken over African wealth are undermined by credence they give to imperial cant that has allowed it all come about. That cant would have it that Western powers led by the United States are involved in Africa to defend human rights and democracy, to combat the evils of corruption, dictatorship, impunity and genocide, and to favour development. There is not much new under the sun. When England colonized Africa, people were supposed to believe the goal was to stamp out the Arab slave trade and uplift Africans through Christian civilization.
In spring 1993, the United States Secretary of State Warren Christopher declared to the African-American Institute that “The people of Africa know where their future lies: not with corrupt dictators like Mobutu, but with courageous democrats in every part of the continent. From Senegal to Benin, from Madagascar to Mali, African nations are building strong democratic institutions.”
What was Warren Christopher’s real message? First, the United States was staking out the areas it targeted. These just happened to be all countries with close ties to France – note that every country mentioned is a member of the Francophone Summit. Secondly, Washington had decided that Mobutu, who had faithfully served the United States for thirty years as an anti-Communist strongman, was now on his way out, and that the Africans’ desire for change and their revolt against Mobutu would be used to advance American pawns in Africa.
The anointed strongman in Africa would now be Yoweri Museveni, even though the Ugandan president thumbed his nose at the sacrosanct notions like human rights, democracy, multiparty systems and economic transparency. In retrospect, though a large number of Congolese wanted to get rid of Mobutu, were they to have a choice now, even the most militant among them would prefer Mobutu’s Zaire to the Congo killing fields that war launched in 1996 has foisted upon their country and their people.
The official position of the United States and of most European countries regarding Africa remained that of reluctance and disinterest. Nonetheless, their diplomatic, economic, political, legal and military involvement increased exponentially between 1990 and 2003. This involvement has became much more direct and very often bypasses the official recognized channels that should govern international relations.
The Rwandan government reacted sharply to the invasion and was supported by France, Zaire and Belgium, though the Belgians soon turned on the Rwandan government. The invasion pitted Ugandan troops that had been at war for years in Uganda against a small Rwandan army that had not seen in combat since 1969. President Habyarimana’s government also took action internally and, not surprisingly, arrested some 8000 Rwandan citizens, mainly Tutsis, holding them for periods varying from a few days to six months.
The intrepid representatives of the New York based Africa Watch (formerly Human Rights Watch/Africa) immediately claimed that the arrests provided verifiable proof of serious human rights violations. Later with their 20/20 hindsight, the arrests became the proof of the genocidal intentions of the Rwandan Government leaders. Africa Watch rang the alarm and it has not stopped ringing ever since.
Foreign diplomats from Belgium, the United States, Switzerland and Canada deplored the action of the government of Rwanda. The Belgian Ambassador Johann Swinnen rushed to the stadium in Kigali where the prisoners were held and, to the joy of those arrested, he condemned the Rwandan government for its human rights violations – would that they had been so prompt when Pinochet locked up thousands in a stadium in Santiago, Chile. Those Western powers obviously wanted to warn President Habyarimana that the going would be tough and that his days were probably numbered.
A few questions must be raised before we delve deeper into this story.
Is it normal in the search for justice to condemn one side in a war for human rights violations and not even question the morality of the aggressors, those who violated the principles of all the charters of rights humanity has ever drafted? Is it right to shout about how a government violates rights and turn a blind eye to the launching of an aggressive war?
The vast majority of Western human rights organisations and their representatives appear to consider it perfectly normal to whitewash the invaders and denounce the invaded country, its leaders and its people. At the top of the list is Alison Des Forges, an ubiquitous American Rwanda activist who has written reams of reports including the Africa Watch report on the arrests. In a statement made under oath in a 1995 Montreal hearing, Ms Des Forges declared that human rights activists “do not examine the issue of who makes war. We see war as an evil and we try to prevent the existence of war to be an excuse for massive human rights violations.” It is like an armed break and entry during which the homeowner defends himself. The Justice Department arrests the home owner for possession of arms and lets the robber off scot-free.
The refusal of human rights organizations to condemn the worst human rights violation, namely the invasion, invalidates all the reports they have published and weakens the foundations on which the “right and proper” tale has been built. It bears sad witness to the lightness with which many of theses groups undertake their work, and also reveals the tacit agreement between them and the big Western powers who wield much more influence than the Rwandan government could dream of having. Worst of all, however, is the blatant double standard they have in respect to Africa. The same groups would never dare apply the same criteria in cases of war in or by their own countries.
In his important Discourse on colonialism published in 1955, Aimé Césaire denounced a similar double standard observed among European humanists. Though many humanists were anti-nazis in the Second World War, they avoided taking up the fight against colonialism. “And that is the great thing I hold against pseudo-humanism,” wrote Césaire. “For too long it has diminished the rights of man, that its concept of those rights has been – and still is – narrow and fragmentary, incomplete and biased and, all things considered, sordidly racist”. 14
Eight thousand Rwandans were arrested by the Habyarimana government, but all were released within six months. For a country that has been invaded, neither the number of arrests nor their duration is excessive, especially considering the revelations of former leaders and collaborators of the Rwandan Patriotic Front. One such leader is Valens Kajeguhakwa, a business man and one of the RPF’s main financial backers. In 2001, his former comrade-in-arms Paul Kagame forced him to leave the country. Kajeguhakwa, who had also been close to President Habyarimana before he joined the RPF in 1990, published a book in which he described himself as the “bridge that clandestinely united the action of patriots outside and within Rwanda.” 15 He boasts of the invaluable role of his vast network of civilian and military informers that he had carefully developed and who were infiltrated throughout Rwanda up to the highest echelons of the Government of Rwanda.
“They were placed in the army, in the Gendarmerie, in government ministries, in all the main public and private companies, in the National Bank of Rwanda, in parishes, in markets in Kigali, Butare, Ruhengeri, and Gisenyi, in the University in Butare and Nyakinama, in the prisons in Gisehyi and Ruhengeri.” Valens Kajeguhakwa left Rwanda for Uganda just before the invasion in October 1990. He points out in his book that he ensured his network would continue working for him and the Rwandan Patriotic Front in his absence.
Leaders of the Rwandan Patriotic Front claim that they had 36 clandestine cells operating inside Rwanda on October 1, 1990. The number of cells grew steadily as the invaders gained ground and especially as they gained international recognition and support. The same sources boast that by 1993 the RPF could activate 146 clandestine cells in Kigali alone. 16 Ever since the Spanish Civil War, an expression accurately describes such cells: a fifth column. In Rwanda, however, that fifth column was and still is conveniently qualified as innocent human rights activists.
The number of arrests and their duration were limited. Since memory is always selective and always very poor in powerful dominating countries, a few comparisons would be helpful.
According to Professor Panikos Panayi who has studied the question of minorities in wartime, “Some of the most systematic persecution of racial and ethnic minorities in recent history has taken place during the two World Wars. Anyone studying the twentieth century cannot avoid this conclusion. In fact, the historian dealing with any period of human development would find that the years 1914-18 and 1939-45 witnessed unprecedented heights of intolerance towards outgroups.” 17 Professor Panayi also deplores the lack of research conducted about minorities in wartime.
In 1914, Canada was automatically drawn into the First World War by England when it declared war on August 4, 1914, but the country was not invaded. In fact, it has not been invaded since 1812. Nevertheless, two weeks after the war began in Europe, the Parliament of Canada adopted the War Measures Act granting the government power to arrest, detain, exclude and deport individuals. Under the Act, the government could refuse release on bail and suspend habeas corpus for any person suspected of being an enemy alien. Canada interned 8579 people in “concentration camps”–the term coined in the Boer War was still fashionable. Most were Ukrainians that Canadian officials mistook for Austrians.
As war progressed, naturalized German Canadians including many born in Canada soon went from being “among our best immigrants, white people like ourselves” as J.S. Woodsworth noted, to “sub-human” or “blood-crazed madmen”. 18 In 1917, to the applause of much of English Canada, the Parliament adopted the War-time Elections Act that took away voting rights from tens of thousands of naturalized Canadians, most of whom were Ukrainian.
During the Second World War, Canada interned 21,000 of the country’s 22,086 residents of Japanese origin. Ninety-one percent of those interned were Canadian citizens. Officially, Canada “evacuated” the Japanese Canadians, who were dispersed throughout Canada, sometimes up to 5000 kilometres from their homes. All their property was confiscated, farms, homes and fishing boats, never to be returned. When the war was over, none was allowed to return to British Columbia, and 3000 Japanese Canadians were deported to Japan.
The United States interned all Japanese Americans after the attack on Pearl Harbour. Pearl Harbour, it should be noted, was not an invasion and did not touch continental United States. The 1940 U.S. census established that 116,947 American residents were of Japanese origin. Sixty percent were born in the United States. In 1942, that country interned – evacuated according to the official euphemism – all the 119,803 men, women and children of Japanese origin. 19
Countries are obsessed with the loyalty of their citizens in wartime. Every minority and every internal nation becomes suspicious. In 1917, Londoners rioted against Jews who were they accused of being opposed to conscription. In the United States, suspicious minorities were tarred and feathered or even lynched. In Canada, the loyalty of French Canadians was immediately questioned in both World Wars, as it was during the Boer War. French Canadians were called Zombies during the Second World War because of their opposition to conscription.
Former colonial possessions are inevitably among the first suspects of countries at war. Ireland, for instance, was independent from England since 1922 and remained neutral during the Second World War. When Winston Churchill suspected these former subjects of Her Majesty to be sympathetic to the Germans, he threatened to bomb all the ports in Ireland.
The treatment of minorities in wartime requires much further study. Suffice it to say that self-righteous human rights activists in Europe and North America would have been well advised to look closely at their own countries’ records before pouncing on Rwanda.
The invading army known by the “right thinking” as a liberation army, settled in for a prolonged guerrilla war when they realized that the Rwandan army was tougher than had been expected. At the end of October 1990, the RPF pulled partly back into Uganda which it used as a base to launch guerrilla attacks. In November, however, Belgium joined Uganda in calling on Rwanda to negotiate with the invading army. Here was the “strategic stalemate” Ugandan President Museveni had talked about on August 1990. The United States and Britain soon joined the chorus of calls for negotiations.
Though the RPF was talking liberation and human rights in all its international press relations in English and French, its writings in Kinyarwanda left no doubt as to its desire to return Rwanda to a pre-independence situation in which the Tutsi minority would dominate. 20 This was confirmed as the RPF behaved like all occupation armies do. They attacked and terrorized civilians, forcing them to flee in large numbers, and targeted the Hutu peasants rather than the Rwandan troops.
What liberation army can boast that it emptied one of the country’s, and the world’s, most densely populated areas? Two and a half years after the invasion, only 1800 people lived in an area of northern Rwanda that previously had a population of 800,000. As the “liberators” advanced, the Hutu peasants fled. By April 1993, Rwanda had more than one million internal refugees. That means one million farmers (one seventh of the total population) who are no longer producing on the most fertile lands in the country. It also means one million people to house and feed, and hundreds of thousands of children absent from school which caused great anxiety among parents.
The Rwandan Minister of Agriculture, Husbandry and Forests in 1992, James Gasana, described the situation in the war torn Byumba prefecture north of Kigali in a book published in 2002. “A prefecture that had been the country’s breadbasket now had the largest population in need of welfare and the highest mortality rate due to malnutrition.” 21
When have we seen a people flee from its liberators? It didn’t happen in France (1940-1945), nor in Cuba (1951-1959), nor in Algeria (1954-1962). The “right and proper tale” would have us believe, however, that the invading RPF army were “liberators”.
These “liberators” were also able to count on a powerful ally. That ally known as the Structural Adjustment Program or SAP was being imposed in unison by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and USAID. Acronyms have a canny way of transmitting messages, and in this case it is particularly eloquent, both in English, SAP, and in French, PAS (Programme d’ajustement structurel). The message could not be clearer: PAS d’argent (no money) unless you SAP the very foundations of the society you built since 1960. That means deregulating the economy, devaluating currency, eliminating agricultural subsidies, privatizing utilities and state-owned corporations, laying off civil servants and more.
The impact in Rwanda was felt immediately. Inflation increased from 1 percent in 1989 to 20 percent in 1991. Devaluation of the currency was even more brutal. In 1990, one U.S. dollar was worth 82 Rwandan Francs. In 1993, it was worth 183 Francs.
The taskmasters at the World Bank, the FMI and USAID knew exactly what was happening. They could see an offshoot of the army led by their friend Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni pitted against a government led by Juvénal Habyarimana. Whereas Museveni was calling on Africa to abandon its anti neo-colonial rhetoric and state loud and clear that Africa’s problems were of its own making, Rwandan President Habyarimana had a relatively prosperous and stable economy but was not as favourably disposed to the new dogma brought down by the by the Bretton Wood institutions.
Privatization and a totally free-market economy presented specific problems for Rwanda. The social revolution of 1959 and independence combined with the growth of a public sector had enabled Rwandan Hutus to gain some economic power and prestige. The private sector, where incomes were much higher, remained largely dominated by Tutsis. The aggressive privatization and deregulation imposed by the Structural Adjustment Program meant an inevitable return towards what had been rejected since the 1960s and a reinforcement of the Tutsis’ power in the economy.
Structural adjustment had another perverse effect on Rwanda. Funds would be given to countries for downsizing their armies. When Ugandan troops invaded Rwanda, the country officially reduced the size of its army. On paper all those Ugandan troops at war in Rwanda were no longer part of the Museveni’s army. Funding to Uganda therefore increased proportionally. Under the same policy, funding to Rwanda was cut since the Habyarimana government increased the size of its army threefold in order to fight the invaders. These were the funds used by Uganda to finance the war in Rwanda. James Gasana, who became Rwandan Defense Minister until he left the country in 1993, wrote a scathing criticism of that policy. “It is no secret that funds granted to two poor countries at war are used to procure weapons. That undercover funding by international development banks prevented international public opinion from understanding the international nature of the war.” 22
Each time the government of Rwanda hesitated to negotiate with the invader or showed reluctance during negotiations, the bankers in New York and Washington would put the pressure on Kigali by refusing to provide the funds the government needed and counted on. Each time the RPF would gain new international recognition, the moral of the Rwandan armed forces would plummet as they increasingly got the impression they were fighting against the whole world. As could easily be predicted by anyone who cared to look, the war aggravated latent hostility between Hutu majority and the Tutsi minority.
As could be expected, the expression “peace process” had quietly crept into the vocabulary of the international community led by the United States and Britain. The “peace process” was to be initiated at Arusha in Tanzania. Peace process essentially means war, a war in which the sponsors of the process choose the winner before the meeting they call takes place. They then pretend to be neutral during negotiations. Having bought time, they tighten the noose on the designated loser and prepare the ground to install a government that is totally subjected to their will. Peace process was on the lips of all the right thinking people, as of course was multiparty democracy.
5 “The Minister of Rape”, New York Times Magazine, Sunday, September 15, 2002, p. 1.
6 Philip Gourevitch, The Congo Test in The New Yorker, May 30, 2003.
7 Yoweri Museveni, What is Africa’s problem?, University of Minnesota Press 2000, p. 106.
8 Ibid. p. 178.
9 Ibid. p. 132.
10 Ibid. How to fight a Counterrevolutionary Insurgency, pp. 132-140.
11 J. R. Seeley, The Expansion of England, Chicago and London, 1971, p. 12.
12 Fashoda was a fort located on the Upper Nile (Now in Sudan). French and British military missions met there on September 18, 1898. France wanted to set up a series of forts from west to east across Africa – Dakar to Djibouti. The British wanted to build a railway from Uganda to Egypt and link its “possessions” in Africa from south to north – the Cape to Cairo. In November 1898, France withdrew from Fashoda and conceded it to the British. It was subsequently decided that the head waters of the Nile and the Congo rivers would delineate the British and French spheres of influence.
13 McNair Paper Number 44, Chapteer 6, October 1995. Institute for National Strategic Studies.
14 Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism, Monthly Review Press, 1972, p. 15.
15 Valens KAJEGUHAKWA, Rwanda : de la terre de paix à la terre de sang et après?, Éditions Rémi Perrin, 2001, p. 223.
16 William Cyrus REED, Exile, Reform and the Rise of the RPF, Journal of Modern African Studies, Vol. 34, No. 3, 1996, pp 479-501.
17 Panikos PANAYI, ed. Minorities in wartime : national and racial groupings in Europe, North America, and Austrialia during the two world wars, Oxford (England) Berg, 1993, p. 3.
18 J.S. Woodsworth, Strangers Within Our Gates, cited in John Herd THOMPSON, Ethnic Minorities during Two World Wars, Ottawa, 1991, Canadian Historical Association.
19 Roger DANIELS, Concentration Camps : North America, Japanese in the United States and Canada During World War II, Krieger Publishing, FL USA, 1981.
20 Enjeux nationaux et dynamiques régionales dans l’Afrique des Grands lacs, Journée d’Étude, Lille, June 20, 1992, under the direction of André GUICHAOUA, URA Tiers-Monde/Afrique.
21 James K. GASANA, Rwanda : du parti-état à l’état-garnison, L’Harmattan, 2002, p. 89.
22 GASANA, op. cit. p. 76
Criminal Paul Kagame
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Replies
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KUKI PAUL KAGAME ATSIMBARARA KUBUTEGETSI?
1. UBWOBA BYIBYAHA NDEKAMERE
PAUL KAGAME YAKOZE IBYAHA BYINSHI KANDI BYOSE BY’ INDENGAKAMERE BISUMBYE IBY’ABANDI BANYAGITUGU BOSE BATEGETSE ISI MBERE YE NDETSE NABAZATEGEKA ISI NYUMA YE. PAUL KAGAME RERO AZI NEZA KO YACIYE UMUHIGO MU KWICA ABANTU : YATEGUYE GENOCIDE MU RWANDA. ARAYIKORA KANDI ARANAYIGARIKA. PAUL KAGAME YISHE ABAHUTU, YICA ABATUTSI MU RWANDA. PAUL KAGAME YISHE ABANTU MURI RDC, ABANYA KONGO, NDETSE N’ABANYAMURENGE BATABARIKA. PAUL KAGAME YISHE ABANTU BENSHI MURI UGANDA AKIRI MU NGABO ZA NYIRARUME MUSEVENI. PAUL KAGAME AMAZE KWICISHA ABARUNDI BENHSI BATAGIRA INGANO AHO ASHAKA GUHIRIKA UBUTEGETSI BWA PETER NKURUNZIZA AGASHIRAHO UNDI MUTEGETSI YISHAKIYE AGATEGEKA UBURUNDI. PAUL KAGAME ASHAKA GUKORESHA GENOCIDE NGO AHIRIKE UBUTEGETSI I BURUNDI NKUKO YABIKOZE MU RWANDA. PAUL KAGAME YASHINZE KANDI AFASHA IMITWE MYINSHI YITERABWOBA : M 23 NDETSE N’INDI MITWE MYINSHI NKAWO KUKO YASHAKAGA KO YAFATA UBUTEGETSI MU BIHUGU BIKIKIJYE U RWANDA. PAUL KAGAME YISHE ABASIRIKARE BENSHI CYANE BABAGANDA IGIHE BAKOCORANA BARWANIRAGA AMABUYE YAGACIRO MURI CONGO. PAUL KAGAME YISHE IMPUNZI NYINSHI KANDI NANUBU ARACYAZICA. AZISANGA IYO ZAHUNGIYE. PAUL KAGAME AZISANGA MU MASHYAMBA IZINDI MPUNZI AZITERA MU BIHUGU ZAHUNGIYEMO AKORESHEJYE ZA AMBASSADE ZU RWANDA ZIBA MURI IBYO BIHUGU IMPUNZI ZAHUNGIYEMO. PAUL KAGAME YIBYE AMAFRANGA MENSHI Y’IGUHUGU CY’U RWANDA. PAUL KAGAME YIBYE CYANE UBUKUNGU BWA KONGO DR KANDI ARACYABIKORA. PAUL KAGAME YISHE KANDI AFUNGA ABANTU BENSHI BAFATANYIJYE GUFATA U RWANDA IGIHE BATERAGA U RWANDA BAVA MU BUGANDA.
2. GUTINYA UBUTABERA
KUBERA IBI BYAHA BYINDENGAKAMERE PAUL KAGAME YAKOZE MW’ISI HOSE KANDI AGIKORA KUGEZA NA NUBU, ARATINYA KO IGIHE CYOSE AZABA ATAKIRI KU BUTEGETSI AZAFATWA, AGACIBWA URUBANZA NKABANDI BA CRIMINELS BOSE, KANDI PAUL KAGAME AZI NEZA KO URU RUBANZA ATARUTSINDA. UBU BWOBA RERO BUTUMA PAUL AGAME AGOMBA GUKORA UKO ASHOBOYE KOSE, KIMWE N’ABANDI BANYAGITUGU BOSE AKAZAPFIRA K’UBUTEGETSI MU RWANDA. PAUL KAGAME YAVUZEKO NUBWO YAFASHE UBUTEGETSI MU RWANDA AKORESHEJE GENOCIDE KANDI AKANAYIHAGARIKA, UZASHAKA KUMUKURA KU BUTEGETSI AZASIGA U RWANDA MU BUBI BURUTA UBWO YARUTEYE AKIRUFATA. NIYO MPAMVU PAUL KAGAME ATAZIGERA AROTA KUVA KUBUTEGETSI. AZABUBAHO NK’ IKIRONDWE KU NKA.
Criminal Paul Kagame
KUKI PAUL KAGAME YISHE HABYARIMANA JUVENAL?
1. INYOTA YUBUTEGETSI IKABIJYE
PAUL KAGAME AKUNDA UBUTEGETSI CYANE KANDI NI NABWO YASHAKAGA IGIHE YATERAGA U RWANDA MURI 1990. IKINTU CYOSE CYATUMA RERO PAUL KAGAME ABONA UBUTEGETSI YAGIKORESHA. IKINTU CYOSE CYATUMA PAUL KAGAME AVA KUBUTEGETSI AGOMBA KUGIKURAHO AKAKIRIMBURA.
2. ABACIKACUMU
PAUL KAGAME YARI AZI NEZA KO HABYARIMANA JUVENAL YARI YARAKUNZE CYANE KANDI YARATONESHEJE ABACIKACUMU MU GIHE CYU BUTEGETSI BWE BWOSE. PAUL KAGAME RERO YARI AZI NEZA KO MU GIHE HABYARIMANA AKIRIHO ATAZABONA ABAMUSHIGIKIRA CYANE CYANE KO YABONAGA KO HABYARIMANA YAKUNDAGA ABACIKACUMU BOSE KANDI YARI YARABAFASHE NEZA CYANE BOSE. HABYARIMANA NTIYIGEZE ASHAKA KO HAGIRA UMUCIKACUMU UHUNGABANA KU NGOMA YE. NIYO MPAMVU PAUL KAGAME YABONAGA ABACIKACUMU BO MU RWANDA KU NGOMA YA HABYARIMANA NTAHO BARI BATANIYE NABACIKAMBUNDA.
3. ABACIKAMBUNDA
PAUL KAGAME YARI AZI NEZA KANDI KO HABYARIMANA KURUNDI RUHANDE YARI AKUNZWE CYANE NABACAIKACUMU ARIKO CYANE NYINE NABACIKAMBUNDA. PAUL KAGAME RERO YABONYEKO NATICA HABYARIMANA BYAJYAGA KUMUGORA GUFATA UBUTEGETSI MU RWANDA. NUKO RERO KAGAME ARI WE « BAKAME » ASANGA YISHE HABYARIMANA ABCIKAMBUNDA BAZARAKARA CYANE KUBERA AMASASU YABAMINJYGAMO KANDI ABACIKACUMU NABO BAZASIGARA BATAGIRA KIRENGERA KUBERA KO UWABAKUNZE CYANE ANDI WABARENGERAGA HABYARIMANA YARI KUBA APFUYE ATAKIRIHO. NIKO KUMWICA NUKO KAGAME ARIWE BAKAME AKORA IBARA. AKORA GENOCIDE ARAYITEGURA, ARAYITANGIRA. KANDI ANAYISHIRA MU BIKORWA. ABACIKACUMU RERO NDETSE NABACIKAMBUNDA BOSE BAZIZE IRARI RY’UBUTEGETSI RYA PAUL KAGAME. PAUL KAGEM YATUMYE ABACIKACUMU NABACIKAMBUNDA BOSE BAHUBANA, NUKO BATA UMUTWE NUKO ATUMA BICANA KANDI BARAKUNDANAGA. NGUWO KAGAME ARI WE BAKAME.
Criminal Paul Kagame
NINDE WATEGUYE GENOCIDE MU RWANDA?
1. GOVERNEMENT YATSINZWE YA MRND NA HABYARIMANA JUVENAL? OYA:
GENOCIDE IMAZE GUKORWA MU RWANDA NYUMA YA 1994 PAUL KAGAME NA GOVERNMENT YE YA RPF YASABYE KO HASHIRWAHO URUKIKO I ARUSHA (TPIR) MURI TANZANIA NGO RUCIRE URUBANZA ABANTU BOSE BAGIZE URUHARE MURI GENOCIDE YO MU RWANDA. URUKIKO RWA ARUSHA RWAGIYEHO RUCA IMANZA. KAGAME PAUL ARUHA RUSWA. ARARUKONTROLA ANARARUTEGEKA RUCA IMANZA ZIBOGAMYE GUSA. RUCIRA IMANZA Z‘ABANTU BO MURI GOVENMENT YA HABYARIMANA YATSINZWE GUSA. URU RUKIKO NTA MUNTU NUMWE WO MURI LETA YA HABYARIMANA RWASANZE YARATEGUYE GENOCIDE MU RWANDA. ABAFUNZWE BOSE BAZIZEKO KAGAME PAUL YAGIYE ABAHIMBIRA IBYAHA BINDI BISANZWE BYO MUNTAMBARA GUSA ARIKO CYANE CYANE KO BARI BARI MURI GOVENMENT YATSINZWE GUSA. NICYO BAFUNGIWE. NICYO BAZIRA. BAMWE NGO BARI ABASIRIKARI ABANDI NGO BARI ABANYAPOLITIKI ABANDI BARI ABANYABWENGE BARI BARIZE MU GIHE CYA MRND. NTABWO BAFUNZWE KUBERAKO BATEGUYE GENOCIDE MU RWANDA.OYA.
2. GOVERNMENT YA KAGAME PAUL NA RPF? YEGO:
PAUL KAGAME AKORESHEJE AMAFRANGA MENSHI CYANE NDETSE AFASHIJWE NABAMUSHIGIKIYE MU GUKORA IYI GENOCIDE YAKINGIYE IKIBABA ABANTU BE BOSE NDETSE NA WE UBWE KU GITI CYE NGO BADACIBWA URUBANZA I ARUSHA MURI TPIR. NIYO MPAMVU KUGEZA UBU NTA MUNTU NUMWE WO MURI RPF WACIRIWE URUBANZA YEWE NA PAUL KAGAME UBWE NTIYIGEZE ATUNGWA AGATOKI NA TPIR. NONE RERO N‘ UBWO ARUSHA YAGIYEHO, YACIYE IMANZA IBOGAMYE CYANE KUKO YARI YARAGURIWE NA PAUL KAGAME. ARIKO NANONE NTABWO YIGEZE ITANGAZA KO HABA HARI UMUNTU NUMWE WO MURI MRND WATEGUYE GENOCIDE MU RWANDA. NONE UBWO RERO UWATEGUYE CG UWAKOZE GENOCIDE MU RWANDA TWAMUSHAKIRA HEHE? TWAMUSHAKIRA MU BANTU BA RPF NA KAGAME NAWE UBWE KUKO ARIBO BASIGAYE BATARACIRIWE URUBANZA MURI URU RUKIKO RWA ARUSHA/TPIR. UBWO RERO NUKUVUGAKO UWATEGUYE GENOCIDE YO MU RWANDA, AKAYITANGIZA KANDI AKANAYISHIRA MUBIKORWA NI PAUL KAGAME NA RPF YE.Criminal Paul Kagame
IBINYOMA BIBIRI (2) BYA PAUL KAGAME: GENOCIDE N‘ ITERAMBERE RIDASHITSE
1. IKINYOMA CYA MBERE: PAUL KAGAME YAKOMEJYE KUBESHA KO YAHAGARITSE GENOCIDE MU RWANDA KANDI NYAMARA ARIWE WAYITEGUYE KANDI AKANAYITANGIZA. KAGAME PAUL AVUGA KO ABATAVUGA RUMWE NA WE ARIBO BATAEGUYE GENOCIDE. ABANDI AVUGA KO BAFITE INGENGABITEKEREZO YA GENOCIDE. ABANDI PAUL KAGAME AVUGA KO BAHAKANA IYI GENOCIDE. IBI PAUL KAGAME ABIKORA GUSA AGIRA NGO ABACECEKESHE ARIKO NYINE MURI KWA GUSHAKA GUSHIMANGIRA CYA KINYOMA CYE CYO KURI GENOCIDE. TWIBUTSE KO GENOCIDE MU RWANDA YATEGUWE, IGATANGIZWA KANDI IGAKORWA NA PAUL KAGAME NA RPF YE. PAUL KAGAME AKOMEJYE KANDI GUCURUZA IYI GENOCIDE NK ITURUFU AKORESHA KU GIRA NGO AYIRIREHO AKOMEZE YIGIRIRE AMAFRANGA YE MENSHI KU GITI CYE KANDI AKOMEZE AKANDAMIZE ABANYARWANDA.
2. IKINYOMA CYA KABIRI: KAGAME PAUL YATANGIYE GUKORESHA KA GAKURU GAKORESHWA NABA NYAGITUGU BOSE BAKORESHA KEREKEYE ITERAMBERE ARIKO NYINE RIBA RIDASHITSE KANDI RITARAMBA. ITERAMBERE ABANYIGUTU BARATA RIBA ARI PROPOPAGANDA NA LOBBYING GUSA BAKORA KU GIRA NGO BIGMIRE KU BUTEGETSI. ABANYAGITUGU BOSE BAKORESHA IRI JAMBO KU GIRA NGO ABANTU BAKOMEZE BAGIRE UBWOBA KO NIBA BAVUYE KU BUTEGETSI IBYO BAGEZEHO BIZASENYUKA NUBWO NTABYO BABA MU BYUKURI BARAGEZEHO. ARIKO NYINE ABANYAGITUGU BOSE BABA BASHAKA KO NIBA BAVUYE KUBUTEGETSI BASIA BARIMBUYE BYOSE ABANTU NDETSE NIBINTU. AKA GAKURU K‘ ITERAMBERE ARIKO RIBA RIDASHITSE NIKO MUSEVENI WA UGANDA, KAGAME PAUL WU RWANDA NDETSE NABANDI BANYAGITUGU BAKORESHA KUGIRA NGO BAKOMEZE BATSIMBARARE KU BUTEGETSI. IDI AMINI DADA MURI UGANDA NA WE YARAGAKORESHEJE.
ABRAHAM LINCOLHN NDETSE NA ALDORF HITLER BARAVUZE NGO „IKINYOMA IYO UGISUBIYEMO KENSHI ABANTU BAGERA AHO BAKACYEMERA NKUKURI.“ IBI NIBYO RERO ABANYAGITIGU NKA PAUL KAGAME NABANDI BABA BAKORA. ITERAMBERE RYA PAUL KAGAME MU RWANDA NU „UGUTEKINIKA“ GUSA. NI BARINGA. UBU KAGAME PAUL NABAMBARI BE BARAVUGA KW‘ ITERAMBERE MURI KIGALI GUSA: AMAZU YE, CRISTAL VENURES NA KIGALI CONVENTIONAL CENTRE. NTA KINDI BASHOBORA KWEREKANA. ARIKO TUZI UKUNTU INZARA, UBUKENE, MALARIA, AMAVUNJA, UBUJURA, UBUSAMBANYI, KUBURA AMAZI MEZA MU RWANDA ARI IBIBAZO BIKOMEREYE ABANYARWANDA BOSE MURI RUSANGE KANDI BYOSE BYAZANYWE NA PAUL KAGAME NA RPF YE.
Criminal Paul Kagame
PAUL KAGAME HAS ONLY ONE CHOICE: TO DIE IN OFFICE AS A PRESIDENT OR ELSE TO FACE JUSTICE ONCE HE LEAVES PRESIDENT OFFICE. PAUL KAGAME HAS NO OTHER ALTERNATIVE APART FROM BEING CAUGHT UP IN STATE HOUSE TILL DEATH. REASONS WHY HE HAS GIVEN HIMSELF TO SUBDUE RWANDA UNDER HIS MILITARY AND POLICE REGIME UNTILL HE DIES. HE FEARS TO BE PROSECUTED BECAUSE OF HIS INVOLVEMENT IN THE SO CALLED GENOCIDE AS THE TRUTH STARTS UNFOLDING ITSELF SLOWLY WITH TIME. WHEN PEOPLE WANT TO UNDESTAND WHAT PAUL KAGAME DID IN RWANDA WITH HIS RPF, PEOPLE SHOULD COMPARE WHAT BOKO HARAM IS DOING IN NIGERIA. THAT IS WHAT PAUL KAGAME CAME DOING IN RWANDA SINCE 01/10/1990 WHEN HE ATTACKED THE PEACEFUL RWANDA FROM UGANDA. PAUL KAGAME WAS HELPED BY HIS MATERNAL UNCLE MUSEVENI OF UGANDA TO CAPTURE RWANDA IN 1994 AFTER THEY PLANNED TO PLONGE RWANDA INTO WHICH CAME TO BE CALLED GENOCIDE. THEY USED IT TO OVERTHROW THE THEN GOVERNMENT. MINUS THIS GENOCIDE THAT PAUL KAGAME AND HIS UNCLE MUSEVENI WHICH THEY IMPOSED ON RWANDA, PAUL KAGAME WOULD NOT HAVE CAPTURED POWER IN RWANDA. REASON WHY PAUL KAGAME WANTS TO DO THE SAME THING IN BURUNDI AND IMPOSE A LEADER HE WANTS THROUGH THE SAME GENOCIDE AS HE DID IT IN RWANDA. PAUL KAGAME IS ALLERGIC TO DEMOCRACY BECAUSE HE KNOWS WHAT WOULD BE HIS FATE, IF HE ALLOWS FREEDOM IN THE COUNRTY OF RWANDA. HE IS AWARE THAT PEOPLE DO NOT WANT HIM.
Criminal Paul Kagame
FPR yagumye gutangaza ko ifite amayeri igihumbi (1000)benshi ntitubyemere, abandi ntidusobanukirwe. Mbese ayo mayeri nayayigeza kuki? Ni ayahe?
Maze kwitegereza inzara iri guca ibintu mu gihugu, impfu za hato na hato, umubare munini w’abanyarwanda baborera mu magereza, umubare munini w’abanyarwanda baheze ishyanga, nasanze amayeri ya FPR ari ayo kuyifasha kwicira abanyarwanda kurwara nk’inda.
Reka duhere ku nzara iteye ubwoba mu rwatubyaye, abanyarwanda mu mpande z’igihugu havuyemo abacuramugambi bayo mayeri barashonje. Aho buri gace inzara bayihaye amazina.
Bamwe bayita (WARWAYE RYARI? )iri zina rikunda gukoreshwa mu mujyi wa Kigali no mu nkengero zawo rikaba rikoreshwa kubera gutakaza ibiro kwa hato na hato kw’abanyarwanda kandi batarwaye.
Abandi bayita( KINGA METARIKE DUHURIRE MU GAHENEREZO )iri zina rikoreshwa n’abantu bo mu giturage, ubundi agahenerezo ni udusoko duto twafashaga abakene kubona ibya make kuko babiguraga ku mwandiko, byongeye kandi hajyagayo ibicuruzwa bitari byiza kuko ibyiza byajyaga ku masoko manini. Mu giturage umuntu ukingisha metalike yabarwaga nk’umuntu ukomeye bigatuma atarabarwaga mu bagombaga kujya guhahira mu gahenerezo. Ariko ubu nawe ya mayeri yaramurindimuye.
Abandi bayita (NTUNDATEHO ABUZUKURU) byo birumvikana ngo umusaza ushonje asiganya umuhungu we kugaburira abuzukuru be.
Abenshi bayita NZARAMBA bishatse kuvuga ko ntaherezo ryayo.
Ibi mbivuze nyuma yo kumva urusaku abaturage baturiye igishanga cya Muyumbu bamaze iminsi bafite. Ngo nyuma yo kunyagwa ubutaka bwabo bukegurirwa bamwe mu bayoboye impunzi z’abarundi kuza mu Rwanda, ntimumbaze niba ari ingororano. Insina zabo zaratemaguwe, ibishyimbo bararanduye, imboga n’ibigori bateye hejuru. Yewe ndetse ngo hari n’umuturage ugomba gusenyerwa ngo kuko ari mu mbago abo barundi biherewe na leta. Ikibabaje kurusha ibindi ni uko nta ngurane bahabwa nk’uko amategeko abiteganya.
Tugiye kungingo ya kabiri yerekeranye n’impfu za hato na hato, ugirango u Rwanda rugiye kurangira nk’isabune. Ntabusobanuro bwinshi mbitangaho kuko benshi murabisobanukiwe.
Ibyerekeranye n’ibihome barundamo abanyarwanda ndumva nabyo ntawe utabizi kuko hari n’aho bapakira impinja zikaborera kwa Kabuga.
Abanyarwanda benshi bahejejwe ishyanga ntibemerewe gukandagiza ikirenge mu rwababyaye icyakora hatewe intambwe ngo imirambo yabamwe izajya iza mu Rwanda beneyo nibatabyemera tuyibe.
Nkaba narangiza mbaza nti ko kera iyo ibuye ryagaragaraga ritabaga ricyishe isuka? Nuko twe abanyarwanda tutabona?
Ntihagire untera ibuye.
Théophile Ntirutwa
Criminal Paul Kagame
Nibyo rwose burya niba mbize icyuya nkakorera 5 frw ahwanye n’1kg y’umunyu, undi banki ikamuha 5000frw (ibice bya 5 frw igihumbi) aza kwisoko 1kg y’umunyu akayigura 500frw. iyo nongeye kuzana 5 cya kilo cy’umunyu barakinyima. biba binsaba kumukorera inshuro 100 akampa ya 500 aguze kilo y’umunyu kuko 5frw wenda nizigamye muri 2014 ataye agaciro. iyi politique yo kwikubira iteka ikoresha imbunda iyo wanze gusinya barakurasa. mu yandi magambo ntiwafata economie ngo uyitereke rusumo maze politique y’imitegekere ngo uyitereke I Rubavu. ntibyakunda, burya ushatse wabishyira hamwe rwagati muri convention center cyangwa muka boite kamwe kuko byose biragendana. politeque ifite ingaruka z’ikomeye (mbi cg nziza) kuri economie. ninayo mpanvu abategetsi bemera imbunda ku ma banki.burya impamvu bazemera ni uko economie baba bashaka kuyigenzura uko bashaka. baba bagirango Kavenya na Cacana nabo bataza bitwaje ishoka bakabaza impamvu ifaranga ribavuna ariko ku isoko ntibahage.
Criminal Paul Kagame
PAUL KAGAME CRUSHED RWANDA’S FREE PRESS
Anjan Sundaram
In Bad News: Last Journalists in a Dictatorship, Anjan Sundaram recalls teaching journalists in Rwanda under the oppressive regime of President Paul Kagame, who last week announced he will stand for a third term, which could see him in power until 2034. In this extract, Sundaram describes the presidential election in 2010, a critical moment in the destruction of a free press
The election was a masterpiece of authority. The vote passed in an ambience of total serenity. No negative incidents were reported in the country: there were no protests, no complaints, no boycotts or demonstrations. The people queued up obediently. None of the opposing candidates claimed procedural irregularities. They were playing the theatre to perfection, and vowed they would accept the election results.I called the presidential candidate I had met before the vote. He said the latest polls had been disappointing, but he claimed to be still hopeful for a win. The president indicated he would wait for the official results before making any pronouncements.
The country was teeming with visitors: foreign dignitaries, journalists, election observers. Reports from that day would be broadcast across the world. A careful decorum had to be maintained. The official observers were unanimous in their praise. The African Union and the Commonwealth lauded the government’s impeccable planning: how the booths had opened on time, how people had voluntarily lined up with their identity cards in the early morning, and how by 10am practically every citizen – the government claimed a 95% participation rate – had cast their ballot. By noon already the booths were empty.“The world has important lessons to learn from Rwanda,” gushed a European Union official. Embassy observers hailed it as the most orderly vote they had witnessed in their careers.
The immense order of the ritual inspired awe. A young Spanish woman, caressing her long hair, introduced herself to me as a propagandist. Her job was to write up positive stories, in supplements to British newspapers, about governments seeking to improve their image on the world stage or seeking to attract foreign investment. But she had found no business in Rwanda because the foreign press was already so positive. “Journalists come to our country all the time,” a senior minister had told her. “And are stunned by how well we run it.”
The minister had shown her examples of such stories in eminent foreign publications. These were stories about the roads, the economic growth statistics, and how survivors of the genocide supported the president, with no mention of his forces’ massacres or his repression. Even the professional propagandist, who had worked in a dozen dictatorships before, was astonished.
At the counting of the votes that evening, I stood in a booth and watched the officials read: “Kagame Paul,” which later became “Kagame” and finally “Paul, Paul, Paul,” which was shorter, easier to say. Some of the girls marking tallies on the blackboard began to laugh. They seemed themselves astonished at the extent of the control.
I said to one of these girls: “The people are obedient.”
She nodded. “Yes, very obedient.” She was still smiling. “The president is strong today. Very strong.”
“What if someone disobeys him?”
“He will ask for forgiveness.”
A few of the ballots were improperly marked, and as though I was some guarantor of fairness the officials held a ballot up to me and asked: “Paul?” I nodded, and did not resist. I felt it was futile to resist against such force.
But later I would hear that in the provinces some had dared to dissent, that in parts of the country – known for having resisted orders to kill during the genocide – only 10% of the people had voted for the president. The mayors in those areas had panicked, worried they would lose their positions, and ensured that the ballots were altered. Now the question was whether they could make sure no one would pass on the truth to the president. The source of this information was someone in the election commission.
The results were exactly as Moses [a colleague and a survivor of Rwanda’s 1994 genocide, who helped organise journalism classes] had predicted a month before. He had told me that it had been decided: the president would receive 93%, the next candidates 5%, and the remainder split between the others. The Intore dancers were summoned and put on a gigantic celebration in the stadium. Thousands attended. More Intore made the rounds in each neighbourhood. In the dark valley below my house I heard the screams – raw, brutal – until almost dawn.
If some websites and stories even slightly criticised the election, the Intore immediately logged comments ridiculing and denouncing the authors, and saying that their lives in Rwanda were happy. They wrote vehement letters to newspapers defending the president and his victory – and always gave their full names, so they could be seen for this loyalty. They knew the president’s office was watching.
By the end of the election the old guard of journalists had been done away with: killed, jailed, exiled or converted
The oppression was obvious to those with experience. A Russian UN worker I met three days after he arrived, when I asked what he thought of the country, said at once that it reminded him of the Soviet Union. He had noticed the tone of the newspapers. Another woman I met had grown up in Yugoslavia, under the dictator Tito, and just moved here. She had not known about the nature of the government – the international press was so positive. But after meeting some government officials she came home, sat down her British husband and said to him: “You have to be very careful what you say in this country.” Her husband had been oblivious. She told me it had been the way people spoke, their mannerisms, something about it all; she could sense the repression.And having grown up in a dictatorship myself, in Dubai, I knew all too well what signs she was referring to; it was sometimes intangible; one felt it, but it caused a kind of terror; one felt weak.
By the end of the election the old guard of news journalists had been done away with: killed, imprisoned, exiled or, by fear, converted into Intore. There was a surge of youngsters who took their positions; we also started to get them in our class. A number of them were the children of reporters once immensely respected in the country – for having dared to speak out during the genocide or having survived imprisonment and torture by the previous government. Some of their parents had been killed for confronting the repression.
I recognised some of these young journalists from the president’s polling station. They were the new superstars. Rising to prominence easily, many had been offered jobs at popular radio stations. They were sent by their editors to gain skills at our programme. But they were difficult to teach: they did not want to listen, talked incessantly about themselves and their families, and they demanded respect from their interviewees. The talent and intellect were not there, but without even the spirit of the journalist there was little that could be done.
I felt we were wasting our time in the programme. But Moses said that he would try to find more deserving students. I felt sad for him and thought he was unable to or did not want to see the truth of our situation – that we were sinking. There was also the growing problem of money. With the dates approaching for the termination of our grants, we started to slow down the programme and think of ways to scale back. It seemed senseless to waste precious funds on undeserving students. I preferred to be dormant for a while. Moses said it would be a travesty if we ran out of money and had to close.
And then Moses was sent for by the president’s office. It happened while he was at the hospital, receiving treatment. His leg had started to hurt again – the leg the security services had tortured for hours by beating the sole of his foot with a wooden baton; it had permanently weakened his bones and he had started to take repeated absences from the programme because of it. The bureaucrats working for the president told him to report the next day and gave him no reason.
[In the] morning at the office we waited impatiently for news. The presidency was the central node of power in the country, the seat of almost every command that was sent out to the people. Like a fortress, hidden by trees, only the most powerful people entered its compound. It wasn’t without reason that they called in someone, particularly an elderly man. We feared the worst. But Moses returned. He was shaken. It wasn’t what we had imagined – he had not been threatened or beaten. An aide to the president had asked him to fill out a lengthy form with his family history. They were going to recruit Moses as a spy.
He was to be deployed against his family, some of whom had fled the country and were intellectuals in the Rwandan communities in Europe and America. His task would be to befriend these aunts, uncles, cousins and nephews and report on them to the government services.
It was possible that the authorities had caught on to his activities at our programme. Sending dissidents for work abroad was a way to neutralise them. The same had happened to General Kayumba, who had been made ambassador to India. But here they were inflicting a double punishment on Moses by asking him to turn on those who trusted him.
I had never seen the man in such a state. The leg still pained [him] intensely – the nerves were almost burning, he said – and he would make his way from one chair to another, clutching his calf, and the armrests. “I’m not sure,” he told me in a moment of respite. “If you take these jobs you are damned. They use you and then dispose of you. But if you don’t take the job you are damned. They see you as disloyal to the president.”
I sent Moses home in a taxi – Claude, the driver who sometimes offered us a free lift, was not far and came at once – so he could rest. He was moaning in the car. He would have to find some way out of his predicament.
I met Roger [a Rwandan journalist who had approached me for help], on the office premises. But we were in the garden, away from the main building. The white flowers on the guava tree were beginning to turn into fruit – tiny green bud-like structures, many dozens of them on a single stalk, covering it like pimples. The tree reminded me of Gibson [one of our students].
Roger said that the ministry officials were trying to talk him out of his reporting. But he had challenged them to take him to court. “They tell me the law is only for use on their enemies,” he said. “They want us to reach an amicable settlement. How can I do that? I have to insist on the law, so that any favour they grant me becomes a right for all our citizens. But they want to separate and isolate us, so we depend on them for favours, for our lives and for our freedom.”
The grenade attacks had continued. There was still no proof of who was responsible for the blasts. Roger said that the army had recently taken Kayumba’s brother, immobilised him, and placed him at one of the likely sites of a bombing. They had told him: “Tonight you will die because of your brother.”
I wanted to check on Gibson . He had returned to Rwanda and was living with his family, who did not want him at home, for fear that the government might come after them all. Gibson had stopped writing entirely. It was too dangerous; he felt it was better that he keep a low profile and stay at home as much as he could. We agreed that it was dangerous for us to meet. I felt artificially separated from him, that he was close by but painfully distant. He said he was going to turn to the family fields and work as a farmer. After this, he started a strange kind of communication with me. My phone would ring once but he would cut the line so it sounded like a beep. On the first occasion I immediately returned his call, but he did not answer. I grew worried.
The following evening he beeped me again. And these squeals of the telephone every couple of evenings, before I went to bed, became somehow reassuring. I would recognise his number and feel pleased. They became little signals of affection, a way for Gibson to communicate that he was surviving. I began to wait expectantly for these beeps from the young journalist who had renounced his work.
Roger called in a panic. The government had finally made good on its threats. His room had been broken into – he said the security services had come at night. All his information had been stolen. Fortunately, he had been away.
I went to his hotel at once. He was standing at the scene, breathing heavily, and alert. His figure and his muscles were taut, and his eyes darted between the hotel staff, me and his belongings. Unlike Gibson, this man seemed to want revenge; the government’s attack seemed to arouse his anger. The door to his room had a hole in it, punched through the wood next to the handle. The bed had been raised against a table and the mattress lifted. His laptop had not been taken, but he said that it had been hacked into – the hard-drive password had been reset – and all its contents copied. The hotel was asking him to pay for a new door.
Just days earlier he had published a story about the president firing a senior official. The official had posed with the president for a photo on a foreign state visit, and this photo was then printed the next day in several newspapers. The president was furious. He was sensitive about subordinates acting important. Roger had found a source in a high-ranking military meeting at which the president had vented his anger, and warned his staff never to become so pretentious as to be photographed with him, as this woman had. “In our families no one should think they are heroes.” He was the sole hero.
The story also revealed something more important but subtle. The genocide had been triggered in 1994 by the assassination of the previous president, whose plane had been shot down. Kagame had always denied attacking his enemy’s plane – he was responsible for ending the genocide, not for sparking it. Yet when the woman in the photograph had recently been arrested in Europe for being involved in the [attack] (she was released after intense diplomatic pressure), she had not expressed frustration with the Europeans for wrongly accusing her. She had started to behave as if the president owed her a favour. “Did I shoot the plane to be jailed?” she had asked the president months before the photo incident – and the president had narrated this at the private meeting. But he had not fired her then.
Roger said the security services had come after him for reporting this military meeting, which reached deep within the government to sources that had access to the president himself. I was impressed. But Roger was worried about something else. In the raid on his room he had lost sensitive information that he had been collecting.
Roger had discovered that the president had set off a campaign to transform the country [and] that [it] was not being reported in the press. There had been an order to remain silent about what was happening. The president had taken control of the narrative in public spaces. His power was now absolute. Roger wanted to reveal this programme.
It was necessary, he said, rapping on his broken door, that the people be able to discuss the actions of the government, and that the state not be able to act as it pleased, completely unchecked. Given the tragic history of this country this was doubly vital. Even if the state thought it was doing good, Roger insisted, that was perhaps the most dangerous kind of policy, and where the journalist was most necessary.
I felt it also made sense that Roger leave the capital, for his safety. He agreed, and suggested that he take me along so we could verify what was happening. Roger had various leads; there was apparently a place where officials had filled an entire school with people; it evoked scenes from the genocide. His only concern was whether we should travel together. A foreigner would attract attention. I told Roger I wanted to see the president’s programme.
He said we would go south. I hauled plastic covers over the computers the journalists had used in our classroom, to protect the machines from the dust. I pulled out the plugs from the wall sockets, as a precaution against sudden surges of current.
Moses was preoccupied, trying to dodge the security services and treating his leg. We were going to suspend the programme. I pulled curtains over all the windows and shut the office doors, leaving the rooms in darkness, pulling all the latches firmly and securing them with heavy brass locks. I felt the pain of a last haven for journalists in the country closing to them. This had at least been a place where they could come and talk. I looked in the classroom one last time, the long hall, the whiteboard, a few handouts that I had written up and printed stacked on the table, some scribbles of the students in the room’s corners, on the floor. I imagined their faces around the table. I drew the last curtain.
Extracted from Bad News: Last Journalists in a Dictatorship, by Anjan Sundaram, published by Bloomsbury, £16.99 . Click here to order a copy for £13.59
1962 Rwanda becomes independent from Belgium and Hutu Grégoire Kayibanda becomes president, while fighting continues and thousands of Tutsi leave the country.
1990 The Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a military movement established by Tutsi refugees in Uganda, invades Rwanda, thereby starting the Rwandan civil war.
1993 A peace accord between the RPF and Hutu president Juvénal Habyarimana is signed after months of negotiation, yet there is continued unrest.
Apr 1994 Habyarimana and Burundian president Cyprien Ntaryamira die when their plane is shot down near Kigali airport (it is never established who is responsible). Extremist Hutu militia and Rwanda’s military begin the organised killing of Tutsi, marking the start of the Rwandan genocide. An estimated 800,000 people are killed in 100 days.
July 1994 The RPF captures Kigali and declares a ceasefire, marking the end of the genocide. More than 2 million Rwandans, mostly Hutu, flee to neighbouring Zaire (now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo).
Nov 1994 The UN Security Council establishes the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) to oversee prosecution of suspects involved in genocide, and announces its first indictments the following year.
1996 Repatriation from Zaire begins while the Rwandan government begins hearing cases for those involved in the genocide. By 2000 there would be over 100,000 suspects awaiting trial.
2000 Vice-president Paul Kagame is elected as Rwanda’s new president.
Feb 2007 8,000 prisoners accused of genocide are released from prison. Since 2003, an estimated 60,000 suspects have been freed to ease overcrowding.
2015 The ICTR holds its last trials, having convicted 93 people.
Dec 2015 More than 90% of Rwandan voters agree to modify the constitution by removing the presidential two-term limit, potentially allowing Kagame to rule until 2034.
1 Jan 2016 Kagame announces he will stand for a third term in 2017.
Criminal Paul Kagame
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