Saturday, March 20, 2010 8:04 AM
Geoffrey York
[Since 1994, the world witnesses the horrifying Tutsi minority (14%) ethnic domination, the Tutsi minority ethnic rule, tyranny and corruption in Rwanda. The current government has been characterized by the total impunity of RPF criminals, the Tutsi economic monopoly, the Tutsi militaristic domination with an iron hand, and the brutal suppression of the rights of the majority of the Rwandan people (85% are Hutus), and mass-arrests and mass-murder by the RPF criminal organization.=> ASIF]
With an election looming in a few months, Rwanda’s authoritarian government has made an astounding claim: democracy leads directly to genocide.
Any independent newspaper would struggle for survival in such an environment, but the government has further squeezed Mr. Gasana by prohibiting public agencies from advertising in his newspaper. Only one private company – along with some foreign embassies and organizations – is daring to advertise in the weekly. He estimates that his total advertising revenue is barely $300 a month.
“It’s part of a broader pattern of intimidating us, silencing us and suffocating us financially,” he says. “I try to shrug it off. But the situation is getting more tense as the election approaches.”
In the last election in 2003, President Kagame claimed to have captured the election with nearly 95 per cent of the vote. This year the election will be even more lopsided, Mr. Gasana says. “People are afraid to make themselves heard. We are far from having a free election.”
People like Mr. Gasana are crucial to the country’s future if Rwandans want to learn the truth about the shadowy events that drive the political agenda here. In recent weeks, Rwanda has been shaken by a series of mysterious grenade blasts and the equally mysterious defection of a former army commander who fled to South Africa. The government was quick to blame the defector for the grenade blasts. But the reporting by Mr. Gasana suggests another possible explanation.
Mr. Gasana was at the scene of the first grenade blast within minutes of the explosion. An eyewitness told him that a man on a motorcycle had flung a grenade and raced on.
The witness also noticed a police car parked nearby. Instead of following the motorcycle, the police car drove off in a different direction, the witness told Mr. Gasana.
Although he cannot prove it, he believes there is a possibility that the grenade attacks were orchestrated by state intelligence agencies to justify a crackdown on electoral politics. It’s an uncomfortable question, but without the independent media in Rwanda there would be nobody to raise such questions.
© Africa Diary
The Truth can be buried and stomped into the ground where none can see, yet eventually it will, like a seed, break through the surface once again far more potent than ever, and Nothing can stop it. Truth can be suppressed for a “time”, yet It cannot be destroyed. ==> Wolverine
