[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), mass-arrests and mass-murder by the RPF criminal organization.
So long as justice and accountability for RPF past and current crimes are ignored and delayed, Peace and Stability will remain illusive and impossible in Rwanda=>ASIF]
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Yesterday, Lydia, doing undergraduate research in Rwanda wrote on her blog:
“His picture is EVERYWHERE – on bumper-stickers, framed on the walls of offices and classrooms, printed on pins, t-shirts, mugs, etc”
The same day we read at Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza’s facebook page:
“Yesterday Saturday, the police raided Mrs Victoire Ingabire residence following two FDU party reprentatives for Kicukiro and Nyarugenge. The policed searched these men and found 35 t-shirts with writings “We Want Democracy” and “We Want True Justice” in their vehicle. The Rwandan police arrested the Party Representatives as if wearing or carrying t-shirts with such words is an unlawful protest. “
His picture is EVERYWHERE – on bumper-stickers, framed on the walls of offices and classrooms, printed on pins, t-shirts, mugs, etc“
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The European sponsorship of Rwanda Elections shows clearly how the international community is out to solve the crucial problem of Rwanda. No one should ignore worries caused by the question of democracy in Rwanda , mostly based on the tag of war between Hutu (85%) and Tutsi (14%), a tag of war which has not yet got a solution, up to now it continues to be a barrier to all plans of peace and stability in the central region of Africa.That same day Louise Mushikiwabo, Rwanda Foreign Minister, gets a free ride in Newsweek by Ryan Tracy, in that context Ann Garrison writes:
“Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza is being evicted from the second house she rented in Kigali City since January because both landlords have received death threats for renting to her.” (Ann Garrison)
A statement by the President of the Atlantic Council, Frederick Kempe at a meeting in Washington called “Democracy and Genocide Denial Politics” (which sole purpose was to legitimize the election rigging in Rwanda and at which obviously only representatives of the Rwandan government were invited) explains why:
“There are those who seek to deny that a genocide ever happened in Rwanda. There are others who blame the present government for starting the genocide by acts of provocation and conspiracy. There are still others who believe that there was a double genocide in Rwanda. Denials of genocide did not begin in Rwanda. They have been a staple of a particular strain of thought in Europe for the last half century. “
This statement is first of all an insult to Holocaust survivors, while it uses their memory to cast a doubt of “genocide denail” on serious investigations (concerning RPF crimes in Congo, but also Michael Hourigan’s investigation concerning the terrorist attack on the plane carrying the Presidents of Rwanda and Burundi in 1994) and rulings by the ICTR, indictments by judges in Spain and France, as Michael Hourigan, a former UN investigator and prosecutor at the ICTR briefly summarizes:
“There is overwhelming credible evidence suggesting prima facie that Paul Kagame and his armed forces were involved in slaughter of many thousands of civilians in Rwanda in 1994 and 1995. There is significant credible evidence on the public record linking President Kagame with the shooting down of the Rwandan presidential aircraft in 1994 killing the Presidents of Rwanda and Burundi and all others on board.”
Secondly, the meeting did not even leave room for the view summarized by Chi Mgbako, a clinical associate professor of law and director of the Walter Leitner International Human Rights Clinic at Fordham Law School in New York City:
“The Rwandan government uses charges of “genocidal ideology” and “ethnic divisionism” to attack independent critics and often seems more concerned with political survival than with lasting reconciliation, manipulating the memory of the genocide for political gain.”
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I am convinced people, especially in the US political establishment, who have uncritically supported Paul Kagame’s regime for 15 years, have a hard time waking up to reality these days. They feel guilt and shame because their emotional and shallow reaction to Rwanda’s genocide has for so long obscured their sound judgement. I predict that some will never admit that they were at least partly wrong (and will continue to search for lame excuses like Frederick Kempe is trying), while others will follow the crowd and claim they “allways knew Paul Kagame was a shady character”.It takes courage and political leadership to admit that serious mistakes were made and that the respected gentleman from Texas, former Ambassador to Burundi and US Senator, Robert Krueger, was right all along when he wrote:
“I can tell you, I first met Paul Kagame in August of 1994. I went to his office. He was vice president then. I wrote down basically my impressions from then I said, as long as this man is the chief executive of the country, there will never be real democracy. “
It takes courage at the State Department and the Pentagon to engage in serious selfreflection concerning, as Robert Krueger, wrote in his book “From bloodshed to hope in Burundi”:
“How U.S. military leaders had become so enamored of Paul Kagame I could not fully fathom….I was appalled that these skills had so successfully overshadowed his obvious preference for dictatorship over democracy, and his tolerance, or perhaps appetite, for vengeful ethnic slaugheter, yet he was invited to the United States to be feted at the Pentagon. In time, I was sure that the truth about the RPA would come out. But how many lives would be lost, how much suffering endured, how much fear and despair would be borne in the interim?”
Considering the State Department recent involvement, through one of their policy planning staffers, in a one-sided simplistic propaganda campaign for Paul Kagame by Deborah Scranton at the Tribeca festival, I am honestly not optimistic.
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
