Supporters March for Peter Erlinder – Demonstrations to demand Peter Erlinder’s Release from Rwanda

Published : Tuesday, 08 June 2010, 9:23 PM CDT

■ He’s accused of revisionism, revising history. Peter Erlinder years before found mountains of documentation at the UN about Rwanda’s history. He read them and discovered that the history of Rwanda is the history that’s told in the documents.
■ He actually found that there was a civil war going on there for 4 years preceding the last 3 months when the alleged genocide took place.
■ The civil war was the causation of the genocide. By doing this work, he encountered the wrath of the Rwandan government.

■ He was trying to help the defense of an opposition presidential candidate Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza, who was arrested for “denying the genocide” and when Peter Erlinder arrived in Rwanda, he was arrested on the same charge.
■ Rwanda President Paul Kagame has discredited presidential candidate Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza.

■ We don’t know in the US, what’s really going on in Rwanda. The US is supporting Kagame’s war in the East Congo, the war is being fought over minerals and rights to minerals.
■ Those minerals are used in cell phones.

■ Help Peter Erlinder: Contact the US State Department and urge them to take an active role.
■ Rwanda President Paul Kagame put 7 people on a list of those he would like to see assassinated, Peter Erlinder was on that list.

SAINT PAUL, Minn. –  Erlinder, a human rights attorney has represented unpopular causes and clients, including one FOX 9 interviewed in March of 2009. 20 years ago, Elsie Mayard met Professor Erlinder. She says Erlinder was there when nobody else would help her.
“He mean the whole world to me because of how much he cared what happened to me because he protected my constitutional rights,” said Mayard.

Appearing weak in court on Monday, a Rwandan judge denied bail for Erlinder who is charged with denying Rwanda’s 1994 genocide. Erlinder was in the country helping with the legal defense of an opposition leader, who wants to run for president.
Bruce Nestor of the National Lawyers Guild says Erlinder’s prosecution threatens the ability of all attorneys to defend their clients.

“I’m afraid it looks like this is not something that’s going to be over in the near term but is going to require our long term work and effort to bring peter back here to the twin cities,” said Nestor.

In Minnesota, Senator Amy Klobuchar says they are working hard to bring him home.

“We have been pushing to have an expedited hearing so that he can at least be out on bail and at best be able to go home to his family. His wife and daughter and that’s what we’ve been working on,” said Klobuchar.

In the run up to the national election, the administration of Rwandan president Paul Kagame has engaged in increasing repressive tactics including shutting down independent media and jailing opposition candidates and their supporters under a vague charge of “genocide ideology”­the same charge Professor Erlinder is now accused of.
The “Genocide Ideology Law” is vaguely worded, requires no link to any genocidal act, and can be used to criminalize a wide range of legitimate forms of expression. Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and even the U.S. State Department have denounced it as a tool of political repression. The Kagame administration has used it widely to target political opponents.The Obama administration has done little to address Professor Erlinder’s situation. The state department and US embassy have referred to this incident as “a local matter.” This is because the US backs the Kagame regime.

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