Wednesday 4 March 2015

President Paul Kagame's Toxic Behaviour At The National Leadership Retreat Proves He Is Not Fit For Office



President Paul Kagame's Toxic Behaviour At The National Leadership Retreat Proves He Is Not Fit For Office

March 1, 2015
Addressing Rwandan leaders that included Chief Justice, President of the Senate, Speaker of Parliament, Prime Minister, Cabinet Ministers and other officials attending the National Leadership Retreat, President Paul Kagame declared them all useless.
Shockingly, the President stated: "Everybody has become like the other - the killers of yesterday and the liberators of yesterday...full of self-importance and doing nothing for this country that has suffered so much."
According to Kagame, he is the only one left to save Rwanda. Were it possible he would even "take arms and fight" against the current non-performing and corrupt system that he himself created.
In most bizarre moment of the retreat, the Ugandan journalist Andrew Mwenda tried to rescue Rwandan leaders from Kagame by listing all the good things that Rwanda has supposedly achieved - including his extraordinary claim that Rwanda has a better healthcare system than even the united States of America.
Kagame then turned on Mwenda: "I really don't like your comments. You can reserve them for your Independent newspaper. You write them and I will read them there."
Somebody please remind Kagame that:
• He is the builder of the current system since 1994.
• He is the appointing authority of all the officials he is now cursing.
• He is their chief executive officer; chief operational officer, and chief financial officer.
• He is therefore in denial of his total failure.
Taking full responsibility, accountability and consequences for poor performance is important. But to turn to public humiliation as a method to change behavior belongs to dark ages whether it is with a 12 year old child or a 60-something Chief Justice of a nation. Frank discussion or showdown behind closed doors is understandable. But public humiliation?
No logic, rationalizations, or excuses make it OK for what the Rwandan President has done. His toxic behavior makes it clear that is not fit to govern. The date March 1, 2015, will be remembered for marking yet another low point in Rwanda's descent into a single big man syndrome.

Article by Dr David Himbara

Monday 2 March 2015

AMAGANYA YA DOGITERI MAGANYA: ATI MURI REPUBURIKA NTA KIGENDA!

AMAGANYA YA DOGITERI MAGANYA: ATI MURI REPUBURIKA NTA KIGENDA!

Kagame yaje mu mwiherero amaze kwica Rwigara, Kayitare, Dr. Gasakure, amaze gukatira Kizito na bagenzi be, aza kwidegembya nagasuzuguro kenshi imbere yabo yagize infungwa ze. Aravuga ko mu butegetsi bwe ntakigenda kandi ko bimaze imyaka 12! None se indi manda arashaka iyiki? Kuki se umwiherero utaganira kubyubwicanyi bwe cyangwa demokarasi mu gihugu, abanyepolitike bafunze cyangwa impunzi? None abo abaza bamusubiza bate abamubwije ukuri ko abica, akabafunga, cyangye bagahunga akazabatsinda yo?
Mwiyumvire irimuva mu kanwa, ibyo ashyira ku bandi yakabyibajije:
"...Kubwirwa incuro cumi nebyiri nti wumva uba ufite ikibazo. Mbere yo gutangira umwiherero abantu baba batekereza gutaha. Ndifuza uwampakanya. Tuza hano kubahiriza umuhango gusa. Prove to me that I am wrong and I will be happy. Ndabategereje. You have no time to think seriously, you are good for nothing. I am not capable of changing people. You talk too much, nobody owns up, and you do little or nothing. You cannot answer the most important question, and it is all of us. Murasiganya nde? Your country is too small for anybody to be interested in your mess. You have nothing to offer. Ndabahishira simbabwira uko mu meze. Aba Ministri muzi ko muri ibitangaza kandi murutwa nabaturage. Are you listening abari kuri camera ko mbuna muri muri za tweet mureba hasi. It is a shame. The young, the old and those who think they know everything. It does not matter how much education you have, it was wasted money. Listen to those who criticize you and less to those who praise you. I sound angry but I am allowed to be. We deceive ourselves that we are very good because we are better than the worst. Murirata ngo mufite abo muruta? Ibibazo nitwe tub itera system...."
Kagame wakweguye ko bigaragara ko unaniwe! Ni hahandi nutegura kandi uvuga ko system yawe nta ngufu namba isigaranye uru rugamba rugusatira uzamanika amaboko, urugwemo, cyangwa uhungire mu baza gushyira mu nkiko mpuzamahanga? Hitamo. Agapfa kaburiwe ni mpongo.

Sunday 1 March 2015

BBC rejects Rwanda criticism over genocide documentary

BBC rejects Rwanda criticism over genocide documentary

March 1, 2015 9:08 AM

London (AFP) - The BBC on Sunday strongly rejected findings by Rwandan investigators that it had broken the country's law on genocide denial with a documentary on the 1994 massacres screened last year in Britain. 
Paul Kagame
The British broadcaster said it was "extremely disappointed" by the conclusions of a probe led by former Rwandan top prosecutor Martin Ngoga, and said it stood by its journalism.
"Rwanda, The Untold Story" questioned official versions of the genocide that left about 800,000 people dead, and highlighted criticism over Rwandan President Paul Kagame's alleged role in events.
The programme revived allegations that Kagame's Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) -- then a rebel group, now the ruling political party -- was behind the downing of a plane carrying the country's Hutu president at the time, an event that triggered the genocide against primarily Tutsi victims.
In the findings published on Saturday, Ngoga urged the Rwandan government to take action against the BBC and ban its radio programmes from the country's airwaves.
"We are extremely disappointed by the findings of this commission," a BBC spokeswoman said.
"While we do not yet know the full implications for the BBC in Rwanda, we stand by our right to produce the independent journalism which has made us the world's most trusted news source."
She said complaints about the programme, produced in London and shown on the BBC2 television channel in October, were going through a "robust" editorial review process.
"This process has not yet concluded but the provisional findings are that the documentary does not breach the BBC's editorial standards," she said.
"We strongly reject any suggestion that any part of this documentary constitutes genocide denial."
Ngoga contended the BBC had "abused press freedom and free speech, violated its own editorial guidelines (and) transgressed journalistic standards."
He recommended that Rwanda "initiate criminal and civil process to deal with identified offences."
He also advised Rwanda to terminate the agreement that allows the BBC to broadcast on the country's airwaves. BBC radio services in the local Kinyarwanda language have been blocked since the programme was broadcast.
Prominent international academics, experts and diplomats have also accused the BBC of being "recklessly irresponsible" by allegedly promoting a revisionist account of the genocide in the documentary, notably by questioning the number of Tutsis killed.
The head of Rwanda's Utilities Regulatory Authority (RURA) said regulators would carefully study the results of the probe before deciding the best course of action.
Source: Yahoo News

Saturday 28 February 2015

Rwanda Budget Revision - Shortfall In Revenue Collection, Reduced Aid Donations, And More Debt

Rwanda Budget Revision - Shortfall In Revenue Collection, Reduced Aid Donations, And More Debt

February 28, 29015
As the CEO of Rwanda, President Paul Kagame, begins his lecture to a fearful gathering at the annual retreat 2015, he should not overlook the Revised Budget tabled by the Minister of Finance in Parliament on February 25, 2015.
President Paul Kagame
The budget is bad news: 1) Revenue collection has fallen short of 2014 estimates, 2) donors are less generous, and so the regime 3) is turning to more and more debt.
Here are a few highlights from the revised budget.
• Overall the 2014/2015 budget has increased from RwF 1753.3 billion to RWF 1759.6 billion - equivalent to US$2.5 billion.
• Tax revenue estimates have fallen short by RwF 12.2 billion from RwF 906.8 billion to RwF 894.6 billion - equivalent to US$1.3 billion.
• Donor grants have shrunk from the original estimate of RWF 544.8 billion (US$788 million) to RWF 414.4 billion - equivalent of US$600 million. Donors in other words are giving the regime less than originally anticipated by US$188 million.
• Total loans have been raised from RWF 122.8 billion to RwF 212.6 billion - equivalent to US$ 307 million.
Kagame's economic lion is proving to be a mouse. Let us hope the retreat is not the usual posturing and phraseology, and instead addresses substantive matters by first acknowledging the difficulty situation facing Rwanda.
Article by Dr David Himbara

Monday 17 November 2014

The problem in Rwanda is not President Paul Kagame - the problem is us Rwandans




Let us revisit Joseph de Maistre's famous statement that "Every country has the government it deserves (Toute nation a le gouvernement qu’elle mérite") written way back on 15 August 1811.
Rwandans inside and outside Rwanda must accept that we get regimes we deserve.
You may say that you had nothing to do with bringing the current one to power, and that therefore you don't deserve it. But the Rwandan character of conformity, blind obedience, and fear of authority is the mother of the problem.
As we all know conformity in Rwandan culture runs very deep. In Rwandan history, from Rwabugiri era, Kanjogera, Musinga, Rudahingwa, Kayibanda, Habyarimana, and Kagame, every Rwandan obeys powerholders as if they were gods. Rwandan people worship, obey, and fear power than even our cousins next door in Burundi if you realize how they dare debate issues that are taboo in Rwanda.

By coincidence there were recently demonstrations in Rwanda and Burkina Faso.

In the Rwandan demonstrations, Kagame regime simply rounded people, and like zombies, they matched on the streets to denounce a BBC documentary they probably had not even watched.
In Burkina Faso, citizens stopped a regime to carry out a constitutional coup d'etat by changing the constitution that would have allowed a dictator to hold onto power.





Meanwhile Rwandans, even those overseas, are hiding under their beds fearful of the dictatorship in their homeland hoping and waiting for a miracle to end the regime in Kigali.
And you wonder why nations get rulers they deserve! All of us look in the mirror and whisper to yourself what you see.......

Source: David Himbara


President Paul Kagame's mirage railway in back - surprise!

11 Nov 2014


Kagame says his global-trotting between 18 August and 7 November that begun with Rwanda Day in Atlanta, USA and ended in New Delhi is about mobilizing resources. For nearly three months? He has now claimed that top of his agenda is to bring railways to Rwanda - that is what he is hunting for in his global travels.
But hold on...it is important to draw lessons from Kagame's history on the mirage rail in Rwanda before prematurely celebrating that he is looking for resources to build it by 2018.
Here is the gentleman's record:
* Early 2000s, President Paul Kagame moots the idea of building a rail line linking Rwanda to the Tanzanian rail network to the Indian Ocean port of Dar es Salaam; He sees Burundi as part of the plan;
* 2005-2006 – Kagame persuades the African Development Bank (AfDB) to co-finance the survey of the rail route that would link Isaka, Tanzania to Kigali/Bujumbura; AfDB was to have covered 90%, with Rwanda and Tanzania covering 10%;
* 2007 – a leading American rail builder and operator, Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF), is recruited by the Rwandan President to assess the viability of the project;
* 2008 – United States Trade and Development Agency (USTDA) funds early investment analysis on a proposed upgrade to the Dar es Salaam to Isaka Railway; BNSF conducts an investment analysis; http://www.ustda.gov/…/Sub…/Tanzania/TanzaniaRail_111908.asp

* 2008 - President Kikwete announces that construction of the railway would begin in 2008, supported by BNSF; http://www.afrika.no/Detailed/16049.html

* 2009 – Kagame government confirms that not only is BNSF’s design of the rail already advanced, potential inventors to finance the project were already found.
* 2010-2011– The rail is forgotten;
* 2013 - Kagame announces he will hit Kikwete at the right time;
2014 - Presidents Kenyatta, Museveni and Kagame announce the Kigali-Kampala-Mombasa rail - Kikwete dumped.
Here we are in 2014, and President Kagame is claiming that among the reasons he is global-trotting is to find money to build a railway! Would he find rail builders/investors in Altanta? In Abu Dhabi? Busan, Korea? Jakarta, Indonesia? New Delhi?
Don’t bank on any of these half-cooked and hasty pronouncements about building railways in Rwanda by 2018. This mirage will go the same way as Kagame’s Kigali-Dar lunatic express – dead things that are permanently on the drawing board.

Source: David Himbara

When rulers take citizens for fools

14 Nov 2014




After a three month global-trotting, President Paul Kagame is now sharing with the citizens the good news of what he achieved, including the railroad. Mr and Mrs Kagame seem to be pleased - the cheering crowd is a sign of love and popularity.

Is that so?

Take a closer look at the cheering crowd in this photo. These are school children bussed in for the occasion.
These are the games played when rulers take citizens for fools. Citizens are never fools though - they merely play survival games. They attend these political rallies because the police state is watching via Nyumba Kumi.


By: David Himbara

President Kagame's enormous power and wealth can't buy him what he needs most....

16 Nov 2014











1. Peace of Mind. Look at this photograph of Kagame at Kirehe, Eastern Province. For a gentleman who says he is powerful and popular, he needs a whole army battalion to "protect" him from citizens...This is hardly a sign of having a peace of mind.
2. Sanity and happiness. Power and wealth are not by themselves cure-all against an ill-led life that include physical elimination of compatriots.Executive jets, expensive hotels, and trips to American, European and Asian capitals do not increase Kagame's sanity and happiness. To the contrary....
3. Friendship. No amount of power, status, or wealth can compensate for a life devoid of genuine friends. With Blaise Compaore, Burkina Faso dictator, overthrown, the only head of state Kagame may call a friend is Uganda's Yoweri Museveni.

Source: David Himbara

President Kagame's announcement of soon-to-be Rwanda railway took me back to 1896!

16 Nov 2014



Why 1896? That is the year Kanjogera consolidated her power having conspired to murder the newly-installed ruler Rutarindwa who was burnt alive with his entire family and followers.
But the year 1896 has greater significance in the broader East Africa. That is when the building of the original 600-mile length of Uganda-Kenya Railway begun, linking the interior to the coast .
Enter Kagame, who happens to be a nephew of Kanjogera.
Whether Kagame is aware or not, when he announced the Rwandan railway on his recent rallies, we are two years short of celebrating the 120th year since the arrival of the railway in East Africa. Sadly, we are also two years short of commemorating the rise of Kanjogera and the mass murder she unleashed from 1896 onwards.
This raises a question: will Kagame be remembered for bringing a railroad to Rwanda, or for mass murder like his grand aunt Kanjogera? One thing is for sure....no one, not even Kagame can hide from history. For those unable to speculate the answer, history will in due course confirm Kagame's legacy.

Source: David Himbara

How much aid has Rwanda received since 1994?


James B from Kigali wants to know how much aid Rwanda has received since 1994. To answer this question, let us first understand the definitions of "aid." The term "official development assistance" (ODA) describes:
1. Loans made on concessional terms, meaning, loans that do not bear any interest or a rate of interest that is below the average cost;
2. Grants are non-repayable funds made by donor nations or by multilateral agencies to recipient countries;
3. Loans with a grant element of at least 25 percent discount.
The following are annual ODA (in US$) that Rwanda has received from 1994 to 2013. It is evident that ODA to Rwanda steadily increased from $335 million in 2003 to $1.2 billion in 2011 before sharply being reduced to $878 million in 2013, and further declining to $661 million in 2013.
The sharp reduction of ODA to Rwanda in 2012 and 2013 mark the period when donors cut or suspended aid to Rwanda in protest of the Kagame government sponsorship of M23 in DR Congo. The data below showing the year and the amount of ODA Rwanda received is from the World Bank:
1994 -....711,750,000
1995 -....694,700,000
1996 -....465,310,000
1997 -....229,670,000
1998 -....350,070,000
1999 -....373,080,000
2000 -....321,460,000
2001 -....304,880,000
2002 -....362,920,000
2003 -....335,240,000
2004 -....490,110,000
2005 -....577,400,000
2006 -....603,070,000
2007 -....722,570,000
2008 -....933,510,000
2009 -....933,590,000
2010 - 1,032,200,000
2011 - 1,264,000,000
2012 -....878,990,000
2013 -....661,428,571
Rwanda has clearly received substantial aid of over $12 billion in 20 years, making the country the biggest per capita ODA recipient in East Africa. Rwanda ODA capita was in 2012, $77; Kenya, $61; Tanzania, $59; Burundi, $53, and Uganda, $49.

Source: David Himbara

Wednesday 16 July 2014

For Rwandan Man In Boston, New Arms Replace Those A Father Destroyed

By  June 30, 2014

Greig Martino fits a new prosthetic on Patrick Mbarushimana at the United Prosthetics workshop in Dorchester. (Jesse Costa/WBUR)

BOSTON — In the mid-1990s, following the Rwandan genocide, clashes between government forces and mostly Hutu rebels continued along the country’s border with then Zaire. One day, soldiers came to a mud brick home in a small village and questioned a father while his young son listened.
The father denied helping rebels, but the boy, then 6 years old, said yes, some men had slept in the house the night before. The soldiers took the father away.
When the father returned a day later, “he said that he’s going to do something that I won’t forget,” recalled Patrick Mbarushimana, now 22.
(Jesse Costa/WBUR)
The details of Patrick’s punishment are murky. In one story that circulated through his village, the father tied Patrick by the arms to a tree. Gangrene set in before he was released. In Patrick’s memory, his father started a fire and sat on him, with his bound arms facing the blaze until rope burned through to the bone.
Patrick says his father left him to die, but he ran away to the soldiers and told them what happened. The father was arrested.

“We heard shootings within that prison,” Patrick said in a soft voice. “Immediately [the soldier] brought us to the car, taking us to the hospital.”
The soldiers told Patrick they had killed his father because if they didn’t, he would kill others.
At the hospital, doctors amputated Patrick’s right arm just below the elbow and his left arm about four inches below the shoulder. Patrick was wandering the hospital halls when a producer with CNN, Ingrid Formanek, arrived looking for survivors of a recent massacre.
“He was dirty, he was soiled, he was jumping into bed at night with patients to keep warm,” Formanek recalled. “That night I called my husband, I was upset. I said this child, we gotta do something. I don’t know why this child and not another child, but anyway, he got to me.”
Formanek partnered with Tharcisse Karugarama, a lawyer she knew at the time. Karugarama, who later became Rwanda’s minister of justice, offered to give Patrick a home.
“I provided the emotional and psychological support,” Karugarama said. “She did everything else.”
Formanek paid for Patrick’s schooling and other expenses. She ordered a set of artificial arms through the mail when Patrick was younger. They didn’t work out, but Formanek and Karugarama never gave up.
‘This Is Incredibly Amazing’
“Now I can scratch,” Patrick said after being fitted with his new arm. “This is incredibly amazing.” (Jesse Costa/WBUR)
At United Prosthetics in Dorchester, Greig Martino, grandson of the company’s founder, pounds the final rivet into a new right forearm for Patrick as he waits downstairs. The prosthetic is a brown tube that ends in tong-like, curved hooks.
“Ooo,” Patrick says after sliding the soft flesh below his elbow into the socket. He stretches the arm out several times before raising it toward his face. “Now I can scratch. This is incredibly amazing.”
Both the right arm and the left will be held on with straps that loop around the opposite shoulder. Patrick pulls against the harness, using what’s left of his arm, underarm and back muscles to extend the artificial limb. As he extends, a cable that runs through the arm tightens, pulling open the two hooks.
Martino gets a laugh out of Patrick as he adjusts the fitting of his new left arm. (Jesse Costa/WBUR)
“Now can I hold you?” Patrick asks, reaching out to shake Martino’s hand. Martino obliges.
“Hello, sir,” Patrick says.
“Hello, sir,” Martino responds. “How are you?”
“Great,” Patrick says with a smile Martino returns.
A Public Disability 
Patrick is an accomplished artist. He plays soccer, sings and produces music, rides a bike, and swims. (Jesse Costa/WBUR)
The arms will change his life, Patrick says, although he’s surprisingly adept without them. He’s an accomplished artist, having learned to pick up a pencil with his lips and teeth, then place it between what’s left of his two arms. He plays soccer, sings and produces music, rides a bike, and swims.
Four of Patrick’s drawings. From left to right, Thabo Mbeki, Beyonce, Nelson Mandela and Akon
But he can’t go to the bathroom by himself, bathe or get dressed, and he’s tired of having such a public disability.
“People who sees me ask me very many questions,” Patrick says. “Others, they cry.”
“Maybe sometimes I will be able to put on shirts with long sleeves, so that people won’t know, unless they see the hook, that I don’t have arms,” Patrick says, adding that he’s not ashamed of how he looks.
Patrick will probably still need help with the buttons from 18-year-old Maurice Murenzi, who’s been Patrick’s constant companion for 16 years.
Maurice Murenzi, 18, right, assists Patrick with all tasks he is unable to do. (Jesse Costa/WBUR)

“Since I met him, we became brothers,” Murenzi says.
The boys came of age after the 1994 genocide, during which 800,000 Rwandans were killed. Most of the dead were Tutsi. Most of the killing was done by Hutus. Patrick and Maurice were adopted into a home that includes Tutsis and Hutus. The young men say tribal differences don’t matter in their relationship.
A Low-Tech Solution 
Patrick writes “I love you all” on a workbench at United Prosthetics as he tests out his new arm. (Jesse Costa/WBUR)
“You’re keeping your chest out, like this,” says Dr. Brendan Green, modeling the stance Patrick will use to move his new left arm. This fitting is tricky. Muscles around what’s left of the 4-inch limb haven’t been used in years.
A higher tech, more robotic arm might help, but those models require regular maintenance not available in Rwanda. So for Patrick, Dr. Green and the team at United Prosthetics went in the other direction.
“This is as low maintenance as it gets,” Green says. “This prosthesis, given all the spare parts that we will give him, will last 10 to 20 years.”
“Together we will do something greater to this world, me and you,” Patrick says to Green and Martino.
“We make good team?” Martino asks. Patrick nods. “All right, brother, it works,” Martino says.
Samantha Conley, an occupational therapist at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in Boston, helps Patrick get his shirt over his head. (Jesse Costa/WBUR)
Three days later, Patrick is at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in Boston. The Braintree-basedRay Tye Medical Aid Foundation is funding the $40,000 to $45,000 cost of Patrick’s prosthetics and rehab.
Patrick sits across a table from his occupational therapist, Samantha Conley. His black Manchester United soccer jersey lies between them.
“Can you put your head in first?” Conley asks.
Twenty minutes after he started, the shirt is stuck on Patrick’s head.
“This is a very great work,” Patrick says, breathing as if he’s just finished working out.
“Where are you?” Conley asks, laughing.
“I’m lost,” Patrick says, returning the laughter.
At the end of the appointment, Patrick, who’s produced a handful of songs and videos in Rwanda, delivers a gift for Conley.
“Can I rap for you?” he asks.
Patrick, holding a microphone with one hook hand, belts out “Dufatanye,” a song about “unity, let’s work together, as one.” Patrick uses the stage name Puzzle when he raps, because, he says, the whole picture of his life is not yet clear.
Rwanda has won praise since the genocide for bringing Tutsis and Hutus together to improve the country’s health and economic well-being. But a recent Human Rights Watch report raises concerns about an increase in what it says are politically motivated detentions and disappearances.
Patrick, an incidental peace ambassador, will be in Boston for a few more weeks, spreading his message of resilience and hope.
Source: Common Health

Rwanda: Acquitted but still not free

by

Beth S. Lyons

In February 2014, Lead Counsel Chief Charles A. Taku and I (with our defence team) won the acquittal of our client, Major F.X. Nzuwonemeye, former Commander of the Reconnaissance Battalion, Rwandan Army in April 1994, in the Ndindiliyimanaet al. (‘Military II’) case at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). The Appeals Chamber reversed the Trial Chamber's convictions for crimes against humanity and violations of article 3 common to the Geneva Conventions and Additional Protocol II for the murders of the Belgian peacekeepers and former Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana.

Major Nzuwonemeye joined the other ICTR acquitted persons and those who have completed their sentences (about ten in total), who live under U.N. auspices in a ‘safe house’ in Arusha, Tanzania. One person, Dr.Andre Ntagerura, has lived in a ‘safe house’ since his acquittal at trial in 2004. The reason is that no country where these men can live in safety and without fear will accept them. They are separated from their families. Many of their families live in Europe, in countries where these men were initially arrested, prior to transfer to the ICTR.

These men are former members of the Rwandan government and military in 1994 - the very enemy against whom the Rwandan Patriotic Front, led by Rwanda's current President Paul Kagame, waged war. A year or so ago, Rwanda expressed its willingness to accept these persons. Based on the government's past and current practices and attitudes towards its opponents (both inside and outside the country), the men fear for their safety if they were to set foot on Rwandan soil.

Their fears are unequivocally justified. The environment in Rwanda under the current government is unsafe for anyone or any party perceived to be in opposition to the regime. As The Economist's editorial on the Parliamentary elections in September 2013 stated, ‘Political opposition has been allowed only where it does not question the RPF's role as the country's saviour.’

The opponents of the RPF - whether political candidates, or journalists or other individuals - are imprisoned or found dead. In the last Presidential election in 2010, the First Vice-President of the Democratic Green Party (one of the three opposition parties excluded from the ballot), Andre Rwisereka, was found dead a few weeks prior to the elections. Leaders (as well as members) of other opposition parties, such as Me. Bernard Ntaganda, Deogratias Mushayidi, Dr. Theoneste Niyitegeka, and Victoire Umuhoza Ingabire remain incarcerated. Journalists have been killed inside and outside the country. In fact, Rwanda ranks 162nd out of 180 countries in the 2014 Reporters Without Borders press freedom index.

Victoire Ingabire, President of the Unified Democratic Forces (FDU-Inkingi), a coalition of Rwandan opposition parties, returned to her home country after 16 years in exile in the Netherlands to challenge President Kagame in the last Presidential election. Instead, she was arrested and prosecuted for ‘genocide ideology,’ ‘divisionism’ and other charges related to terrorism and is now serving a sentence of fifteen years (see, Amnesty International's 2013 publication, Rwanda in Jeopardy: The First Instance Trial of Victoire Ingabire). In a resolution (23 May 2013), the European Parliament stated that it ‘strongly condemns the politically motivated nature of the trial’ and noted that ‘respect for fundamental human rights, including political pluralism and freedom of expression and association, are severely restricted in Rwanda, making it difficult for opposition parties to operate and for journalists to express critical views.’ The bottom line is that Kagame's stranglehold on human rights is omnipresent. It has fostered an environment in which the violations of human rights, the suppression of the opposition, and the muzzling of journalists occur with impunity.

The most recent U.S. State Department Country Report 2013, issued in February 2014, concluded that ‘the most important human rights problems in the country remained the government's targeting of political opponents and human rights advocates for harassment, arrest, and abuse; disregard for the rule of law among security forces and the judiciary; restrictions on civil liberties; and support of a rebel group [M23] in the neighbouring Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).’

The report also identified other major problems, including arbitrary or unlawful killings both inside and outside of the country. In March 2014, South Africa expelled three Rwandan diplomats, after authorities linked them to attacks on former leaders of Kagame's own party, who were in opposition to the Kigali regime. Patrick Karegeya, former Chief of External Intelligence Services, who had been granted asylum in South Africa, was found strangled in a Johannesburg hotel on 1 January 2014. President Kagame, interviewed by the Wall Street Journal at Davos, Switzerland, denied any involvement in his death, and reportedly said, ‘But I add that, I actually wish Rwanda did it. I really wish it.’ Kagame claimed that Karegeya, a leading opposition figure, was part of a group that threatened Rwanda and its people but did not describe the threat.

In Rwanda, media pronouncements on the guilt of ICTR defendants, prior to a trial and verdict, void the presumption of innocence. When there are ICTR acquittals, some civil society groups (including IBUKA, well-known as a state controlled organization) challenge the legitimacy of these judgments. In the last months, these groups filed a petition against Judge Meron [2] (the presiding judge in the Appeals Chamber) with the Security Council, opposing the acquittals of government and military leaders and demanding an investigation of the presiding judge.

At the heart of this is the RPF's consternation that no former government official or military commander stands convicted of conspiracy to commit genocide. Some have been acquitted by the Trial Chamber; others have been acquitted by the Appeals Chamber, which has reversed Trial Chamber convictions for conspiracy to commit genocide.

This charge is the sine qua non of the Rwandan government's ‘official narrative’ of the events of 1994: that there was a pre-planned genocide of the Tutsis by the Hutus, orchestrated by the highest official echelons in Rwanda. In this ‘official’ recollection of 1994, the whole state apparatus, from the national level down to local communes, from the Rwandan army to the local bourgmestre (equivalent of mayor) at the commune level, had been transformed into a killing machine against the Tutsi population. This is essentially the scenario in the book by the late Alison Des Forges, Leave None to Tell the Story, which has been used as the Bible of the prosecution in drafting the indictments.

The fact is that the evidence presented by the prosecution at the ICTR did not prove the allegations of conspiracy to commit genocide beyond a reasonable doubt. For a fuller critique of, and alternative view to, the ‘official narrative,’ based on the trial evidence, including the role of the U.S. and the U.K. in covering up the truth, see ‘The Accidental...Genocide [3]' by Professor Peter Erlinder. 

No doubt alarmed that the evidence did not follow the ‘official narrative,’ the petition states: ‘...It is disquieting to note that in all cases it has handled, all those known and accused of planning the genocide against Tutsi, no one has been convicted of this act of planning. Can genocide happen unplanned?’

Rwanda's U.N. Representative, Eugene-Richard Gasana, reiterated this point in his remarks to the U.N. Security Council in its debate on the international tribunals, held on 5 June 2014: ‘Rwanda fully understands that in a human undertaking such as judicial processes, all people indicted will not necessarily be convicted and sentenced. Nonetheless, we are extremely troubled at the dangerous trend of the ICTR Appeals Chamber of acquitting military commanders and cabinet ministers who were, for some of them, heavily condemned by the Trial Chamber...’.

Rwanda's petition and remarks are an affront to the rule of law, because they do not respect the legal judgments of the Tribunal; nor does the suggestion of an investigation of a presiding Judge indicate respect for the General Assembly, the body which elects ICTR judges.

In this context, returning home is not an option for my client, or for others who have been acquitted or have completed their sentences. The struggle to get countries to accept these men must be based on strict adherence to, and respect for, the rule of law...a principle that is clearly lacking in Rwanda.

* Beth S. Lyons served as a defense counsel in three cases at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Arusha, Tanzania. Her review of Professor Nancy Amoury Combs' book, Fact-Finding Without Facts: The Uncertain Evidentiary Foundations of International Criminal Convictions, was published in the Journal of Genocide Research in September 2011.

Source: Pambazuka.org