Brise le silence.

Key witness in Rwandan genocide-linked case dies

2010-09-24T21:23:00.001-04:00

(AP) –

OSLO, Norway — Abdul Ruzibiza, a former captain of a Tutsi rebel group and key witness in a French judge's investigation into a 1994 attack that triggered the Rwandan genocide, has died, Norwegian police said Friday. He was 40.

Ruzibiza died in a Norwegian hospital Wednesday after a long illness, said Reidun Brekke, who was Ruzibiza's supervisor at staffing company Adecco Norway.

A former captain of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, Ruzibiza released a book in 2005, saying the group was behind the 1994 attack that shot down then-President Juvenal Habyarimana's plane.

The incident set off attacks in the central African nation by extremists members of the Hutu majority who killed Tutsis and moderate Hutus. About 500,000 people, mostly ethnic Tutsis, were killed in 100 days.

Ruzibiza's testimony has been instrumental in an investigation led by a French judge who in 2006 concluded that current Rwandan President Paul Kagame ordered the attack.

Rwanda cut off diplomatic ties with France as a result in 2006 and restored them in November 2009. The Rwandan government's own investigation, released in January, suggested that the plane was shot down by Habyarimana's allies as an excuse for starting the genocide.

Information on survivors and funeral arrangements was not immediately available.

Copyright © 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

President Kagame has called for deliberate intervation in broadband accessibility

2010-07-14T06:18:00.002-04:00

President Paul Kagame has said that widespread access to broadband for developing countries, can not be attained unless countries show willingness to this initiative.

President Kagame was speaking this sunday at the first meeting of the recently launched Broadband Commission at the International Communication Union in Geneva, Switzerland.

President Kagame will co-chair the commission with the world's richest man Carlos Slim of Mexico.
The UN believes Broadband is this century’s driver of economic growth and prosperity.

The objective of the Broadband Commission is to advocate for widespread access to broadband for developing countries.
According to the communiqué from the office of the president, The co-chairs will seek to generate a shared global vision and commitment among world leaders, a critical step in achieving accelerated deployment of broadband.

Given its proven benefits, the commission will seek ways to promote rapid and increased access to broadband for poorer nations currently lagging behind, to enable these countries to address their development challenges and actively participate in the global economy.

Sylvia Gasana

Rwisereka Andre waburiwe irengero i HUYE

2010-07-14T06:17:00.006-04:00

Police y’igihugu muri iki gitondo yatangaje ko hari umugabo witwa Rwisereka Andre waburiwe irengero kugeza ubu iperereza rikaba ritaragaraza aho yaba aherereye.Ngo yaba yavuye mu kabari ke kitwa sombrelo gaherereye mu mujyi wa Huye mu gihe cy’isa munani z’ijoro avuga ko atashye iwe.Icyakora police y’igihugu ikavuga ko iperereza rigikorwa ryerekana ko uwo mugabo yaraye ahaye mushiki we babana mu rugo amafaranga ibihumbi magana 6 amubwira ko ashobora gutaha atinze.Kuva igihe yatangiye ayo mafaranga ngo yaba atari yaboneka mu rugo iwe nkuko tubikeshya Eric Kayiranga umuvugizi wa police y’igihugu.

Police y’igihugu ikaba isaba umuryango we kuba utuje mu gihe iperereza rigikorwa ku irengero rya Andre Rwisereka.Amakuru dukeshya Radio y’abaturage ya Huye avuga ko imodoka ya Rwisereka police yayisanze yamenetse parabrise aricyo kirahure cy’imbere y’imodoka.

Faith Mbabazi

Gwynne Dyer: Rwanda president Paul Kagame tiptoes around democracy

2010-07-14T06:14:00.001-04:00

Gwynne Dyer: Rwanda president Paul Kagame tiptoes around democracy
By Gwynne Dyer

Rwanda president Paul Kagame will not risk real democracy, despite a remarkable economic growth rate of 11 percent last year.

Did Paul Kagame really stop the genocide in Rwanda 16 years ago, or did he just interrupt it for a while?

That question frightens him so much that he will not risk everything on the outcome of a democratic election.

Kagame is running for reelection to the presidency of the traumatised central African country next month. If economic success automatically brought political success, he would be a shoo-in: Rwanda’s economy grew by 11 percent last year.

But in fact, his resounding election victory in 2003 was the result of ruthless manipulation, and this one will be the same.

In recent months, opposition party leaders in Rwanda have been arrested and charged with denying the genocide.

An opposition newspaper was banned and its co-editors attacked. (One died, one survived.)

Leading generals in the Rwandan army have been arrested or have fled into exile. (One was wounded last month in an attempted hit in South Africa.)

So is Kagame over-reacting? Maybe.

If you cut Kagame open, you would find engraved on his heart William Faulkner’s terrible truth: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

One-tenth of Rwanda’s population–at least 800,000 people, Tutsis and those who tried to protect them–were murdered by their neighbours, mostly with machetes, only sixteen years ago.

Not nearly enough time has passed yet for generational turnover to take the edge off the grief and the hate. Everybody pretends it’s over, but of course it isn’t. How could it be?

Kagame’s whole life has been shaped by genocide. He grew up in Uganda, where his parents fled when an earlier wave of violence killed about 100,000 Tutsis in Rwanda in the early 1960s.

He became the leader of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, a mainly Tutsi exile organisation dedicated to overthrowing the Hutu extremists who ruled the country, and he led the RPF army that marched in to stop the great genocide of 1994.

He knows, of course, that Tutsis and Hutus are not really separate ethnic groups.

All of Rwanda’s 19 major clans includes both Tutsis and Hutus. They speak the same language and they live in the same villages.

The term once distinguished cattle-herders from farmers, and later the wealthy from the poor. Rich Hutus could become Tutsis–but the Tutsis naturally always remained a minority of the population.

He also knows, however, that the colonial authorities exploited those class differences and gave the Tutsis political authority over the Hutus in return for their loyalty.

By the later 20th century the Tutsis and Hutus had become ethnic groups for all practical purposes, with a constant undercurrent of resentment by the Hutus against the Tutsis.

After independence in 1960, the killing got underway very quickly. It peaked in 1994.

This past will not leave Rwanda alone. The very words “Tutsi” and “Hutu” have now been banned in Rwanda, but a ministerial investigation in 2008 found anti-Tutsi graffiti and harassment of Tutsi students in most of the schools that were visited.

The army is exclusively Tutsi and the government almost entirely so, because Kagame does not really believe that this generation of Hutus can be trusted.

To make his position even more precarious, Tutsi solidarity is breaking down.

The arrests, exile and attempted assassination of various generals may be in response to real plots.

Most Tutsi generals belong to the Nyiginya clan, which traditionally provided the country’s king. Kagame is from the Umwega clan, and some of the Nyiginya think that power has remained in the wrong hands for too long.

It is an awful situation, and Kagame has only one strategy for avoiding a return to genocide: hang on to power, and hope that rapid economic growth and the passage of time will eventually blur the identities and blunt the reflexes that have made this generation of Rwandans so dangerous to one another.

His model is Singapore, an ethnically complex state that avoided too much democracy during the early decades of its dash for growth.

If Rwanda could become the Singapore of central Africa, then maybe its citizens would eventually come to believe that their stake in the country’s new stability and prosperity was more important than the history.

But Singapore did not have so far to travel, and its history was not drowned in blood.

The logic of Kagame’s strategy obliges him to stay in power: his first duty is to Rwanda’s Tutsis, at least half of whom have already been murdered.

But he must provide prosperity to the Hutu majority too, in order to reconcile them to Tutsi survival, and his relatively corruption-free government has made impressive progress towards that goal.

Nevertheless, in a free election, most Rwandans would vote along ethnic lines.

His Rwandan Patriotic Front would instantly be replaced by a Hutu-led regime of unknowable character and purpose. He dares not risk it, so real democracy is not an option.

If Kagame is now killing opposition journalists and dissident generals, then he is making a dreadful and probably fatal mistake, but it may not be him.

In the ruthlessly Machiavellian world of Rwandan politics, other possibilities also exist. Either way, he has the loneliest, scariest job in the world, and he must know that the odds are long against him.

The new edition of Gwynne Dyer's latest book, Climate Wars, has just been published in Canada by Random House.

Inama nkuru y'itangazamakuru yahaye igihe ntarengwa ibinyamakuru bitujuje ibyangombwa

2010-07-12T11:15:00.003-04:00

Kuva taliki ya 16 z’uku kwezi kwa 7 ibigo by’ibitangazamakuru bizaba bitarageza ku nama nkuru y’itangazamakuru ibisabwa n’itegeko rishya ry’itangazamakuru , ngo ntibizemererwa gukorera mu Rwanda.

Ibi byatangajwe n’umuyobozi mukuru w’inama y’ubutegetsi y’itangazamakuru Arthur Asimwe, mu kiganiro abagize inama nkuru y’itangazamakuru bari kumwe n’umuyobozi mukuru muri minisiteri y’itangazamakuru Ignatius Kabagambe bagiranye n’abanyamakuru mu rwego rwo kubagezaho icyegeranyo cy’ibitekerezo ku buryo bwo guteza imbere itangazamakuru mu Rwanda.

Ibitekerezo bikubiye muri icyo cyegeranyo byatanzwe n’abakora umwuga w’itangazamakuru mu Rwanda aba Leta n’abikorera bigaragaza muri rusange inzitizi itangazamakuru ryo mu Rwanda rihura nazo n’icyakorwa kugira ngo zikemuke. Amikoro n’ubushobozi buke ni bimwe mu bibazo ngo bituma bimwe mu bitangazamakuru byandika bitagira aho bikorera, ndetse na bike bihafite bikaba bidasohokera igihe. Umuti kuri icyo kibazo ngo n’ uko abanyamakuru bahugurwa ku bijyanye no gutegura imishinga ibafasha kwibeshaho no kubona inkunga ziva mu zindi nzego.

Muri iyo nama, banatinze kandi ku kibazo kijyanye n’ibisabwa ibigo by’itangazamakuru kugira ngo byemererwe gukorera mu Rwanda. Mu bisabwa harimo umwirondoro w’umuyobozi w’ikigo cy’igitangazamakuru n’uwumwanditsi mukuru, icyemezo kigaragaza ko umuntu atafunzwe, aho igitangazamakuru gikorera n’ icyemezo cy’ubucuruzi {registre de commerce}. Kugeza ubu, nk’uko inama nkuru y’itangazamakuru yabisobanuye abamaze kuyigezaho ibisabwa ni amaradiyo 6 n’ibinyamakuru 6 .Umuyobozi w’inama y’ubutegetsi y’inama nkuru y’itangazamakuru Arthur Asimwe, akaba yavuze ko nyuma y’italiki 16 z’uku kwezi ibigo by’itangazamakuru bizaba bitaruzuza ibiteganijwe n’itegeko bitazemererwa gukorera mu Rwanda.

Muri icyo kiganiro, abanyamakuru bifuje ko inama nkuru y’itangazamakuru yarushaho kwita ku banyamakuru bahohoterwa ariko ikanafatira ibyemezo ibinyamakuru bitandukira amahame n’amategeko agenga umwuga nk’ikinyamakuru Umurabyo. Umunyamabanga nshingwabikorwa w’inama nkuru y’itangazamakuru, Patrice Mulama yasobanuye ko n’ubwo umuyobozi w’ikinyamakuru Umurabyo yatawe muri yombi na police y’igihugu bitazabuza ko afatirwa ibyemezo n’urwo rwego mu cyumweru gitaha.

Umuyobozi mukuru muri ministere y’itangazamakuru, Ignatius Kabagambe yashimangiye ko batazarebera igitangazamakuru kitubahiriza amategeko.

Muri icyo kiganiro kandi habaye umuhango wo gushyikiriza ibigo by’ibitangazamakuru byujuje ibisabwa bibahesha ububasha bwo gukorera mu Rwanda certificat, ndetse hanatangwa ku mugaragaro amakarita mashya y’abanyamakuru.

Kamagajo Consolate

IMF approves Kigali state-of-art Complex

2010-07-12T07:48:00.001-04:00

The IMFhas hailed the govt of Rwanda’s decision to inject into the Kigali international convention complex and its support to the national carrier Rwandair to purchase its own ircrafts. Government injected over 240million US dollars in this magnificent complex.

This is was revealed in the Fund’s recently released policy statement.

In last year’s budget, government gave loans to Rwandair to purchase planes. The 2 Boeing aircrafts – which are the first to be owned by the national carrier, will be operational by the end of next year.

Despite the construction halting for several months till mid last year, the $240million Kigali International Convention Complex is headed for completion on time in two years - with just government and the Rwanda Investment Group (RIG), as joint owners.

The IMF says the government made the best investment in venturing the two strategic investment projects.
According to The Fund in a policy statement released on Thursday, The authorities conducted feasibility studies, with assistance from international consultants, which showed that these projects are expected to have rates of return above financing costs.

The Rwanda Investment Group (RIG) and National Social Security Fund (NSSF) will have 51 percent stake of the Kigali International Convention Complex – with the remaining 49 percent being for government.

Billed as the biggest in the region, the Complex will have a capacity of some 2600 delegates. It will also have dozens of businesses complexes and shopping malls.

Ends

Mutesi Théopiste

Rwanda cargo planes remain banned in European airspace

2010-07-07T07:27:00.001-04:00

Kigali: Silverback Cargo Freighters from Rwanda will continue not to be allowed in the airspace of the European Union for air safety reasons, the European Commission announced Tuesday.

In the updated list released Tuesday of carries banned from European airspace, the EC said all planes of Silverback Cargo Freighters are not permitted there. Silverback deals with only cargo and was first put on the list last year.

"We cannot afford to compromise on air safety," said Siim Kallas, the commission's vice president, in a statement Tuesday.

Silveback is not allowed in Europe

In April, the African Airlines Association (AFRAA) angrily criticized the European Commission’s safety ban. AFRAA claimed the blacklist at the time, which effectively excludes 111 African airlines from European Union airspace, is protectionist.

In a strongly worded statement, AFRAA secretary general Nick Fadugba said: “The ulitimate beneficiaries of the ban are European airlines which dominate the African skies to the disadvantage of African carriers. If any list is to be published, it should be done by ICAO, the global regulator of aviation safety, which has a known track record of impartiality.”

Two other carriers that are banned from operating in the European Union: Ariana Afghan Airlines from Afghanistan and Siem reap Airways International from Cambodia.

On the new blacklist for Tuesday, the European Commission expanded restrictions on Iran Air's operations by banning more types of aircraft. The commission banned Iran Air from flying its fleet of Airbus A-320 and of Boeing B-727 and B-747 planes into European airports.

The EC said it would continue to monitor Iran Air and work with the airline to improve standards.

All carriers from 17 countries -- 278 companies in total -- are also banned: Angola, Benin, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon (except three carriers with restrictions), Indonesia (except six carriers from which the restrictions have been fully removed), Kazakhstan (except one restricted carrier), Kyrgyzstan, Liberia, Philippines, Republic of Congo, Sierra Leone, Sao Tome and Principe, Sudan, Swaziland and Zambia.

François Mitterrand's role in Tutsi Genocide revealed

2010-07-07T06:42:00.002-04:00

Wednesday, 07 July 2010 11:19 by RNA Reporter

Paris: The former French president François Mitterrand supported the perpetrators of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi despite clear warnings that mass killings of the Tutsi population were being orchestrated, according to declassified French documents.

The publication of the documents in Le Monde newspaper of Saturday for the first time confirms long-held suspicions against France. The previously secret diplomatic telegrams and government memos also suggest the late French president was obsessed with the danger of "Anglo-Saxon" influence gripping Rwanda.

In three months from April 1994, at least a million Rwandans - mainly Tutsis - were systematically slaughtered in killings engineered by the Hutu regime to exterminate its ethnic rivals and repel the Uganda-trained Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF).

The documents, obtained by lawyers for six Tutsi survivors who are bringing a case against France for "complicity with genocide'' at the Paris Army Tribunal, suggest the late President Mitterrand's support for the Hutus was informed by an obsession with maintaining a French foothold in the region.

One of the lawyers, Antoine Compte, said France was aware of the potential danger of its support for the pre-genocide Rwandan government. "Massacres on an ethnic basis were going on and we have evidence that France knew this from at least January 1993. The French military executed the orders of French politicians. The motivation was an obsession with the idea of an Anglo-Saxon plot to oust France from the region."

Mr Compte said the file of diplomatic messages and initialled presidential memos, obtained from the François Mitterrand Foundation, provided evidence that the French military in Rwanda were under direct instruction from the Elysée Palace. The lawyer yesterday called on the investigating judge at the Paris Army Tribunal to interview senior French political figures, including military figures, diplomats, the former defence minister, Pierre Joxe and former prime minister, Alain Juppé.

"It emerges quite clearly from the documents that diplomats, the French secret services, military figures and Mr Joxe wanted France to disengage from Rwanda, or at least to act differently. But the president was obsessed,'' said Mr Compte.

Among the evidence to suggest France was informed of the mounting genocide is a diplomatic telegram from October 1990 in which the French defence attaché in the Rwandan capital Kigali alerts Paris of the "growing number of arbitrary arrests of Tutsis or people close to them". The cable adds: "It is to be feared that [it could] degenerate into an ethnic war.''

Another diplomatic memo, sent by French ambassador Georges Martres on 19 January 1993, quotes a Rwandan informant as saying that the president of the country, Juvenal Habyarimana, had suggested "proceeding with a systematic genocide using, if necessary, the army''.

Habyarimana was killed on 6 April 1994 - the date that marks the start of the genocide - when his plane was shot down over Kigali.

Even though Rwanda was Belgian for most of the colonial era, France took a strong interest in the country after independence, seeing it as a bulwark against the powerful influences of English-speaking Uganda and Kenya.

In the 1980s, French involvement in Rwanda was limited to two dozen military advisers. But when the Uganda-based RPF began launching attacks against President Habyarimana's regime in 1990, France sent arms and troops. Critics claim French troops stood by and watched as ethnic extremist soldiers massacred Tutsi civilians.

France claims its military involvement was aimed at aiding Hutu-Tutsi power-sharing. Last year, a French investigating magistrate, Jean-Louis Bruguière alleged the RPF shot down Habyarimana's aircraft and issued arrest warrants against nine high-ranking officials in the current Rwandan government.

With additional reporting from The Independent

LE PROCES DE NTAGANDA BERNARD OUVERT AU TRIBUNAL DE GRANDE INSTANCE DE NYARUGENGE

2010-07-07T05:06:00.003-04:00

Le Tribunal de grande Instance de NYARUGENGE a ouvert ce mardi le procès de Bernard NTAGANDA du parti PS IMBERAKURI et ses 9 coaccusés. Ils sont tous poursuivis pour avoir porté atteinte à l’ordre et la sécurité publics.
Bernard NTAGANDA de la formation politique et ses 9 compagnons ont été arrêtés le 24 juin dernier alors qu’ils étaient à la tête de manifestations non autorisées et dont l’objectif était de crier au secours et de montrer à la communauté internationale qu’il n’y a pas de démocratie au Rwanda, et de blâmer les élections présidentielles prévues en août prochain.
Bernard NTAGANDA est accusé de quatre crimes dont la formation d’un groupe de malfaiteurs, de porter atteint à la stabilité nationale, de conspiration entre le parti PS IMBERAKURI et d’autres partis non reconnus au Rwanda en l’occurrence FDU INKINGI de Victoire INGABIRE et Green Party de Frank HABINEZA.
Bernard NTAGANDA est en outre accusé de langage agressif, accusant par exemple les juridictions Gacaca de jungle d’extrémistes fondant leur jugement sur la morphologie physique de l’accusé. Parlant des élections, il a affirmé que sa victoire est « cash » mais que son échec sera « catch » pour dire que son échec entrainerait une guerre.
Bernard NTAGANDA a plaidé non coupable de toutes ces charges qui pèsent sur lui .Il avait auparavant clamé que le Tribunal de Grande Instance de NYARUGENGE n’était pas compétente pour mener son procès, lui qui est politicien, mais que son affaire concernait plutôt la Haute Cour de la République mais là encore sur la demande du Senat.
Il lui a été signifié qu’hormis les 5 premières grandes autorités du pays tous les autres comparaissent devant les juridictions ordinaires
Ce procès a été ajourné pour se poursuivre ce mercredI.

Bernadette BATAKALIZA

Abanyamakuru barasabwa kubanza kwiyumva nk'abanyarwanda mbere yuko biyumva nk'abanyamakuru

2010-07-07T05:00:00.002-04:00

Abanyamakuru bo mu Rwanda barasabwa by’umwihariko kubanza kwiyumva nk’abanyarwanda bagamije kubaka igihugu mbere y'uko biyumva nk’abanyamakuru bakorera inyungu z’igitangazamakuru runaka, birinda kubogama mu kazi kabo, bagafasha umuturage gusobanukirwa no gusesengura gahunda zizatangwa n’abakandida prezida batandukanye mu bihe by’amatora y’umukuru w’igihugu ateganyijwe muri Kanama muri uyu mwaka.
Ubu ni bumwe mu butumwa bwatanzwe n’abayobozi bahagarariye inzego zitandukanye z’itangazamakuru nk’ikigo cy’igihugu cy’itangazamakuru ORINFOR, inama nkuru y’itangazamakuru, HCM na ministere y’itangazamakuru MININFOR, mu kiganiro cyatambutse kuri uyu wa 2 kuri Radio na televiziyo by’igihugu ku bijyanye n’ubwisanzure bw’itangazamakuru nyuma y’imyaka 16 ishize abanyarwanda bibohoye ubutegetsi bw’igitugu n’ivanguramoko ndetse no ku bijyanye n’uruhare rw’itangazamakuru.
Abatumirwa bari bahagarariye izo nzego z’itangazamakuru barimo Ignatius Kabagambe, Willy Rukundo na Patrice Mulama. Aba bayobozi bagarutse ku mateka yaranze umwuga w’itangazamakuru muri iyi myaka 16 ishize, aho bagaragaje ko hari byinshi byakozwe mu kuvugurura no guteza imbere uyu mwuga, birimo nk’ishyirwaho rya radio z’abaturage zikorera mu ntara ariko zishamikiye kuri Radio rwanda, radio z’ubucuruzi n’iz’abihayimana. Hashyizweho kandi amategeko n’amahame agenga umwuga w’itangazamakuru mu Rwanda, ndetse n’amashuri makuru yihariye yigisha uyu mwuga, akanahugura abanyamakuru, hamwe n’ikoreshwa ry’ikoranabuhanga mu itangazamakuru mu gufata no gusakaza amajwi n’amashusho, hifashishijwe internet, telephone, n’ibindi bikoresho.
Indi ngingo yaganiriweho n’ijyanye n’uburyo itangazamakuru mu Rwanda rikwiye kwitwara muri ibi bihe twitegura amatora y’umukuru w’igihugu. Umunyamabanga nshingwabikorwa w’inama nkuru y’itangazamakuru Patrice Mulama yavuze ko umunyamakuru akwiye gukurikiza indangagaciro zo kuvugisha ukuri, kumenya sosiyete arimo akorera, ibyifuzo byayo n’akamaro k’ibyo abagezaho ndetse no kudatega ibihembo ku kazi akora kuko ariho hava ruswa no kubogama.
Abaturage bakurikiranye iki kiganiro, bahawe umwanya babaza ibibazo. Hari nk’uwabajije niba hari ibihano biteganyijwe itangazamakuru ryigenga rizakira abanyapolitike basebanya mu gihe cyo kwiyamamaza mu matora twimirije imbere. Aha Patrice Mulama yavuze ko ari inshingano z’abayobozi b’ibitangazamakuru kubanza kumenyesha abanyapolitike ibyo amategeko abahera uburenganzira n’ibyo ababuza.
Hari n’undi muturage wabajije niba bishoboka ko itangazamakuru ryo mu Rwanda ritegura ibiganiro mpaka hagati y’abakandida b’imitwe ya politike itandukanye mu gihe bicaranye ku meza amwe. Kuri iki kibazo, Patrice Mulama yavuze ko hashingiwe ku mategeko agenga itangazamakuru mu Rwanda ngo ibi biganiro mpaka biremewe, ariko ibi biva ngo ku bakandida ubwabo, basaba igitangazamakuru runaka nacyo kibifitiye ubushobozi, ko cyabategurira gahunda y’ibiganiro mpaka.
Umuyobozi mukuru muri Ministere y’itangazamakuru Ignatius Kabagambe nawe yashimangiye ko ibiganiro mpaka nkibi, bitegurwa bishingiye ku bwumvikane hagati y’abakandida n’imitwe ya politike ndetse bikaba n’umwanya wo kugaragariza abaturage bazabatora imigabo n’imigambi bafitiye igihugu.
Ku ruhande rwa ORINFOR, umuyobozi w’icyo kigo Willy Rukundo yavuze ko hashingiwe ku bumenyi n’amahugurwa yahawe abanyamakuru ku bijyanye n’igikorwa cy’amatora, ngo hari uburyo iki kigo giteganya guteguramo ibiganiro nkibi. Willy Rukundo yasobanuye ko ibiganiro mpaka bizajya bitegurwa hagati y’umukandida umwe n’umunyamakuru ufite ubushobozi n’ubuhanga bwo gusesengura manifesto bityo ashobore kubaza ibibazo wa muturage uzatora yakabaye yibariza uwo mukandida.
Aba batumirwa basoje iki kiganiro, basaba abanyamakuru kubanza kwiyumva nk’abanyarwanda bagamije kubaka igihugu mbere yuko biyumva nk’abanyamakuru bakorera inyungu z’igitangazamakuru runaka, basaba n’abaturage kudatinya umunyamakuru ahubwo bakamufata nk’umuyoboro banyuzamo ibibazo bakanaboneramo ibisubizo.

Civilian - military partnership vital for development - Kagame

2010-07-07T04:07:00.003-04:00

By Edwin Musoni & Daniel Sabiiti

MUHANGA - President Paul Kagame, has applauded the collaboration between the army and other citizens in various socio-economic activities that have boosted the welfare of the Rwandan people.

Kagame, made the remarks, yesterday, after inspecting works carried out by the Rwanda Defence Forces (RDF) in Muhanga District, during the ongoing Army Week.

While addressing thousands of excited residents of Muhanga, the President said that the army would not have succeeded in carrying out the work, had it not been for the good partnership with the people.

He reminded the residents that soldiers are their children, relatives, parents and friends, adding that being soldiers does not place them out of the community.

The President pointed out that it should not come as a surprise for the army to partner with the communities, since it’s their obligation to work for Rwandans.

He stressed that the military should go beyond its primary mission and use the professional skills of its members to contribute to national development.

Kagame underscored the need for sustainable development in the country, and reminded the citizens that, one of the ways of realizing development is by embracing partnerships and having a clear understanding of the policies in place.

The President added that the Rwandan people should be fed-up with living in poverty, famine and illiteracy. He pointed out that Rwanda has been getting aid for many years, and wondered why they continued to live in poverty, if aid worked.

President Kagame noted that Rwandans have now realized that their role in development is critically important for their welfare.

He observed that partnership and self confidence is equally a vital path to development.

The President told Muhanga residents that Rwandans are increasingly acquiring life skills that are helping them achieve development and better standards of living.

President Kagame emphasized that Rwanda will not fail to achieve what is good for its people, adding that Rwandans cannot allow anybody to destroy what they have already realized.

Prior to his meeting with residents of Muhanga, the President was taken through RDF community outreach programmes, at Kabgayi Hospital, where hundreds have been treated during the Army Week. Patients at the hospital gave various testimonies of how the army’s medical activities have changed their lives.

Venancia Singirankabo, who has been blind for the past ten years could not hold her excitement on seeing President Kagame for the first time.

“I want to thank you for having sent us the army to help us; I personally had no hope of opening my eyes. Thank you for rescuing me,” Singirankabo told the President.

Residents hailed President Kagame for his good leadership and for transforming the Rwandan society for the better.

The Governor of the Southern Province, Fidèle Ndayisaba, informed the President that the army week activities have played a significant role in eliminating grass thatched houses, which have been a major problem in the province.

Ends

न्गुवो मुमुरेबे.

2010-07-02T03:13:00.002-04:00

Meddy - "Sintinya abakobwa kandi nta bwirasi ngira. Barambeshyera."

2010-06-28T08:41:00.001-04:00

Umuhazi Meddy ni umwe mubo abantu bakunze kwibazaho byinshi ku mibereho no ku buzima bwe bwa buri munsi. Muri iyi minsi hari byinshi bigenda bimuvugwaho byaba byiza cyangwa se ibibi. Inyarwanda.com tukaba twamwegereye maze tugirana ikiganiro cyirambuye.

Inyarwanda.com :Ese Meddy, Kuki usigaye ucyerererwa cyane, ngo ntagahunda nimwe ucyubahiriza?

Meddy : Mu by'ukuri ntabwo nkerererwa k'ubushake bwange cyangwa se kwiyunva nkuko abenshi babivuga ahubwo nkiyo urebye mu bitaramo usanga biterwa na organization y'igitaramo , uko usanga buri muhanzi wese aza kuririmba avuye mu rugo ibi rero bishobora gutuma atinda .Ahubwo jyewe nunva byakabaye byiza uwateguye igitaramo ahaye abahanzi isaha bari buhagurukireho bose kandi bagahugurukira rimwe kandi ahantu hamwe.

Ikindi ni uko umuhanzi burya agira utuntu twinshi cyane mu mu mutwe hakaba hari igihe yica gahunda kugirango natwo agende twatunganye aha navugamo imyenda ye n'iy'ababyinnyi bari buze gukoresha kuri stage,kumenya niba ababyinnyi bange babonye ibikoresho byose ,repetion n'ibindi. Ariko kugirango nkemure iki kibazo nashatse umuntu tuzajya dufatanya muri gahunda zange zose kugirango binyorohere Kandi ndibaza ko buri wese agiye kuzabona impinduka.

Inyarwanda.com :Muri iyi minsi uri kugararagara wambara style yihariye (Udu pantalon twitwa amacupa), ese kuki ariyo wahisemo?

Meddy : Sinzi niba abantu batarabibona jyewe mu mibereho yange kuva na cyera nkunda kwambara ibintu nunva binkwiriye bitamfata cyane bikabije ,kandi na none bitari binini cyane ,iyi style nambara niyo ituma nunva ndi souple ikaba ijyana n'inkweto nkunda kwiyamabrira zo mu bwoko bwa souplesse. Kuri jye rero mbona ariyo myamabarire nkunda kandi nishimira.

Inyarwanda.com : Abantu basigaye bavuka ko wirata ,Ese nibyo koko?

Meddy :Ni ukuri iyo nunvise abantu bavuga ko nirata birambabaza kuko iyo ngeso ubusanzwe sinyigira,ahubwo hari abantu batekerereza abandi ugasanga niba yunvise uri gutera imbere arahita atekereza ko wurije ibiciro. Ikindi abafana bagira ikintu cyo kwanduzanya amagambo ugasanga umuntu umwe abwiye abandi ko nirata nabo bakabyemera batabanje kwikorera ubushakashatsi ngo barebe ko aribyo . Gusa jyewe ntabwirasi niyiziho na gato. Ababivuga n'abatamfiteho umugambi mwiza.

Inyarwanda.com :Ese uracyiga cyangwa wabaye uhagaritse?

Meddy :Murabizi ko maze iminsi ngenda ntabwo naba nkiga muri ULK ahubwo ubu nzajya gutangira mu kwezi kwa cyenda muri Africa y'epfo kuko ubu gahunda zo kwiyandikisha zose narazirangije igisigaye ni ugutangira ishuri.

Inyarwanda.com : Kuki wahisemo kwiga hanze? Ese ubona ntacyo bizahungabanyaho muri muzika yawe?

Meddy :Kwiga mu Rwanda unaririmbirayo biragoye cyane kuko usanga iyo ushyize ingufu muri muzika kwiga biranga kandi nziko kwiga aribyo bifite agaciro kanini cyane kurusha uyu muziki dukora kuko ibyo wize nibyo bigufasha gukorana ndirimbo zawe ubuhanga bityo music yawe ikaba yagera kurwego rwo kuba business.

Ku bwange rero nunva kujya kwiga muri Africa y'epfo ariyo nzira nziza yo gutuma muzika nkora iba mpuzamahanga .Ku bakunzi baha mu Rwanda byo ntibazongera kumbona mu bitaramo cyane nkuko byari bimeze ariko nzajya ngerageza ninza mbashimishe kandi nizera ko aho nzaba ndi nzaba mpagarariye u Rwanda rwose.

Inyarwanda.com :Ngo utinya abakobwa bo mu Rwanda, Ese nibyo?

Meddy :(Aseka) urebye ntabwo aribyo kabisa ,ahubwo mbona abafana bange babakobwa akenshi banyishimira cyane bakarenza ,ikindi kandi gukunda umufana wawe biragora kuko natwe abahanzi nubwo hari abafana bawe baba bagukunda nawe ntibyaba ari igitangaza ko hari uwo ukundamo gusa usanga akenshi n'ubwo wamukunda utinya kubimubwira kuko uba ucyekako atanabyemera cyane ko aba yunva ko ufite abandi benshi cyangwa se ugiye kwitwaza icyo uricyo ngo umuterete.

Ibi rero nibyo bituma akenshi iyo ngeze imbere y'inkumi ngerageza guhisha amarangamutima yange nkabifata nk'ibisanzwe ariko mubyukuri si ugutinya abakobwa ahubwo mbitwararikaho.

Inyarwanda.com :Ese Bruce ni Manager wawe?

Meddy :Oya ntabwo ari manager wange ahubwo ni umuntu umba hafi tugakorana nk'abavandimwe kandi ibyo dukorana birenze ibyo umu Manager yakora. Akaba ari nawe ugiye kunfasha kuzajya nubahiriza igihe nkuko nabivuze hejuru.

Inyarwanda.com :Wabwiye abantu ko Videos zawe zigiye gusohoka none amaso yaheze mu kirere ;byaba bimeze gute?

Meddy: Ndabanza nisegure ku bantu bose. Burya iby'umuntu apanga siko Imana iba yabipanze ,igihe zagombaga gusohoka niho nagize ingendo muri Africa y'epfo no muri America (Boston ) kandi rwose ntabwo izi ngendo nari nziko zizabaho. Ubu rero kugirango nice amande ngiye gukora Videos z'indirimbo bazi nizo batazi nkubu izo mfite muri studio harimo imwe bazunva hari n'izindi 2 bazabonana na videos zazo.

Inyarwanda.com: Abakunzi bawe benshi ni igitsina gore. Ese hari icyo ujya ubitekerezaho?

Meddy :Biranshimisha cyane kuko icyambere nibo benshi mu Rwanda , ariko abakobwa n'abamama nibo bagira umutima wo gutanga mu rwego rwo kugira uruhare mu guteza imbere abahanzi kuberako akenshi usanga ari nabo bitabira ibitaramo byacu cyane kurusha abagabo.

Inyarwanda.com: Ese wunva uramutse uhagaritse Music wakora iki?

Meddy : Nakora ibintu bijyanye na science kuko nize imibare kandi ninayo nunva nzakomeza .Nunva rero mbaye umu scientific byanshimisha cyane.

Inyarwanda.com :Ese hari gahunda z'ibitaramo byawe bwite uri gutegura muri iyi minsi?

Meddy :Mfite Igitaramo cy'abana mu kwezi kwa 8 kuko usibye abakakobwa n'aba mama abakunzi bange ba kabiri ni abana ,so ndashaka kuzakora igitaramo buri mwana wese azibonamo .Ikindi ni launch y'album yange ya kabiri nteganya gushyira ahagaragara mu ntangiriro z'ukwezi kwa cyenda cyangwa se mu mpera z'umwaka.

Inyarwanda.com :Niba atari ibanga watubwira niba ufite copine?

Meddy :Kugeza kuri uyu munsi nta copine ndagira ahubwo rwose ntihazagire uwo njya kubaza ngo ambwire ko mfite abandi.

Inyarwanda.com :Urakoze cyane kukiganiro tugiranye.

Meddy :Namwe murakoze kandi ndabashimira uburyo mufasha abahanzi nyarwanda.

Bakobwa mufite umutima ukunda, Meddy ni single.

POLICE UPDATES ON THE KILLING OF JEAN LEONARD RUGAMBAGE

2010-06-28T08:40:00.000-04:00

Rwanda National Police has arrested two men suspected in the killing of a local journalist Jean Leonard RUGAMBAGE that occurred on Thursday night.

Jean Leonard Rugambage returned home around 10pm on 24 June 2010. He was shot dead as he reached the gate of his residence in the Kigali suburb, Nyamirambo

The police also managed to seize a weapon (Pistol) that ought to have been used in the killing although the suspects still deny responsibility. The seized weapon from the suspect was identified to have been used in shooting and its rounds are similar to the two cartridges that were found at the scene of crime.

It has also been discovered that one suspect is related to a person claimed to have been killed by Leonard during 1994 Tutsi genocide implying that the killing might have been conducted as revenge. It should be noted that J Leonard was once charged by Gacaca courts got imprisoned for a period of three years but later released in 2007.

The two suspects are known to each other and originate from same area implying that the killing might have been planned before execution.

As earlier highlighted by the Commissioner General of Police, Rwanda National Police remains deeply concerned by the fictional accounts being peddled by individuals and groups for political gains. As law enforcement agency, RNP will continue to protect people and their properties against any threat. Investigation is still in progress and development will be communicated accordingly.

Isabukuru y'imyaka 10 hashyizweho inzego z'inama y'igihugu y'urubyiruko

2010-06-28T08:37:00.001-04:00

I Kigali, kuri stade Amahoro, kuri iki cyumweru habereye ibirori byo kwizihiza isabukuru y’imyaka 10 ishize hashyizweho inzego z’inama y’igihugu y’urubyiruko. Perezida wa Repubulika, Paul Kagame Kagame wari umushyitsi mukuru muri ibyo birori, yashimye ibikorwa byiza byubaka abantu kandi byubaka n’igihugu byagaragajwe na bamwe mu rubyiruko, harimo n’abahereye ku busa, bagakoresha ubwenge bwabo n’amaboko bakiteza imbere.
Ibyo birori byo kwizihiza isabukuru y’imyaka 10 inama y’igihugu y’urubyiruko imaze, byanaranzwe kandi n’imyidagaduro, abakrobate n’indirimbo z’abahanzi, abari muri stade bahagurutse babyinana n’abahanzi nyarwanda babasusurukije.
Perezida wa Repubulika, Paul Kagame, yashimiye urubyiruko ku bikorwa byiza byubaka abantu n’igihugu byagaragajwe na bamwe mu rubyiruko rwatanze ubuhamya dore ko bamwe batangiriye ku busa bakiyubaka bakoresheje ubwenge n’amaboko bakaba bamaze kugera kuri byinshi.
Umukuru w’igihugu yasobanuye ko Kubaka igihugu nk’u Rwanda rwasenyutse, rusanzwe ruri no mu bukene bitoroshye ariko ko bishoboka, abantu bahagurutse bagakora, hashingiwe kuri izo ngero.
President wa republika yasabye kandi urubyiruko ko imikorere yo guhuriza hamwe yarubera umurage ukwiriye gukomeza kubakwa, ati kandi birashoboka abizeza ko bazabibona kuko ibyiza biri imbere.
Minisitiri w’urubyiruko, Mitali Protais yavuze ko uyu munsi urubyiruko rufite umunezero wo kwitwa urubyiruko rw’u Rwanda, kubera isura nsha yahanaguye iyo rwahoranye, aho urubyiruko rwatizwaga umuhoro wo gusenya igihugu, ubu rukaba rwariyemeje kugira uruhare mu gushaka umuti w’ibibazo birwugarije. Ku kibazo cy’urubyiruko cy’ejo nzamera nte, minisitiri Mitali yavuze ko biyemeje gushyiraho uburyo bwo guhanga imirimo ibyara inyungu iginewe kongera ubushobozi bwo kugura ibintu ku masoko bagatozwa gukora ibitaboneka ahantu hose.
Umuhuzabikorwa w’inama nkuru y’urubyiruko Murenzi Janvier yagaragaze ko hashingiwe ku nshingano zahawe Inama nkuru y’urubyiruko hagezweho byinshi,harimo gushyiraho inzego uhereye mu nzego z’ibanze, ndetse n’ibikorwa by’ubukangurambaga.
Umuhuzabikorwa w’inama nkuru y’urubyiruko, Murenzi Janvier, akaba yijeje Perezida wa repubulika ko urubyiruko rutazongera gukoreshwa nk’imbaraga zisenya igihugu;kutazarangwa n’ubunebwe cyangwa gusabiriza no gusindagizwa, ngo bazahora baharanira icyagirira abanyarwanda akamaro, barwanya abashaka gusenya ibyiza bimaze kugerwaho.
Minisitiri ufite urubyiruko mu nshingano ze, Mitali Protais, yagarutse ku isabukuru y’imyaka 10 iyi nama y’igihugu urubyiruko rwongerewe ubushobozi, n’inzego ziyishimikiyeho agaragaza ko yaranzwe na n’ibikorwa ndetse n’ibiganiro hirya no hino mu gihugu mu cyo bise icyumweru cy’urubyiruko. Muri ibyo birori habayeho gutanga ubuhamya. Bamwe mu rubyiruko, bagiye, buri umwe ku giti cye, agaragaza intambwe amaze gutera mu kwiteza imbere.
Muri ibyo birori kandi hari hanatumiwe n’urubyiruko rwaturutse muri repubulika iharanira demokarasi ya kongo, u Burundi na leta z’unze ubumwe z’Amerika, rwaje kwifatanya n’urubyiruko rw’u Rwanda.

Peacekeepers shot dead in Darfur

2010-06-24T06:15:00.001-04:00

Unidentified assailants have killed three Rwandan peacekeepers in Sudan's Darfur region.

Monday's attack is the latest assault on members of Unamid, a joint peacekeeping mission by the UN and the African Union.

More than 20 camouflaged attackers opened fire on the soldiers as they guarded civilian engineers building a Unamid base in the mountainous Jabel Mara area, the peacekeeping force said in a statement.

A Unamid official said on condition of anonymity that three attackers were also killed in the hour-long gun battle that ensued.

Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, has called on Khartoum to arrest the attackers.

Surge in fighting

Aid workers say they have been unable to get access to large parts of eastern Jabel Mara since February, when there was a surge in fighting between Sudanese army forces and rebels.
in depth

Who are Sudan's Jem rebels?
Inside Story: Peace for Darfur?
Talk to Jazeera: Chad's president on Darfur peace
Video: Exclusive: Sudan's Jem rebels

The Unamid force, made up of mostly African soldiers and police, took over from a African Union mission. It is still short of its expected strength of 26,000 and is supposed to keep the peace in an area the size of Spain.

A total of 27 Unamid police officers and soldiers have been killed in attacks since the force came to Darfur in 2008, Unamid said.

A Unamid patrol travelling towards Jabel Mara in March was ambushed and held overnight. Five Rwandan peacekeepers were killed in two attacks in Darfur in December.

Violence flared in the mostly desert region in 2003 when rebels demanding more autonomy for the territory launched a revolt against Sudan's government.

Sudanese government troops and allied fighters launched a counter-insurgency campaign which Washington and some activists called genocide.

Khartoum dismisses the accusation and accuses the Western media of exaggerating the conflict.

Toll rises in Congo train crash

2010-06-24T06:07:00.003-04:00

Railway staff have worked to lift overturned train carriages in the Republic of Congo in a search for more bodies two days after a train accident killed at least 76 people.

Denis Sassou Nguesso, the Congolese president, travelled to oil hub of Pointe Noire on Wednesday to meet some of those affected by the disaster as a crisis unit reported 700 people injured.

"This morning, the new toll is 76 dead. The bodies are all at the morgue in Pointe Noire," a crisis unit official said.

Amid the stench of rotting bodies and of fish that was being transported on the train that derailed Monday evening, about 100 railway employees cleared the way for a crane to lift eight overturned carriages.

The government issued a provisional toll on Tuesday of 48 dead, with a final tally only possible after all the carriages have been cleared, and announced three days of national mourning starting on Friday.

'Overloaded train'

Witnesses said the crowded train flew off the tracks after hurtling into a bend at full speed near Yanga, about 60km east of the southern coastal city of Pointe Noire.

"First we heard what we thought was a big explosion," Fabrice Malonga, a local on the scene, said.
grim history
Congo-Ocean Railway
Built between 1921 and 1934 by French
At least 17,000 people died building the railway
The line was closed in the late 1990s during the country's civil war
At least 50 people were killed in a 2001 accident
10 died in 2003 accident when a train derailed
In 2007, about 100 people died in an accident

"I saw bodies of children, older people. The carriages were full. We took the wounded to the road to wait for help."

Some of the injured had left Point Noire hospitals by Wednesday but about 160 people remained, Simon Edika, the area's public-relations director, said.

The government has blamed the accident on the colonial-era track on excessive speed.

Joseph Sauveur El Bez, managing director of Chemin de fer Congo-Ocean (CFCO), the railway operator that runs the train, put the crash down to driver error.

But he acknowledged that the high death toll was "because the train was overloaded. There were too many passengers."

"The train was fine. The track was in good condition," he said.

Non-governmental organisation activists demanded an inquiry and accused the government of neglecting the country's infrastructure.

Past deaths

The 510km CFCO line, also known as the Congo-Ocean Railway, is the main link between the capital Brazzaville and Pointe-Noire on the Atlantic and mainly follows the Congo river.

It was built between 1921 and 1934 during French colonial rule and thousands of Africans are said to have died making the railway.

At least 50 people were killed on the same line in 2001, many of them burned to death, when two trains collided at Mvougounti, about 75km east of Pointe Noire.

In August 2007, about 100 people died when a passenger train crashed into a freight train, also at Mvougounti.

The lack of roads and the dysfunctional railway system between the main towns make travel difficult and contribute to the high cost of food and imported goods in Brazzaville and throughout neighbouring land-locked nations.

Chinese engineers started work late last year on a $500m road linking Pointe Noire with Brazzaville, a project that will involve crossing equatorial forests and steep mountains.

Congo, which has long exported millions of barrels of oil but remains mostly poor and suffers from poor infrastructure, is seeking to diversify its economy as oil reserves wind down.

ATTENTAT CONTRE LE GÉNÉRAL KAYUMBA : 6 SUSPECTS ARRÊTÉS EN AFRIQUE DU SUD

2010-06-22T06:28:00.002-04:00

Par RFI

La police sud-africaine a arrêté 6 suspects après la tentative de meurtre contre l'ancien chef d'état-major rwandais, Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa, devenu critique virulent du régime de son pays. Selon la femme de cet ancien général, il s'agit d'une tentative d'assassinat de la part des autorités rwandaises.

Six suspects ont été arrêtés ces dernières 24 heures dans différents lieux de Johannesburg. Tous sont inculpés pour tentative de meurtre. Ils devraient bientôt comparaître devant un tribunal sud-africain.

La police assure poursuivre maintenant son travail d'enquête. Pour l'instant, les inspecteurs ne souhaitent pas communiquer sur l'origine des suspects ou leurs motifs. D'autres arrestations pourraient survenir dans les prochains jours.

En attendant, le général Kayumba, toujours hospitalisé, a été placé sous protection des forces de l'ordre. Selon ses proches, le président Kagamé souhaite la mort de son ancien chef d'état-major et le gouvernement rwandais pourrait à nouveau tenter de l'éliminer.

A Kigali, la ministre des Affaires étrangères a réagi dimanche en rejetant toute implication dans cette affaire. Le général Kayumba a fui en Afrique du Sud en février dernier, après avoir été accusé d'actes terroristes par les autorités. La police, à Johannesburg, avait alors précisé ne pas avoir arrêté l'ex-militaire, actuellement demandeur d'asile, puisqu'il n'existe pas de traité d'extradition entre l'Afrique du Sud et le Rwanda.

***************************************************

Police have arrested six suspects after an exiled Rwandan general accused of grenade attacks in his homeland was shot in South Africa over the weekend, authorities said Monday.

By LESEGO MOTSHEGWA

Associated Press Writer

JOHANNESBURG (AP) - Police have arrested six suspects after an exiled Rwandan general accused of grenade attacks in his homeland was shot in South Africa over the weekend, authorities said Monday.

Lt. General Kayumba Nyamwasa and his wife were returning to the upscale gated community where they live in northern Johannesburg when a lone gunman fired on him Saturday. Rosette Nyamwasa said her husband was shot in the stomach and would recover.

Police spokesman Govindsamy Mariemuthoo would not say whether the suspects arrested were Rwandan, nor would he discuss possible motives in what he described as a murder attempt.

Nyamwasa's wife has accused Rwandan President Paul Kagame of being behind the shooting, a charge the Rwandan government denies.

"The Government of Rwanda does not condone violence, and we wish the family strength and serenity," said government spokeswoman Louise Mushikiwabo. "We trust in the ability of South African authorities to investigate the incident thoroughly."

Nyamwasa and Kagame were once allied but have fallen out, reportedly because Kagame sees his former military chief as a political rival. Nyamwasa came to South Africa earlier this year.

Rwandan officials have accused Nyamwasa of trying to destabilize their government. The Rwandan government says it has linked Nyamwasa to three grenade attacks in Rwanda's capital Feb. 19 that killed one person and wounded 30 others.

South African police said earlier this year they had not arrested Nyamwasa because they do not have an extradition treaty with Rwanda.

Rwandan opposition leader Victoire Ingabire, who wants to challenge Kagame in the Aug. 9 presidential election, said Saturday's shooting was a "planned assassination attempt."

"This incident is a nefarious conspiracy for disruption of peace in Rwanda, a country sinking deeply into a political and military crisis," Ingabire said in a statement. "The lack of political space, the arrest of opposition leaders, lawyers and senior military officers, the use of violence and all kind of intimidation of dissenting voices are obvious signs of a country on the brink of chaos."

Ingabire was arrested in April and charged with promoting a genocidal ideology. She was freed on bail but her passport was seized and she cannot leave Kigali. Critics of Kagame's government argue the ruling party has used the concept of genocide ideology to discredit detractors and defeat political opponents.

Hutu militias killed more than 500,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus in the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Rwanda's current president, Paul Kagame, ended the killing when he led a Tutsi-dominated force into the country. Critics say his rule since then has been authoritarian but Kagame argues strict measures are necessary to prevent a repeat of the violence.

The U.S. State Department said in a March report on Rwanda that citizens' rights to change their government are "effectively restricted" and cited limits on freedoms of speech, press and judicial independence.

Nyamwasa's shooting is not the first time Rwanda has been accused of attempting to kill or killing a prominent Rwandan exile.

Former Rwandan Interior Minister Seth Sendashonga was killed in May 1998 in Nairobi, Kenya. His widow later testified that she believed Rwanda was behind her husband's killing. She claimed he had been set to testify before the U.N. International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, which is trying the suspected masterminds of the genocide.

A Kenyan judge acquitted the three suspects in Sendashonga' s killing, saying the prosecution failed to prove beyond reasonable doubt that they committed the crime. The judge went further to say that the Rwandan government's refusal to waive diplomatic immunity for some of its embassy officials suggested that there was a political motive behind the killing.

Kagame said he will kill Kayumba, wife alleges

2010-06-21T06:16:00.001-04:00

By Tabu Butagira

Posted Monday
Kampala

Ms Rosette Kayumba, wife to renegade military general Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa, has accused the Rwandan government of trying to assassinate her husband in South Africa, an allegation Kigali vehemently denied yesterday.
Speaking to the BBC hours after Gen. Nyamwasa was shot at their exile home in Johannesburg, Ms Kayumba said: “[Rwandan President Paul Kagame] said it in parliament that he will actually kill my husband, that wherever he is he will follow him and kill him.”

She said she believed the lone gunman who waylaid them on returning from a shopping errand at around 1p.m. (midday South African time) was a hired hit man since he never demanded for cash or any valuables and shot until the pistol jammed firing.

Yesterday, Ms Louise Mushikiwabo, Rwanda’s Foreign Affairs minister and government spokesperson, said by phone from Kigali that the allegations are “preposterous”. “This [assassination of opponents] is not something President Kagame does. He’s a man of integrity,” she said.

Mr Kagame, she said, is a leader who “demands accountability from all persons”, Gen. Nyamwasa inclusive - although he chose to flee. “If you want accountability from someone, you don’t kill them; you allow them an opportunity for explanation or to justify their case,” Ms Mushikiwabo said. Gen. Nyamwasa, who until his escape in late February was Rwanda’s ambassador to India, fled to exile, alleging he was being hounded by the government on fabricated charges.

Investigations on
Authorities in Kigali have in the past been guarded about Gen. Nyamwasa’s alleged crime, but minister Mushikiwabo yesterday said the general is being investigated for his “involvement with elements that were involved with the insecurity - throwing of grenades - in Kigali.”

Sixteen people were, in March this year, injured in two almost-simultaneous grenade explosions, one at a car-washing bay and the other at a bus station in a wealthy Kigali suburb.

Earlier, two people died and several others were wounded when a grenade exploded on them on February 19. President Kagame told Daily Monitor in an interview published in May, that Gen. Nyamwasa, a former Chief of Staff of Rwanda’s Defence Forces, had promoted divisions in the army and fled to avoid “accountability”. He said: “People like Kayumba or [ex-Intelligence chief Patrick] Karegeya or others who flee the country will always say whatever they want to say in an attempt to absolve themselves from any responsibility.” “I think for them to escape - already there is a responsibility they are escaping or fleeing from.”

In a rejoinder emailed to this newspaper a week later, Gen. Kayumba denied the accusations levelled against him and instead made several allegations of his own against President Kagame and the Rwanda Patriotic Front government. “President Kagame is not honest when he alleges that we ran away from accountability. [Our] disagreements [are] centred on governance, tolerance, insensitivity, intrigue and betrayal of our colleagues,” he wrote.

Uganda sympathises
And he added: “Accountability should begin from the top; beginning with the President before he demands accountability from his subordinates.” Gen. Nyamwasa, an alumnus of Makerere University and Mbarara High School in Uganda, first enlisted, in 1984, as a member of the then Yoweri Museveni-led successful National Resistance Army military campaign.

He later joined the RPF, led by Mr Kagame, serving it as the military intelligence chief – but all the while maintained close working relation with the UPDF and headed investigations into the Kisangani clashes between Ugandan and Rwandan armies during the 1997-2003 war in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The Ugandan military yesterday joined sympathisers from around the world to commiserate with the Nyamwasa family. “Humanly speaking, his shooting is unfortunate,” said Lt. Col. Felix Kulayigye, the defence and military spokesman. “I believe any person deserves [to enjoy] the right to life unless deprived of it by a court of law. We hope the criminals will be apprehended.”

It is understood that after serving in various senior positions, Gen. Nyamwasa’s relation with President Kagame soured over accusations and counter-accusations of unexplained riches, insubordination and dictatorship.

In 2001, Gen. Kagame fired the general as the military chief and replaced him with his counterpart James Kabarebe. The President, in November 2002, however, warmed up to Gen. Nyamwasa re-deploying him as Head of Security Services and later Rwanda’s ambassador to India until he escaped four months ago, citing threats to his life. The renegade reportedly fled through Uganda and Kenya, stirring diplomatic nightmare among the East African neighbours, before settling in South Africa where he is seeking asylum - that appears likely.

In accounts offered to the British public broadcaster, the BBC, about the Saturday shooting incident, Ms Rosette Nyamwasa said a man they did not know approached as if to speak to them just as they drove in their Johannesburg suburban home.

The account
“[The gunman] spoke to my driver, but he wanted space to be able to shoot my husband,” she said. “Then when my husband bent, he shot. And fortunately, it went into the stomach and not in the head... My husband got out immediately... And he grabbed the gun. In that kind of scuffle, the guy couldn’t cock the gun.”

The Rwandan Foreign Ministry says the charges are “ridiculous and far-fetched” but the general’s wife could have made them either because she is “distraught or upset”. “We feel for the Nyamwasa family,” Ms Mushikiwabo said, “Anyone interested in [knowing the cause and motive of the gun attack] should allow the South African government to investigate and report.”

The minister said Rwandan prosecutors have offered incriminating evidence and she has engaged her South African counterpart to persuade authorities there to arrest and extradite Gen. Nyamwasa. “We hope he recovers soon so that we can pursue that line,” said Ms Mushikiwabo.
By midday yesterday, Rwanda said the only information they had about the shooting of Gen. Nyamwasa was through the media and the South African government was yet to formally notify them.

Kayumba shooting - the inside story

2010-06-21T04:29:00.000-04:00

By Daniel K. Kalinaki

Posted Monday, June 21 2010 at 00:00
Daily Monitor’s Managing Editor, Daniel K. Kalinaki, who is on holiday in South Africa, was the first journalist to see Gen. Kayumba Nyamwasa after he was shot in Johannesburg on Saturday. He chronicles the events before, during, and after the shooting as told to him by eyewitnesses.

Johannesburg
Saturday, June 19 was an ordinary day in the Kayumba household but it would turn out to be a day to remember for the family. Gen. Nyamwasa and his wife Rosette had gone out shopping with their driver. At around midday, they drove back to the apartment block in Melrose Arch, a posh neighbourhood in Johannesburg that has been home for the family since fleeing into exile a couple of months ago.

As in most residential areas in Johannesburg, the apartment block, which has at least 12 other families, has a fence, a gate, and 24-hour guards. When the Kayumbas arrived at the house in their black BMW X3 the guards, who are at the house 24 hours, opened the gate.

Stranger appears
As they drove in, an unidentified man ran behind the car and knocked on the driver’s window. Surprised, the driver stopped and rolled down the window. When the window was halfway down, the man suddenly drew a pistol and fired at Gen. Kayumba, who was in the front passenger seat. The bullet struck Gen. Kayumba in the stomach, just below the lungs.

RELATED STORIES

Kagame said he will kill Kayumba, wife alleges
The gunman then went round the car to the passenger side where Gen. Kayumba was. As the gunman came around the car, Gen. Kayumba opened the door to confront him and try to disarm him. The general reached for the pistol and tried to wrestle it out of the gunman’s grip. As they fought for the gun, the gunman fired another shot, which glazed Gen. Kayumba’s finger.

With Kayumba rapidly losing strength, the gunman then pulled the trigger again but the pistol jammed. He tried again without success. Gen. Kayumba’s legs gave away and he collapsed in a pool of blood. By this time the driver had come around and also tried to wrestle the gun from the gunman.

An eyewitness who spoke to Daily Monitor said the gunman, speaking in Kiswahili, told the driver to leave him alone, warning that he would kill him if he did not let him be. Seeing that the gun had jammed and the fracas was attracting attention in the area, the gunman then ran back outside, jumped into a waiting car, which then sped off. Throughout all this time, the guards at the apartment block were nowhere to be seen. They would later reappear and claim that they had ducked for their own safety.

Kayumba rushed to hospital
Upstairs in the Kayumba household, the general’s two teenage children were watching television. They were shocked out of their fantasy world when they heard screaming – probably from their mother – and dashed outside to find their father lying in a pool of blood.

With the help of a couple of neighbours, Rosette and her children helped Gen. Kayumba into the car and sped him off to Morningside Clinic, about 10 minutes away, in Sandton, where he was immediately put on a respirator while doctors worked furiously to stop the bleeding.

When this newspaper arrived at the hospital, Gen. Kayumba’s son, Mark, his jacket covered in blood, stood protectively over his father. Moments earlier he’d smashed a glass door in a combination of anger, frustration and, quite possibly, teenage adrenaline. His sister stood next to him, her big eyes starring ahead blankly, as if asking for answers.

Robber or assassin?
As relatives, friends and other Rwandans living in Johannesburg started trickling into the hospital, so did the rumours and the speculation of who might have done it. Johannesburg has one of the highest crime rates in the world. Carjacking and robbery are widespread, as is murder.

Yet the gunman who shot Kayumba did not ask for the keys to the Beemer neither did he take anything. His decision to go round the car and try to shoot Gen. Kayumba again suggests that he was a man with a license – or call it mission – to kill. As expected, many eyes have turned to Rwanda.

In an interview with the BBC, Rosette Nyamwasa accused President Paul Kagame of Rwanda, who her husband fell out with, of having a hand in the shooting. “[Mr Kagame] said it in parliament that he will actually kill my husband, that wherever he is he will follow him and kill him,” she told the BBC. But Louise Mushikiwabo, Rwanda’s Foreign minister, issued a statement in which she said Mr Kagame’s government “does not condone violence”.

Sources in the South African police, who spoke anonymously in order not to jeopardise an on-going investigation, told Daily Monitor that they are “keeping all options open” on whether it was “an assassination attempt”. By press time yesterday, doctors in Morningside said Gen. Kayumba was in a stable condition, despite the bullet that struck him still being lodged in his body. Doctors will decide later on whether to remove it or not.

It will be several weeks, even months, before an official report is issued over the shooting but according to many visitors to the Morningside Clinic, the bullet that struck Gen. Kayumba was not fired by a robber but by a would-be assassin.

Who is Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa?

•Born in 1960s.
•Obtained a Bachelor’s degree from Makerere University (in 1980s) after taking A-level examinations at Mbarara High School in western Uganda.
He was a resident of Lumumba Hall while at the university.
•In 1984, he joined the National Resistance Army rebel group, then headed by President Museveni, and later the Rwanda Patriotic Army/Front that took over government after the 1994 Rwanda genocide.
•Gen. Nyamwasa headed RPF’s military intelligence during its bush days and was later named the army Chief of Staff.
•In 2001, he was sacked as the military chief and replaced with Gen. James Kabarebe. The general was, in November 2002, re-deployed as Head of Security Services.
•A couple of years later, Gen. Nyamwasa was appointed Rwanda’s High Commissioner to India. Early this year, he fled from Kigali during a government retreat in Rubavu.
The Rwandan government immediately stripped him of diplomatic immunity after the defection that stirred suspicion with neighbours.

Compiled by Tabu Butagira from online sources

Rwanda denies shooting exiled army chief in S Africa

2010-06-21T04:25:00.002-04:00

Rwanda has said it was not behind the shooting of an exiled former military chief of staff in South Africa.

Lt Gen Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa, a critic of Rwanda's president, is recovering in hospital after being shot outside his Johannesburg home.

His wife said it was an assassination attempt as the lone gunman had made no demand for money or goods.

But Rwanda's Foreign Minister Louise Mushikiwabo told the BBC the government did not condone violence.

Sources close to Lt Gen Nyamwasa told the BBC on Sunday that he was recovering and should be able to leave hospital in a few days.

BBC Africa analyst Martin Plaut says that since leaving Kigali in February, Lt Gen Nyamwasa had been a thorn in the flesh of President Paul Kagame, whom he accuses of corruption.

Official denial
The Nyamwasas had been returning from a shopping trip at around midday on Saturday (1000 GMT) when the gunman approached their car.

Continue reading the main story
[Mr Kagame] said it in parliament that he will actually kill my husband

Rosette Nyamwasa
Division in Rwanda's military ranks
"[The gunman] spoke to my driver, but he wanted space to be able to shoot my husband," Rosette Nyamwasa told the BBC.

"Then when my husband bent, he shot. And fortunately, it went into the stomach and not in the head.

"My husband got out immediately.

"And he grabbed the gun. In that kind of scuffle, the guy couldn't cock the gun."

She added that Mr Kagame wanted her husband dead.

"[Mr Kagame] said it in parliament that he will actually kill my husband, that wherever he is he will follow him and kill him," she said.

But Rwanda's foreign minister told the BBC in statement that Mr Kagame's government "does not condone violence" and said she trusted South Africa to investigate the shooting thoroughly.

Later in an interview with the BBC, Ms Mushikiwabo said there was evidence that Lt Gen Nyamwasa was responsible for a campaign of violence in Rwanda.

"I'll not speculate much more, as this is a case that has yet to be prosecuted, but there are very serious charges against him on his links with networks that have been planting grenades in the country since the beginning of the year," she told the BBC's Newshour programme.

Lt Gen Nyamwasa has denied the allegations.

Military reshuffle
Our analyst Martin Plaut says Lt Gen Nyamwasa was one of President Kagame's closest confidants, until they fell out.

Lt Gen Nyamwasa is a critic of Rwandan President Paul Kagame
Since arriving in South Africa, the former army chief has accused the president of corruption, accusations the Rwandan authorities have denied.

He also claimed the judiciary was compromised and told the BBC in a recent interview that the judges were now "President Paul Kagame's property".

A couple of months after Lt Gen Nyamwasa went into exile, along with another top military officer, Mr Kagame reshuffled the military leadership ahead of elections due in August.

At the time, two high-ranking officers were also suspended and put under house arrest.

The elections will be the second presidential poll held since the 1994 genocide, in which 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed.

Arrest warrants
Lt Gen Nyamwasa played an important role in the rebel Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), led by Mr Kagame, which put a stop to the killing and which is now in power.

But France and Spain have issued arrest warrants against Mr Nyamwasa for his alleged role in the lead-up to and during the genocide, along with other senior RPF figures.

Mr Kagame, in power for the last 16 years, is viewed by many in the West as one of Africa's more dynamic leaders.

However critics have raised concerns about his more authoritarian tendencies and the government has recently been accused of harassing the opposition ahead of the elections.

US gives a thumbs up to the constitution review in Kenya

2010-06-09T08:06:00.002-04:00

The United States has lent veiled support for a new constitution which will be subjected to a referendum on August 4.

Although Vice President Joe Biden did not expressly declare his support for either the Yes or No sides, he said enactment of a new constitution will open doors to greater US aid and investment.
He, however, warned that Kenya must first strengthen democracy and adhere to the rule of law.

Biden, the first high profile US official to visit independent Kenya, also expressed his delight by the working relationship between President Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga.

And even as he gave the country a thumbs up for the progress made in implementing the reform agenda, the VP urged Kenyans to remain focussed in the review process, which began after the signing of the National Accord.

“I have never been this optimistic of the country’s ability to move the reform process forward...Kenya’s best days are yet to come,” said Mr Biden at a news conference, immediately after a meeting with President Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga at State House, Nairobi.

“Putting in place a new constitution, strengthening democracy and the rule of law will further open up doors for more American programs which will bring about more investments.

We also want to see a peaceful referendum that will further unite Kenyans,” he said.

Biden’s message appeared to reinforce that of US President Barrack Obama’s sentiments over the weekend when he spoke strongly of his wish to see a more prosperous Kenya.

Obama had used an interview with the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation to urge Kenyans to seize “the moment” offered through the referendum, on a new constitution, to put the post-election violence behind it.

But he clarified that the US was not pushing for the Yes vote at the referendum, saying the decision to vote Yes or No at the referendum was up to Kenyans themselves, the president said.
Also present at yesterday’s State House meeting was Vice President Kalonzo Musyoka and Cabinet ministers Musalia Mudavadi, Uhuru Kenyatta, Mutula Kilonzo, Dr Sally Kosgei, Prof George Saitoti and Moses Wetangula.

The American VP, who arrived into the country on Monday evening with his wife Jill Biden, is also scheduled to visit South Africa to attend the opening ceremony of the Fifa World Cup on Friday.

Biden’s comments on investments were in response to President Kibaki’s request to the US administration to encourage more American businessmen to invest more in the country mainly in the transport, housing, energy and water sectors.

Said the President; “We wish to encourage American investors to take advantage of the single East African Common market that will become a reality next month.”

“The single market will allow free movement of people, good, services and capital throughout the five member countries that comprise Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi,” he added.

However Biden in response said; “Americans want to do business here, they want to travel here, and with the right climate, they will come.”
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Brazil's Kaka ready to emerge from the shadows

2010-06-09T07:57:00.000-04:00

JOHANNESBURG

Kaka has become almost a forgotten man in the World Cup, with the spotlight in the run-up to the World Cup centred around Lionel Messi, Wayne Rooney, Fernando Torres and David Villa. Yet, lurking in the shadows and without the huge weight of expectation, there is every reason to believe that the former World Player of the Year could finally shine on the world's biggest stage.

Kaka suffered from niggling injury problems during a disappointing first season with Real Madrid, but that could easily work in his favour. Having made only 33 appearances for his club, Kaka is likely to be fresher than his rivals, many of whom have played upwards of 50 games this season. He is also freed of the weight of expectation which proved such a burden to Brazil's players four years ago.

As if to prove that he is peaking at the right time, Kaka scored his first international goal in a year in Monday's 5-1 friendly win away to Tanzania in their last match before the tournament in South Africa. He also produced some of his characteristic bursts from midfield, a nightmare for defenders as he picks up speed and runs directly at the centre of the defence.

"It gave me a lot of confidence," he told Brazilian reporters after the game in Dar es Salaam. "I felt really good, although still a little bit inhibited. I just need to let myself go."

Coach Dunga said that the 28-year-old had to be held back in training, such was his enthusiasm. "He's improving little by little," said Dunga. "We have to put the brakes on him because sometimes he wants to train morning, noon and night." Kaka will be playing at his third World Cup. In 2002, he made just one substitute appearance on his way to picking up a winner's medal.

Four years ago, he floundered along with the rest of a disappointing Brazilian team, and later revealed that he was injured when he played in the 1-0 quarter-final defeat by France.

Dunga has a natural aversion to big-name players, having had no hesitation in excluding the likes of Roberto Carlos, Ronaldo and more recently Ronaldinho from his squad. However, Kaka, religious and known for his charity work off the field, has escaped the axe. He was even excused by Dunga after asking not be picked for the Copa America three years ago, saying he needed a rest.

Dunga, a snarling, hard-tackling midfielder in his playing days, has built the team in his own image, choosing players for their tactical discipline and work rate as much as for their skill. This means that Kaka will have plenty of team mates to do the donkey work for him, leaving him free to play a creative role. If he finds his best form, it will also be good news for the neutrals. With Brazil now playing a counter-attacking game, he may be the only reminder of the flamboyant, artistic style which made the five-times champions everyone's favourite team.

ICTR defense lawyers petition UN Security Council over Erlinder

2010-06-09T06:40:00.000-04:00

Kigali: Refusal by the Gasabo Intermediate Court to grant bail to American attorney Peter Erlinder has prompted more than 30 defence lawyers to inform the UN Security Council that that are not willing to continue their work at the ICTR, RNA reports.

In a joint statement to the UN Security Council and the International Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), the defence lawyers have said they fear for their own safety and have demanded Erlinder's immediate release.

"We hereby resolve to postpone all activities, other than those which strictly conserve the interests of our mandates, until such time as the minimum conditions or the normal exercise of our missions have been restored by the removal of threats," the statement says. "[We are] aware of the dangers which immediately and directly threaten most of our number."

Peter Erlinder, a US lawyer leading the defence case of top genocide suspects, was denied bail Monday, two weeks after his arrest on charges of denying the Tutsi Genocide.

The treatment of defence lawyers has prompted widespread international condemnation, with the US government calling for Erlinder's release.

The case is also likely to place pressure on the UK authorities, including the Crown Prosecution Service, which has been providing assistance to Rwanda prosecutors to facilitate the extradition of genocide suspects currently residing in the UK, The Guardian reported.

Experts say the incident undermines negotiations surrounding the international criminal court, under way in Kampala.

"How can international criminal courts operate effectively if defence lawyers are at risk of being arrested for what they say on behalf of their clients?" manda Pinto QC, Bar Council representative at the International Criminal Bar, told The Guardian. "This affects all defence lawyers at the ICTR, but the issues are potentially the same for defence counsel anywhere in the international forum."

The government has defended the decision to prosecute Erlinder. "It is an act of justice," foreign affairs minister Louise Mushikiwabo said in a statement on Monday, shortly after the court had ruled. "Flagrant and orchestrated breaches of our genocide ideology laws will be met with the full force of the law."

From gorilla poacher to gatekeeper

2010-06-09T06:28:00.000-04:00

When a gorilla poacher told Rwandan conservationist and businessman Edwin Sabuhoro, "You’ve eaten, you’ve got a job that pays you and that’s why you are chasing us," he stopped to think about it.

He realised the poachers had no other source of income, and that tourists were prepared to pay US$500 just for permission to view one of the central African country’s rare mountain gorillas.

So he invested about three million Rwandan Francs (about US$5,200) in a plan to turn the poachers into gamekeepers. And that’s why many former gorilla hunters are now ardent conservationists.

Léonidas Barora is one of them.

"I was a real animal," Barora says of his 30 years as a hunter in the volcano forest in the country’s north-west. "We used to run in the bushes like animals and hide from park guards, who were always trying to arrest us. My hair grew long and I and my fellow poachers smelt so strange that people would run away."

He sold elephant ivory and his family ate wild meat.

Now, aged 64 and sitting in the Iby’Iwacu (literally: "Home-grown") Cultural Centre, a tourist site set up on the edge of the park to provide alternatives to poaching, Barora says he would be the first to arrest poachers if he saw them.

"I don’t have the desire to go back to the forest to look for something to eat. My food comes from here," he says, pointing to the centre’s facilities. "I use the money they pay me to buy food for myself and my family."

Iby’Iwacu got underway in 2007, when Sabuhoro recruited about 1,000 people from the forest perimeter into an anti-poaching association. He knew the community because a few years earlier – as a park worker for Rwanda’s Tourism and Wildlife Conservation Office – he had disguised himself as a businessman in order to act as a mediator between poachers and police.

Sabuhoro helped develop farming activities and set up handicraft and other small-scale businesses to service the tourists who visit and stay to at the centre, which is owned by the villagers.

Visitors pay more to spend more time with the villagers. They enjoy the do-it-yourself activities, such as helping dig up potatoes, fetching water, collecting firewood and cooking a meal. They can also do a "community walk", visiting a local church and talking to local elders and leaders.

There’s a replica of a royal palace, four traditional mud huts where visitors can sleep, cook and wash. A local healer is on hand to demonstrate medicinal herbs.

Ex-poachers dance, drum and shoot arrows to showcase Rwanda’s traditional way of life – for a US$20 fee. Barora is one of the performers.

"I have to admit that when we first came in I was very afraid that it would be very artificial and staged," 50-year-old Georgia Paul from the United States told me after a holiday there with her husband. "But I think that the important thing is understanding why they are doing it," she adds. "As long as you know that there’s a purpose to it, then it is not artificial – it’s much more sincere."

About 100 tourists a month visit the centre, mostly from Australia, Britain and North America, and it’s clear from my interviews that a major attraction is the idea that the people who would once have been destroying the animals are helping conserve them.

"We saw one gorilla today missing a hand because of the traps," said Georgia’s 61-year old husband, Michael. "If we can show the people a better way to live, to be happy and productive, a lot of things will change. We have to make it profitable for them – they have to be able to make a living doing this."

The income from the cultural activities goes to the village fund: 40 per cent is paid to the performers, 60 per cent is invested in health insurance, high-yielding seeds, education, and developing small-scale businesses. Sabuhoro’s travel agency, Rwanda Eco-Tours, advises the association’s managers and brings tourists to the village.

Sabuhoro’s target is to help raise the village’s current monthly income of US$1,000 to US$100,000 by 2015.

Iby’Iwacu and the 18 other ex-poacher associations involved in tourism in Rwanda have helped cut poaching by 60 per cent, according to tourism officials.

Sabuhoro also points to the strong personal impact made by this form of ecotourism. "Tourists have developed attachments with people [the villagers], which they don’t do with the gorillas," he says. "They write back to ask how everybody is doing."

More importantly, he observes, the Iby’Iwacu initiative is helping build a poaching-free generation of people living around the park and socialising with the tourists, "a generation that will not leave its children and the future generation to starve". It has not fully achieved this aim: about five per cent of Iby’Iwacu members are believed to be still poaching.

Innocent Twagirimana, the association’s president and a guide at the cultural centre, says that his father was a poacher "and I became one of the members of this group because they knew my father was one of them. Now I feel good because I get my salary at the end of the month."

At Euros 225 million a year, tourism is Rwanda’s top foreign exchange earner – not bad for a country that 15 years ago was torn apart by the last major genocide of the 20th century.

Drocella Nyirabureteri, a 47-year-old mother of three who spends about a half of her working hours at Iby’Iwacu, has a more human take on tourism revenues: "I get money to buy food when tourists buy my baskets," she says – and she compares the death of an animal in the park to the death of a baby because, she points out, it is thanks to the forest animals that her community has a tarmac road, tapwater and classrooms.

Adapted from Panos

FIFA World Cup live action for blind and visually impaired football fans

2010-06-09T06:22:00.001-04:00

Blind and visually impaired fans will be able to enjoy a special live-match experience at the 2010 FIFA World Cup™ in South Africa. Six stadiums will each have 15 seats equipped with headphones, and trained commentators will report live on the action happening down on the pitch. In addition, each of these six stadiums will have 15 seats that will be allocated to their sighted guides who will accompany them, while specially trained volunteers will provide assistance within the stadiums. This is a premier in South Africa’s sporting landscape.

The initiative, launched by the Swiss National Association for the Blind (SNAB) and the South African National Council for the Blind (SANCB) and financially supported by FIFA, is aimed at making the tournament accessible to all. FIFA Partner Sony is providing the necessary transmitters that will allow people to receive match-day commentary in the stadiums free of charge. The SANCB is ensuring that the tickets are fairly allocated and only a very limited number of tickets are still available for 19 matches via .www.sancb.org.za.

"Football is a universal sport and it must be accessible to everyone. We are therefore delighted to be able to make this unique live experience in the stadium also accessible to visually impaired and blind people. This project is another launching pad for South African sports and will create a legacy with services and facilities at football grounds for visually impaired and blind South Africans," said FIFA President Joseph S. Blatter.

The Institute of Advancement of Journalism was responsible for sourcing, training and coordinating the audio descriptors, while the Academy of Sound Engineering students will perform the technical audio functions that will be necessary to ensure that the audio descriptions are correctly transmitted to the visually impaired fans at the stadiums.

The stadiums offering this service are:

* Johannesburg – Soccer City Stadium: 8 matches
* Johannesburg – Ellis Park Stadium: 7 matches
* Tshwane/Pretoria – Loftus Versfeld Stadium: 6 matches
* Durban – Durban Stadium: 7 matches
* Nelson Mandela Bay/Port Elizabeth – Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium: 8 matches
* Cape Town – Green Point Stadium: 8 matches

Gunmen kill seven in attack on Nato convoy in Pakistan

2010-06-09T06:16:00.000-04:00

Gunmen have attacked a Nato convoy near the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, killing at least seven people and setting several vehicles on fire.

The overnight assault took place 10km (six miles) outside the city - the closest such attack yet to the capital.

Up to a dozen militants opened fire, setting 20 trucks alight and destroying millions of dollars of equipment.

Meanwhile heavy fighting has taken place in the north-west between militants and the army.
'Indiscriminate firing'

The Nato trucks were carrying supplies to alliance troops in Afghanistan.

"The attack took place around 2335 local time (1835 GMT) and we are still trying to find out how this attack has happened," said Shah Nawaz, the head of the police station in Tarnol, where the trucks were parked at a roadside depot.
Continue reading the main story Map In pictures: Nato convoy attacked

"The attackers walked into the depot and started indiscriminate firing," he told Reuters news agency.

Kalim Iman, inspector general of Islamabad police, said that police were searching for the suspected militants, who escaped in two cars and on motorbikes to a nearby forest area.

The BBC's M Ilyas Khan says that the attack is the most brazen to be carried out by militants in Islamabad, although since September 2008 Nato convoys have been regularly targeted in Balochistan and in the cities of Karachi and Peshawar.

The Taliban have hijacked lorries, stolen their cargo and kidnapped their drivers.

On one occasion in November 2008, militants captured Humvee armoured cars destined for Afghanistan and filmed themselves triumphantly driving off with their booty of Nato vehicles.

The latest attack is a brutal reminder to Nato commanders in Afghanistan that their lifeline is vulnerable, says the BBC's Orla Guerin in Islamabad.

Different militant groups retain the ability to strike with relative ease, our correspondent adds.

The fact that this time the strike was so close to Islamabad and was carried out so audaciously will be a cause of concern to the authorities here.

It will renew anxiety in Afghanistan about trying to find alternative routes.

Militants are being flushed out of one area (by Pakistani military offensives) but are surfacing in another.

It is very clear the militants have not been fatally disrupted as the government likes to claim.

We do not yet know if this is the work of the Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud or his men, but certainly these convoys are targeted by militants who are angered by the fact that they are travelling so regularly on Pakistani roads.

In addition to those killed, police said at least four others were injured. The casualties were thought to be the drivers of the trucks and other local people.

A senior policeman responsible for the area where the attack took place has been suspended for possible dereliction of duty, officials say.

Truckers protesting against the attack briefly closed the grand trunk road linking Lahore, Rawalpindi and Peshawar before being persuaded by police to end their protest.

Some three-quarters of the supplies needed by the 130,000 US-led international troops in Afghanistan are transported by land from the Pakistani port of Karachi.

The regular attacks have compelled Nato and American forces to look for other supply routes, principally through Central Asia.

This latest attack comes after months of relative calm around Islamabad.

In the latest fighting in the north-west of the country, the Taliban killed at least six soldiers, including an army captain, in an ambush near the town of Ghaljo in Upper Orakzai tribal region, officials say.

They say that about 12 soldiers were injured in the ambush, which took place on Tuesday.
Militants with Humvee armoured cars intended for Nato Militants posed in 2008 alongside stolen Humvee armoured cars

An official told BBC Urdu's Riffat Orakzai that a security force convoy was heading from Dabori to Ghaljo when it was ambushed from both sides along a narrow mountain track.

That led to aerial and artillery attacks on suspected militant hideouts in Upper Orakzai region which went on for several hours, the official said, killing more than 30 militants.

The army's claims could not be independently verified.

Correspondents say that the attack comes just over a week after the army said its operation in the region had been successfully completed.

While the security forces have conducted widespread searches in Lower Orakzai over the last four months, there had been no action other than aerial bombings in Upper Orakzai.

ICTR Prosecutor refers 25 cases to Rwanda

2010-06-09T06:15:00.000-04:00

By Felly Kimenyi

KIGALI - The Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) Hassan Boubacar Jallow has referred to Rwanda case files of 25 Genocide suspects.
According to Prosecutor General Martin Ngoga, who received the files, this is a vote of confidence that the tribunal has in the country’s judicial system.

“We accepted and promised to do what needs to be done on those cases,” Ngoga said when contacted for a comment yesterday.

After the handover of the files, which were both in electronic and hard copy form, a statement from the Tanzania-based tribunal quotes Jallow as saying that the development emphasizes the partnership between the tribunal’s prosecution and Rwanda’s national jurisdiction.

“He commended the Rwandan government for the improvements it has made to its judicial infrastructure and capacity,” reads part of the statement released yesterday.
Ngoga emphasized that the files handed over were for suspects still at large and whose indictments have not yet been issued.

“These are among the cases the Prosecutor has been investigating but due to completion calendar, he decided to pass them over to us because the ICTR may not be able to pursue them further,” Ngoga said.

The time-barred tribunal has until the end of next year to have cleared or transferred to national jurisdictions all pending cases as it will be closing shop as directed by the UN Security Council, its instituting organ.

During the meeting between the two prosecutors, it was agreed that the ICTR Prosecutor, for the second time, tables before the court an application to have some indicted or even apprehended suspects transferred to Rwanda.

The first time Jallow tabled similar requests before the tribunal, it was rejected, but it was agreed in the meeting yesterday that the judicial reforms the country has undergone have since addressed the issues on which the court had based to deny the referrals.

“We are both optimistic because despite the decisions in the past, we have attended to the issues on the basis of which the applications were rejected. This time around, we think they will be allowed,” Ngoga said.

Meanwhile, the president of IBUKA, the umbrella body of Genocide survivors’ associations, welcomed the development, saying that this demonstrates the confidence the tribunal has gained in the Rwandan judicial system.

“There have been many fugitives arrested in several countries but could not be extradited to Rwanda because the tribunal had set precedent that our judiciary could not be trusted to handle these cases,” said IBUKA president

Theodore Simburudari. He added that despite the work done by the tribunal for the past 15 years, there have been setbacks that have ‘disturbed’ the survivors, specifically citing the behaviour of some defence lawyers at the UN court, who have been blatantly denying that the Genocide took place in Rwanda.

Aldo Havugimana, a Genocide survivor from the Southern Province, said that this is another way to honour his loved ones who were killed in the Genocide.

“Having justice dispensed here in our backyard will inevitably be a relief since we will have to witness it ourselves. We trust the ICTR has done a good job, but it is always better to have the Rwandan judiciary handle these cases,” said Havugimana, who heads the Huye-based Radio Salus, in a telephone interview.

This brings the number of fugitives whose files were sent to Rwanda to 55. A few years ago, the ICTR Prosecutor handed over 30 files.

ICTR attorney charged with contempt of court

2010-06-09T06:14:00.001-04:00

By Edwin Musoni

KIGALI - The Trial Chamber III at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) has filed a suit against defense attorney, Peter Robinson, for contempt of court by persistently refusing to examine a witness.

Robinson deliberately refused to examine a witness claiming that he was protesting the arrest of embattled controversial American attorney, Peter Erlinder, who was recently arrested in Rwanda over crimes of Genocide denial and trivialization the crime.

“The court accused him of obstruction of justice and disobeying a court order, hence initiating a contempt proceeding against him,” said the tribunal spokesman, Roland Amoussouga.

He added that the court found Robinson’s argument invalid and ordered him to proceed with the examination of the witness, but he continuously refused.

Reports say that the Robinson, a defence attorney to Genocide suspect, Joseph Nzirorera, was told by the court that Erlinder’s charges in Rwanda were not in any way connected to his work at the tribunal.

“Refusing to examine the witness created a direct and negative impact on witness’s ability to present an effective defence,” Amoussouga said.

“Therefore under rule 77(c), the chamber will initiate a contempt proceeding against him and he will appear before the trial chamber on Monday next week”.

The tribunal spokesman also pointed out that the judge ordered Robinson to procure legal representation and submit an affidavit and answer why he should not be held in contempt.

If proven guilty, according Amoussouga, Robinson may be charged with a maximum sentence of five years in prison or a fine of $10,000 or both.

Arrest Mr. Bashir, ICC tells Uganda

2010-06-09T06:00:00.001-04:00

By Alfred Nyongesa Wandera

Posted Monday, June 7 2010 at 19:22

Kampala

President of the Assembly of State Parties to the International Criminal Court has insisted that Uganda must arrest Sudan President Omar el-Bashir when he visits the country during the AU summit due in Kampala in July.

In a statement released yesterday to media at the ongoing ICC Review Conference in Kampala, Mr Christian Wenaweser said since Uganda is a party to the Rome Statute, it has to fulfill its mandate as stipulated in the Statute.

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"I'm looking forward to seeing a statement from the Ugandan government that is less equivocal than what we have seen over the past few days. What's important from our perspective is Uganda is a state party to the Rome Statute so it has an obligation to fully cooperate with the provisions of that statute and we would like to see a statement to that affect,” Mr Wenaweser’s statement reads in part.

It adds: "Certainly confusion has been created, I have been in contact with senior Ugandan officials and told them it was in their interest and the interest of this conference that they would make a statement that is clearer than what they have done so far, and in particular make reference to the fact that they are a state party to the ICC."

The statement comes at a time when Uganda backtracked on an earlier decision not to invite Mr Bashir to a summit in Kampala because he is wanted by the International Criminal Court. "President Bashir of Sudan was actually invited for the AU summit scheduled to take place in Kampala from the July19 to July 29," said a statement from Uganda's ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The ministry said African heads of state have been invited, except those who were suspended from the AU for specific reasons. "The Foreign Affairs ministry statement is the current government position. The Foreign Affairs statement takes precedence over mine," presidential spokesman Tamale Mirundi said.

A presidency statement on Saturday evening had said: "President Yoweri Museveni has disclosed that his Sudanese counterpart General Omar Hassan Bashir has not been invited to attend the African Union Conference" but that Sudan was free to send another representative.

Sudan on Sunday demanded an apology from Uganda and asked that the summit be moved to another venue.

Uganda has in the past dithered over the attitude to adopt towards Bashir, who is wanted by the ICC for war crimes and crimes against humanity in connection with the conflict in Sudan's western Darfur region.

This has threatened to worsen the already fragile diplomatic relations between Kampala and Khartoum.

MHC: Abanyamakuru ba leta ntibakwiye kuzarangwa no kubogama mu matora

2010-06-08T08:51:00.002-04:00

“Itangazamakuru rya Leta rifite inshingano zo gutanga uburenganzira bungana ku mitwe ya politiki, n’abakandida bigenga mu bihe by’amatora”. Byasobanuwe n’Umunyamabanga nshingwabikorwa w’Inama nkuru y’itangazamakuru, Bwana Patrice Mulama, mu mahugurwa y’abanyamakuru kuri uyu wa mbere,amahugurwa abera i Nyamdungu, mu mujyi wa Kigali.

Ni amahugurwa yitabiriwe n’abanyamakuru ba Radio Rwanda, Radio z’Abaturage, Televiziyo y’u Rwanda, ibinyamakuru bya La Nouvelle Releve n’Imvaho Nshya ndetse n’abahagarariye ORINFOR mu turere tunyuranye tw’igihugu. Ayo mahugurwa afite insanganyamatsiko igira iti: “Uruhare rw’itangazamakuru rya Leta mu gushimangira Demokarasi”.

Yateguwe n’ Inama nkuru y’itangazamakuru ifatanyije n’Ikigo cy’Igihugu cy’Itangazamakuru, ORINFOR. Inama nkuru y’itangazamakuru ibishingira ku mahame mpuzamahanga y’itangazamakuru, asaba abanyamakuru kutabogama muri rusange no mu gihe cy’amatora by’umwihariko.Byasobanuwe n’Umunyamabanga nshingwabikorwa w’Inama nkuru y’itangazamakuru, Bwana Patrice Mulama.Kugira ngo abanyamakuru ba Leta bamenye uko bakwiye kwitwara mu bihe by’amatora, bari mu mahugurwa yateguwe n’ Inama nkuru y’itangazamakuru ifatanyije n’ikigo cy’igihugu cy’itangazamakuru, ORINFOR.

Umuyobozi Mukuru wa ORINFOR, Bwana Willy RUKUNDO, asanga itangazamakuru rya Leta, rikwiye kugira ubushobozi n’ubumenyi mu guherekeza abanyarwanda mu myiteguro y’amatora no mu gikorwa cy’itora nyirizina.

Abanyamakuru bo mu bitangazamakuru bya Leta barahugurwa na Athanase NTIYANOGEYE, impuguke mu by’itangazamakuru, umaze imyaka 25 akora mu itangazamakuru, akaba anaryigisha muri za kaminuza zo mu bihugu by’u Burundi n’u Rwanda.Inama nkuru y’itangazamakuru irateganya guhugura abanyamakuru hafi 50bo mu bitangazamakuru bya Leta,Hazahugurwa n’abo mu bitangazamakuru by’abikorera basaga 100, mu byiciro 2, guhera ku itariki 24 z’uku kwezi turimo. Byose kugira ngo bamenye uko bakora inkuru n’ibiganiro bisesenguye, ariko ku buryo butabogamye mu gihe cy’amatora.

Steven Mutangana

Abakoze Jenoside bakwiye gusabirwa bagahindura imitima - Prof. Byanafashe

2010-06-08T08:39:00.003-04:00

Hari abantu bashishikajwe no guhakana ko nta jenoside yabayeho mu Rwanda, bene abo ngo mu masengesho aturwa Imana bakwiye gusengerwa bagahinduka kuko ntibarumva uburemere bw'icyaha bakoze. Ibi byagarutsweho na Prof Déo Byanafashe, umwarimu muri Kaminuza Nkuru y'u Rwanda, mu kiganiro ku mateka ya jenoside yagejeje ku bakozi b'uruganda rukora imiti LABOPHAR ruri mu Karere ka Huye ku wa gatandatu, hari mu muhango wo kwibuka abakozi b'urwo ruganda bazize jenoside yakorewe abatutsi muri Mata 1994.

Padiri Celestini Rwirangira mu gitambo cya misa yasabiye inzirakarengane zaguye muri Jenoside yakorewe Abatutsi muri Mata 1994, bahoze bakora muri urwo ruganda rukora imiti Laboratoire Pharmaceutique du Rwanda (LABOPHAR) mu magambo ahinnye y'igifaransa.

Abakoraga muri icyo kigo bazize Jenoside yakorewe Abatutsi muri Mata 1994 ni bane, aribo; Buhayiro Alphonse, Kamanda Justin, Muhigana Félix na Nzeyimana Vincent, biciwe hanze y'icyo kigo.

Mu rwego rwo gukomeza kubibuka no kubasubiza agaciro bambuwe, ubuyobozi bwa LABOPHAR bwafashe gahunda yo kubakorera urwibutso mu irebe ry'umuryango winjira mu mazu y'icyo kigo, hashyirwa igihangano n'amafoto y'izo nzirakarengane ndetse n'ibimenyetso biranga Jenoside.

Uhereye ibumoso ugana iburyo,
Prof. Déo Byanafashe, Mgr Philippe Rukamba,
Eveque wa Butare,na Prof. Jean-Philippe
Schreiber wa ULB bari mu nama yabaye
mu mwaka wa 2008Ing. Kambanda Rucweri Hormisdas, Umuyobozi wa LABOPHAR asobanura iby'uru rwibutso ruzabafasha, yagize ati “uru rwibutso twashyize muri iki kigo ni uruzajya rudufasha guhora twibuka, kandi tuzirikana abaguye muri Jenoside yakorewe Abatutsi.” Yongeyeho kandi ko atari abantu bahuye na Jenoside gusa ahubwo ko yangije n'ibintu, yakomeje avuga ko ibintu byinshi byangirikiye muri iki kigo hakabaho gusana.

Mu kiganiro ku mateka ya Jenoside Prof. Déo Byanafashe, yagejeje ku bitabiriye uwo muhango, yavuze ko Jenoside yakorewe Abatutsi ari umugambi wacuzwe n'ubutegetsi bubi bwariho, bugacengeza ingengabitekerezo yayo mu baturage, none ngo iracyahari ndetse hakaba hari n'abayihakana. Aba ngo nabo bajye bibukwa mu masengesho kugira ngo Imana ibafashe guhinduka.

Prof Byanafashe, yavuze ko mu gihugu cyabayemo Jenoside nk'u Rwanda hadakwiye kubaho guhuga kugira ngo abayiteguye batazongera, dore ko mu mvugo no mu bindi bimenyetso, bagaragaza ko bagifite uwo mugambi.

Foto: Africa Mission
MIGISHA Magnifique

Arnold Films-Ubu ngo ushobora kwikinira film igihe ubifitiye ubushake n'urukundo.

2010-06-08T08:36:00.001-04:00

Mu gihe usanga abanyarwanda benshi bakunda gukina film nyamara nanone ugasanga babura aho bakinira film ,ubu Arnold Films baratangaza ko bagiye gushyiraho gahunda yo kwigisha gukina Film mu rwego rwo gutangiza ikoraniro ry'abakinnyi ba Film mu Rwanda aho bazigisha,bagahugura, ndetse bakanakina Film zitandukanye.

Mugisha Arnold yatangarije inyarwanda.com ko yagize iki gitekerezo kuko yabonaga ko mu banyarwanda hari abantu bashoboye gukina no gukora Film kuko ngo yaba umwana,umusore,umukecuru n'umusaza ashobora gukina Film bitewe na role iri muriyo film

Iyi gahunda ikaba izatangira ku mugaragaro ku itariki ya 15.06.2010 ariko kwiyandikisha byo bikaba byaramaze gutangira .Ibi rero ngo akaba yarabitekereje nyuma yo kubona ko mu Rwanda hari abakunzi benshi bo gukina Films kandi banafite ubushake ariko bakaba ntamahirwe babona yo gukina naho bakinira.

Uyu musore kandi amaze gusobonukirwa ibintu byo gukora film aho yagiye akora amahugurwa menshi akomeye ya film production ndetse na Film nyinshi yagiye akora , harimo nka editing ya Film By the Shortcurt ya Daddy de Maximo ,yakoze kuri film ya Shake hands with devil ivuga kuri genocide ya korewe abatutsi,n'izindi zitandukanye. Ubu ngo ari gukora Film Documentaires zitandukanye , mu minsi yashize kandi niho yari yaragiye gukorana na Producer Washington ,aho avuga ko yakuye ubumenyi buhanitse mu gukora Film na Videos izo arizo zose.

Ku bantu bose bashaka kuba bakwiyandikisha ngo baterefona kuri 0785365286 cyangwa bakandika kuri e-mail Arnold.films@yahoo.fr bagahabwa ibisobanuro birushijeho .

Ubwo rero abari barabuze aho bagaragariza talents zabo mu gukina film barabe babonye izo contact.

Paul Kagamé : "Nous avons besoin de partenaires, mais pas de maîtres"

2010-06-08T08:15:00.000-04:00

Trois mois après la visite de Nicolas Sarkozy à Kigali qui avait scellé la réconciliation franco-rwandaise, Paul Kagamé rend la politesse au président français par sa présence à Nice. C'est la première fois que le président rwandais, dont le régime autoritaire met en cause la responsabilité de la France dans le génocide des Tutsis de 1994, assiste à un sommet Afrique-France.

Kigali avait rompu avec Paris en novembre 2006 pour répliquer aux accusations du juge Bruguière visant le président Kagamé dans l'attentat contre l'avion de son prédécesseur, Juvénal Habyarimana qui, le 6 avril 1994, a marqué le début du génocide.

Jadis très hostile à la France, le président Kagamé est à Nice et tient à le faire savoir. Lundi 31 mai, avant même l'ouverture du sommet, il a répondu aux questions du Monde, du Figaro et de Libération.

Alors qu'il a choisi, à l'automne dernier, de faire adhérer son pays au Commonwealth, il semble vouloir aujourd'hui se rapprocher de la France pour compenser le désamour dont il fait l'objet dans le monde anglo-saxon. Les Etats-Unis qui, ces dernières années, ne tarissaient pas d'éloge sur les réussites économiques du Rwanda et sur sa stabilité, ont changé de ton à l'approche de l'élection présidentielle prévue le 9 août. Plusieurs candidats ne parviennent pas à se faire enregistrer. La secrétaire d'Etat adjointe chargée de l'Afrique , Johnnie Carson, a récemment stigmatisé, à l'approche du scrutin "une série d'actions inquiétantes prises par le gouvernement du Rwanda, qui constituent des tentatives de restreindre la liberté d'expression".

Comment répondez-vous à ces critiques des Etats-Unis ?

Ces propos ont été grossis démesurément et font sans doute allusion à la question de l'enregistrement des candidatures. C'est un processus qui obéit à des lois rwandaises. A l'étranger, on peut avoir une interprétation différente que nous ne partageons pas. Les élections vont avoir lieu de façon libre, transparente et pacifique, même si certains veulent déstabiliser le processus par des activités terroristes. Dans le passé, nous avons géré des situations plus difficiles.

On vous reproche en particulier d'interdire la candidature de l'opposante Victoire Ingabire...

Victoire Ingabire mène des activités avec d'anciens génocidaires qui sont punies par les lois de notre pays. Des preuves existent de ses contacts avec FDLR [Forces démocratiques de libération du Rwanda, rébellion hutu réfugiée en RDC] et de l'argent qu'elle leur envoie au Congo. Le processus de sa candidature dépend de la procédure judiciaire en cours. Nous détenons des preuves qu'elle a participé à des activités visant à nier le génocide, ce qui est aussi réprimée par la loi. Si elle veut briguer une fonction officielle, elle doit respecter la loi.

Kigali est visé par une série d'attentats à la grenade. Qui les commet ?

Principalement les FDLR. Ils entendent viser le Rwanda précisément parce que notre pays est connu pour sa sécurité et sa stabilité. Victoire Ingabire est liée à ces groupes. Je ne dis pas qu'elle a jeté elle-même des grenades mais elle en contact avec les réseaux du FDLR qui les posent.

On a l'impression que la loi réprimant le négationniste sert en réalité contre les opposants.

Pour nous, être accusé d'utiliser le génocide, c'est une insulte. Nous n'avons pas de problème avec les gens qui nous critiquent, mais avec ceux qui nient l'existence du génocide. Contre ceux-là, nous avons une loi. Pensez-vous que nous devrions les laisser faire ?

Les succès économiques du Rwanda ne devraient-ils pas aller de pair avec des progrès démocratiques ?

Au Rwanda, le développement et la démocratie progressent ensemble. Les progrès accomplis dans le domaine de l'agriculture ou de la santé le sont par le peuple, pas par le président. Il n'y a aucune contradiction entre démocratie et développement. Une fois que les gens ont à manger, la première chose à laquelle ils aspirent, c'est la démocratie.

Un sommet sur la paix dans la région des Grands Lacs devait se tenir en marge du sommet de Nice. Il a été annulé faute de la présence du président congolais, Joseph Kabila. Le regrettez-vous ?

J'aurais aimé qu'il soit là mais son absence n'affectera pas les discussions engagées entre nous.

Le président Sarkozy a-t-il un rôle à jouer dans cette région, comme il le souhaite ?

Ses propositions sont bienvenues mais ce ne sont pas les seules. J'accueillerai tout ce que le président Sarkozy pourra proposer dans le sens d'une coopération avec les Etats de la région. Nous avons besoin de partenaires – la France, l'Allemagne ou la Chine -, mais pas de maîtres. C'est ma ligne de conduite.

Vous avez récemment demandé à la France d'extrader Agathe Habyarimana, la veuve de votre prédécesseur qui est accusée d'avoir pris part au génocide de 1994. Refusez-vous qu'elle soit jugée en France ?

Ce que je souhaite c'est que justice soit faite. Si la France veut organiser un procès honnête, ce sera bien. Si elle nous transfère l'accusée, ce sera encore mieux car ses crimes ont été commis au Rwanda.

Cela signifie-t-il que vous faites davantage confiance à la justice française aujourd'hui ?

C'est vrai, il y a une meilleure compréhension, mais ce qui est fait aujourd'hui aurait du être accompli depuis des années. Ceci dit, il n'est jamais trop tard pour rendre justice.

La France elle-même a-t-elle changé d'attitude à votre égard ?

L'approche est plus pragmatique avec M. Sarkozy. La France a besoin de cette nouvelle approche basée sur le respect mutuel. Elle doit reconnaître que nous avons pris nos affaires en main.

Des entreprises françaises participent au sommet de Nice. Dans quels secteurs leur savoir-faire peut-il intéresser le Rwanda ?

Toutes les sociétés sont bienvenues aussi bien en matière d'infrastructure que d'électricité, d'agriculture, de mines ou de tourisme.

Vous invoquez la justice mais vous soutenez le président soudanais Omar Al Bachir recherché par la Cour pénale internationale (CPI) pour "crimes contre l'humanité" au Darfour.

La CPI voudrait faire croire que des atrocités ne sont commises qu'en Afrique ? C'est faux. Elle pratique une justice sélective dirigée contre les pays les moins développés.

En tant que Rwandais vous connaissez tragiquement bien le lien existant entre justice et paix. Pourquoi le refusez-vous pour le Darfour ?

Ce lien entre justice et la paix et donc la réconciliation ne peut provenir d'une Cour extérieure. Il passe par la justice traditionnelle locale du type de nos gacaca [tribunal populaire]. Avec eux, nous concilions justice et réconciliation. C'est indispensable pour que nos pays avancent.

Propos recueillis par Philippe Bernard, envoyé spécial à Nice

UN calls for DR Congo probe into activist's death

2010-06-08T08:08:00.002-04:00

UN chief Ban Ki-Moon has called for an independent investigation in the Democratic Republic of Congo into the death of a human rights activist.

Floribert Chebeya's body was found in his car after he was called to a meeting with the national police chief, which did not take place, on Tuesday.

A senior UN investigator said the circumstances of the death "strongly suggested official responsibility".

The government has not responded to the comment, but has ordered an inquiry.

The UN has about 20,000 peacekeepers in DR Congo, helping the nation recover from years of civil war and insecurity.

Mr Chebeya, 47, headed Voice of the Voiceless and activists say he received regular threats over the last 20 years.

ANALYSIS

Floribert Chebeya was a thorn in the side of governments in DR Congo for nearly three decades. He founded Voice of the Voiceless in 1983 when Mobutu Sese Seko was ruling then-Zaire with an iron fist.

When Laurent Kabila came to power in 1997 and later his son Joseph, Mr Chebeya continued to denounce illegal arrests, arbitrary detentions and corruption.

DR Congo is set to celebrate 50 years of independence from Belgium this month. But Mr Chebeya opposed the invitation sent to Belgium's king and said it was not a time for parades, but an opportunity to discuss the social ills still facing the country.

I met him a few times last year after he was briefly arrested, beaten up and jailed by special services. He told me then that he was under surveillance and was receiving regular threats.

UN investigator Philip Alston voiced his concern about the circumstances of his death in a speech to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.

Earlier on Thursday, two members of Mr Chebeya's family, three UN staff and two members of Voice of the Voiceless had been granted access to his body at the main morgue in the capital, Kinshasa.

They could see only his face as the rest of his body was covered by a bed sheet that they were not allowed to remove, BBC reporter Thomas Fessy said.

Dolly Ibefo, from Voice of the Voiceless, told the BBC that there were no obvious wounds, but there was blood in his mouth, his nose and his ears.

He called for an independent autopsy.

Our reporter said that Mr Chebeya had sent a text message to his wife saying that he was at the police headquarters for the meeting, but was not heard from again.

Both the police and Voice of the Voiceless have confirmed that the meeting with head of national police, John Numbi, did not take place.

Mr Ibefo explained that Mr Chebeya had sent a letter to Mr Numbi earlier this year asking him to improve detention conditions in prisons.

He received a letter of acknowledgment last week and then a call on Tuesday asking him to attend a meeting at 1730 local time.

DR Congo suspends police chief over Chebeya death

2010-06-08T07:59:00.002-04:00

The head of police in the Democratic Republic of Congo has been suspended following the death of a human rights activist, officials say.

Three police officers have also been arrested and the president is determined to resolve the case, the interior minister said.

Floribert Chebeya, head of the group Voix des Sans Voix, was found dead in his car near Kinshasa on Wednesday.

He had reportedly been due to meet the police chief that evening.

Both the police and Voix des Sans Voix have said the meeting never took place.

'Precaution'
The police chief, John Numbi, is seen as a close ally of President Joseph Kabila, the BBC's Thomas Fessy reports from the Congolese capital, Kinshasa.

Activists say Mr Chebeya had received regular threats over the last 20 years.

On Friday, the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called for an independent inquiry into the incident. The government has ordered its own investigation.

In a statement read out on television, Interior Minister Adolphe Lumanu said on Sunday that President Kabila was "determined that all light be shed" on Mr Chebeya's killing.

"To allow the enquiry to be conducted smoothly, the national defence council decided as a precaution to suspend inspector general John Numbi," the statement said.

DR Congo is struggling to recover from years of civil war and insecurity. The UN has about 20,000 peacekeepers there.

Erlinder denied bail

2010-06-08T07:56:00.001-04:00

KIGALI - The Embattled American lawyer Peter Erlinder was yesterday remanded by the Intermediate Court of Gasabo on grounds of “serious indices of culpability” in his case of genocide denial and spreading rumours that threaten state security.

Judge Maurice Mbishibishi yesterday said that court found the reasons presented by prosecution very serious and could not permit Erlinder to continue with the case outside detention and that his defence failed to convince court that his poor health is linked to his stay in detention.

“Court has decided that Carl Peter Erlinder be provisionally detained for 30 days on grounds of serious reasons that link him to the charges levelled against him by prosecution,”

“All crimes related to Genocide denial and threatening state security are serious offences punished by law with considerable sentences. Court also found no link between Erlinder’s health and his stay in detention.

He will therefore be provisionally detained for 30 days, he ruled, reminding the accused that this decision can be appealed against within five days.

Last Friday during the preliminary hearing, Erlinder had pleaded not guilty of all charges levelled against him which include denying and trivialising the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi and spreading rumours that threaten state security.

Erlinder, who looked healthier than he was on Friday held his chin and momentarily closed his eyes as the judge pronounced the verdict of his bail hearing.

He had told court on Friday that he was not aware that his “obscure” publications back in America could be tantamount to genocide denial or even threaten the country’s security and that he was in ill health and needed urgent treatment.

He pleaded to the judge to conditionally release him and allow him to travel back to the United States for appropriate treatment as his health was deteriorating but prosecution insists he should be provisionally detained as investigations into his case continue.

According to Mbishibishi, Erlinder and his legal team failed to provide the necessary medical reports indicating a linkage between his detention which occurred on May 28 and his ill state.

“The medical report which Erlinder presented to court only shows that he was hospitalised twice but it does not convince court that his hospitalisation was a result of detention,” Mbishibishi said.

His defence immediately announced they would appeal which means that the case will now be heard by the High Court. Efforts to get a comment from the defence were futile as defence lawyers refused to say anything regarding the verdict.

Erlinder had on Friday told court that he was undergoing an emotional and psychological breakdown.

Last week he reportedly feigned a suicide attempt by mixing over 50 tablets in water which he supposedly drunk but doctors found that he had not taken the mixture.
The Judge told Erlinder, that his continued denial and trivialisation of the genocide is a serious offence that is punishable by the laws of the land.

It was also said that Erlinder’s explicit publications urging Rwandans to stand up against a ‘genocidaire ruler’ and his continued accusations on President Paul Kagame triggering the genocide by downing the plane of the former President Juvenal Habyarimana were baseless and tantamount to causing state insecurity.

He referred to a number of documents and books where Erlinder puts the word genocide in inverted commas or prefers to call what happened in Rwanda as “terrible massacres”, “horrific events”, “massive civilian killings”, “civilian-civilian massacres”.

Uganda backtracks on invite for Sudan's Omar al-Bashir

2010-06-08T07:51:00.003-04:00

Uganda has backtracked on earlier comments that it had not invited Sudan's leader Omar al-Bashir to July's African Union conference in Kampala.

Over the weekend, Sudan demanded an apology after Uganda's president was quoted as saying he was not coming.

Since the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Mr Bashir last year for alleged war crimes in Darfur he has had to limit his travel.

Uganda is currently hosting a summit reviewing the progress of the ICC.

Mr Bashir denies the ICC charges and the African Union has said it will not honour the warrant.

But on Saturday, Uganda's state house said President Yoweri Museveni had assured the ICC president that Sudan would be represented by government officials in July.

Following the outrage from Khartoum, however, Uganda's foreign ministry issued a statement to "clarify" that Mr Bashir had been invited to the summit of African leaders.

"The Sudanese embassy in Kampala has confirmed that they received and sent the invitation letter to Khartoum," a statement said.

Last July, Mr Bashir cancelled plans to travel to Uganda following speculation he could be arrested.

2010-05-31T15:17:00.002-04:00

Nice, Inama y'Abakuru b'ibihugu by'Afrika_France

2010-05-31T14:59:00.004-04:00

Perezida Kagame i Nice

2010-05-30T14:11:00.002-04:00

Ejo kuwa mbere i Nice mu Bufaransa hazatangira inama y'abakuru b'ibihugu n'aba za guverinoma muri Afrika,izabahuza na Perezida w'Ubufaransa, Nicolas Sarkozy. Ni inama y'iminsi 2, ikaba izaba iteranye ku nshuro ya 25. uRwanda ruzaba ruhagarariwe na Perezida wa Repubulika, Paul Kagame, ari narwo ruzinduko rwe rwa mbere mu Bufaransa, kuva yaba Perezida w'uRwanda.

Nk'uko bigaragara ku murongo w'ibizigirwa muri iyi nama, abayobozi ba za guverinoma n'abakuru b'ibihugu bya Afrika basaga 30, bazagirana ibinaniro na mugenzi wabo w'uBufaransa, Nicolas Sarkozy, bizibanda ku ngingo 3 z'ingenzi, arizo:
1. Uruhare rwa Afrika mu nzego ziyobora isi, nk'akanama ka Loni gashinzwe amahoro ku isi, Banki y'isi, n'Ikigega Mpuzamahanga cy'Imari, aho ibihugu bya Afrika byemeza ko bidahagarariwe uko bikwiye.
2. Uruhare rw'impande zombi, Afrika n'uBufaransa, mu kubungabunga amahoro n'umutekano, kuko Afrika itahwemye kuvuga ko ibihugu by'ibihangange , n'uBufaransa burimo, bikunze kwivanga mu bibazo Abanyafrika bakwikemurira ubwabyo, n'aho amahanga akaza ari ukubyunganira gusa.
3. Hari kandi ikibazo cy'ihindagurika ry'ibihe, aho usanga ibihugu byateye imbere mu nganda bizarira mu gushyira umukono ku masezerano arwanya ibyuka bihumanya ikirere, kandi izo nganda arizo za mbere zangiza ikirere.Abateguye iyi nama bo baravuga ko ikigamijwe ari inyungu z'impande zombi.

Abasesenguzi mu bya politiki hagati ya Afrika n'uBufaransa, bashyize ahagaragara inyandiko zemeza ko izi ngingo uko ari 3 zishobora kuzakurura impaka zikaze, ari nayo mpamvu zose zizaganirwaho mu mwiherero.Abo basesenguzi barasaba ko iyi nama yazatandukana n'izindi 24 zayibanjirije, ikazagera ku myanzuro ifatika. Nk'Umuryango uharanira uburenganzira bw'ikiremwamuntu, Human Rights Watch, wasohoye itangazo rivuga ko"umuco wo kudahana ariwo ukurura amakimbirane, ruswa, n'andi mahano akomeje kugaragara mu bihugu byinshi bya Afrika, birimo n'ibifitanye umubano wihariye n'Ubufaransa".

Perezida wa Repubulika y'uRwanda,Paul Kagame ategerejwe hano i Nice ejo kuwa mbere, naho Ministri w'Ububanyi n'Amahanga n'Ubutwererane, Louise Mushikiwabo, akaba ari mu nama y'abaministri bagenzi be, yateranye kuri iki cyumweru, igamije gutegura iy'Abakuru b'ibihugu.

Jean-Lambert Gatare i Nice mu Bufaransa

PRESIDENT KAGAME TO ATTEND FRANCE-AFRICA SUMMIT IN NICE

2010-05-30T14:10:00.001-04:00

President Kagame today departed Kigali for Nice, France where he will participate in the 25th France Africa Summit, following acceptance of an invitation extended by President Sarkozy during his visit to Kigali last February.

Around 40 African Heads of State have confirmed attendance at the two-day summit which will consist mainly of closed sessions focusing on governance, reinforcement of peace and security as well as climate change. This is President Kagame first visit to France in eight years, having last visited during the France-Afrique Summit held in Paris in 2002.

Taking place at the margins of the Heads of State Summit are ministerial meetings on commerce and the economy, and a business forum. The summit is being held against a background of a significant shift in France’s relationship with Africa and outcomes may signal the start of a different type of France-Africa dialogue.

Rwanda’s delegation at the Nice Summit include Louise Mushikiwabo, Minister of Foreign Affairs; John Rwangombwa, Minister of Finance; Emmanuel Hategeka, PS in the Ministry of Trade and Industry and Robert Bayigamba, President of the Private Sector Federation.

Following the Summit in Nice, President Kagame is scheduled to address the World Summit for the Future of Haiti taking place at Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic. President Kagame has been invited share with participating dignitaries Rwanda’s post genocide experience, particularly the emergency reconstruction in the absence of proper state structures.

The World Summit for the Future of Haiti is a meeting of the international community called the President of the Dominican Republic, Dr. Leonel Fernández, which aims to ratify the commitment of the International Community, so that Haiti may be guarantee a sustained support for the implementation of the Re-founding Plan and, specifically, to ensure the effective execution of the Action Plan while creating permanent ties of solidarity between the international community and Haiti in its reconstruction.

The Summit is also an opportunity to provide an update of where Haiti is at present. Several Heads of State from the Latin America and Caribbean region and/or representatives of donor countries friendly to Haiti are expected to attend.

END

Zuma explains why Rwanda officers won’t return

2010-03-28T06:52:00.001-04:00

By Emmanuel Gyezaho & Risdel Kasasira (email the author)

Posted Sunday, March 28 2010 at 00:00

Kampala

Rwanda’s hopes of having two dissident army generals currently in self-imposed exile extradited from South Africa to face trial appear to have taken a fatal blow after President Jacob Zuma said his country is obliged to follow international laws on asylum.

South Africa’s President Zuma confirmed to reporters at the end of his two-day state visit to Uganda on Friday that his country had granted asylum to Col. Patrick Karegeya, former director of Rwanda’s external intelligence office, and temporary asylum to Lt. Gen. Kayumba Nyamaswa, an envoy to India.

The comments came in the wake of reports in Kigali that another top army officer had been put under house arrest over coup plot claims, allegations which the Rwandan government dismissed as hearsay. Rwanda Defence Forces spokesman Maj. Jill Rutaremara dismissed reports that Land Forces Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Charles Kayonga had been arrested in a failed coup attempt on Wednesday.

Rwanda denies
“We are tired of those [coup] rumours,” he told Sunday Monitor on telephone from Arusha, Tanzania on Friday. “It is wishful thinkers behind all these baseless rumours but they will be disappointed.” This is the second time reports of a coup plot are coming up in less than a month even though Rwandan leader Paul Kagame said at the beginning of March that a coup is unattainable in Rwanda. The country, preparing for presidential elections this year, has in the last few months experienced isolated cases of bomb explosions in Kigali, which authorities blame on dissident army officers.

Responding to a reporter’s question over whether South Africa would execute arrest warrants for the two exiled army officers, who Rwanda accuses of subversion, President Zuma said: “Certainly, we are going to be guided by what governs the world in regards to refugee status.” “I don’t think we can do anything outside of that,” said Mr Zuma, who admitted, however, that South Africa had not considered the issue of the two exiled officers in light of the arrest warrants. “Once the matter is formally raised, am sure we shall consider it and arrive at the appropriate conclusion,” he said.

International law protects individuals who have been granted asylum and considers that a state has no obligation to surrender an alleged criminal to a foreign state because to be granted sanctuary indicates that the state granting asylum regards the individual as being illegally persecuted by the country they fled from. It appears a complicated matter for officials in Kigali especially in light of the absence of an extradition treaty between Rwanda and South Africa.

Nyamwasa escape
Lt. Gen. Nyamaswa escaped from Kigali on February 27 and transited through Kampala to Malaba border post before he fled to South Africa, a development that fuelled accusations that Uganda had aided his escape. Kampala and Kigali have had frosty relations characterised by accusations and counter accusations of both countries aiding each other’s dissidents.

Les francophones relèvent la tête

2010-03-28T06:46:00.005-04:00

Friday, 26 March 2010 08:30

Depuis la visite de Nicolas Sarkozy les francophones ne cachent plus leur bonne humeur. Beaucoup d’entre eux se sont réjouis d’entendre le président Kagame saluer son homologue en français : « Mr le président bienvenu au Rwanda » (Photo : PPU)

Kigali: La reprise des relations franco-rwandaises ces derniers mois redonne espoir aux nombreux francophones de ce pays frustrés par la suprématie de l'anglais dans l'éducation et l'administration. Beaucoup espèrent pouvoir poursuivre leurs études en France.

Depuis sa réouverture fin février, l’ambassade de France à Kigali est prise d'assaut par des centaines d’universitaires rwandais qui postulent pour des bourses d’études du gouvernement français. Ces francophones qui ne peuvent plus étudier en français dans leur pays depuis que début 2009, l'anglais est devenu la langue unique de formation, de l'école primaire à l'université, postulent pour des masters ou des doctorats en France.

"Depuis plus d’une décennie, les bourses francophones étaient devenues très rares voire inexistantes au Rwanda. La normalisation des relations franco-rwandaises constitue une chance d’accès aux études et à l’emploi", estime Rugerinyange, agent de la Banque populaire du Rwanda, qui compte faire un master dans un pays francophone. Selon lui, un bon diplôme est plus important que la connaissance de l'anglais.

Respecter les droits des francophones

"Les Rwandais francophones avaient une sorte de complexe ou de frustration en voyant la course du Rwanda vers le Commonwealth", constate un journaliste d'une radio privée de Kigali.

Selon lui, certains n'osaient même plus chercher du travail dans les institutions publiques et privées. "Ils sont pénalisés dans les tests d’embauche, car les questions en anglais sont cotés sur 75% contre 25% en français, ce qui met en cause leur dignité", poursuit-il

La reprise des relations franco-rwandaises, marquée par les visites successives du chef de la diplomatie française, Bernard Kouchner en novembre dernier et du président Nicolas Sarkozy le 26 février, redonne aujourd'hui confiance aux francophones. Ils en espèrent aussi un appui pour accéder aux études en français et à l'emploi.

"Grâce à la fin de la brouille qui a marqué les deux pays, les droits des francophones seront maintenant respectés", se réjouit un enseignant au Camp-Kigali School à Nyamirambo, Kigali.

Etudier et travailler en français

Actuellement la plupart des jeunes ont suivi leur scolarité en français. Ils ne peuvent plus aujourd'hui poursuivre leurs études dans cette langue où ils sont le plus à l'aise. "Un professeur de l’Université libre de Kigali (ULK) de la faculté de droit a été récemment remercié parce qu’il donnait ses cours en français", dénonce ce même enseignant.

Jonas Kamari, licencié en langues et littérature française, il y a 13 ans, est poète et écrit des pièces de théâtres. Il espère trouver du travail dans une école francophone ou une Ong française au Rwanda : "La fin de la brouille entre le Rwanda et la France me donne l'espoir de trouver un sponsor pour mes pièces de théâtre."

Ceux qui en ont les moyens, n'hésiteront pas à mettre leurs enfants à l'école française qui va rouvrir ses portes. "Tout en sachant que le Rwanda s’oriente plus vers le monde anglophone que francophone, je conduirai mes enfants à l’école française Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

Ils parleront couramment le français et l’anglais leur sera facile à apprendre un peu plus tard", explique le vétéran capitaine Mbonimpa qui cite aussi un officier anglophone de haut rang dont les trois enfants fréquentent l’école belge de Kigali où le français est la langue d'enseignement.

Pour de nombreux jeunes Rwandais, connaître le français signifie s'ouvrir à d'autres horizons sur le marché du travail. "L’offre au Rwanda est de moins en moins importante. Je vais donc convoiter le monde francophone pour avoir une portée internationale", explique le juriste Manzi qui veut devenir avocat, soit en RDC, soit au Burundi, soit en Afrique de l’Ouest francophone.

(Syfia Grands Lacs)

HUTUS HATE RWANDA IN DARFUR

2010-03-06T16:02:00.001-05:00

To Orwell Today,

For Jackie Jura:

Press Release Intwari-Partnership CNA-Ubumwe FDLR-CMC PDN Darfour Peace Mission : Beyond Karenzi Karake
from,
Gerard Rusteid

To Gerard Rusteid,

I don't understand some of the terms in the name of your organization or the press release you sent [at bottom of page*] - ie "Intwari, CNA-Ubumwe, CMC, PDN" - but I do recognize the term "FDLR" and in adding "2 + 2" and getting "4" I conclude you are either a genocidaire or a genocidaire sympathiser and so I've foregone the usual "greetings" in the salutation.

I guess you sent me that anti-Karake press-release (which is also anti-Kagame, anti-RPF, anti-Rwanda, anti-Western World) because of the article I posted which exposed the truth about Kibeho and concluded that the Hutu Army and Interahamwe - NOT the RPF - were behind the chaos there that saw 80,000 Rwandans pushed almost beyond endurance of human suffering:

WITNESS KAGAME KIBEHO TRUTH

The RPF were heroes for closing down the IDP camps - including Kibeho - and if General Karake was involved there (although his name was never mentioned) that adds SUPPORT to his being appointed Deputy Commander of the AU/UN peace-making mission in Darfur, on top of all his other accomplishments as an officer in the RPF fighting genocidaires in Rwanda and the Congo, in the past AND in the present.

I can't think of any army I would rather have heading a mission to come to my rescue (if I were from Sudan [or any other nation for that matter]) than Rwanda's, based on their conduct and ability in stopping the Tutsi genocide in their own country. Every other nation in the world - including members of the Organization of African Unity - stood by doing nothing.

The Sudanese government itself has spoken out in defense of Rwanda heading the Darfur mission, as you are no doubt aware:

Sudan defends the controversial Rwandan general. Aug 22, 2007 (The Sudanese government blasted accusations directed at a Rwandan general, nominated as deputy commander for the new U.N.-African Union force in Darfur. Sudan’s envoy to the UN, Abdalhaleem Abdalmahmood, told the daily Al-Sudani that these accusations "are part of a campaign aimed at undermining the credibility of Africans". Last week a Rwandan opposition group accused the newly nominated deputy commander for the Darfur hybrid force of being a "war Criminal"....The Rwandan government has stuck to its choice which is likely to create some delays in setting the structure of the hybrid force...."This will infuriate the Rwandans if Karake is denied a role, and that will make it even more difficult to field adequate African forces, given Rwanda's skill and professionalism, and the sheer size of its contingent and potential to add to it" he added. The Darfur conflict began in 2003 when an ethnic minority rose up against the Arab-dominated government in Khartoum, which then was accused of enlisting the Janjaweed militia group to help crush the rebellion.)

If and when the AU/UN force finally arrives in Darfur (and it's a long way from being a reality) they won't be there to STOP the hell - they'll just be there to help the people (which is better than nothing). They'll have a better mandate than the UN forces that were in Rwanda (ie they'll be allowed to use their weapons) but they won't be allowed to disarm the killers.

Because of fabricated accusations by you genocidaires against Rwanda, the AU/UN mission for Darfur is being TALKED about instead of acted OUT and the suffering of the Sudanese continues unabated.

~ Jackie Jura

*PRESS RELEASE
Partenariat-Intwari
Intwari-Partnership
CNA-Ubumwe FDLR-CMC PDN
------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- ---------
Darfour Peace Mission : Beyond Karenzi Karake

The appointment of Rwandan general Karenzi Karake as Joint Deputy Commander of the UN mission in Darfur seems to have provoked a mini scandal which the media have seized upon rapidly.

By confirming the Rwandan officer for such a strategic post, the African Union has in fact fallen into a trap from which it will have difficulties to free itself. Unless it does not repeat its errors by reiterating the simulacrum of a Neutral Military Observers Group (GOMN) that had been put in place in Rwanda by President Museveni and Dr. Ahmed Salim (then OAU Secretary General), and where 90% of the military elements comprising that group were accomplices of one of the belligerent parties, namely, the RPF.

But the real scandal is to be found in more important, higher decision-making echelons, notably, at the level of the UN Security Council.

In this regard and while waiting to offer more extensive revelations, Intwari-Partnership declares the following in order to inform the national as well as the international opinion:

1. In order to grasp all of its parameters and identify all of its outline, one should place the Darfur conflict in a larger context, one of the famous "Regional Liberation War" so dear to the no less famous "New African Leaders" supported by the United States and the United Kingdom, leaders such as presidents Yoweri Kaguta Museveni of Uganda and Paul Kagame of Rwanda among others.

2. Triggered by the victorious NRA rebellion of Museveni in Uganda against Milton Obote from 1981 to 1986, this "Regional Liberation War" which has known its first success in 1986 through the accession to power of the "African Hitler" Museveni, in reference to his 04/04/1997 speech, was to continue in Rwanda with the tragic offensive of Paul Kagame’s Rwandese Patriotic Front from 1990 to 1994, then spread to the Democratic Republic of the Congo and to Burundi, integrating Tanzania, Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea and the Sudan. It is in fact a plan for the renaissance of the Great East Africa composed of the ten African countries mentioned above.

3. The immeasurable ambitions of certain African leaders acting in the name of obscure, foreign and/or local interests, often led them into an enterprise of extermination of their own people, of whom they unashamedly self-style "saviors" or "liberators" as it was the case in Rwanda.

4. The sinister project for the edification of a large "Nilotic" empire itself placed under the protection of an Anglo-Saxon empire that will ultimately cover the entire African continent, explains, to a large extent, fratricide conflicts from which Africa mourns daily, conflicts followed by a cohort of crimes against peace, war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide crimes.

5. In such circumstances as these, it appears urgent and legitimate to ask ourselves questions about the real or hidden intensions about stated or unstated objectives on the side of certain governments such as the government of Rwanda in relation to their multiform contributions to peace missions placed under UN and/or African Union aegis as it is currently the case in Darfur, whereas their collaboration with the SPLA and thus their lack of neutrality vis-à-vis the other Sudanese belligerent was known beforehand.

6. Before pretending to stabilize the Sudan or any other African country, Rwanda should, first, "clean its own house". More than just General Karenzi Karake whose role in massacres is well-known, General Paul Kagame must first of all have the courage to face his very heavy responsibilities in the Rwandan genocide, a genocide whose re-writing appears henceforth inevitable.

7. As for the UN, the African Union and, particularly, the United States and the United Kingdom, whose role in the Rwandan genocide and its seriously devastating consequences in the DRC remain underestimated, their credibility in the framework of the peace efforts currently undertaken in the Sudan may be seriously compromised.

8. Finally, to the Rwandan people in all its constituents and across divisions and wrenches cleverly generated and cynically fostered by a ruthless dictatorship that feeds itself from a permanent state of war, we urgently call upon all of them, our fellow citizens, so that they may, as one and same person, rise and pull down the separation wall erected between them by indignant rulers who knows no scruple.

Done in Brussels, August 21, 2007,
on behalf of Intwari-Partnership,
Déogratias Mushayidi (Signed)
General Secretary and Spokesperson

Rwanda flag to start flying at Commonwealth HQ

2010-03-04T14:31:00.006-05:00

Kigali: Rwanda’s flag will join other 53 national flags at the Commonwealth Secretariat in London on Monday next week – as the country finalises its entry into the British block, government announced Wednesday.

President Paul Kagame receives the Commonwealth's flag from SG Kamalesh Sharma on January 21 in Kigali (Photo: Commonwealth Secretariat)

The blue-yellow-green-with star flag means Rwanda in London, from March 08, will be a complete member as the 54th member. In January, the Commonwealth Secretary General was in Rwanda and presented the grouping’s flag in Kigali during his visit.

President Paul Kagame received the Commonwealth's flag from SG Kamalesh Sharma in what was billed as a powerful symbolic entry to the association.

Rwanda was allowed into the Commonwealth in November at the Commonwealth Heads of Government summit in Trinidad and Tobago. Incidentally, the occasion happened on the date as Rwanda and France reconciled.

The flag also follows changes that have already taken effect. For example, Rwanda’s envoys to Commonwealth members and those from the block to Kigali are called High Commissioner. The embassies are now referred to as High Commission.

‘The East African’ newspaper under fire over Ingabire

2010-03-04T14:29:00.001-05:00

Kigali: The Kenyan-based ‘The East African’ newspaper came under scrutiny on Wednesday with President Paul Kagame describing as “insulting” and “offensive” a damning interview it had with the opposition politician Ms. Ingabire Victoire.

Even naming the reporters who conducted the interview for the regional weekly as Mr. Charles Kazooba and Esther Nakazzi, President Kagame wondered why Rwanda is covered by “Ugandan journalists in Uganda…based in Uganda”.

“For me that suggested [that] we are probably less east-African…or the intention was to make Rwanda less east-African” he said, in reference to the five-member East African Community block.

In the lengthy interview published in the weekly’s February 15-20 Issue, Ms. Ingabire heavily criticized government – with most of her attacks directed at President Kagame himself and his Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) party.

Mr. Kagame told the Wednesday press conference that the story seemed to portray Rwandan society as a country where people are “tight-lipped”, and Ingabire as their “savoir”. The interview also insinuated Rwanda as a kingdom with Kagame at the helm.

In a seemingly irritated tone, coupled with laughter, Mr. Kagame said the “worst of it…probably something that is equally offensive. Why is it that people would cover Rwanda by Ugandan journalists in Uganda, based in Uganda?”

As the President spoke, the Nation Media correspondent in Kigali Mr. David Kezio interjected, distancing himself from the interview. He said it had been conducted by the Kampala bureau and “probably by email”. Mr. Kezio also said he would check with “my superiors Your Excellence”.

“You tell them that in my own right also…and when I say this you understand it,” said the President, adding, “…in my own right I thought it was offensive”.

He added: “But under freedom of expression, we can take that…but we can also express ourselves”.

The President did not say how that will happen.

The Nation Media Group, the parent company of The East African, is already in Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania, and is now working on entering into the Rwanda market. The media group has several newspapers, radio stations and Nation TV.

Previously, government has had issue with Daily Monitor, a daily in Uganda – also part of the Nation Media Group. Its reporter Mr. Robert Mukombozi was declared persona non grata in 2007. President Kagame at some point personally complained that Mr. Mukombozi had misquoted him.

Meanwhile, the spat with the Nation Media Group’s paper also comes after it was announced recently that it had invited President Kagame to the Pan African Media Conference scheduled for March 18 – 19 in Nairobi.

The major conference will also coincide with Nation Media Group's 50th anniversary.

According to the Group, President Kagame, Kenya’s Mwai Kibaki, as well as Joaquim Alberto Chissano, the former Mozambique leader, and John Agyekum Kufuor, former Ghanaian President, have all confirmed their attendance.

Hiddink remplace Vahid

2010-02-27T12:22:00.003-05:00

Football - Coupe du monde 2010

Selon nos informations, Vahid Halilhodzic a été démis de ses fonctions de sélectionneur de la Côte d'Ivoire. Une conférence de presse prévue va officialiser la nouvelle. Le Bosniaque paie l'élimination en quarts de finale de la CAN. Le Néerlandais Guus Hiddink le remplacera comme "pigiste".

Il fallait s'y attendre. Quand on vise - légitimement - le titre de la CAN et qu'on s'arrête en quarts de finale, ça fait désordre. Les instances ivoiriennes n'ont pas attendue bien longtemps d'ailleurs, après la compétition, pour annoncer qu'il faudrait sans doute un nouveau sélectionneur aux Eléphants pour briller lors de la Coupe du monde en juin. Cette fois, c'est sûr, ce ne sera pas Vahid Halilhodzic. Le Bosniaque, arrivé en mai 2008 et qui avait qualifié les Ivoiriens pour l'Afrique du Sud, a été officiellement démis de ses fonctions ce samedi par le président Jacques Anouma.

Pour guider les Elephants lors du Mondial, plusieurs noms circulaient. Ceux d'Eric Gerets (ex-OM) et de Guus Hiddink revenaient le plus souvent. Mais c'est le Néerlandais qui a été choisi. L'ex-entraîneur de Chelsea est pourtant sous contrat avec la Fédération russe jusqu'en juin et s'est engagé, pour la suite, avec la Turquie. Mais il a dû trouver un arrangement pour que sa mission sur les rives du Bosphore ne débute qu'en septembre car selon nos informations, c'est une pige qu'il effectuera en Afrique du Sud. Sa mission? Aller le plus loin possible, au moins en 8e de finale, ce qui serait une première pour la Côte d'Ivoire dans l'épreuve.

Sa tâche ne sera pas aisée avec le Brésil et le Portugal comme principaux adversaires mais Hiddink a de l'expérience et ses résultats comme sélectionneur ne sont plus à démontrer: demi-finale de la Coupe du monde avec la Corée du Sud en 2002, 8e de finale avec l'Australie en 2006 et demi-finale de l'Euro 2008 avec la Russie. En outre, le talent (Drogba, Kalou, Koné, Touré, Keita) est présent dans l'équipe. Reste à savoir comment ces joueurs-là auront digéré l'échec de la CAN en Angola et comment, d'ici juin, sans vraiment y être, il pourra préparer au mieux les Eléphants. D'ailleurs, il ne sera sans doute pas sur le banc à Londres mercredi, pour le match amical face à la Corée du Sud.

National News Regional News Business News Politics Sports Health Search Contact Us Economy Jobs Administrator Grands Lacs Hebdo CRID Archives Special

2010-02-27T12:03:00.002-05:00

Friday, 26 February 2010 20:09

Goma: Attirés par les activités commerciales de Goma, la grande ville du Nord Kivu, de jeunes Rwandais traversent chaque matin la frontière qui sépare leur pays de la RD Congo pour tenter d'y gagner de quoi se nourrir. Ils s’ajoutent ainsi aux enfants de la rue congolais que les autorités et Ong ont bien du mal à prendre en charge.

Très tôt le matin des enfants rwandais se faufilent entre les maisons qui s'enchevêtrent le long de la frontière entre Gisenyi au Rwanda et Goma en RD Congo. Ils évitent ainsi les formalités douanières qui commencent à 7 h et sont de bonne heure dans cette ville, grand carrefour commercial du Nord-Kivu à l'Est de la RDC, où ils viennent chercher de quoi se nourrir.

"Nous avons commencé à constater le passage régulier des enfants de la rue rwandais vers la ville de Goma l’année passée, avec le renforcement des liens entre les deux pays et la libre circulation des biens et des personnes. Il nous est difficile de contrôler leurs mouvements, à l’entrée comme à la sortie, car peu sont ceux qui empruntent les voies autorisées", indique André Masumbuko, agent du service des migrations à la frontière congolaise.

Petits boulots

Commerçants, transporteurs, porteurs et enfants de la rue, tous trouvent leurs comptes dans cette ville. Chaque jour, elle accueille un flux important de véhicules venus du port de Mombasa au Kenya et Dar es Salam en Tanzanie avec des marchandises de divers continents.

C’est aussi là, principalement dans les dépôts du quartier de Birere, que sont déchargés les produits vivriers et manufacturés en provenance du Nord du pays et des villages voisins. Des biens qui seront ensuite acheminés vers les différents marchés du pays, du Rwanda ou du Burundi.

"Ici à Goma au moins nous trouvons à manger et nous rentrons à Gisenyi, au Rwanda, le soir avec un petit quelque chose grâce aux petits boulots que nous faisons. Chez nous il y a moins d’activités commerciales, les porteurs s’arrachent les colis entre eux et nous repoussent. Ils nous disent que ce n’est pas notre boulot", déclare Buregeya, 11 ans, enfant de la rue rwandais. Les plus âgés lavent des voitures et des motos, transportent des colis … "

Après un service, les gens nous donnent 100 ou 200 Fc (de 0,10 $ à 0,22 $). C’est avec ça qu’on se débrouille", affirme Kazungu, âgé de 10 ans. Les plus jeunes, moins forts, abordent les passants, le regard implorant, miné par la faim.

Si vous feignez de ne pas les voir, ils vous poursuivent de leurs jérémiades : "j’ai faim papa, j’ai faim…".

Les enfants rwandais et congolais se confondent, ils sont habillés de la même façon et connaissent bien le swahili (langue la plus parlée à Goma). "Nous les reconnaissons seulement lorsqu’ils parlent entre eux en kinyarwanda (langue rwandaise)", témoigne Alphonsine Masika, commerçante propriétaire d’un dépôt de vivres et produits manufacturés.

Freiner l’afflux

Le Commandant de la Police urbaine souligne que : "l’afflux des enfants rwandais est venu empirer la situation déjà précaire des enfants de la rue de la ville". Deux centres d’hébergement prennent en charge depuis quelques années les enfants de la rue congolais : le centre CAJED (Concert d’Action pour Jeunes et Enfants défavorisés) situé à 5 km du centre-ville et le Centre Don Bosco, proche de Goma, appartenant aux missionnaires Salésiens. Mais faute de moyens suffisants, ceux-ci sont souvent abandonnés à eux-mêmes.

"En 2009, avec nos petits moyens, nous n’avons pu accueillir que 125 locataires", confie frère Mario, Responsable du Centre Don Bosco. La ville y va de ses initiatives aussi comme l’explique son Maire, Rachidi Tumbula : "L’année passée, avec le concours de la police urbaine j’avais déplacé un bon nombre d’enfants de la rue vers un centre que nous avions installé à Mushaki, village situé à 35 km de la ville, mais les Ong et certains organismes internationaux qui nous avaient promis leur concours n’ont pas respecté leurs promesses. Lorsqu’il y a eu coupure brusque de l’assistance en vivres, ces enfants ont regagné Goma".

Pour les associations des droits de l’homme qui oeuvrent dans la province du Nord-Kivu, le gouvernement, avec l’aide des organismes internationaux et les Ong locales, devraient tout d’abord freiner l’arrivée des enfants, en collaboration avec le gouvernement rwandais, et ensuite récupérer ceux de Goma pour les initier à des métiers.

"La tâche n’est pas des moindres mais avec de la bonne volonté et des efforts conjoints, on peut aboutir au résultat escompté", conclut Maundu Djeton, activiste des droits de l’homme et Président urbain de la Socinoki (Société Civile du Nord-Kivu).

Syfia Grands Lacs

Linda Melvern: "No apology from Sarkozy was no surprise"

2010-02-27T11:57:00.003-05:00

Kigali: The French president's visit is historic but a true reckoning of the role of French policy in the genocide may never be possible. During his whistle-stop visit to Rwanda, Nicolas Sarkozy made no apology for the role of France in the genocide of 1994.

A carefully worded acknowledgement that mistakes had been made, not just by France, was as far as he went. The lack of apology was no surprise. No matter the weight of evidence that has accumulated, no forgiveness is being sought – and none will be offered. The issue is simply off the agenda.

The visit, the first by a French president in 26 years, signifies the resumption of diplomatic relations severed four years ago when a French judge accused the current president of Rwanda, Paul Kagame, of involvement in the assassination of his predecessor – thereby blaming him for triggering the genocide of the Tutsis and moderate Hutus. The judge had issued international arrest warrants for nine Rwandan government officials said to have been responsible. One of those officials, Rose Kabuye, who was subsequently arrested and later released in Germany, has this week been organising the Sarkozy visit. The French judge's work is now largely discredited, with his main witnesses having retracted their testimony.

Sarkozy today visited the national memorial at Gisozi where an estimated 250,000 people are buried. The genocide lasted three months, during which time an estimated 1 million people were murdered; it had been a planned and political campaign intended to eliminate a minority, the Tutsis, to avoid power-sharing and create a "pure Hutu state". France had been the one country that had stood any chance of preventing what happened. For years France had supported Rwanda's Hutu dictatorship; the French military had armed and trained the killers and when the genocide began there were French officers embedded in the elite Rwanda army units whose troops in the first hours had eliminated Rwanda's political opposition. France had given tacit approval to the Hutu Power extremists who had formed a rogue government that would eventually create a society based on genocide.

When the Sarkozy visit was first announced, the French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, lost no time in saying it was time to "turn the page". The Rwandan foreign minister, Louise Mushikiwabo, seems to agree. "We have to move on," she said. Kouchner, when asked recently about the prospect of an apology, had said: "More time is needed … to understand every detail … this work is indispensable." But a true reckoning of French policy may never be possible, for the historic visit surely signifies an end to further embarrassment. In all probability, the relevant archives will probably remain firmly under lock and key. French policy was particularly secretive – the preserve of President François Mitterrand and his "Africa Unit" comprising intelligence operatives, mercenaries, businessmen and senior military officers. Its policy was unaccountable to either the French parliament or the press.

President Sarkozy and Bernard Kouchner are familiar with the Rwandan story. In 1994, Kouchner had played the role of intermediary between the French government and the force commander of the UN peacekeepers, Lieutenant General Roméo Dallaire. In one visit to Kigali, Kouchner had negotiated with one of the military leaders, Colonel Théoneste Bagosora, trying to secure the release of Rwandan orphans to fly them to Paris in time for the TV news. Kouchner had promised Bagosora that the release of the children would be an international "public relations coup".

Sarkozy was a government spokesman, and in June 1994 – after two months of widespread massacres – he appeared on French television to explain how France was going to intervene with the military Operation Turquoise in order to establish security zones to protect fleeing refugees. Sarkozy may not have been fully aware of the operation's secondary purpose, for it would ultimately provide an escape route for the Hutu Power killers – the army and the Interahamwe militia – allowing them to establish bases in the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo. The hundreds of genocide suspects currently in Europe today have the French military to thank for their freedom.

So far, the only country to have held a credible inquiry into the circumstances of the genocide is Belgium whose troops – the only effective UN contingent in Rwanda – had been hastily withdrawn when the killing began. Ten years ago, the then prime minister Guy Verhofstadt had gone to Kigali and begged the people of Rwanda for forgiveness. "I accept the responsibility of my country," he said.

We are unlikely to ever hear the same from Sarkozy.

Linda Melvern is an investigative journalist and author, who worked for several years at the Evening Standard and at the Sunday Times, including on the latter's Insight team. She is also an honorary professor at the department of international politics, University of Wales, Aberystwyth. An expert on the Rwandan genocide of 1994, she has published several books on the subject, including A People Betrayed: The Role of the West in Rwanda's Genocide (2000) and Conspiracy to Murder: The Rwanda Genocide (2004)

Adapted from The Guardian, Photo from PPU

Gov't searching for fugitive Gen. Kayumba Nyamwasa

2010-02-27T11:50:00.001-05:00

Kigali: A career soldier, diplomat and most recently linked to the troubled Green Party, Lt. Gen. Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa is against back in the news for all the wrong reasons. Government says he is “on the run” in Uganda – a neighbour with which Rwanda almost went to war, RNA reports.

A government communiqué on Friday evening said the embattled Rwandan diplomat to India and renowned ex-army chief no longer represents Rwanda in Delhi with immediate effect. General Kayumba is also sought for crimes committed back home, according to the brief communiqué, also read on state TV and Radio.

The Government says he is in Uganda, but does not say how and why he got there. The statement does not also say which crimes he supposed to answer for.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has apparently also started behind-the-scenes maneuvers to have him extradited to Rwanda to answer for the yet unspecified charges, according to the government communiqué.

Last week, the soft-spoken General was in the country along with fellow other envoys for the annual ambassadors’ retreat organised by the Foreign Affairs Ministry. The line-minister Louise Mushikiwabo opened and closed the two-day meeting.

It is not yet clear if he returned to his posting in Delhi before fleeing or simply travelled to Uganda.

Green Party

The General has had his fair share of controversy. Most recently, almost all the local newspapers which brand themselves as ‘independent’ reported that a top secret dossier had been compiled by the intelligence community detailing all people behind the trouble-ridden Green Party of Rwanda.

Among those named also includes Senators, the Police Commissioner General Emmanuel Gasana and several other top former and current government officials. Perhaps the biggest shock was the naming of a senior aide to the Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, by the names of Dr. John Nagenda.

Among the tens of people named in the controversial dossier – to which government has not commented, or even any of the people named, only Dr. Nagenda, said to be of Rwandan origin, has responded - denying any links to the Green Party.

However, he confirmed that he is an uncle to the Green Party leader Mr. Frank Habineza, for who he even paid tuition at some point.

Army chief

Before the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) rebels captured power in 1994, Colonel Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa was the Commanding Officer of the Directorate of Military Intelligence (DMI) in the rebel ranks. He would be brought in to battle the ousted government army and interahamwe for several years. Brigade 221 which Nyamwasa headed managed the war-torn northern Rwanda.

In January 1998, then Colonel Kayumba Nyamwasa was appointed army chief of staff replacing then Colonel Samuel Kanyemera. He would become Major General and later Lt. General. Those still in the army ranks describe him as a very strict disciplinarian, but likable officer.

During the dark days after the ex-army and interahamwe militias had been forced out of Rwanda into neighboring Zaire – now DR Congo, General Nyamwasa camped in the heart of the rebel zone in northern Rwanda.

As government struggled to contain the rebel incursions between 1996 to around 1999, General Kayumba was said to have been personally overseeing the war effort. At some point in January 1998, he told the BBC that "We have the means. We have the will. We will kill until they lose their appetite for war.”

And indeed, following the second invasion of DRC by Rwandan forces in 1998 up until now, the interahamwe – now known largely as the FDLR have not been able to strike on Rwandan territory.

President Paul Kagame – then vice president and Defense Minister, up until early 2000, was also a major brain behind the country’s military successes against the rebels.

Sacked

In 2001, General Nyamwasa was relieved of his duties, replaced briefly by exiled General Bem Emmanuel Habyarimana, an ex-FAR officer who was also later replaced by current full General James Kabarebe when Habyarimana become Defense Minister. General Kayumba was sent on training in the UK.

In November 2002, government redeployment returned General Nyamwasa as Head of Security Services – described as coordinating the internal and external security apparatus.

Two years later, the General was posted to India as the country’s envoy – a post he held until Friday.

International indictments

General Kayumba is now not only a fugitive from national justice, he is also sought by the Spanish and French governments over contested indictments.

In November 2006, a French anti-terrorism Judge Jean Louise Bruguiere indicted General Kayumba, along with nine other senior military officers for allegedly being part of the enterprise which assassinated former Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana.

The indictments led to Rwanda severing relations with France completely until this Thursday – with the visit of French President Nicholas.

Trouble was not about to end. In February 2008, Spanish judge Andreu Fernando Merrelles also named General Nyamwasa among the 40 people he indicted for the death of Spanish nuns and war crimes.

In both of the indictments, President Kagame is also named but was not indicted owing to presidential immunity under international law. Government has fiercely contested the warrants – but the Spanish indictments have not gone far.

At the time, General Kayumba – a diplomat in India and therefore also protected under international law, angrily dismissed the two indictments.

Majyambere Denies Al-Shabaab Links

2010-02-27T11:38:00.002-05:00

The Djibouti Consul to Uganda, Mr. Mohamed Silas Majyambere, a businessman of Rwandan birth has reacted on the story that we recently published to the effect that he was being probed on links to the Al-Shabaab in Somalia.

In an email to 256news.com, the lawyers of the powerful Majyambere’s advocates wrote:

We are writing the present email on behalf of Mr. Majyambere who has been cited in the news article
attached and which can be consulted on www.256news.com.
To Mr. Majyambere’s great surprise and astonishment, he reads his name is linked to Al-Shabaab according to a UN Probe. You can understand that this is shocking news for him and for all of us.

The United Nations have been supporting with all means the Somalia Transitional Federal Government and working towards peace and stability in Somalia; Mr. Majyambere, as the Government and people of the Republic of Djibouti, has helped them according to his means among others in Djibouti where they stayed at Imperial Resort & Red Sea
Hotel where they got full support and help from the hotel staff.

His help was well appreciated during the visit of His Excellency Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed to the Republic of Burundi where he personally thanked Mr. Majyambere by paying him a personal visit at his Residence in Bujumbura.

In the given circumstances, it is impossible that Mr. Majyambere might have a link whatsoever with Al-Shabaab which stands against all of Mr. Majyambere’s convictions, namely peace and stability in Somalia.

Furthermore Mr. Majyambere has no offices in Nairobi, Mombassa. Also he has no sister-in-law based in the Horn of Africa.

Indeed the Rwandan newspaper Rwanda Rushya published articles on Mr. Bertin Makuza (Rwanda Foam) and Mr. Vedaste Rubangura based on court information respectively
RCA 7886/KIG - 8559/KIG and N°R.Com A0060/08/HCC. The journalist of Rwanda Rushya is Mr. Jean-Gualbert Burasa based in Kigali (Rwanda). It is true that Mr. Majyambere has a private and commercial dispute with Mr. Bertin Makuza (Rwanda Foam) and Mr. Vedaste Rubangura but this should not be the basis of diffusing and circulating baseless
and dangerous information which tarnish the image of the UN and Mr. Majyambere, compromises the reputation of the UN and Mr. Majyambere but which also is a threat to the security, physical integrity and interests of Mr. Majyambere.

On the basis of the above, we hereby would like to request you to let us know whether or not Mr. Majyambere is subject to investigations by the UN Somalia Monitoring Group linking him to Al-Shabaab. Could you please clarify your position as this article is clearly defamatory,
libelous and slanderous for the UN and Mr. Majyambere?

We are looking forward to your response in order to have the opportunity to react accordingly.

Yours sincerely,

On behalf of Mr. Majyambere
MKONO & CO. in association with Denton Wilde Sapte

256news.com appreciates the reaction by Mr. Majyambere and his much-needed input in the Somalia situation.

My unplanned overthrow of Rwanda!

2010-01-24T11:41:00.000-05:00

BY JOHN NAGENDA

AGE is just a number, perhaps, but it is also felt in the muscles, sinews, and bones: to say nothing of hearts and brains. Your columnist’s mind continually dwells on the happy day, not too many years hence, when Autumn is fully fledged within him and he can concentrate on his First Love, Writing.

Let piece after piece come, if not tumbling out like a new-born lamb, but at least with the measured step that looking back should achieve. But Life never fails to spring surprises when least expected.

On December 23 last year (incidentally my brother Stephen’s entry into the 70s) his son William, living in the United States, agitatedly phoned me that he had come across news that I was among those planning the overthrow of President Kagame of Rwanda.

Reader, I sat down and laughed! 256News.Com had brought out the report and William emailed it rightaway. A certain Godwin Agaba, new name to me, wrote: “It has emerged, following a leak by security sources…a copy…has some of the names…behind the Green Party of Rwanda [who] have been coordinating clandestinely through emails and phone calls to wrestle president Kagame out of power in 2010…It has John Nagenda [256News.Com’s emphasis throughout], a senior adviser to President Museveni to be related to some of the big names behind the Green Party formation.

According to the brief, Nagenda is a maternal uncle to interim Green party Frank Habineza president, and it is Nagenda who paid Habineza’s school fees in his schooldays. Another fact is that Nagenda is a long-time and a close friend to Charles Kabanda who is Green party general secretary and Gen Kayumba Nyamwasa, who is currently Rwandan ambassador to India and a former RDF chief of staff, who is also on the list.

There follows a list of more than a dozen heavy-sounding Rwandans, many of them military. My first and abiding sentiment was one of total incredulity. How preposterous a notion! Many years ago, Uganda and Rwanda used to meet to iron out their differences, laughably chaired by comparative nonentities in the British government. I would have exchanged a joke or two with Nyamwasa. I have never heard of him since. As for Kabanda, his name doesn’t ring a bell, although I might have talked to him without remembering the name. “It was all a long time ago, and in another country…”

Frank Habineza, I know, he worked in my house at Namutamba, on our estate, perhaps 20 years ago. I did help with his school fees. A maternal uncle of his, I have never been. Since he left for Rwanda, I have seen him a few times; the last of which he brought his fiancée for introduction. It is, however, true that from time to time he sent me emails about his life in Rwanda, latterly one or two about the Green Party. I must confess I have not taken his party very seriously. I dimly recall some years ago advising Habineza to stick to work and forget politics. He never struck me as a leader of men, as the saying went!

Funnily enough I was thinking of visiting Rwanda (where I was born in ’38 when my parents were missionaries there). Oh well, another time perhaps.

Chaos As Rwanda Media Council Elections are Held

2010-01-24T11:26:00.000-05:00

By Godwin Agaba

The Director General of Information department in Prime Minister’s office and former Managing Director of The New Times, Ignatius
Kabagambe has stunned journalists in Rwanda when he disregarded his own set guidelines for constituting the Media High Council.

This happened on Tuesday at the chaotic elections for representatives to the Media High Council.

Previously in his letter to all private media houses in Rwanda,
Kabagambe stated that, the representatives would be elected by press house members who are media houses representatives.

In his letter Kabagambe clearly stated that, each media house would have one vote and invitations were sent out in that regard but surprisingly when journalists arrived they found The New Times and Contact FM had bused in their entire staff in (two buses ) including support staff like cleaners , receptionists, tea girls and security guards.

Independent Journalists protested insisting that government directives be followed or the voting adjourned to allow mobilization of genuine journalists to attend, but this was rejected by the president of press house, whose term expired two years ago and has refused to quit, Albert Rudatsimburwa who was a candidate himself.

“How can some one who is a candidate be the one to determine the procedures,” one journalist wondered.

In a u -turn Kabagambe who came expressly to explain his instructions said, he had “over stepped” his cue by stating who would vote, although he thought “it was appropriate since in past dialogue this was agreed by all stake holders.”

It’s here one Managing Editor of the Business Daily, Marcel Museminari said that, “it’s like some body invites you to play basketball but when you arrive at the field he tells you must play soccer without the team and uniform.”

The eventual candidates Albert Rudatsimburwa of Contact FM and Arthur Asiimwe of the RPF owned The New Times were voted for by their own staff members, since all the independent media walked out in protest.

After the walk out, independent journalists condemned the process and vowed to petition cabinet to reject the nominees and force a fair and transparent elections.

Both Rudatsimburwa and Asiimwe are the ones who accompany president Kagame on foreign trips.

Our sources say Rudatsimburwa and Asiimwe have been shuttling on RPF errands in their lobbying International media.

Sources add that the Executive secretary to the Media High Council Mulama Patrice and the president of the Journalists Association Safari Gaspard, both alleged government spies, were the architects of the election rigging.

Last year Rwanda was ranked 158 by Reporters without Borders close to Eritrea and Afghanistan in press freedom.

In this election year Rwanda is likely to go even lower in press
freedom ranking.

Electoral calendar 2010

2010-01-20T15:36:00.001-05:00

* Allotment (sortition)
* By-election
* Electoral fraud
* Show election
* Fixed-term election
* General election
* Primary election
* Indirect election
* Local election
* Referendum
* Criticisms of electoralism

Terminology

* Apportionment
* Crossover voting
* Gerrymandering
* Boundary delimitation (redistricting)
* Majority-minority districts
* Nesting
* Secret ballot
* Suffrage

Subseries

* Political party
* Voting
* Voting systems

Lists

* Elections by country
* Election results by country
* Electoral calendar

Politics portal
v • d • e

This electoral calendar 2010 lists the national/federal direct elections held in 2010 in the de jure and de facto sovereign states and their dependent territories. Referendums are included; it should be noted that they are not elections, however. By-elections are not included.
Contents
[hide]

* 1 January
o 1.1 Upcoming
* 2 February
* 3 March
* 4 April
* 5 May
* 6 June
* 7 July
* 8 August
* 9 September
* 10 October
* 11 November
* 12 December
* 13 Unknown

[edit] January

* 10 January: Croatia, President (2nd Round)
* 17 January: Chile, President (2nd Round)
* 17 January: Ukraine, President (1st Round)

[edit] Upcoming

* 22 January: Netherlands Antilles, Parliament
* 25 January: Saint Kitts and Nevis, Parliament
* 26 January: Sri Lanka, President

[edit] February

* 7 February: Costa Rica, President and Parliament
* 7 February: Ukraine, President (2nd Round)
* 21 February: São Tomé and Príncipe, Parliament
* 21 February: Tajikistan, Parliament
* 28 February: Haiti, Parliament
* 28 February: Togo, President
* February: Greece, President (by the parliament)

[edit] March

* 6 March: Iceland, Debt repayment referendum
* 7 March: Iraq, Parliament and Status of Forces Agreement referendum
* 14 March: Colombia, Parliament
* 16 March: Guinea, Parliament
* 20 March: Madagascar, Parliament

[edit] April

* 5–12 April: Sudan, President and Parliament
* 25 April: Austria, President
* April: Laos, Parliament
* April: Somaliland, President

[edit] May

* 10 May: Philippines, President, House of Representatives and Senate (one half)
* 16 May: Dominican Republic, Parliament
* 22 May: Afghanistan, Parliament
* 23 May: Ethiopia, Parliament
* 25 May: Suriname, Parliament
* 30 May: Colombia, President

[edit] June

* 12 June: Slovakia, Parliament
* 28 June: Burundi, President (1st Round)
* June: Czech Republic, Parliament
* June: Laos, President (by the parliament)
* June: Nagorno-Karabakh, Parliament

[edit] July

* 23 July: Burundi, National Assembly
* 26 July: Burundi, President (2nd Round, if necessary)
* 28 July: Burundi, Senate (indirect)
* July: Mauritius, Parliament
* July: Japan, House of Councillors
* July: Tuvalu, Parliament
* July: Suriname, President (by the parliament)

[edit] August

* 9 August: Rwanda, President

[edit] September

* 19 September: Sweden, General
* 26 September: Venezuela, Parliament
* September: Cook Islands, Parliament
* September: Somaliland, Parliament

[edit] October

* 3 October: Brazil, General (1st round)
* 31 October: Brazil, General (2nd round)
* October: Madagascar, President
* October: Bosnia and Herzegovina, President and Parliament
* October: Egypt, Parliament
* October: Tanzania, President and Parliament
* October: Czech Republic, Senate (a third)

[edit] November

* 2 November: United States, House of Representatives and Senate (one third:"Class III" Senators)
* 28 November: Chad, Parliament
* November: Burkina Faso, President
* November: Bahrain, Parliament

[edit] December

* December: Transnistria, Parliament

[edit] Unknown

* Angola, President (by 2012)
* Australia, Parliament (by 16 April 2011)
* Barbados, republic referendum
* Barbados, Parliament (by January 2013)
* Bonaire, Constitutional referendum
* Burma, Parliament
* Canada, Parliament (by 15 October 2012)
* Central African Republic, President and Parliament
* Côte d'Ivoire, Parliament and President
* Denmark, Parliament and EU opt-out referendum (by 12 November 2011)
* Egypt, President (by 2011)
* Faroe Islands, Constitutional referendum
* Fiji, Parliament (by September 2014)
* Guinea, President (by mid-July 2010)
* Hungary, Parliament (by May 2010)
* Ireland, Parliament (by July 2012)
* Jordan, Parliament (by March 2010)
* Latvia, Parliament (by October 2010)
* Malaysia, Parliament (by 2013)
* Malta, Parliament (by July 2013)
* Moldova, Parliament
* New Zealand, Voting method referendum (by 2011)
* Palestine, President and Parliament
* Poland, President
* Qatar, Parliament (by June 2010)
* Singapore, Parliament (by 2011)
* Spain, Parliament (by March 2012)
* Sri Lanka, Parliament (before 22 April 2010)
* Sudan, Darfur amalgamation referendum (by July 2010)
* Sudan, Southern Sudanese independence referendum (3–5 January 2011)
* Tonga, General
* Ukraine, Parliament (by 2011)
* United Arab Emirates, Parliament
* United Kingdom, General (by 3 June 2010)
* Wales, Devolution referendum (by 5 May 2011)

Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza, Servilien Sebasoni and New Rwanda in the middle

2010-01-20T15:11:00.002-05:00

Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza, 42,
Mother and Professional
2010 Controversial Rwandan Presidential Candidate
(Credit)

(The blog Colored Opinions chronicles the intricacies of the current political configurations and the uphill battle of opposition parties of Rwanda. And Ann Garrison of Colored Opinions documents Victoire Ingabire’s rocky return from exile. First-person narrative in French of Victoire Ingabire's life, here. And Wikepedia page in English, here.)

There’s an African country run like North Korea.

It’s not Zimbabwe with its tropical version of Jim Jong-il: Robert Mugabe, the old geezer who refuses to die; a convenient boogey man to showcase what’s wrong with Africa. Robert Mugabe, a ready-made “replacement killer” for Idi Amin.

Well, here’s a headline: Zim is on the right path, with the ever-resilient Morgan Tsvangirai who is fighting toe-to-toe with Mugabe, slowly but surely reversing the economic demise of a once wealthy country. Until the final demise of the walking-dead who is masquerading for the moment as the unbreakable “iron man.”

The African North Korea I’m referring to is Rwanda. In point of fact, and just due north to it, there’s another tropical North Korea: Uganda…

Rwanda and Uganda were once hailed as countries of the “African Renaissance.” Renaissance. Rebirth...
And, Rwanda in particular, is literally being reborn.

The analogy is false, the real North Korea stands out as Mao Zedong’s paper tiger—Rwandans aren’t starving for example. And Kagame—God be with him!—may pass on today but the Rwandan regime will prove to be sustainable and will live on.

There are precedents of stifling dictatorships in Africa. One could argue that Yoweri Museveni is midway on his path to rejoin the lineage of other African strongmen who have lasted or are still lasting a lifetime in power—to name a few, Congo’s Mobutu Sese-Seko (32 years), Gabon’s Omar Bongo (42 years) and Cameroon’s Paul Biya (28 years with the meter running)… Museveni has been the president of Uganda since 1986 (24 years) and shows no sign of relinquishing power.

But these Big Men didn’t have the un je ne sais quoi real stuff. Like the managerial, engineering skills and motivation to devise a biopolitical machine built to last. I should stop right there before I get ensnared into an extended metaphor...

The events unfolding in Kigali prior and after the return of a woman who could have been an Obama for both Rwanda and Congo are mesmerizing. Frightening.

There won’t be an Obama this year in Rwanda called Victoire Ingabire. And tough luck for the Congolese. A breath of fresh air, though, to hear out of the blue a Rwandan politician say the following in a radio interview:

“military expansionism: you know perfectly well that General Kagame’s military had attacked the Congo. Because of that war, Congo's death toll rose to more than 5 million of human lives.”

Moving on... Kagame has been in power since 1994, that is, 16 years. Some could claim he was only vice-president during the 6 years when Pasteur Bizimungu was the president of the country. But any serious observer knows that Bizimungu was a figurehead who was thrown in jail at the first inkling of insubordination. My estimate of the time span Kagame has been in power does stand indeed.

Truth be told: Museveni is but a child compared to Kagame.

We could easily overlook the dictatorial drifts as venial sins and point to economic miracles and good governance. We could likewise turn a blind eye to what F. Reyntjens calls the “privatization and criminalization of public space” in both countries. To put things bluntly, the governments in these two countries operate as criminal enterprises run by the military. They share those attributes with other countries in the region, including the DRC next door.

We could even laud today in hindsight the Pinochet regime as having been a good “free-market fascism” that had positive lasting impact on Chilean economy…

As a semblance of democracy is the “universal” acceptable norm today by donor countries, Rwanda and Uganda subject themselves to the travesty of the cycles of democratic elections.
You could look at Museveni and Kagame as clever players. They’ve both devised backstopping mechanisms to prevent the democratic sham from sliding out of bounds…
Kagame is not Museveni.

Museveni at times devises superficial backstops.

Breaking with the mold, Kagame is taking a stand and drawing a line in the sand. He sneezes and France catches a cold. He gets into the Commonwealth of Nations right under the nose of Nicholas Sarkozy in Trinidad, sending Bernard Kouchner begging for a handshake in Kigali. He could also quit any time he wants to.

In Uganda, credible opposition candidates are just arrested and charged with, say, rape—based on accusations made by government-paid rape victims—and, for good measure, charge them with “terrorism” too. This is what happened to retired Colonel and medical doctor Warren Kizza Besigye Kifefe of the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) before the 2006 elections. While the opposition candidate is entangled in unending court proceedings, the irremovable Museveni sails to electoral triumph.

In Rwanda, Kagame has 5 more sophisticated backstops. In fact, they are not even backstops. They are something more permanent, the biopolitics of a social formation.
First, ban all reference to tribe and ethnicity while “barely concealed by the ban on ethnic labels, ethnic discrimination has since emerged as the hallmark of the Kagame regime, to an extent unprecedented in the history of Rwanda” (René Lemarchand).

Second, cripple all dissent preemptively with the threat of “revisionism” or “genocide denial.”

Third, line up the opposition with stooges with ridiculous political platform like “full employment, regional security, and progressive taxation”—complete with choreographed pre- and post-electoral accusations by said stooges of attempts by the incumbent to “silence [their] views.” During the 2003 presidential elections, there were two such candidates opposing Kagame that allowed him to get—without any rigging—95.1% of the votes.

And Fourth—and this is Kagame’s masterstroke—let anyone form their political parties but—hold and behold!—according to Ann Garrison, in order to “register and get a ballot line in Rwanda, a party must first convene, and the Democratic Green Party of Rwanda has now tried to convene five times, only to be met with bureaucratic obfuscation and on October 30 [2009], violence.”

The violence meted out against the members of the Democratic Green Party described by Ann Garrison with photographs taken with cellphones was reminiscent of the technique uncovered by Gérard Prunier in his book Africa’s World War:

“songamana: From the [Swahili] verb kusonga, to ‘press together’ [I’d instead translate the verb as to ‘knead’]. A form of crowd control using humiliation practiced by the RPA [Rwandan Patriotic Army] where many people are made to squat tightly together on the ground while being hectored by an officer.”

Nowadays the “hectoring” is preceded by police agents provocateurs masquerading as disgruntled party members resorting to blows to get their points across—prompting the police, lurking by as if by miracle, to suddenly materialize, beat everyone to submission... then “kneading” and “hectoring” them.

No glitches in the perfect setup. Glitches happen on the other side of the border, in the DRC. Not on this side of the border. We are dealing with professionals here.

Kagame’s first 7-year term comes to an end this year. There are presidential elections in August. And the RPF machine suddenly realized that this electoral cycle there are young, determined passionate and iconoclastic opposition candidates who won’t be bullied to play the 2003 script.

So another script has to be written. The script called the final act of the “outing” from the closet. No more playing the clown for “two constituencies” (domestic and foreign). Time to unify the constituencies. To lay these things in the open. To scare Victoire Ingabire into submission while throwing into the dustbin the narrative of “universality” and telling the producers of this discredited narrative—that is, so-called Western “experts” and NGOs—that things have changed once and for all. We're tired of playing the fools. Go ask leaders on the other side of the border, in the DRC, to continue playing this silly game!

And Kagame isn't some mercurial statesman like Museveni who, like a good Congolese politician, at times says things he doesn’t mean. In fact, Kagame has a keen sense of verbal economy. He’s a strategist. He’s got plenty of big guns around: technocrats and intellectuals to do the talking and the doing. And these guys happen to be academic heavy weights.

Way before Victoire Ingabire’s return, the RPF brought out the heavy artillery. In the person of the crafty litterateur, professor, writer, contentious pamphleteer, communication director and spokesperson Servilien M. Sebasoni.

The man was born a wordsmith extraordinaire. A prolific analyst.

He tagged Victoire Ingabire as the “présidente virtuelle du Rwanda” [Rwanda’s virtual president]—a scornful moniker that instantly went viral on Rwandan blogosphere.
By late November, Sebasoni didn’t even think Ingabire would dare to show up at Kigali International Airport.

In the concluding paragraph of the scathing statement he unleashed in Kigali on November 26 with all the flourish of his trademark high-brow French style, Sebasoni scoffs at the pretentions of Ingabire while painting a chilling scenario of the aftermath of elections fraught with controversies:

“the Rwandan presidential election might take place in 2010, if the virtual president, who never ends coming home, decided not to come in Rwanda. On the one end, she has sufficiently prepared her constituents for this eventuality, by tapping into the anthology that her diaspora has made up against Kagame; on the other hand, the alternative that her partisans imagine in the event isn’t enticing for a candidate who is loath to violence. Who would have a stake, in effect, in seeing the upcoming elections lead into a “Kenya” or a “Zimbabwe,” if the results were to be contested by the opposition?”

The pamphlet is even more portentous as it strips the electoral process of any previous pretenses by the regime to appear playing by the rule of a universal canon of democracy—a despicable “IMITATION” (capital in the original) of western standards.
There’s a need to invent the African future of political play, Sebasoni asserts (triggering by association in my mind Mobutu’s maxims of Authenticity: “The African authentic political system isn’t a system of opposition but a system of cohesive juxtaposition”):

“This incapacity to think by oneself, to say something else instead of systematically plundering all the clichés and commonplaces and other acknowledged ‘experts,’ this psittacism is frightening for a generation forced to invent a future, at the moment when Western universalism is leaking at the seams and starts to be contested and put into question as well in Asia as in Africa, even right down on its own turf, in Europe and America in the wake of resounding fiascos. There is in fact a big chunk of books that are coming out to denounce the claims of the Western model to universality. Just read. Jean Ziegler, Hatred of the West (2008); Amin Maalouf, A World Adrift (2009); Immanuel Wallerstein, European Universalism (2008); George Corm, L’Europe et le Mythe de l’Occident [Europe and the Western Myth] (2009). And several more other books. You will discover that the famous ‘international standards’ about which they go on and on are only Western standards to boot. It will soon be permitted to be an honest person without being a Westerner. To take advantage, however, of the insufficiencies of the new Rwanda and to go along with its detractors could be a strategy chosen wisely. The fact remains nonetheless that a political project that would discard individual creativity of the nation is by no means meant to last, even though it is true that the poor have to account to two ‘constituencies,’ the aid donors and the people. Such an anomaly could only be transitory and couldn’t serve as a lasting pact between the politician and the people.”

This guy is brilliant and his prose dense with meaning, let alone this impressive library. I've to give it to him: no one reads anymore in the DRC... The part of "plunder," of "psittacism" ("parotting"): this is heavy stuff lifted from developmental and clinical psychology and applied to cultural theory: that is, "alienation" (again, I stumble upon Mobutu). This is a systematic and chilling exercise in deconstruction. Chilling because this guy might as well tear to pieces “Western standards” of DIPLOMACY and read the riot act to the bickering politicians in Kinshasa as follows: "Hey, guys, this is the 'new normal' in diplomacy in the Great Lakes; our way or the highway!"... Maybe they've done it already!

“Pact between the politician and the people.” Uncanny sentence…

Once again, I’m reminded of Mobutu who kept repeating: “Mobutuism is the complicity between the Guide and his people.” (The man had "bloated" himself to fill up a whole country!) But I know that Mobutu was a “virtual” moron—to borrow a qualifier dear to Sebasoni. Did Mobutu come up independently with all this stuff? I don't think so... And still, I see a a common thread linking Sebasoni and Mobutu as if they tapped into the same well. There’s a genealogy… I also remember the persistent rumor circulating in Zaire at the time that claimed that the ideas of Authenticity were implanted into Mobutu’s mind by Barthélémy Bisengamina Rwema, a Rwandan engineer and intellectual, who served for a long time as Mobutu’s Chief of Staff. And the rumor went on to say that Bisengimana got those ideas from the books authored by Rwandan polymath ALEXIS Kagame… speculation no doubt.

How are the donors going to react to this riot act of new non-Western democracy that doesn't care about "universal standards"? For despite the riot act, Rwanda still needs foreign dollars to bridge the electoral budget deficit:

“The mountainous country faces a huge hike in the cost of holding the election.
The 2010 vote will cost 11 million dollars (7.7 million euros) compared to some 4 million dollars in 2003, according to state radio, which quoted the country's electoral commission.

'The price of voting materials has gone up since 2003 and the number of voters has also risen,' the executive secretary of the electoral commission, Charles Munyaneza, told AFP.

The Rwandan government will bear more than half of the cost of the election, with the rest contributed by donors such as Britain, the European Union and the Netherlands, the radio said.”

We know that Rwandan leadership never backs down… August is just round the corner, let’s wait and see.

Saturday, Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza—“who piles up beautiful names (Victoire, Don, Consolation)” (dixit Sebasoni) — returned to New Rwanda after 16 years of absence and caused an uproar for what she said and angered the powers that be.
New Rwanda may not be the place for her. What a waste with such a beautiful campaign logo: Victore2010… And, BTW, we need brilliant women like her in the Congo.

Madame Victoire, Don:

Please, move to Kinshasa and get Congolese nationality. It’s easy, believe me. It will be your Consolation prize for returning to Africa… Time isn't ripe in New Rwanda for your kind of discourse...Maybe never!... To speak in tongue like Servilien Sebasoni, there's a massive semiotic fraud taking place in New Rwanda, just like under Mobutu's Authenticity in Zaire... It's a waste of time... You belong in the DRC, where no one would ever dare get us back to that sham... Even in the darkest moments when Kisangani was under the boot of Rwandan and Ugandan occupational forces... There's a direct flight from Kigali to Kinshasa, I believe or via Nairobi... Think about it... That’s where you stand the chance of fulfilling your destiny of another kind of Obama of the African Great Lakes region.

Rwanda politician prompts row over genocide memorial

2010-01-20T14:58:00.006-05:00

A row has erupted in Rwanda about the genocide memorial not reflecting the plight of Hutus in the 1994 massacres.

During the 100-day genocide, Hutu militias systematically killed about 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

But opposition politician Victoire Ingabire, who has returned to Rwanda for the first time since the genocide, says Hutus were also killed by Tutsis.

Genocide survivors group Ibuka says her comments amount to "genocide negation" and she should be prosecuted.

Theodore Simburudari, the head of Ibuka, told the BBC the opposition United Democratic Forces leader should also be tried for "fuelling ethnic hatred".

Victoire Ingabire (Photo from UDF website: www.fdu-rwanda.org/)
People who were massacred in this country cannot simply be forgotten
UDF leader Victoire Ingabire

The BBC's Geoffrey Mutagoma in the capital, Kigali, says Ms Ingabire made the comments during her visit to the Kigali genocide memorial on Saturday.

Following the furore sparked by her remarks, Ms Ingabire told the BBC's Great Lakes Service she was not attempting to belittle the genocide.

"Clearly, reconciliation has a long way to go," she said in an interview conducted in Kinyarwandan.

"People who were massacred in this country cannot simply be forgotten," she said.

"Looking at this memorial, it only stops at the genocide committed to Tutsis; there is still another role that concerns the massacres committed to Hutus.

"Their relatives were also killed and they are asking themselves: 'When will our concerns be discussed?'"

Judicial authorities have so far not commented on the request by the genocide survivors.

But the BBC reporter says considering the sensitivity of the subject, constitutional statutes and other laws regarding the genocide, Ms Ingabire is undoubtedly courting controversy as she moves to register her party to run for the 2010 presidential elections.

Ms Ingabire left Rwanda before the genocide began and has spent the last 16 years in Europe.

The elections due in August will be the second presidential polls held since the genocide.

Ms. Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza’s arrival in Rwanda, an utter reminder of the RTLM!

2010-01-20T14:52:00.001-05:00

Indeed, since the vitriolic vocal president of the coalesced nostalgic so-called opposition political parties in exile, a.k.a FDU-Inkingi, announced in September last year the party’s decision to come and compete in the 2010 Presidential elections, we have in this column, informed the public of who they are but also encouraged them to come in the hope that their leader would get an opportunity to erase her totally antiquated image of Rwanda with the sparking reality on the ground.

It was however a shock to me and others in the Rwandan boat of today, when she on arrival proactively continued with her boots of a hardened genocide denier in her characteristic divisionist/hate ideology.

Some among us got the utmost scare of the year when we woke up to her voice and messages on airwaves that sounded identical with that of Ms Bemeriki Valerie on the infamous RTLM during the man-made ‘apocalypse’ of 1994.

She went on to claim that “I am a daughter and a mother, moved by the misery and humiliations of my people…..” Here I got utter consternation, a self-styled presidential contender and sorry to say, munyarwanda mother, agitating and propagating ethnicity, hate and divisionism well knowing where Rwanda was in April 1994?

With Ingabire Victoire’s latest clarity of what her intentions are as testified in her maiden speeches and acts since her arrival in Rwanda on 16 January, we are pretty convinced now than ever that she did not ‘live in the past Rwanda’ while in Holland out of shear ignorance of what Rwanda today stands for but rather behaved as she did out of an ideological conviction that extremism and ethnicity is the route to achieve her political dream and the cherished high office of the land.

A friend intimated when he read the infamous ‘revolutionary’ I mean hate speech of Ingabire, that both the latter and some Rwandans were only lucky that she was out of the country during the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, otherwise she might also have participated, and probably would, with the help of Interpol or others, now have been in the gallows.

Aware of the threat that reconciliation and other relevant policies like Gacaca and TIG are a threat to Ms Ingabire’s extremist ethnic ideology which she has as a tool for her political ambitions, the controversial Rwandan lady is out in arms to target these government policies in the hope that she could derail these bonafide Rwandan initiatives that aim at building a Rwandan State that belongs to all Rwandans.
Ingabire should, in this regard, be asked to state in very clear terms her position as regards three crucial issues concerning national security, reconciliation and sustainable stability.

Although in the Imvo n’Imvano programme on BBC of 9 January 2010, Ingabire dismissed her FDU-Inkingi’s roots in the RDR as RPF propaganda, we believe that this fact should not be taken lightly.

We find it necessary to remind the public what RDR really is and what it stands for so that whatever Ingabire pretends, she together with her party are seen in their true context….

“RDR is the first criminal organization to acquire international recognition through Genocide laundering. It was officially launched on 3 April 1995, with offices in France, Belgium, Netherlands and Canada,” according to Jean Kambanda’s testimony at the ICTR.

Ex-FAR military leaders, including Col. Bagosora, orchestrated the creation of RDR and, from the outset, sought to control it. As a matter of fact, on 29 April 1995, the High Command of FAR (Ex-Rwandan Army) issued a statement in Bukavu, divorcing itself from the Hutu ‘government in exile’, the group of Hutu extremists that had been its partner in the genocide.

FAR believed that the exiled government had become ineffective in serving the interests of refugees in Zaire and extremist Hutu everywhere and instead declared its unswerving support for the RDR.

In 1998, the RDR admitted that it was created to bypass or circumvent the embargo imposed on the genocidaire government in exile. Since then, there was a ploy by the group to — through the concepts and language used in the RDR’s numerous press releases and discourse — depict the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi as a “civil war”, “tragedy”, and “crisis”, or even as Ingabire has lately endeavored, insinuate a double Genocide.

In the same strategy, the RDR, and lately the FDU-Inkingi, have relentlessly accused the RPF of “sensationalizing the Genocide and using their version of the facts” as political capital, in an attempt to win international sympathy and donor aid, “using, for political benefits, the tragedy which has plunged into mourning the Rwandan people…” (Quoted from RDR Political Platform)

Most recently, the November 23, 2009 report of a UN Group of Experts confirmed with evidence that, being an emanation of genocidal forces, FDU Inkingi and thus RDR, is still in close collaboration with FDLR in a strategy of overthrowing the current government.

The Group of Experts has gathered substantial evidence about existing collaboration between FDLR and FDU-Inkingi. It disclosed that the FDLR military leaders are in close contact with Diaspora members of the FDU-Inkingi political group in Belgium, including J.B Mberabahizi (FDU Inkingi’s Secretary General), and Naomi Mukakinani, wife to FDU’s Commissioner for Social Affairs, Michel Niyibizi.

The Experts report also affirms that Victoire Ingabire has attended the so-called “Inter-Rwandese Dialogue” meetings along with FDLR supporters which they both strongly advocate for.

Though unsurprising, given the common ideology and background, this collaboration between the FDLR and FDU Inkingi is rather disturbing and Ingabire Victoire had better come clear of these accusations if she is to earn any trust of Rwandans. She must also account for her role in her original party, the RDR, as it is the one ideologically leading the FDU-Inkingi coalition.

In her end of the year 2009 propaganda speech, Ingabire Victoire stated that “Gacaca courts and even Interpol have become tools to harass or get rid of individuals on behalf of the Kigali regime!” She has several times vowed to close all the Gacaca courts once she gets into power.

She seems to know that actually most of the said courts have already closed after they, more successfully than not, tried over a million cases of suspected genocidaires.

The underlying issue here is that she is obviously a Genocide denier, and yet those tried by these courts are birds of the same feathers in ideology, thus her defense for them, including those warranted by the ICTR through Interpol as genocide suspects.

This is indeed neither surprising as one of her RDR mission was to constitute defense support to ICTR prisoners prosecuted for the crime of Genocide.

Ingabire should substantiate to the Rwandan public and the international community at large, her characteristic allegations against both the Gacaca and Interpol and come clear as to why she stands aside and advocates for the Genocide suspects who are the very people targeted by the two institutions.

Another very sensitive issue that Ingabire must also come clear about is her unrelenting undermining of the concept of “Genocide ideology” as defined in the Rwandan Constitution.

In the mentioned BBC program and her other numerous propaganda speeches, she shamelessly sustains that “the Genocide ideology is an RPF invention to deny those opposed to it …”

For an uprightly thinking Rwandan, except when he/she is still committed to pursuing the “unfinished genocide”, to state that there is no Genocide ideology in a country that has just experienced the very Genocide, is simply tantamount to genocide denial, an expression of that genocide ideology itself, a crime in the Rwandan law and I dare add, even under the International law given the gravity of the crime of Genocide.

The Rwandan public and peace lovers in the International Community should educate themselves on the true intentions of the likes of Ingabire, listen to their discourses and double-edged sword talk in order to appropriately get an informed opinion on what would happen if any of them was to, God forbid, rise to the highest office in Rwanda.

After this long silence that was premised on the hope that Ingabire would be the ‘Prodigal daughter of Rwanda’ once she physically got the realities of the Rwanda of today, we are now motivated than ever to keep this column active and continue contributing as other peace loving people of the World, to the Never Again principle.

muhetofe@gmail.com

Habyarimana tué par les siens

2010-01-12T12:34:00.000-05:00

12/01/2010 15:33:42
Jeune Afrique
Par : Tshitenge Lubabu M. K.

Un rapport d’enquête rwandais sur l’assassinat de l’ancien chef de l’État conclut à la responsabilité des extrémistes hutus de son propre camp.

Certains croyaient pouvoir affirmer que l’attentat perpétré dans la nuit du 6 avril 1994 contre l’avion du président Juvénal Habyarimana, alors qu’il se préparait à atterrir à l’aéroport de Kigali, était l’œuvre du Front patriotique rwandais (FPR, actuellement au pouvoir). Telle est du moins la conviction du juge français Jean-Louis Bruguière, qui a délivré des mandats d’arrêt contre neuf hauts responsables rwandais soupçonnés d’être impliqués dans cet attentat. Cette thèse vient d’être contredite par le rapport publié par le « Comité indépendant d’experts », créé par le gouvernement rwandais en avril 2007 pour « établir la vérité sur les circonstances du crash de l’avion Falcon 50 immatriculé 9XR-NN ». Selon cette équipe de sept membres – tous Rwandais – dirigée par Jean Mutsinzi, président de la Cour africaine des droits de l’homme et des peuples, et ancien président de la Cour suprême du Rwanda, l’attentat (c’est le terme utilisé) a été perpétré par des extrémistes du camp de Habyarimana. Pour arriver à cette conclusion, le Comité Mutsinzi a enquêté pendant deux ans, consulté de nombreux documents inédits et interrogé plus de 500 personnes.

Expertise britannique

Mais qui a donc tiré ces fameux missiles Sam 16 ? Et d’où ? Un commando du FPR, à partir des locaux du Conseil national de développement (CND), sur la colline de Masaka ? Non, répondent les membres du Comité Mutsinzi, confortés par une enquête menée sur le terrain par deux experts de l’université de Cranfield et de l’Académie militaire du Royaume-Uni. D’après cette expertise, basée notamment sur l’audition de plusieurs témoins et l’analyse d’éléments matériels disponibles, les missiles ont vraisemblablement été tirés du camp militaire de Kanombe, dans la zone de l’aéroport. Au moment des faits, ce camp était sous le contrôle des Forces armées rwandaises (FAR). Plusieurs témoins – militaires, agents en poste à l’aéroport, voisins, etc. – ont déclaré aux enquêteurs que les tirs ne pouvaient provenir d’ailleurs que du camp de Kanombe. Et que, après l’attentat, l’attitude de beaucoup de membres des forces armées et d’hommes du sérail prouvait qu’un plan venait d’être exécuté.

Pour les auteurs de l’enquête, c’est la décision prise par Juvénal Habyarimana de procéder à l’installation des institutions de la transition conformément aux Accords d’Arusha qui a scellé son destin. Il devait passer à l’acte juste après son retour de Dar es-Saalam. Cette initiative, qui devait se concrétiser par un partage du pouvoir avec l’opposition et, par conséquent, la perte des privilèges pour beaucoup de ses proches et alliés, n’a pas plu aux faucons. À la tête de ceux-ci, un homme, le colonel Théoneste Bagosora, ancien commandant du camp de Kanombe et, à l’époque des faits, tout-puissant directeur de cabinet du ministre de la Défense. C’est lui qui aurait préparé une partie du plan : l’élimination physique de Habyarimana, la confiscation du pouvoir par les militaires et le génocide.

Depuis 1994, c’est la première fois qu’une enquête qui ne se base pas que sur des témoignages, le plus souvent aléatoires, aboutit. Pendant quinze ans, malgré l’existence de preuves, personne n’a voulu, à commencer par l’Organisation des Nations unies (ONU), chercher à comprendre ce qui s’était vraiment passé le 6 avril 1994. Et qui a déclenché le génocide. Même si le Comité Mutsinzi estime que, attentat ou pas, le projet de massacrer les Tutsis et les Hutus opposés à la politique de Habyarimana aurait de toute façon été mis à exécution.

Woman passes 950th driving test

2009-11-09T08:04:00.001-05:00

Cha Sa-soon holds her successful test
Cha Sa-soon says she needs a licence for a vegetable-selling business

A South Korean woman is celebrating after passing the written exam for a driving licence - on her 950th attempt.

After four years of trying, 68-year-old Cha Sa-soon finally managed to secure the 60 out of 100 points needed to pass the test.

The grandmother has spent more than 5m won ($4,200, £2,600) on application fees for the test.

Now Mrs Cha, who lives in Jeonju, 130 miles (210km) south of Seoul, must pass the practical test to get on the road.

'Don't give up'

According to the Korean Driver's Licence Agency, the 50-minute written test consists of 50 multiple-choice questions on road regulations and car maintenance.

Mrs Cha had been trying to pass it since 13 April 2005, the Korea Times reported.

She wanted a licence so that she could use a vehicle to sell vegetables and other goods, the newspaper said.

And her determination to pass the test has made her well-known at the Jeonju centre.

"She is really famous here. Not only agency employees but even some test-takers know her. Her challenging spirit is really amazing," one official was quoted as saying.

Speaking in February - after her 775th failure - Mrs Cha had appeared undaunted.

"I believe you can achieve your goal if you persistently pursue it," she told Reuters news agency.

"So don't give up your dream, like me. Be strong and do your best."

The Africans who fought in WWII

2009-11-09T07:58:00.002-05:00

A photo of three African soldiers taken during the Second World War
Jagamo Kello, middle, left home at just 15 to fight Italian invaders

By Martin Plaut
BBC Africa analyst

The 70th anniversary of World War II is being commemorated around the world, but the contribution of one group of soldiers is almost universally ignored. How many now recall the role of more than one million African troops?

Yet they fought in the deserts of North Africa, the jungles of Burma and over the skies of Burma. A shrinking band of veterans, many now living in poverty, bitterly resent being written out of history.

For Africa, World War II began not in 1939, but in 1935.

I greeted Gandhi with a military salute and asked him: 'What are you going to do for Africa now that India is going to be free?'
Marshal Kebby
Nigerian soldier

Italian Fascist troops, backed by thousands of Eritrean colonial forces, invaded Ethiopia.

Emperor Haile Selassie was forced to flee to the UK, but others, known as Patriots, fought on. Among them was Jagama Kello. Fifteen years old at the time, he left home and raised a guerrilla force that struck at the Italian invaders.

Mein Kampf

Other Africans learnt what Fascism could mean for them. Among them was John Henry Smythe of Sierra Leone. His teacher gave him Adolf Hitler's book, Mein Kampf.

"We read what this man was going to do to the blacks if he gets into power. And he attacked the British and Americans for encouraging the blacks to become doctors and lawyers," Mr Smythe said.

A black and white picture of John Henry Smythe looking through a camera.
John Henry Smythe, left, read Hitler's Mein Kampf before joining the RAF

"It was a book which would put any black man's back up and it put mine up."

He volunteered to join the Royal Air Force, becoming a navigator, flying bombers over Germany. Others took a similar view.

Joe Culverwell, who went on to fight for the liberation of Zimbabwe, volunteered the day war was declared in 1939.

"Don't forget in those days we were very loyal Brits - stupid as that may sound now," Mr Culverwell says. "We were brainwashed into being little brown Britishers."

Others were conscripted. They were picked up when they went to visit a local market or on the orders of a local chief.

And many found that once they enlisted they were badly treated. The reality of military life for African soldiers like Nigerian Marshall Kebby was very different from the propaganda.

"As a colonial soldier I had very rough treatment. At that time we hadn't even a single Nigerian officer, all were British. And many of us revolted against injustice, what I might call man's inhumanity to man."

'Hell'

But once the fighting began there was little time for protest. For men like Mr Culverwell, serving in Somalia, being bombed by the Italians was a terrifying experience.

We, the ex-servicemen, gave this country the freedom it's enjoying today.
Marshall Kebby

"Boy that was hell. We all had foxholes. I never felt so frightened in my life. They were bombing 100 yards away. We daren't even look up, you see."

Mr Smythe took part in air-raids over enemy territory.

But on the night of 18 November 1943 his plane was shot down over the German city of Mannheim. He spent 18 months in a prisoner of war camp, where the Germans tried to extract intelligence from him.

"You must use some special instruments to navigate your way here," his interrogator told Mr Smythe.

"He said: 'I want you to co-operate to get you out of this place.' I said: 'I will give you my name and number'. He started to scream at me; became a real Nazi officer.

"He said: 'You know they are talking about whether to execute you tomorrow or not. Because you, as a black man, should not involve in white man's war.'"

Meeting Gandhi

On the other side of the world, Mr Kebby was meeting Indians.

Among them was the leader of India's independence movement, Mahatma Gandhi, who was addressing a crowd of one million people in Madras. Mr Kebby worked his way to the front.

"It was one of the greatest things I did as a soldier. I greeted Gandhi with a military salute and asked him: 'What are you going to do for Africa now that India is going to be free?'

"He said: 'India will not do anything for you. But India will give you moral support on condition you fight the British non-violently'."

By 1945 the war was over, African troops had helped the allied powers defeat Germany, Italy and Japan.

Graphic, showing the numbers of African soldiers involved in WWII

Mr Culverwell remembers talking to other black soldiers he met about what would happen to them now.

"We used to have long chats about the colour problem and we were determined that we were not going to be treated that way any more."

Freedom fighters

But for most Africans independence was still 15 years away.

In the meantime, the veterans had to get home and find a job.

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Many found little gratitude for their years of service and no work.

In February 1948 veterans from Ghana, among them Kalimu Glover went to petition the governor.

But instead of receiving them, police opened fire. It sparked off an outpouring of anger on the streets of Accra.

"After the shooting, we said we should damage all British things in the city. We got stones, sticks to break down shops. We broke them all down. Those were wonderful days: February 1948, Saturday to Sunday."

Mr Kebby is convinced that he and others like him helped end colonial rule.

"Every soldier who went to India got new ideas and learnt new things. We came back with improved ideas about life. We, the ex-servicemen, gave this country the freedom it's enjoying today. We gave this freedom and handed it over to our country."

Pasteur Bizimungu

2009-11-09T07:20:00.000-05:00

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Pasteur Bizimungu (born 1950) was the President of Rwanda from July 19, 1994 until March 23, 2000. He is an ethnic Hutu born in the Gisenyi prefecture of Rwanda. Bizimungu worked within the Hutu MRND regime which ruled Rwanda (until 1994), including as director general of the national electricity company. In 1990 he joined the primarily Tutsi Rwandese Patriotic Front when his brother, a colonel in the Rwandan Armed Forces, was assassinated, possibly on the orders of the government.

The Rwandan Patriotic Front was dissatisfied with the Hutu government of Juvénal Habyarimana, who Pasteur Bizimungu was reportedly close to in the 1980s. After Habyarimana's death in a plane crash April 6, 1994 decades of complex ethnic, social and political hatreds were ignited and led to the Rwandan Genocide.

Eventually in July 1994 the Rwandan Patriotic Front gained control of the country and established a national unity government. The RPF leader, Tutsi Paul Kagame, was chosen vice-president, and Bizimungu was chosen President so that the majority Hutus would still be highly represented in the government. Bizimungu was chosen largely for his harsh criticisms of Hutu hardliners. Bizimungu frequently reported that the hardliners assassinated his close friend Juvénal Habyarimana and reportedly supplied information to the MI6 demonstrating the involvement of Hutu hardliners and French intelligence in the assassination.

During Bizimungu's administration, many believed that Kagame had true control of the government. Bizimungu, as deputy leader of the RPF, eventually came into a conflict with Kagame amid growing differences with the government over its policies and what he saw as an unwarranted crackdown on dissent. He resigned in March 2000, and Kagame became president.

In May 2001, Bizimungu founded an opposition movement, the Party for Democratic Renewal (PDR), known as Ubuyanja in the Kinyarwanda language. It was almost immediately banned by the government, which accused it of being a radical Hutu party. Critics claim that the government is simply crushing opposition figures under the pretext of inciting racial tensions. Bizimungu was placed under house arrest for continuing the operations of the party on April 19, 2002 and charged with endangering the state. On June 7, 2004 he was sentenced to 15 years in prison for attempting to form a militia, inciting violence and embezzlement. He received a five-year sentence for each of these convictions, which were to run consecutively.[1] On 17 February 2006, represented by a team of attorneys including Peter Zaduk[2], Bizimungu's appeal, based on the fact that he was convicted of crimes different from those with which he was initially charged, was denied by the Supreme Court.[3]

He was released on 6 April 2007, having been pardoned by Kagame.[4]

Théodore Sindikubwabo

2009-11-09T07:18:00.000-05:00

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Théodore Sindikubwabo (born 1928 – died late 1990s) was President of the National Development Council (Parliament of Rwanda) 1988–1994 and the interim president of Rwanda from April 9 to July 19, 1994, during the Rwandan genocide.

Born in the town of Butare in the south of Rwanda, Sindikubwabo was educated as a physician, and was Minister of Health in the administration of President Kayibanda. Following the takeover by Juvénal Habyarimana, Sindikubwabo became a practising pediatrician in Kigali Central Hospital. He later returned to politics as a deputy in parliament.

Immediately following Habyarimana's assassination on April 6, 1994, Sindikubwabo was installed as interim President by the Crisis Committee controlled by Colonel Théoneste Bagosora, and was the head of government during the genocide. Many scholars and the British MI6 report that Sindikubwabo and Hutu hardliners organized Habyarimana's assassination due to concerns over the Arusha Accords with the aid of French intelligence. .[citation needed] Sindikubwabo is widely believed to have been a puppet of the group of military officers who held the real power. On 19 April 1994, he made a now infamous speech at the ceremony appointing a new Préfet (Governor) of Butare that was broadcast on national radio, in which he insulted those who were not "working", a euphemism for killing Tutsis, and told them to "get out of the way and let us work". On 29 April, he returned to Butare and told the populace that he was there to supervise the killing of Tutsi. On an 18 May visit to Kibuye Prefecture, he congratulated the people on how well they had done their "work".[citation needed]

Following the invasion of the Rwandese Patriotic Front that took control of the country and ended the genocide, Sindikubwabo fled to Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), where he lived in exile in Bukavu. He was interviewed there for the book We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families and quoted as saying: "The moment has not yet come to say who is guilty and who is not guilty."[citation needed] He was initially reported to have been killed in the Rwandan government attack on Bukavu in November 1996 at the beginning of the First Congo War, but subsequent reports put him in Kinshasa. He died in exile in Democratic Republic of the Congo in the late 1990s of natural causes and was never charged by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.

Juvénal Habyarimana

2009-11-09T07:14:00.001-05:00

Juvénal Habyarimana (8 mars 1937 - 6 avril 1994) fut le président du Rwanda de 1973 jusqu'à son assassinat en 1994. Juvénal Habyarimana a épousé Agathe Kanziga[1].

Biographie

Ministre de la Défense pendant la présidence de Grégoire Kayibanda, dont le fils était son filleul, Juvénal Habyarimana dirige un coup d'État et prend le pouvoir le 5 juillet 1973. Ce coup d'État intervient dans un contexte très troublé : le président Kayibanda est de plus en plus contesté, cependant que le massacre des élites hutues au Burundi, en 1972, réveille des angoisses au Rwanda. Le gouvernement de Kayibanda tente de renforcer son assise dans la population en lançant de violentes campagnes contre les Tutsis dans les établissements scolaires et l'administration. Selon Bernard Lugan, « le coup d'État militaire de juillet 1973 a stoppé un processus qui aurait pu évoluer vers des massacres généralisés et une guerre civile interne aux Hutu[2]. » Selon l'ancien ministre de la Défense (1992-1993) James Gasana[3], « l'élite tutsi va se solidariser avec le coup du 5 juillet 1973 », car se sent « vengée » par le renversement et l'incarcération de son oppresseur[4].

Juvénal Habyarimana laissa mourir en prison Grégoire Kayibanda et plusieurs membres de son gouvernement renversé.

Juvénal Habyarimana est originaire du nord-ouest du Rwanda et Grégoire Kayibanda du sud. Même si ces deux présidents se reconnaissaient comme Hutu, les populations des deux régions avaient peu de sympathies mutuelles.

Marqué, comme son prédécesseur, par l'institutionalisation des catégories administratives ethnistes lors de la colonisation belge, il favorisera les Hutus, dont il était issu, pendant les vingt années de sa présidence, et soutiendra la majorité hutue du Burundi contre le gouvernement tutsi, avant que le pouvoir ne revienne, dans ce pays voisin du sud, aux partis hutus en 1993. Habyarimana, introduit des quotas ethniques dans l'administration et l'enseignement pour limiter le poids des Tutsis. L'historien Jean-Pierre Chrétien va jusqu'à parler de « nazisme tropical » pour caractériser le régime Habyarimana[5]. Certains auteurs[réf. nécessaire] ont repris cette expression, d'autres ont jugé qu'elle n'avait « guère de sens »[6], ou qu'elle relevait de la manipulation pro-FPR[7].

Au contraire, l'ancien premier ministre (juillet 1994-août 1995) rwandais Faustin Twagiramungu a indiqué que « jamais le président Habyarimana n’avait été accusé [par l'opposition démocratique dont Twagiramungu était l'un des meneurs] d’être l’ennemi des Tutsis. On disait même au contraire que le coup d’État qu’il avait fait les avait favorisés, et qu’en tout état de cause, il leur avait ouvert le secteur privé où ils étaient devenus prospères[8] ». James Gasana, le ministre de la Défense de J. Habyarimana, désormais installé en Suisse[9], nuance et précise que les quotas régionaux et ethniques ont en tout cas favorisé les Tutsis par rapport aux Hutus du sud, soutiens du président Kayinbanda jusqu'à la fin des années 1960 - alors que Habyarimana est du nord[10].

Quoi qu'il en soit, le juriste et politologue belge Filip Reyntjens note quant à lui qu'« entre la prise de pouvoir par le général Habyarimana et le début de la guerre en octobre 1990, aucune violence à caractère ethnique n'a été déplorée » et que « même si elle était loin d'être parfaite, la situation des droits de l'homme contrastait favorablement avec celle prévalant ailleurs en Afrique »[11] dans les années 1970 et 1980. Dès la première édition de son ouvrage sur le génocide au Rwanda, Gérard Prunier fait des analyses comparables : « L'un dans l'autre, les Tutsis n'avaient pas la vie facile étant donné qu'ils étaient victimes d'une discrimination institutionnelle, mais dans la vie quotidienne, la situation restait tolérable. En comparaison avec les années Kayibanda, les choses s'étaient améliorées au point même que certains hommes d'affaires tutsis réputés avaient fait fortune et étaient en très bons termes avec le régime. L'accord tacite était “Ne vous mêlez pas de politique, c'est la prérogative des Hutus”. Tant que les Tutsis respectaient ce principe, on les laissait généralement en paix. [...] Le système, bien qu'autoritaire, était quelque peu débonnaire et il fonctionnait sur le plan économique[12]. »

Un des arguments qui rendirent le régime Habyarimana très populaire auprès des organisations non gouvernementales, jusqu'en 1990, étaient en effet sa stabilité et sa relative prospérité.

Au début des années 1990, la rébellion armée tutsie du Front patriotique rwandais, intégrant dans ses rangs les démocrates hutus opposants à Juvénal Habyarimana, mène des actions militaires contre le gouvernement rwandais. Après avoir franchi la frontière ougando-rwandaise en masse le 1er octobre 1990, l'avancée se poursuit jusqu'à Gabiro (à 90 km de Kigali), mais suite aux contre-attaques meurtrières de l'armée rwandaise et à l'engagement des forces françaises de l'opération Noroït, le FPR ne peut progresser plus loin. Il poursuit des actions de guérilla pour maintenir son contrôle sur une partie du territoire rwandais. Au moins le Zaïre et la Belgique ont en 90 et jusqu'en 91 (pour les Belges) eux aussi aidé l'armée d'Habyarimana contre le FPR.

Suite au discours de La Baule du président François Mitterrand en 1990, Habyarimana annonce une libéralisation et une démocratisation du régime. En 1991, une nouvelle constitution, garantissant le multipartisme et les libertés publiques, est adoptée. À partir de 1992, le gouvernement est dirigé par un membre de l'opposition.

Selon Colette Braekmann, Pascal Krop et Gérard Prunier, le président François Mitterrand entretint une relation particulière avec Habyarimana, de même que leurs fils respectifs Jean-Pierre Habyarimana et Jean-Christophe Mitterrand, responsable de la cellule africaine à l'Elysée, que les Rwandais, comme d'autres Africains, appelaient « papa m'a dit» . L'ancien premier ministre Faustin Twagiramungu, a pour sa part jugé que ces relations n'avaient jamais été particulières[13]. Selon les notes rédigées par J.-Ch. Mitterrand et consultées par Pierre Péan, le conseiller et fils du président était réservé et dénué d'enthousiasme sur l'intervention française au Rwanda. Dans une note du 16 octobre 1990, il juge « impossible » une intervention directe, se prononce pour « des livraisons minimum » de munitions et d'armes, et juge que cette aide « permettrait à la France de demander avec force le respect des droits de l'homme et une ouverture démocratique, une fois le calme revenu »[14].

Assassinat du président Habyarimana
Article détaillé : Attentat du 6 avril 1994 (Rwanda).

Dans la soirée du 6 avril 1994, le président Habyarimana, le président Cyprien Ntaryamira du Burundi, ainsi que plusieurs hauts responsables du Rwanda et du Burundi, sont tués à bord de l'avion qui les ramène de Tanzanie, où ils avaient participé à un sommet consacré aux crises burundaise et rwandaise. Leur Falcon 50 avait amorcé sa phase d'atterrissage sur l'aéroport de Kigali, lorsqu'il a été frappé par un tir de missile sol-air. Le lendemain, les extrémistes hutu ont éliminé les éléments modérés du gouvernement, avant d'exterminer les populations civiles tutsi ainsi que les hutu qui s'opposaient au génocide.

Les circonstances exactes et les responsabilités de cet attentat n'ont pas été élucidées ; certains allèguent que l'attentat a eu lieu sur ordre de Paul Kagamé, chef du FPR, d'autres que ce sont les extrémistes hutu voulant faire capoter les accords d'Arusha, éventuellement aidés par des militaires et/ou mercenaires français.

Enquête en France

La pertinence du contenu de cet article est remise en cause. (Merci d'indiquer la date de pose grâce au paramètre date)
Considérez le contenu de cet article avec précaution. Discutez-en ou améliorez-le !

Une enquête est ouverte en France sur l'attentat contre le président Juvénal Habyarimana en avril 1994. En 1998, les familles des trois membres d'équipage français de l'avion présidentiel abattu ont porté plainte pour "assassinats en relation avec une entreprise terroriste".

Selon des témoignages d'anciens membres du FPR, cette décision aurait été prise fin 1993 et début 1994 par les chefs de l'Armée patriotique rwandaise, dont Paul Kagame.

Le juge Jean-Louis Bruguière a rendu, au terme de son enquête, une ordonnance de soit-communiqué concluant à la responsabilité de Paul Kagame et de plusieurs de ses principaux collaborateurs. Le 21 novembre 2006, le parquet de Paris a donné son accord au juge Bruguière pour qu'il délivre des mandats d'arrêts internationaux contre neuf proches du président rwandais Paul Kagame, dont James Kabarebe, chef d'État-major général des Forces rwandaises de défense et Charles Kayonga, chef d'État-major de l'armée de terre[15]. Le juge d'instruction ne peut pas engager de poursuites contre Paul Kagame en raison de l'immunité accordée en France aux chefs d'État en exercice. Il a demandé à l'ONU de saisir le Tribunal pénal international pour le Rwanda (TPIR) en Tanzanie pour engager contre Paul Kagame une procédure judiciaire.

Le principal témoin du juge Bruguière, Emmanuel Ruzigana est ensuite revenu sur son témoignage après la publication de l'ordonnance[16]. Le second témoin du juge, qui affirme pourtant avoir participé à l'attentat, n'est pas concerné par les mandats d'arrêts[17].

Notes

1. ↑ Extrait d'un Document législatif du Sénat de Belgique [archive] : « le président Habyarimana avait un problème. La Seconde République qu'il créa en 1973 était au départ une revanche des Rwandais du nord sur les Rwandais du sud du Parmehutu (104). Mais une fois qu'il fut clair que les portefeuilles ministériels, les opportunités économiques et les bourses d'études à l'étranger allaient avant tout aux Rwandais du nord, ceux-ci commencèrent à s'entre-déchirer pour savoir qui se taillerait la part du lion. Le président et son épouse favorisaient les gens de la préfecture de Gisenyi par rapport au groupe de la préfecture de Ruhengeri, dirigé par le ministre des Affaires étrangères Casimir Bizimungu et le ministre des Travaux publics Joseph Nzirorera. Ceux du clan de Ruhengeri furent donc contraints de jouer les seconds couteaux derrière ceux du clan de Gisenyi. Mais cela ne s'arrêtait pas là. Les faveurs étaient accordées en fonction de la commune d'origine et à ce niveau, le président avait une faiblesse. Le président Habyarimana était né dans la commune de Karago, mais il n'était pas « quelqu'un », il n'était pas issu d'un lignage respectable. En fait, des rumeurs persistantes rapportaient que son grand-père aurait été un immigrant provenant soit de la province ougandaise de Kigezi, soit de la province zaïroise du Kivu. Il était à plusieurs égards un homme seul, qui s'était forgé lui-même. Bien qu'étant devenu le mwami des Hutus, le shebuja à la tête du pays, il n'avait pas de véritables abagaragu qui soient dévoués entièrement à sa personne.
Enfin, le cas de la femme du président était différent. Agathe Kanziga provenait de Bushiru et était la fille d'un de ces petits lignages Abahinza du nord qui dirigèrent de petites principautés indépendantes jusqu'à la fin du XIXe siècle et, dans certains cas même, jusque dans les années 1920. Elle et sa famille étaient très fières de leur lignage qui était vaste et bien connu. Le président s'en remettait donc au clan de sa femme et à ses abagaragu pour être ses yeux et ses oreilles. Elle devint si puissante qu'on lui donna le surnom « Kanjogera », en mémoire de la terrible mère du roi Musinga, qui tenait les rênes du pouvoir dans l'ombre du trône. Son époux se reposait sur elle et sur sa famille, mais peu à peu, il devint leur prisonnier et finalement leur victime. (105) Dans le climat de la fin des années 1980, alors que la compétition politique pour arracher le contrôle d'une économie en net recul s'intensifiait, les projets de succession que le président Habyarimana nourrissait pour le colonel Mayuya constituaient une grave menace pour le Clan de Madame qui risquait de perdre le contrôle du pouvoir à un moment où ce contrôle était plus vital que jamais car Mayuya était l'homme du président (l'un des rares! (106)). Le colonel Serubuga, un des akazu les plus puissants, organisa le meurtre de Mayuya. Le sergent qui appuya sur la détente fut par la suite assassiné en prison et le magistrat du ministère public en charge du dossier fut assassiné pendant l'instruction. »
2. ↑ Bernard Lugan, Rwanda : le génocide, l'Église et la démocratie, éd. du Rocher, 2004, p. 98, note 3.
3. ↑ Parti socialiste vaudois - Candidature de M. James Gasana au Conseil communal de Bussigny. Mise au point [archive]
4. ↑ James Gasana, Rwanda : du parti-État à l'État-garnison, éd. de L'Harmattan, 2002, p. 26
5. ↑ Un « nazisme tropical » au Rwanda? [archive], Vingtième Siècle. Revue d'histoire, 1995 (48) pp. 131-142]
6. ↑ Gauthier de Villers, « L'africanisme belge face aux problèmes d'interprétation de la tragédie rwandaise » [archive], Politique africaine, décembre 1995, p. 2
7. ↑ Pierre Péan, Noires fureurs, blancs menteurs, éd. Fayard/Mille et une nuits, Introduction, chapitre 5, « Les vains efforts d'Habyarimana » et chapitre 20, « Jean-Pierre Chrétien, ou le cachet universitaire des sornettes du FPR »
8. ↑ Audition de M. Faustin Twagiramungu [archive] devant la mission d'information parlementaire française. M. Twagiramungu a, depuis son passage à la primature après le génocide, renié ses acquointances et amitiés au FPR, et il fait figurer le Manifeste des Bahutu sur son site : http://www.twagiramungu.net/histoire.htm [archive]
9. ↑ Parti socialiste vaudois - Candidature de M. James Gasana au Conseil communal de Bussigny. Mise au point [archive]
10. ↑ James Gasana, op. cit., p. 39
11. ↑ Filip Reyntjens, L'Afrique des grands lacs en crise. Rwanda, Burundi, 1988-1994, éd. Karthala, 1994, p. 35
12. ↑ Cité dans le rapport [archive] remis par la commission d'enquête du Sénat belge
13. ↑ Audition de M. Faustin Twagiramungu [archive] devant la mission d'information parlementaire française : « Il a estimé que les rapports entre le président François Mitterrand et le président Habyarimana n’étaient pas privilégiés, mais qu’ils résultaient, à son avis, d’une coopération qui s’était tissée au fil du temps. »
14. ↑ Pierre Péan, Noires fureurs, blancs menteurs, éd. Fayard/Mille et une nuits, 2005, p. 53
15. ↑ Mandats d'arrêt contre des proches de Kagame [archive], Nouvelobs.fr, 4 décembre 2006
16. ↑ Le juge Bruguière démenti par l'un de ses témoins-clés [archive], Radio France Internationale, 4 décembre 2006
17. ↑ Attentat du 6 avril 1994: Bruguière accuse Kagame [archive], Libération, 21 novembre 2006

Biographie de Paul KAGAME

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Paul Kagame est né en octobre 1957 à Ruhango, un petit village entre Gitarama et Butare, au Rwanda dont il est actuellement président.

Paul Kagame quitte son pays à l'âge de deux ans, suivant sa famille, lors des premières persécutions des Tutsi suite à l'indépendance de 1959. La famille s'installe en Ouganda.

À l'âge de 22 ans en 1979, il rejoint le futur président de l'Ouganda, Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, dans un mouvement de résistance à la dictature d'Idi Amin Dada, qui devint la NRA, National Resistance Army. Plusieurs réfugiés rwandais font aussi partie du noyau de cette résistance qui affrontera ensuite la dictature de Milton Obote, puis celle de Tito Okello. Cette période permettra à Fred Rwigema et Paul Kagame de se construire une culture politico-révolutionnaire, dans laquelle les grandes figures révolutionnaires d'Amérique latine et chinoises ont une place prépondérante. En 1986, Yoweri Kaguta Museveni devient Président de la République de l'Ouganda et plusieurs de ses compagnons d'armes rwandais, deviennent officiers dans l'armée ougandaise. La petite histoire raconte que Yoweri Kaguta Museveni invita le Président du Rwanda de l'époque, Juvénal Habyarimana, lors d'une visite officielle, à grader lui-même ces officiers « ougandais », signe d'une indéfectible amitié entre les deux Présidents.

Marié avec Jeannette en 1989, dont la famille était réfugiée au Burundi, il est père de quatre enfants.

Arrivée de Paul Kagame sur la scène internationale

Paul Kagame et George W. Bush, en avril 2005 à la Maison Blanche.Venant d'Ouganda, le 1er octobre 1990, le Front patriotique rwandais (FPR) de Fred Rwigema entame le retour au Rwanda des exilés rwandais, réfugiés à partir de 1959. Dès le 2 octobre 1990, Fred Rwigema est tué au combat, ou par ses amis selon les Forces armées rwandaises du régime Habyarimana. La mort de ce leader emblématique sera cachée plusieurs jours aux combattants du FPR. Ses responsables sont dans le désarroi. Le président ougandais, Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, très proche des responsables du FPR, dont plusieurs se sont illustrés comme officiers dans les rangs de son armée, impose son chef des renseignements militaires, Paul Kagame, vieil ami de Fred Rwigema, pour résoudre cette crise circonstancielle du FPR. Paul Kagame, alors en stage de formation aux États-Unis à Fort Leavenworth, entre sur la scène internationale en prenant les commandes du FPR qu'il avait créé avec Fred Rwigema.

De 1991 à 1993, alternant combats, défaites et victoires, Paul Kagame négociera parallèlement les accords d'Arusha avec le Président Juvénal Habyarimana, poussé à la discussion par la France, par l'intermédiaire de Pasteur Bizimungu qu'il fera élire président de la république de la période de transition, après le génocide. Pendant la période de ces négociations et lors d'un séjour du 17 au 23 septembre 1991, Paul Kagame sera arrêté à Paris par les services français une douzaine d'heures, sous le motif de terrorisme, juste après avoir été reçu par Jean-Christophe Mitterrand et Paul Dijoud conseillés du gouvernement français pour les Affaires Africaines auprés de l'Elysée. Paul Dijoud justifiera cette arrestion :"Les accompagnateurs du Major Kagame, qui circulaient avec des valises de billets, s’étaient fait repérer par la police et ont été arrêtés, sans que le Quai d’Orsay en ait été averti, puis libérés le soir après l’intervention du Ministre des Affaires étrangères".

En 1994, au moment de l'attentat contre le président Juvénal Habyarimana, les soldats belges de la Minuar sont accusés par ceux qui s'apprêtent à former le gouvernement interimaire d'en être les auteurs. Dix d'entre eux sont assassinés le lendemain par des militaires au Camp Kigali. Par la suite, Paul Kagame sera accusé à son tour d'avoir commandité l'assassinat du président Juvénal Habyarimana, notamment par la France, le juge antiterroriste français Jean-Louis Bruguière, et par des officiers dissidents du FPR. Paul Kagame mènera les troupes du FPR à la victoire militaire contre les Forces armées rwandaises et le gouvernement intérimaire. Malgré des troupes inférieures en nombres (15 000 hommes contre 50 000) et des moyens militaires moins important, faisant preuve d'un grand sens stratégique et d'une grande fermeté, il bénéficiera aussi de l'épuisement des troupes adverses mobilisant toute leur énergie dans la conduite d'un génocide qui fera environ 5 à 8 000 morts par jour pendant cent jours et exterminera plus de 90 % des Tutsi de l'intérieur du Rwanda. Il devient vice-président du Rwanda et Ministre de la Défense le 19 juillet 1994.

« L'homme fort » du Rwanda
Paul Kagame sera ensuite l'artisan de la reconstruction du Rwanda, complètement détruit et vidé par le génocide mais aussi par la fuite de plus de deux millions de Rwandais qui sont partis en République démocratique du Congo pour fuir la nouvelle justice rwandaise ou craignant la vengeance des tutsi. Mais en même temps il est l'un des principaux artisans du renversement de son homologue du Zaïre en 1997, le président Mobutu Sese Seko, dont le pays est quatre-vingt dix fois plus grand que le Rwanda. Des proches de ses officiers racontent qu'au départ les Rwandais n'avaient pas l'intention de renverser Mobutu Sese Seko. Mais devant la faible résistance qu'ils ont rencontré au Zaïre ils auraient décidé d'aller jusqu'à Kinshasa, entrainant l'Ouganda, qui ne voulait pas être en reste, et l'AFDL de Laurent-Désiré Kabila dans leur sillage, lors de la Première guerre du Congo.

Paul Kagame est élu président de la République par le Parlement le 17 avril 2000, après l'obtention de la démission de Pasteur Bizimungu. À la suite de l'instauration d'une nouvelle constitution par référendum, il est réélu au suffrage universel direct le 25 août 2003 avec plus de 95 % des voix.

La personnalité de Paul Kagame
Les Occidentaux qui approchent Paul Kagame le décrivent comme quelqu'un de courtois, calme et lucide et avec lequel le « courant passe bien ». Ses détracteurs voient en lui un tortionnaire, éduqué, d'une dureté implacable, ancien chef d'espionnage de Kampala où il était surnommé Kagome (de umugome, « le méchant » en kinyarwanda).

Le régime de Paul Kagame et les droits de l'homme
Article détaillé : Front patriotique rwandais.

Arguments de ses partisans
49 % des députés, 30 % des sénateurs et des ministres sont des femmes. Selon les informations officielles, madame Kagame prend une part très active dans la politique sociale du Rwanda et la lutte contre le sida, autre fléau du génocide, dont le viol fut une arme de prédilection y compris sur des fillettes de moins de dix ans.

La lutte contre l'ethnisme est un des thèmes du FPR et de Paul Kagame, bien avant le génocide de 1994. Ce combat contre l'idéologie de l'ethnisme est inscrit dans la nouvelle constitution.

Critiques et accusations contre Paul Kagame
La lutte officielle contre l'ethnisme est interprétée par des africanistes tels que Rony Brauman, Stephen Smith comme un paravent de l'ethnisme tutsi.

Lors de la campagne en RDC contre les forces génocidaires qui s'y étaient réfugiées (miliciens interahamwe et anciennes Forces armées rwandaises), les troupes de l'armée patriotique rwandaise sont accusées de s'être livrées à des massacres de civils. En 1996-97, Kagame est accusé d'ingérence dans les affaires internes du Zaïre du Maréchal Mobutu et d'en violer la souveraineté nationale. Cette ingérence débouchera sur la première guerre du Congo et la chute de Mobutu. Selon ses opposants, le sentiment de culpabilité de la communauté internationale vis-à-vis du génocide de 1994, qui a causé 800 000 morts selon l'ONU, n'y est probablement pas étranger. Le gouvernement de Kagame est accusé d'utiliser le prétexte de l'argument sécuritaire afin de piller les ressources naturelles de l'est du Congo, région où vivent les banyamulenge, congolais rwandophones, immigrés au Congo en 1896.

La seule personnalité qui aurait pu être un adversaire sérieux aux élections présidentielles de 2003, l'ancien Président de la République Pasteur Bizimungu, a été emprisonnée pour quinze ans, six mois avant les élections, par la justice rwandaise. On déplore des disparitions de plusieurs opposants et des assassinats. D'autres ont été maltraités pendant la campagne électorale.

Assassinat du président Habyarimana
Une enquête est ouverte en France concernant l'attentat contre le président Juvénal Habyarimana en avril 1994. En 1998, les familles des trois membres d'équipage français de l'avion présidentiel abattu ont porté plainte pour « assassinats en relation avec une entreprise terroriste ».

Selon des témoignages d'anciens membres du FPR, la décision d'éliminer Habyarimana aurait été prise fin 1993 et début 1994 par les chefs de l'Armée patriotique rwandaise, dont Paul Kagame. D'autres thèses impliquent la participation de l'armée française à l'attentat contre Habyarimana.

Le 21 novembre 2006, le parquet de Paris a donné son accord au juge d'instruction Jean-Louis Bruguière pour qu'il délivre des mandats d'arrêts internationaux contre neuf proches du président rwandais Paul Kagame, dont James Kabarebe, chef d'État-major général des Forces rwandaises de défense et Charles Kayonga, chef d'État-major de l'armée de terre.

Le juge d'instruction ne peut pas engager de poursuites contre Paul Kagame en raison de l'immunité accordée en France aux chefs d'État en exercice. S'il le souhaite, il doit demander à l'ONU de saisir le Tribunal pénal international pour le Rwanda (TPIR) en Tanzanie pour engager contre Paul Kagame une procédure judiciaire.

Source : Wikipedia

RWIGEMA

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1957 (10 avril) :Préfecture de Gitarama dans une famille Naissance d'Emmanuel GISA à Mukiranze, Musambira, en de trois enfants. Son père s'appelle Kimonyo et sa mère Gatarina Mukandirima.

1960 : Suite aux événements de 1959 (la révolution rwandaise, abolition de la monarchie tutsi, indépendance), sa famille s'exile en Ouganda et s'installe dans un camp de réfugiés à Nshungerezi en Ankole.

1976 : Après des études secondaires (Mbarara High School, Ouganda), il rejoint en 1976 le FRONASA (Front de Salut National) de Yoweri KAGUTA MUSEVENI, Kahinda OTAFIIRE et SHEFU ALI. Il change de nom et s'appelle donéravant Fred RWIGEMA.

Après une rencontre avec Yoweri Museveni à Nairobi, il part pour s'engager dans le FRELIMO (Front de Libération du Mozambique) en passant par la Tanzanie.
C'est dans un camp d'entraînement du FRELIMO qu'il devient ami avec Salim SALEH (de son vrai nom Coleb AKANDWANAHO, petit frère de Yoweri Museveni) qui deviendra plus tard Major General dans la National Resistance Army (NRA) ougandaise. Les lectures de ces deux amis se partagent entre les oeuvres de Che Guevara, Mao et... George Washington.

1978 : Idi Amin Dada "envahit" la Tanzanie. La réaction tanzanienne parviendra à repousser les troupes du dictateur. Des Ougandais et des Rwandais de la diaspora (dont Museveni et Fred) aidèrent les troupes tanzaniennes.

1979 : Création de l'UNLA (Uganda National Liberation Army) dont l'objectif est de mettre fin à la dictature d'Amin. Paul KAGAME rejoint ses rangs et donc Fred et Museveni. Fred RWIGEMA est mis "sur la touche" en raison de ses origines rwandaises, mais reste parmi les proches de Yoweri Museveni.

Création de la RRWF (Rwandese Refugee Welfare Foundation) dont le but est d'aider les réfugiés rwandais victimes de la politique de répréssionsystématique d'Amin à leur encontre.

1980 : La Rwandese Refugee Welfare Foundation devient la Rwandese Alliance for National Unity (RANU). Fred en fait partie.

1981 : Création de la National Resistance Army (NRA), dont l'objectif est cette fois de mettre fin à la dictature de Milton OBOTE, revenu au pouvoir après la chute d'Amin. Fred et Paul Kagame font partie des 40 hommes (dont seulement 27 armés) qui constituèrent le noyau de cette guerilla autour de Yoweri Museveni et commence le jour de l'attaque d'un camp militaire à Kabamba.

1986 (6 février) : Après les chutes successives des régimes de Milton Obote et de Tito OKELLO, la victoire de la NRA. Yoweri Kaguta Museveni devient Président de la République Ougandaise.

1986-1989 : Chef des opérations de combat de la NRA (Commander in chief) où il dirige la guerre contre la LRA (Lord Resistance Army) d'Alice LAKWENA.

1987 : Mariage de Fred avec Jeannette BIRASA avec laquelle il aura deux enfants : GISA JUNIOR RUGAMBA et TETA GISA. Le septième congrès de la RANU a lieu à Kampala en décembre.

La RANU "devient" le FRONT PATRIOTIQUE RWANDAIS (FPR-Inkotanyi). L'objectif principal est le retour des réfugiés rwandais dans leur pays d'origine. Fred Rwigema en est le président. En sont aussi membres Sam Kanyemera (Sam KAKA), Paul KAGAME, Cdt. MUSITU ou Peter BAHINGANA.

1989 : Fred est relevé de ses fonctions au sein de la NRA. Il se consacre à récolter des fonds auprès de la diaspora rwandaise, notamment en Amérique du Nord et en Europe.

1990 : En septembre, il termine les préparatifs de l'attaque du premier octobre. Alors qu'il n'a plus de responsabilités au sein de l'armée ougandaise, il justifie des mouvements de troupes (de soldats rwandais de la NRA) qu'il a ordonnés en prétendant que le président Museveni l'a chargé d'organiser les cérémonies de l'indépendance ougandaise du 9 octobre.

Lundi 1er octobre 1990 : 14 h 30 : Début des opérations du FPR en tant qu'armée de libération nationale. Un groupe d'un cinquantaine d'homme franchit la frontière ougandaise et attaque un poste frontière rwandais. Le maître d'oeuvre en est bien entendu Fred Rwigema.

Mardi 2 octobre 1990 : Mort de Fred. Elle est gardé secrète un certain temps afin de ne pas démoraliser les troupes du FPR engagées dans des combats contre l'armée du Général HABYARIMANA. Depuis, deux versions circulent sur la mort de Fred : tué au combat ou assassiné ?

Tout le texte et source sur rwanda.free.fr/index6.htm

Fred Rwigema

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La mort de Fred Rwigema, au second jour de l'attaque du Rwanda par le FPR, reste mystérieuse.

Fred Rwigema, Kampala (Ouganda) septembre 1990

Fred Rwigema, de son vrai nom Emmanuel Gisage ou Gisa, est né 10 avril 1957 sur la colline Kiranzi, cellule Kidahwe, secteur Nyamiyaga dans la commune de Musambira, Préfecture de Gitarama. Fils de Kimonyo et de Mukandirima alias Nyirabwije, il est du clan des Abacyaba. Suite à la révolution sociale de 1959, lui et ses parents quittèrent le pays vers l’Ouganda. La famille s’établit dans le camp de réfugiés de Nshungerezi en Ankole. En 1987, il s’est marié à Jeannette Birasa, petite-fille de Bideri, ancien chef de la région d’Impala, du clan des Abahindiro, dans la préfecture de Cyangugu. Elle était réfugiée au Burundi. Le couple eu deux enfants.

Fred Rwigema a été recruté par Museveni dans la jeunesse désœuvrée des rues de Kampala. La facilité de communication (la langue de la région d’origine de Museveni est une variante du kinyarwanda) et la solidarité ethnique permirent à Museveni de recruter un bon contingent d’hommes qui le rejoignirent dans le maquis (1981-1986). Fred Rwigema fut son chauffeur, son « coureur » (garçon à tout faire) et son garde de corps tout au long de ces années. Après la victoire, cette loyauté fut récompensée : il fut nommé Général-Major et Vice-Ministre ougandais de la Défense. Cette position lui permit de préparer la guerre contre le Rwanda, via un mouvement le Front Patriotique Rwandais (FPR).

L’attaque contre le Rwanda fut déclenchée le 01/10/1990 et Rwigema mourut mystérieusement le second jour de l’attaque. Au sujet de sa mort, plusieurs hypothèses circulent.

La première est qu’il serait mort « en sautant sur une mine rwandaise » selon Tito Rutaremara en 1990 ou qu’il « a été abattu par l’ennemi » selon Paul Kagame dans une interview accordée au journaliste François Misser en 1995. Ces deux versions désignant les Forces Armées Rwandaises ne sont pas crédibles car le 02/10/1990, celles-ci n’avaient pas encore atteint Kagitumba pour une confrontation. De même la pose des mines était inutile dans cette vaste savane du Parc National. Le piégeage des axes que devait emprunter le FPR ne pouvait être fait car les informations sur la façon dont allaient se déployer les combattants étaient encore lacunaires.

La deuxième hypothèse est que sa présence aux commandes de l’armée ougandaise commençait à trop peser sur Museveni et mettait ce dernier dans une situation inconfortable devant ses compatriotes. Un étranger à la tête de l’armée ougandaise était un leitmotiv pour les détracteurs du Président. Museveni qui aurait profité de la guerre pour envoyer des commandos aux trousses de Fred Rwigema afin de l’éliminer et ainsi éviter son retour. Au départ en effet, les analyses n’avaient jamais envisagé une victoire rapide du FPR.

Une troisième hypothèse est liée aux raisons magico-mythologiques qui voulaient que pour gagner la guerre, un des grands chefs des armées ou un prince de sang devait d’abord s’immoler en versant son sang sur la terre du pays à conquérir. C’est le rite du héros libérateur umutabazi : un des combattants devait se faire tuer dans le territoire ennemi ; cette mort devait assurer la victoire à son armée. Il en serait de même pour Rwigema qui, voulant que la victoire soit sûre, se serait donné la mort après sa traversée de la rivière Umuvumba qui sépare le Rwanda et l’Ouganda, et au bord de laquelle (du côté rwandais au poste frontalier de Kagitumba) le FPR avait dressé son campement au 1 octobre 1990. L’annonce tardive de sa mort tiendrait à ce dernier motif car on attendait d’abord que les combattants progressent après cette immolation dont on espérait des résultats immédiats. Dans l’histoire ancienne du Rwanda de tels sacrifices étaient légion.

Une quatrième hypothèse est que ce serait le tandem Bayingana-Bunyenyezi qui aurait organisé son assassinat suite à une divergence de vue sur la stratégie militaire. Ces derniers voulaient une guerre éclair jusqu’à Kigali, tandis que Fred Rwigema était pour une guérilla de longue durée. Bayingana, docteur en médecine de son état, avait été recruté par Rwigema mais il ne tarda pas à vouloir s’imposer comme tête pensante du FPR dans cette masse de quasi analphabètes. Dans cette hypothèse, Paul Kagame, de retour des USA, aurait à son tour organisé l’assassinat des deux autres officiers qui sont morts le même jour du 23/10/1990. Il est d’ailleurs important de signaler qu’à la mort de Rwigema, Bayingana l’avait remplacé, ce que Kagame ne pouvait pas non plus supporter car il briguait le même poste.

Une cinquième hypothèse avance que ce serait Paul Kagame qui, se sentant mis à l’écart du FPR, aurait fait assassiner Rwigema. Pour ce faire l’actuel président rwandais aurait utilisé ses anciens agents (du temps où il était responsable des services de renseignements militaires ougandais). Son adjoint d’alors, le Major Jackson Nziza, aurait participé au coup. Cette dernière hypothèse semble la plus plausible. De fait Kagame ne pouvait pas s’imposer au sein du FPR-Inkotanyi tant que son chef charismatique était encore vivant.

En effet, Fred Rwigema et Paul Kagame ont tous les deux participé activement à la préparation de la guerre : le premier dans la recherche des armes, le second dans la campagne médiatique (campagne qui a d’ailleurs bien fonctionné puisque le Rwanda naguère considéré comme un pays bien géré et bien administré fut subitement présenté par presque tous les médias du monde comme étant sous la coupe d’une dictature qui a dilapidé les fonds publics). Kagame considérait son éloignement comme injuste et soupçonnait Rwigema d’y avoir été pour quelque chose. Kagame serait donc parti aux Etats-Unis la haine au cœur. Pour son honneur, il devait à tout prix participer à la guerre de « libération ».

Pour saisir ce phénomène et cet état d’esprit, il faut se rappeler que dans tous les milieux des réfugiés, c’était l’effervescence. Les « libérateurs » de l’Ouganda avaient montré leur savoir-faire. La conquête du Rwanda n’était qu’une question de jours. Pour ce faire, bon nombre d’officiers rwandais de la NRA avaient lancé une sorte de publicité pour chercher des filles à épouser avant que la guerre ne commence. C’était pour celles-ci une fierté d’être des femmes de ceux qui étaient dans l’équipe des futurs « libérateurs ». Les filles accoururent de toutes parts. Fred Rwigema et Paul Kagame avaient rencontré tous les deux des anciennes réfugiées au Burundi, les prénommées Jeanne et Jeannette. Ils les ont épousées. C’était une frustration que l’un d’eux soit écarté de ce projet qui faisait la fierté familiale. L’opprobre était ainsi jeté sur Kagame considéré comme « celui ayant fui au moment où l’attaque allait être déclenchée » (yatinye gutabara). L’épouse de Rwigema, Jeannette, ainsi que celles de Bayingana et de Bunyenyezi démentiront cette interprétation et confirmeront la thèse selon laquelle leurs maris avaient été tués par les FAR.

Gaspard Musabyimana
12/2/2009

Biographie du Président Kayibanda

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Origines familiales et formation [1]

Kayibanda est né à Tare le 1 mai 1924 au sud du Rwanda. Son père Léonidas Rwamanywa et sa mère Caroline Nyirambeba ont eu 13 enfants dont 5 devaient arriver à l'âge adulte.

Il fit ses études primaires, d'abord à Tare (1932-1934) ensuite à Kabgayi (1934-1937). Il fut inscrit en 1937 au Petit Séminaire Saint Léon à Kabgayi. Ayant fini ses études secondaires en 1943, il rejoignit le 28 décembre 1944 le Grand Séminaire de Nyakibanda, situé à une douzaine de km au Sud de la ville de Butare. C'était à l'époque l'unique institution d'enseignement supérieur au Rwanda. Le 15 novembre 1948, il décida de quitter définitivement le Grand Séminaire et s'orienta vers l'enseignement.

Après avoir quitté le Grand Séminaire, ayant ainsi renoncé à la prêtrise, Grégoire Kayibanda fut obligé de passer deux mois chez ses parents à Tare à cause de la maladie. Le 20 janvier 1949, Grégoire Kayibanda fut engagé comme enseignant à l'Institut Léon Classe où il devait dispenser les cours généraux: français, histoire, géographie et religion. Fondé en 1944 et basé à Kigali, cet institut était une école secondaire professionnelle, qui deviendra plus tard, sous l'égide des Salésiens depuis 1952, l'Ecole Technique Officielle (ETO).

Activités professionnelles et politiques

a) Enseignant et catholique engagé

Engagé dans le mouvement de la Jeunesse ouvrière catholique (JOC), Grégoire Kayibanda fut envoyé à Bruxelles par Mgr Déprimoz, Vicaire Apostolique de Kabgayi, pour représenter le Rwanda au Congrès et à la Semaine Internationale de la Jeunesse Ouvrière Catholique du 3 au 10 septembre 1950, à l'occasion du 25ème anniversaire du mouvement.

En 1953, Grégoire Kayibanda fut affecté à Kabgayi au Bureau de l'inspection des écoles au Service chargé de refondre et d'adapter les manuels scolaires. A la tête d'une association de moniteurs (AMR) qui comptait près de 2000 adhérents, Grégoire Kayibanda animait la revue professionnelle Kurerera Imana ("Éduquer pour Dieu"). Lorsque fut annoncée la laïcisation des écoles, l'AMR fut à même de réunir près de 100 000 signatures pour soutenir les Conseils des parents qui menaçaient de faire des manifestations si l'enseignement de la religion était supprimé des programmes.

En 1952 se formèrent à Kabgayi deux mouvements d'action catholique: la Légion de Marie et la Ligue du Sacré Coeur. A l'issue du premier présidium, Grégoire Kayibanda fut élu président de la Légion de Marie. Dans ses carnets, il écrivit (cité par Paternostre de la Mairieu): "Je n'aimais pas d'abord la forme légionnaire en action catholique. Sa rigidité me paraissait un obstacle à bien des développements et adaptations... Mais quand je vis en pratique la profondeur de l'esprit aventurier - le don de soi - qu'elle peut apporter à un peuple humble, je l'aimai et me suis employé de toutes mes forces à l'aider". Dès son affectation à l'Inspection des Ecoles à Kabgayi, Grégoire Kayibanda entrepris de multiples activités sociales et justifiait ainsi son activisme (cité par Paternostre de la Mairieu): "dans un pays où l'on bâillonne les petits... par dirigisme et par un certain racisme... en me concentrant sur une seule activité, je risquerais de me voir vite réduit à néant... Je préfère éveiller mon pays à la conscience de ses possibilités... repérer autour de moi les aptitudes timides ou inconscientes... les aider à découvrir les besoins de ceux qui les entourent, les pousser et les encourager à rendre service. (...) Je crois que c'est ma vocation sociale, dans un pays qui se cherche encore, qui pose ses jalons pour un démarrage définitif prochain.

b)Journalisme et politique

De juin 1953 à décembre 1954 Grégoire Kayibanda fut rédacteur en chef et éditorialiste de la revue L'ami, fondée en 1945 par le Père Pierre Boutry à l'intention des intellectuels du Rwanda. A ce poste il bénéficia d'une importante documentation du Vicariat Apostolique comprenant outre des documents religieux, tous les textes officiels régissant la vie politique du pays à une époque cruciale de son évolution. La revue L'ami devint très vite une tribune idéale pour agir sur l'opinion des élites de toute la région. Sur un langage mesuré, Grégoire Kayibanda fustigeait les inégalités sociales et politiques basées sur la discrimination ethnique en faveur des Tutsi par l'administration de tutelle (coloniale) belge et par la monarchie féodale tutsi. Il stigmatisait l'exclusion de la majorité hutu des sphères du pouvoir.

Grégoire Kayibanda voyait son influence politique s'étendre. En 1953, il fut élu au Conseil de la chefferie, puis du Territoire. Il note dans ses carnets (cité par Paternostre de la Mairieu): "[le Chef présidant le Conseil de chefferie] semble me croire anarchiste, et me craint quelque peu. Il est habitué à en imposer à ses Sous-Chefs, or je n'accepte pas tous ses dogmes! Mon esprit est plein des iniquités subies par mon peuple, et je supporte très mal un régime aussi désuet qu'inopérant".

Pour le changement de la situation de son pays, notamment au niveau politique, Grégoire Kayibanda proposait à l'élite l'action sociale à travers les associations, les coopératives. Or la législation en vigueur au Rwanda à l'époque interdisait la constitution d'associations dans la mesure où elles auraient des activités politiques. Il plaidait que le droit d'association soit reconnu sans aucune restriction pour tous les citoyens rwandais. Avec un brin d'ironie, à l'adresse de l'autorité coloniale et de la monarchie féodale tutsi, il écrivait dans la revue L'ami: "Nos éducateurs européens, tout comme leur aide, la hiérarchie coutumière, trouveront dans la promotion d'associations un appui sûr pour mener à bonne fin l'évolution pacifique dans laquelle ils ont jusqu'à présent plus ou moins réussi"[2]. Le regroupement recherché par les élites entourant Grégoire Kayibanda (le futur Mouvement Social Hutu) affichait des buts à caractère social, mais dut garder longtemps la forme d'une association de fait. Il ne sera reconnu que le 4 avril 1958 par l'administration de tutelle (coloniale).

Au début de l'année 1955, Grégoire Kayibanda passa de l'Inspection des Écoles à la rédaction du journal catholique Kinyamateka sous la direction du Père Arthur Dejemeppe, vicaire délégué de Mgr Déprimoz depuis 1953. Ce journal laissait poindre depuis un certain temps "un courant revendicatif ou réformiste" faisant grimper son tirage de 5 000 à 20 000 exemplaires. Selon Donat Murego "l'idée-force autour de laquelle tournaient griefs, louanges ou voeux fut celle du progrès (amajyambere)"[3]. La nomination de Grégoire Kayibanda comme éditeur responsable du Kinyamateka fit l'effet d'une bombe dans les sphères du pouvoir. Par cette promotion, l'église catholique ainsi son soutien aux idées de Grégoire Kayibanda, en lui permettant de prendre la direction de L'Ami d'abord et celle de l'unique journal politique du pays, le Kinyamateka, édité en kinyarwanda. Le journal apporta son ferme soutien à ceux qui revendiquaient plus de justice sociale contre la ségrégation socio-ethnique au niveau des institutions.

En septembre 1957, à l'intention de la prochaine Mission de visite de l'ONU, le Conseil Supérieur du Pays (sorte de parlement qui n'en avait pas le nom), presque entièrement tutsi, avait rédigé un document revendicatif intitulé "Mise au point" adopté en février 1957. Passant à côté du problème crucial du monopole du pouvoir par la minorité tutsi estimée à 9% de la population, les auteurs de la "Mise au point" se servirent d'un autre problème du racisme tout aussi réel entre l'administration coloniale et la monarchie tutsi: "Une question essentielle qui se pose maintenant dans notre pays est sans conteste celle des relations humaines entre Blancs et Noirs". La "Mise au point" dénonçait "la situation de dépendance et le rôle d’exécutants dans lesquels les dirigeants traditionnels rwandais ont été insérés dès le début de la colonisation. Avec le temps et ce, malgré le maintien d’une grande partie de leurs privilèges par le Gouvernement colonial, cette dépendance et ce rôle ont développé des sentiments de frustration dans la mesure où ces dirigeants se rendaient compte qu’ils étaient de moins en moins maîtres des décisions engageant leur pays et leur autorité"[4].

En guise de réponse à cette "Mise au point", les leaders hutu se réunirent à Gitarama le 20 mars 1957, pour préparer et signer un document intitulé "Note sur l'aspect social du problème racial au Rwanda" désigné dans la suite par l'administration coloniale sous l'appellation de Manifeste des Bahutu. Ils dénonçaient dans ce document le "colonialisme à double étage", c'est-à-dire la domination de la minorité tutsi, et celle de l'administration de tutelle.

Le 9 septembre 1957, Grégoire Kayibanda fut envoyé en Belgique par Mgr André Perraudin (nommé Vicaire Apostolique de Kabgayi en décembre 1955) en stage de journalisme auprès du journal Vers l'avenir - qui avait son siège à Namur - contre un engagement de revenir travailler au journal Kinyamateka à son retour. Son stage ayant pris fin, il regagna le Rwanda le 8 novembre 1958 et reprit ses activités au journal Kinyamateka le 25 novembre 1958. Sur le plan non professionnel, il put également retrouver le "Mouvement Social Hutu" (MSH) fondé avec les autres démocrates en juin 1957, trois mois avant son départ pour l'Europe. Il accepta également son élection comme président du conseil de gestion de la Trafipro (Travail, Fidélité, Progrès), grande coopérative de consommation dont il était devenu membre avant son départ pour l'Europe. Ce conseil, note Paternostre de la Mairieu (idem, p.130) "devait veiller à ce que le profit économique et social voulu pour les populations soit assuré par une gestion financière rigoureuse sans que des intérêts particuliers viennent en fausser le jeu". Il redevint à nouveau président national de la Légion de Marie, ce qui lui facilitait les contacts au niveau du pays avec les responsables locaux aux quatre coins du pays. Il fut de plus en plus mieux connu de tous, connaissances qu'il mettra à profit pour pour organiser un parti politique et établir les futurs Conseils communaux à l'issue des élections communales. Le 26 septembre 1959, à l'issue d'une réunion des principaux leaders du Mouvement Social Hutu (MSH), fut fondé le PARMEHUTU (Parti du Mouvement de l'Emancipation des Hutu). Ce parti voulait non seulement rassembler les Hutu au sein d'un même parti, mais aussi être le porte-voix des populations exploitées, c'est-à-dire de très nombreux Tutsi et de Twa pauvres, sans se limiter au groupe ethnique des Hutu.

Le changement: Premier Ministre puis Président

Le 1er novembre 1959 se déclencha la révolution, suite à un incident dans lequel le Sous-Chef Hutu Dominique Mbonyumutwa fut molesté par un groupe de jeunes Tutsi. Il réussit à repousser ses agresseurs sans avoir besoin d'aide. Dès lors les bruits coururent que le Sous-Chef Mbonyumutwa avait été assassiné. Les gens de la région se mobilisèrent et le soir même commencèrent les incendies systématiques d'habitations des Tutsi par des bandes de Hutu armés d'arcs et de lances. Ils chassaient d'abord les gens de leurs habitations avant d'y mettre le feu. En général ceux qui résistaient aux expulsions risquaient d'être lynchés. Une flambée de violence s'étendit sur tout le pays. Les royalistes mirent sur pied une "politique de décapitation" afin d'éliminer les noyaux du Parmehutu. Les principaux leaders hutu dont Grégoire Kayibanda furent protégés pas des soldats armés mais plusieurs leaders hutu furent assassinés. C'est en plein milieu de cette révolution que le gouvernement belge remit au Parlement une Déclaration définissant les grandes lignes des réformes institutionnelles dans le sens du manifeste-programme du Parmehutu. Deux semaines après le début des troubles, l'essentiel des revendications de la révolution avaient été satisfaites et l'ordre rétabli. Le 25 décembre 1959, les réformes institutionnelles annoncées par la Déclaration gouvernementale du 10 novembre furent précisées par un Décret qui annonçait la fin de l'administration indirecte et du monopole tutsi dans les sphères du pouvoir. En vertu de ce texte, les 544 sous-chefferies furent regroupés pour former 229 communes. Des élections communales furent fixées dans un délai de six mois pour constituer les conseils communaux au sein desquels seraient élus des bourgmestres proposés à la nomination du Roi. Les dix Territoires devinrent dix Préfectures confiées à des Préfets rwandais. Un Conseil du Pays fut mis en place dont les membres élus au second degré exerçaient un certain pouvoir législatif conjointement avec le Roi en attendant les élections législatives en bonne et due forme. Ce décret permit aux partis politiques de se préparer aux élections communales.

Le 6 juin 1960, les leaders du Parmehutu se réunirent à Ruhengeri, sous la présidence de Grégoire Kayibanda. Ils rejetèrent définitivement l'institution monarchique. Leur parti s'appela désormais Mouvement Démocratique Républicain (MDR) Parmehutu. C'est sous cette étiquette que Grégoire Kayibanda fit campagne pour les élections communales. Celles-ci se déroulèrent au suffrage universel, territoire par territoire, entre le 26 juin et le 22 juillet 1960. Ces élections furent largement remportées par le MDR-Parmehutu [5]. Organisées en l'absence du Roi qui ne remettra plus les pieds dans son pays, elles sonnèrent le glas de l'institution monarchique.

Après cette victoire Grégoire Kayibanda fut chargé,le 26 octobre 1960, de former un gouvernement provisoire en tant que 1er Ministre. Celui-ci comptait 9 Ministères et 12 Secrétariats d'État et d'administration dont huit membres de l'administration belge de tutelle pour faciliter une transition efficace vers une autonomie de plus en plus large. Le 28 janvier 1961, les leaders hutu organisèrent à Gitarama une réunion de tous les élus communaux et se prononcèrent en faveur de la forme républicaine de l'État et élirent par bulletin secret le Premier Président du Rwanda en la personne de Dominique Mbonyumutwa, tandis que Grégoire Kayibanda fut investi en tant que Premier Ministre. Les élections législatives connues sous l'appellation de Kamarampaka, furent organisées le 25 septembre 1961 et furent également remportées par le Parmehutu à 77,7% des voix. La question du Roi ayant été posée lors de ces élections, elle fut définitivement tranchée, les républicains obtinrent 80% des suffrages. Le Roi s'exilera aussi définitivement.

Après les consultations populaires du 25 septembre 1961, l'assemblée législative s'attela par priorité à la question du régime constitutionnel pour la nouvelle république. La question fut débattue dans sa séance du 4 octobre 1961. L'assemblée législative se prononça pour un État républicain et un régime présidentiel fort. Le président serait à la fois Chef de l'État et Chef du Gouvernement. Il serait élu par l'Assemblée législative en son sein au bulletin secret et à la majorité des 2/3. L'élection eut lieu le 26 octobre 1961 et fut remportée par Grégoire Kayibanda par 34 voix sur 44. Le 1er juillet 1962 fut proclamée l'indépendance du Rwanda. En date du 23 novembre 1962 l'Assemblée Nationale vota une constitution qui institua désormais le principe de l'élection du président de la République au suffrage universel avec un mandat de 4 ans renouvelable trois fois seulement. Un amendement fut apporté à la constitution pour y conformer la situation du Chef de l'État qui avait été élu par l'Assemblée nationale. Le Président Kayibanda fut réélu jusqu'à son ultime mandat constitutionnel.

Le coup d'état de 1973

En 1973, les élections présidentielles devaient avoir lieu au mois de septembre. Un projet de loi fut soumis à l'Assemblée Nationale, voté par celle-ci et promulgué le 18 mai: la durée du mandat présidentiel fut prolongé de 4 à 5 ans, la limite d'age de 60 ans fut également supprimée. La présidence du Président Grégoire Kayibanda prit fin le 5 juillet 1973 à la suite du coup d'état organisé par son ministre de la défense Juvénal Habyarimana, qui l'a remplacé.

Il fut assigné à résidence à Rwerere, dans la préfecture de Ruhengeri, et ensuite, après le décès de son épouse, dans sa maison de Kavumu près de Gitarama. Il fut condamné à mort par l'arrêté N° 0001/ 74/ CM de la cour martiale le 29 juin 1974. Sa peine fut commuée en prison à perpétuité sur décision de Juvénal Habyarimana.

Le président Kayibanda est décédé à son domicile le 15 décembre 1976. Paternostre de la Mairieu écrit à ce propos: "Le matin du 14 décembre à 9h30, [le président Kayibanda] se plaignit de douleurs dans la région du coeur; et son fils Pio dut alerter le Corps de Garde, qui fit appel à un docteur de l'hôpital de Kabgayi. Ce médecin n'avait jamais eu l'occasion de soigner le Président auparavant, vint vers 19 heures et, au cours d'une rapide visite (une dizaine de minutes), le trouva 'lucide', souriant, aimable', avec l'apparence d'un homme bien portant. Et quoi qu'il n'en ait rien voulu dire, on raconte qu'il constata une affection abdominale. Il estima que Grégoire Kayibanda 'était juste légèrement souffrant', qu'il n'y avait pas de gravité dans son mal' et se contenta de prescrire quelques médicaments, qui furent apportés de la pharmacie de l'hôpital. Dans la nuit cependant, le mal reprit et, à 4 heures du matin, le Président Kayibanda s'éteignit... On était le 15 décembre 1976."

Eugène Shimamungu

---------------------------------------------------

[1] Paternostre de la Mairieu, Baudouin - Pour vous mes frères: Vie de Grégoire Kayibanda, premier Président du Rwanda, Pierre Téqui Editeur, Paris, 1994. La plupart des informations contenues dans cet article sont tirées de cette biographie dont l'auteur, de nationalité belge, a vécu au Rwanda de 1961 à 1977, comme conseiller aux Affaires étrangères

[2] Kayibanda Grégoire, "Notre rôle dans la cité" dans L'ami, n°114, janv.1954 (cité par Paternostre de la Mairieu)

[3] Murego Donat - La révolution rwandaise 1959-1962, Publications de l'Institut des Sciences Sociales, Bruxelles, 1976. pp.803 et 804

[4] Murego Donat, idem, pp.751-752

[5] Munyarugerero François Xavier - Réseaux, pouvoirs, oppositions: la compétition politique au Rwanda, L'Harmattan, Paris, 2003

(Tiré de : editions-sources-du-nil.over-blog.com)

[Seule la dernière photo vers le bas du texte est dans le texte original]

Rwanda queen-killing suspect held

2009-10-06T09:11:00.002-04:00

One of the most-wanted suspects in the 1994 Rwandan genocide has been arrested in Uganda, police say.

Former intelligence chief Idelphonse Nizeyimana is accused of organising the killing of thousands of ethnic Tutsis - including the revered former queen.

Correspondents say he was travelling to Kenya from the Democratic Republic of Congo when he was detained.

Some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed by Hutu militias during 100 days of slaughter.

The BBC's Will Ross, in the Kenyan capital Nairobi, says Mr Nizeyimana was detained in Kampala carrying false identity documents.

Murder and pillage

Mr Nizeyimana, a captain in the army, was head of intelligence and military operations during the genocide and is accused of setting up special military units to help carry out the slaughter.

RWANDA GENOCIDE
6 April 1994 Hutu President Juvenal Habyarimana killed when plane shot down
April - July Estimated 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus killed
July Tutsi-led rebels capture capital city, Kigali
July Two million Hutus flee, sparking 15 years of unrest in the region

One of these units is believed to have killed Queen Rosalie Gicanda, widow of King Mutara III who died in 1959 shortly before the country became a republic.

According to a 1999 report by US-based Human Rights Watch, Hutu soldiers took the queen from her home in the south-eastern town of Butare and shot her behind the national museum.

They also murdered several women who looked after the queen, who was about 80 years old when she died.

They returned the next day and shot her mother and pillaged her house.

The rights group said the murder of the queen, who had kept out of politics since her husband's death, alerted many Tutsis to the danger they faced.

Intelligentsia attacked

A Ugandan police spokeswoman confirmed Mr Nizeyimana had been arrested on Monday and flown to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, based in Arusha, Tanzania.

Idelphonse Nizeyimana
Idelphonse Nizeyimana allegedly helped draw up death lists

ICTR officials said they could not confirm the arrest, but described Mr Nizeyimana as one of their highest targets.

He faces charges of genocide and crimes against humanity.

The indictment against him includes allegations that he ordered soldiers to kidnap a group of refugees, including 25 children, from a convent, and they were never seen again.

He also allegedly ordered the kidnap of two priests who were later killed.

He ordered roadblocks to be set up where people carrying ID cards identifying them as Tutsis were hacked to death with machetes, and he helped draw up lists of Tutsis to kill, the tribunal says.

Troops under his command also rampaged through the University of Butare, killing lecturers and students.

BBC Africa analyst Martin Plaut says this was part of an attempt to wipe out the Tutsi intelligentsia.

Idelphonse Nizeyimana

2009-10-06T09:00:00.004-04:00

Idelphonse Nizeyimana was said to be part of the Hutu "inner circle"

Idelphonse Nizeyimana has long been one of Rwanda's most wanted men.

The former Hutu intelligence chief, reportedly arrested in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, was one of eight key suspects identified earlier this decade as central to the grisly genocide of 1994.

According to prosecutors at the UN-backed tribunal for the Rwandan genocide, which sits in Tanzania, Mr Nizeyimana gave "clear signals" to people that massacres were condoned by the Rwandan military during their early stages.

He later directly ordered killings of Tutsis and in at least one case participated in the killings himself, the indictment says.

During 100 days of bloody violence across Rwanda which began after a plane carrying the Hutu president was shot down in April, some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed.

The violence was well-organised and methodically executed - bands of Hutu soldiers and local militias systematically slaughtered their Tutsi neighbours and many Hutus who refused to co-operate.

Many of them were brutally attacked with machetes before being left to die in agonising pain.

Killings and kidnappings

Idelphonse Nizeyimana was born in Gisenyi, an area of Rwanda close to Lake Kivu and the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo.

During the genocide of 1994 he held the rank of captain, serving as second-in-command and head of intelligence and military operations at Rwanda's elite military training school, the ESO.

RWANDA GENOCIDE
6 April 1994 Hutu President Juvenal Habyarimana killed when plane shot down
April - July Estimated 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus killed
July Tutsi-led rebels capture capital city, Kigali
July Two million Hutus flee, sparking 15 years of unrest in the region

As a member of the same commune as Rwanda's Hutu president, he was viewed as a member of an elite "inner circle". The combination of his official rank and his privileged access gave Idelphonse Nizeyimana the power of command over officers and soldiers at the military college.

The charge sheet against Mr Nizeyimana begins with an allegation that, in the days after the shooting down of the president's plane, he took part in a swearing-in ceremony for a new regional governor in Butare that saw Rwanda's new president openly call on the people of Butare to begin massacring Tutsis.

As the killing continued and intensified, he used his authority to organise militias to carry out the massacres, setting up roadblocks which allowed killers to operate without fear of interruption, the tribunal alleges.

Capt Nizeyimana, the indictment says, "in most cases instigated, encouraged, facilitated, and or acquiesced to ... killings, kidnappings and destruction of property".

He was also complicit in a long list of raids and missions against Tutsis, including raids on a university aimed at academics, and widespread rape, sexual abuse and mutilation by soldiers under his command, it adds.

At the end of the genocide - which took place during a civil war in Rwanda that ended with Tutsi rebels taking power in Kigali - many of the perpetrators and enablers of the violence fled to neighbouring countries.

In 2002 Mr Nizeyimana was among eight fugitives named by the US as ringleaders of the genocide.

Washington offered up to $5m (£3.1m) in rewards for information leading to the capture of Augustin Bizimana, Jean-Baptiste Gatete, Augustin Bizimungu, Idelphonse Hategekimana, Augustin Ngirabatware and Callixte Nzabonimana, as well as Mr Nizeyimana.

His apparent capture in Kampala opens up the likelihood of prosecution for someone accused of being a key cog in the genocidal machine.

Rwanda: Hundreds of Rebels Surrender, Four Killed

2009-01-27T16:27:00.002-05:00

James Karuhanga

27 January 2009

Kigali — As the ongoing Rwanda-DRC joint offensive against the Ex-FAR Interahamwe intensified yesterday, four other rebels were killed, dozens of weapons seized while hundreds more surrendered.

The operation code named Umoja Wetu (Our Unity) was launched last week in an effort to rout the militias responsible for the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, out of the Eastern DRC.

Capt. Olivier Hamuli, the Congolese army (FARDC) eastern operations Spokesman told The New Times on phone that four rebels were killed early in the day, 35 AK-47 rifles seized and a total of 494 rebels also surrendered to the joint operation in the past two days.

"These four were killed today in the south of Lubero and the joint forces have also taken control of the territory of Masisi which was their (rebels) main base," Capt. Hamuli said.

He explained that this was in the territories of Lubero and Masisi, in Katoyi Sector.

The militias who are grouped under what they call the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) have been living in the central African country since 1994 and are responsible for atrocities against Congolese civilians.

A subsequent press release indicates that the four died when the FDLR tried to forcefully retake Kasinga, a region between Bunyatenge and Fatua locations.

He also revealed that the recent rallying of the rebel National Council for the Defense of the People (CNDP) to government side had caused refugees in neighboring Uganda to return home.

"In two refugee camps in Uganda, when the refugees learnt about CNDP's integration, they left their camps and have now come back home," He said.

Capt. Hamuli put the number of returning Congolese to about 7,000. These have reportedly come from Kihihi and Mutolere refugee camps in Uganda.

MONUC's role

In a related development, the United Nation's Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) - MONUC - has also been allowed to participate in the joint military operation. Rwandan Defense Spokesman Maj Jill Rutaremara revealed this Monday afternoon.

According to Maj. Rutaremara, the Joint Operations Centre briefed MONUC about this, in the presence of its Commander Gen. Babacar Gaye on Sunday.

"This allays all their fears and concerns on matters to do with civil affairs," he said, "MONUC has agreed to cooperate - to provide logistics and bring on their own staff to follow up on civil affairs."

"There will be close collaboration whereby their earlier concerns will be put to rest," he said.

The UN peacekeepers had last Thursday demanded to be given a role in the joint military operations, saying they feared for the safety of civilians.

French Judge To Question Rwandan Presidential Aide Wed

2009-01-27T16:13:00.001-05:00

Tuesday January 27th, 2009 / 17h48

PARIS (AFP)--A French judge will Wednesday begin questioning Rwandan presidential aide Rose Kabuye over her alleged involvement in the 1994 murder of Rwandan ex-president Juvenal Habyarimana, her lawyer said.
Kabuye, 47, was charged before a French court in November of "complicity in murder in relation to terrorism" in the downing of Habyarimana's plane, an event widely seen as sparking the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.
"Mrs Kabuye is ready to provide explanations, to be fully transparent, and show that she is not involved directly or indirectly in this attack on the plane of president Habyarimana," said her lawyer Leon-Lef Forster.
Kabuye, a former guerrilla fighter who is now President Paul Kagame's chief of protocol, was arrested in Germany on Nov. 9 and transferred to Paris.
Her arrest drew a furious reaction from Kagame's Tutsi-dominated government, which accuses Paris and its allies of deploying more efforts to persecuting the genocide's survivors than to hunting its Hutu perpetrators.
"The allegations against Mrs Kabuye stem from a manipulation of history aimed at using French justice to provide cover for the authors of the 1994 genocide," said Forster.
Kigali has repeatedly accused France of having actively supported the Hutu militias during the 1994 genocide, in which 800,000 people were killed.
Kabuye was allowed to go back to Rwanda for the holiday season and she returned to France on Jan. 9.
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DR Congo seeks Nkunda extradition

2009-01-24T00:37:00.006-05:00

The exact details of Gen Nkunda's capture are still unclear
The Democratic Republic of Congo has asked for the extradition of rebel leader Gen Laurent Nkunda after his capture by neighbouring Rwanda.
Gen Nkunda, who has led an ethnic Tutsi rebellion in the east since 2004, is wanted for atrocities allegedly committed by forces under his command.
His arrest has been welcomed by the UN envoy to DR Congo.
The UN's refugee agency has expressed alarm at moves to disarm a different rebel group - of ethnic Hutus.
See detailed map of the area
Gen Nkunda was arrested in Rwanda, after fleeing attempts to arrest him in eastern DR Congo by a joint military force from both countries.
Correspondents say that it would appear that intense diplomacy has led to a deal under which DR Congo is letting Rwanda take action against its enemies - the Hutu rebels based in DR Congo - in return for taking out Gen Nkunda.
If both groups are neutralised, peace in the region would become a realistic prospect.
Some 4,000 Rwandan troops have entered DR Congo this week.
The BBC's Thomas Fessy reports from the key east DR Congolese city of Goma that there is a sense of relief among residents there, who feel the war is nearing an end.
About-turn
Rwandan army spokesperson Major Jules Rutaremara told the BBC that General Nkunda was being held by Rwandan forces in Rubavu district in western Rwanda, close to the border with the DR Congo.

Read the reactions of Congolese refugees displaced by the fighting in the east of the country to the arrest of Tutsi rebel leader Laurent Nkunda.

DR Congolese Information Minister Lambert Mende confirmed his country wanted to extradite the rebel leader.
"He is Congolese," said. "He committed his crimes in Congo."
Rwanda has not yet said whether it will hand over its former ally.
Human rights group have accused Gen Nkunda's National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP) - and also government forces - of numerous killings, rapes and torture.
Some 250,000 people fled their homes in North Kivu province when Gen Nkunda led an offensive towards the end of last year.
The UN recently accused Rwanda of backing Gen Nkunda.
A Tutsi like Rwanda's leaders, he had guarded their western flank against attacks from the Hutu forces who fled there after the Rwandan genocide of 1994.
But in mid-November Rwanda shifted its position, announcing it would work with the Congolese to destroy the Hutu rebels.
Refugee fears
The UN envoy, Nigerian former President Olusegun Obasanjo, told the BBC he welcomed Gen Nkunda's arrest but said more work had to be done to end all conflict in the region.
"The problem of DRC is that you end something and then another ugly atmosphere rears its ugly head," he said.

LAURENT NKUNDA
Age: 40
Congolese Tutsi
Fought for Tutsi rebels in Rwanda and DR Congo
Accused of war crimes in DR Congo
Studied psychology
Owns a cheese farm

Q&A: DR Congo conflict
"This time we need to uproot everything, root, trunk and stem. And that is why our own mediation effort should not come to end, because our responsibility goes beyond even the eastern DRC, it covers the whole of the Great Lakes region."
In a statement, the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) said it viewed "with some concern" a military build-up in North Kivu.
The joint Congolese and Rwandan operation is now expected to try to forcibly disarm the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), an ethnic Hutu militia, some of whose leaders are accused of involvement in Rwanda's 1994 genocide.
"Drawing from our past experience in this region, we fear that these operations could create new and massive displacement of the civilian population," the UNHCR said.
It pointed out that there were already about 850,000 internally displaced people in the province.

Laurent Nkunda

2009-01-23T11:04:00.003-05:00

(Redirigé depuis Nkundabatware)

Laurent Nkunda, né le 2 février 1967, dont le vrai nom est Nkunda Mihigo, est un officier rebelle tutsi de l'armée de la République démocratique du Congo.
Sommaire
1 Biographie
1.1 1994-2002
1.2 2003-2006 : Gouvernement de Transition 1+4
1.3 2006 : Élections
1.4 2007
1.5 2008
1.6 2009
2 Annexes

Biographie

1994-2002
Durant le génocide rwandais en 1994, Nkunda, ancien étudiant en psychologie, est présent au Rwanda où il est formé par le Front patriotique rwandais (FPR)[réf. nécessaire], ex-rébellion rwandaise dirigée par le général Paul Kagame, aujourd’hui président du Rwanda, et James Kabarebe, chef de l'armée rwandaise.
Il a été membre du Rassemblement congolais pour la démocratie (RCD)[réf. nécessaire], localisé à partir de 1998 dans l'est de la République démocratique du Congo.
Il s'illustre durant la Deuxième guerre du Congo lors des massacres à Kisangani en août 2002[réf. nécessaire] et a été largement soutenus par le Rwanda au cours des dernières années.
2003-2006 : Gouvernement de Transition 1+4
Nkunda est responsable, avec le colonel Mutebesi, de nombreuses actions militaro-politiques après l'instauration en 2003 du Gouvernement de transition :
Attaque de Bukavu en juin 2004,
Appel à la désertion aux soldats appartenant à l’ancien RCD-Goma intégré dans l’armée nationale au Nord Kivu en août 2005,
attaques de plusieurs villes dans le territoire de Rutshuru, dans la province du Nord-Kivu, en janvier 2006.
Un Mandat d'arrêt international a été lancé contre lui en septembre 2005. Il est accusé d'être responsable de nombreux crimes de guerre et crimes contre l'humanité (massacres, actes de torture, viols)1, accusations qu'il réfute point par point2. Il refuse toutefois de rejoindre l’État-major intégré de l’armée nationale congolaise.
2006 : Élections
Nkunda tente de déstabiliser l'Est de la RDC lors de l'Élection présidentielle congolaise de juillet 2006 et à la fin de l'année3.
En décembre 2006, le Burundi l'accuse, ainsi que James Kabarebe et Salim Saleh, d'avoir fomenté une tentative de coup d’État au Burundi en décembre 20064.
2007
Début janvier 2007, Nkunda accuse le chef militaire français de la MONUC, Christian Houdet, de soutenir les FDLR (ex-génocidaires rwandais) puisqu'il refuse de les désarmer5.
Le 18 janvier 2007, il annonçe que ses hommes ont commencé à rejoindre les rangs de l'armée gouvernementale de RDC6 à la suite de négociations menées à Kigali, au Rwanda. Néanmoins, la première moitié de 2007 se caractérise par de nombreux combats à l'est7,8,9,10 forçant des dizaines de milliers de civils à prendre la fuite. Laurent Nkunda accepte finalement de "brasser" ses troupes avec les troupes gouvernementales11,12,13.
Les accusations d’occupation de l’est de la RDC14,15, 16, de pillages de ses ressources17,18 et de tentative de déstabilisation du Gouvernement de la République démocratique du Congo s’amplifient de plus en plus durant la première moitié de 200719,20.
La tension monte encore d’un cran en mai 2007 lorsque Nkunda menace de retirer ses soldats des rangs de l'armée nationale, lorsque la MONUC dénonce publiquement la présence de troupes rwandaises et ougandaises en RDC21,22,23, lorsque des dissensions apparaissent entre Joseph Kabila et son état-major 24 et lorsque Louise Arbour, Haut commissaire des Nations unies aux droits de l’homme, préconise un inventaire des crimes graves commis de 1993 à 2003 en RDC25.
Début décembre 2007, une très importante offensive gouvernementale encadrée par la MONUC est lancée contre Nkunda à Mushake et contre son fief26,27,28,29. Elle se solde en une dizaine de jours par une sévère déroute et des milliers de morts dans les rangs des troupes gouvernementales30,31. La MONUC a été accusée d'avoir fait défaut aux troupes gouvernementales32,33.
Le colonel indien Chand Saroha a commandé pendant la période sensible fin 2007-début 2008 l'unité des casques bleus déployée à Sake, verrou stratégique situé à 30 km de la capitale provinciale Goma. Sake était défendue par les Casques bleus et marquait la frontière entre les positions du CNDP (Congrès national pour la défense du peuple) de Nkunda et celles de l'armée régulière congolaise, à laquelle l'ONU apportait un appui logistique34.
2008
En juin 2008, les accusations contre Nkunda de recrutement d'enfants-soldats reprennent35.
L'ONU ouvre le 10 juillet 2008 une enquête sur les déclarations de mi-avril 2008 du colonel indien Chand Saroha (ex-commandant au Nord-Kivu) tenus peu avant son retour en Inde lors d'une cérémonie d'adieu en présence de Nkunda et de son état-major 36,37,38,39 durant laquelle il qualifie Nkunda de « frère » qui « combat pour une noble cause » et qui est « prêt au sacrifice » à l'instar des « vrais révolutionnaires »39. Saroha a décoré Laurent Nkunda d'une « médaille d'honneur ». En réponse, Nkunda le remercie pour son amitié et son soutien, déclarant carrément : « Tu nous a énormément aidé39 ». Or, en décembre 2007, le colonel Saroha était présent au quartier général de campagne de l'armée congolaise, près de Sake. L'armée venait de lancer une offensive contre le CNDP qui s'est soldée par un cuisant échec au bout d'une semaine d'intenses combats. Saroha est accusé de ne pas avoir appuyé comme convenu l'offensive gouvernementale et d'avoir livré des informations à Nkunda[réf. nécessaire]. La Monuc a qualifié la démarche de son officier d'« inacceptable » et « contraire au mandat de l'ONU », tout en soulignant qu'elle a « été menée totalement à l'insu de son commandement39 ». Cette affaire a relancé une enquête déjà ouverte par le BSCI de l'ONU au Nord-Kivu. Dans un rapport confidentiel de février 2008, le BSCI fait état d'allégations « très sérieuses » selon lesquelles « des membres du bataillon indien (de la Monuc) fournissaient de la nourriture, des munitions et de l'information au général Laurent Nkunda »39.
Le 26 août 2008, Laurent Nkunda lance une nouvelle offensive qui lui permet d'agrandir la zone qu'il contrôle dans le Nord-Kivu et d'amener ses troupes à quelques kilomètres de Goma à fin octobre. L'armée congolaise ayant abandonné la ville, la Monuc n'a pas pu lancer de contre-offensive : son mandat est d'appuyer les autorités officielles congolaises dans leurs efforts pour rétablir leur contrôle sur le territoire national, mais pas de contrer une opération rebelle en soi. Nkunda a cependant renoncé à prendre la ville et a déclaré le 29 octobre un cessez-le-feu unilatéral puis demandé l'ouverture de négociations à Kinshasa.
Selon certains observateurs, l'offensive de Laurent Nkunda coïncide avec la signature entre le Congo et la Chine de contrats d'exploitation de minerais40.
En octobre 2008, Nkunda a expliqué, dans un entretien en anglais avec RFI qu'une prise de la ville de Goma (Nord-Kivu) n'était pas un objectif et qu'il cherchait à entrer en pourparlers avec Kinshasa.
2009
Le 23 janvier 2009, l'inspecteur général de la police de la République démocratique du Congo annonce l'arrestation de Laurent Nkunda la veille au Rwanda ; le général déchu avait franchi la frontière alors qu'une opération conjointe des forces congolaises et rwandaises reprenaient le contrôle du territoire conquis par le CNDP avant qu'une faction anti-Nkunda ne décide de se rallier au gouvernement de Kinshasa. Laurent Nkunda avait en effet été démis de ses fonctions par un de ses subalternes le 5 janvier, ce qui avait entraîné une scission du CNDP41.

Guerre au Nord-Kivu, Appui du Rwanda au Cndp : Kagame dément sans convaincre

2009-01-23T10:55:00.010-05:00

Kinshasa, 20/12/2008

Pince sans rire, Paul Kagame soutient ne jamais « connaître Nkunda ». Il a déclaré : « Je ne le connais pas. Je n’ai jamais parlé avec lui. Je ne l’ai vu qu’à la télévision comme tout le monde ». Amnésie ou démenti ? Nul ne le sait.

Le président rwandais est monté au créneau pour rejeter le rapport des Nations unies sur le soutien qu’apporte son gouvernement au CNDP, la rébellion qui sévit dans l’Est de la RDC. Devant la presse, l’homme fort de Kigali dément, sans convaincre ne jamais connaître Laurent Nkunda. Là où Paul Kagame a failli dans sa stratégie de communication pour se tirer de l’étreinte du rapport onusien, c’est lorsqu’il affirme n’avoir jamais parlé avec Laurent Nkunda.

Face à ces déclarations, pour le moins surprenantes, aucun observateur sérieux n’y a prêté le moindre crédit. Et pourtant, l’histoire récente de ces deux hommes démontre qu’ils ont d’une manière ou d’une autre évolué ensemble. D’abord, lors de la marche victorieuse du Front patriotique rwandais (FPR) qui a conduit Paul Kagame au pouvoir, Laurent Nkunda avait pris part aux combats. Il est ainsi exclu que Kagame ne l’ait jamais rencontré à cette occasion. Un frère d’armes, pour les militaires, ne s’oublie pas. La solidarité du front ne s’efface pas par un coup de baguette magique ou une amnésie circonstancielle.

Comme pour contredire le général-président, des analystes rappellent le soutien total apporté au RCD. En cette période, des réunions mixtes d’états-majors se tenaient à Kigali tout comme à Goma et dans d’autres villes sous le contrôle de ce mouvement politico-militaire de 1998 à 2003. Personne de censé suivant l’évolution politique dans la sous-région des Grands Lacs africains ne peut accepter d’avaler cette mixture de Paul Kagame. Dans le pire des cas, il se pourrait que Laurent Nkunda n’ait été qu’un petit exécutant de basses besognes. Est-ce pour autant vrai que le président rwandais ne lui ait jamais adressé la parole ?

En bon stratège militaire, Paul Kagame oublie, sans aucun doute, que Laurent Nkunda a déclaré avoir en commun avec le Rwanda la neutralisation des interhamwe. Il est exclu que celui-là même qui exécute la besogne, si chère au Rwanda, ne soit pas en contact avec le président de ce pays. Une relecture de l’interview du président rwandais au journal belge Le Soir ne révèle-t-elle pas mieux son état d’esprit vis-à-vis de Nkunda ? L’autre preuve qu’administrent les analystes repose sur l’attaque de Bukavu par Mutebusi et le même Nkunda. Vers quel pays s’étaient-ils repliés ? N’est-ce pas le Rwanda ?

Dans le même élan, les spécialistes des renseignements militaires contactés considèrent que le président rwandais ne pouvait se permettre le luxe de s’interdire de scruter en profondeur la personnalité qui partage plusieurs centaines de kilomètres de frontières avec son pays. «Dans cette zone où pullulent des hors-la-loi de tout genre, ne pas parler avec celui qui soustraite la question des interhamwe est un mensonge éhonté », a confié un attaché militaire africain en poste à Kinshasa.

Une autre évidence qui bat en brèche les déclarations de Paul Kagame touche à l’approvisionnement du CNDP. Si ce mouvement rebelle s’est battu pour prendre le contrôle des frontières communes avec le Rwanda, c’est justement pour assurer ses arrières dans l’éventualité d’un retrait. Qu’un conseiller de Kagame reconnaisse la présence des démobilisés rwandais dans les rangs du CNDP démontre si besoin en était encore que le Rwanda connaît non seulement l’existence de ce mouvement mais aussi son chef.

Il est vrai que Kagame ne pouvait pas accepter publiquement ses collusions avec Nkunda, mais il s’y est mal pris en prenant l’opinion pour naïve et incapable d’analyses. Paul Kagame a simplement menti !

Soutien à Nkunda : la Suède suspend son aide budgétaire au régime de Kigali

Le Rwanda a rejeté hier le rapport de l’ONU l’accusant de soutenir et d’armer la rébellion tutsie dans l’Eest du Congo mais, emboîtant le pas à la Hollande, la Suède a suspendu son aide budgétaire au régime de Kigali. Le Conseil de sécurité de l’ONU étudie cette semaine le rapport de 132 pages du Groupe d’experts sur le pillage de la République démocratique du Congo (RDC). Les enquêteurs blâment aussi le Congo pour son appui aux rebelles hutus rwandais des Forces démocratiques de libération du Rwanda (FDLR), en lutte contre le régime à prédominance tutsie de Kigali.

Et ils accusent les FDLR de participer au pillage des ressources du Congo, au même titre que le Congrès national pour la défense du peuple (CNDP) du « général » Laurent Nkunda, Un Tutsi congolais. Dans une réponse de sept pages, le Rwanda décrit le rapport de l’ONU comme « inexact et partial », estimant qu’il « a été calculé pour détourner le blâme » du Congo et de l’ONU, « qui n’ont pu résoudre le conflit ».

Le Parlement hollandais pressait le ministre de la Coopération Bert Koenders depuis novembre pour qu’il gèle l’aide de 4 millions de dollars de La Haye au Rwanda.

Soutien détaillé

« J’attends les conclusions de l’ONU avant de décider », avait déclaré Koenders le 29 novembre, de retour de Kigali. Les conclusions, tombant cette semaine, sont accablantes pour le Rwanda. « La Suède prend au sérieux le rapport de l’ON U et a bloqué le versement annuel de 14;5 millions de dollars au budget du Rwanda », a annoncé hier Stockholm. L’enquête, effectuée en vertu d’un mandat du Conseil de sécurité de l’ONU, révèle dans ses moindres détails le soutien systématique et multiforme du Rwanda à la rébellion de Nkunda.

Fournitures d’armes et de militaires, enrôlement d’enfants soldats, facilités bancaires sont autant de contributions de Kigali au combat contre ses exiles hutus en territoire congolais les empêchant de ramener la guerre au Rwanda. Les FDLR regroupent d’anciens « génocidaires » du régime Habyarimana renversé en 1994 par le FPR (Front patriotique rwandais) tutsi, et des Hutus rwandais nés au Congo après leur exil massif. Ils veulent reconquérir le Rwanda pour la majorité hutue (85%), tout comme la minorité tutsie (14%), exilée après l’abolition de la monarchie, ont repris le Rwanda par les armes avec la guerre de 1990-94.

Guerre inachevée

Cette guerre, inachevée, se poursuit dans l’est du Congo. Les victimes sont congolaises - mourant au rythme de « deux tsunamis » (500.000 personnes) par an, selon l’ONU. Et les ressources pillées pour la financer sont congolaises - diamant, or, coltan, bois, cheptel, café, plus des taxes imposées aux civils.

Des voix s’élèvent aussi en Grande-Bretagne, principal soutien de Kigali, avec les Etats-Unis, pour pousser le Rwanda à lâcher Nkunda et pacifier le Congo. « Paul Kagame, le président du Rwanda, est un favori des Britanniques qui lui versent des dizaines de millions de livres en soutien budgétaire. Mais son rôle dans l’Est du Congo est inquiétant. Il est temps de lui dire que l’aide cessera s’il ne met pas Nkunda au pas », écrit le directeur de la Royal African Society.

Kenneth Roth, directeur de Human Rights Watch (HRW), écrit que Londres doit « cesser de tourner en rond » et pousser l’Europe à déployer une force de soutien aux Casques bleus de la MONUC dans l’est du Congo. L’intervention de Roth coïncide avec le refoulement, pour la deuxième fois en trois mois, d’Alison Desforges, principale conseillère de HRW sur l’Afrique, par les autorités rwandaises le 2 décembre. Mme Desforges avait soutenu le FPR en 1994, mais elle ne se gène plus pour critiquer les violations commises par Kigali.

(SL/Th/GW/Yes)

Le Potentiel/ Le Palmarès

Nkunda victime de l’entente surprise entre Kinshasa et Kigali

2009-01-23T10:45:00.012-05:00

vendredi, 23 janvier 2009

Le chef rebelle congolais Laurent Nkunda, devenu « incontrôlable » selon des observateurs, a été victime d'un retournement surprise d'alliance entre Kinshasa et Kigali ayant conduit à son arrestation jeudi.

MONDE - INTERNATIONAL 16:02
« Nkunda était devenu incontrôlable. En plus, il était devenu gourmand financièrement. Il ne voulait pas dépendre de Kigali et se finançait directement (par le trafic de minerais) au détriment de ceux qui étaient censés être ses alliés (le Rwanda) », avance Gérard Prunier, chercheur français au CNRS (Centre national de la recherche scientifique) et spécialiste de la région.

Depuis des années, Kinshasa accusait Kigali de soutenir le Conseil national pour la défense du peuple (CNDP) de l'ex-général tutsi congolais Laurent Nkunda, des accusations étayées mi-décembre par un rapport de l'ONU. Kigali a toujours nié, tout en reprochant constamment à Kinshasa de refuser de désarmer les rebelles hutu rwandais des Forces démocratiques de libération du Rwanda (FDLR), basées dans l'Est de la RDC depuis le génocide rwandais de 1994.

La dernière offensive du CNDP contre les forces gouvernementales lancée fin août 2008 dans le Nord-Kivu a déclenché d'intenses pressions diplomatiques internationales pour amener les deux gouvernements à en finir avec les groupes armés dans la région. Ces pressions se sont traduites par l'annonce surprise mardi par Kinshasa d'une opération militaire conjointe RDC-Rwanda contre les bases des FDLR. Mais le déroulement des opérations depuis mardi démontre que l'opération avait également un autre but, la neutralisation de Laurent Nkunda. « C'est un deal qui s'est fait de président à président. La preuve, Vital Kamerhe, le président du parlement congolais, a expliqué qu'il n'était pas au courant », assure M. Prunier.

Un diplomate en poste dans la région et spécialiste de cette crise renchérit: « Dans le cadre de l'accord entre Kinshasa et Kigali, il était prévu que le CNDP aide les FARDC à combattre les FDLR. Nkunda a refusé ». « Puis l'armée rwandaise est entrée en RDC. Nkunda s'est senti trahi et disait en privé: je suis Congolais, nationaliste, et je suis prêt à me battre contre les Rwandais. » « Ca a scellé son sort », explique ce diplomate sous couvert de l'anonymat. « Kagame s'est dit: j'ai tout à y gagner. Je ne contrôle plus Nkunda, j'élimine les FDLR et je fais un deal avec Kabila qui va contenter la communauté Internationale », ajoute M. Prunier. A Kigali, la version officielle est toute autre: « Le général Nkunda a été arrêté car il voulait s'opposer à l'opération militaire conjointe », a assuré vendredi le porte-parole de l'armée rwandaise, le major Jill Rutaremana.

Les FDLR reprennent quant à eux la thèse du chef rebelle lâché par son tuteur. « Cela ne nous a pas surpris. Il n'était qu'une marionnette entre les mains du Rwanda. L'armée rwandaise pouvait à tout moment en faire ce qu'elle voulait », a déclaré le président des FDLR, Ignace Murwanashyaka, joint au téléphone en Allemagne. Si M. Kabila peut se prévaloir de la neutralisation de Laurent Nkunda comme d'un premier succès de cette opération conjointe, l'accord conclu avec son homologue rwandais n'en demeure pas moins une prise de risque énorme pour le chef d'Etat congolais, estiment le diplomate et le chercheur. « Il joue avec une grenade dégoupillée. On sait quand l'armée rwandaise est entrée, on ne sait pas quand elle repartira », souligne le chercheur.

De même, rappelle M. Prunier, le souvenir des atrocités de l'armée rwandaise pendant les années de guerre en RDC (1998-2002) marque toujours les esprits dans la population du Kivu, un des bastions électoral de M. Kabila lors de son élection en 2006.

Rwanda: 'The Israel of Africa'

2009-01-21T14:00:00.001-05:00

By Mark Doyle
World Affairs Correspondent, BBC News

Aid agencies fear a new humanitarian disaster in DR Congo
The United Nations says some 2,000 Rwandan troops have entered the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, where rebels opposed to the Rwandan government have been based for many years.
A UN spokesman said the Rwandan move was part of a peace plan agreed with the Congolese government.
However, the presence of Rwandan troops inside Congo is bound to spark controversy and could have a powerful impact across central Africa.
Rwanda has been described by some as the Israel of Africa.
The ethnic Tutsis of Rwanda experienced their genocide in 1994 but a Tutsi-dominated government then came to power and has ruled ever since.
Like the Israelis, the Tutsis have enemies on their borders, and now they have sent in their powerful army to deal with the ones who have bases in neighbouring DR Congo.
Thousands displaced
The parallels with Israel are not exact, of course. Rwanda and Congo have been fighting what amounts to a proxy war: Rwanda accuses Congo of harbouring ethnic Hutu militias who took part in the 1994 genocide and Congo accuses Rwanda of backing a Congolese Tutsi separatist movement.

RWANDA IN DR CONGO

1994: After Rwanda genocide, Hutu rebels move to DR Congo (then Zaire)
1997: Rwanda invades DR Congo to deter cross-border rebel raids
1998: Rwanda invades again. At least four other countries intervene
2002: Rwandan military leaves DR Congo
2003: "Africa's world war" declared over
2008:Congolese Tutsi rebel offensive on Hutus
2009: Rwandan military enters DR Congo

Q&A: DR Congo conflict
Diary: Protecting mountain gorillas
The two countries recently agreed to work together militarily to deal with the Hutu side of this equation, and the march of the Rwandan army into eastern Congo can be seen in this context.
So there is the potential for this military move to be a step towards peace. But its fraught with danger.
Recent fighting in eastern Congo, between Congolese, left a quarter of a million people displaced.
Most of them will be terrified of the Rwandan presence and a new humanitarian disaster is possible.
And of course the Rwandan Hutu militias, a well-drilled military machine, are unlikely to give up to the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan army without a fight.
So there is also a very real possibility of Rwandans fighting Rwandans on Congolese soil.

Wasps plot to trim Cameroon to siz

2009-01-21T01:12:00.002-05:00

BY BONNIE MUGABE

Africa Youth Championship
21 January 2009

Group A
Mali v Ghana 2pm
Cameroon v Rwanda 4pm

Rwanda’s U-20 team are in for a tough challenge when they take on Cameroon this afternoon in the ongoing African Youth Championship at Amahoro stadium.

The Junior Wasps go into today’s game with three points amassed in the 2-1 from the opening day victory over Mali while Cameron where lucky to draw 1-1 with Ghana.

Victory for the hosts will be enough to make them the first team to qualify for the semi-finals but it won’t be easy against a very physical Cameroon side that will be looking at this match as one they must win to have a chance of surviving the group.

After the win over Mali, the Junior Wasps will be under no pressure as even a draw is a good result in terms of staying on course for a place not only in the last four of this competition but the next Fifa World Youth Championship in Egypt later this year.

Coach Obradovic Tomislav has a fully fit squad to pick from as he seeks to make history as the first man o to lead Rwanda to a major continental title.

But the Croat will have to rectify the weaknesses in his team’s defence and midfield which were evident in the opener against Mali.

“We made a lot of mistakes in the first match but it was expected due to the amount of pressure my players were under, first from the crowd and secondly from our opponents,” admitted Tomislav.

After the win over Mali, Tomislav’s confidence increased by a notch and he believes that his team have a good chance of not only reaching the last four but also lifting the title on home soil.

Cameroon Coach Alain Wabo, who will be aiming for nothing less than a win in today’s game, is set to change the game tactically as he seeks Cameroon’s first win of the tournament.

Two years ago, Cameroon failed to go past the first round in Congo Brazzaville. However, they have since made up for this by summoning overseas-based players Espanyol’s Asong Joseph Leke, Bosso Aristide Cedric of Anderlecht and Nkoum Victor Cedric (Paris Saint-Germain) to boost their chances of making further progress in this tournament.

“Our game against Rwanda will be a 50-50 match but I will change my tactics to enable my team record the much needed victory,” vowed Wabo, adding that both sides will play a good game owing to Rwanda’s excellent performance in the first game.

Ghana takes on Mali in the day’s first game with both sides search for maximum points to keep them in the race for the semi-final spot.

RDC: rencontre entre chefs de l'armée et rébellion congolaises

2009-01-21T00:51:00.005-05:00

MUNIGI (RDCongo) (AFP) — Le chef d'état-major dissident de la rébellion du Conseil national pour la défense du peuple (CNDP), Bosco Ntaganda, a rencontré mardi des chefs de l'armée congolaise dans l'est de la République démocratique du Congo (RDC), a constaté un journaliste de l'AFP.
Cette rencontre est intervenue le jour de l'entrée d'au moins un bataillon de l'armée rwandaise dans l'est de la RDC pour participer à une opération conjointe avec l'armée congolaise contre la rébellion hutu rwandaise des Forces démocratiques de libération du Rwanda (FDLR).
Le général Ntaganda et des responsables de l'armée congolaise se sont en entretenus mardi à Munigi à quelques kilomètres au nord de Goma, la capitale de la province du Nord-Kivu, tandis que soldats et rebelles congolais étaient mêlés, a constaté un journaliste de l'AFP.
Le général Ntaganda, et une dizaine de commandants dissidents du CNDP, dont les forces campaient à une dizaine de km au nord de Goma depuis fin octobre, avaient annoncé le 16 janvier qu'ils mettaient "fin à la guerre" avec l'armée congolaise. Ils avaient aussi déclaré vouloir participer à l'opération de traque conjointe décidée par Kinshasa et Kigali contre les FDLR.

L'armée rwandaise intervient en République du Congo

2009-01-21T00:46:00.000-05:00

[ 21/01/09 ]
La traque des rebelles hutus rwandais, réfugiés dans l'est de la République démocratique du Congo (RDC) depuis le génocide au Rwanda de 1994, a commencé hier avec l'entrée d'au moins un bataillon de soldats rwandais au nord de Goma, capitale provinciale du Nord-Kivu. De 800 à 1.500 soldats sont arrivés à Kibumba, localité proche du Rwanda, à 35 kilomètres au nord de Goma, selon des sources militaires occidentales. « C'est la première étape d'une opération militaire conjointe entre le Rwanda et la RDC », a confirmé la ministre rwandaise des Affaires étrangères, Rosemary Museminali. Kigali et Kinshasa avaient annoncé le 5 décembre leur intention de combattre ensemble les Forces démocratiques de libération du Rwanda, réfugiées dans l'est de la RDC depuis le génocide, et dont certains membres avaient participé aux massacres.

RDC: le blocus des routes "inacceptable"

2009-01-20T12:27:00.000-05:00

AFP
20/01/2009 | Mise à jour : 17:51 | Ajouter à ma sélection
La Mission de l'ONU en République démocratique du Congo (Monuc) a qualifié aujourd'hui d'"inacceptable" l'empêchement fait à ses unités par l'armée congolaise de se rendre au nord de Goma, suite au début de la traque des rebelles hutus rwandais dans l'est de la RDC.

"Les FARDC (Forces armées de RDC) ne nous laissent pas passer à Kibati, tout comme des organisations humanitaires. Ce comportement est inacceptable", a déclaré à l'AFP le porte-parole militaire de la Monuc à Kinshasa, le lieutenant-colonel Jean-Paul Dietrich.

Les FARDC bloquent la route à partir de Kibati, localité située à 10 km au nord de Goma, capitale provinciale du Nord-Kivu, a constaté un journaliste de l'AFP.

La traque des rebelles hutu rwandais des Forces démocratiques de libération du Rwanda (FDLR), réfugiés dans l'est de la RDC depuis le génocide au Rwanda de 1994, a commencé mardi avec l'entrée de soldats rwandais au nord de Goma.

La Monuc estime qu'"entre 1.500 à 2.000" soldats rwandais étaient présents mardi en RDC, a indiqué son porte-parole militaire.

Les gouvernements rwandais et de RDC avaient annoncé le 5 décembre leur intention de combattre ensemble les FDLR.

Le pays annonce la normalisation de ses relations avec l'Allemagne

2009-01-20T12:21:00.000-05:00

Le pays annonce la normalisation de ses relations avec l'Allemagne© AFP
La ministre rwandaise des Affaires étrangères a annoncé dans un communiqué la normalisation des relations diplomatiques avec l'Allemagne, après une crise diplomatique entre les deux pays provoquée fin 2008 par l'arrestation en Allemagne d'une cadre du régime rwandais, Rose Kabuye.

"L'Allemagne et le Rwanda se sont mis d'accord pour nommer dans leurs capitales respectives de nouveaux chefs de leurs missions diplomatiques, dans un futur proche", annonce le communiqué de la ministre des Affaires étrangères et de la Coopération, Rosemary Museminari.

"L'Allemagne et le Rwanda partagent une longue histoire de relations amicales. Dans l'intérêt mutuel des deux pays et de leurs peuples, ils entendent aller de l'avant et ont décidé de travailler ensemble pour aplanir les sujets de désaccord", précise le communiqué.

L'arrestation début novembre 2008 à Francfort, en Allemagne, de Rose Kabuye, directrice du protocole présidentiel rwandais et l'une des proches du chef de l'Etat rwandais Paul Kagame, en vertu d'un mandat d'arrêt émis par la France, avait provoqué une crise diplomatique entre Kigali et Berlin.

L'ambassadeur rwandais en Allemagne, Eugène Gasana, avait été rappelé quelques jours plus tard "pour consultations" par Kigali, qui avait également exigé, et obtenu le départ de l'ambassadeur d'Allemagne au Rwanda, Christian Clages.