African Great Lakes Observer

Reconstructing Rwanda: 15 Years After Genocide. A Tribute to Alison Des Forges. Speakers include: Tom Porteous, Anneke Van Woudenberg, Carla Ferstman, Paul Gready, Kersty McCourt, Jens Meierhenrich, Karen Murphy and Don Webster. 20 March 2009 http://www.sas.ac.uk/643.html Panel 1: Human Rights & Civil Society Speakers: Tom Gibson, Amnesty International; Anneke Van Woudenberg, Human Rights Watch; Professor Paul Gready, University of York; Kerstin McCourt, Danish Institute of Human Rights Panel 2: State Authority & Local Agency Panel 3: Foreign Relations Panel 4: Reconciliation Panel 5: Post-Genocide Justice Panel 2: State Authority & Local Agency Panel 3: Foreign Relations Panel 4: Reconciliation Panel 5: Post-Genocide Justice

Andrew Mitchell: Achieving value for money in aid http://www.conservatives.com/News/Speeches/2009/10/Andrew_Mitchell_Achieving_value_for_money_in_aid.aspx “ giving aid to Russia is simply ridiculous ”. “ signing off a 240,000 pounds grant to set up a Brazilian dance troupe in Hackney ” is a waste of British taxpayer’s money. “ giving 38 million pounds of aid to China, a country which spent 20 billion pounds on hosting the Olympics” is arrogance toward Chinese people. But, giving aid to Kagame and Museveni to massacres Rwandans and Congolese people and to destabilize the whole Africa Great Lakes Region is criminal . Kagame is crying for being imposed by the British to accept their foreign aid. Kagame has consistently played down the role of aid in economic development while more than 60 % of his country annual budget is from foreign aid, mainly from the British ‘s taxpayer’s money. So, what is the rationale for the British to impose their aid to countries that do not need ...

Volume 56, Number 14 · September 24, 2009 Kagame's Hidden War in the Congo By Howard W. French Africa's World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe by Gérard Prunier Oxford University Press, 529 pp., $27.95 The Dynamics of Violence in Central Africa by René Lemarchand University of Pennsylvania Press, 327 pp., $59.95 The Congo Wars: Conflict, Myth and Reality by Thomas Turner Zed Books, 243 pp., $32.95 (paper) Although it has been strangely ignored in the Western press, one of the most destructive wars in modern history has been going on in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Africa's third-largest country. During the past eleven years millions of people have died, while armies from as many as nine different African countries fought with Congolese government forces and various rebel groups for control of land and natural resources. Much of the fighting has taken place in regions of northeastern and eastern Congo that are rich in mineral...

by Edward S. Herman "The plane was shot down by Paul Kagame and his Tutsi associates, [15] with active or tacit help from the Belgians, UN representative Romeo Dallaire, [16] and possibly the CIA. This act was part of the Kagame-Tutsi final assault to seize power after a four-year war, with the assistance of the U.S.-sponsored Ugandan military. When the chief investigator for the Rwanda Tribunal, Australian Michael Hourigan, reported solid evidence on this locus of responsibility for the April 6th assassination to Chief Prosecutor Louise Arbour in 1997, she immediately closed down the investigation and ordered him to destroy his files. This finding, which does not comport with the idea of a pre-planned Hutu murder program, has been suppressed in the Free Press. [17]" We have all heard about “genocide denial” and “holocaust denial” as very bad happenings that have focused attention, indignation, and concern to the point of laws passed to criminalize such behavior in Austria, B...

This shiny surface, however, hides a gloomy reality, with Kagame accused of war crimes committed before and during the 1994 genocide, denying political and press freedom in Rwanda subtly recomposing the old power-structure in favor of the Tutsi ethnic group. One of the most notorious accusations against Kagame has come from French judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere, who investigated the 6 April 1994 plane crash that killed then-Rwandan president Juvénal Habyarimana, then Burundian president Cyprien Ntaryamira and three French nationals. Bruguiere’s investigation concluded that the aircraft was shot down on orders from Kagame himself. Not only has Kagame denied all accusations but has even argued that France directly participated in the genocide that followed the assassinations. Since then, diplomatic relations between the two counties have been frozen. There after a spain juge delivered 40 international warrants against RPF's soldiers responsible for war crimes,internationa l human rights...

Report on Rwanda s Application for Membership of the Commonwealth: An assessment against Core Criteria ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Comments on this report: “We should not even say that Rwanda made an application to join the Commonwealth. In fact, it’s Kagame who is joining the Commonwealth, not Rwanda as a nation. What is happening in Rwanda is that a minority cannot govern without human rights violations. Anyone who condemned or did not support Kagame’s war is now in jail in Rwanda under the gacaca courts system. Others have fled the country and are still fleeing now. Many others Rwandans are being persecuted in their own country. Kagame is waiting for an apology from others who warn him or who wanted to help to ensure that political negotiations take place between Kagame and the former government he was fighting against. Britain continues to supply foreign aid to Kagame and his cronies with media reports highlighting...