African Great Lakes Observer

Former ambassador to the U.S. Theogene Rudasingwa says opposition leader Victoire Ingabire is a freedom fighter who should not be in jail By James Butty | Washington, D.C. VOA News 27 October 2010 A former Rwandan ambassador to the United States and former chief of staff to President Paul Kagame has called on Rwandans to continue their peaceful resistance to what he called Mr. Kagame’s state-sponsored terrorism. This comes as a Rwandan court Tuesday denied bail to opposition leader Victoire Ingabire, who was arrested earlier this month on charges of forming a terrorist group. Rwandan Opposition Leader Victoire Ingabire Theogene Rudasingwa told VOA that Ingabire is a freedom fighter who should not be in jail. “My comment is first of all to ask why she should be in jail because Ingabire is not a terrorist as they charged her. In My opinion, I think she’s a freedom fighter, and she’s paying a price for that,” he said. In denying Igabire a bail Tuesday, the court said she could c...

By Ambrose Nzeyimana The Rising Continent October 21, 2010 Agence France Presse (AFP) reported this week that Tony Blair, the former British prime minister, visited Rwanda on Sunday and Monday . The visit happened just after two major events in Rwandan politics which, if not carefully managed, could damage irreversibly the image of Paul Kagame, the Rwandan president, his country, and particularly many world personalities who have been closely associated with the rebuilding of Rwanda after the 1994 genocide. These events could as well have a negative resonance on the views of citizens of Rwanda and more widely the Great Lakes region about countries and foreign leaders backing the Rwandan president. The two events are in order of importance and chronology the publication of the UN report titled, ‘Report of the Mapping Exercise documenting the most serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law committed within the territory of the Democratic Republic of the C...

By Christopher Black Center for Research on Globalization September 14, 2010 On August 26, the French newspaper Le Monde revealed the existence of a draft UN report on the most serious violations of human rights in the Democratic Republic of Congo over an eleven-year period (1993-2003).1 The massive draft report states that after the Rwandan Patriotic Front's takeover of Rwanda in 1994, it proceeded to carry out "systematic and widespread attacks" against Hutu refugees who had fled Rwanda to neighboring Zaire (now the DRC) as well as against the Hutu civilian population of the DRC in general. Crucially, it concludes that the pattern of these attacks "reveal[s] a number of damning elements that, if they were proven before a competent court, could be classified as crimes of genocide."2 The draft report was leaked to Le Monde out of the plausible fear that its most damning facts and charges against the armed forces of the Rwandan Patriotic Front and President Pau...

By The Proxy Lake October 17, 2010 The Rwandan directory of military intelligence DMI in collaboration with national police force may have masterminded the conspiracy to indict and eliminate Madam Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza with charges of participating in terrorist activities. Army General Rwarakabije On a tip off from an informant from Kagame’s secret services, the exiled Umuvugizi newspaper Chief Editor Jean Bosco Gasasira revealed that the plan to eliminate Madam Victoire Ingabire was engineered by Colonel Dan Munyuza assisted by Army General Rwarakabije. General Rwarakabije was asked to find an agent to play a central role to carry out the plan. He was tasked to hire a Hutu ethnic agents from FDRL that can be as reliable as easily influenced to collaborate in the Machiavelli plan, Umuvugizi Newspaper revealed Sunday 17 th October. The Newspaper confirmed that “General Rwarakabije picked one of his men from FDRL, a certain Major [Vital] Uwumuremyi who arrived in Rwan...

Victoire Ingabire Re-arrested, Bernard Ntaganda in Serious Condition By Human Rights Watch October 15, 2010 Victoire Ingabire.© Getty Images Related Materials:   Rwanda: Silencing Dissent Ahead of Elections Rwanda: Allow Independent Autopsy of Opposition Politician Rwanda: Allow Human Rights Watch to Work Rwanda: Stop Attacks on Journalists, Opponents "The police should grant Ingabire access to visitors and should respect her rights to due process. If she is to be charged, it should be on the basis of solid evidence, not as a punishment for her criticisms of the government". Rona Peligal, Africa director at Human Rights Watch.  (New York) - The Rwandan government should fully respect the rights of opposition party members and allow them to carry out their legitimate activities without fear for their safety, Human Rights Watch said today.  Human Rights Watch issued its statement in response to the re-arrest of Victoire Ingabire, president of the opposition party FDU...

Black Star News Editorial October 15th, 2010 Photo: Rwanda's U.S.-backed Gen. Paul Kagame speaking at the UN [Black Star News Editorial] The Kagame dictatorship has finally officially arrested Rwanda's opposition leader Ms. Victoire Ingabire Umohoza--the woman Gen. Paul Kagame fears the most in the world. Had she been allowed to run in Rwanda's presidential elections in August, it's widely believed Ingabire Umohoza would have defeated Gen. Kagame. Instead, she was prevented from running and accused of being a "genocide denier." This was a falsehood. What she had done was to state that: yes, Tutsis were massacred in 1994, but that Hutus were also massacred, and there could never be any genuine reconciliation if only the vanquished side was prosecuted. Kagame instead conducted sham elections and awarded himself victory with 93% of the votes; a margin that would even shame the members of the former Soviet Politburo . Kagame was practically the only ca...

Rwanda:Was USA complicit in Africa genocide? Peter Erlinder in The Daily Monitor http://www.monitor.co.ug/Magazines/-/689844/1029236/-/othcna/-/index.html With respect to the United Nations report officially released October 1, showing the role of the Rwanda People's Front and other parties in alleged genocide against Hutus in the Congo (1993-2003), I think that the language used in the report is much less important than the pattern of commission of massive crimes against civilians, killing millions, and the illegal extraction of resources from the eastern Congo which the report confirms, once again. The same information was contained in reports commissioned by the UN Security Council in 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2008. The Spanish indictment also details more than 300,000 deaths prefecture by prefecture committed by the RPF in Rwanda in 1994, and the assassination of President Juvenal Habyarimana and Cyprien Ntaryamira, as a means to trigger Burundi-like civilian mass...

ICTR defense lawyer Christopher Black, who recently published, " The Rwandan Patriotic Front's Bloody Record and the History of UN Cover-Ups ," in Monthly Review Zine, says that the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda will never charge officers of Kagame's army because, if charged, they will implicate their U.S. and European allies: "They're never going to charge the RPF, because it would be too dangerous. If you start charging the RPF, RPF officers, to save their necks, are going to start talking about others. And then you're going to get up to the Americans and the British and the Canadians and the Belgians. The whole thing would fall apart. They don't dare do that." Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/298764#ixzz122QeOqdB Human rights activists around the world have called for international justice and an end to impunity in the wake of the UN Mapping Report on Human Rights Abuse in the Democratic Republic of Congo. ...

by John Laughland - Global Research http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=21361 Those who take the Rwandan genocide of 1994 as the supreme case for armed intervention should learn about its aftermath As a hardened opponent of military interventionism and international war crimes tribunals, I find I am often floored when Rwanda is invoked. `How can you possibly advocate standing idly by when hundreds of thousands of people are being massacred?' is a difficult question to answer. The events in Rwanda in 1994 have become the supreme moral reference point for interventionists, long after other similar causes célèbres have vanished from memory, because to contemplate the scale and method of killing there is to stare into the very heart of darkness. William Hague last year expressed the prevailing sense of certainty when he said casually, `We are all agreed that we would intervene if another Rwanda were predicted.' Returning to the theme of intervention...

  http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2010/10/148549.htm U.S. Department of State   Home » Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs » Bureau of Public Affairs » Bureau of Public Affairs: Press Relations Office » Press Releases » Press Releases: 2010 » Press Releases: October 2010 » UN Mapping Report on Violations of Human Rights in the Democratic Republic of the Congo UN Mapping Report on Violations of Human Rights in the Democratic Republic of the Congo Philip J. Crowley Assistant Secretary , Bureau of Public Affairs Washington, DC October 1, 2010 The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has released a report documenting atrocities, including serious violations of human rights, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the decade between March 1993 and June 2003. The report raises serious allegations of brutal and horrific mass killings, rape and other abuses during the period in question. The United States strongly supports accountabili...