Paul Rusesabagina: Stop legitimating Kagame's Rwanda [Includes Audio]

Submitted by Ann Garrison on Sun, 08/11/2013 - 18:23

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KPFA Evening News, 08.10.2013

Paul Rusesabagina spoke to KPFA about why he is urging the international community to ignore Rwanda's sham "elections" but not the massacres It commits In Congo.

Transcript:

KPFA Evening News Anchor: Rwanda, the East African nation long implicated in the lethal conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, will be Paul Rusesabagina, author of "An Ordinary Man"holding Parliamentary elections on September 12th. Rwandan exile and human rights activist Paul Rusesabagina has published an editorial in the Black Star News titled"Ignore Rwanda's Sham "Elections" But Not The Massacres It Commits In Congo." KPFA's Ann Garrison has more.

KPFA/Ann Garrison: Paul Rusesabagina received a Presidential Medal of Honor for saving over 1200 Tutsi Rwandans by sheltering them in the Kigali hotel he managed in 1994, and lived to tell the story in his book An Ordinary Man. Now he is asking the international community to ignore Rwanda's sham Parliamentary elections on September 12th. He says elections have not been honest since the Rwandan Patriotic Front seized power in July 1994 and that they were hopelessly rigged by the rewrite of the Rwandan Constitution, in 2007:

Paul Rusesabagina: In 2007, Kagame managed to limit completely the Constitution, so that no other political party can get involved in the election, so why should international community bother, knowing there is only one political party, which is leading the country, which is holding everything, including the wealth of the nation.

KPFA: He said that no political space has opened up since Rwanda's 2010 presidential election year, and that there is no more reason to send election monitors now than there was then. At the beginning of that election year, all three of the country's viable opposition candidates expressed hope that European Union election monitors would travel to the country to observe and report, but by midsummer one candidate was in prison, another under house arrest, and the third found the vice president of his party by the banks of a river with his head cut off. A Rwandan journalist had been shot dead in Kigali, an ICTR Defense lawyer had been shot dead in Dar Es Salaam, and an exile Rwandan General had survived an assassination attempt in Johannesburg. All three were enemies of sitting President Paul Kagame. The candidates and their parties by then agreed with Rwandan American Law Professor Charles Kambanda, who told KPFA that there was nothing to observe:

Charles Kambanda: "We're not talking about the election day. We are not talking about a few hours after elections or before elections. We are looking at the entire social, political environment before, during, and after the elections. Anybody who has been following involvements in Rwanda knows that it is impossible to have free and fair elections, so why do people seriously think of going there to observe elections?

Members of RPF Bureau Politique follow proceedings at the party's meeting - Kigali, 7 August 2013Which elections are they going to observe? There is NOTHING to be observed because what we have is a one-man show, what we have is a situation where they have created the so-called opposition. RPF has kicked out all the potential political opposition leaders. They are either in prison, or, they are already dead, or in exile."

KPFA: Rusesabagina asked the world to focus on the Rwandan army's massacres in the neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo, where its M23 militia is fighting the Congolese army with the help the UN Force Intervention Brigade.

Paul Rusesabagina: not turn our backs to what is going on in Congo, next door from Rwanda. Why? Because the Rwandan government sends to the Congo the Rwandan army and Rwanda has also been entertaining militias. And these people have been raping women, raping children, recruiting child soldiers, killing each and everyone on their path, so we are urging the international community not to forget that, but to stand for the truth and do justice to those innocent peoples.

KPFA: The Rwandan Patriotic Front government in Kigali has been an ally and military partner of the United States since 1994.

For Pacifica, KPFA, and AfrobeatRadio, I'm Ann Garrison.

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