Rwanda: the opponents are mobilizing
As Rwanda begins its week of mourning in memory of 18th anniversary of the genocide,the exiled opposition, highly dispersed, tried to close ranks and overcome divisions between Hutu and Tutsi.
A week after a press conference in Brussels conducted jointly by the parties and
PS-Imberakuri PDP-Imanzi (Deo Mushayidi its president, a Tutsi who lived in Belgium, just scoop of life in prison in Kigali), two other movements common cause: the UDF of Ingabire, also imprisoned, and Rwanda National Congress led by four former close to President Kagame.
At a meeting jointly held March 31 under police protection in Ixelles, Theogene Rudasingwa, former secretary general of the RPF (the ruling), compared the current situation to that prevailing before the Hutu revolution of 1959, equating to Kagame a”Tutsi king” that excludes the majority of the population. He was also accused of ordering the assassination of his predecessor, but also that of Laurent Kabila in Congo in 2001.
For its part, the Rwandan Embassy in Brussels is organizing this April 7 a day of remembrance under the theme “Let us learn from our history to shape a bright future.”To see the various recoveries of remembrance, not everyone has a different conception of history in Rwanda, nor its future, even if Rudasingwa finally acknowledged that “not everything was bad in the RPF” .
From : http://www.levif.be
Edited by Rwema Francis.
This blog has inspired me to continue writing on my own blog
Letter to Rudasingwa
Dear Mr Rudasingwa
I have read your statement and followed your intervention during RNC-FDU meeting back in March. The candour in both is for everyone to see but I’m still quite disturbed about your intentions, but also the consequences your attitude might bring to our country if not handled with care. Exposing Kagame’s misdeeds is absolutely right and is a laudable exploit. But remember Kagame is just one inadequate individual, limited in time and space. Your obsession against his person rather than the overall system betrays your resolve to cover up yet more information, which won’t solve our problems even if you manage to bring him down. Rwanda’s problems didn’t start with him and won’t stop with his fall unless leaders like you decide to dig deep below the surface and honestly eradicate the ethnic disease that has plagued our society for decades.
We are hungry about the truth concerning the causes of all misery that has befallen our country for many years, and nobody better than you can lighten us on the matter. However, I can’t quite get around a few crucial questions about what you are trying to achieve; whether this is the whole truth and what will be your next move after bringing down the Kagame regime.
You seem too eager to please Hutus at any cost, including genocide perpetrators by rendering Kagame the alfa and omega of all Rwanda’s sufferings, but do you realise they are not in hurry to return the favour? All those Hutus during your RNC-FDU meeting were applauding you but none of them had the same ‘courage’ to denounce, let alone apologise on behalf of fellow Hutus for the torments they piled upon Tutsis since the fifties. How could you not notice!? What do you predict will be their attitude once Kagame is out of the way? The only answer I find to this is you are either suffering from the ‘Rubanda Nyamucye complex’ or you are kidding yourself that you will manage once again to outsmart Hutus, the way you did with the likes of Kanyarengwe and Bizimungu.
You apologise for selling, for 18 years, a lie about a crime that cost around 1 million lives, and you expect people to just say thank you and move on, although you do not seem keen to tell the whole truth? That’s called perverting the course of justice Mr Rudasingwa, because in order to conceal the secret, you fabricated false evidence and intentionally laid the blame on innocent people. Kagame told you he ordered the shooting down of the plane, yes, but is that all? In your role as a close adviser, what were your discussions about the fate of Tutsis and moderate Hutus inside Rwanda, the same people you tricked into supporting your movement, financially but also by sending thousands of their children to the front? What was your role as RPF Executive Secretary in the draft of the “Declaration of the Political Bureau of the Rwandan Patriotic Front on the planned deployment of a force of UN intervention in Rwanda”, submitted to the UN Security Council on April 30, 1994? In this declaration, for those who don’t know, the RPF unconditionally opposed any kind of UN military intervention allegedly because there were no more Tutsis left to rescue in Rwanda. Do you know how many of our families perished in May, June and early July, just because not only you refused them the help they needed, but also thwarted plans of those who were willing to come to their rescue? Do you realise we know you were at the centre of all that perfidy?
It’s strange that you apologise to everyone from Habyarimana’s family to Burundian and French pilots’ families, but omit the very victims of your misdemeanours! It’s disturbing to think that you might have wilfully chosen this omission to please Hutu extremists, ignoring the fact that yourself and your family were once victims of this scourge of extremism. How can you sleep at night Mr Rudasingwa? You betrayed everyone on your path, from fellow Tutsis and moderate Hutus who were massacred in Rwanda, through former Tutsi refugees, to the RPF you helped capture and hold onto power through crime and treachery. If needed, will you hesitate to deceive those same fellow politicians you’re tricking into believing you’re a reformed man?
I had long discussions with many Rwandans on this issue, Hutus and Tutsis alike. We came to the same conclusion that as long as your coalition is just trying to brush under the carpet the problem of ethnicities by blaming all evil on Kagame, we are heading towards the same dreadful results as achieved by MRND or RPF. If you are a man of dialogue, I openly challenge you to respond to our worries, and there will be many of us to join your fight against tyranny in our Rwanda.
Gerry, uramubwiye ariko ikibazo amatwi arimo urupfu ntiyumva!!