The Case Against Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame
Pasteur Bizimungu, a Hutu, was named president in what seemed an effort at providing representation for the roughly 84 percent Hutu majority in Rwanda’s new national unity government. However, Kagame, a Tutsi and the nominal vice president, kept control of the Rwandan Army, becoming the country’s de facto leader. And by 2000, after numerous cases of forced exiles, disappearances, and assassinations of politicians, Bizimungu resigned the presidency, bringing a definitive end to the illusion of ethnic balance in high office. (The government now prohibits the use of ethnic labels.)
Since then, former Rwandan officials say, almost every position of meaningful power in the country has been held by a Tutsi. In 2001, when Bizimungu began organizing a political party in order to run for president, it was outlawed on charges of being a radical Hutu organization. The following year, Bizimungu was arrested on charges of endangering the state, and later he was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
(Bizimungu, whom Amnesty International called a prisoner of conscience, was pardoned by Kagame in 2007, but the methods used to sideline him have been applied broadly ever since, with critics of the regime of all stripes being prosecuted for promoting “genocide ideology,†which has become an all-purpose charge.)
Pointing to the origins of the war and its bloody aftermath, Scott Straus, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin, said: “An honest analysis … would show that the reasons for what happened were much more complicated than the idea that the Hutus hate the Tutsis and want to wipe them out.â€
For one thing, there is abundant evidence that Kagame’s forces in the early days carried out targeted executions of the Hutu elite, followed later by much larger extermination campaigns that killed tens of thousands of people.
A year after the genocide had ended, blood was still being spilled, recalls Timothy Longman, then the country director for Human Rights Watch. “People would take me around and say, ‘There’s mass grave right over here,’ and you would ask, ‘From when?’ And they would say, ‘Just from a few weeks ago—not from the genocide,’†says Longman, who now directs the African Studies Center at Boston University.
One of the earliest investigations was undertaken by a U.N. team led by the American Robert Gersony in the fall of 1994. The team conducted research by interviewing people in refugee camps and the countryside. In a report later suppressed by the U.N., partly as a result of American political pressure aimed at supporting the new RPF government, Gersony’s team concluded that four provinces had seen “systematic and sustained killing and persecution of their civilian Hutu populations by the RPA,†the armed wing of the RPF.
Furthermore, the report estimated that the RPA killed between 15,000 and 30,000 people in just four of its survey areas in the summer of 1994. Years later a key member of Gersony’s team told me that the real number of Hutus killed during this period was likely much higher, but that a low estimate had been published because of fears of a political backlash within the U.N. so soon after its failure to stop the larger-scale killing of Tutsis. “What we found was a well-organized military-style operation, with military command and control, and these were military-campaign-style mass murders,†the team member told me.
(In one notorious incident in April 1995, the RPA attacked an internally displaced people’s camp in Kibeho using automatic weapons, grenades, and mortars. A team of Australian medics listed more than 4,000 dead when the RPA forced them to stop counting. France’s leading researcher on the region, Gérard Prunier, estimates that at least 20,000 more people from the camp “disappeared†after the massacre.)
Many people inside the country know this history well but have been prevented from talking about it as the political space has narrowed.
“After the first Congo war, money began coming in through military channels and never entered the coffers of the Rwandan state,†says Rudasingwa, Kagame’s former lieutenant. “It is RPF money, and Kagame is the only one who knows how much money it is—or how it is spent. In meetings it was often said, ‘For Rwanda to be strong, Congo must be weak, and the Congolese must be divided.’â€
Congo looms large in the story of Kagame in other ways as well. For years Rwandan government forces and their proxies have operated in Congo. Twice Rwanda has invaded the country outright, in September 1996, when with U.S. acquiescence it successfully waged war to overthrow Mobutu Sese Seko, and again beginning in August 1998, when it mounted a repeat operation to depose Laurent-Désiré Kabila. This second operation, to replace the very man Kagame installed to replace Mobutu, ended in failure but established a pattern of intervention and meddling aimed at undermining its much larger neighbor. The ensuing war, involving several African nations, is believed to have cost the lives of 5 million people.
As early as 1997, the U.N. estimated that Rwandan forces had caused the deaths of 200,000 Hutus in Congo; Prunier, the French expert, has since estimated that the toll is closer to 300,000. According to the U.N. report, these deaths could not be attributed to the hazards of war or to collateral damage. “The majority of the victims were children, women, elderly people and the sick, who were often undernourished and posed no threat to the attacking forces.†The report concluded that the systematic and widespread attacks, “if proven before a competent court, could be characterized as crimes of genocide.â€
Two years ago, Kagame delivered a lecture in London on “The Challenges of Nation-Building in Africa: The Case of Rwanda.†When confronted with a U.N. report that was then making headlines with the suggestion that his forces had committed genocide in Congo, he dismissed such allegations as “baseless†and “absurd.†Clearly he was keener to talk about economic indicators and repeat the oft-told success story of his country.
But even that is a truth with modification. Social inequality in Rwanda is high and rising, experts say. Despite an average annual growth rate of about 5 percent since 2005, poverty is soaring in the countryside, where few Western journalists report without official escort.
“The rural sector has suffered enormous extraction under the post-genocide government, far more than what had happened before,†said one longtime researcher who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “There is a real increase in misery. When you speak of Rwanda as a volcano, that’s what’s involved.â€
Will Rwanda explode again? The big, looming issue is whether Kagame will leave office in 2017, as the Constitution calls for. With so much to answer for, few expect a straightforward exit.
Source: The Daily Beast
u better write a book or else u summerise yo articles, they are so boring and on top of that, it’s all bullshit
IT IS MORE THAN TIRESUM.IT IS ATROUBLE CREATING IN THE INNERPERSON IT CAN ALSO CAUSE SOME ONE VOMITTING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
You write nosense. do you think Rwandans we can take our time reading this? never.
That’s roten malice!
Inyenyeri you remove our comments unless you are paid to make man eators agents abuse the victims! It couldnt be done on Inyenyeri atleast! Who is Maliced or roten mugabo than the killer of his Nationals? What make you vomite Niwe is it the master of deception who denies what he does with live evidance unto his face? What makes you tired and creates truble in taking the world most femous killer to justice he shall face it wheather to day or 2mrw.
That is your wish list. I wish you will leave the world of dead before realizing your dreams
@Gahanga, you have compromised the little respect some of us had for you. It is true “a son of a snake is a snake”. That comment proves how hungry and thirsty you are for the blood of Rwandans. The only thing you forget is that you can only kill those whose day has come and not everyone you hate. You are so obsessed with seeing Rwandans die that your illusion for destroying the social fabric of our community and our people, blinkers all you sense of reason and logic to the extent that you assume to be God, that your wish will happen. You even forget that this, inyenyerinews.org, is a virtual world and as long one is playing by the rules no one can do anything to him/her, let alone threats. Bagandas have a saying that, “a bikolimo bye Nkoko te bita Kamunye”.
As for @coco and @NIWE, how can you two be so silly and foolish to claim the role of speaking for Rwandans? If you can’t read something, then leave it. If you don’t like the content, then ‘TOUGH’. This is beyond your control and you will continue to chase shadows. If you refute anything, then contest it in a honorable way. Otherwise, live with it as the victims and relatives of the victims, of your so called ‘HERO’s’ adventures in DRC, are living with it. We live in the 21st Century where the “IDEA RWANDA” extends beyond the physical borders. Technology makes the reach and stretch of that idea beyond any single person or groups control. So be ready to embrace it and own up.
The TRUTH will always prevail!!!