ABANDONING RWANDA & MAKING MOVIES
Dear Jackie Jura,
I would like very much to thank you for publishing on your website my posting about H.E Paul Kagame. I do share with you the same admiration about him.
I am a canadian of rwandan origin and currently living in Montreal. I have followed history. Matter of fact I also do monitoring about current events through the net and elsewhere. The way you depicted PAUL KAGAME is very admirable. I will like to thank you very much from the bottom of my heart...
Greetings,
Sharangabo Rufagari
Dear Sharangabo Rufagari,
Thank you very much for letting me know that you liked my depiction of Paul Kagame, and thank you also for sending the photo at Christmas.
I always follow news about Rwanda. I was really surprised to read in Saturday's Globe & Mail, January 22, 2005* that Britain had cut off funding to Rwanda based on lies made by the UN that Rwanda is breaking the peace agreements in the Congo. Sweden has also cut off funding and the Dutch government is talking about it. This is a massive blow to Rwanda which depends on donors for 60 per cent of its operating budget. It's another example of the western world abandoning Rwanda in moments of peril, instead of offering support so that it can get on its own feet. It's obvious that Britain's goal for Africa is to throw it to the wolves. It will prop up evil tyrants like Mugabe in Zimbabwe but abandon the only honest leader in Africa, just as was done in the Congo back in the 60s when JFK CRIED FOR CONGO.
Today I discovered H. E. Paul Kagame's website which I'll put a link to at the bottom of my RWANDA'S GOOD MAN KAGAME article.
I wonder what you think about the latest movies about Rwanda, ie "Hotel Rwanda" which is a Hollywood version being heavily promoted all over Canada and USA and "Sometimes in April" which was filmed in Rwanda and aired there this weekend? Also, in Scotland, a computer game of the Rwandan genocide is being distributed to schools. It supports the UN's actions in Rwanda.
My opinion of all of these productions, based on reading reviews, is that they were created by the Ministry of Truth (Lies) and don't give credit where credit is due for the starting and the stopping of the genocide. A documentary or movie that should really be made is one focused on Paul Kagame based on Phil Gourevitch's 1998 book WE WISH TO INFORM YOU THAT TOMORROW WE WILL BE KILLED WITH OUR FAMILES: STORIES FROM RWANDA.
All the best,
Jackie Jura
BBC Rwanda film criticized (making money from "Shooting Dogs"). Go to 16.Minitrue & 25.Prolefeed
"Hotel Rwanda" Rusesabagina no hero. All Africa, New Times Kigali, Mar 1, 2006
..."Rusesabagina came in as a businessman who threw out whoever failed to pay for the room. He sacrificed nothing. He was just managing a hotel in a way that did not reflect the presence of a crisis..."
Genocide survivors criticise "Hotel Rwanda" ("nothing but fiction"). AngolaPress, Feb 26, 2006
"Paul Rusesabagina is not a film actor but rather a real politician because he tries to apologise and negate the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi," remaraked François Ngarambe, who heads the NGO Ibuka (Remember), one of the leading organisations of genocide survivors. "It is difficult to say that the objective of this film was to explain the genocide because of the diabolization of the Tutsis and the demarcation of certain Hutus from the genocide ideology,"... Nagarambe accused Rusesabagina of engaging in deliberate distortions by avoiding certain key events behind the genocide in which more than 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were massacred.
Rwandan president to be at U of Pacific (speaking to students & public & receiving honourary Law degree). Tri-Valley Herald, Apr 6, 2005. Go to USA UNIVERSITY HONORS KAGAME
Reader says giving Paul Kagame a Nobel Peace Prize would honour those who offered their lives in order to stop genocide
Rwanda/Uganda slam UN report ("panel has very tenuous relationship with the truth"). ReliefWeb, Feb 2, 2005. Go to 28.Reality Control & RWANDA BEFORE & AFTER
*Is the "genocide credit' used up? Rwanda continues to send troops into Congo, always invoking the Tutsi slaughter...
Now foreign aid is starting to slip away. Stephanie Nolen, Globe & Mail, Jan 22, 2005
...Rwanda's ambassador to the Great Lakes, Richard Sezibera, denied that his country's troops are in Congo. "What is happening in DRC now is a purely inter-Congolese affair," he told The Globe and Mail recently. The infrastructure of eastern Congo has been so thoroughly destroyed, and the terrain is so impenetrable, that it is difficult to speak conclusively about even a major military offensive. But the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Congo says it has clear evidence of Rwandan forces. While the UN has not detained a soldier in a Rwandan uniform carrying a Rwandan ID card, spokeswoman Eliana Nabaa said, patrols found evidence of major trooop movements, interviewed local people taken hostage by Rwandan soldiers to act as guides and heard from many civilians whose homes were looted by unfamiliar soldiers speaking Kinyarwanda and English (many Rwandan soldiers grew up in exile in English-speaking Uganda). In addition, the UN says aerial photographs show well-armed soldiers who are not part of the Congolese army in northeastern Congo...
Rwanda first sent troops into Congo after the genocide, when the Hutu militias responsible for the slaughter fled across the border. Mr Kagame said then that no one had come to the aid of Rwanda's Tutsis and that the new Tutsi government would henceforth protect its own...Since then Rwanda has twice more sent its army into Congo, always ostensibly to move against the genocidaires. "There is evidence, which is known by everybody of tens of thousands of the forces which committed genocide in 1994; they are present and active and sometimes acting in concert with some units of the DRC government", said Mr. Sezibera, the Rwandan ambassador..."There is no doubt whatsoever that there are genocidaires remaining in the Congo," said Mr. Caplan, who is also co-ordinator of the international genocide commemoration, Remembering Rwanda. ". . . Is the Rwandan government exaggerating the threat? When you're the intended victim, it's easy not to be objective."...Mr Sezibera denied that there was any mineral wealth being taken from Congo. Extracting it requires capital and infrastructure beyond the means of Rwandans, he said. The Rwandan military which numbers an estimated 60,000 troops, is disciplined and well trained...
Rwanda's military ally, the Rally for Congolese Democracy-Goma, has been weakened by internal divisions and has lost territory..."The Kinshasa transitional government is not going well, and this increased threat may fracture them and cause it to fall apart," Ms. Des Forges said. "If it falls apart, that leaves Rwanda as dominant. Yet she said she senses that the "genocide credit" is beginning to run out, that the perception of the Kagame government as the "good guys" is eroding. She cited the recent decision by Britain, Rwanda's largest donor, to suspend its aid; The Swedish government stopped sending money in December, saying that even if Rwanda was only threatening, and not in fact invading, they had still breached the peace agreements. The Dutch parliament debated Rwandan actions last month, although the issue has never been raised in Canada. Rwanda's government depends on foreign donors for 60 per cent of its operating budget.
Jackie Jura
~ an independent researcher monitoring local, national and international events ~
email: orwelltoday@gmail.com
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