HOLLYWOOD HUTU HOTEL HERO

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.