The star witness of two European judges who have indicted Rwandan officials
has thrown the spanner in the works by retracting his testimony.
Abdul Joshua Ruzibiza says the plot was the work of the French intelligence services.
FRANCE CASE RE RWANDA SINKING
from the cover of "Rwanda: Secret History" by Joshua Abdul Ruzibiza
recounting his experiences as a lieutenant of the RPF Commando Network,
but he now says that the account of the plane's downing is not true and that
the book was the work of several people.
To Orwell Today,
Hello Jackie Jura!
I am the person who once was called the key witness of Bruguière in his stupid investigations. But as I declared it before, this was a pure game of mind.
I saw your bibliography and followed what you wrote on my mother land. I loved it and want perhaps to have a talk with you one day if it sounds well.
Have a very nice day,
Joshua Ruzibiza
Dear Joshua,
I guess you're writing me because you noticed I put a link to the radio interview you did with Rwanda (Contact FM out of Kigali) the other day in an email I received from Yves Mitali mentioning the arrest of Rose Kabuye and an email also from reader Badang.
Other than that, I have not written about you before in all the articles I have done about the complicity of France in the Rwandan genocide.
But I have read about you over the years and about the blatant, outrageous lies you told about Kagame and the RPF supposedly being behind the shooting down of the plane of then president Habyarimana and "sparking" the genocide.
It always amazed me that on such a shaky foundation as your testimony a mere judge was allowed to lay charges and indict as war criminals the president of a sovereign nation (ie France against Rwanda and Kagame and his aides) and cause such international chaos as the severance of relations between Rwanda and France.
I would be interested in hearing what you have to say and if it contributes to shining the light of truth on Rwanda and France I will share it with "Orwell Today" readers. So if you want to talk with me about it, please express in an email and I'll listen.
Yours in truthseeking,
Jackie Jura
To Orwell Today,
Hello Jackie!
I didn't refer to any link you are talking about. I don't know even where they are....Anyway, no lessons to teach me.
If you think I can be an interesting source of info, we remain in contact.
Have a nice evening,
Joshua
Greetings Joshua,
I just assumed you'd seen the links because you said you followed what I wrote about your motherland and had seen the Rwanda bibliography on my website.
Here are the email articles I was referring to where you are mentioned in context of other issues related to the Orwellian doublethink of Germany arresting and extraditing Rose Kabuye, a Tutsi who helped STOP the Rwandan genocide, while at the same time Germany refuses to arrest or extradite Hutus who COMMITTED the Rwandan genocide in 1994 and in Congo during present-day:
CONGO FORCES AGAINST NKUNDA (...The whole issue of those warrants originates from investigations done by French judge Brugiere and the main provider of all information is one fugitive RPF Soldier RUZIBIZA (He lives in Europe). I would like to share the following link to readers of Orwell Today where RUZIBIZA himself is interviewed by Rwandan local radio, Contact FM, Nov 11, 2008....)
GENOCIDAL HUTUS NEVER EXTRADITED (...I met Rose Kabuye when I was covering RWANDA'S LIVING LEGEND IN LONDON in April 2006. She's in a photo I took of Kagame hoisting a trophy he'd been awarded (she's wearing a long gold skirt). Then I met Rose Kabuye again during my DESTINY DESTINATION RWANDA trip where she was organizing the LIBERATION DAY 2006 celebrations at Amahoro Stadium and she invited us to THE RECEPTION FOR PRESIDENT KAGAME. Also, I have an article about her on the website at RWANDA'S ROSE...)
All the best,
Jackie Jura
PS - Below is the bibliography from "Orwell Today" on the France-Rwanda bones of contention, including some recent articles explaining your role in the French judge issuing warrants for the arrest of President Kagame and his top aides (including Rose Kabuye).
UPDATE: Key witness in former Rwanda president Habyarimana death dies, CapitalFM, Sep 24, 2010
A key witness in the French probe into the 1994 downing of a plane carrying then Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana has died in exile in Norway, several sources close to the case said Friday. According to the Rwandan news agency RNA, Joshua Abdul Ruzibiza, 40, died of a cancer on Thursday in Oslo, where he had lived for more than a decade. Ruzibiza had accused President Paul Kagame's Rwandan Patriotic Front of being responsible for the downing of Habyarimana's plane, which triggered the 1994 Hutu genocide against the minority Tutsis. The former RPF lieutenant claimed in a book that he was part of the commando unit that shot the plane down and became the key witness in the investigation launched in 2006 by French anti-terror judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere. A lawyer for Rwandan officials targeted in the investigation said he had asked Marc Trevidic, the judge who took over the case from Bruguiere, to request more details on the circumstances of Ruzibiza's death. "I have asked Trevidic to contact the police and judicial authorities in Norway and demand that it be urgently established whether the death was of natural causes," Bernard Maingain told AFP by phone. "I had not heard anything about him being sick," he said. Maingain was part of a group of experts, including Trevidic, who travelled to Rwandan earlier this month to hear witnesses and visit sites related to the plane crash. Kagame's regime has always said that Hutu extremists were behind Habyarimana's death. Ruzibiza had retracted several of his claims when he was heard in France following the arrest of Kagame's former chief of protocol Rose Kabuye. He was heard again recently by Trevidic in Norway and, according to an excerpt of the hearing published by French magazine Mariannne, Ruzibiza claimed he had gone back on his earlier revelations following intimidation from Kagame's regime. But Maingain argued that there was much more to the hearing than what was published and said of Ruzibiza: "We have lost somebody who could have provided very interesting explanations on how the investigation was manipulated under Bruguiere." The probe has been a source of great tension between Paris and Kigali.
Hundreds turn up for Kabuye protests in Brussels
by James Karuhanga, New Times, Nov 28, 2008
BRUSSELS - Nineteen days after Rose Kabuye’s arrest in Germany and extradition to France, protests against what many consider an illegal arrest of the chief of State Protocol continue all over the world. Apart from the ongoing online protests and petitions by Rwandans the world over, the Diaspora in Belgium also mounted a rally in Brussels, Belgium Thursday afternoon. Chantal Karara, head of the Rwandan Diaspora in Belgium confirmed this in a phone interview. She told The New Times that La Place Schuman, an area close to the European Commission institutions was the setting of the protests. “We sang and danced in protest to Rose’s arrest,” she said, adding that they also sent, through a representative, a memo of protest to José Manuel Barroso, President of the European Commission. “His representative came and listened to our protests,” she said, explaining that they also wrote requesting the EU to consider looking into the basis of the indictments and arrest warrants issued by French Judge, Jean Louis Bruguiere. Kabuye was arrested in Frankfurt, Germany on the basis of Bruguiere’s arrest warrants. The French Judge claims that she played a role in downing former President Juvenal Habyarimana’s plane. “We pointed out that people like Rose Kabuye are the ones who fought to liberate our country, unlike what is being suggested in the faulty indictment charges,” Karara said. More protests are planned for today in Paris.
Rwanda: French Judge Bruguiere's Witness Retracts Remark Over Habyarimana's Plane Crash
Hirondelle News Agency, Nov 21, 2008
Arusha: One of the witnesses of the French investigation into the attack against the plane of President Juvenal Habyarimana, Abdul Ruzibiza, currently a refugee in Norway, denounced his former statements in several interviews that they were "made up". He also added that Rose Kabuye was "innocent" of the charges charged against her in France. The formal indictment for complicity in murder and criminal conspiracy for her alleged role in the attack, on 6 April 1994, of the plane of President Habyarimana, Mrs. Kabuye was granted bail Wednesday evening but was placed under judicial supervision. Ruzibiza's retraction was initially made on the airwaves of the Rwandan private radio station Contact FM, then in various newspapers, including the French newspaper Libération, where he explained that the commando "network" which he had described, saying he was himself a member of it, "never existed". It is "purely and simply an invention", he added, without explaining why he told lies. In an interview with the French radio station France-Culture, he affirmed that the chief of protocol of the head of the Rwandan state "never had anything to do with these operations (the plane attack). "She is not involved". Ruzibiza considers himself a victim of "political manipulation". He specified to be "not along with Judge Bruguière (...) because I saw political manipulation. The list of accused does not correspond at all to what I or others would have said. I see falsifications of names, really illogical things".
Questioned by the Hirondelle Agency, Claudine Vidal and André Guichaoua, the two sociologists who wrote the preface and epilogue in Ruzibiza's book published in 2005, stress that these retractions relate only to the attack to which he devotes 15 pages out of 494. "We had the occasion to verify, before the publication of the book, that a number of information given by the author was also told by other testimonies, others than those known by Ruzibiza", the two researchers affirmed. "Today, they specify, we are not convinced that Ruzibiza can prove that he lied about all of it since 2003 and in particular before the ICTR, that it be on the attack or on other points. As for the motives of the Ruzibiza's retraction, the two French academics added, we only know what he said and that we do not have to discuss it. It belongs to the concerned courts to react to this claim of false testimony.
Key witness in Kabuye trial retracts testimony
Radio France Internationale, Nov 20, 2008
Joshua Abdul Ruzibiza, a former Rwandan commando and key witness in the case against Rwandan presidential aide Rose Kabuye has retracted his testimony. Ruzibiza told RFI that Kabuye “was not involved at all” in the downing of a plane that killed president Juvenal Habyarimana and triggered the 1994 genocide. Ruzibiza gave his statement to French Judge Jean-Louis Bruguière in Paris in July 2003. But he claims he did not name Kabuye. Bruguière’s case cites Kabuye and eight others in the downing of the plane. “I wish to say that Rose Kabuye is really innocent, and I regret to see why the country with a professional judge can make such a mistake,” said Abdul Ruzibiza who spoke to RFI via telephone from Norway. “It is sad to see countries saying this just for political manipulation,” he added. The case has become a point of contention between France and the Rwandan government.
Kabuye, a former guerrilla leader with the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) which fought against the Hutu-dominated government of the time, was arrested in Germany on a French arrest warrant. “She was working with administration and personnel. After that she was named a parliamentary candidate for the broad-based conditional government and I really don’t see any logic in arresting her or that she was involved in any military operations in downing the plane,” says Ruzibiza. “I don’t expect that there is any other former soldier who said it,” he added. Ruzibiza's statement to the judge named a number of people in the RPF, according to French newspaper Libération, including two sharpshooters who were involved in the plane incident, Eric Hakizimana and Frank Nziza. He later told the paper that he does not know Nziza, and he does not even know if he exists. The RPF special forces called Commando Network allegedly shot down the plane, killing Hutu president Juvenal Habyarimana. In 2005 Ruzibiza wrote Rwanda: Secret History, recounting his experiences as a lieutenant of the Commando Network, but now says that the account of the plane's downing is not true and that the book was the work of several people. The case brought against Kabuye and eight others by Bruguière is faulty, according to Ruzibiza. “If he is basing his investigation on me, then I have the right to say that he is a big manipulator… he is saying what I have not said,” he says. “I let him manipulate me. He was desperate he had conducted an enquiry for five years and didn’t get any tangible information about the downing of that plane or that accident.” Bruguière “needed someone to manipulate for political needs and aspirations, but at first had to prove that now they know who did it,” he claims. France “tried to deny the genocide because they knew what their role was in the genocide."
Rwanda: Confessions of a Political Hit-Man
New Times, Nov 13, 2008
Kigali: The retraction by key witness, Abdul Joshua Ruzibiza, in the Jean Louis Bruguière, indictments against key Rwandan Government officials is likely to throw the spanner in the works of the case the French Government has so tenaciously pursued over the years. In his confession, aired on Rwanda's private radio station, Contact FM, the former Rwanda Defence Forces officer, exposes the link between the French government and the notorious Genocidal forces, the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR). A development that vindicates those who have long argued that the invocation by the French of the principle of Universal Jurisdiction was just a malicious abuse of the international justice system to meet their political ends against the current Rwandan Government. Rwanda has since warned of the potential flaws in the application of the principle that can lead to anarchy in the global justice system. But, as the old adage goes, truth has long years. No amount of political chicanery, blackmail or any kind of deception can hide the fact that there are over a million bodies buried on Rwandan soil today. People who were killed in a well oiled (financial and technically supported) operation, that was well calculated and organised for months as exposed in the Mucyo Commission Report. There are French officials named in the report who are yet to be made to account for their actions.
Thus, the importance of Ruzibiza's confession. It shames Rwanda's detractors but also punches holes into the notion of the thoroughness and superiority of Western justice systems. While confessing that he framed the indictments, Ruzibiza tells us that he met the judge Bruguiere in question, for less than 30 minutes. "Even for the 30 minutes we were together, we actually did not even exchange more than five words as far as I remember," said Ruzibiza. And a whole country's leadership is supposed to come down. De grâce, messieurs!
FRANCE NO RSVP RWANDA (reader Badang asks about french response to accusations of Bisesero genocide survivors)
France comments offend Rwanda survivors ('never used the word genocide') & French Foreign Minister Kouchner visits Rwanda ('political' responsibility in genocide) & France blocks extradition of genocidaire (coordinated massacres in Kibuye). AFP/BBC/AllAfrica, Feb 5, 2008
BISESERO HILL HAUNTS CONGO (Hutus crossed Lake Kivu)
Genocide survivors offended by French Minister Kouchner comments. RwandaNewsAgency, Feb 3, 2008
Government has to be careful with the gestures for a renewal of diplomatic relations with France because of the suspicious language used by top French diplomat on a recent trip to Rwanda, Genocide survivors have demanded. French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner was in Kigali on a visit observers say was to try to restore the severed relations. Mr. Kouchner and President Paul Kagame exchanged pleasantries calling each other "a friend". However, following his tour of the Genocide Memorial Center, Mr. Kouchner touched the hot potato in Franco-Rwanda relations - Genocide responsibility. He fell short of admitting French role instead saying there were "political faults". Mr. Kouchner told reporters: "It was certainly a political fault ... we didn't understand what happened. But there was no military responsibility." The genocide survivors' umbrella organization IBUKA is bitter. "The Association IBUKA has been heavily offended by these untruthful and arrogant comments, and vigorously denounces them", the grouping said in a statement released Saturday - more than a week after the visit. IBUKA says Mr. Kouchner - was himself in Rwanda during the Genocide between May 10 to 17 1994, but on pretext of evacuating orphans. When he returned to Paris, the former humanitarian campaigner avoided the use of the word Genocide to describe the events in the country. He never used the word 'Genocide' instead emphasizing it as the 'worst humanitarian crisis'. Well aware that had he used the word 'Genocide', it would have weighed strongly on international conscience", IBUKA says. Current estimates suggest that up to 1.5 million people were massacred by rampaging militias and government soldiers in just 100 days. However, as the RPF rebels took on ground, French soldiers are said to have aided the Genocide machine to flee south and then west to Zaire (DRC). Corroborated evidence to the government appointed probe into French role shows that French soldiers fought along the militias and government forces. In the south, they put up a 'humanitarian cordon' through which the interahamwe lived and later crossed to Zaire. French doctors in eastern Zaire are reported to have "deliberately amputated" limbs of wounded Tutsis in a move survivors who went through the ordeal say was to leave them inapt. In the fortified area - the zone turquoise, Tutsis girls as young as 10 years were hunted for and raped. According to experts brought in by the Mucyo Commission, French diplomats at the UN headquarters ensured an information blackout on Rwanda to prevent any debate. British researcher Prof. Linda Melvern detailed a conspiracy mechanism facilitated by then UN Secretary General Egyptian Boutros Boutros Ghali. IBUKA says France was aware of the "criminal and ethnic nature" of the regime in power that was implementing the Genocide - supporting them militarily, politically and diplomatically...
Questions as French Minister Bernard Kouchner Visits Great Lakes Region. The Nation, Jan 30, 2008
France has offered an olive branch by sending an emissary, the French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, to her former colony Rwanda. Mr Kouchner, upon his arrival in Kigali admitted that France must have failed somewhere politically in Rwanda. But, Mr Kouchner insisted that despite the political failings the French bore no "military responsibility" for the 1994 genocide that led to the massacre of close to a million Rwandese. Mr Kouchner said: "It was certainly a political fault ... we didn't understand what happened. But there was no military responsibility." This is probably why there has always been a diplomatic gap between the two countries. But, the question many are asking is; "Is there any hope of bridging the gap between the two, if the French are still insisting they had no military role in the genocide?' Both countries have in the past traded accusations over involvement in the 1994 genocide. As a way of encouraging a "truth and reconciliation process" Rwanda, almost a decade ago independently decided to probe France's role in the events that happened during the genocide. A probe committee called The Mucyo Commission, christened after the name of it's presiding president, Jean de Dieu Mucyo, was set up by the Rwandan government to adduce evidence of France's role in the genocide. During some public hearings, covered by the local press, Mr Mucyo's commission heard from many witnesses, interestingly including some French nationals testifying against the French military....Mr Mucyo proceeded with his probe commission and finalised work late last year producing a 500-page report that is yet to go public. While probing the killings, members of the Mucyo Commission heard from French nationals who said the French military and politicians actively supported and directly participated in training genocide protagonists. Witnesses including international journalists and two celebrated British writers Andrew Wallis and Linda Melvern testified that there was a certain degree of killings done by French soldiers, who operated under the auspices of the UN troops within Rwandan borders. Mr Wallis the author of the International bestseller, Silent Accomplice, a book that explored the role played by France in facilitating the genocide, wrote that the French carried out atrocities under what was then called Zone Turquoise, a humanitarian operation meant to create escape routes for the fleeing victims. Mr Wallis particularly said that Zone Turquoise Operation worsened when the French military wooed the 'would be' victims out of their hiding, particularly in Bisesero Hills and thereafter shielded the Interahamwe militia during their subsequent exodus to the Democratic Republic of Congo. Interahamwe is a term used to refer to the Hutu extremist militia created by the Habyarimana clan in the early 1990s and trained by Rwandan army. According to Mr Jean Hatzfeld a journalist who covered the Rwanda genocide as a foreign correspondent for the French daily Liberation, there is evidence that the Interahamwe were sometimes locally trained by the French military. The 13 foreign witnesses who testified during Mucyo's public hearings mostly concurred on the fact that the French Zone Turquoise Operation was not a humanitarian mission as claimed by the French. During his short visit to Kigali, Mr Kouchner said, "we have to work on history. But we have to separate the legal problems and the political problems, the historical problems and the political problems." Mr Kouchner as a person is an appealing character. As co-founder of the Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), he visited Rwanda several times during the genocide to help organise humanitarian aid corridors...
French Court Blocks Extradition of Key Genocide Suspect to ICTR. New Times, Jan 19, 2008
The French Supreme court has turned down the request to extradite key Genocide suspect Dominique Ntawukuriryayo to the Tanzania-based International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). The French lower court had earlier ruled that Ntawukuriryayo, 65, be extradited to the ICTR. Ntawukuriryayo is accused of having taken part in the massacre of Tutsis from April to July of 1994. He is charged of having used his authority as a regional official to order aides to carry out killings, including a massacre at Bisesero hill. He is also accused of having coordinated the killing of up to 30,000 Tutsis in the former Kibuye province. Jean Bosco Mutangana, the spokesman for Prosecution, said that Rwanda's main concern is to have justice respected. "Justice should prevail in this trial no matter where the case is being heard from," Mutangana said. When contacted, Rwanda's Special Envoy to the ICTR, Aloys Mutabingwa said that Rwanda is deeply concerned and wishes that proper justice is provided in this case. He said: "I am trying to read the ruling very carefully and analyse it so that I can advise the prosecutor accordingly. "However, the procedures of how to extradite him should not at all obstruct justice; he is an ICTR inductee and has to be transferred and tried." The ruling by the French Supreme Court meant that the case will return to a lower court, which will be asked to review the case once again. Ntawukuriryayo, who has French residency papers, has denied charges that he took part in the Tutsi Genocide that claimed over a million lives. He was arrested in the southern French town of Carcassonne last October....
RWANDA FRENCH TURQUOISE FILM (depicts UN-French-Hutu connection)
UN PEACEKEEPING NOT KEEPINGPEACE
RWANDA'S SILENT FRIENDS (Dallaire has made no comment on Hutu genocidaires attacking Congo Tutsis)
BELGIANS & HABYARIMANA DEATHS (reader asks where the Belgian soldiers died & President Habyarimana's plane went down)
RWANDA-FRANCE BONE CONTENTION (and its impact on the bilateral relations between Rwanda and France, and on the Great Lakes Region of Africa)
The Arrogance of the French (Why They Can't Stand Us - and Why the Feeling is Mutual)
Reader says it's important that the global community learn the facts behind Rwanda-France problems
Genocidaires' defenders accuse Kagame (ICTR lawyers from Canada & USA). AngolaPress, Jan 31, 2007
Arusha, Tanzania - Two defence lawyers at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in Arusha, Tanzania, have petitioned the court to press charges against leaders of the Rwanda's ruling Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF), for their responsibility in the 1994 genocide. America's Peter Erlinder, and Andre Tremblay of Canada, who are also professors of law in their respective countries, also want the activities of the ICTR suspended and all completed cases revised, in consideration of alleged crimes committed by the ex-rebels now in power...
Rwanda leader defiant on killer claim. BBC, Jan 30, 2007 (Rwandan President Paul Kagame, in a rare interview, is asked to respond to allegations by a French investigating judge that he was complicit in the assassination of former President Juvenal Habyarimana in 1994. BBC world affairs correspondent Fergal Keane reports...I travelled to Rwanda to put Judge Bruguiere's central allegations to President Kagame. In a defiant response he said: "I care that there was a genocide here. A million people died - people have been persecuted for decades here in Rwanda. "I was a refugee for nearly 30 years out of my country as a result of that. Would I care that bloody Habyarimana died, somebody who was responsible for a genocide here, who was a president of a government that discriminated, that persecuted its own people? "That Judge Bruguiere says this or France says that - I don't give a damn." In the aftermath of the genocide, the UN backed away from an investigation of the plane crash. One investigator alleged the matter was dropped because the UN did not want to confront Paul Kagame...However, in his interview with the BBC, Mr Kagame said he would co-operate with an impartial inquiry carried out by a judge who had nothing to do with Rwanda or France...)
FRANCE A CANADA-RWANDA LOSER (reader says France was barbaric in Rwanda before, during & after the genocide)
60 MINUTES READING RWANDA ("every child, woman, man Tutsi in my village is dead"). CBS, 60 Minutes, Dec 11, 2006
FRANCE ORWELLIANLY AIDS RWANDA
KILLING HABYARIMANA NOT GENOCIDE
JUSTICE HEALS GENOCIDE WOUND (reader says the wound of genocide needs to be cleaned before it can heal)
ICTR "is not properly handling" job (says President Kagame, "It was created to try cases of genocide"). Voice of America, May 31, 2006
ADAD IS GENOCIDE MOUTHPIECE (reader says ICTR lawyer Erlinder is now president of ADAD, a genocide mouthpiece organization)
ANTI-KAGAME PETITION (reader sends petition presented by a Canadian MP accusing Kagame of genocide)
LOVE'S BLIND SAYS KAGAME HATER (reader says Orwell Today coverage of Rwanda is one-sided)
KAGAME IS WELCOME IN CANADA ("the Napoleon of Africa is the personifcation of hope after horror"). MontrealGazette, Apr 22, 2006
RWANDA REP DEFENDS KAGAME (reader sends Rwanda response to ICTR defense lawyer in Arusha)
GENOCIDAIRE'S LAWYER WRITES CANADA
Rwanda wounds reopened in Canada (genocide inciter still here). EpochTimes, Apr 22, 2006
Rwanda's President visiting Canada (star attraction at conference for Education & Economic Development) & Canadian univeristy assissting Rwanda (in public health & hospitals). EmbassyNews/UWO News, Apr 19, 2006
Rwandan genocide militias get refuge in Congo (11,000 UN troops lack authority to go after killers). ABC News, Feb 11, 2005
The leaders of a genocide that resulted in the deaths of nearly 1 million people have regrouped, rearmed, and opened camps in the deep forests of Congo. The United Nations knows where the murderous Rwandan militias hide, according to a confidential map obtained by ABC News, but says it lacks the authority to go after and capture the killers. "We would need a different mandate than the one we have now," admitted William Swing, head of the U.N. Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire). "The mandate from the United Nations Security Council." Similar to the Rwanda genocide of 1994, the U.N. peacekeeping troops in the affected areas of Congo, some 11,000 in number, have the sanction to monitor the conflict and protect civilians and foreign aid workers, but not to seek out and stop the killers, known as Interahamwe and by their political groupings, FDLR and FOCA...These militias include some of the same men from the ethnic Hutu extremist groups that the United Nations says led the mass murders of people of Tutsi descent across the border in Rwanda 11 years ago. Tutsi people have a long history in Congo, having settled in the Kivu provinces since their ancestors migrated generations ago from Rwanda and Burundi. Tutsi leaders in eastern Congo say they fear another genocide is in the offing. "They know our Tutsi face, my nose is long," said Dunia Bakarani, a member of the Congolese parliament. "The same program from 1994 is continuing, until every Tutsi is dead." Wamba dia Wamba, a Congolese senator, also sees similiarities to the conditions that led to the Rwandan genocide. "It sounds like a replay," he said. "It is the same sort of feeling one may have that the U.N. knows where they are, where the camps are and then they don't want to do anything about it."
Kagame: Resolution to prevent genocide a failure. AllAfrica.com, Apr 12, 2004
Recalling the December 1948 adoption of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Rwandan President Paul Kagame said: "We should always bear in mind that genocide, wherever it happens, represents the international community's failure, which I would in fact characterise as deliberate convenient failure." Close to one million Rwandan people were in 1994 brutally massacred within three months across Rwanda while the world silently watched and chose not to act. Rwanda turned into one massive slaughter place as neighbour killed neighbour on 7 April 1994, a day after a plane carrying Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana, leader of a Hutu-dominated government, was shot down killing him as he returned from a meeting with minority Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front rebels in Tanzania. Soon after the attack, which also claimed the life of Burundi President Cyprien Ntaryamira, the Hutu-dominated government troops and allied militia started killing thousands of Rwandans, mostly Tutsis, accusing them of collaborating with the RPF rebels led then by Paul Kagame. As the days drew on the mass killings, looting and raping spread across the Central African country with officials and media outlets inciting the massacres turning churches and hospitals into human slaughterhouses. The withdrawal of UN peacekeepers from the Great Lakes Region country as RPF rebels advanced into Kigali exacerbated the problem. ...Meanwhile as investigations into the Rwanda killings continue fingers are being pointed everywhere with France, Belgium, the United States, Britain, the United Nations and the Roman Catholic Church coming under fire for allegedly contributing to or failing to prevent the mass ethnic bloodshed. Recently Rwandan President Kagame reportedly told the French state-owned RFI radio that the French "directly" took part in the genocide by supplying arms and giving orders to the perpetrators. "The French were there when the genocide took place. They trained those who carried it out. They had positions of command in the armed forces who committed the genocide," said President Kagame.
Kagame speaks at sombre ceremony (says France trained & armed soldiers & militias for genocide). News Asia, Apr 7, 2004
Rwanda remembers its dead (but western heads of state were conspicuous by their absence). Guardian, Apr 7, 2004
Drunks & machetes began nightmare (Hutu militia named "Interahamwe" went house to house with names). Reuters, Apr 7, 2004
Rwanda, Ten Years Later (ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front that toppled genocidal regime has abolished ethnic divisions). National Geographic, Apr 6, 2004
Jackie Jura
~ an independent researcher monitoring local, national and international events ~
email: orwelltoday@gmail.com
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