FRANCE-RWANDA TRIBUNE

By Theogene Rudasingwa

General Paul Kagame's recent "arrests" of his notorious generals and colonels ( Ibingira, Rutatina, Munyuza, et al) left Rwandans and the international community speculating as to what the errant General Kagame is up. You might recall that last year we tried to make sense of his unintelligent reshuffle in which Karenzi, Rutatina and Munyuza, officers that he distrusts, hates and despises, were to head key security organisations and departments ( National Security Agency, Directorate of Military Intellegence, and External Intelligence). We have been proved right. General Kagame's moves, attitude, behavior and actions are more acts of desperation than coherent strategy. He may boast that he will rise and never fall, but he is a general without real generals. 

Ten Things that Can Happen to General Paul Kagame's Generals:

1. Inconsequential Promotions and Deployments:

The greatest danger signal to a general in Rwanda is when he is asked to become a Minister of Defence or head the National Security Service ( NSS). Lt. Generals Kayumba Nyamwasa and Marcel Gatsinzi have been there. Currently James Kabarebe occupies the glamourous post of Minister of Defence, essentially retired out of active military service. General Kagame is his own Defence Minister and Chief Intelligence Officer. He would never sub-contract this functions to anybody. 

2. Deport to a Diplomatic Mission:

Lt. General Kayumba Nyamwasa was banished to India as Ambassador at a time when Kagame was looking for every avenue to marginalise or kill him.

3. "Agatebe" (reduced to being redundant):

Generals will be humiliated with trumpted up charges ( General Muhire, corruption; General Karenzi, sexual immorality, Rwigamba, corruption etc). Without support from the state, the officers are impoverished and left to beg for mercy from General Kagame.

4. Criminalised:

General Kagame has criminalized his Generals. From the killing of President Habyarimana, President Ntaryamira, President Laurent Kabila, the crimes of Kibeho and Democratic Republic of Congo, the assassinations of his comrades in the RPA, Seth Sendashonga, Lizinde, Kayumba assassination attampt, and many others, General Kagame has corrupted otherwise good officers to become criminals. Now they are trapped with him as co-criminals.

5. Send to DRC on commercial errands:

With an appetite for DRC's mineral wealth, General Kagame has sent his Generals to loot for him. When their actions become public knowledge, he disowns and "arrests" them. Trader-in-Chief becomes law and discipline enforcer, prosecutor and Judge.

6. Blackmail:

General Kagame uses Generals to spy on each other, as they compete for his ear, attention and favors. He keeps dossiers on them and at the opportune moment blackmails them into silence and forced loyalty to him.

7. Apologize:

Like in the Stalinist era, Generals who have fallen from grace are asked by Kagame's coterie of civilian and military ( RPF and RDF) officers to apologize for sins they did not commit and abandon "bad influences." Inyumba, Tito Rutaremara, James kabarebe, Kayonga, et al have tried this on Nyamwasa, Karegeya, and many others.

8. Start a war:

General Kagame has always been the General who leads from the safety of the rear. He does not care who goes to war, and whether they survive or not. He has made his Generals behave like automatons who must fight his futile wars in Congo, wars without purpose, wars of plunder, and very costly wars in human terms. While Kagame's generals are 99.99% Tutsi, the expendable men are mostly Hutu. 

9. Demobilize:

General Kagame takes Rwanda Defence Forces as his personal army. Frequently, after beating officers, he chases them out of "his army".

10. Kill them:

Ultimately, if a General cannot bend to Kagame's way, he must be killed. The cases of Nyamwasa and Karegeya illustrate this point. Kagame uses meetings with officers to hammer this point to his Generals and other officers. 

Napoleon once said that an army moves on its stomach. He probably over-emphasised the stomach part and forgot that an army, and its generals as its leaders, must have a national purpose and a conscience that defends a people, not the commercial and personal interests of a dictator. General Kagame has destroyed Rwanda's Generals. He has become a General without Generals. And the generals have become an endangered species. Only themselves and the Rwandan citizens will save them from extinction.

Mercredi 1 février 2012
KIGALI -- Grâce aux efforts conjoints des forces armées du Rwanda et de la République démocratique du Congo (RDC) visant à démobiliser et à rapatrier les combattants des Forces démocratiques pour la libération du Rwanda (RDLR), trois généraux de brigade et 32 autres membres de ce mouvement rebelle se sont rendus mardi aux autorités rwandaises du district de Rubavu, près de la frontière de la RDC. La reddition a eu lieu à la suite d'une opération militaire conjointe menée par les Forces de défense rwandaises (RDF) et les Forces armées de la République démocratique du Congo (FARDC).

http://www.afriquinfos.com/articles/2012/2/1/continental-195850.asp

Victoire Ingabire, une mère de famille. Ici, le jour de son départ à Kigali, avec sa fille Raïssa.

Victoire Ingabire, candidate aux présidentielles de 2010

Victoire Ingabire menottée. Otage de Paul Kagame, elle ne courbe pas l'échine et continue de se battre pour la liberté du peuple rwandais. Au prix fort!

Un an et deux mois se sont écoulés depuis l'arrestation brutale et arbitraire de la candidate aux présidentielles de 2010. Entretemps, Ben Ali est parti en exil, Hosni Moubarak croupit en prison, Mouammar Kadhafi a été exécuté comme un vulgaire bandit et son corps traîné dans le sable du désert, loin de ses tentes luxueuses. Pendant ce temps, le rwandais Paul Kagame poursuit imperturbablement ses atrocités : assassinats des opposants et des journalistes, persécution des réfugiés rwandais, provocations diplomatiques des pays amis du Rwanda. La communauté internationale le laisse faire, jusqu'au jour où sa folie ne sera plus maîtrisable. Mais ce sera peut-être trop tard pour les peuples de la région. Les patriotes, les combattants de la liberté et les vrais amis de notre peuple ne doivent pas lâcher la pression.

Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza n'est pas une criminelle.

Sa place n'est pas en prison. Cette femme, cette mère de famille, cette militante, obsédée par la liberté, l'égalité, la paix et la concorde entre toutes les composantes de la population rwandaise, doit être immédiatement libérée, sans condition. Paul Kagame, grand prédateur des libertés, criminel contre l'humanité contre les peuples du Rwanda et de RDC, doit en répondre devant un tribunal international, à l'instar de ses amis Laurent Gbagbo et Omar el Beshir. Les préconisations du Rapport Mapping du 1er Octobre 2010 sur les crimes de masse commis en RDC entre 1993 et 2003 ne doivent pas rester lettre morte. Les rescapés de ces atrocités doivent plus que jamais se mobiliser pour amener le Conseil de Sécurité des Nations Unies à adopter rapidement la résolution créant le tribunal ad hoc chargé de poursuivre et de juger Paul Kagame et ses complices. Les pays membres du Conseil de sécurité de l'ONU, en particulier les membres permanents de cette institution, doivent jouer pleinement leur rôle. Le droit international humanitaire ne peut pas faire l'objet d'une application discriminatoire à l'endroit des millions de rwandaiss et de congolais victimes de l'Armée Patriotique Rwandaises de Paul Kagame.

Ambassadeur Jean-Marie Ndagijimana

RWANDA NATIONAL CONGRESS

Press release

RWANDASECURITY OPERATIVES ASSASSINATE A RWANDAN JOURNALIST IN KAMPALA, UGANDA

On Friday 2^nd December 2011, Andrew Bagala of the Monitor Newspaper in Uganda reported that the editor of Rwanda’s Inyenyeri news Charles Ingabire who had sought refuge in Uganda for political reasons was shot dead at a Kampala pub. Kampala Metropolitan Police spokesperson Mr Ibin Ssenkumbi confirmed the murder. On Sunday 4^th December 2011, Andrew Bagala again reported in the Monitor that mourners at the requiem of Ingabire funeral were hiding their faces.  Andrew Bagala further reported ‘One by one, the mourners walked into the Evangelical Restoration Church in Bakuli many avoiding eye contacts with strangers and only speaking in hushed tones. Several mourners we spoke to alleged being persecuted by government back home but none wanted their photographs to be taken or identities revealed. Among the mourners were men in civilian clothes, most of whom had security gadgets. The men could be seen communicating on walkie talkies as the service went on. Ingabire had earlier fled Rwanda for Uganda for fear that his life was in danger for being critical of Rwanda President Paul Kagame and his government. No Rwandan official attended the funeral’.

Charles Ingabire tried to rebuild his life after the genocide almost all members of his family but as reported by Giles Muhame in Chipreports of 2^nd December 2011 that before he fled to exile in Kampala, Ingabire founded Ongera Micro-Finance in Kigali which quickly realised profits. According to the report, ‘First Lady Jeanette Kagame developed interest in the financial institution.  Ingabire did not want state interference. Gradually, state machinery cracked hard on the institution and brought it on its knees. Fearing for his life, Ingabire took off to Kampala. Sources in Rwanda say days before he fled Kigali, Rwanda intelligence wanted to jail him for “using names of high government personalities to get money from European Countries to fund his micro-finance.”

Rwanda National Congress (RNC) condemns in the strongest terms possible, the heinous and cowardly policy of political assassination employed by President Paul Kagame to terrorize and silence all his critics and Rwandan in general. Over the years, President Paul Kagame has used assassinations, forced disappearances and imprisonment as a policy of sustaining himself in power. The Rwandan people both at home and abroad are living under a state of terror. Rwanda has become an Army with a state.  It is an understatement to describe Rwanda as a police state in view of the fact that state agents arbitrary arrest, imprison and kill political opponents with impunity. As rightly pointed out by the  United States American Ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, in her speech in the Rwandan capital that "Civil society activists, journalists, and political opponents of the government often fear organizing peacefully and speaking out. Some have been harassed. Some have been intimidated by late-night callers. Some have simply disappeared. The political culture in Rwanda under President Paul Kagame’s government "remains comparatively closed.”  Charles Ingabire is the latest victim to give credence to the observations by the top American diplomat.

Recently, Britain sternly warned President Paul Kagame of “grave consequences” once Rwandese exiles living in London were hurt. They had complained of persistent harassment by Rwanda spies.Since that time, the daily lives and activities of these individuals have been affected. Other Western governments have discretely advised Rwandans living in their countries that their lives are in danger from the Kigali regime’s operations to carry out assassinations through conventional and unconventional means.

Charles Ingabire was a survivor of the Rwandan genocide whom President Paul Kagame famously claims he saved from the Rwandan genocide. It is ironical that President Paul Kagame uses the genocide to claim high moral ground in foreign capitals while, at the same time, killing Tutsi survivors in and outside Rwanda. Other Tutsi survivors like Assiel Kabera,  former advisor to President Bizimungu, was gunned down in the capital Kigali by soldiers from the Presidential guard on account of having criticized President Paul Kagame.  While this is an open secret in Rwanda and the suspects in this crime include the notorious Kagame agents like Brigadier Jack Nziza who has been accused of various other assassinations, and  no action has been taken for the last eleven years. Like many others in the clique, he has prospered on impunity. Many Tutsi have died before, during and after the genocide of 1994 at the hands of Paul Kagame. Many have fled Rwanda only to be hunted down like their fellow country men and women, the Hutu. From the former king of Rwanda, King Kigeli Ndahindurwa who has been in exile for over five decades, to former speaker Joseph Sebarenzi  and the multiple assassination attempts on General Kayumba and Colonel Karegeya, it is clear the reign of terror is increasingly blind to ethnicity. Except for a few whom President Kagame has recruited and uses in his criminal activities, Tutsi in RPF and the Rwanda Defence Force are hostages, living in fear like the Hutu,  fleeing Rwanda daily, and waiting for deliverance from the regime of terror. To Kagame, all Rwandans are enemies unless proved otherwise. President Kagame is a predator of not only the Hutu but Tutsi as well.

The predatory and kleptocratic tendencies of the President’s family and his RPF party have forced many Rwandans to flee the country. The case of Charles Ingabire where ordinary citizens have been fled and been hunted down by powerful individuals in power is not an isolated one.  All Rwandan refugees live under fear, whether in refugee camps or cities.  For example, the Rwandan Embassy accounts in Belgium are now closed under a judicial order in a case instituted by Gaspard Gatera, a Rwandan refugee who was threatened with death by state agents in Kigali when he demanded payment for services rendered in a contract where he was involved with government departments.   Gaspard Gatera lives in fear in Belgium from state agents harassing him.  In view of the above President Paul Kagame cannot be absolved of neither the reasons that caused Charles Ingabire to flee his country nor the circumstances that led to his assassination. It is important to determine who directed and bank rolled Ingabire’s assassination.

 It is not surprising that President Paul Kagame who has ‘championed’ and benefited from the opaque perception of being a protector of the Rwandan genocide survivors is so quite in this matter.

The assassination of Charles Ingabire is meant to send the following messages:

First, President Paul Kagame is a relentless paranoid serial killer who will hunt any one and everywhere. This message is meant for all Rwandans, that they have nowhere to hide and should bear, embrace, and accept the dictatorship at home. The absence of a government representative (Embassy official) at the funeral when President Paul Kagame has been priding himself with the principal to protect Africans  by sending troops to Sudan is a glaring indictment of a regime that has lost the slightest sense of decency.

Second,  Uganda is an unsafe country and Rwandan criminal agents have a free reign in this country. The prompt burial and lack of any slight statement by any official of the government of Uganda sent a compelling and deafening message to the analogy of President Paul Kagame’s impunity in the region. The message to fellow Ugandan citizens is that for now the guns are turned to Rwandans. Tomorrow, the same guns will turn against them.

Third, and as always, the international community is impotent in President Kagame’s estimation. He expects, like he has always done, to get away with this latest but no last crime. Having assassinated many Rwandans and murdered millions of refugees under the protection of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) in the DRC(See Mapping Report), it is inconsequential for him murdering another one in Uganda.

Rwanda National Congress condemns in the strongest terms possible this heinous act and calls on the International Community and the UNHCR in particular to suspend the cessation clause negotiations with the government of Rwanda. It is erroneous that the UNHCR continues to participate in an exercise that forces refugees to a country where the leadership is hunting and assassinating refugees in the countries of asylum.

In concluding her remarks while in Rwanda U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice reminded President Paul Kagame of his own words, “As President Kagame said, the uprising in Libya has already sent a message to leaders in Africa and beyond. It is that if we lose touch with our people, if we do not serve them as they deserve and address their needs, there will be consequences. Their grievances will accumulate-and no matter how much time passes, they can turn against you.”  President Kagame has lost touch with the Rwandan people, their needs, especially their right to life. Grievances among Rwandans have accumulated to unbearable and dangerous levels.  Consequence of President Kagame’s reign of terror include death, destruction, fear, and exile. The other consequence is that Rwandan people have turned against him.

President Paul Kagame is a known serial killer and mass murderer on rampage.The Rwanda National Congress would like to appeal to all Rwandans-Hutu, Tutsi and Twa-to join hands and end his bloody dictatorship. No matter how long it takes, Rwandan people shall win and the regime of terror shall lose.

Dr. Theogene Rudasingwa

Co-ordinator

RwandaNational Congress

Washington, D.C,

USA

December 5, 2011