Rwanda denies it's been trying to kill people in S. Africa, but says
that one guy had it coming.
The ins and outs of a bizarre diplomatic spat.

ENLARGE
Six men charged with one of several attempts to kill Rwanda's former
army chief Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa sit at court in Johannesburg on
July 10, 2012. (Stephane de Sakutin/AFP/Getty Images)
NAIROBI, Kenya — South Africa has issued a warning to Rwanda: stop
trying to kill your citizens on our soil.
"As the South African government, we want to send a very stern warning
to anybody, anywhere in the world, that our country will not be used
as a springboard to do illegal activities," said Justice Minister Jeff
Radebe on Wednesday.
Last week, an armed attack on the South African home of a prominent
Rwandan dissident, General Kayumba Nyamwasa, resulted in the expulsion
of three Rwandan diplomats whom South African investigators have
linked to the attack. Rwanda says it has seen no evidence to support
the allegation.
In retaliation, Rwanda expelled six South African diplomats. On
Twitter, after its diplomats were ordered out, Rwanda's foreign
minister Louise Mushikiwabo countered that South Africa was "harboring
dissidents responsible for terrorist attacks in Rwanda."
The terrorism charges relate to a series of occasionally deadly
grenade attacks in the capital Kigali in recent years. Rwanda also
says Nyamwasa has links to the FDLR, a Rwandan rebel group in eastern
Democratic Republic of Congo, some of whose members helped organize
the genocide that killed at least 800,000 people, mostly ethnic
Tutsis, 20 years ago next month.
The latest attack on Nyamwasa was botched — he was not at home at the
time — but for South Africa it was the final straw.
Nyamwasa, the former chief of staff of the Rwandan army, survived an
assassination attempt in Johannesburg in 2010 when gunmen shot him in
the stomach as he drove home from a shopping trip.
Then on New Year's Eve last year another prominent Rwandan dissident,
former spy chief Colonel Patrick Karegaya, was strangled in a hotel
room in Johannesburg. Both Nyamwasa and Karegaya were founding members
of the Rwanda National Congress (RNC), an opposition group formed in
the US in 2010 by former high-ranking members of Kagame's inner
circle.
Their party blames the government in Kigali for the 2010 attempt on
Nyamwasa's life, the murder of Karegaya and the recent attack on
Nyamwasa's house, but Rwanda dismisses the allegations.
At the same time, senior Rwandan government figures have publicly
celebrated Karegaya's death, accusing him — in what is by now familiar
rhetoric in a state founded on the memory of the 1994 genocide — of
having betrayed his country.
In comments published on local news websites, defense minister General
James Kaberebe said, "When you choose to be a dog, you die like a
dog."
Later that month President Kagame addressed a prayer breakfast. "You
cannot betray Rwanda and get away with it. There are consequences for
betraying your country," he said.
According to translated excerpts published in the fortnightly
newsletter Africa Confidential, he
added in the local Kinyarwanda language: "It's a matter of time for
anybody trying to undermine Rwanda to face the consequences of their
actions anywhere. I do not have to be apologetic about people who
forget that Rwanda made them who they are."
In case anyone doubted what he was talking about, Kagame reportedly
said, "It's the first time I am speaking about the Karegaya issue
because there was no need. We don't seek permission to defend our
country."
On Twitter foreign minister Mushikiwabo added that she would lose no
sleep over Karegaya's demise. "It's not about how u start, it's how u
finish. This man was a self-declared enemy of my Gov & my country, U
expect pity?" she wrote.
That comment led to a testy exchange with Karegaya's son Elvis, in
which Mushikiwabo displayed no sympathy. The minister faced criticism
for her undiplomatic language, but it wasn't the only time the Rwandan
government's embrace of social media has backfired.
Earlier this week it emerged that infamous pro-Kigali troll account
@RichardGoldston was in fact run by someone who simultaneously had
access to President Kagame's official Twitter account, @PaulKagame.
The troll account had been used to savage people seen as critics.
After the slip-up last week, the @RichardGolston account was deleted.
Rwanda's presidency
tweeted that the "employee in the Presidency" who ran the
"unauthorized account" has been "reprimanded."
Attacks on critics, whether verbal or otherwise, seem very much part
of Rwanda's playbook. Countries other than South Africa have accused
Rwanda of planning assassinations abroad.
In 2011 two dissidents exiled in Britain, Rene Mugenzi and Jonathan
Musonera, each received a letter from the Metropolitan Police warning
of "reliable intelligence … that the Rwandan government poses an
imminent threat to your life."
Human Rights Watch has compiled a list of exiled Rwandan dissidents
killed, disappeared or threatened since the Rwandan Patriotic Front
(RPF) took power.
It was reported Thursday that the chairman of the US House Committee
on Foreign Affairs
wrote to Secretary of State John Kerry this week, encouraging the top
US diplomat to reconsider relations with Rwanda given the attacks and
Kagame's "violent rhetoric."
The falling out between South Africa and Rwanda could be dismissed as
nothing more than an unseemly spat were it not for the fact that South
African troops are in eastern Congo, along Rwanda's western border, as
part of a special United Nations brigade deployed last year to fight
rebels including M23, a group widely considered to have enjoyed
Rwandan support.
Worsening relations between South Africa and Rwanda will only
complicate regional and international efforts to bring peace to the
war-wracked region.
When the UN "Force Intervention Brigade" helped Congo's army defeat
M23, the majority of the rebels were neither captured nor killed.
Instead they found shelter in Rwanda and Uganda — meaning M23 is more
dormant than extinct.
As Rwanda prepares for the somber memorials that will mark the 20th
anniversary of the genocide, stories of hit squads, diplomatic rows
and Twitter spats are not what where it wants the world to focus. But
as recent events in South Africa show, controlling things is trickier
abroad than at home.
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/africa/140313/rwanda-denies-killing-dissidents-south-africa-Nyamwasa-Karegaya
http://www.google.ca/gwt/x?gl=CA&hl=en-CA&u=http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/africa/140313/rwanda-denies-killing-dissidents-south-africa-Nyamwasa-Karegaya&q=Rwanda+denies+it%27s+been+trying+to+kill+people+in+S.+Africa,+but+says+that+one...
--
SIBOMANA Jean Bosco
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