Rwanda: The Courageous Lady Revealing Kagame's Brutal Rule

http://newsrwanda-nkunda.blogspot.com/2012/04/courageous-lady-that-reveals-kagames.html The Courageous Lady Revealing Kagame's Brutal Rule  |  | Print This! | No comments Do you like this post?  Victoire Ingabire, the selfless pro-democracy defender is burning in the flames of Kagame's kangaroo court. In fact, it is not a court in any dignified sense of the word: Kagame is the judge, jury and executioner. Equally damning is how such blatant and arrogant disregard for the rule of law has so far managed to escape international condemnation. Besides a few footnote-long reports by the international media, no leader has come to this woman's rescue. The fact that she is fighting for democracy in a country that is usually characterized by political hooliganism, has been taken for granted. Even feminists are deafeningly silent.  To some extent, Ingabire's trial shows how difficult it is to oppose a dictator who enjoys the backing of the west. It is a tenuous undertaking as recent events in the Middle East have shown us. For the last seventeen years, Kagame has enjoyed almost unconditional support from sections of the west--especially, Britain and the United States. This support has been consistent, despite documented crimes against humanity and credible accusations of genocide implicating him and his government.  The most clear-cut case being that Kagame has invaded the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) more than three times, leaving behind a death toll of five million.  Still, even if Britain and the United States continue this cynical and Machiavellian game, for those of us crying for freedom, there can be no retreat. This is the path that Ingabire has charted, and many are following in her footsteps. From my conversation with the Rwandan youth, I can say for a fact that the quench for freedom and democracy has never been so palpable. The resolve is now more pronounced than ever. A peaceful Tsunami-like movement is in the making.  Back to Ingabire's trial. Ingabire, 44, returned to Rwanda some two years to exercise her democratic right to contest in the 2010 presidential elections. Despite the obvious risks she faced, she believed that 16 years after the genocide Rwanda had matured for democratic reform. Barely four months into her stay, she was thrown into jail, which preemptively barred her from contesting the presidency. This, in a convenient, calculated and self-serving manner, left Kagame to run unopposed.  Now, two years into her detention, a list of indelible facts have revealed the case she faces is not more than a poorly organized form of political witch-hunt. Just to name a few examples: she was held in prison despite the fact that the prosecution had not commenced investigations into the alleged crimes. In fact, the case was, on various occasions postponed to allow the prosecution to gather evidence. Despite this major weakness, she was never allowed bail. Some of the procedural violations by the prosecution in this case were clear contraventions of the Rwandan la. For instance, Article 59 of the penal code states that, "persons against whom the prosecution has evidence to suspect that they were involved in the commission of an offense cannot be heard as witnesses". Contrary to this law, the prosecution continues to rely on "evidence" from the co-accused. Other violations are just so basic and defy common sense. Ingabire is accused of genocide denial based on speeches delivered before the promulgation of the law in 2008. In fact, the law itself has been subject of serious critique by human right organization who regard it as grave affront on free speech. Anyone interested in the genocide denial laws and the conflict with free speech should read Amnesty International's review of this law in a report titled"Safer to Stay Silent: The Chilling Effect of Rwanda's law on "Genocide Ideology" and "sectarianism". The same report considers the question of whether Ingabire's speech, upon her arrival in Rwanda constituted an act of genocide denial. Amnesty International finds no compelling reason to believe so. More recently, the prosecution manipulated and intimidated Ingabire's defense witness. The witness is, Lt. Col. Michel Habimana, alias Edmond Ngarambe, the former spokesperson of the FDLR rebel group, which Ingabire is accused of collaborating with. Even at the risk of torture, he denies having worked with Ingabire in any capacity. When the government prevented Ngarambe from testifying, for Ingabire, this was the last straw. But why should the government decide who testifies in court and who doesn't? As I write, Ingabire's case has made the valiant decision to disconnect herself from the trial. She will no longer attend any more court sessions. The reason is simple but principled and compelling. If a trial is a sham, and marred by continuous violations, why would anyone pretend that it is just? Going to court, and assuming that everything is normal, would have helped render to the kangaroo court the sort of legitimacy that it fails to honor.This is exactly what Kagame was hoping for. In a way, he has lost.  Ingabire's trial has proven beyond reasonable doubt that the Rwandan judicial system is under the complete machination of the executive. It is a system, which is used to punish critics and reward loyalists. There is no justice being dispensed. Ironically, western backers continue to pour money into this cartel of organized crime masquerading as a court in the hope for reforms. Well, we now know that the purported reforms are phony. Our appeal to the international community is that its now time to turn the spigot off! No more easy aid money and cheap loans for the dictator.  This is why. Ingabire has persistently appealed for the executive to "leave the court to do their work". Kagame has reacted arrogantly by taking every occasion to make comments that are bound to influence the court. For instance, on CNN last year, he said with much force that "Ingabire must be taught a lesson". Is it any wonder then that the judiciary is taking such insane measures to appease him? If Ingabire wanted to overthrow the government by force; if she truly wanted to support an armed rebellion, she would not have gone to Rwanda unarmed.  This is quite a no-brainier. As explained by her British attorney, in an interview with the California-based journalist, Annie Garrison, her returning to Rwanda is an act of courage and selflessness. Ingabire did so because she believes in a united Rwanda, where everyone is held equal before the law. Contrary to the cheap propaganda being peddled around, Ingabire does not care about Hutu or Tutsi. This, I know for a fact having met her on several occasions. She dreams of a world where all Rwandans can live in peace and harmony. This is why she has called for truth and reconciliation in Rwanda, something that does not exist. If Ingabire is such an extremist, as the Rwandan government claims, why would she form a coalition with several Tutsi-led parties?  The charge that every Hutu is an extremist is just an excuse for maintaining a pro-Kagame Tutsi hegemony. It is just as dangerous and dehumanizing as the claim that every Tutsis was an Inyenzi collaborators. Ingabire's only crime, in this case, is believing that all people, whether Hutu, Tutsi or Twa, have equal moral worth. I support her cause in seeking to unite Rwandans and believe that history will soon absolve her! N.B RNW has more on the testimony by Colonel Habimana and how the Rwandan government interfered with it. Link here.

http://therisingcontinent.wordpress.com/2011/09/05/understanding-the-reason-why-victoire-ingabire-is-on-trial/ Understanding the reason why Victoire Ingabire is on trial Posted on September 5, 2011 | Leave a comment 'Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.' Martin Luther King For non informed people or those that Western media keep deliberately ignorant to safeguard interests of particular socio/ economic groups, it would appear difficult to grasp what has been going on more or less for the last two decades in the Great Lakes region of Africa, and particularly in Rwanda and Democratic Republic of Congo. In the last few years, Ann Garrison, a Californian radio journalist, has developed an interest in the events happening in that part of the world. In her following article, 'Free African political prisoner Victoire Ingabire,' which appears on freedetainees.org website, she provides a glimpse of the picture that none of the big news names around would dare to highlight, because it would distort the image they have created to cover up the reality found on the ground, but at the same time protect interests of Western multinationals and governments. But the overall picture leans towards a certain racism similar to that protestors experienced from a European who, on Friday 2/9/11, argued vigorously that Africans liked to kill each other. This was in front of the Department for International Development where we were holding a protest against DfID significant support to Paul Kagame, dictator of Rwanda. We had to leave the irrational interlocutor to his ignorance, because it was impossible to convince him that Africans were the most human on the planet despite the overall propaganda against their humanity. Free African political prisoner Victoire Ingabire by Ann Garrison "Don't give up. He will never jail a whole nation." – Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza We need an international movement to free Rwandan opposition leader Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza. Her case is important to African people all over the continent and in the Diaspora and to all of us, all people. The weight on Victoire's shoulders is that of resource war, the ongoing wars for the world's natural resources that threaten to destroy the whole planet. The fate of her tiny East African nation, Rwanda, is intertwined with the resource war in Rwanda's vast, resource rich neighbor, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, site of the most lethal conflict since World War II. The Congo conflict has taken over 6 million African lives since 1998 alone. Background of the Congo conflict, in Rwanda and Uganda In 1990, the U.S. and Uganda backed the invasion of Rwanda, from Uganda, by an army of ethnic Tutsis who had grown up in Uganda, the children of Rwandan refugees. Four years of bloody civil war left over a million Rwandans dead, and Rwanda then joined Uganda and Burundi, the two nations on Congo's eastern border, in invading Congo, first to overthrow Congolese dictator Mobutu Sese Seko and then to overthrow his successor, Laurent Kabila, the onetime ally who had proven less than compliant in their project: the ongoing occupation, de facto colonization and resource plunder of eastern Congo. A peace treaty was signed in 2003, but the death toll in Congo continues to rise. The majority of war dead perish of hardship after being driven from their resource rich land, rich in minerals, timber, cropland, fresh water, oil and natural gas, everything that feeds the world's industrial and military industrial machines and the global capitalist system's insatiable demand for profit. Victoire I don't believe that Victoire went home to Rwanda, after 16 years spent first studying, then working and raising a family in the Netherlands, to take on so much weight, the weight of resource war threatening the whole world, but that is the broad context in which her own people are suffering. She said she was returning home because she could no longer stand to see her Rwandan people suffering so, under such brutal dictatorship. By that time, January 2010, she had emerged as the most inspiring and intellectually forceful leader in the Rwandan Diaspora. I first became aware of Victoire when I saw demonstrations amongst the Rwandan Diaspora in Europe. She was then under house arrest in Rwanda and they were lined up in Brussels, holding her picture and chanting "Victoire! Victoire! Victoire!" As a journalist, I maintained my distance for some time, making my way through all the available information and asking myself, "Who is Victoire?" I knew American radicals who were suspicious of her. They imagined that she was the Pentagon and State Department's chosen successor to Paul Kagame. I still don't know just why they imagined that, though it seemed perhaps because she hadn't been arrested, or rather, had only been placed under house arrest, forbidden to leave Kigali, Rwanda's capital, to speak to the majority Rwandan population, rural peasant farmers, whom she hoped to represent. Her political party was not allowed to register and she was not allowed to run in Rwanda's 2010 presidential election. Victoire was finally arrested and incarcerated two months after the election she had been excluded from, and several days after the last time I spoke to her for Pacifica Radio station KPFA. We had by then spoken many times, for KPFA and for WINGS, Womens' International News Gathering Service. She has been in maximum security prison ever since. Her Rwandan support team now reports that she is ill, without a doctor's care. This worries me because, earlier this year, Rwandan American Law Professor Charles Kambanda told me that he did not believe Rwandan President Paul Kagame would release her from prison with her faculties intact. Pasteur Bizimungu, Kagame's last major challenger, has been released, but he is, by all accounts, not the same man who entered Rwanda's prison system, one of the most overcrowded and notorious on earth. Rwanda's per capita prison population is second only to those of the United States and Russia. Professor Kambanda said that Victoire is a great leader, capable of leading Rwanda, whose conflict has spilled into eastern Congo, to real reconciliation – between African people who have been manipulated by foreign powers to the point of human catastrophe. But Kambanda also thinks Victoire is such a great leader that Rwandan President Paul Kagame will never let her leave prison alive, or with her faculties intact. I hope he's wrong, because we need her. Rwanda, Congo, Africa and the world need her. Free Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza! San Francisco writer Ann Garrison writes for the San Francisco Bay View,Global Research, Colored Opinions, Black Star News, the Newsline EA (East Africa) and her own blog, Ann Garrison, and produces for AfrobeatRadio on WBAI-NYC, Weekend News on KPFA and her own YouTube Channel,AnnieGetYourGang. She can be reached at ann@afrobeatradio.com.

Nyakubahwa perezida Kagame, gira impuhwe!

--- On Sun, 10/28/12, agnesmurebwayire <agnesmurebwayire@yahoo.fr> wrote: From: agnesmurebwayire <agnesmurebwayire@yahoo.fr> Subject: *DHR* Nyakubahwa perezida Kagame, gira impuhwe! To: Democracy_Human_Rights@yahoogroupes.fr Date: Sunday, October 28, 2012, 1:57 PM   Nyakubahwa perezida Kagame, Nongeye kugusaba ngo utekereze kure y'ibibazo wanyuzemo mu buzima bwawe, maze ufungure Mme Vigitoriya Ingabire. http://youtu.be/zQEPo9LNm7o __._,_.___ Répondre à expéditeur | Répondre à groupe | Répondre en mode Web | Nouvelle discussion Toute la discussion (1) Activités récentes: Nouveaux membres 5 Aller sur votre groupe http://fr.groups.yahoo.com/group/Democracy_Human_Rights Maître Innocent  TWAGIRAMUNGU DHR FOUNDER&OWNER Tél.mobile: 0032- 495 48 29 21 UT UNUM SINT "L'extrémisme dans la défense de la liberté n'est pas un vice; La modération dans la poursuite de la justice n'est pas une vertu". "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice; moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue." (USA,Republican Convention 1964,Barry Morris Goldwater (1909-1998)). "Le monde ne sera pas détruit par ceux qui font le mal mais par ceux qui regardent et refusent d'agir", Albert EINSTEIN. Les messages publiés sur DHR n'engagent que la responsabilité de leurs auteurs. CONSIDERATION, TOLERANCE, PATIENCE AND MUTUAL RESPECT towards the reinforcement of GOOD GOVERNANCE,DEMOCRACY and HUMAN RIGHTS in our states. Liability and Responsibility: You are legally responsible, and solely responsible, for any content that you post to DHR. You may only post materials that you have the right or permission to distribute electronically. The owner of DHR cannot and does not guarantee the accuracy of any statements made in or materials posted to the group by participants. " BE NICE TO PEOPLE ON YOUR WAY UP, BECAUSE YOU MIGHT MEET THEM ON YOUR WAY DOWN." Jimmy DURANTE. COMBATTONS la haine SANS complaisance, PARTOUT et avec Toute ENERGIE!!!!!! Let's  rather prefer Peace, Love , Hope and Life, and get together as one!!! Inno TWAGIRA Passer à: Texte seulement, Résumé du jour • Désinscription • Conditions d'utilisation . __,_._,___

Rwanda: Tomorrow, political prisoner Ingabire will be sentenced

http://www.facebook.com/notes/victoire-ingabire-umuhoza/rwanda-tomorrow-political-prisoner-ingabire-will-be-sentenced/10151157751493423 Rwanda: Tomorrow, political prisoner Ingabire will be sentenced Kigali, 29 October 2012.   This time after several postponements, hesitations and international mood-sensing, Paul Kagame's regime has finally decided to sentence the opposition leader, the 2012 Sakharov prize nominee, Madame Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza. It's tomorrow 30 October at 10:00 High court time. Sources confirm that a special cell in MPANGA central prison has been already prepared for her before this symbolical ruling by the High court. From different corners of the country, some RPF followers have been prepared for national radio and TV live and studio call-in congratulating messages to the regime for the sentence of the FDU-Inkingi chairperson, presented as the worst national enemy. This moment is historical for the struggle for democracy, justice and freedoms in Rwanda. It's a turning point, a paradigm shift in the recent history of Rwanda. A day we will all remember.   The Rwandan government is still under strong criticism from its allies and foes following a damning report by the UN Security Council's Group of Experts accusing it of arming and providing personnel to M23 terrorist warlords in the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. The Rwandan political leadership should be in the dock and not Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza who is calling for peaceful democratic change and genuine reconciliation underpinned by the rule of law and fair justice.   At this particular mark of our history, FDU-Inkingi is calling upon all Rwandans, party members and friends to stay calm and to watch the horizon for the wind of change. All of us in this generation will remember and bear witness of this political kangaroo process. Those who remember will not repeat history.   The international community's voice has not being strong enough to save an innocent mother from the teeth of a politicized judicial ghost. You can still make a difference and make your voice heard and respected.   We are urging people who are concerned about these political proceedings to remain on our side, as we are going to bring about genuine change in this country. Madame Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza is our living hero, we are proud of her courage, determination and extraordinary leadership.   FDU-Inkingi, Boniface Twagirimana, Interim Vice President.   Like · Comment · Share

Rwanda: Two members of FDU-Inkingi abducted, 3 others intimidated

http://www.facebook.com/notes/victoire-ingabire-umuhoza/rwanda-two-members-of-fdu-inkingi-abducted-3-others-intimidated/10151157732418423 Rwanda: Two members of FDU-Inkingi abducted, 3 others intimidated Kigali, 22 October 2012.   On 17 October, 2012, at around 9pm, Mr. Michel Niyomugabo and Mr. Eugene Nsabimana residents of Kangondo II Village, Nyarutarama Cell, Remera Sector, Gasabo District, while gathered in family at home, were suddenly besieged by individuals who usually team up with state security services. A police vehicle was rushed to the place shortly after reserve forces personnel. They quickly seized the two young men, threw them into that vehicle and took them to the police station of Remera for the whole night. In the morning, the two young men were taken to undisclosed location and their whereabouts remain unknown up to date. When the father of Michel Niyomugabo tried to inquire about the whereabouts of his son and his employee, the kidnapers intimidated him saying that if he too would like to be taken he should get in the vehicle right away.     This took place when on that same day several members of FDU-Inkingi, including the above mentioned two young men, led by the party Interim Secretary General, Mr. Sylvain SIBOMANA, went to UK High commission to deliver a call upon the key bilateral partner of Rwanda to help defuse unrelenting manhunt against political opponents to the current regime in Kigali. Specifically, they requested the unconditional release of all political prisoners, journalists and opinion leaders.   In the night of 20 October 2012, Andre Gatwa and Cyprien Havugimana were arrested by reserve forces of Cyibiraro I Village, in Nyarutarama Cell. Among these reserve forces there was one named Daniel. The victims were taken away, severely beaten and dumped afterwards back in Kangondo II Village, Nyarutarama Cell, Remera Sector, Gasabo District. Such acts of intimidation against political opponents are taking place while on 2 October 2012 Mr. Theophile Ntirutwa was arrested by the administrative officials in Nyarutarama Cell. He was briefly jailed within the premises of Nyarutarama administrative office. He was later released, but continued to be harassed and intimidated by several services including intelligence operatives. One may also recall that on 17 October, 2012, Mr. Theophile Ntirutwa was again arrested by the reserve forces and taken to the administrative office of Nyarutarama Cell and later to the police station of Remera. He was released the next day on 18 October, 2012 but was prevented from spending that night in his home. Indeed, a plain cloth military officer drifted in and confiscated some of his belongings. Afterwards, he was arrested along with his whole family by the military police and held in Remera police custody. The Kanombe military authorities gave an order to return his confiscated belongings to no avail.   Eight members of FDU-Inkingi are currently incarcerated in Gitarama prison after attending a talk with the party interim Secretary General in which he criticized the way the implementation of some government programs is ignoring the aspirations of the population and the fact that rural areas are neglected with regard to economic development in general.      FDU-Inkingi vehemently condemns the unrelenting intimidation of the opposition and calls upon the Kigali regime to release without delay all of the above imprisoned people, disclose the whereabouts of the abductees and unconditionally release all political prisoners.   FDU-Inkingi, Boniface Twagirimana Interim Vice-President   Like · Comment · Share