Rwanda and July 4th:
Empty slogans of "independence", "liberation" & "never again"
By Theogene Rudasingwa
President Kagame inspects a guard of honour mounted by the Rwanda Defence Forces and the Rwanda National Police.
Today, 4th of July, Rwanda's sole ruling party, the Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF), will be celebrating Liberation Day. On the 1st of July, Rwanda should have celebrated its independence from Belgian colonial rule slightly over five decades ago. Earlier, on April 7, in pomp and circumstance, the RPF and its dear leader, Paul Kagame, commemorated twenty years after the genocide of 1994.
During such events, ordinary Rwandans are harassed and coerced to turn up in tens of thousands to celebrate RPF's "achievements". They are forced to listen and clap to Kagame's now familiar vitriolic monologues in which he denounces those he falsely labels RPF's "disloyal", "corrupt", and "genocidal" enemies.
For the majority of Rwandans, Liberation, independence, and "never again" have just become slogans empty of meaning. For the freedom fighters of the 1959( MDR-PARMEHUTU) and 1990(RPF)who shed their blood, millions of Rwandans who perished during these periods and since then, their deaths have been in vain. July 4, July 1, and April 7, have lost the promise enshrined in the revolutions that defined these periods, and have been turned into deceptive rituals to display the national flag, sing the national anthem, and intimidate Rwandans into silence and inaction.
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