Rwanda: Victoire Ingabire and prosecutors appeal to Rwanda's Supreme Court [includes audio]

http://www.anngarrison.com/audio/2013/03/419/30/madame-victoire-ingabire-and-prosecutors-both-appeal-to-rwandas-supreme-court

Victoire Ingabire and prosecutors appeal to Rwanda's Supreme Court

Submitted by Ann Garrison on Sat, 03/30/2013 - 20:58

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03:49

KPFA Evening News, 03.30.2013

Imprisoned Rwandan opposition leader Victoire Ingabire, in a Kigali courtroomKPFAEvening News Anchor Cameron Jones:Rwanda's FDU-Inkingi opposition party is reporting that Rwandan police assaulted and/or arrested seventeen of its members last Monday, outside the Supreme Court appeals hearing of their imprisoned leader, Madame Victoire Ingabire. Ingabire attempted to run against incumbent Rwandan President Paul Kagame, in the 2010 election that many observers, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, described as unfair or as window dressing for military dictatorship. Ingabire was not allowed to register her party or run against Kagame, and she has been incarcerated in Rwanda's 1930 maximum security prison since October 2010. KPFA's Ann Garrison has the story.

KPFA/Ann Garrison: Last October Victoire Ingabire was convicted and sentenced to eight years in prison. She has appealed the conviction, but prosecutors have at the same time appealed for a harsher sentence. They accuse Ingabire, an ethnic Hutu, of conspiring with members of a Hutu militia in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to destabilize Rwanda. They also accuse her of minimizing the 1994 Rwanda Genocide by asking that all victims, not only Tutsi but also Hutu, be remembered at the Kigali Genocide Memorial.    

In 2010, before her arrest, Ingabire told KPFA that she stands for true reconciliation between Rwanda's Hutu, Tutsi, and Twa ethnicities, and said that media were falsely characterizing her as an ethnic politician, and ignoring her central concern with poverty, and with HIV/AIDS:  

Victoire Ingabire (in 2010): Now I see all media. . .they say that I talk only about ethnicity, but that is not true. I talk also about the problem of poverty in our country. I talk about the problem of AIDS.  

KPFA: Scholars, including Colgate University Peace and Conflict Studies Professor Susan Thompson and Loyola University Political Science Professor Brian Endless, and Rwanda Genocide survivor and author Paul Rusesabagina have all written that Rwanda's much lauded economic success has rewarded only an urban elite and left Rwanda's majority rural peasants in extreme poverty. And, they say, this success has been largely achieved by illegal extraction of neighboring D.R. Congo's vast mineral wealth.

FDU-Inkingi Treasurer Alice Muhirwa, in RwandaKPFA spoke to Alice Muhirwa, the FDU-Inkingi Party Treasurer, in Rwanda, who said that she had been able to enter the Rwandan Supreme Courtroom for the appeals hearing on Monday, and that those arrested or beaten before they could enter had not been been demonstrating, but that Victoire Ingabire's supporters all wear name tags, bracelets, or pink ties, the color of Rwandan prison uniforms, to court, to demonstrate their support for her.

Alice Muhirwa: People, all supporters of Madame Ingabire Victoire, all the time have something showing that they are really supporting. Either we had pink ties, or some written thing, so it was not a kind of demonstration. We had some name tags and bracelets. I don't think that they arrested them because of those bracelets, because I was wearing one and I was inside the courtroom. It seems that they organized themselves just to . . . to intimidate or pressure against people who will try to come and support Madame Victoire.

KPFA: The Rwandan Supreme Court postponed the appeals of both prosecution and defense until April 16th. Amnesty International called on the court to allow an appeal that meets international fair trial standards and rectifies problems documented in their report Justice in Jeopardy: The first instance trial of Victoire Ingabire. ForPacifica, KPFA, and AfrobeatRadio, I'm Ann Garrison.

Tags: 

Victoire Ingabire

Ingabire

Paul Kagame

Alice Muhirwa

Rwanda

Kigali

Congo

Democratic Republic of the Congo

D.R.C.

KPFA

KPFA Evening News

Africa

Rwanda: Victoire Ingabire and prosecutors appeal to Rwanda's Supreme Court [includes audio]

http://www.anngarrison.com/audio/2013/03/419/30/madame-victoire-ingabire-and-prosecutors-both-appeal-to-rwandas-supreme-court

Victoire Ingabire and prosecutors appeal to Rwanda's Supreme Court

Submitted by Ann Garrison on Sat, 03/30/2013 - 20:58

• play
• stop
• mute

00:00

03:49

KPFA Evening News, 03.30.2013

Imprisoned Rwandan opposition leader Victoire Ingabire, in a Kigali courtroomKPFAEvening News Anchor Cameron Jones:Rwanda's FDU-Inkingi opposition party is reporting that Rwandan police assaulted and/or arrested seventeen of its members last Monday, outside the Supreme Court appeals hearing of their imprisoned leader, Madame Victoire Ingabire. Ingabire attempted to run against incumbent Rwandan President Paul Kagame, in the 2010 election that many observers, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, described as unfair or as window dressing for military dictatorship. Ingabire was not allowed to register her party or run against Kagame, and she has been incarcerated in Rwanda's 1930 maximum security prison since October 2010. KPFA's Ann Garrison has the story.

KPFA/Ann Garrison: Last October Victoire Ingabire was convicted and sentenced to eight years in prison. She has appealed the conviction, but prosecutors have at the same time appealed for a harsher sentence. They accuse Ingabire, an ethnic Hutu, of conspiring with members of a Hutu militia in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to destabilize Rwanda. They also accuse her of minimizing the 1994 Rwanda Genocide by asking that all victims, not only Tutsi but also Hutu, be remembered at the Kigali Genocide Memorial.    

In 2010, before her arrest, Ingabire told KPFA that she stands for true reconciliation between Rwanda's Hutu, Tutsi, and Twa ethnicities, and said that media were falsely characterizing her as an ethnic politician, and ignoring her central concern with poverty, and with HIV/AIDS:  

Victoire Ingabire (in 2010): Now I see all media. . .they say that I talk only about ethnicity, but that is not true. I talk also about the problem of poverty in our country. I talk about the problem of AIDS.  

KPFA: Scholars, including Colgate University Peace and Conflict Studies Professor Susan Thompson and Loyola University Political Science Professor Brian Endless, and Rwanda Genocide survivor and author Paul Rusesabagina have all written that Rwanda's much lauded economic success has rewarded only an urban elite and left Rwanda's majority rural peasants in extreme poverty. And, they say, this success has been largely achieved by illegal extraction of neighboring D.R. Congo's vast mineral wealth.

FDU-Inkingi Treasurer Alice Muhirwa, in RwandaKPFA spoke to Alice Muhirwa, the FDU-Inkingi Party Treasurer, in Rwanda, who said that she had been able to enter the Rwandan Supreme Courtroom for the appeals hearing on Monday, and that those arrested or beaten before they could enter had not been been demonstrating, but that Victoire Ingabire's supporters all wear name tags, bracelets, or pink ties, the color of Rwandan prison uniforms, to court, to demonstrate their support for her.

Alice Muhirwa: People, all supporters of Madame Ingabire Victoire, all the time have something showing that they are really supporting. Either we had pink ties, or some written thing, so it was not a kind of demonstration. We had some name tags and bracelets. I don't think that they arrested them because of those bracelets, because I was wearing one and I was inside the courtroom. It seems that they organized themselves just to . . . to intimidate or pressure against people who will try to come and support Madame Victoire.

KPFA: The Rwandan Supreme Court postponed the appeals of both prosecution and defense until April 16th. Amnesty International called on the court to allow an appeal that meets international fair trial standards and rectifies problems documented in their report Justice in Jeopardy: The first instance trial of Victoire Ingabire. ForPacifica, KPFA, and AfrobeatRadio, I'm Ann Garrison.

Tags: 

Victoire Ingabire

Ingabire

Paul Kagame

Alice Muhirwa

Rwanda

Kigali

Congo

Democratic Republic of the Congo

D.R.C.

KPFA

KPFA Evening News

Africa

http://therisingcontinent.wordpress.com/2011/10/14/the-liberation-of-african-minds-a-giant-step-to-make/

The liberation of African minds: a giant step to make

A friend asked me once if I liked movies and what I liked watching on TV. I replied and said that I had not watched television for the last four years. I didn't elaborate on the reasons that had pushed me to that radical resolution. But what he added summarized most of it.

'A rabbi once said that watching television [or a censored news source – my emphasis] is like opening sewage in your house.'

Many are not aware of which ground they stand on. Harriet Tubman, a black American abolitionist born in 1822, helped to free many among her compatriots from slavery. With a lot of courage, she took enormous life risks to liberate black people during the time when a handful of Negroes would dare to oppose openly the slavery system. To those who praised her for her efforts and achievements, she responded,

'I would've freed many more if they had realised that they were slaves.'

Realising that you are a slave or not free, or simply the fact that you are oppressed or exploited, is the initial step for your liberation, your path to freedom, or recovery of your intrinsic powers. And it is a giant one. Because the power of oppression resides in the ignorance of the oppressed about their inner situation. This reminds me of a big event I attended a while ago in London city where the cream of the establishment had gathered. The keynote speaker delivered a speech which made me understand the working of capitalism. The main message was that being part of its project is the best option you can find around. It's an opportunity to be grabbed with both hands, even if they have to be tied in the process.

Dr Chancellor Williams, in his book 'The destruction of Black Civilization,' explains how Black people came to be what we generally observe today,

'The present-day confused outlook of the African people is the result of centuries of Caucasian acculturation, a quite natural process wherever one people come under the economic, political and social domination of another people. The ideologies and value system of the oppressors quite unconsciously become those of the oppressed, even when the result is demonstratively against themselves. But all other oppressed peoples, whether Indian, Chinese or Japanese, were able to hold on doggedly to their own social racial pride and cultural heritage as the last resource for survival as a people. Unlike the Blacks, they were never completely cut off from this sustaining life-live of every people.'

It could be rightly said that few black people in general and Africans particularly, feel deep-seated in their roots and proud. This small fraction is the one which occasionally raises her voice to condemn aggressors of the motherland when countries like Libya and Ivory Coast are invaded by Western powers. Unfortunately, the majority among Africans, those that Harriet Tubman would refer to as they don't know that they are slaves, will praise NATO's invasion of Libya and France for its military intervention in Ivory Coast, whatever the false justifications of the invaders. These Africans with a mind of slaves will call invaders liberators because of their ignorance.

As Africans, unless our minds become liberated, we will die and the next generation too, without knowing who is killing us, or even believing that we are living while we are in the process of dying. That would really look pathetic. It would be acceptable to succumb to a sudden tsunami which has not given any warning signs, but perishing from slow motion deadly symptoms which could be won over if addressed properly is not excusable.

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October 14, 2011Leave a reply

http://therisingcontinent.wordpress.com/2011/10/14/the-liberation-of-african-minds-a-giant-step-to-make/

The liberation of African minds: a giant step to make

A friend asked me once if I liked movies and what I liked watching on TV. I replied and said that I had not watched television for the last four years. I didn't elaborate on the reasons that had pushed me to that radical resolution. But what he added summarized most of it.

'A rabbi once said that watching television [or a censored news source – my emphasis] is like opening sewage in your house.'

Many are not aware of which ground they stand on. Harriet Tubman, a black American abolitionist born in 1822, helped to free many among her compatriots from slavery. With a lot of courage, she took enormous life risks to liberate black people during the time when a handful of Negroes would dare to oppose openly the slavery system. To those who praised her for her efforts and achievements, she responded,

'I would've freed many more if they had realised that they were slaves.'

Realising that you are a slave or not free, or simply the fact that you are oppressed or exploited, is the initial step for your liberation, your path to freedom, or recovery of your intrinsic powers. And it is a giant one. Because the power of oppression resides in the ignorance of the oppressed about their inner situation. This reminds me of a big event I attended a while ago in London city where the cream of the establishment had gathered. The keynote speaker delivered a speech which made me understand the working of capitalism. The main message was that being part of its project is the best option you can find around. It's an opportunity to be grabbed with both hands, even if they have to be tied in the process.

Dr Chancellor Williams, in his book 'The destruction of Black Civilization,' explains how Black people came to be what we generally observe today,

'The present-day confused outlook of the African people is the result of centuries of Caucasian acculturation, a quite natural process wherever one people come under the economic, political and social domination of another people. The ideologies and value system of the oppressors quite unconsciously become those of the oppressed, even when the result is demonstratively against themselves. But all other oppressed peoples, whether Indian, Chinese or Japanese, were able to hold on doggedly to their own social racial pride and cultural heritage as the last resource for survival as a people. Unlike the Blacks, they were never completely cut off from this sustaining life-live of every people.'

It could be rightly said that few black people in general and Africans particularly, feel deep-seated in their roots and proud. This small fraction is the one which occasionally raises her voice to condemn aggressors of the motherland when countries like Libya and Ivory Coast are invaded by Western powers. Unfortunately, the majority among Africans, those that Harriet Tubman would refer to as they don't know that they are slaves, will praise NATO's invasion of Libya and France for its military intervention in Ivory Coast, whatever the false justifications of the invaders. These Africans with a mind of slaves will call invaders liberators because of their ignorance.

As Africans, unless our minds become liberated, we will die and the next generation too, without knowing who is killing us, or even believing that we are living while we are in the process of dying. That would really look pathetic. It would be acceptable to succumb to a sudden tsunami which has not given any warning signs, but perishing from slow motion deadly symptoms which could be won over if addressed properly is not excusable.

Rate this:

 

 

 

 

 

 

1 Votes

Share this:

• Twitter3
• Facebook37
• Email
• Print
• Reddit
• LinkedIn
• StumbleUpon
• Digg
• Google +1
• Pinterest

Like this:

October 14, 2011Leave a reply