Indignity of Cardinal Antoine KAMBANDA of Rwanda
His Holiness Pope Francis
The Vatican
Subject: Indignity of Cardinal Antoine KAMBANDA of Rwanda
Most Holy Father,
It is in all humility and filial piety that we, MRD, the Rwanda Movement for the Republic and Democracy, a political platform committed and determined to bring about a change of government in Rwanda, dare to appeal to your august authority to express our deep indignation and questions following the absolutely shocking and scandalous statements made by Antoine KAMBANDA, whom you ordained Cardinal during the Consistory on November 28, 2020.
Your Holiness, while 90% of the 14 million Rwandans are Christians and the Catholic Church is an essential social power that has made a significant and positive contribution to the major advances made by the Rwandan people, Cardinal KAMBANDA's statements are causing a real erosion of faith in Jesus Christ, as well as a major crisis in the Catholic Church of Rwanda.
In fact, to quote only the latest declaration by this upstart prelate and fanatic of the junta in power in Rwanda since 1994, Cardinal Antoine KAMBANDA, speaking publicly before hundreds of people, said: "In this memorable year 2024, we Rwandans must give thanks to God, for it has been 30 years during which there is no longer any Rwandan being killed, no one's property being destroyed anymore, no one being forced to live in fear nor condemned to exile."
Your Holiness, could you please ask Cardinal KAMBANDA if he lives in the same Rwanda as all the Rwandan citizens, who have been prey to a brutal and criminal dictatorship regime for the past 30 years? Indeed, the Kagame system, which reigns over Rwanda, is built on three pillars: lies, divisionism (divide ut imperas) and terror. To describe Paul Kagame as a "liar" is an understatement. The man claims to have stopped the genocide, when it was he who provoked and accelerated it in order to be in power in Rwanda with ease. He claims to have developed Rwanda, whereas there is a real gulf between the capital Kigali and rural Rwanda. Kagame is certainly a divisionist: he has provoked a veritable humanitarian tsunami by undertaking all these wars ostensibly to help the Tutsi community. He has deliberately trapped the Rwandan community by instituting a kind of "original sin" against the Hutu ethnic group. And when we say that this man is a terrorist, we need only think of the attack he perpetrated on April 6, 1994 against the plane carrying Rwandan head of state HABYARIMANA Juvénal and Burundian head of state Cyprien NTARYAMIRA, an act unanimously considered to be the detonator of the genocide in Rwanda.
Today, the UN mapping report and all informed observers point to more than 15 million killings on Congolese soil alone since Paul Kagame's army first invaded the Congo in 1996. In Rwanda, countless citizens have been murdered, disappeared, tortured, summarily executed and forced to flee their homeland. All reports from serious organizations are unanimous: the Paul Kagame system uses murder as a state method. How can such a senior pastor of the Church of Christ turn a blind eye and condone such crimes?
What kind of amnesia leads Cardinal KAMBANDA to forget the summary execution on June 05, 1994 in Gakurazo, of a group of the clergy composed of 3 bishops, namely Mgr Vincent NSENGIYUMVA Archbishop of Kigali, Mgr Augustin RUZINDANA and Mgr Thaddée NSENGIYUMVA, 9 priests and an 8-year-old child, executed by Battalion 157 commanded by General Fred IBINGIRA himself on the orders of Paul KAGAME? How can Cardinal KAMBANDA ignore the assassination by the same General Fred IBINGIRA, on November 30, 1996, of Bishop Phocas NIKWIGIZE of Ruhengeri? How can he ignore the assassination by the RPF per KAGAME's orders, on October 29, 1996 of Mgr Faustin MUNZIHIRWA, Archbishop of Bukavu, for the sole reason that after the destruction of the Rwandan refugee camps, he was the only one to organize and coordinate relief for Rwandan refugees?
How can Cardinal KAMBANDA ignore the recent assassination of Kizito MIHIGO, a champion of peace and reconciliation, who was executed in his Kigali cell in February 2020? How can Cardinal KAMBANDA swallow the hammer-blow assassination of Father Claude SIMARD by KAGAME's soldiers on October 18, 1994, and the murder of Father Vjeko CURIC in the heart of Kigali on January 31, 1998? Your Holiness, isn't the role of the Church to be on the side of the weak, to defend the widow and the orphan? How can Cardinal KAMBANDA ignore the Kibeho massacre of April 22, 1995 in which more than ten thousand people were killed by Paul KAGAME's artillery? How can he forget the Kanama cave massacre of November 1997 where more than eight thousand people were brutally executed by KAGAME's soldiers?
In view of the above, how can anyone dare say that the Rwanda of the last 30 years, under the boot of criminal dictator Paul Kagame, is a haven of peace? In truth, Cardinal Antoine KAMBANDA belongs to that tiny category of Rwandans blinded by the fanatical racial hatred of the Kagame system. What's more, this emotional indifference and socio-political myopia betray a far more serious problem: your distinguished Cardinal KAMBANDA is partisan and viscerally committed to the side of his mentor Paul KAGAME, who, as we already know, aims to keep the Rwandan people in chains, already dying as a result of the unspeakable violence imposed by his system.
Please accept, Most Holy Father, the expression of our highest consideration.
COPY:
Dicastery in charge of Bishops
Episcopal Conference of Rwanda
Cardinal Kambanda Antoine
Washington, June 28, 2024
Mrs. Christine Coleman,
MRD President
| ### "Be courteous to all, but intimate with few; and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence", George Washington. ### |
