UN Congo report: "Double standards on human rights"

By Albert Rudatsimburwa

The report compiled by the UN High Commission on Human Rights on violations of international humanitarian law between 1993 and 2003 in DRC was published on 1 October.

Following the report, Filip Reyntjens, professor of Law and Politics, Institute of Development Policy and Management at the University of Antwerp, wrote on the RNW Africa website earlier this week that it is clear that "the most serious and systematic crimes are placed firmly on the doorstep of Paul Kagame’s Rwanda."

In response to Reyntjens article, The UN report on Congo's atrocities: the end of impunity? , Albert Rudatsimburwa, a Rwandan political analyst has this to say:

It is always interesting and rather entertaining to be privy to the view of Professor Philip Reyntjens on the politics of a country he has last visited 18 years ago. One might even be tempted to admire his sense of loyalty to the memory of the late Juvenal Habyarimana, President of Rwanda from July 1973 to April 1994.

After all, was he not greatly instrumental in consolidating the latter’s absolute hold on power by providing him, with the help of few others, with a rather well drafted constitutional text? The very text that gave Habyarimana the legal framework to reduce the Tutsis of Rwanda to a status of second class citizenship, effectively setting the wheels in motion in what would later become one of the worst crimes ever perpetrated by a state against its own people.

Relying on Philip Reyntjens for an expert view on Rwanda would be like communicating with the spirit of Socrates or Plato to get an update of the political situation of Greece.

So enough with the rantings of those feeding on the nostalgia from colonial days to Cold War when Africa used to be told what to do, what to think, how to act and never to speak.

Double standards
A new day is dawning on Africa, and Rwanda is spearheading this quiet revolution.
The recently leaked and subsequently released UN report on alleged crimes perpetrated by the Rwanda Patriotic Army (RPA) amongst others in the DRC between 1993 and 2003 is yet another example of the clear double standards on human rights issues when it comes to dealing with Africa from a Western perspective.

The 1994 Genocide on the Tutsi is a fact recognised by International Law and backed by mountains of evidence which have allowed for the prosecution of those suspected in having had a hand in these atrocities in one way or another.

Here is another fact, no less important. Genocide is a legal term defined in the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

Understandable
In light of the definition, the reaction of Rwanda on the release of this report can only be described as understandable. No state in its right mind would accept such baseless allegations backed by no evidence whatsoever to be leveled against it. It is quite evident that the “intent” on the part of the authors and sponsors of this so-called report is to tarnish the otherwise blemish free success story of the current Rwandan Government led by Paul Kagame.

Why wouldn’t they? Isn’t it the same Paul Kagame who exposed the UN’s inefficiencies by stopping the 1994 Genocide in their presence? Was it not the same Paul Kagame led RPA that single handedly solved the humanitarian catastrophe referred to in this report by repatriating and successfully rehabilitating over 3 million “Hutu” refugees who had been taken hostage by the former Rwandan Armed Forces (ex-FAR) right across the border?

It is indeed the same Paul Kagame who successfully raised his country from the ashes of her tragically violent and divided past to become the success story that it is today for the whole world to see. And this bothers those who feed on African misery to make a name for themselves as champions of human rights; those modern day messiahs who know so much better than us ignorant Africans that our only chance for survival is the repentance of our sins, however unreal they might be.

Disciplined and efficient
Africa is no fatality; Paul Kagame, more than any other African Leader, understands it. He found a solution to justice for the survivors and the perpetrators, stabilized and pacified a troubled Great Lakes Region and brought steadfast economic growth to East Africa.

The Rwandan Army that stands accused today of possible acts of genocide is cited as the most disciplined and efficient in the UN peacekeeping mission it is involved in.

This same discipline that the Rwandan Army has always shown was one of the keys to success in fighting the genocide without descending into a whirlwind of revenge killings. It was also one for defeating the FAZ and their mercenaries Yougo’s, the FAR, Interahamwe, Mai-mai and others. And it is well documented that Paul Kagame tirelessly called upon the “international community” to “do something” about the clear and imminent threat paused by refugee camps set up Rwanda’s border with DRC, a mere 200 meters away.

Thorn in the foot
It is also documented that the ex-Far with their allies were on the verge of launching multiple attacks on Rwanda to “finish the job” when the Government of Rwanda decided to send an “integrated exFAR-exAPR” contingent to solve the problem and repatriate all willing unarmed Rwandan refugees/hostage. What would be the logic in sending a Hutu-Tutsi army to carry out massacres of Hutu civilians?

But for all these facts cited above, Paul Kagame is and will always be a thorn in the foot of those who regard humanitarian aid as a business with a future in Africa.

Am I now suggesting that the Congo War was a “clean” war without atrocities? Not by a long shot! I will even go further to say that justice needs to be done to honor the memory of those who lost their lives in these conflicts. Like justice is needed for all the victims of all conflicts. How far do we want to go? Dresden, Hiroshima, Spain, Sumatra, Belgian Congo, Indonesia, Algeria, Biafra, Soweto, Iraq, Kurdistan, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Namibia, Wounded Knee?

Justice isn’t just an ideal to some; Rwandans more than anybody else want it. Not as Trojan Horse carefully crafted to destabilize us, but as a genuine exercise in truth and accountability for the benefit of all parties involved. For now, we say thanks for the gift of justice, but no thanks.

© Radio Netherlands Worldwide

Let Rwanda repeal the UN mapping report

By Félicien Mwumvaneza

The UN is at it again. The popular aphorism, "If life gives you lemons, make lemonade" by a famous writer Dale Carnegie embodies much truth regarding the constant challenges of nation building virtually in all countries. It would be fair to say, though, that the adage has particular resonance in Rwanda’s post-genocide efforts for building sustainable peace and development and the ingenuity with which the leadership has had to overcome unique challenges both at home and from the external environment.

Well, what the UN has given Rwanda and the region through its so-called mapping exercise report on the DRC is not just lemons but also a case of sour grapes owing to a deeply flawed methodology and outrageously false allegations that it seeks to translate into a credible discourse. Still Rwanda has gone out of its way to provide a properly worked out and convincing document in response to some of the serious deficiencies in the UN report.

Assuming other factors constant, the controversy surrounding the making of the report was supposed to be purely methodical and any efforts aimed at correcting the professional deficiencies exposed in the UN report ought to have been limited to the technical level – plain and simple. Yet, the UN created a diplomatic emergency that was completely uncalled for.

Rwanda, out of good will, agreed to the diplomatic initiative by the UN Secretary General. And the results? No more than cosmetic modifications have been made to the report, which serves to indicate that the UN was not genuine about the discussions with Rwandan officials anyway.

After all, albeit out of opportunism, the UN may probably rationalise that it has gotten what it wanted: Rwanda will not withdraw thousands of its troops from various UN peacekeeping missions, and it calmed its fears that President Paul Kagame might have been considering to boycott the UN General Assembly meeting. It is not always easy to speculate about irrational behaviour, but they were certainly well aware of the seriousness of the unsubstantiated allegations against his country.

The UN might have its rationalisations in this case, but it is wrong on one key aspect in the equation, and that is Rwanda’s zero tolerance on all kinds of injustices. This is one of the defining constructs of the country’s character as a nation today and Rwanda is not likely to give up on challenging the UN report until justice to its history is done.

As the situation stands, there is a range of options that Rwanda might explore to challenge the UN’s destructive report.

First, in accordance with articles 34 and 35-paragraph 1 of the UN charter, Rwanda should officially demand the Security Council or the General Assembly to repeal the UN mapping exercise report on the DRC in its entirety or just a number of fundamentally flawed sections of it. The demand for repeal should be on the basis that the false allegations contained in the report are a serious threat to regional peace and security among many other credible justifications.

The charter provides that a member state may bring to the attention of the Security Council or of the General Assembly “any situation which might lead to international friction or give rise to a dispute, in order to determine whether the continuance of the [...] situation is likely to endanger the maintenance of international peace and security.” The Security Council par excellence approved the mapping exercise and it is in order that Rwanda makes such a demand to the UN.

Second and in connection with the above, Rwanda should launch its diplomatic power to rally the support of its regional and international allies to co-sponsor the repeal motion so that a proper and systematic inquiry of crimes committed in the DRC can be commissioned. Even though Rwanda can make the demand on its own, working in the framework of the regional bodies of which Rwanda is a member would be a good option, as it would strengthen its position and voice.

For instance, there are important provisions in the charter for the establishment of the East African Community that would act as a basis for the action even though there is not yet a detailed international relations protocol for the partner countries. The Common Wealth is another important body in which to explore this possibility for action.

Action within the framework of the African Union would be relatively more feasible based on the organisation’s Peace and Security Council protocol. All these different founding documents exist to serve a useful purpose and they should be operationalised in undertaking Rwanda’s legitimate action.

Third, should the above initiatives be sidelined by different actors for various reasons as it ought to be expected, Rwanda should not shy away from exploring several other retaliatory and/ or legal actions. As a juridical person, the United Nations has willingly and deliberately committed a serious offense against the Rwandan people by subtly espousing the “double genocide” theory and by falsely accusing its military of committing serious crimes.

Apart from being a destabilising bonanza against Rwanda’s and regional peace and security in the short and long term, the UN’s false allegations are likely to have a serious negative impact on the character, reputation and legitimacy of the Rwandan people and the government.
Rwandan lawyers should consider whether and under which arbitration jurisdictions the UN can be held to account, and whether the UN’s actions against Rwanda regarding the DRC mapping report may not constitute forms of liabilities for which it may be held accountable.

Rwanda’s course of action in seeking to repeal the report would not be without precedents. For instance in his address to the 46th session of the UNGA on the September 23, 1991, the US president George W.H. Bush called for the repeal of UNGA resolution 3379 that had misrepresented Israel’s Zionism as racism. The resolution was unconditionally repealed just three months later. The resolution had mischaracterised the struggle that led to the creation of the Jewish state enabling millions of Jews in the Diaspora to finally find a place to call home – a home that had been theirs in the first place.

President Bush Sr. rightly made the case that “to equate Zionism with the intolerable sin of racism is to twist history and forget the terrible plight of Jews in World War II and, indeed, throughout history. To equate Zionism with racism is to reject Israel itself, a member of good standing of the United Nations.”

The UN mapping report on the DRC has placed Rwanda and its military in a similar situation and it is Rwanda’s legitimate right to demand that the report be repealed. The UN has committed the same historical mistake against Rwandans by mischaracterising the intentions and the conduct of the Rwandan military in the DRC and it risks undermining Rwanda’s willingness for active self-defence in the future among other negative consequences.

The UN should realise that the need to establish facts about the events in the DRC and its obligation for morality, respect for state sovereignty and fundamental fairness and justice to all are not mutually exclusive. One should not come at the expense of another. That is UN’s duty.

As important as high-level short-term political promises that are likely to ensue may be, such promises may not be reliable in the long term as they tend to last as long as office tenures of the respective politicians who make them. Anyone could take action on the basis a published document anytime and the best course of action might be for Rwanda to keep on challenging the UN mapping report on substantive grounds.

Rwanda: The UN and NGOs – Is State Sovereignty under attack? Part III

By Félicien Mwumvaneza

My previous contributions in this series have pointed out how a select group of western international non-governmental Rights organisations have engaged in what appears to be a sustained mission to undermine the strongholds of Rwanda’s political independence as a sovereign state by attacking its most vital governance policies.

I have pointed out the highly unusual and absurd nature of the collaboration between these “Rights” organisations and the United Nations particularly in circumstances surrounding the so-called mapping exercise report on the DR Congo which accuses Rwanda of possible serious crimes there, and how the mainstream western media have helped to advance the discourse of these negative forces.

The DR Congo ‘amateurish’ mapping report might go down in history as a symbol of how the UN has moved further away from its founding principles given that it has clearly accorded non-state actors vital political preeminence over its sovereign member states in the process of carrying out and publishing the results of the DRC report.

From the way Western human rights organisations and mainstream media have parroted and characterised political conditions and events in Rwanda, to how the UN has joined these forces with some Western governments and have oddly mimicked the same allegations about Rwanda, it becomes extremely difficult to believe how these NGOs are actually non-governmental at all.

That is when nothing is said about the channels through which this so-called Human Rights Organisations are actually funded to carry out their work; evidence indicating that governments are not without a firm hand in their financing.

It becomes very unconvincing to argue that the Western media is indeed free and independent, and it makes the relationship and collaboration between these Western “non-state actors” and some Western governments’ approach to Africa and the rest of the developing world is highly questionable.

Clearly, the application of the newfound means of influencing other countries’ policies – the use of soft power particularly through the work of NGOs, could have been softer and more subtle than Rwanda’s case has shown in recent months, at least for the sake of pretence.

But the new ‘marriage’ relationship between western governments, NGOs and the media regarding their behaviour in and about Rwanda is not actually new. It can be seen as a celebration of longstanding bond that was established at the height of the Cold War purposely to support the use of soft power in order to avoid aggression in a clear act of circumventing the provisions of the UN charter.

By using NGOs, states would not be accused of aggressing other sovereign states as the definition of Aggression does not cover acts by international organisations, and the determination of whether any acts of aggression have been committed at all is an exclusive mandate of the very undemocratic Security Council.

That is a smart move, isn’t it? Well, not if it goes against the fundamental principles of justice and fairness for which the UN was founded to promote in the first place, and it’s definitely neither smart nor ethical at all when it endangers other countries’ peace, security and stability as the case of the international negative forces against Rwanda indicates.

The making and workings of the UN, international human rights law
The charter of the United Nations recognises sovereignty as the hallmark of statehood and it was intended to avert war while ensuring international peace and security by recognising every country’s independence and competence. In the system of international relations and obligations, the principle of noninterference in affairs that are within the domestic jurisdiction of states is an important component of state sovereignty.

Under the UN charter and related conventions, sovereign states have “prescriptive” and “enforcement” powers - competence and authority to make laws and enforce them within their jurisdictions. Some of the cases in which the international community can intervene in domestic affairs of a state include when the state fails to maintain peace and security or when it abuses human rights within its jurisdiction. The latter scenario, though, is a norm that evolved after the establishment of the charter and its meaning and interpretation continue to expand even to this day partly through the work of human rights organisations.

At the height of the cold war in the 1960s and 70s, a number of countries found an indirect way to bypass the UN charter noninterference obligations; and so some of the most powerful human rights organisations we have today were set up primarily to promote the balance of power policies. Non-governmental organisations including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch were later given access and observer status at the United Nations, and their “expert” inputs in the UN processes came to be given important attention.

It is on record how these and other NGOs collaborate in the drafting of reports and resolutions at the UN and how they have been instrumental in the emergency of new human rights norms which form part of the current international human rights law.

As the debate about the UN mapping exercise report on the violation of international human rights law within the DR Congo goes on, it is important to remember that the undemocratic UN Security Council enjoys the exclusive right to interpret, define, frame, decide and declare whether or not a sovereign state has violated its human rights obligations. Thus, even as Rwanda should not relent in the efforts to challenge the flawed report that is clearly a political ploy, it is important to recognise that the underlying challenges actually go deeper that technical issues in the making of documents.

The real issue and important question to be addressed, probably in the long run is to demystify the claims that the UN is just and fair to all countries and peoples when only a few countries enjoy interpretative powers on issues affecting other countries.

And this is something countries could do by giving up some of the short-term benefits and coming together to strongly challenge such a patronising system. It is not something that one country could achieve acting alone.

The way forward for Rwanda
The people of Rwanda need to understand that the onslaught on the country by human rights groups, the mainstream media and the UN might be a deliberate political ploy or a patronising experiment at best that is designed to divide the society by encouraging ethnic politics under the guise of human rights.

Its purpose might be to undermine Rwanda’s increasingly lofty standing both at home and abroad for some unspecified foreign interests. For this reason, Rwandans need to stay united against this challenge and rise above the diversion.
The Rwandan government should refuse to be put on the defensive for doing the right thing for its people and for the country; neither should it be detracted from pursuing the country’s pragmatic foreign engagement that seeks to promote common interests and mutual respect.

These coordinated negative forces and interests have had successes elsewhere in destabilising countries by pressuring governments into abandoning policies that were indeed working for those countries, and it came with devastating consequences and so they seem to believe they can carry out the same experiment in Rwanda today.

Even though there are complex politics at play in the international system, Rwanda must firmly refuse to go down that road because the international community, even when it is at its best, is inherently reckless. This is because despite praises about embracing multilateralism, democracy and freedoms, the struggle for strategic influence and pursuit of self-interest by states has not weathered away. Real actions have not matched rhetoric. The fluid concepts of democracy, human rights and press freedoms are promoted as if they were a specific brand of commodities that developing countries must purchase, rather than theoretical and controversial concepts to be applied contextually. They are, to all intents and purposes, mere instruments for domination. What else could possibly explain the kind of elusive behaviour these interests have manifested in Rwanda in recent months?
For now, Rwanda should continue to firmly challenge the procedural, methodological and all other technical deficiencies of the UN report and demand that these and other substantive issues be systematically revisited as Rwanda holds the obligations of membership in too high regard to let irresponsible mistakes go unquestioned.

The UN has a history of acting inconsistently and there is a possibility that it may realise its grave mistake regarding the mapping exercise report on the DRC and decide to set itself on its feet again. The benefit of time might enable the UN to realise that indeed, in the words of a famous scientist, “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”

Although the UN has created an unnecessary diplomatic crisis for an otherwise purely technical issue, Rwanda might want to give the diplomatic initiative by the UN a chance.

However, that would be only if the postponement was not an opportunistic move to help persuade Rwanda to keep its troops in the UN’s peacekeeping missions in Sudan, Chad, Haiti, and Liberia and to ensure the smooth running of last week’s UN General Assembly in which President Paul Kagame had prominent roles to play in various UN initiatives.

Now that the report was published with negligible changes to the baseless allegations, Rwanda should not shy away from taking appropriate retaliatory actions in accordance with international law based on UN’s record in/on Rwanda and on the detrimental impact the report could have on the character, legitimacy and reputation of the country. Even so, as a UN member state, Rwanda would seek that the UN act out of moral obligations and based on its founding principles rather than out of contingency and opportunism.

Standing up to injustices directed against Rwandans regardless of who the aggressors has been perhaps one of the most distinguishing features of Rwanda’s character as a nation today and it can be seen as one of the key reasons behind its rapid social transformation as well as the increasing lofty standing abroad.

These ideals have brought the country thus far – winning through the power of ideas and actively promoting justice and fairness. It is the same ideals that must defeat the new wave of attacks that are seeking to hijack Rwanda’s right for self-determination as an exercise of its sovereignty. The shotgun...To Whom It May Concern approach in characterising Rwanda’s governance landscape and strategic intentions should be met with strong resistance.

The author is a graduate student of International Development, Wageningen University – The Netherlands
nezaonline@yahoo.com

© The New Times

Rwanda: The UN and NGOs – Is State Sovereignty under attack? Part II

By Felicien Mwumvaneza

It has been said, “If you do not ask the right questions, every answer seems wrong.” And I would add; when one’s motives are wrong, one’s behaviour towards others, however offensive and shameful, always seems or is assumed to be right to oneself.

There is probably no better way to describe the deliberate onslaught by some human rights organisations and mainstream media against Rwanda especially in the run up to the August 2010 presidential election to the post-election coverage, and recently, the draft UN mapping exercise report on the DR Congo.

The untold story
Even from among Rwanda’s most vocal critics, very few dispute that Rwanda’s intervention in the DR Congo in October 1996 was in accordance with international law regarding the obligation to act in self-defense. In the same vein, the conduct of the Rwandan military in the DRC operation is well known.

It is on record how the Rwandan forces bravely acted to create safe corridors to free approximately 2,000,000 refugees taken hostage by the ex-FAR, militias and genocide perpetrators in refugee camps then turned UN-supported military recruitment, training and arming bases.

The facts about how the Rwandan military successfully repatriated millions of refugees, whilst the fighters in camps used them as human shields, are also indisputable.

Yet, Rwanda’s ‘altruist’ rights advocates and ‘experts’ will not tell the principal elements of the entire story. They will not talk about the failure of the UN Security Council to protect innocent civilians killed in the 1994 genocide against the Tutsis, the starting of which ended the prospects of a peaceful end to the conflict that had been painstakingly negotiated in Arusha, Tanzania.

They will not talk about how the Rwanda Patriotic Army which at the time singlehandedly fought to stop the genocide, saved lives and arrested hundreds of thousands of killers to await trial, even where they were arrested while in action. They do not want the world to know that there were isolated cases where some Rwandan military officers or men were involved in certain crimes during the war and that these were actually prosecuted and indeed sentenced for those crimes, simply because Rwanda and its armed forces do not condone violence and crime.

They will not mention the complicity of the Security Council in authorising France to intervene in western Rwanda – a mission that to all intents and purposes enabled the genocide perpetrators to flee justice and helped to direct millions of refugees to leave the country.

They will not want to talk about the UN’s failure to meet its international obligations regarding the handling of refugees on borders and their disarmament. They would prefer to conceal the moral and legal failures for which the UN ought to be prosecuted in the first place.

It is those same refugees whom the UN now struggles to mislead the world that the Rwandan army may have committed crimes against including a possible genocide. By ignoring not only the facts but also the context of the whole situation, the United Nations decided to collaborate exclusively with non-state actors especially those who constantly attack Rwanda’s domestic policy.

There is enough evidence to suggest that the authors of the UN mapping exercise report on the DRC may have worked with Amnesty International and other such groups and their trademark practice of using facts selectively in their work on Rwanda is beginning to emerge.

The arbitrary action of the LDGL rights group in forwarding a ‘damning report’ to the UN Human Rights Council without the consent of some of its core member organisations is a case in point, although this is just the tip of the iceberg.

And now the ‘benevolent’ advocates of Rwanda with ‘extensive expertise’ on the country for 2, 4, 7, 10 or so years – depending on how they prefer to expand (or inflate?) and justify their CVs, are weighing in with an assessment of the impact of their ‘good work’ on Rwanda.

They are now suggesting to the world that the legitimacy of the Rwandan government has been undermined. Now, back in high school, this would be typical of what we used to call “dancing to your own tunes,” and it is similar to an even richer phrase in my native language, “kwikirigita ugaseka.”

Questioning legitimacy: ‘experts’ or the electorate?
Regardless of the nature of the facts about each issue raised by the critics whether in good faith or just out of ignorance; in spite of the official position as well as established practice of the government and its institutions, Rwanda’s detractors have sought to highhandedly question the country’s electoral system, it’s constitutional provisions on multiparty politics and some of its official laws particularly the genocide ideology and sectarianism laws.

Since these so-called non-governmental human rights organisations and mainstream media are not always as clever as they probably think they are or would want the selected victims of their attacks and their other audiences to believe, they are now openly, and of course maliciously, questioning the legitimacy of the Rwandan government. Thus, they cannot hide their true motives long enough; they betray their presumed subtlety.

For months they have fought tooth and nail to misrepresent the country and they are now suggesting or rather wishing that Rwanda’s and President Paul Kagame’s legitimacy has somehow been undermined – never mind the fact that his popular approval was overwhelmingly renewed in the general elections less than two months ago.

What kind of short memory could that possibly be? Yet one would have expected that the obligation to link conclusions to credible premises – effect to cause, is the basic principle of literacy in any culture and civilisation.

Even as Rwandans themselves know it would perhaps be good for Hollywood amateurs, the critics believe that the image of their fictional version of realities in and about Rwanda has been painted vividly enough and presented to the unsuspecting world audience, and that that image should now be sold to major western capitals that have important development cooperation with Rwanda.

Well, with no intentions to disappoint the united detractors of Rwanda in their agenda, it is my opinion that President Kagame’s legitimacy as well as that of his government cannot just be wished away. In addition to renewed popular legitimacy, he and his government also enjoy procedural legitimacy due to strict adherence to the rule of law, high level of accountability and reputation for zero tolerance on corruption that has led to a negligible level of corruption of the corrupt according to Transparency International.

Moreover, and perhaps the most important aspect of all, President Paul Kagame and his government enjoy a high degree of substantive legitimacy and credibility. From incredible reconstruction to the steady path of sustainable growth and socio-economic development, his government’s record of delivery on all policy fronts is something for which no expert is needed to explain.

It is an exciting turn that has caught the keen attention of the wider world. It is an approach with innovative approaches of social change in a complex post-genocide setting in which the homogeneity of the nation has been a challenge never before witnessed anywhere in history.

Rwandans are in no competition with anyone and nobody should feel challenged or threatened by their modest and innovative ways of advancing their society. Other than pouring out unwarranted criticism, serious experts ought to give honest criticism and feedback about the country, and serious researchers might soon need to use the Rwandan experience to update some of the development models.

As for the united detractors of Rwanda, it appears that they can only ignore the country’s history and context – past and present, if they are seeking pretexts for pursuing unspecified interests.

The author is a Graduate student of International Development, Wageningen University – The Netherlands

© The New Times, Rwanda



UN report on Rwanda genocide threatens stability in Central Africa

By Harry Verhoeven / September 23, 2010


Until recently, President Paul Kagame and his Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) were the international community’s aid darling, heralded for their role in stopping the 1994 genocide that claimed the lives of as many as one million Rwandans. They now stand accused of a long list of crimes.

A recently-leaked UN report accuses the RPF of atrocities “that could be classified as genocide” in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in 1996-1997 – mass murdering tens of thousands of Hutu refugees. The regime’s legitimacy and its leaders’ individual criminal responsibility are now being contested.

But how wise is it to swap one set of dangerous simplifications for another? Is Rwanda the model of progress and reconciliation, or is Kagame’s RPF the genocidal eye of Central African storms? And what does this tell us about international intervention in a region with an immensely troubled past?

Historical context

Rwanda has long suffered from powerful imagery projected onto it by self-declared friends of the country. The analyses of socio-political trends often reveal more about the “expert” expounding his truths than about what actually happens to Rwanda’s people.

A century ago, Belgian colonialists, biased by the Flemish-Walloon cleavage that undermined nation-statehood back home, portrayed the complex Hutu-Tutsi relationship as fundamentally irreconcilable, mixing racist theories with political expediency.

During the cold war, the regime of Hutu President Juvénal Habyarimana was the “enfant chéri” of development practitioners, the Catholic Church, and French President François Mitterrand. A 20-year dictatorship was deemed “a peaceful outpost” in the “dangerous” African jungle. When Mr. Habyarimana was assassinated on April 6, 1994, the regime’s core members unleashed a genocidal hell against Tutsis and some moderate Hutus.

Habyarimana’s old allies disbelievingly went into shock (Brussels) and continued support for the Hutu extremists through denial (Paris). Seeing their illusions go up in smoke was something Belgium and France handled with great difficulty, but with terrible consequences for Rwandans themselves.

Turning a blind eye

When Kagame and his predominantly Tutsi rebels took over, ending the 1994 bloodshed, a new generation fell in love with Rwanda. Anglo-Saxon politicians and aid workers combined geopolitical opportunism with genuine admiration for the RPF’s sophisticated security and good governance buzz.

Apparently willing to ignore the reprisal atrocities perpetrated by RPF forces against civilians across the country between 1995 and 1998, Bill Clinton and Tony Blair have publicly led the defense of Kagame’s team as visionary reconciliators.

The unwillingness of outside actors to critically examine their wishful thinking about Rwanda has historically proved embarrassing. But it’s also led to terrible mistakes, including the inability to prevent the genocide that killed at least 800,000 people.

However, the problem is not just that Rwanda has been imagined as a non-existent African Shangri-La. It’s also that some armchair critics have often gone so over the top in demonizing the RPF – seldom based on any thorough, on-the-ground research – that the movement handily dismisses essentially legitimate concerns as baseless accusations. One Rwandan diplomat called the leaked UN report “an amateurish NGO job.”

Blaming Kagame

It was once mandatory to demand “empathy” for the war-ravaged country’s authoritarian government. Today it is becoming fashionable among some to blame the regime – and Kagame himself – for almost all Central Africa’s wrongs. Desiring to denounce the RPF as the brilliantly evil organization “you love to hate,” too many commentators are now recklessly amalgamating charges of human rights violations, corruption, and bad policy.

Some are coming dangerously close to embracing revisionism about the 1994 crimes, too.

The conventional and well-documented account of the genocide is that government forces, extremist militias, and ordinary Hutus murdered at least 800,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutu Rwandans in less than 100 days, following the assassination of “their” president, Habyarimana. An entire propaganda machine and a brutally crafted extermination ideology fuelled the massacres in churches, schools, and homes.

Dangers of a "double genocide" theory

Today, the idea of a “double genocide” is gaining strength, suggesting that the madness of 1994 was less a one-sided ethnic cleansing of Tutsis, but part of a long and vicious fight between Hutus and Tutsis that became “uncontrollable.” Unfortunately, and shamefully, it is no longer just Hutu génocidaires and their French silent accomplices who suggest the “double genocide” hypothesis, conveniently trivializing two decades of anti-Tutsi massacres.

Former NATO secretary-general Willy Claes was the Belgian Foreign Minister in 1994, and driving force behind the withdrawal of UN peacekeepers from Rwanda during the genocide. He recently called Kagame co-responsible for the extermination of hundreds of thousands of Rwandans. Numerous journalists, scholars, and activists are now jumping on the new UN report’s controversial hypotheses, claiming it offers supreme evidence of the culpability of a regime they loathe (for doctrinal or fashionable reasons).

Some even go so far as to theorize: If the RPF waged an extermination campaign in DRC in 1996-1997, then perhaps it also co-engineered the 1994 events so that it could take over power?

The real need to hold people accountable for what happened to the 200,000 Hutu refugees in the DRC during that time is at risk of being merged with the problematic agendas of genocide revisionists and not particularly innocent RPF detractors.

UN failures

Debate over the technicalities of genocide seldom leads to concrete improvements on the ground. For example: The counterproductive debate about genocide in Darfur did little or nothing to end impunity and increase accountability in the Sudanese region. The risk is particularly acute because the report’s author, the UN, has not done a particularly good job of owning up to its own catastrophic failures in Central Africa.
This includes its shameful role in the 1994 Rwandan genocide, but also its shocking inability to neutralize tens of thousands heavily-armed génocidaires in the very refugee camps where it alleges the RPF massacred civilians. The UN would have far more moral credibility and political leverage to finally do something about the DRC atrocities if it had done its utmost to solve the deadly embrace between Eastern Congo and Rwanda during the past 16 years.

Unfortunately, the international community has yet to fully accept the devastating responsibility of Security Council members in this ongoing tragedy.

A treacherous time for Rwanda

Moreover, the debate is re-ignited at a treacherous time for Rwanda. Despite the semblance of a secure hold on power due to Kagame winning an impressive, and controversial, 93 percent of the vote in the last presidential election, tensions are rife in the Rwandan capital, Kigali.

The RPF leadership remains an ultra-professional, but deeply paranoid, military organization, not an ordinary political party. Formal institutions collide with the informal logic of a leadership that thinks like a guerilla movement, in uncompromising terms. The RPF’s security-obsessed hardcore has disintegrated rapidly in recent years. The rivalry problem between Kagame and his former lieutenants (Kayumba Nyamwasa and Patrick Karegyeya) is not about policy but power. Politics in the (increasingly fragmented) RPF is more than ever based on “nobody trusts nobody” anymore.

The Kagame regime, both internally and externally, sees its legitimacy to rule as inextricably tied to having ended the 1994 “genocide.” Standing accused of the most heinous of crimes is more than a diplomatic insult. It’s questioning the regime’s right to rule.

Consequences for Central African stability

The RPF core will react the way it has learned to respond to such threats – by going on the offensive. (Withdrawing its blue-helmets from the Darfur peacekeeping force, as the RPF has threatened to do? Stirring up trouble in Eastern Congo to show it’s indispensable as a force for stability there?) At best, it will offer temporary tactical concessions through on-and-off negotiations.

Ultimately, the RPF will consider itself vindicated in its initial distrust of the outside world, shutting down avenues of mutual listening and further squashing internal dissent.

The inconvenient truth is this: With its genocide reference, this perhaps well-intended report will probably be counter-productive to justice and stability in Central Africa. It was written at a terribly sensitive moment, by an organization that is in no position to lecture Rwanda about accepting responsibility.

The chances of the leaked document leading to increased accountability for crimes in DRC of RPF officials seem nil. Calling the atrocities “genocidal” spices up the debate, but doesn’t further the cause of peaceful politics inside Kigali, and doesn’t necessarily bring justice any closer for eastern Congo massacres.

Harry Verhoeven is a doctoral student at the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford. He heads the Oxford University China-Africa Network (OUCAN) is co-authoring a research project on the aftermath of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, “Point of No Return. Kabila, the Rwandan Patriotic Front and the Internal Dynamics of the Great African War.”

@ Christian Science Monitor

African Union to protest UN report in New York

Report from Rwanda News Agency by RNA Reporter
Sunday, 19 September 2010; 12:44:

(Kigali) - The African Union is tipped to use the 65th Session of the United Nations General Assembly to force amendments on the report that accuses Rwanda of alleged Genocide in DR Congo.

The session that gets under way on Monday in New York has been rocked by the leaking of the report linking Rwanda troops to genocide in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The UN was left with egg on its face after the contents of the 600-page draft report was leaked, prompting the secretary-general Ban Ki-moon to fly to Rwanda to ease tensions.

Former and current diplomats told the Kenyan newspaper ‘Sunday Nation’ that the African Union will seek changes to the document as a show of solidarity with Rwanda which has become a major player on the continent.

Another former ambassador and now university don, Prof Frank Matanga, says the leak has exposed the  and left it with no option but to cause the amendments as demanded by Rwanda.

The recognition of Rwanda’s growing importance in African affairs, Prof Kikaya added, should provide a good starting point to mobilise the AU block to demand tighter structures to forestall any future leaks.

“The burden is on Rwanda’s diplomatic corps to lobby the African caucus to give its position on this matter,” he told the Kenyan daily.

Rwanda’s growing importance in the continent since the genocide in 1994 can be seen in its peace efforts in the region.

It currently has 3300 peacekeeping force and 86 police serving with a joint UN and African Union force (Unamid) in the troubled western Sudanese region of Darfur. It is led by Rwandan Lt Gen Patrick Nyamyumba.

Another 256 troops serve with the UN Mission in Sudan (Unmis), which is supporting the implementation of a peace deal between north and south.

“Rwanda was the first country to send troops to a very treacherous place to monitor implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement. It therefore pioneered the African-based force,” Prof Kikaya pointed out.

Instead of bashing Rwanda, the UN should be thanking the country for evolving African-based peace keeping in the continent, added Prof Kikaya.

The fact that the report also names Uganda, Zimbabwe, Angola and Burundi, it creates sympathy among other African leaders to fall behind their colleagues, according to diplomats.

President Kagame will also meet with UN Secretary General Ban ki-moon and other top UN officials as part of Rwanda’s offensive against the report due to be released on October 01.

Rwanda, the UN and NGOs: Is State Sovereignty under attack?

By Felicien Mwumvaneza

The process of globalisation with associated spread in communication technologies has ubiquitously changed and shifted the ways in which states and non-state entities function.

It is no longer easy for states, albeit not impossible, to control a massive amount of information that goes around in print, on airwaves and through the internet, especially when the ideas circulated are highly erroneous and evidently detrimental to the character and interests of the concerned state or person. However, there is a level beyond which what goes on in the media and NGO world cannot be considered merely as business as usual.

Well, Rwanda has seen and had its unfair share because of this unique turn in modern times. The country has received a barrage of criticism in recent times especially from her perennial critics such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Reporters Without Borders.

Some in the mainstream media too have found something newsworthy, telegenic and photogenic, although their criticisms are often contradictory and based on inaccurate claims.

Moreover, since these organisations seem to be answerable to nobody, issues of credibility and morality regarding the methods and quality of their work are not something they would lose sleep over. It would be fine if they just didn’t care about reputation and ethical principles in their own right, but it raises serious questions when it come to how their work is recognised within inter-governmental organisations such as the United Nations.

While this trend is neither new nor surprising, the United Nation’s links to this kind of behaviour is a sad chapter in the history of the world body. It is one thing for non-state actors to make all sorts reckless allegations against a state, just at whim, but it is quite another when the UN makes unsubstantiated and dangerous claims against some of its independent and sovereign member states.

Unanswered questions
When you read the draft UN report on the DRC that was leaked to the press nearly two weeks ago and Amnesty International’s report entitled Rwandese-controlled eastern DRC: Devastating human toll published on June 19, 2001, you hardly find any difference between the two reports. They are similar both in content and the allegations made and even in the format used, the major difference being in the volume and scope of the two reports.

In fact, you may think the UN draft report is just a new edition of the aforementioned and other reports by Amnesty International. The authors of the leaked UN inconclusive report did not make any efforts to ensure that the readers don’t conclude that the UN report either was co-authored with Amnesty International or at least largely drew its content from the organisation’s various reports and those of its partner organisations in the region.

Given that the data collection methodology of the report is far from empirical, its content highly controversial and the circumstances surrounding its leak to the press extremely questionable, the UN should appreciate that comments and criticisms of its actions in this case are legitimate and not meant in an offensive spirit.

The underhand methods in the whole process of compiling the report that mostly, if not exclusively, involved NGOs, serves to undermine the UN’s credibility. For the UN to accord NGOs political acceptance (and in the DRC case, political and credibility pre-eminence) over state actors is an absurd thing to do and might jeopardise the foundational principles of the United Nations and further damage its already poor record particularly in Rwanda and the DRC.

The UN relied on accounts from hundreds of NGOs and individuals who they claim are victims of the alleged human rights abuses in the DRC, whether or not they include those who are still running away from justice back in Rwanda is to them not an issue.

Can one even assume that the UN is not aware that these non-governmental organisations represent a wide spectrum of political views in the conflict-ridden region? How could the UN neglect its primary duty to respect the normal verification procedures of determining the accuracy and reliability of the massive information from non-state actors against member states, by giving governments concerned an opportunity to provide their own account?

How can the UN justify its impartiality and lack of political bias when the decision to allow governments to comment on the leaked report at all was only ad hoc, apparently largely due to Rwanda’s warning that it would withdraw its troops from UN peacekeeping operations, if the report was published in the form in which it was leaked?

The statements from New York and indeed from Mr. Ban Ki Moon himself, while on his recent impromptu visit to Kigali, have made it clear that concerned governments’ comments will be published “alongside the report itself on 1 October, if they so wish.” How does the UN expect Rwanda and other concerned governments to be as naive and credulous as to be content with the offer to publish their comments only in annex form? If the UN had genuine commitment to get it right at this stage, it would have sent a clear message to its concerned member states that their comments would be used to reconsider the substantive content of the draft report itself.

If Mr. Ban is indeed disappointed that the report by the organisation he heads as chief diplomat was leaked, why hasn’t he shown the initiative and willingness to propose that the UN launch an investigation to find out who was behind the leak and what the motive was?

In all of these cases, therefore, the UN has once again missed the opportunity to demonstrate expected neutral judgement. While it may be a normal bureaucratic and diplomatic game at the United Nations, it carries serious national security and indeed existential threats for Rwanda and it is the kind of game, which I hope, the Rwandan government cannot and should not be prepared to tolerate.

Ban Ki-Moon Visits Rwanda

THE United Nations Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, arrived in the country yesterday on an impromptu visit aimed at discussing with the Rwandan government the controversial leaked draft UN report alleging that Rwandan troops could have committed human rights abuses in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).


The report titled “Democratic Republic of the Congo Human Rights Mapping” compiled by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, has been dismissed by Rwanda as “malicious and threatened to withdraw its peacekeeping troops from Sudan.

According to th Government Spokesperson and Minister of Foreign Affairs Louise Mushikiwabo, Ki-moon is expected to hold talks this morning with President Paul Kagame over the report which has also been condemned by both the DRC and Uganda.

“The Secretary General decided to visit Kigali to speak directly with the Rwandan President and other government officials about their concern regarding the Democratic Republic of the Congo Human Rights mapping report compiled by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.” Mushikiwabo said in statement to the media.

The UN Chief was accompanied by Roger Meece, the UN Special Representative for DR Congo, Alain Le Roy, the UN Under-Secretary General for peacekeeping operations as well as Ivan Simonovic, the Assistant Secretary General for Human Rights.
The UN last week delayed publication of the report which was supposed to be published on September 2 to October 1 to give Rwanda and the other nations mentioned in the report more time to submit their views.

Last week, the Government of Rwanda announced that it was ready to withdraw over 3,500 troops serving under the UNAMID/UNAMIS peacekeeping missions in Sudan, with Mushikiwabo arguing that an army that is preventing a possible Genocide in Darfur cannot be accused of doing the same somewhere else.

Courtesy of the New Times

100 Reasons to Re-elect Paul Kagame for President of Rwanda

1. Education

1. Ensuring 9-Year Basic Education for all Rwandan children that will tremendously improve literacy levels in the country

2. A promise to have Universal Secondary Education by 2017

3. Making education accessible by all with no segregations, particularly promoting Girls’ and Special Needs’ education

4. Encouraging parents and communities’ involvement in education

5. Introducing English as medium of instruction in schools to make Rwanda more competitive on the global stage

6. Creating 14 new Higher Learning Institutions, almost tripling Higher Education enrolment in 7 year years

7. Providing scholarships to the best and brightest Rwandan students to pursue their studies in the best universities of Europe and North America;

8. Promising to achieve 100% literacy by 2017 through effective adult education;

9. Introducing technology in schools starting with primary schools under the ’One Laptop Per Child’ program

10. Increasing the number of qualified teachers at all levels of education through effective distance learning and in-service training and remunerating them adequately.

2. Health

1. Raising the life expectancy in Rwanda from 43 to 53 years;

2. Introducing 6 types of health insurance including the famous “Mutuelle de Santé” resulting in a health insurance coverage of 94% of the population;

3. Introducing universal immunisation programmes;

4. Introducing health awareness programs;

5. Reducing deaths from malaria by 75%;

6. Reducing infant mortality by 70%;

7. Reducing HIV infections from 9 percent to 2%;

8. Building a clinic in every sector;

9. Reducing water-borne diseases by 60%;

10. Ensuring that more doctors and nurses are trained and deployed evenly across the country

3. Justice

1. Trying over 1,100,000 cases in the Gacaca court system;

2. Undertaking a complete restructuring of the justice sector;

3. Introducing many laws for different sectors that brings orderliness in State functioning;

4. Releasing over 80,000 genocide convicts safely into the community while ensuring law and order in the society;

5. Making convicted prisoners give back to society through work schemes;

6. Building over 100 new courts of law;

7. Training over 300 new judges;

8. Creating an independent judicially and an independent Judge selection process;

9. Promoting local mediation services to reduce backlog of court cases;

10. Introducing the commercial courts and streamlining the justice system by merging the administration process;

4. Agriculture

1. Introducing crop intensification programme and boosting agricultural production by 10 percent annually;

2. Introducing the cooperative system to buy produce from farmers;

3. Diversifying the crops cultivated through sensitisation;

4. Significantly reducing poverty and mal-nutrition through the one cow per family: “the Girinka” programme;

5. Introducing a phone text service that can inform farmers of the latest crop prices

6. Making subsidized seeds and fertilizers available on credit;

7. Promoting mechanised agriculture through a scheme of 1 tractor per village

8. Making veterinarians more widely spread across the country

9. Introducing irrigation farming

10. Making ‘hunger’ a history in our country

5. Economy

1. Increasing average earnings of Rwandans from $220 to $560 in 7 years!

2. Strengthening the private sector and streamlining doing business in Rwanda;

3. Increasing the tax base and total revenue collected domestically ;

4. Promoting credit to small to medium sized enterprises;

5. Increasing domestic funding of government to development projects in national budget from 10% to 50%;

6. Promoting transparency by fighting corruption;

7. Diversifying the economy by promoting new sectors like mining and tourism;

8. Promoting foreign direct investment to nearly $1 billion annually;

9. Making poverty-reduction the hallmark of economic development;

10. Cutting down on government expenditure through initiatives like reducing on the number of government vehicles;

6. Security

1. Making Rwanda one of the safest places in the world

2. Devolving security responsibility down to the local level

3. Reducing crime through local initiatives

4. Professionalising the Army and integrating former hostile elements

5. Fighting impunity and corruption in the army and hence cementing discipline

6. Sending Rwandan soldiers and Police officers to keep peace in war ravaged places like Darfur, Haiti, Liberia, etc.

7. Introducing electronic ID cards to all adults

8. Instituting a police force that is disciplined and highly professional

9. Establishing a credit scheme for the Army and Police

10. Making peace with neighbours like Democratic Republic of Congo

7. Foreign policy

1. Making Rwanda a respected partner in regional and international affairs

2. Improving Rwanda’s relations with former hostile nations like France and DRC

3. Making Rwanda one of the biggest contributors of peace-keepers in the UN

4. Working tirelessly to track and prosecute Genocide suspects

5. Joining the East African Community and the Commonwealth

6. Being one of the foremost advocates of fully integrated EAC

7. Relentlessly promoting Rwanda abroad and expanding her relations to countries such as Australia, Singapore, South Korea, etc.

8. Chairing powerful global initiatives like the UN MDGs and the ITU Broadband Commission and serving on the Advisory board of the World Bank.

9. Creating special friends for Rwanda that have always defended our cause.

10. Refusing to be bullied by the west and always insisting on an equal voice for Africa on the global scene.

8. Technology

1. Making ICT the main focus of our long-term development

2. Making technology integral to government service provision

3. Supporting the one laptop per child policy

4. Laying thousands of kilometres of fibre-optic cables

5. Connecting all government centers to the internet

6. Abolishing import duties on ICT equipment

7. Building one of the best telephone network systems in the region

8. Strongly advocating for undersea cable to land on EA coastline and now eventually in Rwanda

9. Turning Rwanda into an influential country on ICT global issues

10. Emphasising on ICTs in our education programs and setting up institutions to oversee this program

9. Infrastructure

1. Constructing good roads across the country

2. Building communication towers to help link outlying areas

3. Setting up building regulations to improve basic infrastructure

4. Reducing tax on building materials to encourage growth of the industry

5. Bringing electricity to all major areas, with plans to expand it to every village

6. Coming up with a master plan and securing funding for a new international airport

7. Advocating for Isaka railway line which will reduce transport costs

8. Ensuring that Kigali master plan is implemented

9. Building district and sector headquarters nationwide

10. Investing heavily in ICT infrastructure

10. Kagame, the man

1. He is a man of principle and values

2. He is pragmatic and ready to make tough choices in the interest of his country

3. He promises and delivers

4. He is patriotic and wants the best for Rwandans

5. He is a visionary and inspirational leader

6. He is intelligent, skilful and innovative

7. He is a humble man who does not value personal gains

8. He is not a man to bully and he is never shaken by circumstances

9. He has a humble background that shapes his character as a down-to-earth leader

10. He is a family man and cherishes family values

"You Do Not Change a Winning Team"

Democracy and Genocide Denial Politics in Rwanda | Atlantic Council

Democracy and Genocide Denial Politics in Rwanda Atlantic Council

The New Times - Rwandas First Daily :: Issue 14326 :: Rwanda’s internet fastest in the region

Rwanda’s internet fastest in the region

There is no apathy in nation building

By Felicien Mwumvaneza

A member of the parliament of Rwanda has proposed the enactment of a law for mandatory voting and asked that a debate be initiated in the house on the issue.
While reading the story my first instinct was that participation in the political process in general and voting in particular are citizen rights and not duties, and therefore making it mandatory to vote would be an infringement on peoples’ rights.

After due reflection however, I think that much as we cherish all our citizen rights and freedoms, it is our duty to ensure that those rights and freedoms are preserved and protected by making our voices heard.
Not only should everyone take part in the political process through the election of leaders and policy makers to preserve their freedoms, but each citizen’s active participation is also the best way to guarantee the quality of those rights and freedoms.

Democracy has stood the test of time so far as the best form of government; the government of the people, by the people and for the people, where elected leaders of society make and enforce different types of policies on the people’s behalf.

The Rwandan people have come a long way in nation building and are on a steady path to change their lives for the better, and in a democracy the best policies and strategies are validated through the people’s will.

Courtesy of 'The New Times', Rwanda





 
 
 
Kigali City Tower

FPR-Inkotanyi, Msingi wa mabadiliko

FPR-Inkotanyi, Msingi wa mabadiliko

Rwanda’s mobile broadband is Africa’s first

By Michael Malakata

Little known by the outside world until genocide tore the country apart 15 years ago, Rwanda has become the first nation to launch a wireless broadbandI Internet facility in Africa.
Little known by the outside world until genocide tore the country apart 15 years ago, Rwanda has become the first nation to launch a wireless broadbandI Internet facility in Africa.
Unlike other countries in Africa, where mobile broadband Internet connection is restricted to a few buildings, Rwanda’s capital city, Kigali, has become the first capital city in Africa broadly offering high-speed services, overtaking Nigeria and South Africa, Africa’s biggest telecom markets in terms of both investment and users.

The launch of the wireless facility means that Rwandese will now be able to surf the Internet anywhere and anytime in the capital city using their laptops.
The US$7.7 million wireless internet facility has been built by Korea Telecom, South Korea’s largest fixed line operator. Korea Telecom is a prominent South Korean integrated wired and wireless telecom service provider. The contract to build the wireless Internet facility was awarded to Korea Telecom in 2007 by the Rwandan government. The service is based on WiBro technology, the South Korean version of the mobile WiMax IEEE 802.16e specification, and will offer 5.5Mbps and 2Mbps connection speeds.

The launch of the wireless internet facility also marks the entry of wireless broadband technology in Africa. “By launching the wireless facility, Rwanda has become the ICT hub not just in east Africa but the whole Africa. Other countries must surely follow the footsteps of Rwanda,” said Mwape Mutale, CEO of the center for ICT development in Africa.
In addition to the wireless broadband internet facility, Korea Telecom is also constructing a US$40 million Kigali Metropolitan Network project. The Kigali Metropolitan Network project is based on on a fiber-optic loop and will be the largest computer network in Rwanda, providing connectivity for local area networks. The Rwandan government claims over 45 government institutions have already been connected to the high-speed Internet facility.

The Rwanda Metropolitan Network will be completed next year, according to Rwanda Development Board (RDB) deputy chief executive in charge of information technology Patrick Nyirishema. Rwanda’s vision is to promote and facilitate modern infrastructure development by 2020. In the next three years, the Rwandan government is aiming to provide access to high speed Internet to more than 4 million Rwandans through the wireless Internet facility and the Kigali Metropolitan Network project.

Until last year, Rwanda was also the first country in Africa to have a mobile phone assembling plant through a company called A-Link Technologies. Early this year, the world Bank provided $24 million to Rwanda for the provision of broadband connectivity and access to low-cost international connectivity through the connection to the undersea cables in east Africa

Courtesy of IDG News

A crisis cannot be willed into happening!

By Pan Butamire

“There I was, standing in the rain, getting soaked while waiting for a cab……[when he] removed himself from his security detail……to walk over and ……share his umbrella with me,” said Tom Murro.

Murro was talking about Rwandan President Paul Kagame, who had just officiated over the launching ceremony of the Tribeca Film Festival in Manhattan, New York.

The president was walking out after watching the screening of “Earth Made of Glass”, a documentary on Rwanda. As it was raining outside, President Kagame walked over to where Murro was soaking in the rain.

Writes Andrew Lagomarsino: “Paul Kagame ……has seen a lifetime of pain and suffering……and his gentle act of kindness made an impression……[Can you imagine] helping a total stranger in public?”

Flash back to another scene in Rwanda. “‘Please call my father’, he whispered. ‘He has no idea where I am,’” wrote Jefferey Gettleman.

Gettleman is American, and he is the East Africa Bureau Chief of ‘The New York Times’. He was recounting the story of his visit to Iwawa, a Rwandan island in Lake Kivu.

He talks about a request made to him by a young Rwandan man whose names, he says, are Gasigwa Gakunzi.

The young Gakunzi is one of a number of young Rwandans who “are learning skills like bricklaying, hairdressing and motorcycle maintenance,” Mr. Gettleman assures us.

All very well, except that Mr. Gettleman reveals to us that the people on that island “describe it as an Alcatraz”. So, it is not an ordinary island.

Thanks to my privileged access to the Internet’s Google, now I can tell that Alcatraz Island is in the San Francisco Bay and was the seat of an impregnable prison until 1963.
But no, the people of Iwawa, who’d need to know English even if computers, leave alone the Internet, were to be available there, have beaten me to it. They know what an “Alcatraz” is!

That aside, anyway Mr. Gettleman continues to reveal their identities without the least care, in a country whose leadership he qualifies as “repressive and Orwellian”!

“‘We call it the island of no return,’ said Esperance Uwizeyimana, a homeless mother,” confirms Mr. Gettleman. And he quotes officials of the institution, too. “‘This isn’t a good place for children,’ one employee said in hushed tones because the minister was nearby. ‘They could get abused.’”
An “Orwellian state” and yet Gettleman mingles freely with people who’ve been banished to “the Alcatraz” of Africa, after which he exposes their names to a “repressive government” and then leaves them high and dry.

Moreover, the “Orwellian state” does not notice and stop him, despite his being the lone White man, dome covered in conspicuously bushy curls, amidst an ocean of maroon uniforms.

Suppose, anyway, that he was able to listen to them. It would mean that the young man, the lady and the “prison official”, on top of knowing what an “Alcatraz” is, speak English. Buggers belief!

In fact, Gettleman says the young man in the “prison camp”, Gakunzi, had all the time to tell him his names and the long story of how he (Gakunzi) was watching pay TV when he was “abducted”.

Surely, a man who travels all the way to Rwanda to expose the plight of the oppressed souls of that country would care to contact the father of that poor boy. But then, a scoop is what we want and, haven’t we got it?

And while we are at it, wouldn’t any one wonder why his camera does not capture any of the “children” in that “camp” that he talks about?

Among the glossy pictures that he splashes around showing uniformed young men and their mattresses, not a single one of those “children”?

However, first things first: the two scenes mentioned in the opening paragraphs. Two individuals: one a Rwandan in USA, the other an American in Rwanda.

The Rwandan tears himself away from his security minders to go to the assistance of someone in the rain. Always mindful of the other, whatever their colour or station. That is today’s Rwanda for you.

The American gladly accepts a ride from a Rwandan minister but his mission is to serve the order from his editor. I can imagine it: “There must something rotten in Rwanda. Get behind the façade and give me something I can chew into. Get me a scoop!”

And off goes Genttleman, always mindful of his job, whatever its accompanying damage or the inaccuracy of his story.

But the lies peddled are downright dirt. Yet, even later when the truth comes out, his editor will be more mindful of his newspaper’s reputation and will never want to reveal to its paying readership and advertising community that it erred.

It might earn Gettleman a reprimand and that will be it. But, surely, the most gullible world cannot believe that Rwanda has abducted and taken its youths into concentration camps in the name of showing a clean, orderly face.

Are members of the diplomatic corps based in Rwanda, or visiting dignitaries, so gullible that they can visit these young Rwandans without noticing that they are in a concentration camp? Or maybe all the uniformed pupils of Rwanda are in concentration camps!

How come whoever visits this rehabilitation and skills-acquisition centre always lauds the genuine efforts of the Rwandan government? Which is why Minister Mitali didn’t mind taking Gettleman along, in the first place.

It may take long, but Mr. Gettelman must realise that the world will in the end shed its gullibility and know that all this hype about a crisis in Rwanda before elections is a creature of the foreign media and job-and-name-seeking activists.

Even as a liberation movement, The Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) always advanced its objective as bringing justice to Rwanda, where no Rwandan ever exerted undue influence over any other Rwandan or anybody else.

To-date, RPF’s raison d’être is the eradication of injustice to any Rwandan, young and old. That is how Rwanda has become a country where everyone is accorded their dignity and impunity has been uprooted.

Instead of exposing a crisis, Gettleman only succeeds in showing us why he has a “t” where he should an “n”!

Courtesy of The New Times, Rwanda