08 November 2010

Jérôme Nayigiziki is the General Secretary of the Party for Democracy in Rwanda (PDR-IHUMURE)

 PRESS RELEASE

THE PDR-Ihumure strongly condemns the on-going all-out persecution and demonization campaign of Hotel Rwanda hero Paul Rusesabagina and other political opponents by the desperate RPF government of President Paul Kagame

Two weeks ago, on October 27, 2010, the PDR-Ihumure woke up to astounding news that Rwanda’s general prosecutor Martin Ngoga had declared the intention of the Rwandan RPF government to bring criminal charges against Paul Rusesabagina, because Rwanda has “evidence that Paul Rusesabagina is one of those others who have been financing the same genocidal rebels of the FDLR.” The accusations are in connection with those leveled against Victoire Ingabire, leader of the FDU-Inkingi opposition party, who was  arrested on October 14, 2010 in Kigali on allegations that she has funded the FDLR rebel group. Victoire Ingabire has rejected the charges against her as politically motivated. On his part, Paul Rusesabagina has also gone on the air with many world news organizations to refute the charges against him.

The PDR-Ihumure would like to remind the public that this is not the first time Kagame’s RPF government has tried to tarnish the image of Paul Rusesabagina. In September 2007, during a Chicago conference to launch Hotel Rwanda Rusesabagina Foundation’s initiative for “Peace and Reconciliation Commission in Rwanda” (PRC), Rwanda’s Ambassador James Kimonyo stunned the audience by making outlandish claims that former American Ambassadors Robert Krueger and Robert Flaten, had purchased weapons in Cape Town in South Africa in January 2007 along with Paul Rusesabagina, in order to stage an armed attack on Rwanda. Also present as sponsor of the conference was Reverend Jesse Jackson Sr. Both Ambassadors and Rusesabagina immediately dismantled the charges as a figment of Kimonyo’s fecund imagination. Three years later, similar charges are being made again, this time specifically linking Rusesabagina with the FDLR rebel group.

It is critical to underscore the timing of charges both in 2007 and today. In 2007, the RPF government feared the potential strength of a movement that threatened to rise out of this “Peace and Reconciliation Commission” initiative which enjoyed significant backing from Jesse Jackson, the Ambassadors, many leaders in the U.S government, and the Rwandan Hutu refugee community in America and Europe. Therefore, it needed to discredit the standard bearer of this movement, Paul Rusesabagina.

This year, Paul Rusesabagina was asked to assume the leadership of the DIRHI (Dialogue Inter-Rwandais Hautement Inclusif) initiative, a newly-created powerful entity boasting a large membership of Rwandan political and civil society organizations, including the Hotel Rwanda Rusesabagina Foundation (HRRF). So, once again, Kagame’s RPF government has detected a potential threat in this new initiative, and has decided to go nuclear by bringing terrorism charges against its leader.

Of course Kagame’s degree of apprehension is doubly heightened by the recent release of the Mapping report by the UN, whose damage to his moral legitimacy and credibility as Rwanda’s leader has been absolutely devastating with no end in sight. In fact, things will only get worse when the first arrest warrants are issued and prosecutions get under way. There is also the added threat represented by his defected former Tutsi collaborators, general Kayumba Nyamwasa, colonel Patrick Karegeya, former prosecutor general Gerald Gahima and former presidential advisor Théogène Rudasingwa, who have publicly called for the removal of the RPF regime. Consequently, Kagame like a wounded animal is resorting to extreme measures to inflict damage on his political opponents, including physical elimination, as he faces steep challenges from several fronts with his regime teetering on its last leg.

Paul Rusesabagina’s home in Brussels has been the subject of night armed burglaries three times in the last four years. Each time he luckily survived by not being at home at the time of attack. A week ago, his home was burglarized again as he lay in a Brussels hospital bed, and a lot of documents were taken away. This kind of demonization accompanied by physical elimination attempts cannot be taken lightly. However, Rusesabagina should stand firm and fight Kagame’s dictatorship even harder, drawing comfort from knowledge that even Nelson Mandela himself was often disparaged and smeared as a terrorist in an effort to bring him down. 

The DPR-Ihumure is convinced President Kagame’s days are numbered and his regime has started its final downward spiral. Kagame himself knows it very well. When he says “They call me Hitler but I don’t care”, that is the cynicism of a bitter man who knows his end is near. This man is a dictator of the worst kind for whom power is nothing but a tool to amass wealth, build mansions and high rise buildings as well as buy private airplanes out of taxpayers’ money and foreign aid, jail his political opponents and decapitate others, and kill as many people as possible as in the DRC case, rather than serve the well-being interests of the population. He doesn’t give a damn, as he often says.

We condemn the on-going vicious demonization campaign against political opponents by the RPF regime, and call on dictator Kagame to lay off Paul Rusesabagina. We ask that all political prisoners, namely Victoire Ingabire, Bernard Ntaganda, Déogratias Mushayidi, Charles Ntakirutinka, and many others, who are incarcerated under terrible living conditions, be released without conditions or further delay. We urge the international community to initiate without delay the arrest and immediate prosecution of suspected criminals within the RPF government of President Kagame as documented in the UN Mapping report.

Jérôme Nayigiziki

General Secretary
PDR-Ihumure
Washington, DC

PDR-Ihumure Hails UN Mapping Report on DRC by Jérôme Nayigiziki

01 October 2010

Jérôme Nayigiziki is the General Secretary of the Party for Democracy in Rwanda (PDR-IHUMURE)

PRESS RELEASE No. PDR-01/10/2010

PDR-Ihumure Hails UN Mapping Report on DRC

The Party for Democracy in Rwanda (PDR-Ihumure) welcomes the recent official publication by the UN of the Mapping report documenting war crimes, crimes against humanity, and possibly the crime of genocide committed in the Democratic Republic of Congo from 1993 to 2003 by the army of President Paul Kagame’s Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) regime.

While the UN’s publication of this report is a very positive step in the direction of eradicating a 20-year old culture of impunity in DRC, Rwanda and the Great Lakes region of Africa, the real test will be bringing to justice those suspected of having perpetrated the horrendous crimes in the region.

The whole world, especially Rwandans and Congolese who have lost loved ones and have suffered the most from the Congo conflict, expect all suspects, including leaders of all armed groups implicated in the mass massacres, to be arrested and brought to justice, beginning with leaders of Rwanda’s RPF army. Indeed, it must always be kept in mind that the culture of mass violence never existed in the region until the RPF arrived on the scene by invading Rwanda on October 1, 1990. From that moment until today, every crime committed in the region has been a direct consequence of the RPF’s logic of violence at the expense of the logic of peace and negotiations. That is why there will be a deep sense of betrayal, bias and one-sided justice if the UN does not arrest members of the Rwandan army whose warmongering proclivities, power grab through violence in Rwanda and greed for minerals in the DRC created this whole tragedy.

One thing seems certain: the road to justice in the region will be long, and will require unshakable courage and determination on the part of the UN leadership. It already seems inevitable that Rwanda will need a Mapping report of its own if there is ever going to be real justice and reconciliation in the country, because the killings - not just in 1994 - simply have been too cruel, too systematic and too widespread, and have occurred for far too long to ignore. Also, the international community must bear in mind the serious consequences of letting the RPF regime continue to run Rwanda when the leadership of that same regime stands accused of crimes against humanity, war crimes, and possibly the crime of genocide, not just in the DRC but also in Rwanda as well. In the very minimum, President Kagame should be pressured to free immediately and without condition all political prisoners from jails or house arrest.

The PDR-Ihumure applauds the outstanding leadership of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Ms. Navi Pillay for standing up against impunity in favor of justice and human life in the DRC, Rwanda, and the entire Great Lakes region of Africa.

Done in Washington, DC - USA
October 01, 2010

Jérôme Nayigiziki
General Secretary
PDR-Ihumure

5 August 2010        

Robert Krueger has served as a U.S. congressman, senator, ambassador at large for Mexican affairs, ambassador to Burundi, and ambassador to Botswana.      

Rwanda's president fought to end the country's 1994 genocide -- then used it to justify his own awful rule.  

On Aug. 9, Paul Kagame's mandate as president of Rwanda will be renewed in an election in which he will probably receive, as before, about 94 percent of the vote. Rwandan journalists who criticized him are in prison; some of his earlier would-be opponents are dead, in prison, or in exile. Rwandan elections have no more uncertainty than those in the Soviet Politburo of Brezhnev's day.      

Some American church leaders will be pleased that Kagame, whom they see as a God-fearing man, will continue to lead a nation that suffered the planet's worst genocide in the last 20 years. Many corporate leaders and economists will be pleased that the government of a Central African country claiming the fastest economic growth in its region has won again. Only justice, democracy, and the silent and terrified majority of the Rwandan population will have lost.       

The most striking thing in the room was Kagame himself, a man with a sorcerer's air about him, dressed in a dark suit too large for his rail-thin body.

I first met Kagame in September 1994, just two months after the Tutsi forces of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) had defeated the Hutu genocidaires and captured the capital city of Kigali. As U.S. ambassador to neighboring Burundi, I had been invited to join U.S. Undersecretary of State Tim Wirth and U.S. Ambassador to Rwanda David Rawson for a two-hour meeting with Kagame, then the leader of the RPF. On the drive to his headquarters in downtown Kigali from the airport, half the buildings in the capital still lacked windows; shattered glass littered the streets.      

We entered a large, shadowy office with cement floors and walls. The most striking thing in the room was Kagame himself, a man with a sorcerer's air about him, dressed in a dark suit too large for his rail-thin body. (Fine tailoring is often a victim of civil war, especially for guerrilla leaders.)      

My perceptions of Kagame undoubtedly had been shaped by my earlier interviews with some of the 100,000 Rwandan Hutu refugees who had arrived in Burundi over the previous two months. They had been coming at a rate of more than 1,000 a day since Kagame's victory, and were living on bare ground under blue plastic sheeting provided by the United Nations, stretched over branches torn from surrounding trees. When I asked them when they would return home, they invariably replied, "Whenever the RPF stops killing us." A counter-genocide by Kagame's all-Tutsi force, they said, was mercilessly slaughtering the Hutu population.      

Kagame surely knew all that, but of course refused to admit it when I questioned him. I found him to be shrewd, well spoken, and careful. He never directly denied my statements, but always refused to take responsibility for the RPF's campaign of revenge. And the United States and the U.N. preferred to believe that the Tutsi victors were better than the defeated Hutu forces. Emerging from the meeting into the darkened streets of Kigali, I knew there would be no equal justice or real democracy as long as Kagame held power.       

Several months later, I visited a missionary couple in Burundi who lived only three miles from the Rwandan border. At night, we heard gunfire from Rwanda. In the morning, we found four bodies floating in the stream, and more than a hundred Rwandan refugees who had crossed the border to find shelter at the mission. They reported that the RPF had surrounded their encampment and slaughtered approximately 750 people during the night. The U.N. mission nearby, which refused to send troops to assist, claimed only 12 casualties occurred. The numerical discrepancy was so great that I received the State Department's permission to inspect the massacre site in Rwanda personally. But when I was flown by helicopter to the site, the U.S. military attaché on board refused to allow the helicopter to land, making inspection impossible.      

21 April 2010  

Jérôme Nayigiziki is the General Secretary of the Party for Democracy in Rwanda (PDR-IHUMURE)  

PRESS RELEASE  

The Party for Democracy in Rwanda (PDR-Ihumure) is profoundly outraged by the news of incarceration of Ms. Victoire Ingabire by the RPF government in Kigali on charges of the socalled “genocide ideology”, “divisionism”, “genocide denial”, and “collaboration with a terrorist organization”. Ms. Ingabire is the chair of UDF-Inkingi political party and its standard bearer in the upcoming presidential elections in Rwanda in August 2010.  

The RPF regime, which in 16 years of power has become past master in stifling opposition, lately has pushed its intolerance of dissent to a new level by “excreting” unwanted generals in the army and incarcerating anyone else holding a different point of view as the presidential elections draw closer. Rwandan refugees in many African countries are being threatened with forcible repatriation. Déogratias Mushayidi, a political opposition leader, was two months ago abducted from a neighboring country, shackled and jailed like a dog on bogus charges without a trial. Ms. Ingabire, who last month was barred from traveling out of Rwanda, is now jailed without a trial. Up next are Bernard Ntaganda of the PS-Imberakuri party, and Frank Habineza of the Green party, both of whom are also gearing up for a run in the presidential elections this summer. This way, the jail-happy RPF regime has ruthlessly cleared the way for President Kagame to run unopposed by keeping with its infamous tradition of using extra-judicial arrests and incarcerations to prolong its grip on power.  

But in the realm of political folly, todayʼs arrest of Ms. Victoire Ingabire ranks in a class of its own. It gives a whole new meaning to arrogance of power and utter contempt of western principles of democracy and the rule of law, coming as it did without due legal process and on a day when the Governor General of Canada - a woman no less - is visiting Rwanda. It is the height of chutzpah for President Kagame to orchestrate such an unlawful arrest thereby lacking even a modicum of respect for the representative of Queen Elizabeth II, all of which selfimportance is a result of years of adulation by western powers as the “man who stopped the Rwandan genocide”. It is deeply ironic and troubling that the RPF regime has used a terrorist process to accuse Ms. Ingabire of supposed terrorist connections as a way to bring her down. But more troubling is the stunning silence of chanceries in Kigali who are nowhere to be heard as Rwanda drifts away into a spiral of dictatorial repression.  

The PDR-Ihumure deeply condemns the on-going state-sponsored terrorism against innocent civilians, and calls for the immediate and unconditional release of all people detained illegally, including Déogratias Mushayidi and Victoire Ingabire. The PDR-Ihumure wants to alert the international community that the conditions of yet another cataclysmic tragedy in Rwanda are gradually falling into place, and the time to act and prevent it from happening is now, not tomorrow.
 

Washington, DC - USA  

Jérôme Nayigiziki (signed)   

General Secretary, PDR-Uhumure
Contact: jnayigizik@aol.com

20 January 2010   

Jérôme Nayigiziki is the General Secretary of the Party for Democracy in Rwanda (PDR-IHUMURE)   

The Party for Democracy in Rwanda (PDR-Ihumure) is deeply concerned by accusatory statements by Rwandan Minister of Internal Security Sheikh Mussa Fazil Harerimana that Ms. Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza, who as FDU-Inkingiʼs President arrived in Kigali this past January 16 from Europe to launch her campaign for presidential elections in August this year, is engaging in “revisionist and genocide denial pronouncements”.   

Ms. Ingabireʼs statement that not only Tutsis but also Hutus died in the 1994 genocide and all must be memorialized without discrimination is not only the truth, it is the right thing to say and do if Rwanda is serious about one day achieving genuine reconciliation. We need to remind the world that the RPF now in power in Rwanda was busy killing thousands of Hutus for 4 years as a rebel group from October 1, 1990 to March 1994 before the genocide started in April 1994, and kept on killing thousands more Hutus in the years after 1994 in Rwanda and in the Democratic Republic of Congo, until today. It would be irresponsible to overlook this sad reality of our recent history.   

The on-going practice by the Rwandan government to automatically label political opponents as revisionists or genocide deniers as they recently attempted to do against Bernard Ntaganda of PS-Imberakuri and are now attempting to re-edit against Ms. Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza, is a shameful and unacceptable smear campaign and criminalization of good citizens and must be vigorously condemned and resisted by the democratic and free world.   

It is a disgrace for the RPF in power in Kigali to pretend to organize free and fair elections while at the same time mounting road blocks designed to disrupt the democratic process and a free-flowing election campaign by all political parties involved.   

The PDR-Ihumure will not join in this electoral masquerade because we know Rwanda is under a brutal military dictatorship that will not even play by its own rules. This will not be a democratic election when millions of our innocent brothers and sisters wonʼt be able to vote as they are being hunted down like animals deep in the DRCongo forest.   

This cannot be a democratic election when thousands of our innocent brothers and sisters are locked up in jails and wonʼt be able to vote, and those who are not in jail are under siege by the notorious witch-hunt Gacaca courts, and so cannot freely vote their mind. If Rwandans could vote freely this coming August and their votes counted fairly and accurately, there is no doubt the RPF would go down in a never-seen-before tsunami-like electoral defeat.   

The FDU-Inkingi political party has decided to participate in this election, just as the PSImberakuri and the Green Party have, and it is their full right to do so. It is, therefore, only logical and appropriate for these partiesʼ candidates to have free reign to compete for votes throughout the country, explain their agenda to the population, and expose and denounce all the excesses, lies and abuses by the current RPF government so that Rwanda can heal and be whole again.   

We will stand in unity with our brothers and sisters in the opposition, whether armed or non-armed, against the current brutal RPF military dictatorship in Rwanda, and once again we call upon President Paul Kagame to prove that he is a democrat by letting all political parties to sit together and jointly put in place favorable conditions for truly democratic elections, including a jointly drafted electoral code and a fully inclusive electoral commission.   

January 20, 2010   

Washington, DC - USA   

Jérôme Nayigiziki (signed)   

General Secretary, PDR-Uhumure   

Contact: jnayigizik@aol.com

5 April 2009    

t has been fifteen years since the genocide that devastated Rwanda in 1994, and while the players and sides have changed, the politics sadly remain largely the same. Rwanda is enmeshed in another cycle of repression, with an elite that represents a clear minority engaged in legal and extra-legal policies that impoverish the majority of the people in the country. In addition, this repression and violence flow across borders in the region, particularly into the neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) as evidenced recently.     

Unfortunately for all involved, while foreign aid is crucial for the development of Rwanda and to lift it out of poverty, this same foreign aid is actually perpetuating the crisis. The government rules by and for the elite Tutsis who came out of Uganda in 1994 and their small group of allies. However, aid that flows to that government has the perverse effect of enabling this group to keep control – even when that control actually stems from purposefully limiting the development of the vast majority of the people in the country.     

Background:
The civil war that took place in Rwanda between 1990 and 1994 and subsequently spread to the DRC, caused enormous loss in human capital through countless victims (the final toll is generally put at 800,000 between April and July 1994 in Rwanda, and at more than 5 million in the DRC in the years since). The war also damaged or destroyed infrastructure and equipment, as well as public and private buildings. Additionally, productive resources were diverted toward war activities.
The staggering destruction coupled with huge distress of the Rwandan population prompted the international community to scramble to rebuild Rwanda and poured in substantial assistance, in amounts much higher than the average granted to other Sub-Saharan countries. As early as January 1995, the Donors Round Table in Geneva committed a bilateral and multilateral aid of almost $600 million (US)1 for Rwanda.     

Starting in 1997, foreign aid went through two phases of massive increase, first in 2000,     

1 Filip Reyntjens (2004) « Rwanda, ten years on: From genocide to dictatorship », African Affairs, 103, 177–210     

rising from 16% of gross domestic product (GDP) in 1997-1999 to 20% in 2000-2002, and secondly in 2003, rising to 25% of GDP in 2003-20042. From 1995 to 2006, foreign aid to Rwanda totalled $5,064,210,000 (US)3, with the United Kingdom, the United States, the Netherlands and Belgium being among the most important donors4. Today, with foreign assistance reaching $55 (US) per capita, Rwanda is one of the most aiddependent countries in the world5.