Mick Collins [cirqueminime@gmail.com]

Sent:                               28 May 2009 01:37

To:                                   Mick Collins

Subject:                          OPEN LETTER TO HIS EXCELLENCY PAUL KAGAME

OPEN LETTER TO HIS EXCELLENCY PAUL KAGAME, PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF RWANDA AT KIGALI

http://cirqueminime.blogcollective.com/blog/_archives/2009/5/27/4202188.html

[Here's an Open Letter from the UN Political Prisoners in the ICTR's detention unit by that little airport just outside Arusha, Tanzania. I just got it from Chris Black, who translated it from the French. 

It's always struck me as sadly ironic that these innocent Rwandan victims of a foreign aggression (1 October 1990), Nuremberg's primal crime against Peace, these representatives of the rational, majoritarian, revolutionary government of mid-1990s Rwanda, led by its duly-elected and grotesquely martyred (6 April 1994) Hutu president, Juvénal Habyarimana, these patriots who, after unsuccessfully defending their homes and loved ones against a proxy military force from the world's most developed and dangerously venal nations (US, UK, Belgium, Israel) on a full-tilt feeding frenzy for the riches of Congo, find themselves cast into a dungeon of UnReason and charged with the genocide of the very people they had committed to defend by the very neo-feudal Sadists who had razed their homes, slaughtered their friends and families, demolished the national infrastructure it had taken them 30 years to build up, and returned their once-thriving African society to a mere shade of its former colonial self: that these profoundly decent people have not been driven hatter mad or madder and continue to petition their pitiless tormentors and executioners, at the UN and in Obama's Washington, with well-tempered and soundly reasoned historical arguments for the innocence of the majority of the Rwandan people and the redemption of the Rwandan nation, makes me shiver with insignificance. 

It is not that I envy their tolerance so much as that I am shocked and awed by their patient understanding--their wisdom. They really make Job look like Mr Lucky. So, if you can read their story--the Rwandan story that is all over this blog--without becoming so angry you bleed from the anus, then you'd better double-check you've still got any pulse at all.--mc] 

**************************** 

Arusha, Tanzania, 12 May 2009 

OPEN LETTER TO HIS EXCELLENCY PAUL KAGAME, PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF RWANDA AT KIGALI 


OBJECT: The denunciation of the discriminatory actions and intentions of the Rwandan authorities. 

Your excellency, President of the Republic, 

The detainees of the ICTR, signatories of the present document, have judged it necessary to react to your racist and discriminatory intentions announced by several Rwandan personalities on the occasion of the 15th anniversary of the Rwandan “genocide”, celebrated on Nyanza hill, at Kigali, 11 April 2009. The Rwandan government stated that 5,000 people were taken from the Official Technical School (ETO) at Kicukiro, 11 April 1994, and were then massacred at Nyanza hill. Those who stated this were Charles Muligande, M. Simburudi, president of the IBUKA Association which represents the Tutsi survivors of the “genocide” and the deputy mayor of Kigali, and Dr. Augustin Iyamuremye, senator and former chief of the civilian intelligence services in the Rwandan government of 1994. 

We think that the things said do not take any account of the truth or the reality of the history of our country, but instead, have as a purpose the terrorizing, intimidating and humiliating of the Hutu people of Rwanda, who are globally accused of having planned and committed a “genocide” against the Tutsis. Our reaction is motivated by the fact that the RPF regime wants to wipe from the history of Rwanda the revolutionary period that liberated the people of Rwanda from the yoke of a feudal monarchy and ushered in national construction once the country had achieved its independence. The ultimate objective of the RPF is clearly to erase from the history of Rwanda the benefits of the republican period to better support their false thesis according to which the Hutus only marked the history of the country with barbarism and “genocide” of the Tutsis. It is a false and divisive vision, and clearly, by propagating it, you have abandoned the interests of the Rwandan people. 

1. Pre-colonial and Colonial Rwanda cannot be a model 

The deputy mayor of Kigali stated, “We want to change history in order to present another Rwanda that is not that of the period between 1959 and 1994, a Rwanda like it was before; the one we inherited from our ancestors; the Rwanda of children who live without division, without hate, without discrimination.” Thus the RPF regime pretends that in the pre-colonial and colonial periods the ethnicities composing the Rwandan nation lived harmoniously in peace, understanding and solidarity. It is a complete reversal of history.[1] 

The feudal-monarchical regime of Rwanda is not a model to propose to Rwandans today. It was a period of social, political, economic and cultural inequality and led to the social revolution of 1959. Many writers, including eminent Tutsis in positions of high authority, have written about this.[2] 

We think that in the search for durable solutions for our country, the RPF must stop the manipulation and falsification of Rwandan history. We believe that the remedy is to search for a democratic political compromise in a sincere dialogue between the power and its opponents. Such a step cannot be accommodated with obscurantism of the past. We condemn without reservation all attempts to rewrite the history of Rwanda for propaganda and ideological aims that seek the monopolization of power by the Tutsi ethnic group to the exclusion of the others that make up Rwandan society. 

2. The Planning Of The Criminal War by the RPF Is The Essential Cause of the Rwandan Tragedy 

Minister Muligande stated that “the ‘genocide’ of the Tutsis was planned by the government defeated in July 1994,” without furnishing the least proof of this alleged planning. Very simply, he stated that the ‘genocide’ was taught over a long time by the MDR/PARMEHUTU and later by the MRND. Such statements are nothing but propaganda. The MDR and MRND parties never practiced racism or discrimination against the Tutsis. It is well known that under the Habyarimana regime, between 5 July 1973 and the war in October 1990, the Hutus and Tutsis lived in symbiosis. The ethnic divisions of 1990-1994 were the consequence of the strategy of destabilization carried out by the RPF to rally the Tutsis of the interior of Rwanda to the cause of the RPF Tutsis from Uganda, who had invaded the country, as a means of attracting sympathy in world opinion. 

Following the social Revolution of 1959, a number of Tutsi dignitaries could not accept the democratic changes proclaimed by the people, and fled the country, and, for many years, systematically rejected all offers by the government to return peacefully and participate in the construction of the country as Rwandans. They took the Tutsi refugees hostage and prevented them from returning to Rwanda as long as they were not sure of taking back their former power to exercise to their class advantages. The Tutsi diaspora dominated by these extremists preferred to organize a movement of “liberation” called the INYENZI[3] and conducted several attacks against Rwanda in the 1960s with the aim of taking power by force of arms. It is for this reason that all the calls made by the Rwandan government to the refugees for their peaceful return to the country were made in vain.[4] 

The MRND party practiced a policy of peace, national unity and progress, that was enormously beneficial to the Tutsis of the country.[5] It is false and unjust to accuse the MRND of having persecuted Tutsis or having refused the right of return to those Tutsis wishing to come back to Rwanda. Everyone knows today that it was the RPF who torpedoed the Accords signed between Rwanda and Uganda under the auspices of the UNHCR on 31 July 1990. Instead of permitting the delegation of refugees expected in Kigali at the end of September 1990 to go to Rwanda and work under the auspices of that Accord to bring about the mass return of refugees, the RPF launched a surprise attack against Rwanda on 1 October 1990, beginning its war of aggression. 

You must have the courage to recognize that this war, launched at the moment when a political solution had been found to the refugee problem, is the origin of the Rwandan tragedy. The RPF sowed desolation and created divisions, a climate of terror and distrust among a population subjected to four years of RPF violence. By these terrorist attacks and subversion, the RPF provoked the total destabilization of Rwanda.[6] The RPF planned and executed the attack of 6 April 1994 that took the lives of Presidents Juvénal Habyarimana of Rwanda and Cyprien Ntaryamira of Burundi, as well as those of their respective entourages and the French flight-crew, knowing full well that the attack would provoke violence in the country. Directly after shooting down the presidents’ plane, they attacked on all fronts, precipitating total chaos throughout the country. It was the RPF that planned the destruction of the country. This is attested to by the inability of the prosecutor at the ICTR to prove that any plan to commit genocide existed. Indeed, all the heavy condemnations of genocide pronounced against the Hutus before the ICTR are founded on the illegal judicial notice ordered by the Appeals Chamber on 16 June 2006.[7] In Rwanda, courts continue to condemn the Hutus, en masse and without evidence, for allegedly planning “genocide,” all the while refusing any debate on the question.[8] 

Despite the judicial notice imposed by the Appeals Chamber of the ICTR on 16 June 2006, in order to condemn the accused at the Tribunal for political reasons, the controversy over this issue continues. Conscious of their enormous responsibilities in the Rwandan tragedy, the RPF has not missed a single opportunity to cry about the “genocide of the Tutsis.” So, it was not without some thought that Minister Muligande stated on 11 April at the Nyanza memorial at Kigali: ”We had the chance to win the war to get recognition of the genocide. If not, we would have become the Armenians whose genocide is still contested because they lost the war.” M. Mulgiande is very conscious of the responsibilities born by the RPF, even if he does not have the courage to admit them. The RPF abuses its current position by imposing the “genocide” of the Tutsis and practicing victors’ justice over the vanquished.[9] The leaders of the RPF must stop falsifying history with ideological propaganda and find the courage to recognize their heavy responsibility in the Rwandan drama. . . .

[Read more at http://cirqueminime.blogcollective.com/blog/_archives/2009/5/27/4202188.html]