By Mbonyumutwa Ruhumuza
It is now one week, 7 days, since Venant Madiba Abayisenga, 32, a Rwandan political opponent and member of Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza’s party, disappeared. He has not been seen since Saturday, 6 June 2020, when he left his home to buy mobile units a few hundred metres away.
Since Victoire Ingabire was released from prison, he is the fifth member of her party to disappear or be murdered in the space of 21 months, a life crushed every four months, not counting those imprisoned or who escaped assassination, nor the many other lives of non-party members that have been crushed in Rwanda in the same space of time and which www.rwandanlivesmatter.site gives a glimpse of.
We are tired of witnessing assassinations or disappearances of political opponents, journalists, or other citizens in a small Central African country in general indifference and absolute silence as if the lives of the inhabitants of this country had no value.
We are tired of always shouting in a vacuum for a few days, a few weeks or sometimes a few months, without anything changing, without anyone taking any interest in these injustices before we run out of breath, until it happens again and again.
We are tired of regularly receiving last wishes in video, audio or written format, from young Rwandans in their prime who, having dared to express themselves, formulate their last wishes thinking that their days are numbered, without any possibility of leaving this country that Kizito Mihigo described as an “open-air prison” from which he himself never managed to escape until he was murdered at the age of 38.
We are tired of hearing all the time around us talk about humanism, universality, solidarity, ubuntu, while those who evoke these concepts seem to have no consideration for the lives that are not publicized, or at least those of the inhabitants of this small Central African country.
We are tired of hearing Sunday pan-Africanists come to us boasting about a “development model” for Africa as if skyscrapers or clean streets are worth more than the lives of the country’s children who continue to be crushed before our eyes at a frenetic pace.
We are tired of the arrogance of a president who, with the unfailing support of the most powerful in the world, is quick to declare publicly and unashamedly that the citizens he accuses of wanting to “destabilize” the country will be “shot in broad daylight”.
We are tired of a president who, despite being the primary guarantor of a constitution he himself promulgated, can boast of the existence of a “parallel justice system” to which “those who play rough” are brought, thus admitting by himself that the rules of law that have been put in place are not intended to apply to all the citizens of the country.
To those, especially the youngest ones, who are seduced by these discourses of terror to find justifications for assassinations or enforced disappearances that should not be justified in any society, we address the following question to them:
– Does a person accused of destabilizing a country deserve extrajudicial execution? If so, is it up to a president (executive power) to determine who is guilty of wanting to destabilize the country or up to the courts? Knowing for example that Théophile Nyirutwa and Venant Abayisenga, after having been accused of wanting to “destabilize Rwanda” were cleared by the Rwandan justice in January 2020 after two years and four months of arbitrary detention.
We are tired of those who claim “it’s like that everywhere”, and talk about tragic deaths that occur elsewhere like those of Georges Floyd in order to accept the violence in their country of origin by trying to convince themselves that this is the norm.
To those we say: NO; it’s not like that everywhere. The police officers who killed Georges Floyd are now behind bars, the deceased received a national tribute, his family is supported throughout the country and far beyond, while no perpetrators of the assassinations of Rwandan political opponents have ever been prosecuted and the families of the victims live in fear, silence, isolation and are often forced to grieve in discretion and terror to avoid being in turn struck down by the system.
Video 1: Excerpt from an interview with Venant Abayisenga in January 2020, after his release, in which he tells how he was tortured to confess to crimes he did not commit. He explains how his torturers told him that they could kill him without any follow-up, and he himself says that he is well aware of this, even though he hopes that he will be able to confess to the crimes he did not commit.
Video 2: Excerpt from General Kagame’s statement about those he accuses of wanting to destabilize the country: “We will instead intensify our actions, we will not only capture and imprison them, we will shoot them in broad daylight” (June 2014).
Video 3: Excerpt from General Kagame’s statement in which he speaks of “parallel justice” (May 2019)
Video 4: extract from General Kagame’s statement in which he declares that he is ready to “increase the price to pay” for those who “want to destabilise the country by hiding behind nonsense” (democracy, human rights, freedoms…) ” “we will put you where you belong” (November 2019).