By THILO THIELKE
Rwandan President Kagame’s Dangerous fight. In Rwanda, dictator Paul Kagame pretends to be a clean man. But he lets his political opponents, who campaign for democracy, imprisoned and murdered.
Victoire Ingabire sits in the reception room of a house that is too big for her alone. It is located on a hill. When she comes out, she has a good view of Rwanda’s capital, Kigali. It is Ingabire’s house. But her family is in Holland, the husband and three children, 13, 16 and 26 years old. The 50 year old Victoire Ingabire is longing for them. But she also says she has to stay, that she can not help herself. “Once I leave this country, they will never let me in again. And bringing the family here is too dangerous. ”
The Hutu tribe Victoire Ingabire is chairing the Rwandan United Democratic Forces and wanted to run for president in 2010. Since 1994 Rwanda has been governed by the dictator and former rebel leader Paul Kagame with an iron fist. Kagame does not tolerate any contradiction. He regularly wins elections with 98 or 99 percent of the votes; political opponents often disappear without a trace. Nevertheless, Ingabire, who had previously studied business law in the Netherlands and was a successful businesswoman, returned to her former home country after 16 years of exile in Europe. “I knew then how dangerous that was,” she says today, “but I wanted to fight for democracy.” That has not changed.
Ingabire was not admitted to the elections. She had not been to Kigali for long before she was under house arrest and a few years later in court. She was called a terrorist by former Rwandan Foreign Minister Louise Mushikiwabo, and was wrongly accused of maintaining contacts with Hutu militias in Congo. The judge alleged that Victoire Ingabire denied the genocide and planned to overthrow Kagame’s regime. Being a “génocidaire” is the standard charge in the land of a thousand hills. Even Ingabire’s lawyer, American law professor Peter Erlinder, was arrested in Kigali for allegedly denying the genocide.
Erlinder had previously filed criminal charges against Kagame in the United States. The lawyer accuses him of ordering the launching of the plane hit by two ground-to-air missiles landing on Kigali on April 6, 1994. Burundi’s ruler Cyprien Ntaryamira and Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana lost their lives, and immediately afterward, a genocide began that would take around three months and kill some 800,000 lives. Tutsi Kagame and his rebel force Rwandan Patriotic Front had previously attacked Rwanda from Uganda and plunged the country into civil war. There were cruel slaughters of members of the Tutsi ethnic group, but also moderate Hutu, and there were also mass acts of revenge committed by Kagames advancing Tutsi rebels.
Ever since Paul Kagame won the civil war and is in power, everyone is being persecuted who doubts the official reading. According to this version, Kagame’s men did not force the country into civil war, did not shoot down the plane of President Habyarimana, or commit no war crimes. “This history is baffling,” says Ingabire, “but any criticism of it is brutally suppressed.” Her American lawyer was released shortly after his arrest for “health reasons.” Victoire Ingabire, on the other hand, was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment by Kagame’s judge – and officially reprieved only in the autumn of 2018, after eight years in prison.
The first five years have been cruel, says Ingabire: “I was completely isolated. Only in the last three years have the conditions improved a bit because I was able to leave my cell for the first time and saw other inmates. “However, the inmates were not allowed to talk to the politician. When Ingabire left the notorious Mageragere Prison in September of last year, she remained unbroken. She walked upright, wearing a red dress and a green jacket, the colors of her coalition. She said, “Seeing the direction of our country today gives reason to hope for greater political freedom.”
She would not say that today. “Three weeks after my release, our party’s vice president, Boniface Twagirimana, was taken out of jail and disappeared without a trace. Our secretary-general is still in custody. “On March 9, Ingabire’s secretary, Anselme Mutuyimana, was found murdered on the edge of the Gishwati forest in West Rwanda. Villagers had watched the body of Ingabire’s closest associate being thrown out of a car. There were choking marks on his neck. Mutuyimana’s death, Human Rights Watch writes, is the latest incidence of “a long series of killings, enforced disappearances, politically motivated arrests and unlawful arrests, especially by government opponents.”
She could move freely of course, says Ingabire, but must count on an hourly arrest. Only recently she spent a whole day at a police station and was interrogated. The country may leave them only with the permission of the Minister of Justice. She no longer believes that Kagame could democratize the country and released her and 2,140 other prisoners from prisons.
“It’s all about Kagame, aufzupolieren his image,” Ingabire is convinced. “He wants to be the leader of the francophone world in Africa, and in particular he wants to host the Commonwealth Games in 2020 – he now stylises himself as a Sauberman.” Originally, the games were to take place in Malaysia, but were relocated for political reasons and then assigned to Rwanda , Thus, the major sporting event will be held for the first time in history in a country that never belonged to British influence.
“Kagame enjoyed a long fool’s freedom and was courted by the West,” says Rwandan-Canadian economist David Himbara. “It’s because of guilt because at that time the United Nations did not intervene to stop the genocide.” Kagame himself speaks of “Genocide Capital” in this context. Himbara grew up in Canada and holds a doctorate from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. Later he worked in South Africa, among others. Like Ingabire, Himbara returned to Rwanda to rebuild his country. From 2000 to 2002, the market liberal political economist officially worked as “Supreme Private Secretary” Paul Kagames; In 2006, the president commissioned him to open the country economically. “We brought Rwanda forward at the time,” says Himbara. “In the World Bank report, which measures
The bitterly-poor small state with its approximately twelve million inhabitants still lives on this reputation. Nevertheless, the shortcomings were not to be overlooked. Kagame’s governing party RPF is involved in nearly every industry with its own investment fund Crystal Ventures, said Himbara. That applies from road construction through safety to furniture companies. “Now foreign investors can easily open branches, but there is no fair competition.” The result: Sixty percent of Rwandans live according to Himbaras less than two dollars a day. The average annual income of a rower amounts to 740 to 800 dollars – half as much as that of a Kenyan. When he criticized Kagame for
Meanwhile, the economist lives in Toronto. Himbara says he can not put a foot on African soil anymore because he would soon be a dead man. His concerns seem justified: in 2010, an attack on the former Rwandan Chief of Staff and Kagame veterinarian Kayumba Nyamwasa was perpetrated in Johannesburg. A little later, the Rwandan journalist Jean-Léonard Rugambage, who was investigating the case, died on his doorstep in Kigali after being hit by four bullets. In 2012, the former head of the Rwandan Development Bank, Théogène Turatsinze, was murdered in Maputo. The Mozambique police suspect a Rwandan killer squad behind the attack. In 2014, former intelligence chief Patrick Karegeya was assassinated in South Africa under unclear circumstances.
Himbara finds it particularly grotesque “Kagame’s attempt to make himself popular with his financiers in the so-called donor countries by taking up their favorite subjects”. So he has had plastic bags banned, although there is “not even a sewage system in the city of Kigali” and all the dirt is flushed into the rivers. Likewise, it is “silly” of Kagame, “to give oneself as a feminist”. Although he boasted that of the members of the national parliament sixty percent women – “but not one of them has been elected democratically”. On the contrary, his bravest political opponents are women.
Because not only Victoire Ingabire does not want to give up the political fight despite all the dangers. Even the 37-year-old businesswoman and women’s rights activist Diane Rwigara is one of Kagame’s greatest critics. Even Rwigara, whose family is one of the richest in Rwanda, intended to run for president against Kagame. In early May 2017, she announced her intention. Shortly thereafter, she was told that neither she nor a few other candidates would be allowed to vote. At that time, Amnesty International stated that Rwanda had a “climate of fear and oppression”.
As expected, Kagame won the election in early August with almost 99 percent. At the end of August, Rwigara’s house was stormed by the police. She and her mother Adeline were arrested and charged with alleged tax evasion. To cover the alleged debts, the Rwandan tax office confiscated equipment from a family owned tobacco plantation and sold it for about two million dollars. Only after more than a year in prison were Rwigara and her mother released on bail.
Diane Rwigara sits on a lawn chair in front of her house in the middle of Kigali. Towards the street, the property is protected by a high wall with barbed wire. Nevertheless, she does not feel safe. In 2015, her father Assinapol Rwigara died in a traffic accident. The circumstances were never cleared up. He was once very close to Kagame. Then he – like many other former companions – had fallen out with the authoritarian ruler. Rwigara is convinced that her father was murdered. “Under Kagame there is clan attachment,” she says. Even their siblings were deprived of passports so they could not leave the country. Nevertheless, that Kagame has been courted by foreign countries for so long and is sometimes hailed as a reconciler and a great innovator does not embitter her. “We have to take care of our own affairs,” she says.
At the moment, Kagame’s brutal methods are threatening to escalate into a crisis affecting the entire region. Months ago, he blocked the borders with neighboring Uganda – allegedly because his erstwhile patron, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, is funding rebels in Rwanda. From there it is meanwhile meanwhile, one is prepared also for a war between the two countries. Although they wanted to prevent a gun gang, Museveni’s party, “National Resistance Movement,” in an opinion know, but was “prepared to defend themselves at any time and at any price.”
Source: FAZ
https://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/ausland/ruandas-praesident-kagame-gefaehrlicher-kampf-16321177.html?GEPC=s2