No more proof needed: Kagame killed Habyarimana
There are criminals who never face justice, not because there is not
enough evidence to get them sentenced, but only because the judiciary
system supposed to investigate them is managed by criminal interests.
It was on April 6th, 1994 at 8.25 in the evening. His family would
never see him again alive. Even dead, his body could not be brought
together in all its parts.
It will be soon 20 years that will have passed since that incident.
Those who were there at that night in Kigali can recall it as if it
was yesterday.
That night, war resumed between the Rwandan Patriotic Front and the
government forces, like it did last night between M23/RDF and FARDC in
the Kibumba area of the Eastern Congo.
This time the fighting appears to be a consequence of the collapse of
the negotiations of Kampala on Monday 21st October between Kinshasa
and M23/RDF.
People should remember that the new dialogue had been prompted after
the FARDC had defeated the occupying M23/RDF forces and evicted them
from some of the different areas of North Kivu they controlled at the
time.
Last night too, Thursday 24th October, Boniface Twagirimana wrote from
Rwanda that the country’s alleged security forces, though not well
identified by the locals, had abducted tens of young men and adults in
the area of Ruzizi in the South West and close to the border with the
DRC.
The population of that part of Rwanda is claiming that these young men
and adults being kidnapped, – some think that it must be the
Department of Military Intelligence which is involved-, are being sent
to fight for M23.
A week or so ago, Kigali restricted further the few areas of news
coverage that the rare remaining journalists still operating in Rwanda
could publish about.
For at least 25 years, Rwandan journalists are now prohibited from
publishing anything related to military operations in the country or
the DRC, because reporting on these issues has been very damaging for
the Rwandan image abroad.
On October 1st, 2010 the UN Mapping report was published. The document
extensively describes the crimes committed in the DRC against
Congolese populations and Hutu refugees by Kagame’s forces among
others, crimes which could amount to crimes against humanity, war
crimes and those of genocide nature if they could be brought in front
of court.
So far 6 million constitute the lowest estimate of the Congolese
victims from the wars that Kagame and Co continue to impose to the DRC
for more than seventeen years. More than 500,000 Congolese women,
girls and even men have been raped. And it is not evidence which is
lacking about his responsibility in all those crimes.
“On 6 February 2008, the Spanish Investigative Judge Andreu Merelles
issued an indictment charging 40 current or former high-ranking
Rwandan military officials with serious crimes including genocide,
crimes against humanity, war crimes and terrorism, perpetrated over a
period of 12 years, from 1990 to 2002, against the civilian
population, and primarily against members of the Hutu ethnic group.”
Almost two years earlier, on November 17th, 2006 the French judge
Jean-Louis Bruguiere had on his part indicted 9 top collaborators of
Kagame more or less for the same crimes including the shooting down of
Habyarimana’s airplane.
At the hype of the second Congolese war, in 1998/99, Kagame had
ordered the cleansing of the region of Gisenyi/Ruhengeri where
civilians were systematically targeted and killed in big number by his
Chief of Staff at the time General Faustin Nyamwasa. Nobody will ever
know exactly how many were massacred in those operations as they were
aimed at clearing that part of the country which was the stronghold of
the Habyarimana regime.
In April 1995, Colonel Ibingira, certainly with the orders from his
boss Kagame, killed with machine guns and tanks, and all this under
the watch of UN peacekeepers, 8,000 internally displaced in the Kibeho
camp of Gikongoro.
After Kagame gained the war from the Hutu government in July 1994, he
went on rampage across the country killing indistinctly hutu civilians
at the trend of 30,000 a month at least for the entire period covered
by the report of the UN expert Robert Gersony.
The list of Kagame’s crimes could go and on forever. Books and more
books could be written to account for his criminal achievements.
Having highlighted this brief list far from being exhaustive of his
crimes, who is frankly still making people believe that there is a
need of some more evidence to prove that he killed Habyarimana?
There are people arguing that the assassination of the former
president was part of Kagame’s strategy of war. I am of the same
opinion. The effect on the course of the war which resumed immediately
was of total mayhem and unpreparedness in the hutu government camp.
As a war strategy, it was a coup of a master. Considered from that
perspective, even the concerned himself does not dismiss his eventual
responsibility in the assassination. Kagame explains in the interview
he gave to Stephen Sucker during the BBC Hard Talk programme of
December 7th, 2006.
When the journalist asks Kagame:
“… do you believe you had a right to assassinate him?”
His reply was:
“…of course Habyarimana, having been on the other side that I was
fighting, it was possible that he could easily die. Imagine if I had
died myself in the same process? Would the same judge be asking about
my death or who killed me? … I am saying [that] this was a situation
where there was a war which was being fought.”
Without a clear denial of his personal involvement in the
assassination of Habyarimana from the concerned Kagame, why would
somebody else appear to have some interests in continuing to cultivate
the doubt among the people about who killed the former Rwandan
president?
There are two plausible motivations.
One is that the doubt enforcers, looking for unnecessary additional
evidence, are interested in covering up some responsibility [theirs or
some of other people] seeing that Kagame might soon be taken to court.
Two is that they are deliberately distracting the particularly
concerned general public from what is happening presently of more
importance in the Great Lacks region, such as the resumption of war in
Eastern Congo, and even the necessary political change in Rwanda and
countries like the DRC and Uganda.
There are criminals who never face justice, not because there is not
enough evidence to get them sentenced, but only because the judiciary
system supposed to investigate them is managed by criminal interests.
