On the morning of July 15, I spoke to William Mitchell Law Professor and international criminal defense attorney Peter Erlinder about the grisly assassination of Democratic Green Party of Rwanda Vice President Andre Kagwa Kwisereka. Kwisereka was found beheaded, with a machete left nearby, near Butare, Rwanda, on July 13, 26 days after Professor Erlinder’s release in Rwanda, where Rwandan President Paul Kagame’s regime had arrested and incarcerated him for three weeks. Erlinder had traveled to Rwanda to defend Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza, Rwanda’s FDU-Inkingi party leader and presidential candidate, only to be arrested and accused of “genocide ideology,” which means disagreeing with Rwanda’s official history of the 1994 Rwanda Genocide and/or with the regime of Rwandan President Paul Kagame.
Professor Jwani Mwaikusa headed the Department of Constitutional and Administrative Law at the University of Dar Es Salaam.
When I told Professor Erlinder about Andre Kagwa Kwisereka’s assassination, he said, “Yes, and an ICTR [International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda] defense attorney, Professor Jwani Mwaikusa, was just assassinated, too, in Dar es Salaam.”
He also said:
“No one knows for sure whether he was assassinated by Rwandan Patriotic Front operatives, but we do know that lawyers put themselves in danger by defending people whom the RPF have identified as their enemies.”
Professor Erlinder put himself in great danger by traveling to Rwanda, and says that he would have been “disappeared” had he not sat down, started hollering, demanded to speak to the U.S. Embassy, and made the sort of scene that white Americans feel empowered to make, in the Kigali hotel where he had been arrested. Professor Mwaikusa, however, put himself in far more danger and paid the ultimate price, along with a nephew and neighbor who attempted to come to his defense.
Law Professors Peter Erlinder and Jwani Mwaikusa both served as defense attorneys for the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda (ICTR).
Professor Erlinder and Professor Mwaikusa were both towering, world renowned legal scholars, teachers and human rights defenders, but Professor Erlinder was an American who survived, Professor Mukwaisa an African who paid with his life. His assassins no doubt knew that, though their stature and accomplishments were similar, the international outcry and consequence would not compare.
As U.S. citizens, we are complicit in Professor Mwaikusa’s death because President Paul Kagame’s Rwanda is the highest per capita recipient of U.S. aid in Africa.
Thanks to Professor Charles Kambanda for sharing his thoughts on Professor Mwaikusa and his legacy. – Ann Garrison
Professor Jwani Mwaikusa: Martyr for truth
by Charles Kambanda
The identity, motive and/or sponsors of Professor Jwani Mwaikusa’s assassins, in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, may remain “unknown,” meaning “unproven,” for some time, but Professor Mwaikusa’s friends and colleagues know that whoever was responsible deprived the legal fraternity and the entire human race of an irreplaceable, independent and incorruptible mind.
We will remember his extensive knowledge of philosophy and law, his both Cartesian and naturalist legal theory, his deep humanity, his great sense of humor and his courageous, landmark work at the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda (ICTR). Professor Mwaikusa contributed much of his valuable time to defending the accused at the ICTR. His concise and precise objections to any inadmissible evidence or testimony was his unique contribution. The quality of his research in preparation for his court appearances will also remain an ICTR landmark.
In order to defend his clients, Professor Jwani Mwaikusa, a Tanzanian by birth, inquired into Rwanda’s social and political environment prior, during and after the 1994 genocide. His findings led him to a crucial conclusion that “both parties to the Rwandan Civil War within which the 1994 genocide surfaced committed international crimes.” This conclusion, which he referred to as “the bitter truth,” deeply angered Rwandan President Paul Kagame and his top Rwandan Patriotic Front officers and officials, and they have thus, inevitably, become suspect in his death.
Professor Jwani Mwaikusa was renowned far beyond the borders of his native Tanzania. Here he consults with the law faculty at the University of Cape Town.
Professor Mwaikusa often argued that by not prosecuting Rwanda Patriotic Front/Army (RPF/A) senior officers who allegedly committed crimes, the ICTR was acting in contravention of its own founding treaty. He insisted that there is overwhelming evidence, collected by private investigator and former ICTR Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte for RPF/A senior officers to be prosecuted by the ICTR before the court closes. He did not mince words about the Kagame regime’s political meddling into the International Court’s affairs and administration of justice in particular, and warned that the ICTR risks leaving a legacy of “victor over vanquished” justice. The liberty with which the Rwandan regime exerted pressure on the ICTR meant, in his view, that international justice was being replaced by international politics and diplomacy.
When Kagame’s government jailed Professor Peter Erlinder, Professor Jwani Mwaikusa spoke out. He condemned the move and said that it was a “strategy” to deprive the ICTR of independent defense attorneys. Professor Mwaikusa worried that it would be a matter of time before he too would be in a Rwandan jail for the same reason. Now we can only speculate as to whether he had any premonition that his own fate would be even more harsh and final, or that a nephew and a neighbor would both die attempting to come to his defense.
In a landmark case at the ICTR in which the Kigali regime and the prosecutor at the ICTR sought to transfer some of the ICTR’s cases to Rwanda, Professor Jwani Mwaikusa convinced the court that the defendants had no chance of a fair trial in Rwanda. He also successfully argued that the regime in Rwanda lacked the moral authority to try its former political rivals because there is too much evidence that leaders in the Kigali regime are guilty of the same crimes.
University of Dar es Salaam Law Professor Jwani Mwaikusa was assassinated in Dar es Salaam on July 14. He taught constitutional development and practice, human rights, including community rights, democratic governance, land rights and environmental law. The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) is headquarted in Arusha, Tanzania. - Photo: U.S. State Department
Professor Jwani Mwaikusa accused the Kagame regime of twisting the terms of the U.N. resolution that instituted the ICTR. He argued that the U.N. Security Council used the term “Rwandan Genocide” knowing that extremists from both of the two rival ethnic groups committed atrocities against the other, but that the Kagame regime uses the term “Tutsi genocide” to water down the regime’s role in the atrocities.
“Robbery gone wrong” is not an option in the professor’s assassination because the assassins did not depart with anything of monetary value. The assassins stole his ICTR case-related documents. By coincidence or design, the manner in which Professor Jwani Mwaikusa was assassinated is not different from the way some other critics of the Kagame regime met their death. Seth Sindashonga and Major Theoneste Lizinde, both strong critics of the Kigali regime, were assassinated in 1998. The two had sought refuge in Kenya. Journalist Jean Leonard Rugambage was assassinated on June 24 after writing that Kagame had ordered the assassination attempt on Rwandan exile Gen. Kayumba Nyamwasa. A week later, Professor Mwaikusa, a strong critic of the Kigali regime, was gunned down. On the same day, Democratic Green Party of Rwanda Vice President Andre Kagwa Rwisereka was beheaded near Butare in southern Rwanda.
The perpetrators remain unknown, but the United Nations secretary general, on July 15, called for an investigation into the deaths of Jean Leonard Rugambage and Andre Kagwa Rwisereka. He has not yet ordered an inquiry into Professor Mwaikusa’s assassination, but one is certainly called for, discomfiting as the truth may be to some of the world’s most powerful people.
Professor Charles Kambanda is an American of Rwandan origin and a former professor of law, business and philosophy at Makarere University in Kigali, Rwanda, where both the Umuseso newspaper editor and Democratic Green Party of Rwanda President Frank Habineza were his students. He was once a member of Rwandan’s ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front Party. He first met Professor Jwani Mwaikusa in 2001 when they were both teaching at the University of Dar es Salaam and they remained friends from that time on. Professor Kambanda is now involved in research on Rwanda’s ongoing social and political conflict. He can be reached at kambacha@yahoo.com.
by the Africa Faith and Justice Network, Friends of the Congo, Hotel Rwanda Rusesabagina Foundation, International Humanitarian Law Institute of Minnesota, Foreign Policy In Focus, Mobilization for Justice and Peace in Congo, Africa Action, Chicago Coalition for Congo, Foundation for Freedom and Democracy in Rwanda, Shalupe Foundation and Organization for Peace, Justice and Development in Rwanda and Great Lakes Region (OPJDR)
In mid-July in Spain, Prime Minister Jose Rodriguez Zapatero refused to meet with Rwandan President Paul Kagame, who was visiting for a U.N. conference, after human rights defenders urged him not to and protesters took to the streets chanting “Kagame! War Criminal!”
President Obama said, in his 2009 speech in Accra, Ghana, that America should support strong institutions and not strong men. However, in the case of Rwanda, this has been no more than rhetoric. Rwandans, like most Africans, cheered Obama’s election, hoping that it might signal a new, more peaceful and cooperative relationship between the U.S. and Africa, but Obama has expanded AFRICOM, the U.S. Africa Command, and now he remains silent as Rwanda’s strongman, President Paul Kagame, prepares a sham presidential election to retain his brutal grip on power.
On Aug. 3, in Washington D.C., we, a coalition of Africa advocates, will gather at the National Press Club to call on President Obama and the U.S. State Department not to recognize the legitimacy of Rwanda’s upcoming Aug. 9 election results and to stop militarizing Africa and supporting repressive regimes.
“The U.S. policy has been to support strongmen,” says Maurice Carney, executive director of Friends of the Congo. “And at the head of the class is Paul Kagame, who has received military support, weapons, training and intelligence and as a result has been able to invade Rwanda’s neighbor, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and sustain proxy militia fighting there to rob the Congolese people of their natural resources. He has contributed to the death of over 6 million people in Congo and to the destabilization of Africa’s whole Great Lakes region.”
President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama greeted representatives of U.N. member countries at the Metropolitan Museum in New York on Sept. 23, 2009. Here, Rwandan President Paul Kagame stands between them. – Photo: irwanda1.com
Assassinations, arrests, disappearances, imprisonment and torture of both politicians and press critical of Kagame have led up to Rwanda’s Aug. 9 presidential polls, and now the question is not “Will Rwanda’s August 2010 election be free and fair?” but “How much more violence will the population suffer from Rwandan police, military and security operatives?”
And how much longer will President Obama continue to support the brutal Kagame regime in the heart of Africa, even though 40 of Kagame’s top officers and officials have been indicted in both Spanish and French courts for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide? Kagame himself has not been indicted by these courts but only because he is a sitting head of state and indictment would therefore be a declaration of war.
Spanish protesters in mid-July want Kagame held accountable for genocide. Still applauded by the mainstream press only a few months ago, Kagame's record is now being questioned and condemned by some of the most influential media in the world.
“Kagame is doing everything he can think of, including killing journalists, jailing and torturing political opponents and denying political opponents their constitutional right to register their parties to exclude them from the election. Because as soon as he loses the presidency, he is likely to be tried for all the mass killings he ordered,” says Rwandan exile, writer and activist Aimable Mugara, who now lives in Toronto.
All the viable opposition has been kept out of the election, but four Kagame allies have agreed to stand so as to make it appear that Rwanda is having a real election.
Victoire Ingabiré Umuhoza, Rwanda's leading challenger to Kagame, is under house arrest and banned from the Aug. 9 ballot.
Leading presidential candidate Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza, who was arrested and indicted on trumped up charges to prevent her from registering to run against Kagame, has said that she will not vote and has urged other Rwandans not to vote either. “We know that the military and police will use violence against the population,” Ingabire said, “but we have to fight for our rights. There is no reason to vote if you don’t have a choice.”
In May, Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Johnnie Carson announced that the U.S. government plans to send a dozen teams of election observers to Rwanda before the Aug. 9 polls, but many Rwandans now say they will only be wasting U.S. taxpayers’ money.
“There is no reason to vote if you don’t have a choice.” – Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza
“Why do people seriously think of going there to observe elections?” asked Charles Kambanda, an American of Rwandan origin, former member of Kagame’s RPF Party and former professor at Makarere University in Kampala, Uganda. “Which elections are they going to observe? There is nothing to be observed, because what we have is a one-man show. What we have is a situation where the government has created the so-called opposition.
In this pre-1997 map, Congo is shown as Zaire.
“The RPF has kicked out all the real opposition leaders. They are either under house arrest, like Victoire Ingabire, or in prison or they are already dead or they are in exile.”
“Foreign election observers planning to go to Rwanda to observe the ‘election’ this August are wasting time and money,” said Aimable Mugara. “I would recommend that they stay in their countries and write their reports based on all the insane actions Gen. Kagame’s ruling party has taken since the beginning of this year, actions that make this so-called election null and void.”
The United States government has provided not only election observers but also over $1,034,000,000 in United States taxpayer-funded foreign assistance to Rwanda since 2000. An additional $240,200,000 is proposed in the president’s fiscal year 2011 budget.
Almost immediately after President Obama authorized Predator drone strikes on Libya on April 21, drone-fired missiles began to fly. The excuse? To "stop genocide."
KPFA Weekend News, April 23, 2011 – Law professor and legal scholar Charles Kambanda and Rwanda Genocide survivor, writer and activist Aimable Mugara spoke to KPFA Weekend News about the truth of the Rwanda Genocide story, as more and more lobbying groups push for Pentagon campaigns to stop genocide, even with Predator drones.
Transcript:
KPFA Weekend News host: The prevailing narrative of the 1994 Rwanda Genocide is that extremist Hutus massacred 800,000 or more Rwandan Tutsi and the moderate Hutu who tried to protect them. But many scholars, journalists and human rights investigators now argue that both Tutsi and Hutu massacred one another because of their ethnicity.
A Predator drone-delivered missile bombs the residence of Muammar Qaddafi in the Tripoli suburb of Tajura on April 22. – Photo: Mahmud Turkia, AFP/Getty Images
The truth is now more and more significant for all Africa, as NATO wages war in Libya and U.S. policy lobbyists promote a proposal to use Predator drones to “stop genocide,” specifically to stop the next Rwanda or Darfur from happening elsewhere in Africa, such as Libya or Sudan. KPFA’s Ann Garrison spoke to a Rwandan American legal scholar and a Rwandan Genocide survivor about the Rwandan massacres of 1994.
Ann Garrison: Rwandan American legal scholar Charles Kambanda is an ethnic Tutsi and a former member of the ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front party, who left Rwanda when he became disillusioned with Rwandan President Paul Kagame. He says that extremist Hutu did indeed massacre Tutsi in 1994, but that extremist Tutsi also massacred Hutu, as they advanced to victory in the Rwandan Civil War which had begun in 1990. The war began when General, now President Paul Kagame and his Rwandan Patriotic Front Army of refugee Tutsis invaded Rwanda from Uganda in 1990.
Professor Charles Kambanda: The Rwandan conflict goes back before colonial times; it goes back before independence. These two peoples have failed to share power. They have failed to create a framework for power sharing. Whoever is in power wants to take it all. And this is where we have the genocide.
Law professor and legal scholar Charles Kambanda
Each side was killing the other because they wanted to eliminate them. And actually, it was also a military tactic. The Hutu were eliminating the Tutsi because they didn’t want the Tutsi to support their fellow Tutsi who were fighting the government. The Tutsi on their side were killing the Hutu because they didn’t want the Hutu in their territory to cross over and join the Hutu government.
An ordinary Rwandan knows that saying that the Hutu and the Tutsi died in the genocide is the truth. But politicians think by saying that the Hutu also died, then you are going to ask them for accountability, because if you say that the Tutsi were killed by the Interahamwe, and you also say that the Hutu were killed, then you need to know who killed them. And if you start mentioning who killed them, those politicians who are in power – Kagame and the others – will be called to answer for crimes.
KPFA: Aimable Mugara, a Rwanda Genocide survivor now living and working in Canada, says that bullets broke the windows of his family’s home on April 6, 1994, when he was 13 years old, and his family soon sought refuge, first in neighboring Congo, then Kenya, then Canada, and that, as a teenager, he suffered from deeply internalized racism, because Hutu people were blamed for all the massacres:
Aimable Mugara: The popular culture has represented the 1994 genocide as a Tutsi genocide, where only innocent Tutsis were killed by Hutus. There is this belief by some people that all the Hutus are evil. There is this belief by some people that all the Hutus hate Tutsis and that all the Hutus want the Tutsis dead.
Rwanda Genocide survivor, writer and activist Aimable Mugara
I remember when I went to see the movie “Hotel Rwanda.” I came out and there was this group of Canadian girls, and one teenage Canadian girl said, “I wish all the Hutus were dead.” And I was not completely surprised by it because even I myself for at least five years since 1994, I never ever felt comfortable saying I was born a Hutu. I felt like, even though I know that I was 13 years old in 1994, and I did not do anything, I could not have done anything to stop what was going on, I still felt that it’s all my fault, what happened, and I have no reason to live and I have no right to live.
But eventually with time I thought about it more and I realized that the way that the Hutu people have been demonized, it’s not right. People need to realize that by demonizing an entire group, you’re contributing to the whole culture of genocide. That’s when you feel that “Oh, since those people are evil, it’s OK if they die. Since those people are evil, they have no right to have children any more.” That kind of culture really shocks in this day and age.
Professor Michel Chossudovsky, Law Professor Peter Erlinder, ICTR Defense attorney Christopher Black, Professor Ed Herman and author David Peterson have all documented U.S. complicity with the advancing army of the Rwandan Patriotic Front led by General, now President, Paul Kagame, in pursuit of its geopolitical agenda.
This is a more personal account. In a recent Facebook discussion of the trial of Rwandan opposition leader Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza, Jean Pierre Mbungira shared his own experience of the Rwanda Genocide at the ages of 14 and 15. I found this to be one of the most emotionally credible accounts of how something like the Rwanda Genocide could have happened, as mass panic became mass psychosis. – Ann Garrison
I was living in the capital city, Kigali. I was 14, turning 15 in a few months. But the whole thing was crazy! Now when I look back, I realize that the worst nightmare of any system is infiltration. The whole political landscape was almost non-existent. The president, Habyarimana, had little authority. He was very weakened by the war plus very active opposition.
Even the army (ex-FAR [Armed Forces of Rwanda]) had rifts in their ranks, to the point that when the president died, some did not go on with defending the country. Some went on pillaging; others just did not take the duty as their concern. On the top of that, the interim government had the brilliantly stupid idea of arming the ordinary citizen.
President, then General, Paul Kagame, spoke on his satellite phone as he led the Rwandan Patriotic Army’s advance on Kigali.
Try to picture this: Suppose your neighbor has sent his boy in the RPF [Rwandan Patriotic Front, the Tutsi refugee army invading from Uganda] and that your brother, who is a soldier, died on the battlefield. Then someone arms you, typically with an AK47, without training whatsoever, in a tense situation where, a few days previously, grenades were exploding in bars and taxis, where political parties – ethnically divided – were at each other’s throat, and the president, who was barely holding all that mess together, has just been assassinated.
On that, add that you have a history of ethnic tension that goes back some centuries. And you have no education and no military training, except they showed you how to shoot your gun and how to reload it. And you know APR [Rwandan Patriotic Army, Tutsi rebels], most part of it, are advancing.
Now imagine little knowledge, no formal education; many have not even finished the elementary school, have no TV and are cut off from the rest of the world, with radios like RTLM [extremist Hutu] and Muhabura [extremist Tutsi] competing to fan all that fire and add as much oil as they can.
Now, put all that together and tell me what my “ordinary citizen” will do with his new gun! That was in Kigali City, where they could afford modern weaponry.
Now, replace the gun with a machete, and you have the picture of what was happening in the countryside. – Jean Pierre Mbungira
Rwanda’s economy is said to be doing well, so how does population size become a problem that requires dire, questionable voluntary vasectomies of the poor?
by Charles Kambanda, PhD
Poor Rwandans are targeted by the government’s call for voluntary vasectomies of 700,000 men who can’t support their children.
In controversy is the minister of health’s announcement of what the government of Rwanda calls voluntary vasectomies (sterilizing) of 700,000 males between 2011 and 2013. The target group is men who cannot pay bills for their children’s upkeep. The poor who make over 75 percent of Rwanda’s population are only uncertain of when their males will be sterilized.
At issue is not whether the country needs sound family planning policy. Whether the political elite will stick to voluntary vasectomies is the main concern. Conceptualizing “voluntary” vasectomies in Rwanda’s contemporary public policy, history gloss and politics is utterly crucial.
The timing of sterilizing 700,000 males raises red flags. In Rwanda’s socio-political environment that swivels on passivity, apathy, suspicion and docile citizenry with militarized “civil society,” securing free will of the men to be sterilized borders on insanity.
Who are the poor?
The deprived are the Twa, a secluded ethnic group. The needy are the Hutu peasants who survived the Congo refugee camps’ massacres. The hard-up in Rwandan society are those few Tutsi survivors of genocide who have not benefited from the genocide survivors’ fund. The underprivileged are the Hutu populace that was uprooted from their land, without compensation, under the habitant and land reform government policy.
The poor are those Tutsi returnees who have no close relations in the Tutsi dominated government. The bitter fact is that poverty in Rwanda runs along the country’s ethnic divides. The poor are mostly victims of the country’s unresolved ethnic and power sharing crisis.
History is seldom a bad teacher. However, people are hardly good students of history. Rwanda’s post-independence history, not different from the country’s pre-independence era, insinuates a constant fight between the Hutu, the majority ethnic group making up about 86 percent of the population, and the Tutsi, the minority ethnic group making up about 14 percent. The Twa hardly make up 1 percent.
Growing or dropping in numbers of either ethnic group is an issue for each ethnic group’s political and physical survival. The Hutu-Tutsi co-existence failed on a win-win modus operandi. The victor seeks to depopulate the loser, or at least to delay the other ethnic group’s violent return to power.
War crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide have long been a “social engineering” and depopulation strategy geared at incapacitating the loser in the country’s power grabbing paradigm. In 1959 it was some Hutu’s turn to “depopulate” the Tutsi.
In the 1980s a Hutu-led government flocked the Tutsi to cannibals and crocodiles in the country’s national park, Akagera. Although scholars disagree on whether the 1994 genocide was committed by only the Hutu against the Tutsi, the scholars appear to concur that genocide was a strategy to “tame” the enemy’s unmanageable and unwanted population.
The brutal massacres of the Hutu refugees in Congo, which the United Nations’ Mapping Report accuses the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan troops of, could also be viewed from this perspective. With growing international enforcement of laws on war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, Rwandan society appears vulnerable to apparent legal methods of birth control like “voluntary” vasectomies to achieve the traditional ethnic depopulation conspiracy.
Sociologists, philosophers and psychologists have long discussed whether a poor person can make choices. Do the poor have free will? The Rwandan government does not appear uptight about this paradox. The poor, who cannot nourish their children, are said to be going for “voluntary” vasectomies. This is the proverbial hiding of the head in the sand.
If poverty is a criterion for vasectomies, free will cannot exist
This new policy forcefully encourages human beings to dispel with their primary animal instinct: reproduction. Image sourced at http://www.yorkmedicaltechnologies.co.uk
If the policy be voluntary, the 700,000-man target contradicts what the government of Rwanda calls voluntary vasectomies. Last year, 2010, the vice president of Rwanda’s parliament marketed, in vain, a policy proposal for compulsory sterilization of the “socially retarded” Rwandans. It took excessive efforts by international human rights organizations to thwart the policy proposal. The 2011 “voluntary” vasectomies policy may be a continuum of the 2010 policy proposal.
Public policy analysts consent that current latent public policy ideas and motives of any country must be read in light of the similar previous policy. First, the government of Rwanda implemented the habitant and land reform policy. People were supposed to abandon their traditional homestead and go to live in settlement centers – imidugudu. The previous homesteads were meant to be for farming. Initially the government called it a voluntary policy.
Implementation of this policy turned out to be forceful and inhumane. Some government officials snatched victory from the jaws of defeat; they grabbed the land people had abandoned for settlement centers. Second, the government’s policy of what was called voluntary sharing of land between the Hutu owners and the Tutsi returnees ended in the forceful grabbing of land from the Hutu in many regions of the country. Will vasectomies of the unprivileged males be voluntary as the government suggests?
Self-propagation is a basic need and right. However, producing excessive children, as many Rwandans do, is a symptom of insecurity and poverty. There is a general demographic pattern for the well-off to produce between one to three children. The deprived generally produce more than six children. It is no surprise that in a country like Rwanda, where about 75 percent of the population survives on less that $1 a day, the population is increasing by 3 percent per annum. If quantity of the population be the problem, vasectomies are not a durable solution.
The first beneficiary of development is the human person
The quality of a country’s human resources and not the quantity is what matters. Investing in human development is the only sustainable solution. The Rwandan government has sustained one of the most expensive wars in Africa. It is well documented that Rwanda has one of the biggest and most heavily armed militaries in the Great Lakes region of Africa. Rwanda runs the most expensive presidential personal security unit in Africa.
Rwanda’s economy is said to be doing well. Ironically, money is available. How does quantity of the population become a problem that requires dire, questionable voluntary vasectomies?
Human history demonstrates habitual failure by some leaders to reconcile the existence of the poor in an environment that the political leadership project as prosperous. Adolf Hitler exterminated the gypsies alongside the Jews because the gypsies – the poor – would negate the economic prosperity of Germany. This is how seriously the world takes protection of the poor.
Crime against humanity
Rwandan American Law Professor Dr. Charles Kambanda
Denying people the right to self-propagation on the basis of their failure to meet costs for their children ought to be an issue of utmost concern for the international community. Targeting the poor with vasectomies is presumed forceful because the poor always lack free will.
Vasectomy in this unique Rwandan context might amount to a crime against humanity. The essence and function of government is redistributing resources and power among the citizens. Vasectomy in a Rwandan context manifests government failure to perform its core functions and responsibilities. The policy mirrors incivility, lack of public conscience and negates the basic ethical tenets.
Dr. Charles Kambanda, Dip.Phil., BA, LLB, MA ETPM, MBA, MA HRTs, LLM, PhD, teaches at St. John’s University Law School, LLM Center, New York, and previously lectured at the National University of Rwanda, where, according to the Rwanda News Service, he was known for his “outspoken nature.” This story first appeared on The Proxy Lake: Views and News on the African Great Lakes Region.
“Don’t give up. He will never jail a whole nation.” – Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza
Victoire behind bars
We need an international movement to free Rwandan opposition leader Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza. Her case is important to African people all over the continent and in the Diaspora and to all of us, all people.
The weight on Victoire’s shoulders is that of resource war, the ongoing wars for the world’s natural resources that threaten to destroy the whole planet. The fate of her tiny East African nation, Rwanda, is intertwined with the resource war in Rwanda’s vast, resource rich neighbor, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, site of the most lethal conflict since World War II. The Congo conflict has taken over 6 million African lives since 1998 alone.
Background of the Congo conflict, in Rwanda and Uganda
In 1990, the U.S. and Uganda backed the invasion of Rwanda, from Uganda, by an army of ethnic Tutsis who had grown up in Uganda, the children of Rwandan refugees. Four years of bloody civil war left over a million Rwandans dead, and Rwanda then joined Uganda and Burundi, the other two nations on Congo’s eastern border, in invading Congo, first to overthrow Congolese dictator Mobutu Sese Seko and then to overthrow his successor, Laurent Kabila, the onetime ally who had proven less than compliant in their project: the ongoing occupation, de facto colonization and resource plunder of eastern Congo.
A peace treaty was signed in 2003, but the death toll in Congo continues to rise. The majority of war dead perish of hardship after being driven from their resource rich land, rich in minerals, timber, cropland, fresh water, oil and natural gas, everything that feeds the world’s industrial and military industrial machines and the global capitalist system’s insatiable demand for profit.
Victoire
I don’t believe that Victoire went home to Rwanda, after 16 years spent first studying, then working and raising a family in the Netherlands, to take on so much weight, the weight of resource war threatening the whole world, but that is the broad context in which her own people are suffering. She said she was returning home because she could no longer stand to see her Rwandan people suffering so, under such brutal dictatorship. By that time, January 2010, she had emerged as the most inspiring and intellectually forceful leader in the Rwandan Diaspora.
I first became aware of Victoire when I saw demonstrations amongst the Rwandan Diaspora in Europe. She was then under house arrest in Rwanda and they were lined up in Brussels, holding her picture and chanting “Victoire! Victoire! Victoire!”
As a journalist, I maintained my distance for some time, making my way through all the available information and asking myself, “Who is Victoire?” I knew American radicals who were suspicious of her. They imagined that she was the Pentagon and State Department’s chosen successor to Paul Kagame.
I still don’t know just why they imagined that, though it seemed perhaps because she hadn’t been arrested, or rather, had only been placed under house arrest, forbidden to leave Kigali, Rwanda’s capital, to speak to the majority Rwandan population, rural peasant farmers, whom she hoped to represent. Her political party was not allowed to register and she was not allowed to run in Rwanda’s 2010 presidential election.
Victoire was finally arrested and incarcerated two months after the election she had been excluded from, and several days after the last time I spoke to her for Pacifica Radio station KPFA. We had by then spoken many times, for KPFA and for WINGS, Womens’ International News Gathering Service. She has been in maximum security prison ever since.
Her Rwandan support team now reports that she is ill, without a doctor’s care. This worries me because, earlier this year, Rwandan American Law Professor Charles Kambanda told me that he did not believe Rwandan President Paul Kagame would release her from prison with her faculties intact. Pasteur Bizimungu, Kagame’s last major challenger, has been released, but he is, by all accounts, not the same man who entered Rwanda’s prison system, one of the most overcrowded and notorious on earth. Rwanda’s per capita prison population is second only to those of the United States and Russia.
Professor Kambanda said that Victoire is a great leader, capable of leading Rwanda, whose conflict has spilled into eastern Congo, to real reconciliation – between African people who have been manipulated by foreign powers to the point of human catastrophe. But Kambanda also thinks Victoire is such a great leader that Rwandan President Paul Kagame will never let her leave prison alive, or with her faculties intact.
I hope he’s wrong, because we need her. Rwanda, Congo, Africa and the world need her.
Susana Sanz Guardo of Basta de Impunidad en Ruanda (Stop Impunity in Rwanda) attended the Sept. 13 Paris protest against Rwandan President Paul Kagame’s visit to meet French President Nicolas Sarkozy. She wrote that an unprecedented 1,300 people from several European countries marched to the Parliament Building protesting Kagame’s human rights abuses in Rwanda and Congo, calling him “genocidaire (someone who commits or advocates genocide).”
In Paris on Sept. 12, 2011, Rwandans and their supporters protest the visit of Rwandan President Paul Kagame. Voice of America reports: “The presidents of France's national assembly and senate declined to meet with Kagame; French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe was on a trip overseas. A number of French generals called Kagame's presence in Paris insulting.”
“The biggest success has been, without doubt, that for the first time Rwandans and Congolese living in Europe, being victims of the policy of Kigali, have joined together in the same march and with one common voice,” she wrote. “For the first time the protest has been massive. This means that they have lost the fear, that we will not stop and that there is no turning back.”
On Aug. 29, Barack Obama’s State Department filed “Suggestion of Immunity Submitted by the United States of America,” a request for immunity for Rwandan President Paul Kagame in the civil lawsuit Habyarimana vs. Kagame, which alleges Kagame’s guilt in the Rwanda Genocide and Congo wars and demands damages for the widows of assassinated Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana and Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira.
Obama seems to be requesting more legal immunity for a foreign head of state than he himself enjoys, after the landmark Supreme Court case Clinton v. Jones, which established that a sitting president of the United States has no immunity from civil litigation against him for acts done before taking office and unrelated to the office.
Plaintiffs' complaint in Habyarimana vs. Kagame promises to prove that then Gen. Paul Kagame, now president of Rwanda, ordered the assassination of Rwandan President Habyarimana and Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira on April 6, 1994. The crash triggered the ethnic massacres known as the Rwanda Genocide.
Or will the Obama team argue that Kagame is immune from legal action for assassinating the Rwandan and Burundian presidents because that was part of Kagame’s path to seizing power and is therefore related to his office as president of Rwanda?
Plaintiffs’ counsel say they can prove that Kagame ordered the assassination of the Rwandan and Burundian presidents by shooting down their plane, which crashed into the presidential palace in Kigali, Rwanda, on April 6, 1994, triggering the panic and subsequent massacres that came to known as the Rwanda Genocide. The two presidents were returning from peace talks in Arusha, Tanzania, called to try to bring an end to the Rwandan civil war of 1990-1994, which began when then Gen. Paul Kagame and his Rwandan Patriotic Army invaded Rwanda from Uganda on Oct. 2, 1990.
Habyarimana v. Kagame
Habyarimana v. Kagame alleges that Gen. Paul Kagame and nine of his top military commanders and officials are guilty of “wrongful death and murder, crimes against humanity, violation of the rights of life, liberty, and security, assault and battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress, violations of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, torture, and continuing conspiracy in furtherance thereof” in Rwanda and its neighbor, the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Plaintiffs allege that many of these crimes, including the assassination of the Rwandan and Burundian presidents, were committed before Kagame succeeded in overthrowing the government and becoming first a government official and then president.
Wreckage of the plane that carried Rwanda President Juvénal Habyarimana and Burundi President Cyprien Ntaryamira to their deaths is guarded in Kigali.
The suit demands a jury trial, in which evidence would become public record, and might then be included as evidence in a criminal trial.
Peter Erlinder and lawyers Kurt Kerns and John P. Zelbst filed the suit on behalf of Mesdames Habyarimana and Ntaryamira in the federal District Court of Western Oklahoma in Oklahoma City prior to Kagame’s April 30, 2011, commencement address at Oklahoma Christian University.
Kagame failed to answer the complaint within the time allowed, and the court thus declared a default judgment in favor of Mesdames Habyarimana and Ntaryamira.
Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana
Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira
This judgment could, however, quite likely be overturned if Kagame, Obama and the State Department were willing to let the case proceed on its merits to a jury trial.
Pierre Prosper, a lawyer who served as George Bush’s second United States ambassador-at-large for war crimes issues from 2001 to 2005, is representing Kagame in his claim that he was not properly served with the lawsuit and that he therefore cannot be expected to answer the lawsuit or be declared in default for failing to answer.
Kagame was not properly served?
It seems unlikely that the State Department would have intervened had they expected Pierre Prosper’s challenge of proper service, by a team of experienced lawyers and private investigators, to succeed.
Claude Gatebuke, with other Rwandans and supporters, protested the April 30, 2010, visit of Kagame to Oklahoma Christian University, where he was served with the lawsuit on behalf of the assassinated presidents’ widows. – Photo: Kendall Brown
But it’s difficult to argue that Kagame was not properly served and remains unfamiliar with the lawsuit, considering that his own prosecutors presented portions of it as evidence against law professor Peter Erlinder following his arrest in Kigali, Rwanda, in May 2010, after he arrived to defend opposition leader Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza.
Kagame’s prosecutors’ use of the lawsuit now as evidence against Ingabire herself make it even harder to argue. Ingabire stands in the dock in Kigali, facing a possible sentence on charges of terrorism and “genocide ideology,” i.e., refusing to deny that Hutus as well as Tutsis died in ethnic violence before, during and after the genocide.
Executive immunity after Clinton v. Jones
This is the first time that the U.S. State Department has requested immunity in a civil lawsuit for a foreign head of state in U.S. courts beyond that which U.S. presidents can claim after Clinton v. Jones, a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case establishing that a sitting president of the United States has no immunity from civil litigation against him for acts done before taking office and unrelated to the office.
The State Department has claimed immunity for Kagame’s alleged wrongful acts before he became the president of Rwanda, an immunity which Bill Clinton could not claim from Paula Jones’s lawsuit, which she filed when he was president of the United States, suing him for what he allegedly did while he was governor of Arkansas.
On Monday, the wives of the assassinated Presidents of Rwanda and Burundi filed their “Objections to the August 29 State Department Suggestion of Immunity on Behalf of Rwanda’s President Kagame” and cited the State Department statement of interest of the United States of America, No. 1:104 CV 1360 (Feb. 14, 2011) (LMB), declaring that immunity is only applicable to “official acts by a sitting government,” with which all parties agree.
Law professor Peter Erlinder
“It is astounding that the Obama-Clinton-Koh State Department would choose Paul Kagame as the first head of state on whose behalf to assert immunity for unofficial actions,” observes law professor Peter Erlinder, “wrongful acts before becoming head of state, in light of the clear legal guidance of Clinton v. Jones and the factual record of massive crimes committed by Kagame before he became titular head of state under questionable circumstances in 2000 and again in 2003 and considering negative White House comments that ‘an election is not democracy’ after opposition parties were outlawed and journalists expelled and assassinated in the rigged election in August 2010.
Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza, who would likely have prevailed over Paul Kagame had he allowed her to run in last year’s presidential election, has endured nearly a year in Rwanda’s maximum security prison and is now on trial.
“The objection on behalf of the presidential widows filed today lists French and Spanish indictments; four U.N. Security Council reports from 2001-2008; a 600-page UNHCHR report of Kagame’s Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity between 1993 and 2003 issued Oct. 1, 2010; and U.N.-ICTR prosecutor reports from 1994 to 2003, all of which confirm massive crimes committed by Kagame and his Rwandan Patriotic Front that are in the public record.
“The irony of the ‘Suggestion of Immunity’ is compounded because Victoire Ingabire, the would-be presidential candidate against Mr. Kagame whom I attempted to advise in Rwanda in May 2010, which resulted in my own arrest by Kagame on charges of ‘genocide ideology,’ is now in the dock in Kigali facing trumped-up terrorism charges, as reported in the New York Times Sept. 10, 2011, during the same week that the Obama administration has asserted immunity for massive crimes for which Mr. Kagame is charged in multiple criminal indictments and U.N. reports.
“The question is, why IS protecting Mr. Kagame so important for U.S. policy-makers, anyway?”
Habyarimana vs. Kagame, the civil lawsuit, is available here.
Suggestion of Immunity [Kagame’s] submitted by the United States of America is available here.
Objections to the August 29 State Department Suggestion of Immunity on Behalf of Rwanda’s President Kagame is available here.
Ingabire on trial, Kagame in France, Obama for Kagame immunity
KPFA Weekend News report broadcast Sept. 10, 2011
Transcript of KPFA Weekend News report broadcast Sept. 10, 2011
KPFA Weekend News Host Cameron Jones: Victoire Ingabire’s trial will resume in Kigali, Rwanda, on Monday, where Ingabire is expected to testify in her own defense. Ingabire is on trial for terrorism and genocide ideology, which, in her case, means refusing to deny that Rwandan Hutus as well as Tutsis died in ethnic violence before, during and after the 1994 Rwanda Genocide.
Law professor Peter Erlinder, arrested last year when he went to Rwanda to defend presidential candidate Victoire Ingabire, is featured in this poster worn by a protester against Rwandan President Kagame’s visit to Paris Sept. 12, 2011.
As Ingabire prepares to testify, Rwandan President Paul Kagame is on his way to France in response to the invitation of French President Nicholas Sarkozy and President Obama has requested immunity for Kagame as a head of state in the civil case, Habyarimana v. Kagame, which alleges Kagame and his officers’ guilt in the Rwanda Genocide and Congo wars and demands damages for the widows of Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana and Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira. Ann Garrison has this report:
KPFA/Ann Garrison: As Victoire Ingabire prepares to testify in her own defense, Rwandan President Paul Kagame is on his way to France at the invitation of French President Nicholas Sarkozy. Sarkozy has sent French Foreign Minister Alain Juppé to Asia for the duration of Kagame’s visit.
Juppé has publicly disapproved of the invitation and said that the official Rwandan report on French involvement in the genocide is a collection of lies assembled to stop the investigation of Kagame and his senior officers and government officials’ crimes, including genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, an investigation conducted by the French court of Jean-Louis Bruguiere.
Susana Sanz Guardo is a principle organizer with Basta de Impunidad en Ruanda – in English, End Impunity in Rwanda – an international organization based in Spain. KPFA spoke to Sanz Guardo as she prepared to travel to France to join Rwandan, Congolese, Burundian and international human rights activists in protesting Sarkozy’s invitation and Kagame’s presence in France.
Susana Sanz Guardo: His visit is really surrounded by a strange atmosphere, and has awakened most human rights organizations, who have asked to be mobilized. Military diplomatic French people are also doing their work, who are all against Kagame’s visit.
KPFA: On Friday, in the United States, President Obama asked a federal court in Oklahoma City to grant Kagame immunity in the civil suit alleging his guilt in the Rwanda Genocide and Congo wars filed by William Mitchell law professor Peter Erlinder and Wichita lawyer Kurt Kerns. Rwandan American legal scholar Charles Kambanda, a professor at St. John’s University Law School in New York City, had this to say about Obama’s request:
Charles Kambanda: In this case, in my opinion, the interests of the people who have come to this court – of the United States court – are far greater than the interest the United States might have in protecting Kagame. Also the interest the United States has in protecting its image as the pioneer of fighting for the helpless people who are denied their rights by their leaders is far compelling to any interest the president of the U.S. can possibly think of in Kagame’s case.
KPFA Evening News Anchor Anthony Fest: And this is KPFA, 94.1 Berkeley, KPFA, 89.3 Berkeley and KFCF, 88.1 Fresno, Pacifica Radio for Northern and Central California. This program is the Evening News. I’m Anthony Fest.
Victoire Ingabire in court, in handcuffs, pink prison uniform and shaved head, speaks to her British lawyer Iain Edwards, who told KPFA and the SF Bay View that she was a joy to represent and that she makes “no distinction whatsoever between Hutu, Tutsi or Twa” – that to her, they are all her Rwandan people.
KPFA’s Ann Garrison spoke to Rwandan American Charles Kambanda, a law professor at St. John’s University, about the significance of the Ingabire case not only in Rwanda but also in the country’s war ravaged neighbor, the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
KPFA/Ann Garrison: Professor Kambanda, could you first explain the significance of Victoire Ingabire’s case?
Charles Kambanda: I believe Ingabire’s case has exposed Kagame. Kagame is now known to the entire world, because now any reasonable person knows that Kagame will stop at nothing. This came out clearly in Ingabire’s case, and I believe it’s the reason why the international community does not take for granted what Kagame says or does. Kagame did anything, even the most crazy thing, in Ingabire’s case. You saw a person persecuted by the court, and this could never happen without Kagame’s approval.
KPFA: And in Congo, where Kagame has said for so long that he’s protecting Congolese Tutsis and saving Rwanda from Hutu militias that he claims to have saved them from in 1994?
Imprisoned Rwandan opposition leader Victoire Ingabire
Charles Kambanda: Like I always said, Ingabire dared Kagame. Kagame cannot hide anymore. Ingabire made it clear that Kagame is nobody’s savior.
KPFA: What do you expect from Victoire’s appeal to the Rwandan Supreme Court filed on Dec. 17?
Charles Kambanda: I don’t expect anything. The Rwandan judiciary has, unfortunately, made it clear that it is another institution working for Kagame. I’m not saying that the judges have made this choice. They are forced to do what Kagame wants because they know if they don’t do it, they risk their life. Definitely there is no case for Ingabire to answer. Whatever she’s accused of having said, it is clear she was exercising her constitutional right. I mean I don’t expect any judge to put his life at such risk and say Ingabire should be acquitted.
Ingabire made it clear that Kagame is nobody’s savior.
KPFA: And what about the possibility of an appeal to the African Court of Human and Peoples’ Rights?
Rwandan Defense Minister James Kabarebe, Rwandan President Paul Kagame and Rwandan Chief of Land Forces Gen. Charles Kayonga. The latest U.N. Group of Experts Report on the Democratic Republic of the Congo includes a chain of command chart that identifies Kayonga – and Kabarebe above him – as the commanders of M23 that resumed the war in Congo this year. Kagame and Kayonga are both graduates of the U.S. Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas (USA).
Charles Kambanda: Yes. I believe that Ingabire and her lawyers are doing this for a strategic reason. How do they go back to the same judiciary, which she said she does not trust? She is not a fool. It is only strategic. She wants to go back and exhaust the appeals as required under the African Human Rights Court.
KPFA: But a victory in the African Court of Human and Peoples Rights would be only a moral victory, right?
Charles Kambanda: But then what should follow, after such a declaration, is for the politicians to isolate such a member, who is in violation of the principles of the African Union.
KPFA: That was Rwandan American Law Professor Charles Kambanda on Rwandan opposition leader Victoire’s Ingabire’s third Christmas behind bars.
Editor’s note: A member of Ingabire’s FDU-Inkingi party asked the SF Bay View to add that Victoire is one of many Rwandan political prisoners. Others include Bernard Ntaganda, who also attempted to run against President Kagame in 2010, and Déo Mushayidi, former president of the Rwandan Journalists Association, who wrote the introduction to Charles Onana‘s French language book “Les secrets du génocide rwandais.”
Major news outlets around the world reported East African warlord Bosco Ntaganda’s surrender this week. Rwandan American law professor Charles Kambanda spoke to KPFA about Ntaganda and why the story of his surrender is thoroughly implausible.
KPFA Evening News, March 23, 2013
The Congolese Army gave Bosco Ntaganda the title of general after his “integration” from the force that had been fighting the Congolese army. Professor Kambanda, Human Rights Watch and others described that move as, in fact, a concession of Congolese territory to Rwandan control. The agreement fell apart, leading to his mutiny in 2012 and his so-called “surrender” to the U.S. Embassy and the ICC this month. – Photo: Alain Wandimoyi, AP
KPFA Weekend News Anchor David Rosenburg: On Monday, March 18, major news outlets all over the world reported that Gen. Bosco Ntaganda, an East African warlord indicted by the International Criminal Court, had crossed the border from DR Congo into Rwanda and “surrendered” at the U.S. Embassy in Kigali, unbeknownst to Rwandan President Paul Kagame and Rwandan security forces.
KPFA’s Ann Garrison spoke to Rwandan American Charles Kambanda, a law professor at St. John’s University in New York City and former professor at the National University of Rwanda, about Bosco Ntaganda and why he considers the story of Ntaganda’s surrender thoroughly implausible.
KPFA/Ann Garrison: Professor Kambanda, there are a lot of questions about whether Bosco Ntaganda was actually Congolese or Rwandan. He was born in Rwanda, he moved to Congo, then back to Rwanda to fight under Kagame in the Rwandan Civil War and the First and Second Congo Wars.
The ICC indicted him as a Rwandan national, but now he’s being presented to the world as a Congolese rebel. Isn’t the most important point that he’s been a Rwandan military officer, responding to orders from Kagame’s military chain of command for the 20-plus years of his military career?
U.S. Embassy, Kigali, Rwanda
Professor Charles Kambanda: There is no question about that. Ntaganda is a Rwandan military officer. He has been receiving orders from Kigali, from Kagame’s command structure. There’s no doubt about that.
KPFA: Well, if Kagame, the U.S., Ntaganda, the ICC or anyone else had wanted to make the story that Ntaganda is a Congolese rebel easier to believe, wouldn’t it have made more sense for Ntaganda to have “surrendered” to MONUSCO, the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Congo, in Goma?
Charles Kambanda: I believe Kagame and Ntaganda had no choice. It was just the order from donors. The donors were telling Kagame: “We want that Ntaganda or else NO MORE MONEY FOR YOU.” Kagame was only being ordered by the donors that “We want this guy. We want him in our embassy.” Everything was planned, so he had no choice but only to surrender Ntaganda to the American Embassy. That’s it.
Professor Charles Kambanda
I think the United States had all interest to have Ntaganda in their embassy before he goes to the ICC, because the U.S. is a major actor to the politics of the region. They probably needed some background information or they needed some deep dark secrets of how Kagame works and how the rebel groups work in the region. I think the American Embassy needed Ntaganda in there, in our embassy, for some time to get all these details. I don’t think the U.N. would have served that purpose.
KPFA/Ann Garrison: OK, let’s talk about Rwandan security in Kigali. A Google map indicates that the U.S. Embassy is just a short distance from Kigali’s Police Headquarters on Police Road and the Avenue of the Gendarmerie, which run parallel between the two – the police headquarters and the U.S. Embassy – until they intersect at the Embassy, across the street from what appear to be Rwanda’s central government ministries.
The U.S. Embassy in Kigali, Rwanda, is located at 2657 Avenue de la Gendarmerie (Kacyiru), at its intersection with Police Headquarters Road.
Charles Kambanda: Yes, it is, it is an accurate description. That’s where the American Embassy lies. Put it this way. The American Embassy is in the center of the most guarded parts of Rwanda. And the American Embassy itself is the most guarded area in Rwanda. It’s impossible for anybody who knows the way the Kigali government controls that area … for anybody who’s aware … nobody can believe that story.
KPFA/Ann Garrison: And that was Professor Charles Kambanda, who in a longer interview explained that the propaganda about Ntaganda’s so-called decision to surrender to the ICC serves the U.S. and the Security Council by making it look as though they are responding to Congo’s human catastrophe and making the International Criminal Court appear credible.
It also, he said, allows Kagame to pretend that he does not let the big Western powers tell him what to do – because Ntaganda did this on his own. For Pacifica, KPFA and AfrobeatRadio, I’m Ann Garrison.
Confirmation outside the KPFA newscast from Gen. Kayumba Nyamwasa
Rwandan Gen. Kayumba Nyamwasa with Rwandan President Paul Kagame before they fell out and Kayumba went into exile in Johannesburg, South Africa, where he survived an assassination attempt in 2010.
Former Rwandan General Kayumba Nyamwasa, now dissident and in exile in Johannesburg, South Africa, where he survived an assassination attempt in 2010, was not available by phone on Saturday, but he sent this confirmation of what Professor Kambanda told KPFA:
“It is not possible for anybody to walk in any American embassy compound without appointment. Since 2001 American embassies’ security were reinforced with barricades, several tens, or hundreds metres from embassy. In Kigali the outer perimeter is manned by Rwandan police and private security both comprised of demobilized soldiers who all know Ntaganda. He could only move through this ring in an embassy or government of Rwanda vehicle. No remotest possibility that he entered embassy without appointment/arrangement.”
FDLR are freedom fighters. Like many other armed and unarmed groups working hard to bring down Kagame’s oppressive, bloody junta, FDLR has my support and I encourage them to fight for their rights no matter what Kagame and his lobbyists say FDLR stands for.
Professor Charles Kambanda
Whether any superpower country supports Kagame’s bloody junta is immaterial. Victory is coming, and very soon. Like the South Africans defeated the apartheid regime which some superpowers initially supported, Rwandan freedom fighters will defeat Kagame and his reign of terror notwithstanding his Western supporters.
I call upon all people of good will, friends of Rwanda and all Rwandans to realize that until all Rwandans engage into an open dialogue, we shall continue to have Kagame’s manipulated narrative of the massacres that took place in Rwanda. Kagame and some of his assassins massacred the Hutu and Tutsi to create terror and chaos throughout the country when it had a predominantly Hutu government. It’s well documented that some Hutu massacred the Tutsi and Hutu too.
Blaming the Rwandan massacres on that Hutu government after it was defeated – as Kagame propaganda goes – is an absolute lie. It’s possible that some FDLR members perpetrated some crimes during the Rwandan massacres, but it is ridiculous to identify them as the sole perpetrators of the massacres of perhaps as many as a million people or more.
Rwanda needs a social-political environment where all parties will become part of their healing process – through dialogue – where there will be justice for all. Kagame’s junta does not create that environment.
Long live all Rwandan freedom fighters. We must bring an end to Kagame’s reign of terror.
Charles Kambanda is a Rwandan American attorney in New York City. He is also a former official in President Paul Kagame’s government. He can be reached at kambacha@yahoo.com.
Update: On May 18, a Defense Department official, speaking anonymously, told USA Today that the Pentagon had sent about 20 Marines “to bolster security at the embassy” in Burundi’s capital, Bujumbura.
KPFA Weekend News, broadcast May 16, 2015
A coup attempt prevented Burundi’s President Nkurunziza from flying home from Arusha, Tanzania, earlier this week, but Nkurunziza now seems to be firmly back in control. The U.S. has called on Nkurunziza to step down and not seek a third term in office, but they do not appear to have supported the aborted coup.
Transcript
KPFA Weekend News Anchor David Rosenberg: An attempted coup d’état fell apart in Burundi this week, but not until after the Wikipedia entry on President Pierre Nkurunziza had been revised to say that he’d been ousted from power on May 13, 2015. On that day and the next it was widely reported that coup plotters had seized and darkened Bujumbura’s International Airport, making it impossible for Burundi’s president to fly home from talks on Burundi and regional instability.
President Pierre Nkurunziza accepted his party’s nomination for a third term in April. – Photo: AFP
By Friday, however, the president was back home, and the general who had announced the coup on a private radio station was reported to be on the run. Other coup supporters were reported to have been arrested and arraigned, and the Wikipedia once again identified Nkurunziza as Burundi’s incumbent president. KPFA’s Ann Garrison has more.
KPFA/Ann Garrison: Protest broke out in Burundi’s capital, Bujumbura, in April, after President Nkurunziza’s party announced that they were nominating him for a third term as president, “whatever the consequences.” Nkurunziza’s opponents say that both the 1998 Arusha Agreement on Peace and Reconciliation in Burundi and the Burundian Constitution legally oblige Nkurunziza to step down, but the text of both documents is ambiguous enough to allow for legal argument on either side and Nkurunziza’s supporters and opponents line up accordingly.
Burundi neighbor Rwanda shares the same majority Hutu and minority Tutsi demographic and history of conflict. Many pundits and reporters have therefore expressed anxiety about the possible return of the ethnic violence of the 1993-2005 civil war that cost 300,000 lives. Rwandan American legal scholar Charles Kambanda has said, however, that he considers this misguided propaganda.
Charles Kambanda: There was been much misguided propaganda about what is happening in Burundi. I don’t think the Burundian problem is Hutu-Tutsi. It’s struggle for power. It is just a struggle for power.
KPFA: The U.S. has called Nkurunziza’s bid for a third term unconstitutional and called on him to step down and urged regional leaders to do the same. The U.S. also supported a U.N. Security Council resolution censuring Nkurunziza, but that was blocked by Russia and China, who declared it an internal matter for the sovereign nation of Burundi.
Gen. Godefroid Niyombare announced that Pierre Nkurunziza was no longer Burundi’s president on a private radio station on May 13 and 14. By May 15, he acknowledged that the coup had failed.
Some observers therefore expected that the U.S. might support the coup attempt, but on Thursday, the U.S. State Department issued a statement saying that it continued to recognize Nkurunziza as the country’s president. On Friday, BBC reporter Maud Julienne reported that coup leader Gen. Godefroid Niyombare was on the run and unable to count on help from either the U.S. or Rwandan Embassy.
BBC/Maud Julienn: Well, he’s on the run at the moment but he doesn’t seem to have a viable exit route in front of him. We understand that the U.S. and the Rwandan embassies, which he may have counted on for support, are not going to be helping him. He’s thought to still be in the country, though of course it’s not clear where. And he has already admitted to some journalists that he was surrendering, that the coup had failed, so it seems like a matter of hours before he too is arrested.
KPFA: Reuters reported that Burundian authorities claim to have the renegade general in custody and claim that he did not surrender but was arrested instead. The Burundian government spokesperson, again according to Reuters, has since withdrawn that statement and said that the general is still at large.
Burundian President Pierre Nkurunziza and supporters in rural Burundi. – Photo: AFP
The U.S., the E.U. and Western media continue to castigate Burundian President Pierre Nkurunziza for seeking a third term in office, despite violent street protest and a failed coup détat. Nkurunziza, who was elected by Burundi’s Parliament in 2005, claims that the Burundian Constitution gives him the right to run for election twice by universal suffrage. The country’s constitutional court confirmed that Nkurunziza has that right.
Ironically, one of the only voices in the Western press who has broken with the Western consensus by pointing to Burundi’s sovereignty is heard weekly on the Voice of America. On June 3, 2015, Shaka Ssali, the very popular African-born host of Straight Talk Africa, compared the Burundian constitutional court’s decision to that of the Supreme Court regarding the 2005 U.S. election of George Bush:
“George W. Bush was not elected president of the United States in his first term. He was appointed by the Supreme Court of the United States of America, 5 to 4 verdict. And the five members who voted for him – they had been appointed by Republican presidents.
“People grumbled here and what have you, but life went on. So let’s be honest. You may not be in agreement with the decision of the Burundian constitutional court, but since the court has spoken, you have to accept it, no?”
“George W. Bush was not elected president of the United States in his first term. He was appointed by the Supreme Court of the United States of America, 5 to 4 verdict. People grumbled here and what have you, but life went on.”
Ssali was speaking to John Manirakiza, an international development consultant and member of the Burundian Diaspora in Washington, D.C. Manirakiza responded that the people of Burundi oppose Nkurunziza’s decision to run for election again. However, Agence France Presse (AFP), in one newswire that departed significantly from the rest of the Western press, reported that the protests have all occurred in Burundi’s capital, Bujumbura, and that Nkurunziza is immensely popular with Burundi’s rural peasant majority.
“Dancing and singing,” AFP reported, “thousands waited to greet the president as he visited this farming community on Saturday, some 30 kilometres (20 miles) outside the capital, Bujumbura.”
Burundi borders DR Congo’s resource-rich South Kivu Province.
Shaka Ssali also argued that the Burundian Constitution became the law of the land when it was enacted in 2005, at which point it superseded the authority of the 1998 Arusha Peace and Reconciliation Agreement for Burundi, a document which the U.S. continues to invoke. In this, Ssali agrees with Rwandan legal scholar and attorney Charles Kambanda, who published his legal analysis in “The Rwandan.”
Gearóid Ó Colmáin, an Irish writer based in Paris, credited Nkurunziza with reconstructing the country after 12 years of civil war and further explained his popularity in an interview with Phil Taylor on CIUT-FM Toronto:
“He’s managed to reconstruct the country. He’s actually built more schools, by 2007, than were built before in the entire 50 years of independence. He’s instituted policies that have been very good for working people, with emphasis on infrastructure.
He’s managed to reconstruct the country. He’s actually built more schools, by 2007, than were built before in the entire 50 years of independence.
“He made a law actually, which requires people to provide free labor, community labor, on Saturdays to build schools and other public infrastructure that people need. So he has created a kind of a national voluntarism which has given people a sense of hope and a sense that they have power to build their country. He’s actually done very well and he spends a lot of his time with poor people on weekends, so he’s extremely popular.
“The government has made the claim that this problem, this violence, is really only in Bujumbura, the capital, and that is actually true. In most of the country there are hardly any protests. The foreign funded media tends to be concentrated in Bujumbura. But even in Bujumbura, you only have about four quarters of the capital where there’s violence. So this has really been blown all out of all proportion by the international press.”
In “Are the US and the EU Sponsoring Terrorism in Burundi?” an essay published in Global Research, Colmáin said that Nkurunziza has fallen out of favor with the West by striking a deal with a Russian corporation to mine Burundi’s nickel reserves, and that the U.S. has engaged in a low intensity campaign to destabilize Burundi and the surrounding region. He blamed foreign funded media, especially private radio stations, for frightening the population to destabilize the country and the region in service to foreign interests.
Colmáin said that Nkurunziza has fallen out of favor with the West by striking a deal with a Russian corporation to mine Burundi’s nickel reserves, and that the U.S. has engaged in a low intensity campaign to destabilize Burundi and the surrounding region.
No one more adamantly challenged the Western consensus than Pan Africanist scholar Dr. Randy Short, speaking to Press TV. Dr. Short said that the Burundian crisis is really all about the resources that Western powers are taking out of Burundi’s neighbor, the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
“Burundi is a conduit into Congo. Burundi is one of the poorest countries in the world. They don’t have anything. They (U.S. policy makers) care as much about Burundians as they do about the people in Baltimore who were rioting a few weeks ago. This is a sham. It’s a shibboleth. What it’s an effort to do is to steal from sovereign nations in Africa and to compete with the Chinese and the BRICs countries to hold onto Africa as a treasure house for the benefit of white Western powers.”
Rwanda is the official “hideout” for the Burundian government’s armed and unarmed “rebels” and/or opposition. Some Burundians in Rwanda, under Rwanda government protection, have openly declared war against the government of Burundi.
Kigali, which is the base for Burundian government armed and unarmed rebels and opposition, is hardly 100 miles from Burundi’s border with Rwanda.
Burundi and Rwanda are members of the East African community. Is Kagame’s decision to host and facilitate Burundi’s rebels, including those who participated in a coup in Burundi, consistent with the spirit and letter of the East Africa Community Treaty?
Is Kagame’s conspicuous support for Burundian “rebels” consistent with the ideals of good neighborhood? Is it consistent with the International Convention for the Protection of Refugees for Kagame to host and protect armed Burundians who “ran” away from Burundi after the coup?
Shouldn’t the world be looking into an independent committee to monitor Burundi’s borders to avoid an outright war between these two countries? Is Kagame’s role in Burundi’s crisis a secret anymore?
Is Kagame capable of ruining Burundi the same way he ruined DRC, especially North and South Kivu?
Are the U.N., the U.K. and the U.S. looking on as Kagame destroys Burundi so that the Western allies can later send an expensive U.N. peacekeeping force to Burundi the same way the world looked on as Kagame was destroying the Democratic Republic of the Congo?
Are the U.N., the U.K. and the U.S. looking on as Kagame destroys Burundi so that the Western allies can later send an expensive U.N. peacekeeping force to Burundi the same way the world looked on as Kagame was destroying the Democratic Republic of the Congo?
Rwandan American Dr. Charles Kambanda is a practicing attorney in New York City and a former professor at the National University of Rwanda. He was once a member of President Paul Kagame’s Rwandan Patriotic Front Party.
Dr. Charles Kambanda’s essay, which was first posted to the Facebook forum Friends of Reason (and is posted below – ed.), brought reason to the discussion of presidential term limits in Burundi, which had been overwhelmed by propaganda and fearmongering about the renewal of ethnic violence between Hutus and Tutsis in the tiny East African nation.
Transcript
KPFA Weekend News Anchor David Rosenberg: The international discussion of whether or not Burundian President Pierre Nkurunziza has the legal right to run for another term in office took a rational turn in recent weeks, thanks to Rwandan American lawyer and former National University of Rwanda professor Dr. Charles Kambanda. Kambanda first posted his essay to a Facebook forum Friends of Reason, which is devoted to discussion of war and peace in the Great Lakes Region of Africa. KPFA’s Ann Garrison, who studies and participates in the Friends of Reason Facebook forum, spoke to Dr. Kambanda.
Rwandan American lawyer and former National University of Rwanda professor Dr. Charles Kambanda
KPFA/Ann Garrison: Dr. Kambanda, could you explain how you brought the voice of reason to the debate about the Burundian Constitutional and political crisis in the Facebook forum Friends of Reason?
Kambanda: The reason why I wrote that piece was to bring the academic aspect into this debate. The debate had basically taken a propaganda trend. My intention was to bring reason into the debate by demonstrating the legal aspects of the problem, and also demonstrating that beyond what people call the Constitutional crisis, there are other complex political and social problems.
KPFA: And it’s your position that the Burundian Constitution gives President Pierre Nkurunziza the right to run again for another term, and that this has been confirmed by the Burundian Constitutional court, right?
Kambanda: Yes. The law of the land, the supreme law of the land, is the Constitution, and Article 96 is clear that a person serves two terms (and) cannot serve beyond two terms if he was elected by universal suffrage. Now, Nkurunziza has served only one term, meaning that, under Article 96, he has the right to run for president and, if elected by the people, then he becomes the president. He has the right; that’s the Constitution.
KPFA: We don’t have time to go deeply into your analysis, but can you summarize why the Arusha Accord on Peace and Reconciliation in Burundi has been improperly invoked as though it were ruling law in this situation?
Kambanda: The Arusha agreement was not meant to live forever. Like any agreement, it had its own termination clause. Every party to the agreement performed their part of the bargain and, on Sept. 4, 2005, the United Nations secretary general reported to the United Nations Security Council that all the parties had fully performed the terms of the agreement and it was time to dissolve the committee that had been instituted to enforce the implementation of the agreement, meaning that on that date the Arusha agreement terminated by its own terms. So you cannot bring it back as a legal document.
KPFA: OK, now could you tell us about the Facebook forum “Friends of Reason”? It’s noteworthy as a media story that you have a lot of status in this forum, which includes a number of people who were your students at various East African universities, and your argument obviously had impact almost immediately after you posted it.
Kambanda: Friends of Reason has very many prominent international policymakers. We have people from almost all the donor countries, or Western countries. We have some people there from China, Russia, Britain, France, USA, Germany. We have so many people in this group. Most of them don’t write, but they read what we write there.
So it’s like Friends of Reason brings primary data to the community and then policymakers process that and then make a decision. I find that is the role of Friends of Reason.
KPFA: OK, Charles Kambanda, thank you for speaking to KPFA.
Kambanda: Thank you, Ann.
KPFA: A transcript of this KPFA News report will be published shortly on the website of the San Francisco Bay View, sfbayview.com, along with Dr. Kambanda’s essay and the audio archive of his interview on CIUT-Toronto’s Taylor Report.
CIUT-Toronto’s Taylor Report interview with Dr. Charles Kambanda
On Burundi’s current turmoil: A Constitutional crisis or a set of complex political and economic issues?
by Charles Kambanda
Burundi’s current deadlock, on its face, hinges on the president’s stanch determination to run for another presidential term after 10 years in office. Supporters of the president’s new bid for the top job are convinced that the Republic of Burundi 2005 Constitution does not bar the president from running for another term. On the other hand, opposition leaders argue that the spirit and letter of the Arusha agreement – read together with what opposition leaders call vague presidential terms limit in the Constitution – bars the president from running for another term.
Article 96 of the Republic of Burundi 2005 Constitution provides that “the president of the republic is elected by universal suffrage for a mandate of five years renewable one time.” The president has held office for 10 years now.
Burundi’s opposition leaders and political activists insist that the president is ineligible for another term. The president and his supporters contend that the president has been in office for 10 years. However, the first term he served (five years) was under Title XV “special transitional period” the 2005 Constitution created. Therefore, the president argues, the first five years he served under Title XV do not count for purpose of Article 96.
Burundi’s Arusha agreement adopted five protocols. The pertinent protocol, for purposes of presidential term limits, is democracy and good governance (Protocol 11). Article 7(1)(a) “the [subsequent] Constitution shall provide that, save for the first election of a president, the president … shall be elected by direct universal suffrage …”
Article 7(1)(c) prescribed that the National Assembly would elect the first post transition president through the Article 20(10) procedure. Article 7(3) prescribes that the Constitution of Burundi shall provide that the president is elected for a term of five years renewable only once.
The framers for Article 96 of Burundi’s 2005 Constitution adopted Articles 7(1)(a) and 7(3) of the Arusha agreement without adopting Article 7(1)(c). However, Article 302 of Burundi’s 2005 Constitution provides: “Exceptionally, the first President of the Republic of the post-transition period is elected by the [elected] National Assembly and the elected Senate meeting in Congress; with a majority of two-thirds of the members … The president elected for the first post-transition period may not dissolve the Parliament.”
The face-off centers around various questions: What’s the legal status, if any, of the Arusha agreement in Burundi’s legal regime after the transitional period? Was the Arusha agreement an ordinary contract (guided by its terms and/or common law principles) or was it a treaty (part of Burundi’s law)?
Alternatively, was the Arusha agreement a precursor or an integral part of Burundi’s 2005 Constitution? Is Article 302 an exception to, or does it complement Article 96? Is what’s called a “constitutional crisis” real or imaginary?
Burundi Constitutional Court’s take
The Constitutional Court of Burundi ruled that Burundi’s Constitution does not bar the current president from standing for another term, which would be his last term. In their ruling, the head Justice of the Constitutional Court reasoned that “to understand the spirit of the Constitution, it is useful to first understand the document which most inspired the drafters of the 2005 Constitution.”
Burundi’s Constitutional Court Justices argued that the Arusha agreement is a genuine, unavoidable, inspiring and indispensable document. In effect, the Constitutional Court argued, the Arusha agreement is Burundi’s 2005 Constitution bedrock.
The Justices of the Constitutional court did not present details of their legal reasoning. However, the Justices’ conclusion about the current status and role of the Arusha agreement is revealing.
The Arusha agreement was meant for a specific purpose: establishing principles and rules that would help Burundians to bring an end to their protracted ethnic civil war and build institutions for sustainable peace, security and development. It appears the Justices were convinced that although the Arusha agreement inspired the framers of the Constitution, like any other landmark event in Burundi’s history, the black and white letter of Burundi’s Constitution prevails.
The justices appear to agree that Title XV of the 2005 Burundi Constitution created a special transitional presidency which the framers of the Constitution clearly did not intend to count for purposes of the Article 96 term limit. I would concur.
The Arusha agreement was an ordinary agreement, as opposed to a treaty
The Arusha agreement was a multilateral agreement. There was an offer, acceptance, consideration and there were no defenses for any party against the Arusha agreement. There were specific things each party had to perform within a specific time frame.
To this effect, Protocol V, Article 3(1) created the Implementation Monitoring Committee to: “(a) Follow up, monitor, supervise, coordinate and ensure the effective implementation of all the provisions of the agreement; (b) Ensure that the implementation timetable is respected; (c) ensure the accurate interpretation of the agreement; (d) Reconcile points of view … (f) Give guidance to and coordinate the activities of all commissions and subcommissions set up … for the purpose of implementing the agreement, (g) Assist and support the transitional government in its diplomatic mobilization of financial, material, technical and human resources required for the implementation of the Agreement …”
On the 8th and 9th of August 2005, the Implementation Monitoring Committee held its last meeting, in which they confirmed that the Agreement had been fully implemented. The U.N. Secretary General, having been duly briefed that the Arusha agreement had been successfully implemented and the country was ready for a new and independent legal and political regime, dissolved the committee.
In his report S/2005/586, Sept. 14, 2005, the UN Secretary General informed the United Nations Security Council that the Arusha Agreement had been implemented in toto. Therefore, the Arusha agreement, like any other ordinary contract, terminated naturally by its “termination clause.”
An agreement that has terminated by its own terms and the parties are discharged after complete performance of their bargains would not be reasonably “revived” without a new offer, acceptance, consideration and absence of defenses. It’s my submission that it’s erroneous to evoke the terms of the Arusha agreement after its natural termination.
The spirit of the agreement might be morally binding for ages. However, while we can enforce the law, there is no paradigm to enforce morality.
The Constitutional Court Justices rightly observed that the Arusha agreement remains a living inspiration for Burundians – of all ages – because it was the cornerstone for ending the bloody protracted ethnic war. Jurists from all schools of thought – historical, philosophical and analytical – agree that specific events, life experience or realities inspire each statute or law.
However, the events, life experience or realities that inspire a given statute do not, by themselves, become law. It’s a settled principle that whatever inspired a given statute or law can be helpful for courts to interpret that statute if a term or provision of the statute is ambiguous. However, as the Justices of the Constitutional Court properly reasoned, aside from the fact that the Arusha agreement is a living inspiration for Burundian lawmakers, politicians and civil society, the Arusha agreement was not law and the agreement is not part of the 2005 Constitution.
Burundi’s 2005 Constitution ushered in a new, independent and sustainable legal and/or political regime. That is why Burundi’s 2005 Constitution preamble ends with a conspicuously captioned statement: The Constitution is the fundamental law of the Republic of Burundi.
The 2005 Burundi Constitution did not adopt the Arusha agreement in its entirety or any provision of it
Burundi’s 2005 Constitution mentions the Arusha agreement in its preamble: “Reaffirming our faith in the ideal of peace, of reconciliation and national unity in accordance with the Agreement of Arusha …” This provision in Burundi’s Constitution is instructive.
First, the framers of Burundi’s 2005 Constitution are categorical; the agreement is a set of ideals of a moral nature, not law. Second, it was not the framers’ intention to adopt the Arusha “ideals” by mentioning the agreement in the preamble. It’s a legal principle of general application that mentioning a document or an event in a statute or Constitution, by itself, is insufficient to prove that the document or event is a component of the statute or Constitution.
Article 19 of Burundi’s 2005 Constitution enumerates specific treaties that are an integral part of the Constitution. The Arusha agreement was not a treaty. Therefore, Burundi’s 2005 Constitution does not enumerate the Arusha agreement among the treaties that are an integral part of the Constitution.
Articles 96 and 302 of Burundi’s 2005 Constitution are not inconsistent provisions
Burundi’s 2005 Constitution creates a unique period called the “first post-transitional” under Title XV of the Constitution. The Title XV wording is clear; it reads: “Title XV: Of the particular provisions for the first post-transitional period.”
Title XV set particular procedures for the election of the president in this unique period. Title XV took away some vital powers of the president during the first post-transitional government. Article 96 is clearly not under the Title XV arrangement.
Article 302 is under Title XV; it provides: “Exceptionally, the first President of the Republic of the post-transition period is elected by the [elected] National Assembly and the elected Senate meeting in Congress … The president elected for the first post-transition period may not dissolve the Parliament.” By its letter and spirit, Title XV created a special category of presidency which was, clearly, not intended to count for purposes of Article 96.
The term “exceptionally,” which opens Article 302, does not create an exception to Article 96. The term “exceptionally” under Article 302, as the wording of Title XV suggests, refers to the exceptional epoch (the first post-transition period) and an exceptional procedure for the election of the president Title XV created.
The wording of Title XV of Burundi’s 2005 Constitution is clearly meant to create a distinct and separate transitional period called “the first post-transitional period,” which is outside the scope of the Article 96 presidential term limit.
Save for the clear wording of Title XV, particularly Article 302, the framers of Burundi’s 2005 Constitution could not have used Article 302 to “amend” and/or negate Article 96 of the same Constitution. Therefore, Articles 96 and 302 (presidential term limit, election procedures and powers) were designed for different Constitutional epochs.
In effect, Title XV provisions became obsolete as soon as the first post-transitional period ended. Seeking to apply Title XV provisions today would be applying a dead law. Consequently, understanding the meaning of Articles 96 and 302 is not a Constitutional interpretation issue; it is about reading the black and white letter of the 2005 Constitution
The Burundian ‘deadlock’ is probably broader than the imaginary Constitutional issues
The Arusha agreement was for political transition purposes – from the civil war to sustainable peace. The Arusha agreement was not an eternally enforceable contract among the parties. Many countries that emerged from protracted civil wars had similar agreements.
The standard practice is that transitional agreements do not survive the transitional period save for those principles that implicitly become an integral part of the Constitution. Why do some sections of the public – local and international – expect Burundi to return to a transitional agreement that terminated, yet the 2005 Constitution ushered in a new and independent legal order?
Why is Burundi expected to revive a terminated agreement without new negotiations, contrary to the known contract law principles? Why should a written law, Burundi’s Constitution, be modified and/or invalidated by the spirit or letter of a document which, itself, is not a law?
Why are countries like Rwanda, whose post-conflict Constitution defers from its Arusha Agreement, not compelled to respect their transitional agreement?
Burundi is confronted with deeper political and economic problems, domestically and internationally. Domestically, the ruling power (party?) is excessively strong in terms of resources and membership, in comparison with all the opposition parties put together.
In the most fair and free elections, the possibility that Burundi’s opposition parties will win an election is minimal. Burundi’s opposition political parties are confronted with a political monster in Burundi’s ruling political party.
Political tension in such environment is inevitable. The country’s economic base is too narrow, yet Burundi’s fertility rate is all the way through the roof for a tiny country with an impoverished population.
This opens a floodgate of all social evils and problems, which makes Burundi an active volcano that could erupt any time for any reason – real or imaginary. Internationally, Burundi is a favorable gateway into the Democratic Republic of Congo’s vast and valuable natural resources.
The booming illegal business in DRC has attracted first class multinational companies into that region. Each of these multinational companies wants to influence politics and politicians in Burundi for “favors.”
Burundi has 6 percent of the world’s unexploited nickel deposits. A firm that is affiliated with Russia recently “won” the tender to mine nickel in Burundi. With the cold war reactivated, Burundi is probably a new cold war battleground.
Burundi is up for grab in the balance of power system. It is my submission that the so-called constitutional crisis in Burundi is probably an iceberg of a combination of problems Burundians ought to consider addressing from the roots.
Conclusion
The Arusha agreement was fully implemented. The parties were discharged as per the letter and spirit of Protocol V of the agreement. The Arusha agreement was not an indefinite agreement between parties; it was a transitional agreement among the parties to bring an end to a bloody, protracted ethnic civil war.
The agreement’s moral authority notwithstanding, tying down the sovereign – Burundi – to an agreement that terminated by its own terms is a historical and legal fallacy. The Burundian government is not reasonably expected to enforce moral dictates, which is the proper status of the Arusha agreement in Burundians’ public life.
Burundi’s 2005 Constitution created two distinct and separate epochs: the first post-transitional period (guided by Article XV provisions, including Article 302) and the period thereafter. Seeking to apply Title XV outside its intended epoch is offensive to Burundi’s 2005 Constitution.
The Title XV epoch expired upon the natural end of the first post-transitional government. Therefore, Title XV limits and procedures are irrelevant outside the Title XV epoch.
The alleged “constitutional crisis” is imaginary because Burundi’s 2005 Constitution is not ambiguous. The core issues are political, economic and social, domestically and internationally.
To the extent Burundians address the real problems underlying this imaginary constitutional crisis realistically, Burundians will enjoy sustainable peace.
Charles Kambanda is an attorney and counsel at law in New York.
Which presidents will remain in power in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and its neighbors, Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi and the Republic of the Congo?
Transcript
KPFA Weekend News Anchor Sharon Sobotta: Presidential succession struggles continue in many nations on the African continent, including the Democratic Republic of Congo and its neighbors to both the east and west. KPFA’s Ann Garrison has the report.
President Obama and Burundian President Nkurunziza. Why do President Obama and the U.S. State Department express so much more concern with the presidential succession struggle in Burundi than in the Republic of Congo, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda and Rwanda?
KPFA/Ann Garrison: Reuters reported six hours ago that the ruling party led by President Joseph Kabila in the Democratic Republic of Congo says that elections must be delayed up to four years until a national census and revision of the voter rolls can be completed. Dozens of Congolese have been killed or imprisoned protesting against Kabila’s attempt to cling to power.
The succession struggles in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s neighbors are important to the Democratic Republic of Congo as well, because so many of its neighbors, most of all Rwanda and Uganda, have invaded DR Congo, leaving millions dead and plundering its resources during the past two decades.
In Uganda, one of the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s neighbors to the east, President Yoweri Museveni doesn’t need to overcome term limits because Uganda’s Parliament abolished them in 2005. He has already announced that he will run again in 2016, his 30th year in power. Museveni’s Parliament has also passed a “Public Order Management Bill,” which makes it illegal for more than three people to lawfully assemble in public.
Rwandan American attorney Charles Kambanda writes that the constitutional amendment makes extraordinary provisions to enable Kagame alone to hang on to power and making him far more than equal to other Rwandan citizens before the law. Kambanda also says that this is not an “amendment to the constitution,” but a constitutional coup.
Click to enlarge
In Burundi, Rwanda’s neighbor and another of the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s neighbors to the east, President Nkurunziza claimed the right to be elected twice by universal suffrage and won the election, as Rwanda’s President Kagame did in 2010 and DR Congo’s President Kabila did in 2011, and that right was confirmed by Burundi’s highest court.
After a failed May coup attempt in Burundi, the coup plotters took up arms against the government. Violence has continued in the capital Bujumbura, with police, government officials, protestors and opposition leaders all suffering casualties reportedly totalling as high as 200. Burundian officials accused Rwanda of backing the coup plotters after clashes on the Rwandan Burundian border.
Neither President Obama nor the U.S. State Department protested Kagame or Kabila’s second election by universal suffrage, but both have adamantly protested Nkurunziza’s. KPFA asked the U.S. State Department to comment on the constitutional amendment that will allow Kagame to serve until the year 2034. State’s press office promised a response as yet unreceived, but, in response to past inquiries, State has gone on record in opposition to another term for Kagame.
Kennedy Gihana: It is a catastrophe for Rwanda … it was after genocide … we lost almost 1 million people, and we came out and had this beautiful constitution, even though it has been changed many times. But that provision, Section 101, which prohibits a person to have more than two terms as president …
When you look back on that provision, you see that under no circumstances a person can hold the office of president more than two terms. Now, he has removed that term by calling a referendum to remove that term. It is against the constitution, so he has overthrown the constitution.
KPFA: Many Congolese say that another term for Kagame could be catastrophic for them as well.
Charles Kambanda told KPFA that the West is trying to create a failed state whose resources will then be easier to control.
Transcript
KPFA Weekend News Anchor Sharon Sobotta: After a failed coup attempt followed by six months of armed insurrection in the streets of Burundi’s capital, Bujumbura, the government issued an ultimatum, offering amnesty to insurgents who would lay down their arms by today, Saturday, Nov. 7. KPFA’s Ann Garrison has the story.
KPFA/Ann Garrison: Burundi is a tiny, landlocked nation bordering Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Tanzania deep in the heart of Africa. Its Hutu-Tutsi-and-Twa social groupings mirror those of neighboring Rwanda, and the two nations’ political struggles have long been intertwined.
After Burundian President Pierre Nkurunziza’s ultimatum to insurrectionists to lay down their arms, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power and the International Crisis Group, a think tank headed by Western military, government and corporate officials, warned of massacres like those in Rwanda in 1994. In contrast, Charles Kambanda, Rwandan American attorney and former professor at the National University of Rwanda, describes the conflict as political and its larger context as an East-West power struggle for resources.
Charles Kambanda: What is really happening in Burundi is no different than what happened in DRC, in Congo. We have these multinational corporations, Western corporations, fighting for natural resources in that region.
The best way for these companies to conquer these natural resources is to create a situation where no government is in control. Burundi is now known for a type of natural resource called nickel and they say 6 percent of the world’s nickel is in Burundi.
And if we want to remember the geography of that region, Burundi borders with Congo, and Congo, the other side, is so rich in minerals. So we have these corporations fighting to control Burundi, to create a failed state in Burundi, so that they can get involved in illegal business in that region.
We have these corporations fighting to control Burundi, to create a failed state in Burundi, so that they can get involved in illegal business in that region.
But also, it is known that the Burundian government signed a contract with a Russian corporation to exploit the nickel in Burundi. The U.S. corporations that were interested in this contract did not get it.
So we have this fight now because some politicians who are sponsored by these corporations don’t want their clients to lose that contract. On the other hand, Russia is saying, “We cannot lose our resources in Burundi.”
iBurundi tweets: “#Burundi police say armed men have police/army uniforms. Then sent this one 2 search 4 weapons; Real police or not?” – Photo: iBurundi
This difference on the ground is what we see at the U.N., United Nations Security Council. The spokesperson for the United Nations secretary general made it clear that the council will never reach an agreement over Burundi issues because the superpowers are divided into two clear groups about Burundi, which is why the Western media is out there to present the government of Burundi as a failed government.
KPFA: President Nkurunziza and his government said that Burundian security forces would begin house to house searches for illegal weapons and insurgents who refuse to lay down their arms by today’s end.
The International Crisis Group called for U.S. and other donor nations to commit support for an “African-led peace implementation mission” in Burundi, but the regional will for such a mission has thus far been lacking. The U.S. and E.U. have succeeded in enlisting the African Union Peace and Security Council but not the East African Community or the South African Development Community.
Charles Kambanda also said that many in the region fear that if Hillary Clinton becomes president, she will instigate war and chaos in the region in the interest of U.S. hegemony.
Many in the region fear that if Hillary Clinton becomes president, she will instigate war and chaos in the region in the interest of U.S. hegemony.
If Western press alone could overthrow a government, Burundi’s would be long gone. Anyone searching the web for “Burundi” and “News” in the past year would have seen long lists of shrill press quoting shrill Western officials demanding that Burundian President Pierre Nkurunziza step down, amidst street protest and armed insurgency, and make way for a “transitional government.”
Nkurunziza’s crime? Winning a third term in office, after Burundi’s constitutional court ruled that he was constitutionally entitled to run for election by universal suffrage a second time. Nkurunziza is hugely popular with Burundi’s rural agricultural majority.
Ibrahima Fall, Senegalese diplomat and the AU’s special representative to the African Great Lakes Region
U.S. U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, the U.S. State Department, the E.U. and Belgium, Burundi’s former colonial master, have fiercely advocated for the deployment of 5,000 African Union (A.U.) troops in Burundi, whether Burundi agrees or not. They say the deployment is needed to protect civilians and prevent genocide.
In her book, “Problem from Hell: America in the Age of Genocide,” Samantha Power argues that Americans are obliged to protect civilians and prevent genocide with – what else? – our unprecedented military force. A.U. “peacekeeping” missions rely on the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) for weapons, training, intelligence, logistics, organization and command.
Nevertheless, on Sunday, Jan. 31, 2016, the African Union’s Annual Summit of member nations dismissed the West’s proposal to deploy A.U. troops to Burundi without Burundi’s consent. The Burundian government has said that the fighting is taking place only in some neighborhoods in the capital, Bujumbura, that their own security forces are capable, and that they will respond to any A.U. deployment without their consent as an invasion.
They also said that Burundi’s government, army and police all include members of both the Hutu and Tutsi groups and that there is therefore no imminent danger of genocide. In 1993, Burundi’s predominantly Tutsi army slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Burundian Hutus after assassinating the country’s first Hutu president, Melchior Ndadaye, who was also its first democratically elected president.
Rwanda’s role in the conflict
Over 200,000 refugees have fled Burundi since the violence began in the capital in the last week of April. In November, Jeff Drumtra, a former U.N. official at Rwanda’s Mahama Refugee Camp, told Pacifica’s Flashpoints Radio that he had documented the Rwandan government’s conscription of Burundian refugees into a new rebel army to fight in Burundi.
Drumtra said he had submitted his documentation to the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees, so neither the U.N. nor the major powers will be able to say, at a later date, that they were unaware of the recruitment. Rwanda denied Drumtra’s allegations, but Refugees International confirmed them in its December report, “Asylum Betrayed: Recruitment of Burundian Refugees in Rwanda.”
The African Union Annual Summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The decision regarding Burundi was announced after a closed door meeting, without a voice or roll call vote.
“It was never the intention of the African Union to deploy a mission to Burundi without the consent of Burundian authorities,” he said. “This is unimaginable. If the position of these two leaders (Equatorial Guinea’s Teodoro Obiang Nguema and the Gambia’s Yahya Jammeh) is based on this misunderstanding, it is hoped that gradually more communication takes place and that dialogue may settle on these issues.
“Probably one of the conclusions – because currently these conclusions are tentative – one of the final conclusions of the meeting this Friday will be sending a high-level delegation to Burundi to speak with senior Burundian authorities and initiate a conversation on this issue.”
Opposition to the deployment was not even brought to a voice or roll call vote. A.U. member nations no doubt realized that if they authorized the deployment without Burundi’s consent, unwelcome A.U. troops might be sent across their borders as well.
Article 4(h) of the African Union Constitutive Act provides that the A.U. has the right to intervene in a member state in “grave circumstances, namely, war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity,” but, had it been approved, the deployment to Burundi would have been its first use.
Charles Kambanda, Rwandan American lawyer and former law professor (at the National University of Rwanda), said: “The A.U. heads of states appear to have properly analyzed the situation in Burundi. It’s clear that the A.U. Peace and Security Council, pressed by the E.U. and U.S., who are desperate for regime change in Burundi, did not do serious research – legal and political – for their naive proposal to force A.U. troops on Burundi. Once again, President Kagame and his partners-in-crime, who sought to use A.U. troops to grab control of Burundi, have been defeated. The truth, not propaganda, will prevail.”
On the morning of July 15, I spoke to William Mitchell Law Professor and international criminal defense attorney Peter Erlinder about the grisly assassination of Democratic Green Party of Rwanda Vice President Andre Kagwa Kwisereka. Kwisereka was found beheaded, with a machete left nearby, near Butare, Rwanda, on July 13, 26 days after Professor Erlinder’s release in Rwanda, where Rwandan President Paul Kagame’s regime had arrested and incarcerated him for three weeks. Erlinder had traveled to Rwanda to defend Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza, Rwanda’s FDU-Inkingi party leader and presidential candidate, only to be arrested and accused of “genocide ideology,” which means disagreeing with Rwanda’s official history of the 1994 Rwanda Genocide and/or with the regime of Rwandan President Paul Kagame.
When I told Professor Erlinder about Andre Kagwa Kwisereka’s assassination, he said, “Yes, and an ICTR [International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda] defense attorney, Professor Jwani Mwaikusa, was just assassinated, too, in Dar es Salaam.”
He also said:
“No one knows for sure whether he was assassinated by Rwandan Patriotic Front operatives, but we do know that lawyers put themselves in danger by defending people whom the RPF have identified as their enemies.”
Professor Erlinder put himself in great danger by traveling to Rwanda, and says that he would have been “disappeared” had he not sat down, started hollering, demanded to speak to the U.S. Embassy, and made the sort of scene that white Americans feel empowered to make, in the Kigali hotel where he had been arrested. Professor Mwaikusa, however, put himself in far more danger and paid the ultimate price, along with a nephew and neighbor who attempted to come to his defense.
Professor Erlinder and Professor Mwaikusa were both towering, world renowned legal scholars, teachers and human rights defenders, but Professor Erlinder was an American who survived, Professor Mukwaisa an African who paid with his life. His assassins no doubt knew that, though their stature and accomplishments were similar, the international outcry and consequence would not compare.
As U.S. citizens, we are complicit in Professor Mwaikusa’s death because President Paul Kagame’s Rwanda is the highest per capita recipient of U.S. aid in Africa.
Thanks to Professor Charles Kambanda for sharing his thoughts on Professor Mwaikusa and his legacy. – Ann Garrison
Professor Jwani Mwaikusa: Martyr for truth
by Charles Kambanda
The identity, motive and/or sponsors of Professor Jwani Mwaikusa’s assassins, in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, may remain “unknown,” meaning “unproven,” for some time, but Professor Mwaikusa’s friends and colleagues know that whoever was responsible deprived the legal fraternity and the entire human race of an irreplaceable, independent and incorruptible mind.
We will remember his extensive knowledge of philosophy and law, his both Cartesian and naturalist legal theory, his deep humanity, his great sense of humor and his courageous, landmark work at the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda (ICTR). Professor Mwaikusa contributed much of his valuable time to defending the accused at the ICTR. His concise and precise objections to any inadmissible evidence or testimony was his unique contribution. The quality of his research in preparation for his court appearances will also remain an ICTR landmark.
In order to defend his clients, Professor Jwani Mwaikusa, a Tanzanian by birth, inquired into Rwanda’s social and political environment prior, during and after the 1994 genocide. His findings led him to a crucial conclusion that “both parties to the Rwandan Civil War within which the 1994 genocide surfaced committed international crimes.” This conclusion, which he referred to as “the bitter truth,” deeply angered Rwandan President Paul Kagame and his top Rwandan Patriotic Front officers and officials, and they have thus, inevitably, become suspect in his death.
Professor Mwaikusa often argued that by not prosecuting Rwanda Patriotic Front/Army (RPF/A) senior officers who allegedly committed crimes, the ICTR was acting in contravention of its own founding treaty. He insisted that there is overwhelming evidence, collected by private investigator and former ICTR Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte for RPF/A senior officers to be prosecuted by the ICTR before the court closes. He did not mince words about the Kagame regime’s political meddling into the International Court’s affairs and administration of justice in particular, and warned that the ICTR risks leaving a legacy of “victor over vanquished” justice. The liberty with which the Rwandan regime exerted pressure on the ICTR meant, in his view, that international justice was being replaced by international politics and diplomacy.
When Kagame’s government jailed Professor Peter Erlinder, Professor Jwani Mwaikusa spoke out. He condemned the move and said that it was a “strategy” to deprive the ICTR of independent defense attorneys. Professor Mwaikusa worried that it would be a matter of time before he too would be in a Rwandan jail for the same reason. Now we can only speculate as to whether he had any premonition that his own fate would be even more harsh and final, or that a nephew and a neighbor would both die attempting to come to his defense.
In a landmark case at the ICTR in which the Kigali regime and the prosecutor at the ICTR sought to transfer some of the ICTR’s cases to Rwanda, Professor Jwani Mwaikusa convinced the court that the defendants had no chance of a fair trial in Rwanda. He also successfully argued that the regime in Rwanda lacked the moral authority to try its former political rivals because there is too much evidence that leaders in the Kigali regime are guilty of the same crimes.
Professor Jwani Mwaikusa accused the Kagame regime of twisting the terms of the U.N. resolution that instituted the ICTR. He argued that the U.N. Security Council used the term “Rwandan Genocide” knowing that extremists from both of the two rival ethnic groups committed atrocities against the other, but that the Kagame regime uses the term “Tutsi genocide” to water down the regime’s role in the atrocities.
“Robbery gone wrong” is not an option in the professor’s assassination because the assassins did not depart with anything of monetary value. The assassins stole his ICTR case-related documents. By coincidence or design, the manner in which Professor Jwani Mwaikusa was assassinated is not different from the way some other critics of the Kagame regime met their death. Seth Sindashonga and Major Theoneste Lizinde, both strong critics of the Kigali regime, were assassinated in 1998. The two had sought refuge in Kenya. Journalist Jean Leonard Rugambage was assassinated on June 24 after writing that Kagame had ordered the assassination attempt on Rwandan exile Gen. Kayumba Nyamwasa. A week later, Professor Mwaikusa, a strong critic of the Kigali regime, was gunned down. On the same day, Democratic Green Party of Rwanda Vice President Andre Kagwa Rwisereka was beheaded near Butare in southern Rwanda.
The perpetrators remain unknown, but the United Nations secretary general, on July 15, called for an investigation into the deaths of Jean Leonard Rugambage and Andre Kagwa Rwisereka. He has not yet ordered an inquiry into Professor Mwaikusa’s assassination, but one is certainly called for, discomfiting as the truth may be to some of the world’s most powerful people.
Professor Charles Kambanda is an American of Rwandan origin and a former professor of law, business and philosophy at Makarere University in Kigali, Rwanda, where both the Umuseso newspaper editor and Democratic Green Party of Rwanda President Frank Habineza were his students. He was once a member of Rwandan’s ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front Party. He first met Professor Jwani Mwaikusa in 2001 when they were both teaching at the University of Dar es Salaam and they remained friends from that time on. Professor Kambanda is now involved in research on Rwanda’s ongoing social and political conflict. He can be reached at kambacha@yahoo.com.
by the Africa Faith and Justice Network, Friends of the Congo, Hotel Rwanda Rusesabagina Foundation, International Humanitarian Law Institute of Minnesota, Foreign Policy In Focus, Mobilization for Justice and Peace in Congo, Africa Action, Chicago Coalition for Congo, Foundation for Freedom and Democracy in Rwanda, Shalupe Foundation and Organization for Peace, Justice and Development in Rwanda and Great Lakes Region (OPJDR)
President Obama said, in his 2009 speech in Accra, Ghana, that America should support strong institutions and not strong men. However, in the case of Rwanda, this has been no more than rhetoric. Rwandans, like most Africans, cheered Obama’s election, hoping that it might signal a new, more peaceful and cooperative relationship between the U.S. and Africa, but Obama has expanded AFRICOM, the U.S. Africa Command, and now he remains silent as Rwanda’s strongman, President Paul Kagame, prepares a sham presidential election to retain his brutal grip on power.
On Aug. 3, in Washington D.C., we, a coalition of Africa advocates, will gather at the National Press Club to call on President Obama and the U.S. State Department not to recognize the legitimacy of Rwanda’s upcoming Aug. 9 election results and to stop militarizing Africa and supporting repressive regimes.
“The U.S. policy has been to support strongmen,” says Maurice Carney, executive director of Friends of the Congo. “And at the head of the class is Paul Kagame, who has received military support, weapons, training and intelligence and as a result has been able to invade Rwanda’s neighbor, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and sustain proxy militia fighting there to rob the Congolese people of their natural resources. He has contributed to the death of over 6 million people in Congo and to the destabilization of Africa’s whole Great Lakes region.”
Assassinations, arrests, disappearances, imprisonment and torture of both politicians and press critical of Kagame have led up to Rwanda’s Aug. 9 presidential polls, and now the question is not “Will Rwanda’s August 2010 election be free and fair?” but “How much more violence will the population suffer from Rwandan police, military and security operatives?”
And how much longer will President Obama continue to support the brutal Kagame regime in the heart of Africa, even though 40 of Kagame’s top officers and officials have been indicted in both Spanish and French courts for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide? Kagame himself has not been indicted by these courts but only because he is a sitting head of state and indictment would therefore be a declaration of war.
“Kagame is doing everything he can think of, including killing journalists, jailing and torturing political opponents and denying political opponents their constitutional right to register their parties to exclude them from the election. Because as soon as he loses the presidency, he is likely to be tried for all the mass killings he ordered,” says Rwandan exile, writer and activist Aimable Mugara, who now lives in Toronto.
All the viable opposition has been kept out of the election, but four Kagame allies have agreed to stand so as to make it appear that Rwanda is having a real election.
Leading presidential candidate Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza, who was arrested and indicted on trumped up charges to prevent her from registering to run against Kagame, has said that she will not vote and has urged other Rwandans not to vote either. “We know that the military and police will use violence against the population,” Ingabire said, “but we have to fight for our rights. There is no reason to vote if you don’t have a choice.”
In May, Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Johnnie Carson announced that the U.S. government plans to send a dozen teams of election observers to Rwanda before the Aug. 9 polls, but many Rwandans now say they will only be wasting U.S. taxpayers’ money.
“There is no reason to vote if you don’t have a choice.” – Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza
“Why do people seriously think of going there to observe elections?” asked Charles Kambanda, an American of Rwandan origin, former member of Kagame’s RPF Party and former professor at Makarere University in Kampala, Uganda. “Which elections are they going to observe? There is nothing to be observed, because what we have is a one-man show. What we have is a situation where the government has created the so-called opposition.
“The RPF has kicked out all the real opposition leaders. They are either under house arrest, like Victoire Ingabire, or in prison or they are already dead or they are in exile.”
“Foreign election observers planning to go to Rwanda to observe the ‘election’ this August are wasting time and money,” said Aimable Mugara. “I would recommend that they stay in their countries and write their reports based on all the insane actions Gen. Kagame’s ruling party has taken since the beginning of this year, actions that make this so-called election null and void.”
The United States government has provided not only election observers but also over $1,034,000,000 in United States taxpayer-funded foreign assistance to Rwanda since 2000. An additional $240,200,000 is proposed in the president’s fiscal year 2011 budget.
KPFA Weekend News, April 23, 2011 – Law professor and legal scholar Charles Kambanda and Rwanda Genocide survivor, writer and activist Aimable Mugara spoke to KPFA Weekend News about the truth of the Rwanda Genocide story, as more and more lobbying groups push for Pentagon campaigns to stop genocide, even with Predator drones.
Transcript:
KPFA Weekend News host: The prevailing narrative of the 1994 Rwanda Genocide is that extremist Hutus massacred 800,000 or more Rwandan Tutsi and the moderate Hutu who tried to protect them. But many scholars, journalists and human rights investigators now argue that both Tutsi and Hutu massacred one another because of their ethnicity.
The truth is now more and more significant for all Africa, as NATO wages war in Libya and U.S. policy lobbyists promote a proposal to use Predator drones to “stop genocide,” specifically to stop the next Rwanda or Darfur from happening elsewhere in Africa, such as Libya or Sudan. KPFA’s Ann Garrison spoke to a Rwandan American legal scholar and a Rwandan Genocide survivor about the Rwandan massacres of 1994.
Ann Garrison: Rwandan American legal scholar Charles Kambanda is an ethnic Tutsi and a former member of the ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front party, who left Rwanda when he became disillusioned with Rwandan President Paul Kagame. He says that extremist Hutu did indeed massacre Tutsi in 1994, but that extremist Tutsi also massacred Hutu, as they advanced to victory in the Rwandan Civil War which had begun in 1990. The war began when General, now President Paul Kagame and his Rwandan Patriotic Front Army of refugee Tutsis invaded Rwanda from Uganda in 1990.
Professor Charles Kambanda: The Rwandan conflict goes back before colonial times; it goes back before independence. These two peoples have failed to share power. They have failed to create a framework for power sharing. Whoever is in power wants to take it all. And this is where we have the genocide.
Each side was killing the other because they wanted to eliminate them. And actually, it was also a military tactic. The Hutu were eliminating the Tutsi because they didn’t want the Tutsi to support their fellow Tutsi who were fighting the government. The Tutsi on their side were killing the Hutu because they didn’t want the Hutu in their territory to cross over and join the Hutu government.
An ordinary Rwandan knows that saying that the Hutu and the Tutsi died in the genocide is the truth. But politicians think by saying that the Hutu also died, then you are going to ask them for accountability, because if you say that the Tutsi were killed by the Interahamwe, and you also say that the Hutu were killed, then you need to know who killed them. And if you start mentioning who killed them, those politicians who are in power – Kagame and the others – will be called to answer for crimes.
KPFA: Aimable Mugara, a Rwanda Genocide survivor now living and working in Canada, says that bullets broke the windows of his family’s home on April 6, 1994, when he was 13 years old, and his family soon sought refuge, first in neighboring Congo, then Kenya, then Canada, and that, as a teenager, he suffered from deeply internalized racism, because Hutu people were blamed for all the massacres:
Aimable Mugara: The popular culture has represented the 1994 genocide as a Tutsi genocide, where only innocent Tutsis were killed by Hutus. There is this belief by some people that all the Hutus are evil. There is this belief by some people that all the Hutus hate Tutsis and that all the Hutus want the Tutsis dead.
I remember when I went to see the movie “Hotel Rwanda.” I came out and there was this group of Canadian girls, and one teenage Canadian girl said, “I wish all the Hutus were dead.” And I was not completely surprised by it because even I myself for at least five years since 1994, I never ever felt comfortable saying I was born a Hutu. I felt like, even though I know that I was 13 years old in 1994, and I did not do anything, I could not have done anything to stop what was going on, I still felt that it’s all my fault, what happened, and I have no reason to live and I have no right to live.
But eventually with time I thought about it more and I realized that the way that the Hutu people have been demonized, it’s not right. People need to realize that by demonizing an entire group, you’re contributing to the whole culture of genocide. That’s when you feel that “Oh, since those people are evil, it’s OK if they die. Since those people are evil, they have no right to have children any more.” That kind of culture really shocks in this day and age.
Professor Michel Chossudovsky, Law Professor Peter Erlinder, ICTR Defense attorney Christopher Black, Professor Ed Herman and author David Peterson have all documented U.S. complicity with the advancing army of the Rwandan Patriotic Front led by General, now President, Paul Kagame, in pursuit of its geopolitical agenda.
This is a more personal account. In a recent Facebook discussion of the trial of Rwandan opposition leader Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza, Jean Pierre Mbungira shared his own experience of the Rwanda Genocide at the ages of 14 and 15. I found this to be one of the most emotionally credible accounts of how something like the Rwanda Genocide could have happened, as mass panic became mass psychosis. – Ann Garrison
I was living in the capital city, Kigali. I was 14, turning 15 in a few months. But the whole thing was crazy! Now when I look back, I realize that the worst nightmare of any system is infiltration. The whole political landscape was almost non-existent. The president, Habyarimana, had little authority. He was very weakened by the war plus very active opposition.
Even the army (ex-FAR [Armed Forces of Rwanda]) had rifts in their ranks, to the point that when the president died, some did not go on with defending the country. Some went on pillaging; others just did not take the duty as their concern. On the top of that, the interim government had the brilliantly stupid idea of arming the ordinary citizen.
Try to picture this: Suppose your neighbor has sent his boy in the RPF [Rwandan Patriotic Front, the Tutsi refugee army invading from Uganda] and that your brother, who is a soldier, died on the battlefield. Then someone arms you, typically with an AK47, without training whatsoever, in a tense situation where, a few days previously, grenades were exploding in bars and taxis, where political parties – ethnically divided – were at each other’s throat, and the president, who was barely holding all that mess together, has just been assassinated.
On that, add that you have a history of ethnic tension that goes back some centuries. And you have no education and no military training, except they showed you how to shoot your gun and how to reload it. And you know APR [Rwandan Patriotic Army, Tutsi rebels], most part of it, are advancing.
Now imagine little knowledge, no formal education; many have not even finished the elementary school, have no TV and are cut off from the rest of the world, with radios like RTLM [extremist Hutu] and Muhabura [extremist Tutsi] competing to fan all that fire and add as much oil as they can.
Now, put all that together and tell me what my “ordinary citizen” will do with his new gun! That was in Kigali City, where they could afford modern weaponry.
Now, replace the gun with a machete, and you have the picture of what was happening in the countryside. – Jean Pierre Mbungira
Rwanda’s economy is said to be doing well, so how does population size become a problem that requires dire, questionable voluntary vasectomies of the poor?
by Charles Kambanda, PhD
In controversy is the minister of health’s announcement of what the government of Rwanda calls voluntary vasectomies (sterilizing) of 700,000 males between 2011 and 2013. The target group is men who cannot pay bills for their children’s upkeep. The poor who make over 75 percent of Rwanda’s population are only uncertain of when their males will be sterilized.
At issue is not whether the country needs sound family planning policy. Whether the political elite will stick to voluntary vasectomies is the main concern. Conceptualizing “voluntary” vasectomies in Rwanda’s contemporary public policy, history gloss and politics is utterly crucial.
The timing of sterilizing 700,000 males raises red flags. In Rwanda’s socio-political environment that swivels on passivity, apathy, suspicion and docile citizenry with militarized “civil society,” securing free will of the men to be sterilized borders on insanity.
Who are the poor?
The deprived are the Twa, a secluded ethnic group. The needy are the Hutu peasants who survived the Congo refugee camps’ massacres. The hard-up in Rwandan society are those few Tutsi survivors of genocide who have not benefited from the genocide survivors’ fund. The underprivileged are the Hutu populace that was uprooted from their land, without compensation, under the habitant and land reform government policy.
The poor are those Tutsi returnees who have no close relations in the Tutsi dominated government. The bitter fact is that poverty in Rwanda runs along the country’s ethnic divides. The poor are mostly victims of the country’s unresolved ethnic and power sharing crisis.
History is seldom a bad teacher. However, people are hardly good students of history. Rwanda’s post-independence history, not different from the country’s pre-independence era, insinuates a constant fight between the Hutu, the majority ethnic group making up about 86 percent of the population, and the Tutsi, the minority ethnic group making up about 14 percent. The Twa hardly make up 1 percent.
Growing or dropping in numbers of either ethnic group is an issue for each ethnic group’s political and physical survival. The Hutu-Tutsi co-existence failed on a win-win modus operandi. The victor seeks to depopulate the loser, or at least to delay the other ethnic group’s violent return to power.
War crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide have long been a “social engineering” and depopulation strategy geared at incapacitating the loser in the country’s power grabbing paradigm. In 1959 it was some Hutu’s turn to “depopulate” the Tutsi.
In the 1980s a Hutu-led government flocked the Tutsi to cannibals and crocodiles in the country’s national park, Akagera. Although scholars disagree on whether the 1994 genocide was committed by only the Hutu against the Tutsi, the scholars appear to concur that genocide was a strategy to “tame” the enemy’s unmanageable and unwanted population.
The brutal massacres of the Hutu refugees in Congo, which the United Nations’ Mapping Report accuses the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan troops of, could also be viewed from this perspective. With growing international enforcement of laws on war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, Rwandan society appears vulnerable to apparent legal methods of birth control like “voluntary” vasectomies to achieve the traditional ethnic depopulation conspiracy.
Sociologists, philosophers and psychologists have long discussed whether a poor person can make choices. Do the poor have free will? The Rwandan government does not appear uptight about this paradox. The poor, who cannot nourish their children, are said to be going for “voluntary” vasectomies. This is the proverbial hiding of the head in the sand.
If poverty is a criterion for vasectomies, free will cannot exist
If the policy be voluntary, the 700,000-man target contradicts what the government of Rwanda calls voluntary vasectomies. Last year, 2010, the vice president of Rwanda’s parliament marketed, in vain, a policy proposal for compulsory sterilization of the “socially retarded” Rwandans. It took excessive efforts by international human rights organizations to thwart the policy proposal. The 2011 “voluntary” vasectomies policy may be a continuum of the 2010 policy proposal.
Public policy analysts consent that current latent public policy ideas and motives of any country must be read in light of the similar previous policy. First, the government of Rwanda implemented the habitant and land reform policy. People were supposed to abandon their traditional homestead and go to live in settlement centers – imidugudu. The previous homesteads were meant to be for farming. Initially the government called it a voluntary policy.
Implementation of this policy turned out to be forceful and inhumane. Some government officials snatched victory from the jaws of defeat; they grabbed the land people had abandoned for settlement centers. Second, the government’s policy of what was called voluntary sharing of land between the Hutu owners and the Tutsi returnees ended in the forceful grabbing of land from the Hutu in many regions of the country. Will vasectomies of the unprivileged males be voluntary as the government suggests?
Self-propagation is a basic need and right. However, producing excessive children, as many Rwandans do, is a symptom of insecurity and poverty. There is a general demographic pattern for the well-off to produce between one to three children. The deprived generally produce more than six children. It is no surprise that in a country like Rwanda, where about 75 percent of the population survives on less that $1 a day, the population is increasing by 3 percent per annum. If quantity of the population be the problem, vasectomies are not a durable solution.
The first beneficiary of development is the human person
The quality of a country’s human resources and not the quantity is what matters. Investing in human development is the only sustainable solution. The Rwandan government has sustained one of the most expensive wars in Africa. It is well documented that Rwanda has one of the biggest and most heavily armed militaries in the Great Lakes region of Africa. Rwanda runs the most expensive presidential personal security unit in Africa.
Rwanda’s economy is said to be doing well. Ironically, money is available. How does quantity of the population become a problem that requires dire, questionable voluntary vasectomies?
Human history demonstrates habitual failure by some leaders to reconcile the existence of the poor in an environment that the political leadership project as prosperous. Adolf Hitler exterminated the gypsies alongside the Jews because the gypsies – the poor – would negate the economic prosperity of Germany. This is how seriously the world takes protection of the poor.
Crime against humanity
Denying people the right to self-propagation on the basis of their failure to meet costs for their children ought to be an issue of utmost concern for the international community. Targeting the poor with vasectomies is presumed forceful because the poor always lack free will.
Vasectomy in this unique Rwandan context might amount to a crime against humanity. The essence and function of government is redistributing resources and power among the citizens. Vasectomy in a Rwandan context manifests government failure to perform its core functions and responsibilities. The policy mirrors incivility, lack of public conscience and negates the basic ethical tenets.
Dr. Charles Kambanda, Dip.Phil., BA, LLB, MA ETPM, MBA, MA HRTs, LLM, PhD, teaches at St. John’s University Law School, LLM Center, New York, and previously lectured at the National University of Rwanda, where, according to the Rwanda News Service, he was known for his “outspoken nature.” This story first appeared on The Proxy Lake: Views and News on the African Great Lakes Region.
