There are criminals who never face justice, not because there is not enough evidence to get them sentenced, but only because the judiciary system supposed to investigate them is managed by criminal interests.
It will be soon 20 years that will have passed since that incident. Those who were there at that night in Kigali can recall it as if it was yesterday.
That night, war resumed between the Rwandan Patriotic Front and the government forces, like it did last night between M23/RDF and FARDC in the Kibumba area of the Eastern Congo.
This time the fighting appears to be a consequence of the collapse of the negotiations of Kampala on Monday 21st October between Kinshasa and M23/RDF.
People should remember that the new dialog had been prompted after the FARDC had defeated the occupying M23/RDF forces and evicted them from some of the different areas of North Kivu they controlled at the time.
Last night too, Thursday 24th October, Boniface Twagirimana wrote from Rwanda that the country’s alleged security forces, though not well identified by the locals, had abducted tens of young men and adults in the area of Ruzizi in the South West and close to the border with the DRC.
The population of that part of Rwanda is claiming that these young men and adults being kidnapped, – some think that it must be the Department of Military Intelligence which is involved-, are being sent to fight for M23.
A week or so ago, Kigali restricted further the few areas of news coverage that the rare remaining journalists still operating in Rwanda could publish about.
For at least 25 years, Rwandan journalists are now prohibited from publishing anything related to military operations in the country or the DRC, because reporting on these issues has been very damaging for the Rwandan image abroad.
On October 1st, 2010 the UN Mapping report was published. The document extensively describes the crimes committed in the DRC against Congolese populations and Hutu refugees by Kagame’s forces among others, crimes which could amount to crimes against humanity, war crimes and those of genocide nature if they could be brought in front of court.
So far 6 million constitute the lowest estimate of the Congolese victims from the wars that Kagame and Co continue to impose to the DRC for more than seventeen years. More than 500,000 Congolese women, girls and even men have been raped. And it is not evidence which is lacking about his responsibility in all those crimes.
“On 6 February 2008, the Spanish Investigative Judge Andreu Merelles issued an indictment charging 40 current or former high-ranking Rwandan military officials with serious crimes including genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and terrorism, perpetrated over a period of 12 years, from 1990 to 2002, against the civilian population, and primarily against members of the Hutu ethnic group.”
Almost two years earlier, on November 17th, 2006 the French judge
Habyarimana
Jean-Louis Bruguiere had on his part indicted 9 top collaborators of Kagame more or less for the same crimes including the shooting down of Habyarimana’s airplane.
At the hype of the second Congolese war, in 1998/99, Kagame had ordered the cleansing of the region of Gisenyi/Ruhengeri where civilians were systematically targeted and killed in big number by his Chief of Staff at the time General Faustin Nyamwasa. Nobody will ever know exactly how many were massacred in those operations as they were aimed at clearing that part of the country which was the stronghold of the Habyarimana regime.
In April 1995, Colonel Ibingira, certainly with the orders from his boss Kagame, killed with machine guns and tanks, and all this under the watch of UN peacekeepers, 8,000 internally displaced in the Kibeho camp of Gikongoro.
After Kagame gained the war from the Hutu government in July 1994, he went on rampage across the country killing indistinctly hutu civilians at the trend of 30,000 a month at least for the entire period covered by the report of the UN expert Robert Gersony.
The list of Kagame’s crimes could go and on forever. Books and more books could be written to account for his criminal achievements.
Having highlighted this brief list far from being exhaustive of his crimes, who is frankly still making people believe that there is a need of some more evidence to prove that he killed Habyarimana?
There are people arguing that the assassination of the former president was part of Kagame’s strategy of war. I am of the same opinion. The effect on the course of the war which resumed immediately was of total mayhem and unpreparedness in the hutu government camp.
As a war strategy, it was a coup of a master. Considered from that perspective, even the concerned himself does not dismiss his eventual responsibility in the assassination. Kagame explains in the interview he gave to Stephen Sucker during the BBC Hard Talk programme of December 7th, 2006.
When the journalist asks Kagame:
“… do you believe you had a right to assassinate him?”
His reply was:
“…of course Habyarimana, having been on the other side that I was fighting, it was possible that he could easily die. Imagine if I had died myself in the same process? Would the same judge be asking about my death or who killed me? … I am saying [that] this was a situation where there was a war which was being fought.”
Without a clear denial of his personal involvement in the assassination of Habyarimana from the concerned Kagame, why would somebody else appear to have some interests in continuing to cultivate the doubt among the people about who killed the former Rwandan president?
There are two plausible motivations.
One is that the doubt enforcers, looking for unnecessary additional evidence, are interested in covering up some responsibility [theirs or some of other people] seeing that Kagame might soon be taken to court.
Two is that they are deliberately distracting the particularly concerned general public from what is happening presently of more importance in the Great Lacks region, such as the resumption of war in Eastern Congo, and even the necessary political change in Rwanda and countries like the DRC and Uganda.
There are criminals who never face justice, not because there is not enough evidence to get them sentenced, but only because the judiciary system supposed to investigate them is managed by criminal interests.
