By Andre Vltchek
I actually came to Rwanda to tell a story, a complex story of a divided country where hundreds of thousands of people were killed in a dreadful bloodshed of 1994.
But the story begins earlier in the 1980s and early 1990, when the current president Paul Kagame, a man trained in and supported by the United States began attacking relentlessly Rwanda from Ugandan territory.
And the story continued after the 1994 genocide; it spiraled over into the DRCongo in the trench cart land. There were the most intense killings of the more than history that has been taking place until now.
Rwanda and Uganda on behalf of western companies and governments have been plundering and ravishing this mineral rich nation killing millions.
Essential questions keep coming to my mind.
Who did what?
What was the essence of the build-up?
Who was responsible?
Who fired the first shot?
Who was exactly behind the conflict?
I thought it was essential to find out, to discover the truth for the sake of Rwanda and Congo, for the sake of Africa and the world.
“And I have a very strong feeling that there have been great pressure by various sections of the Rwandan government and the international community to market a particular version of that history of Rwanda of 1994 and I don’t think it’s accurate.”
“…spring of people who have been killed or short abroad and it can even be true in a country like the US, Great Britain, France, not to speak of South Africa. There is no place where Kagame would not strike. And he does it with some sort of barefaced. Eh any Mobutu or Idi Amin Dada looks like an apprentice by comparison, because at least these they had a sort of red line they would not cross. They would not try to kill someone, once miss him and try again and go through your official embassy people; you would not kill an opposition figure in London and Paris or New York. You would just wait for them to be at the very minimum in Kinshasa.”
“I am sorry to say in these very strong words but increasingly Kagame behaves like a serial killer, because and that is the most gravest situation that Rwanda faces today. That Kagame believes and feels that it is OK to kill anybody he wants. He kills Hutus and Tutsis. They are all these crimes pulling upon him. He seems not to care. I think he has reached a point of no return, and he says, “Anyway, if someone else dies, one more person dies, what about it?”
“Who do you put a finger at? Haven’t they been killed by militias? But behind the militias are multinationals and governments but their stages removed. You don’t see multinationals, corporations, using the militias who slaughter people so they can access the coltan that westerners are using in their cellphones. It’s indirect.”
“Congo Rwanda and Uganda belong to themselves to the people. We need democracy that puts the power in the hands of the individuals who use and trade the resources for their well-being, not to be a fuel of influence for foreign countries which come and take the resources.”