Paul Kagame

[Rwanda]

Africa Calls upon Obama: Do not recognize Kagame's Election

Support real freedom and democracy in Africa

by Ann Garrison, San Francisco Bayview

www.globalresearch.ca/, July 28, 2010

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, 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 its 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.

"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.

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Paul Kagame, the Mastermind of the Genocide of Interior Tutsis

by Guillaume Murere, Ph.D., Gatineau-Québec, Canada

www.mail-archive.com/ugandanet@kym.net/, November 23, 2007

'Shake Hands with the Devil', a film about the Rwandan Genocide featuring Canadian Senator Romeo Dallaire, has revived debate on the subject. This is perfectly normal because, 13 years after the event, this gruesome crime is still unresolved.

Initially, the media imposed the version that the Rwandan Genocide was planned and carried out only by Hutus (The ethnic group mentioned here is the one to which an individual is reputed to belong. It may be different from the actual ethnic group to which the individual himself identifies and ethnic group in which the individual is classified by the holder of power). But against all odds, after spending more than a billion dollars (U.S.) and employing the intelligence services of the United States, England, Canada, Belgium and Israel, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), has yet to find any physical evidence for their thesis of a central planning of the genocide. This result was quite predictable from the outset. In fact, intelligence gathering was and still is Paul Kagame's best strength. His agents had infiltrated all spheres of Rwandan society even before October 1990. So, if evidence of planning the Rwandan Genocide by Hutus ever existed, Kagame would have made it available to the ICTR immediately and thus would have definitively silenced skeptics.

Despite this void, all the experts remain certain: the killings in 1994 were so systematic that they must have been pre-planned. Then, one must ask, who was the planner? Who was the mastermind? Since investigations on the Rwandan Government's side have (so far) failed to find any evidence of pre-planning by Hutus, would not be logical to investigate the other warring side, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF)?

Here are some observations: 1. Kagame fanned hatred against those deemed Tutsi by committing systematic massacres against the predominantly Hutu population. In 2001, in an open letter to Kagame, Alphonse Furuma, a former RPF officer, confirmed the deliberate nature of the massacres in these terms:

"From the time Arusha Peace Agreement was being negotiated up to as late as 1996 you (Kagame) carried out a deliberate policy of using all means possible to reduce the Hutu Population in the Umutara, Kibungo, and Bugesera regions."

The crimes of Kagame's army are documented in great detail by Lieutenant Abdul Ruzibiza, another former member of the RPF (See his book "Rwanda: Histoire secrète," Panama. 2005). As it would happen in other countries in similar circumstances, these systematic massacres by Kagame's men, reputed Tutsi, against the population, mostly Hutu, stirred up hatred against those deemed Tutsis and weakened the moderate political forces which were dominant at the beginning of the war (October 1990-February 1993). The fact of people reputed Tutsis committing systematic massacres against other population groups is, by any standard, the worst form of hate propaganda against those deemed Tutsi. Kagame used the worst possible means of terrorism to destroy the social peace between Rwandan ethnic groups that existed under Habyarimana's regime, a period of 17 years during which there was no ethnic conflict. 2. Kagame destroyed the coalition between the interior opposition parties and the RPF, which prevented the war from escalating into an ethnic-based conflict. In 1992, the major interior opposition parties, the MDR (predominantly Hutu), the PL (predominantly Tutsi) and the PSD formed a political coalition with the RPF (predominantly Tutsi). With that coalition, the conflict was formally a political battle for power sharing and political representation. The negotiations already underway in Arusha, Tanzania, aroused great hopes for peace among Rwandans. Unfortunately, political analysts failed to consider one very important point: the success of the negotiations would have prevented Kagame from obtaining absolute personal power. Kagame sought any pretext to destroy the coalition and thus thwart the peace negotiations.

On 08 February 1993, claiming Bagogwe (a sub-group of Tutsi) had been massacred by Rwandan government forces; Kagame ordered a massive attack in the Ruhengeri Prefect. The death toll was very high: over 40,000 Hutu civilians were massacred. Consequently, the pressure on interior opposition parties at the Arusha negotiations became untenable. It was not justifiable to be in a coalition with a party that massacred innocent civilians en masse in broad daylight. The coalition of interior opposition parties with the RPF shattered. In addition, each political party split into two factions: one called "Hutu Power," a pro-Hutu, and anti-RPF faction, while the other was pro-RPF and anti-MRND. Confrontation on an ethnic basis was now difficult to avoid and the slightest spark could now start the dreaded ethnic-based war. 3. In his testimony (http://www.inshuti.org/ruzibiza.htm), Ruzibiza tells that long before 1994 Kagame had instructed his men who infiltrated within Rwanda, particularly within the Interahamwe (a militia that participated in the genocide of interior Tutsis), to massacre interior Tutsis in such a way that the crimes could be attributed to the government forces and militias. Here are, according to Ruzibiza, some on the list of those Kagame had instructed his men to exterminate:

"Every interior Tutsi (sacrificing interior Tutsis); intellectual Tutsis deemed to oppose RPF ideology, for example 'Lando'; and regrouped Tutsis living in remote places."

In the same testimony, Ruzibiza reveals, "It was a common strategy of Kagame to order the assassination of opposition politicians or Tutsi personalities in order justify the resumption of hostilities on the ground that that the government was violating human rights." 'Lando' was the nickname of Landoald Ndasingwa, an intellectual Tutsi, founder, and leader of the PL political party. He was married to a Canadian lady named Hélène Pinski. The couple and their two children, Malaika and Patrick, were massacred very early on 07 April 1994. Contrary to popular belief, the testimony of Ruzibiza and many other facts suggest that Ndasingwa and Pinski were massacred by agents of Kagame who wanted to eliminate any legitimate political opposition to the RPF after the war was over.

4. On April 06, 1994, the plane transporting President Juvenal Habyarimana was shot down by a missile. As could be expected, this terrorist act sparked a human tragedy of unthinkable proportion: the Rwandan Genocide. The investigation of French anti-terrorist judge Jean-Louis Bruguière concluded that this terrorist crime was commissioned by Paul Kagame. This terrorist assassination was carried out despite the fact that in February 1994, following the assassination of Felicien Gatabazi (leader of the PSD party) and Martin Bucyana (leader of the CDR party), President Habyarimana had demonstrated that he still held ultimate authority and was still capable of maintaining law and order in his country by bringing a halt to the social unrest caused by these murders. Andre Guichaoua, a professor at the University of Paris, agrees that these assassinations were ordered by Kagame. 5. In April 1994, while the interior Tutsis were being massacred, Kagame and his men opposed the intervention of international forces. Charles Muligande, the current Rwandan Minister of Foreign Affairs, was part of the delegation that was sent to the United States to seek support from Washington for this opposition. Ruzibiza revealed in his testimony that during the genocide, Kagame personally ordered his troops to not rescue interior Tutsis from militias.

In 1999, in an open letter to Paul Kagame, Jean-Pierre Mugabe, an ex-intelligence agent of the RPF, denounced the assassination, by Kagame's troops, of young Tutsis who joined the RPF from Rwanda and Burundi. Ironically, those young Tutsis joined the RPF with the goal of coming back to Rwanda by force to defend their parents. All these actions seem coherent: Kagame could not instruct his infiltrators within the Interahamwe to activate the massacre of interior Tutsis while allowing these young Tutsis to take more responsibility in his army and, in the end, permit his regular troops to come to the aid of the same interior Tutsis his infiltrators, in alliance with the Interahamwe, were killing.

6. Among the founders of the Interahamwe are Anastase Gasana (now exiled in the United States), rewarded with the post of Minister of Foreign Affairs in Kagame's regime and Desiré Murenzi, who was placed at the head of a major oil company. Also troubling is the fact that Robert Kajuga, the Tutsi President of the Interahamwe, is the brother of a Rwandan businessman named Husi (killed during the Rwandan Genocide), who, according to several sources, has funded the scholarship of Janet Nyiramongi, Paul Kagame's wife. These indications point to the fact that the militia Interahamwe was, from beginning to end, manipulated by Kagame's secret services. These previous observations demonstrate beyond a reasonable doubt that Paul Kagame has done everything possible to ensure that interior Tutsis were exterminated. Therefore, it has to be concluded, in the words of Kagame himself in his speech delivered on the 10th anniversary of the Rwandan Genocide, that, 'Indeed the Rwandan Genocide was premeditated, calculated and cold blooded.' However, in light of these facts, we must now add that the mastermind of the genocide of the Rwandan interior Tutsis is Kagame himself. That is the sad and terrible reality the international community, who gave a carte blanche to Kagame, has (so far) refused to confront.

Yet, if the above cited criminal acts would had been committed by Rwandans deemed Hutu, they would have been condemned by the whole world for committing the crime of genocide against Tutsis. Instead, Kagame, because he is reputed Tutsi, has a red carpet rolled out for him across Europe and in America. This differential treatment of Rwandans, based on ethnicity, is sheer racism in flagrant contradiction to the democratic values of our time.

Guillaume Murere Ph. D. Gatineau, Québec, Canada, November 2007

Biography - Guillaume Murere

I am of Hutu background and was pursuing a doctorate program in electrical engineering at École Polytechnique de Montréal when the Rwandan war broke out on October 1st, 1990. At the beginning of the war I made a statement in favor of Tutsi refugees and for this reason was labeled by fellow Rwandans as RPF sympathizer and was ostracized and persecuted. In reaction to this persecution, but more in support of Arusha peace negotiations, I openly joined the RPF, Montreal section, in July 1993. I quitted the RPF in April 1995 after I had all evidence that Kagame and the RPF, under Kagame's strict control, use the genocide of interior Tutsis as a weapon of massive destruction against innocent population, particularly those reputed Hutu. In the unending Rwandan crisis, my worst day was on March 3rd, 1997 when Kagame's troops shoot down all young men who have passed the night at my father's home for the mourning of my mother who was put in grave on March 2nd, 1997. On March 3rd, 1997, Kagame's men killed my two brothers and 8 of my cousins. On that single day, Kagame's troops killed more than 1000 young Hutus in the outskirts of the city of Ruhengeri.

Having been member of the RPF and close to the Tutsi community and also being of Hutu background, I was in position to see and analyze what was going on either side without bias. Currently I work for peace and reconciliation among Rwandans by uncovering and exposing the truth about the Rwandan crisis

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The Geopolitics behind the Rwandan Genocide: Paul Kagame accused of War Crimes

by Michel Chossudovsky

www.globalresearch.ca/, November 23, 2006

Paul Kagame accused by French Court

A French judge has issued arrest warrants for nine close aides of Rwandan President Paul Kagame, in relation to the shooting down of the plane carrying Rwanda's former president Jouvenal Habyarimana in 1994...

French judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere has accused Kagame of ordering the shooting down of the plane, which contributed to triggering the 1994 ethnic massacres and genocide. __The court case in France should serve to clarifying the role of the RPF. __Major General Kagame, who led the RPF insurrection, was supported by the US and Britain. __The official version of the Rwandan Genocide is that it was triggered by ethnic conflict in the context of what was characterised as a "civil war". __Below are selected excerpts of my May 2000 article entitled Installing a US Protectorate in Central Africa, which documents Paul Kagame's role in the shooting down of the plane and the events which led up to the Genocide.
According to the testimony of Paul Mugabe, a former member of the RPF High Command Unit, Major General Paul Kagame had personally ordered the shooting down of President Habyarimana's plane with a view to taking control of the country. He was fully aware that the assassination of Habyarimana would unleash "a genocide" against Tutsi civilians. RPA forces had been fully deployed in Kigali at the time the ethnic massacres took place and did not act to prevent it from happening:

The decision of Paul Kagame to shoot Pres. Habyarimana's aircraft was the catalyst of an unprecedented drama in Rwandan history, and Major-General Paul Kagame took that decision with all awareness. Kagame's ambition caused the extermination of all of our families: Tutsis, Hutus and Twas. We all lost. Kagame's take-over took away the lives of a large number of Tutsis and caused the unnecessary exodus of millions of Hutus, many of whom were innocent under the hands of the genocide ringleaders. Some naive Rwandans proclaimed Kagame as their savior, but time has demonstrated that it was he who caused our suffering and misfortunes Can Kagame explain to the Rwandan people why he sent Claude Dusaidi and Charles Muligande to New York and Washington to stop the UN military intervention which was supposed to be sent and protect the Rwandan people from the genocide? The reason behind avoiding that military intervention was to allow the RPF leadership the takeover of the Kigali Government and to show the world that they - the RPF - were the ones who stopped the genocide. We will all remember that the genocide occurred during three months, even though Kagame has said that he was capable of stopping it the first week after the aircraft crash. Can Major-General Paul Kagame explain why he asked to MINUAR to leave Rwandan soil within hours while the UN was examining the possibility of increasing its troops in Rwanda in order to stop the genocide?44

Paul Mugabe's testimony regarding the shooting down of Habyarimana's plane ordered by Kagame is corroborated by intelligence documents and information presented to the French parliamentary inquiry. Major General Paul Kagame was an instrument of Washington. The loss of African lives did not matter. The civil war in Rwanda and the ethnic massacres were an integral part of US foreign policy, carefully staged in accordance with precise strategic and economic objectives.

Despite the good diplomatic relations between Paris and Washington and the apparent unity of the Western military alliance, it was an undeclared war between France and America. By supporting the build up of Ugandan and Rwandan forces and by directly intervening in the Congolese civil war, Washington also bears a direct responsibility for the ethnic massacres committed in the Eastern Congo including several hundred thousand people who died in refugee camps.

US policy-makers were fully aware that a catastrophe was imminent. In fact four months before the genocide, the CIA had warned the US State Department in a confidential brief that the Arusha Accords would fail and "that if hostilities resumed, then upward of half a million people would die". 45 This information was withheld from the United Nations: "it was not until the genocide was over that information was passed to Maj.-Gen. Dallaire [who was in charge of UN forces in Rwanda]." 46

Washington's objective was to displace France, discredit the French government (which had supported the Habyarimana regime) and install an Anglo-American protectorate in Rwanda under Major General Paul Kagame. Washington deliberately did nothing to prevent the ethnic massacres.

When a UN force was put forth, Major General Paul Kagame sought to delay its implementation stating that he would only accept a peacekeeping force once the RPA was in control of Kigali. Kagame "feared [that] the proposed United Nations force of more than 5,000 troops [might] intervene to deprive them [the RPA] of victory".47 Meanwhile the Security Council after deliberation and a report from Secretary General Boutros Boutros Ghali decided to postpone its intervention.

The 1994 Rwandan "genocide" served strictly strategic and geopolitical objectives. The ethnic massacres were a stumbling blow to France's credibility which enabled the US to establish a neocolonial foothold in Central Africa. From a distinctly Franco-Belgian colonial setting, the Rwandan capital Kigali has become --under the expatriate Tutsi led RPF government-- distinctly Anglo-American. English has become the dominant language in government and the private sector. Many private businesses owned by Hutus were taken over in 1994 by returning Tutsi expatriates. The latter had been exiled in Anglophone Africa, the US and Britain.

The Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA) functions in English and Kinyarwanda, the University previously linked to France and Belgium functions in English. While English had become an official language alongside French and Kinyarwanda, French political and cultural influence will eventually be erased. Washington has become the new colonial master of a francophone country.

Several other francophone countries in Sub-Saharan Africa have entered into military cooperation agreements with the US. These countries are slated by Washington to follow suit on the pattern set in Rwanda. Meanwhile in francophone West Africa, the US dollar is rapidly displacing the CFA Franc -- which is linked in a currency board arrangement to the French Treasury.

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Major General Paul Kagame behind the shooting down of late Habyarimana's plane: an eye witness testimony

2nd Lt. Aloys Ruvenzi

www.inshuti.org/ruyenzi.htm, Norway - July 5, 2004

1. I have been keenly following talks on allegations of crimes committed by Paul Kagame, leader of Rwanda, and his attempts, against all odds, to deny them. I deem it necessary to inform Rwandans and the international community at large of the crimes I witnessed in the hope that he would stop deceiving people. It took quite a long time before I decided to make public this statement because I was in Uganda, where Kagame has a lot of covert agents who would have eliminated me. I know him very well because I worked with him in the Rwandese Patriotic Army since its creation. More so, I served in his escort for nearly 10 years, until I fled the country.

My background

My name is Aloys Ruyenzi, I was born on 1st March 1971 in Mbarara, Uganda of Rwandan refugee parents. I grew up in Uganda and I joined the National Resistance Army of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni in 1987. I had a six-month course in Basic Military Training, after which I attended a six-month course in military intelligence. After the training, I was posted in the 23rd battalion based in northern Uganda, as intelligence staff. A year later, I was called back to Kampala and posted at the Directorate of Military Intelligence (DMI), where Kagame was a senior officer. While in DMI, I was selected for another course called "the Intelligence and Self-Defence". When I fled the country, I was working in the Republican Guard, an RPA (Rwanda Patriotic Army) special unit that provides elements for the Presidential Protection Unit. I was Second Lieutenant and my army number was OP1460.

I joined RPA since its creation

When the Rwandan Patriotic Front attacked Rwanda on 1st October 1990, I was among the fighters. First I was with the 4th battalion operating in the Akagera National Park, until we were pushed back to Uganda and started guerrilla warfare. I then joined the then LIMA Combined Mobile Force, from where I eventually joined the High Command Unit. This is equivalent to army headquarters in a regular army. However unlike the latter the unit's main duty was to escort Major Kagame, then RPA boss. I first was in the missile unit, before being appointed in the escort of Kagame.

When I joined the escort, I resumed my duties as intelligence officer. I would be most of the time close to Kagame as a member of the close bodyguards' team. In this capacity, I hardly missed any detail of what he would say or instruct to be done. Hence, my testimony is not a piece of hearsays, but a testimony of an eyewitness.

After the take over of government by RPF, I once again attended courses in military intelligence and Protection of VIPs. I took up duties as a presidential bodyguard. When the invasion of Zaire started, I was sent there as one of the confidants of Kagame to follow and give detailed account of any military operation that took place. This was in a bid to make sure that he did not miss any detail by sending his own escorts. The crimes that I witnessed there are so much that I cannot detail them here. I was there on special assignment as member of the Republican Guards unit. I will do it in a different paper once I have time. What I can simply say for the time being is that a lot of crimes that were committed by the RPA were ordered by Kagame.

People were killed on a very large scale on orders of Kagame and officers who did not carry out orders to kill were either relieved of their duties or disappeared. Kagame does not tolerate anybody disobeying his orders. Similarly, during the time the RPA was fighting the so-called "infiltrators" in northern Rwanda in Ruhengeri and Gisenyi, many unarmed Hutu civilians were killed in what looked like a true ethnic cleansing. I opposed those atrocities, until I was labelled as an enemy collaborator.

Reasons for fleeing the country I love so much and I fought for

As I said earlier, I joined and served RPA[1] since its creation. When I joined it, I sincerely believed that I was struggling to end injustice towards our brothers, our parents and our motherland, and eventually to return home. In any case, this is what we were told. I never envisaged that our return would lead to killings and expulsion of the population we found inside the country. To my dismay, I realised that our leader and current President of Rwanda, Paul Kagame had a hidden agenda. To make matters worse, he would not tolerate any dissenting voice and opposing his orders could even lead to disappearance.

I had the misfortune of working in his escort, where the climate is abominable. There is a permanent climate of terror and mistrust, as everybody spies on everybody else. I was intelligence officer, but I knew very well that I was myself being spied on.

The intelligence officers do not carry out ordinary military intelligence work they are paid for. They are a squad of criminals that was set up by Kagame for his own ends. Its sole mission is killings opponents and other unwanted elements, so as to consolidate his murderous regime. It is therefore very difficult to work with him, more so as intelligence officer without adhering to his criminal policies. My aim now is that before I am eliminated I want make public a list of assassinations ordered personally by Kagame. The list is indeed very long.

I defected because I was realising that we were becoming a gang of killers. I could not stomach that situation which was contrary to what we fought for, that it is fighting for restoring a rule of law.

But it took time before I could flee for fear of being arrested and killed as a deserter. I feared being killed by the butt of a used hoe agafuni. The latter is the acronym given to the part of a hoe that RPA used to smash heads of people condemned to death. It is very sad that I kept on working deliberately with a man whose criminal records are so horrendous.

The opposition to atrocities planned and ordered by Kagame landed me in trouble as this was considered as tantamount to treason. In fact I was being suspected of possible treasonable acts. I was eventually trailed and attempts were made over my life. I was by now labelled as one of the so-called "negative forces". This was a label given to Interahamwe militia living in Zaire. I was even accused of having released Interahamwe in Nkamira-Gisenyi and put under arrest. This was mere fabrication. Not only there is no Interahamwe prison there, but also I never released anybody with evidence that he was involved in killings. There is no way I could show mercy to such people. I will emphasize here that I do not refer to those innocent Hutus who were labelled Interahamwe because simply by virtue of being Hutus.

By the time I worked with the Gendarmerie, people who were detained there were suspected of common law crimes mostly related to land and cattle disputes. I was unfairly arrested on 8th June 1999. Those who arrested me eventually got ashamed and I was released and allowed to resume my duties in the escort of Kagame.

My escape from many traps

After allegations of conniving with the enemy were levelled against me simply because I did not support killings innocent people, attempts were made to get rid of me in ambushes. The first time I survived an ambush was in Gisenyi on my way to Kabaya thanks to a friend who had warned me. It was on 13th April 1999.

I did also escape narrowly a second attempt on my life, but my escort perished. One was called James Kabera, a private soldier, the other one was Hodari, a Mugogwe (a local ethnic Tutsi group of Gisenyi). It was on 15th May 2001. I was again going to Gisenyi on special assignment. I was ambushed in the mountains of Buranga in Ruhengeri. This time around, I had not been warned at all, as I could not imagine that I could be ambushed while on such a mission. I did not understand why I had been selected for the mission but even if I had known, I could not refuse the order. A vehicle trailed me right from Kigali and kept on indicating my position. The Toyota Land cruiser vehicle that I was in was sprayed with bullets and two of my escort were killed on the spot. I don't know how I survived.

The last attempt on my life was on 18th November 2001. This had been assigned to two groups to ensure that I don't escape anymore. One of the people involved felt bad and told me to flee, as he did not have any quarrel with me. The same day I fled to Uganda.

I was first kept under tight surveillance, under CMI (Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence) custody purportedly for my own security. When they gathered enough information and confirmed that I was a genuine asylum seeker, I was allowed to go out and look for shelter. I realised that I could not remain in Uganda, as Rwandan intelligence services there are even more active that Ugandan own services. Many Rwandan asylum seekers were picked there and sneaked back to Rwanda where they were tortured and killed. This is why I decided to go far from Rwanda in my quest for asylum. I am now in a place where I can denounce the atrocities committed by General Paul Kagame and his henchmen. I insisted on giving all these details in order to explain the difficulties faced by an RPA soldier who does not support what Kagame wants. I am hoping that slowly by slowly, the tendency of considering all Tutsi officers as killers will vanish in the minds of many people.

General Kagame did a lot of atrocities, he must answer for them

A. Kagame's record

General Kagame is of quite a very bad character. He is extremely nervous, so much so that at time he can crash everything on his way and ransack a whole house. He does not tolerate any dissenting voice, what he says is gospel truth. I worked with him for a long time. He does not tolerate any advice and is trigger-happy. Once one of his close allies simply tells him that you are suspected of disloyalty, this is enough to warrant your death.

Kagame can spend a whole month without smiling. He can spend sleepless night abusing people and roughing them up. He does not spare anybody, he beats people at random. Anybody summoned at his home starts shaking excepts henchmen like Major general James Kabarebe. Other officers up to the rank of colonel like Ndugutse could be beaten to our disgust. He is a bloodthirsty person. When I worked with him, he would go very early in the morning to visit detention places of DMI[2] to sometime supervise killing. I recall once in Muhura when we were fighting to capture Kigali, he personally went on a 12.7mm AAC (anti air craft) mounted on a jeep of his escort and sprayed bullets on a peaceful market crowd of peasants gathered on a market place. It was in 1994. He then ordered his soldiers to use all available weapons and shell the market. It is very saddening to see a leader getting involved in massacring people in a market, while sarcastically laughing. The few times you will ever see him smiling is mainly when he is killing or seeing people killed.

20. General Paul Kagame supervises the smallest detail of everything going on in the army. He even follows conversations between soldiers on military patrols on their walkie-talkie radios.

Every morning, he summons his signal officer and reads through all operations and routine army messages, to make sure that he does not miss anything. He uses to short circuit his military commanding officers by giving direct orders to field commanders without passing through the chain of command. Here I simply want to stress that there is nothing he can pretend to ignore. Nothing can take place within RPA without his knowledge. Apart from very isolated incidents carried out by petty criminals, all atrocities committed by the army in operational areas are sanctioned by him. The officers detained for so-called operational blunders are in actual facts detained because they did not kill the way he wants. They are not in remand for killing civilians, but for not concealing their bodies. For him that is a crime. The one who manages to kill the maximum and clear all the evidence will surely be promoted.

Major general Paul Kagame manages Rwandan army as his own militiamen. The whole army has become a wide intelligence network. When there are officially 5 intelligence officers, you can rest assured that there are another 20 under cover. There is no clear chain of command in the intelligence network, everybody spies on everybody else and reports to Major General Paul Kagame in person. Kagame is a very rough and security cautious person. He has got a network of criminals who are by this virtue untouchable. They are ready to carry out any dirty mission that Kagame assigns them. Those people are so deadly that nobody dares flee the country because they may be tracked anywhere and be killed. Kagame does not fear anybody. He does not care even about his health. He sleeps at 2.30 am and wakes up at 4.00 am. He does what he wants, when he wants. He is very stubborn and arrogant. He does not hesitate to call his entourage stupid people because he thinks that he is the cleverest man. He does not trust anybody and is very unpredictable.

B. Some of the crimes he committed or ordered

Major general Paul Kagame personally ordered the shooting down of President Juvénal Habyarimana's plane.

I got astonished when I heard him denying it. I equally got surprised by Rwandan Radio and some international media manoeuvre to absolve him of that act. I heard even civilian people like Minister Charles Muligande, trying to explain how militarily it was impossible.

25. Let me make it crystal clear, I attended the last meeting where the plan was hatched. I was there physically and I even know the names of those who carried out the shooting. I was working with them in the High Command unit. It is Lt Frank Nziza and cpl Eric Hakizimana.

It is not hearsays; I was present when the meeting took place. That was on 31st March 1994 from 2.30pm to 3.30pm.The Chairman of the meeting was Major general Paul Kagame, and the following officers were present: Col Kayumba Nyamwasa, Col Théoneste Lizinde, Lt Col James Kabarebe, Major Jacob Tumwine, Captain Charles Karamba. I heard P. Kagame asking Col. Lizinde to report about his investigations and I have seen Col Lizinde giving to Paul Kagame a map of the selected place for the plane shooting etc. I don't want to jeopardise the investigation, because I would be playing around with criminals who would take the opportunity to prepare their defence. But I simply want to say that I am ready to give evidence in court, should my testimony be needed. I would then say the whole truth, if I were still alive.

C. Major general Paul Kagame gave orders to kill civilians.

He ordered at numerous occasions to kill as many civilians as possible. This took place in many areas in Byumba, Ruhengeri and elsewhere, and long before the Tutsi genocide. I say so because some people think that RPA killed in reprisal after the genocide. Even during the genocide, I saw and heard on several occasions major general Paul Kagame giving orders to kill civilians, especially in Mutara, Byumba and Kibungo. He would enjoy it like a football fan watching a football game and cheering his team. At time, he even used his escort or selected DMI operatives to kill civilians.

28. Before the plan to get rid of Juvénal Habyarimana was hatched, meeting had been going on to prepare the final assault on Kigali. This had been the ultimate goal whatever the outcome of the negotiations. At that time, I was acting I.O for then Lt Silas Udahemuka (currently strong man in Kigali), who had got involved in an accident. In this capacity, I could attend all the meetings of the High Command. In one of the meetings, major general Paul Kagame ordered that civilians be lured into attending a public rally under the pretext of emergency food supply or security meetings, in order to round them up and eliminate them. And this happened the way it had been planned. The reality is that mass killings of people took place under his orders. Furthermore, he had a special hatred against religious people. Whenever the latter would be spotted and rounded up, local commanders would always ask major General Kagame what to do. Invariably, he ordered for their killings. I am even aware of the talks he had with Lieutenant colonel Fred Ibingira before the bishops were killed in Kabgayi. Similar incidents happened in Rwesero. The execution squad took the priests to Karushya and killed them.

D. The sparking off of the Tutsi genocide. I was in charge of collecting and analysing intelligence from our sources inside Rwanda.

All the reports were unanimously stating that Tutsi would be wiped out if the war resumed. Any pretext would be enough to kick off the killings. Major general Paul Kagame did not care at all about those threats. Recently, when one of former RPA officers who deserted and fled the country said that RPA was to blame for the killing of Tutsi, Rwandan foreign affairs minister, Charles Muligande attempted against all odds to refute it. Why does he so pathetically tell lies? It will suffice to recall that Kagame himself used to say that Tutsi living inside Rwanda were opportunists and reactionary elements that had refused to flee. Their death was none of his concerns. In fact, all the forces that were used to kill innocent civilians in liberated areas would have been used to rescue Tutsi. This did not happen. God willing, I will, jointly with other colleagues, compile a comprehensive report about ethnic cleansing that was ordered by Kagame. At times, he did it personally. I saw him personally instructing for the digging of mass graves for people who had been massacred in Byumba, Muhura and Murambi. Later, he ordered their removal and to be taken to crematory centres in Gabiro, Nasho, Masaka, Nyungwe, Kami, Gitarama military barracks and Mukamira. At times, people would be packed alive into lorries and be taken directly to the above place to be executed on the spot.

Apart from the war of 1990-1994, he launched two bloody wars in Zaire and is still disturbing that country.

Major general Paul Kagame also instructed his officers and men led by then Col Kayumba Nyamwasa to massacre civilians in Ruhengeri and Gisenyi. I saw personally heavy artillery pieces and helicopter gunship shelling villages under the excuse of fighting insurgency. At time, no single infiltrators would have set foot there, or they may have been there but left long before the counterattack. People would be summarily executed after long suffering by torture.

32. He did not spare his own tribes mates Tutsi. Bagogwe and Banyamulenge of Zaire were killed to safeguard his own selfish interests. It is not easy to find the right wording, but what he did is indescribable. He killed so many Congolese of Rwandan origin, Hutu and Tutsi alike. This will also be detailed later. We were Inkotanyi-members of RPA, we know all the elements who were misguided into getting involved in crimes. People should be assured that soon or later, all crimes that took place on the Rwandan soil will be accounted for. It will serve as a lesson for many, for one may conceal a crime, but the crime does not conceal itself.

33. I take this opportunity to call upon all Rwandan fighting the general Kagame's regime, to avoid getting involved in any activities that would lead to shedding the blood of innocent people. Kagame concealed his crimes for nearly 10 years, but time has come to expose him. All criminals will end up being taken to court to answer for their deeds. Why do they take the risk of being arrested one day and spend the rest of their lives in prison?

E. The refusal to rescue Tutsi in 1994

34. I cannot forget the pain that general Kagame inflicted to Rwandan of Tutsi ethnic group, his own tribe mates. Some were even killed on his orders. Others were deliberately left at the mercy of Interahamwe. He made sure that nobody comes to their rescue. Up-to-date, he is still pursuing his policy by repeating in Congo what he did in Rwanda. Why is he busy creating hatred between Banyamulenge minority and the rest of the Congolese population? Is it for the interest of Tutsis? Even in Rwanda, he does not spare anything to exacerbate tension between ethnic groups, by his policy of forced reconciliation. What he does will inevitably lead to a new wave of ethnic conflict and Tutsi will again be the main victims. I hereby condemn it publicly, I urge him to stop forthwith killing us, causing us to be killed and using us as political springboard. I urge him to leave our country and the region in peace. As I promised, with the help of courageous colleagues who managed to flee his death squads, we shall compile a comprehensive report of all atrocities General Paul Kagame was involved in. I deliberately refrained from talking about politics. I leave it to others more competent to denounce his dictatorship.

I know very well that people will ask themselves why a Tutsi who came from Uganda for that matter can leak such secrets, as people think that all former Ugandan refugees are all in good books with the regime of general Kagame.

For me, I am not leaking secrets, I am denouncing crimes. There are many people who are longing to do so, but who cannot because they don't have the opportunity. For to say such thing inside Rwanda or anywhere in Africa would put somebody's life in great danger. I spoke out because I have a chance of being in a country where I feel safe. I don't rule out reprisals against my family left in Rwanda, but I am doing it anyway to avoid more suffering for all Rwandans. My prayer is that the international community at long last takes the opportunity to put an end to its support to general Kagame's regime, which is decimating people under the pretext of protecting Tutsi. Everything is done for his own interest.

2nd Lt Aloys RUYENZI

Norway, 05/07/2004

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