On the 9th of March 2019, 30-year-old Anselme Mutuyimana, personal
assistant of a leading politician Mrs Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza,
president of the United Democratic Forces party, was found murdered by
strangulation, a recipe of the murder in a hotel in South Africa of
Colonel Patrick Karegeya critic of donor darling President Kagame, on
New Year eve 2014. Unlike Patrick Karegeya he was taken in broad
daylight at around 1:30 GMT in view of people at Mahoko Taxi Park by
uniformed men who reassured him that he was taken for questioning. His
body was found dumped in Gishwati forest. According to eye witnesses, he
arrived at Mahoko car taxi around 1:00 GMT on board taxi from the
capital Kigali. He rented a motorcycle taxi then a red pickup, without
car plate numbers, came to block his way. Two plain clothed men came out
of this vehicle and tried to bundle him into the pickup. He resisted and
managed to escape their hold, but uniformed officers came out of the
same vehicle and ordered him to obey orders to enter the pickup. He did
not resist because he knew he was innocent and thought it could a matter
a mistaken identity.
This despicable crime follows the murder in cold blood of another
colleague , enforced disappearances of 1st Vice President Boniface
Twagirimana in October 2018 and of Mrs. Illuminee Iragena in March 2016,
feared dead. Nine other members of FDU-Inkingi are languishing in prison
without trial for more than a year in violation of existing Rwandan
laws. It is very strange that several dissidents have been found dead
inside Rwanda and in exile in unsolved cases in recent years. It is
worth recalling the case of André Kagwa Rwisereka, another opposition
politician, who was found dead with his head nearly severed just a month
before the 2010 presidential vote.
As Human Rights Watch rightly points out, by accepting “the normality”
of human abuses in Rwanda for political or economic reasons, the donors
and the international community in general may be “contributing to the
conditions that will produce the very repetition of bloody violence in
Rwanda”. By commission funders of the regime are aiding violence because
their aid frees up resources for the Rwandan government to use in its
military adventures against neighbours, in buying military hardware to
intimidate neighbours, in repression within and across borders against
critics and luxury life style of President Kagame instead of investing
the resources in projects that profit the people.
The tyranny meted on the Rwandan population is well documented by
governments and institutions that give aid to Rwanda. For example the US
report on human rights highlight that “the most significant human rights
issues included: arbitrary killings and politically motivated
disappearances by security forces; torture and other cruel, inhuman, or
degrading treatment or punishment by security forces; harsh and
life-threatening prison and detention center conditions; arbitrary
arrest; security forces’ disregard for the rule of law; prolonged
pre-trial detention; infringement on citizens’ privacy rights and on
freedoms of speech, assembly, and association; restrictions on and
harassment of media and some local and international nongovernmental
organizations (NGOs); restrictions on freedom to participate in the
political process and the ability to change government through free and
fair elections; harassment, arrest, and abuse of political opponents,
human rights advocates, and individuals perceived to pose a threat to
government control of social order; trafficking in persons; and
restrictions on labor rights”.
The Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (2009) rightly points out, the
regime “uses the constitution opportunistically as a façade, which hides
the exclusionary and repressive nature of the regime; relies on power
structures that sometimes run parallel to, and sometimes cross-cuts the
formal government and in which the army plays a central role”. Rwanda is
considered by Freedom House report 2018, Human Rights Watch reported
torture by security agents including “sleep deprivation, sensory
deprivation, starvation, extraction of fingernails, electric shocks,
scalding, melting of plastic bags over the head, suffocation, burning or
branding, beating, and simulated drowning through confinement in
cisterns filled with rainwater”.
The risks for such a tyranny are well known. The victors of the 2nd
world war as contained in the preamble to the universal declaration of
human rights namely that: “it is essential, if man is not to be
compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against
tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the
rule of law”.
UN Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and
of association, Maina Kiai, rightly pointed out in his June 2014 address
to the Human Rights Council saying that, “a society without room for
critical voices to speak freely and peacefully is unsustainable”.
Aid donors can stop the descent to hell. Aid suspension succeeded in
stopping the Rwandan repressive regime from maintaining its support to
the murderous M23 rebels. The key aid donors UK, USA and EU should
suspend their aid to a tyrant until he opens the political space and
accepts dialogue with the genuine political opposition that wants
peaceful change.
The FDU-Inkingi call on the international community and on all peace,
loving people to rein on President Kagame to stop terrorising his own
people. We demand an independent enquiry in the murder of Anselme
Mutuyimana. We don’t trust the outcome of an enquiry carried by the
state organs like RIB that are mere tools of repression.
By supporting a tyrannical regime unconditionally, aid donors are aiding
violence and taking heavy responsibility in accelerating Rwanda’s
descent into hell again
Done in Rouen March 15, 2019
Theophile Mpozembizi
FDU-Inkingi Commissioner for Communications
[email protected]; [email protected]