PRESS RELEASE
The FDU-Inkingi would like to condemn in the strongest terms possible, the arrest of Mr Museruka Augustin for pointing out facts that are of public knowledge published in many reports regarding killings of Hutus by the Rwandan army, including the following:
- A report by UNHCR Team headed by Robert Gersony estimated that from April to August 1994, the Rwandan Patriotic Front systematically killed between 25,000 and 45,000 Hutus as it made its way toward Kigali;
- The massacre on June 5, 1994, of the Catholic Archbishop of Kigali, three bishops, nine clergy, and two other civilians who had been taken into the RPF’s supposedly protective custody;
- A thirty- two-member team of the Australian Medical Corps had counted 4,200 corpses of people killed by the RPF army at the Internally displaced camp of Kibeho before being stopped counting by the Rwandan army;
- On October 1, 2010, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights published a report mapping the most serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law committed in the Democratic Republic of Congo between March 1993 and June 2003 highlighting among other things crimes committed against Rwandan Hutu refugees and Congolese Hutu. According to the report “the apparent systematic and widespread attacks described in this report reveal a number of inculpatory elements that, if proven before a competent court, could be characterized as crimes of genocide. It is estimated that 200,000 Hutu refugees perished. (DRC: Mapping human rights violations 1993-2003: paragraph 517);
- An investigative journalist Judi Rever has recently written a book that aims to reshape the narrative about what happened in East Africa during the Rwandan genocide in 1994. “In Praise of Blood” accuses President Paul Kagame’s RPF of also having committed atrocities against Hutus.
The Executive Secretary of Nyamata sector, Mushenyi Innocent confirmed to a local newspaper Umuseke that Mr Museruka Augustin of Murambi Village, Kayumba cell, Nyamata sector, Eastern Province was arrested on April 9, 2018 after he was heard saying that genocide against Tutsi does not tell the whole story about the Rwandan tragedy because it does acknowledge that people from the Hutu ethnic group also died.
He was also heard saying that the pain of losing the loved ones is felt by Hutu and Tutsi alike, pointing out that many Hutus were killed in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
He was immediately reported to the local authority because such statements are said to constitute an offence of downplaying genocide against tutsi and harbouring genocidal ideology.
As pointed out by several academicians and Human Rights Defenders in their letter to the President Obama, the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and the UN Secretary General Mr. Ban Ki-moon in June 2009, “to insist on the right to justice for all victims, as did the [1994] UN Commission of Experts, is not to deny the genocide, nor does such an insistence equate war crimes with genocide; it simply asserts that all victims, regardless of their affiliation, regardless of the nature of the crime committed against them, and regardless of the affiliation of the perpetrator, must have equal opportunity to seek redress for the wrongs done them”.
They rightly pointed that “victor’s justice” sets a dangerous precedent for future international prosecutions, and undermines efforts at achieving peace, security, and reconciliation in Rwanda and the Great Lakes region as a whole”.
The international community, particularly those who back the current repressive regime, are taking heavy responsibility for future instability of Rwanda for looking on when the regime is throwing in jail people like Museruka, Mrs Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza and others, for demanding even-handed justice. The best service they can do to Rwandans to avoid another tragedy is to rein on Kagame to ensure equal access to equitable justice and to end repression against those who claim for this right.
Done in London on April 16, 2018
FDU INKINGI
Justin Bahunga,
FDU-Inkingi Commissioner for External Relations and spokesperson.
Contacts: [email protected]; [email protected];
Phone: +44-7988-883-576
