By Erasme Rugemintwaza
A man of exceptional courage, a real revolutionary, has just been added to the long list of those who have pushed very far their temerity to speak, to have and to see with a different eye than the strong man of Kigali, to have a voice that sounds discordant in the ears of the RPF-Inkotanyi regime. This is Karasira Aimable, a Tutsi survivor of the Rwandan Genocide who preferred YouTube as the only way to make his voice heard, the only way to chase away the specter that haunts him and thus to get rid of an anguish that gnaws at him. Orphaned by the civil war that ravaged Rwanda, he was continuously injured by the RPF regime until he was dismissed from the job he held for his survival and that of his brother handicapped by this fratricidal madness. Last Sunday, May 30, 2021, through his YouTube channel, “Ukuri Mbona” which can literally be translated from “The truth that I see”, a very popular channel, he finally fired his last cartridge against the petitioners who were claiming his head. What did Karasira Aimable say until he became a “pet peeve” that absolutely must be slaughtered? What is he accused of?
He is not the first and the last Rwandan to be arrested in order to silence him, ridicule him and thereby ruin him. He is also neither the first nor the last Tutsi survivor to take the risk of saying that the RPF soldiers committed massacres, and thus disillusion the sacrosanct “liberators” of the Tutsi. But why taking such a risk? The answer is very simple: Enough is enough! And the silence benefits to the accused! This is how Karasira Aimable had been in the sights of the RPF regime for some time, which since its accession to power ib Rwanda demonstrates a firm desire to muzzle any “dissenting” voice. Both bodily and moral sequestrations, violence, arbitrary arrests, rigged convictions constitute the daily lot of Rwandans. Many Rwandans have seen their image tarnished by Paul Kagame regime. Some have shut their mouths, others the doors of their homes and others have been forced to leave their sweet land, to flee their sweet homeland which they thought they were serving by telling the truth!
Karasira Aimable is one of those courageous sons of Rwanda who refused to shut their mouths. Because he knows that only the truth will heal this country.
This morning of 05/31/2021, Karasira responded with dignity to the summons of the Rwandan Investigation Office (now RIB), but he insisted on recalling that before being arrested, there was a strong campaign in pro-government newspapers to poison the public. This is always the last step in eliminating whoever you want, as emphasizes an adage “He who wants to drown his dog accuses him of rabies”. Because in fact, there is a strong campaign by a group which named itself “Umurinzi Initiative” which asks for membership of the petition launched on the internet, which calls for the arrest of Karasira Aimable and Nkusi Uwimana Agnès of the channel «Umurabyo». But RIB says Karasira’s arrest has nothing to do with this petition. On its tweeter account, the RIB says that Karasira is arrested for “denial and revisionism of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi as well as divisionism”, crimes allegedly committed in broadcasts via YouTube.
Karasira accuses RPF soldiers of killing his parents
Karasira is a computer scientist and was a full time lecturer at the University of Rwanda; he had chosen Youtube as a way to pass his ideas, but this cost him his job as a lecturer at the University of Rwanda in August 2020. The official alibi for his dismissal was that his conduct and morals were contrary to the values of the university and thus incompatible with his job of lecturer.
In his Sunday program 05/30/2021, Karasira, speaking of his life, revealed that he was the eldest of a family of four children of Tutsi parents, born in the south of the country to grow up in Kigali. He said that during the confrontation between the RPA and the FAR, a bomb thrown by the RPA crashed in their home in Nyamirambo killing his brother on the spot. As for his mother, father and sister, they were massacred by RPF soldiers. He told what happened to his mother who was a staff of Doctors Without Borders in Ririma (Bugesera). Someone told me: ‘When the RPF soldiers brought in people suspected of being the Interahamwe genocidaires, your mom spoke to the whites, to tell them that massacres were going on. Since then we have learned that your family has been massacred ”
Karasira is neither the first nor the last to accuse the RPF soldiers of having massacred his own. In Rulindo very recently, the peasants candidly said the same thing when corpses of their relatives were accidentally unearthed. In Byumba, Shyaka Gilbert talks about 40 family members massacred by the RPF. On all the thousand hills of the country the hecatombs sleep silently, but one day they will speak. Karasira only gives a brief detail of what Kagame himself has twice accepted. Last March, Kagame said in the interview with Evgeny Lebedev, “OK, there are a lot of Hutus who have died. But they didn’t die as a result of being hunted down for who they are ”. In the most recent interview with Jeune Afrique, on May 25, 2021, Kagame declared, after the roar of all the Congolese people who were accusing him of denial of the massacres committed against their compatriots recounted in the famous “Mapping Report”: “Many people died in Rwanda and in Congo, there is no doubt about it ”.
A double disappointment!
The UN has indeed maintained that in Rwanda there was the Genocide against the Tutsi, but some Rwandans including Karasira indeed claim that there is the other side of the genocide, large-scale massacres committed by the RPF-Inkotanyi before, during and after 1994.
It is these other massacres which constitute a taboo subject in Rwanda. Trying to talk about it is crossing the red line drawn by the Kigali regime. The subject is however an open secret!
The Rwandan Mozart, Kizito Mihigo, who died in his police dungeon cell, in a posthumous book, clarified that having dared to speak about these massacres in a song “Igisobanuro cy’urupfu” (The meaning of death ”), is the only cause of his imprisonment. Karasira revealed, this fatal Sunday, that after the genocide, he did not take advantage of the various advantages given to the survivors of the genocide such as school fees, because “they knew that his parents had been killed by RPF soldiers”.
Karasira goes on stating that his little brother and him are suffering from a psychologically traumatism and confirms that he too lives with irascible anguish. He added that when he arrived at the University of Rwanda, he did not like the survivors of the genocide because “In the University they invented false information that I am the son of the genocidaire like Karamira Frodouard , the others said that I am the son of Bucyana Martin president [of the genocidal party] of the CDR, to attract hatred against me, and in fact to hide what the RPF had done against my family ”. “This taught me a good lesson in not having any ethnic preference so that I could say, for example, that either all Tutsi or all Hutus are wicked,” he added. Because in fact, the genocidaires Interahamwe massacred many members of his Tutsi family in southern Rwanda and the RPF soldiers, Tutsi, killed his parents, Tutsi like them!
Karasira says that his ideas have attracted against him much trouble and enemies since 2010, that he has been questioned many times by the RIB, and that he has been confiscated of his rights as citizen such as that of having a passport. He draws an important conclusion: “Rwanda is a country which practices segregation, one who does not espouse the ideas of the government is automatically excluded. And I cannot espouse their ideas because I am a victim on two sides (Hutu and Tutsi. Editor’s note) “. He adds” They are victims of one side only and selfishly consider themselves as innocent by throwing the other side in the hell ”
Karasira defied any warning and preferred to go against the grain given that before responding to RIB’s summons, to be finally jailed, he had received “a warning to stop talking about the genocide”
For Prof Kananura, a university professor and political scientist, Karasira’s arrest is undoubtedly just a good way to silence any statements about what really happened in Rwanda. Karasira is currently detained in the Kicukiro police dungeon and has declined any legal assistance. However, think-tanks of rights can assist him and find him a lawyer in a trial that naturally should be straightforward, if the Rwandan judiciary was independent.
Conclusion
Karasira’s arrest is, bluntly, a drop of water drawn from an ocean. We know well the situation in which the opposition lives in Rwanda, how the press is muzzled, in a word how human rights are violated by the Kagame regime. We especially know how muscular the Kagame regime’s force to hunt down any dissenting voice: arbitrary arrests, intimidation, kidnappings, imprisonment, and assassinations constitute the daily lot of Rwandans. Where is Kizito Mihigo? Where is the talented young poet Innocent Bahati? Where are the brothers of Ntamuhanga? Where is Yvonne Idamange? To talk only of them, ordinary citizens? Rwanda is becoming more and more a prison for anyone who dares to speak up, a gaping and hungry cemetery! Every year, the Universal Periodic Review (UPR), in human rights matters, makes sharp remarks and criticisms of the horrors of the Kagame regime in this area. But that doesn’t change anything. It is up to us, then Rwandans to take the destiny of our country in hands and bring it out of the clutches of the oppressor. And above all, let’s not wait until tomorrow.
