Saturday, August 24, 2013

Rwandan President bodyguard rescued in Entebbe



Rwandan President bodyguard rescued in Entebbe


By RISDEL KASASIRA & RICHARD


WANAMBWA | Thursday, August 22 2013 at 08:03



Rwanda President Paul Kagame.

RwandaN President Paul Kagame. FILE | NATION MEDIA GROUP FILE

 

The UN yesterday issued a strong protest to the government of Uganda over the rise in abductions and the attempted assassination of Rwandan refugees and asylum seekers in the country.

 

This came hours after it emerged that a former bodyguard of Rwandan President Paul Kagame, who had been granted refugee status in the country, has gone missing.

 

Mr Innocent Karisa’s whereabouts remain unknown, while Lt who had been arrested by Ugandan police under unclear circumstances, was being extradited to Rwanda using what later turned out to be a fake Interpol arrest warrant.

 

Their apparent abduction sparked immediate outrage from the UN agency responsible for refugees.

The agency yesterday appeared to question the Ugandan government’s commitment to its obligations under international law to assure the safety of refugees and asylum seekers.

 

“UNHCR is sending a strong protest note to the Ugandan government over the recent spate of abductions of refugees and asylum seekers and the assassination attempts on Joel Mutabazi by people who appear to be non-Ugandans,” UNHCR spokesperson Kitty Mckinsey said.

 

A number of former associates of the Kigali regime have, in the past, either transited through Uganda en route to exile, or settled in the country, a situation which has caused a freezing up in relations with Kampala on occasion.

Police warrant

Highly-placed sources in the government, who insisted on remaining unnamed due to the sensitivity of the affair in light of Uganda’s delicate relations with Kigali, said the so-called international police warrant for Mutabazi was a fake.The affected two former close protection officers on the Rwandan presidential security team have been living in Kampala after falling out with Kigali. Lt Mutabazi is reported to have spent a night at Jinja Road Police Station after his last minute rescue.

 

He had been picked up from his home in Namugongo outside the city on the same Tuesday night by a force of individuals dressed in Ugandan police uniforms and other unknown people believed to be from Rwanda.

 

Uganda’s state minister for Disaster Preparedness and Refugees, Mr Musa Ecweru, who is handling the Mutabazi case yesterday said the police made a mistake in arresting and attempting to extradite him to Rwanda.

 

When asked why police was using a fake Interpol arrest warrant, Interpol boss Asan Kasingye said: “I can’t comment on the issue.”

 

In 2012, unknown armed assailants attempted to kill Lt Mutabazi at his former home in Kasangati.

Meanwhile, Karisa, the other former Kagame bodyguard, went missing on Wednesday, sparking off a frantic search by family members.

 

Mr Karisa escaped from Kigali and sought refuge in Uganda in 2010. Efforts to reach the Rwandan High Commissioner in Uganda, Maj Gen Frank Mugambagye, for comment on the duo’s cases were futile as his mobile phone was switched off. First Secretary at the mission John Ngarambe referred this newspaper to Foreign Affairs minister in Kigali, but Ms Louis Mushikiwabo did not answer our repeated calls.


AP News

In Uganda, a Rwandan exile goes missing



KAMPALA, Rwanda (AP) — One Rwandan refugee is missing and another was almost taken from Uganda's capital, officials said Thursday, in the latest case highlighting Rwanda's uneasy relationship with exiles who have fled the country.
The two refugees once served on Rwandan President Paul Kagame's security detail and are wanted by Rwanda.
One of the refugees, Innocent Kalisa, is missing and was likely abducted, said Douglas Asiimwe, a Ugandan government refugee protection official. A second refugee, Joel Mutabazi, was almost sent back to Rwanda this week before refugee officials intervened, he said.
Karen Ringuette, a spokeswoman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Uganda, said Mutabazi's case was one of some "very serious security incidents" involving refugees in Uganda. She said the UNCHR would soon send a letter of protest to Uganda's government over Mutabazi's case.
Mutabazi, a former Rwandan army lieutenant who had been under the watch of refugee workers because of a previous attempt on his life, was almost taken Tuesday by Ugandan police acting on an Interpol notice from Rwanda, said Asiimwe, who works in the office of the prime minister. The other refugee, Kalisa, "disappeared and we don't know where he is," he said.
Musa Ecweru, a Ugandan government minister who is in charge of refugees, said the matter was "delicate" because it involved a foreign government. But Mutabazi "is now safe," he said.
The two cases add to a growing list of Rwandan exiles who say they are afraid to return home because they could be jailed or killed by the government they once served, charges often denied by Rwandan officials who insist those who flee their own country tend to have a criminal record.
Rwandan police confirmed in a statement that they had asked Ugandan authorities to arrest Mutabazi. "Our counterparts in the Uganda Police had legitimate grounds to arrest Mutabazi on the basis of a valid Interpol request and to initiate his extradition to Rwanda in keeping with their international obligations," the statement said.
Although the Interpol notice said Mutabazi was a criminal wanted in Rwanda the Rwandan had lived in Uganda since 2011 and was known to refugee workers who believed he deserved special protection because of a previous attempt on his life.
"This was not a criminal," Asiimwe said, referring to Mutabazi. "Why do they want to criminalize him at this stage? If we hadn't arrived in time they were going to take him."
A Ugandan police spokesman, Patrick Onyango, said Rwanda on Aug. 14 sent a formal request for the arrest and extradition of Mutabazi, who is accused of robbing a bank in Kigali in September 2011. He called it a routine Interpol request.
Maria Burnett, a senior Africa researcher with Human Rights Watch, said her group is "very concerned" for the safety of Rwandan asylum-seekers and refugees in Uganda. She said the Rwandans are "frequently threatened and there have been several other reports of abductions and attempted abductions."
Despite a positive economic outlook that has made Rwanda a favorite of foreign investors since the country's 1994 genocide, Kagame's government retains a fearsome reputation in the eyes of exiles who once worked for it. Many accuse Kagame of restricting the political space available for the opposition and of harassing independent-minded critics.
Many journalists and former civilian and military officials have fled Rwanda, alleging persecution. In the most prominent case, Gen. Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa, a Rwandan army chief who once was a close Kagame ally, defected to South Africa in 2010 and later accused Rwanda's government of ordering a failed attempt to assassinate him. Rwanda denied the allegations.
Mutabazi once was a member of Kagame's security team and is one of about eight Rwandan ex-servicemen who have defected to Uganda over safety concerns back home. At least two of them recently contacted The Associated Press over their fears, saying they were being hunted down by Rwandan agents sent to kill or capture them.



Congo-Kinshasa: Kagame and Congo - How Long Can He Deny Rwandan Involvement in the East?



Photo: Rwanda Govt
Rwandan military.
Questioned last week on the BBC's Hardtalk about the connection between Rwanda and the M23 rebel movement in eastern Congo, President Paul Kagame denied all involvement.
He said: "We are not connected at all with the cause of the uprising of M23, we are not supporting it. We don't intend to because we don't know what they are about or what they want. We are not involved at all... There is no support for what is going on and there will be no support for what is going on."
Kagame also denied that support could have been given without his knowledge and finally dismissed the 127 page report as "a so-called report" by "so-called experts...(who) pick things on the street".
In compiling the report the highly respected team of researchers and experts consulted 106 organisations from the World Bank to local NGOs as well as hundreds of individuals. There are 75 pages of photographic and documentary evidence. It is hard not to read this well-researched and highly detailed report as anything other than prima facie evidence that the Rwandan government and military command are supporting, enabling and supplying the rebels of the M23, Mouvement du 23 Mars, which is another name for the Congres national pour la defense du people, CNDP, in Eastern Congo.
Here is the report. The most important sections are 61 - 69.
It documents a whole economy build around the CNDP-controlled territory in eastern Congo; bank accounts in Rwanda filled by 'pools' of Rwandan exiles, CNDP tolls on roads, its control of the lucrative charcoal trade, land purchases and cattle ranching, 'front' companies and even the control of the main Congo/Uganda customs post. The money - and this is resource rich area - flows through Rwanda. The report also names senior members of the Rwandan government and military who have had close personal and telephone contact with CNDP. And it details the supply of weapons and uniforms by the Rwandan government to the rebel movement. It is hard to imagine what further proof is needed.
But Susan Rice, the US Ambassador to the UN, who heads the UN Mission to Congo and whose government has strong ties to Rwanda, is reported to have considered suppressing this document, only latterly accepting its inevitable release. The British, close allies of Paul Kagame, have said nothing.
Congo's war is not just another small war in Africa. I wonder whether, when the history of the 20th Century is written in the future, it will be defined by three cataclysmic wars: World War I, World War II and the Great War of Central Africa which began in 1993 genocide, and dragged on into the second decade of the 21st Century.
The war began with the invasion of Rwanda by the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) in 1990 and included the genocide of 1994 and a similar one (largely ignored today) in Burundi the previous year. After 1994 it moved to Congo. It is difficult to estimate exactly how many people have died in eastern Congo directly or indirectly as a result of this war, but even if the 5.4 million death-toll figure given by numerous NGOs is exaggerated, it is still the worst conflict since World War II.
Kagame's policy on coming to power in the wake of the 1994 genocide had four pillars: declare all distinctions between Hutus and Tutsis to be a colonial invention and henceforth banned, establish what looked like a broad coalition government which in fact was and remains a Tutsi dominated clique, woo the West and play on their guilt in doing nothing to stop the genocide, and finally embark on a rapid programme of economic and social transformation by building schools and health centres and attracting businesses to invest in Rwanda. It was a radical policy administered with exceptional efficiency and dedication. The western donors love it. Kagame's gamble was that if everyone started to get better health service, education and a higher standard of living, maybe Rwandans would forget the past divisions and become peaceful. And if anyone queried the plan they were denounced as a sympathiser of the genocidaire.

Rwanda's history was rewritten to obliterate past conflicts - pre-colonial and colonial - between Hutus and Tutsis. From now on there would be only one genocide and all Rwandans must know it. In fact, Rwanda's history is complex. Conflict between Hutu and Tutsi in Rwanda, Burundi and eastern Congo has sometimes been fierce and genocidal, but throughout much of their 700-year history they lived in peace; mutually benefitting from their respective cattle-keeping and crop-growing economies.
Some outsiders bought into the new version of Rwandan history. In 2001 I was told by a western ambassador that there was no record of who was Tutsi and who was Hutu in the new Rwanda. But on a visit a couple of years later another official from that country showed me a breakdown of the Hutu-Tutsi balance in terms of the powerful positions in government. It was overwhelmingly Tutsi.
What was the alternative? To form a real government of genuine national unity would mean sitting down with actual or suspected genocidaires - the killers. In the post-genocide period the former Rwandan army and gangs of killers were camped across the border in eastern Congo. The argument for a military government keeping a very tight grip on power was strong.
That was nearly 20 years ago. Rwanda invaded Congo, drove the Hutu refugees back into Rwanda and slaughtered any that fled west. They then marched more than a thousand miles to the capital, Kinshasa, drove out President Mobutu Sese Seko and installed Joseph Kabila as president. He soon threw off Rwandan tutelage, but when the Rwandans and Ugandans invaded again in 1998, several African armies stepped in to protect him and the invaders withdrew. The Congolese government promised to suppress Rwandan militias but, even if the government had the intention, the country is too big and the government too weak to control armed movements in the thick forests of the east. Rwanda took matters into its own hands by setting up and supplying its own militias in the region.
Today Rwanda is still very tightly controlled internally and is clearly running a huge military operation in eastern Congo. Its allies there are Congolese Tutsis, but Western media reporting, by concentrating on the appalling behaviour of Rwandan-backed rebels, self defence militias and Congolese government troops, rarely analyses what the war is actually about.
In early 1994 I travelled through eastern Congo to Masisi, which is now one of the battle-grounds. Then there was a small war between Rwandan refugees and local Congolese. "We don't mind these people coming here as refugees," a Hunde chief told me, "but they must behave like refugees". He objected to them starting business and marrying local women. What struck me was that the local people referred to all the Rwandans as Banyarwanda (the people of Rwanda). There was no distinction between Hutu and Tutsi Rwandans - they were all just Banyarwanda, some of who had settled centuries before, and others who had fled pogroms in Rwanda in the early 1960s.
Today however, despite the Rwandan government's attempt to ban the use of the words Hutu and Tutsi, this division is what the war is about. The Rwandan, essentially Tutsi, government is supporting its fellow Tutsis in eastern Congo. According to Africa Confidential there is talk of a Tutsi dominated buffer zone on the border - a new independent state of Kivu dominated by Rwanda.
The humiliation of Congo by the Rwandan and Ugandan invasions of 1995-1997 and 2000 has created deep hatred amongst Congolese of Rwanda and the Tutsi communities of eastern Congo (who formed militias initially in self defence). Now, with Rwandan government help, the indigenous Tutsis carry out massacres and mass rape among local communities. The local self-defence forces, the mai mai, combined with deserters from the Congolese army and have also become murderous gangs. Six local leaders of these gangs have been indicted by the International Criminal Court. Most are Congolese and one of them, Bosco Ntaganda, a CNDP leader, is an ally of Rwanda.
Further north in Ituri the pattern was repeated. In 1995 Uganda (which also has a Tutsi-related cattle-keeping leadership) invaded and sparked off a war between Hima and Lendu - the Hima also being a caste of cattle keepers like the Tutsi. Thomas Lubanga, a Hima leader backed by Uganda, was prosecuted by the ICC and is now serving a 14-year prison sentence. While the gangs of warriors may be of mixed origin and the motives may have evolved from political to economic control, those running these wars have a political agenda. And the ultimate controllers - as we now know - may not be the uniformed commanders on the ground.
When a similar situation occurred in Sierra Leone, the International Criminal Court went after the main supporters and funders of the rebel movement, in particular the President of Liberia, Charles Taylor. He was recently sentenced to 50 years in jail for his part in funding the murder and destruction of Sierra Leone. Yet the evidence of Rwanda's support for warring groups in Congo is as strong - if not stronger - than the evidence that convicted Taylor. But because of the genocide in Rwanda and because both Uganda and Rwanda have good development programmes that western donors love to fund, they will not be criticised. Eastern Congo will continue to suffer.
Richard Dowden is Director of the Royal African Society and author of Africa; altered states, ordinary miracles.





 

No comments: