Africa History

Tuesday, 12 January 2016

[AfricaRealities.com] Fw: [fondationbanyarwanda] Re: As Rwanda’s totalitarian regime is revealed, sponsors reconsider support - The Globe and Mail.

On Monday, 11 January 2016, 18:21, "Jean Bosco Sibomana sibomanaxyz999@gmail.com [fondationbanyarwanda]" <fondationbanyarwanda@yahoogroupes.fr> wrote:

[[[Via The Globe and Mail's iPhone app]]]. iPhone a des applications qui permettent d'accéder à la version payante du Globe And Mail?! Merci tout de même d'acheminer cet article réservé aux abonnés.

Le lundi 11 janvier 2016, JNepo jnmani03@yahoo.com [Democracy_Human_Rights] <Democracy_Human_Rights@yahoogroupes.fr> a écrit :

From The Globe and Mail:
As Rwanda's totalitarian regime is revealed, sponsors reconsider support

Via The Globe and Mail's iPhone app
As Rwanda's totalitarian regime is revealed, sponsors reconsider support
GEOFFREY YORKJOHANNESBURG | The Globe and MailLast Updated: Friday, Jan. 08, 2016 6:00AM EST
Village informers. Re-education camps. Networks of spies on the streets. Routine surveillance of the entire population. The crushing of the independent media and all political opposition. A ruler who changes the constitution to extend his power after ruling for two decades.
It sounds like North Korea, or the totalitarian days of China under Mao. But this is the African nation of Rwanda – a long-time favourite of Western governments and a major beneficiary of millions of dollars in Canadian government support.
The chilling details are from two recent books by researchers who spent years in the country. While the authoritarian nature of the Rwandan regime is already well-known, and The Globe and Mail has already reported evidence of Rwanda's role in attempting to assassinate exiled dissidents, the recent books give a disturbing portrait of a much broader system that puts the entire civilian population under the regime's tight control, through surveillance by spies and neighbourhood informers.
Until now, Rwanda has enjoyed a huge amount of support from foreign governments – mostly because of its ability to dazzle outsiders with its economic reforms, its anti-corruption drives and its clean and tidy streets, and because of the lingering Western feeling of guilt over the 1994 genocide.
Canada has given more than $500-million in aid to Rwanda since the genocide, including about $30-million in 2013 alone. In total, Rwanda gets nearly $1-billion in annual aid from the West, accounting for almost 40 per cent of its government budget.
But this support might finally be starting to change. The United States, while still an ally of Rwandan strongman Paul Kagame, has been increasingly critical of his human-rights abuses and his efforts to manipulate the constitution to stay in power. Under the latest constitutional changes, Mr. Kagame will be able to stay in power until 2034 – giving him a stunning 40 years in control of Rwanda.
A few days ago, the U.S. State Department said it was "deeply disappointed" by Mr. Kagame's announcement that he will seek another presidential term.
"The United States believes constitutional transitions of power are essential for strong democracies and that efforts by incumbents to change rules to stay in power weaken democratic institutions," it said. "We are particularly concerned by changes that favour one individual over the principle of democratic transitions."
With the United States shifting away from its blanket support for Mr. Kagame, and with the growing evidence that the Kagame regime is heavily involved in human-rights violations that include killings and the imprisonment of dissidents, it will be interesting to see if the new government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau reconsiders Canada's support for Rwanda.
Already, in recent years, Canada has been moving away from general financial aid for the Rwandan government. Instead, it has preferred to support civil-society groups and independent agencies, especially in areas such as agriculture and rural development.
On its official website for its Rwandan programs, the Canadian government says: "Canada regularly stresses to Rwanda the importance of a pluralist society, respecting commitments on human rights, and seeking concrete solutions to challenges in the region related to peace and security."
But it's not enough to issue gentle reminders to a regime that brutally controls the daily lives of its people; consider the revelations of a newly published book, Bad News: Last Journalists in a Dictatorship. The book was written by Anjan Sundaram, who worked as a media trainer in Rwanda, trying to encourage and protect the dwindling band of independent journalists in the country. His book is a glimpse inside an Orwellian society of deep social control.
One by one, the Rwandan journalists in his training program were imprisoned, forced to flee the country, converted into pro-Kagame propagandists or even harassed into madness. The author attended rallies in which Mr. Kagame's obedient subjects sang his praises. He met a mother who denounced her own sons as rebels, allowing one of them to be executed and the other to be "re-educated." He even witnessed a Rwandan family gathering around a photo of Mr. Kagame and praying to him, seeing him as their sole protector.
"The state was highly ordered and controlled," Mr. Sundaram observed. "Every piece of the country was organized into administrative units benignly called 'villages.' Each village … contained about 100 families. Even the capital was but an agglomeration of such villages. Each village had its head, its security officer, and its 'journalist' or informer, all of whom had to approve of one's behaviour if one wanted something from the government – a passport, for example."
Thousands of rural people were ordered into new "villages" to deepen this control, he wrote. "Directives from the government now could be followed down to the individual. And there was no privacy. Officials and security agents in the villages kept track of visitors and those travelling. Permission was required if someone was to sleep overnight."
Another recent book, by Canadian scholar Susan Thomson and published in 2013, studies the tiny ways in which ordinary Rwandans try to resist the regime's social controls. The book, Whispering Truth to Power, describes a frightening mixture of control tactics by Mr. Kagame's ruling party, including "dense networks of spies" and "near-constant surveillance by local authorities and neighbours alike."
One of the most chilling examples of these control techniques is the system of military-style re-education camps and "solidarity camps." Many Rwandans are obliged or "encouraged" to attend formal lectures in these camps, in barrack-style quarters, for an average of 12 weeks each. At lectures, they are drilled on the regime's version of Rwandan history and government programs. "There is a significant military presence, with armed soldiers monitoring the activities of participants," Ms. Thomson writes.
Ms. Thomson, a professor at Colgate University in New York State, was able to research these camps from the inside – because she herself was ordered to attend a re-education camp. She had been conducting ethnographic research on how ordinary peasant Rwandans were affected by the government's national-unity policies, until the government ordered her to stop her research in 2006. It said the peasants had "filled her head with negative ideas," and she was "too kind to prisoners accused of acts of genocide."
So she was required to attend a Rwandan re-education camp. The government took away her passport until it was satisfied that she had been "re-educated."
In a separate academic article on her 2006 experience, Ms. Thomson described how she and other participants were marched to their lessons in single file and then subjected to hours of non-stop lectures. "No questions were allowed; anyone who stretched his legs or began to nod off was jostled back to attention by one of the six armed military escorts who stood guard around the pitch," she recalled.
One participant, a former physician named Antoine, quietly asked her to "alert the world" about the plight of Hutus under the Tutsi-dominated government. "When one of the ever-present armed soldiers who monitored our lesson witnessed this, he strode up to where we were sitting and slammed Antoine's bare feet with the butt of his rifle," she wrote.
Then the soldier went after the Canadian scholar. "He grabbed me, pulled me close to him and then threw me on the ground, pointing to where I was to sit silently for the rest of the lesson."

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The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish.
I have loved justice and hated iniquity: therefore I die in exile.
The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.
When the white man came we had the land and they had the bibles; now they have the land and we have the bibles.
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[AfricaRealities.com] (unknown)

http://www.thezimbabwean.co/2016/01/presidents-who-cling-to-power-face-tough-year/

Things are not going well for some of Africa's last dictators and long-term presidents, and if recent events are anything to go by, the world is losing patience.

President Robert Mugabe

Leaders who overstay their welcome are under the spotlight in 2016, and Robert Mugabe is not alone.

Last week the United States condemned the Rwandan president's decision to stand for yet another election.

Spokesman John Kirby, said the US was "deeply disappointed that President Paul Kagame has announced his intention to run for a third term."

Washington provides civil and military aid to the country and, in December, Kagame held a referendum, potentially granting him a mandate to stay until 2034.

Neighbouring Burundi has been left in low-scale civil war by Pierre Nkurunziza's effort to remain in office even though he has served the constitutional 10 years.

Democratic elections are now more common than at any time in Africa's history. Even Paul Biya of Cameroon who has ruled since 1982 has hinted he may be ready to go and there is talk on the streets of Luanda that the dos Santos era is drawing to a close. Angola has not had a change of president since 1979.

By contrast, Yoweri Museveni who took over Uganda in 1986 shows no sign of stepping down even though a recent poll across 35 Africa countries showed nearly 75 per cent thought the constitution should limit how long any person could serve at the top.

Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe, who turns 92 in February, has held power since 1980 and his country, once only second to South Africa as a regional player, is among the poorest in the world.

In West Africa, regional grouping ECOWAS is trying to establish a binding rule on two terms, resisted by Gambia's Yahya Jammeh who overthrew the previous regime in a coup 21 years ago.

For the US, Europe, even China, the problem of long-term leaders is nowhere more critical than the tiny state of Djibouti, perched at the entrance to the Red Sea and a safe port on the vital route to Suez.

Despite its strategic position, there had been scant concern over a country little bigger than Hwange National Park. Since independence from France in 1977, Djibouti has had only two presidents, current ruler Ismaîl Guelleh and his uncle.

And with a combination of fear and patronage that sometimes mirrors Zimbabwe, Guelleh uses the state media along with police, army and a militia to dominate politics.

But he was thrust into the media spotlight last year when he tried to charge a rival with terrorism.

Abdourahman Boreh, now external affairs spokesman for the opposition Union pour le Salut National, was vilified after calling on the president to abandon a third term in 2010. His property was overrun by state militia and he was convicted of inciting a grenade blast in the capital, Djibouti City, a charge he denies.

The state sentenced him in-absentia, then charged him with the same offence via a London court, only to founder when the judge discovered that crucial evidence against Mr Boreh had been falsified.

France has its largest African troop numbers in Djibouti and it is home to the only US military base on the continent. China, Japan and Russia are in the process of establishing a presence.

So when, on 19 December, police opened fire on protesters in the capital, Djibouti City, it left Guelleh's allies with a problem.

Estimates of those killed range from nine to 37, and the US issued a muted response calling for dialogue and free elections, due later this year.

The government says the crowd was hijacked by an armed gang, and police had no option but to return fire. But he opposition has denied this and asked for independent verification of how many died, and reports of up to 100 injured.

It might have gone quiet, except that Mr Guelleh has announced he will seek a fourth term this year. And Mr Boreh, still in London, has given his people a voice.

Despite losing the terror case -– as happened with the Tsvangirai treason trial in 2004 – Djibouti went on to charge the opposition leader with corruption on a series of contracts to refurbish the all-important harbor.

But Boreh's London lawyers convinced the court that the president himself had a hand in most of these deals, so his conduct should also be examined.

Juicy details emerged of nepotism, the first family's wealth, their control of state and private business, a string of homes and up to 80 cars.

Back in Washington, members of Congress have raised concern that, for the very reason of Djibouti's value in shipping and the war on terror, a free and fair vote is needed to choose a genuinely popular leader and stabalise the country. For now, Guelleh's party controls all 65 seats in parliament.

Countries like Burundi, Zimbabwe or Djibouti stand out all the more because, in 2016, stubborn heads of state have become an oddity. South America got rid its generals who ruled for decades while, in Asia, Burma is catching up with more democratic neighbours, and even China has freedoms unheard of under Mao.

In Africa where coups and one-party states used to be the rule, Paul Kagame is under pressure, while Sudan's Omar al-Bashir is wanted at The Hague.

Death and ongoing violence in Burundi has drawn global condemnation.

Others like DRC have rolled into dynasties. In 2001, when Laurent Kabila was killed by a bodyguard, his son Joseph simply took over. Critics from both the MDC and within ZANU-PF accuse Grace Mugabe of planning to do the same when her husband dies or retires.

In a swipe at such moves, Washington has said it is, "particularly concerned by changes that favor one individual over the principle of democratic transitions."

But while landlocked Zimbabwe and Burundi — or the Gambia surrounded on three sides by a democratic Senegal — are of concern, Djibouti's location puts it more in the category of Panama or the Cape Sea Route.

For Abdourahman Boreh, judgment in London is due early this year and, while respecting matters still before the court, Mr Boreh has spoken about the suffering back home.

"Here is one of the most strategic countries in the world," he said, "essentially run by one man, with huge revenues from foreign armies and the port, yet the people lack running water."

And, in a statement that could become a rallying cry for all countries where the world ignores abuse, Boreh said it was time to stop measuring Africa on a different scale.

"It's called the Universal Declaration of Human Rights because it apples to all humans. If you think Africans are not human, then have the courage to say so.

"Otherwise, we in Djibouti and across the continent deserve the same freedom as everyone else."

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"Hate Cannot Drive Out Hate. Only Love Can Do That", Dr. Martin Luther King.

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Posted by: Nzinink <nzinink@yahoo.com>