[AfricaRealities.com] Rwanda: Government to seek explanation over Kambanda interview

 

http://www.newtimes.co.rw/section/article/2015-07-23/190882/

Government to seek explanation over Kambanda interview

By: FELLY KIMENYI

• PUBLISHED: July 23, 2015

•  

Jean Kambanda, the prime minister of the genocidal government

The government will soon contact the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) to find out if it is within the rights of a genocide convict to get airplay on a public television which he uses to cleanse his name and also negate the very genocide.

This follows a news programme by a British commercial television network, ITV, which aired on Tuesday evening, featuring Jean Kambanda, the former prime minister of the genocidal government currently serving a life sentence at Koulikoro high-security Prison in Mali.

Kambanda was in 1998 convicted on all the six charges he was facing, all connected to the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi.

"It is obscene…ITV is a commercial television channel, and the only conclusion is someone is probably paying for this. The whole world knows Kambanda is a Genocide convict who was at the heart of the Genocide and for him to get airtime to try to cleanse himself of the very crimes he was convicted for, is shocking," Justice Minister Johnston Busingye told The New Timesyesterday.

During the ITV interview, Kambanda, who exhausted all legal procedures after the Appeals Chamber of the ICTR upheld his life sentence, said he was tricked into entering a guilty plea, which forms basis for human rights activists to link the interview to Genocide denial.

"Any court judgment that has exhausted all appeal processes automatically becomes law. Asking a convict about the same crime he was convicted of is not only holding in contempt the judgment, but most importantly, the crime for which the person was convicted," said Laurent Nkongoli, an international law expert and member of the Rwanda National Human Rights Commission.

He added that any interview can only be granted when a convict has lodged a case in court pertaining to the charges, and this has to be done through a lawyer.

Nkongoli said the problem in this case was not with Kambanda, but rather the people who gave him a forum to deny crimes for which he had time to plead against both in the trial chamber and on appeal.

In 1998, the trial chamber of the Tanzania-based ICTR disregarded Kambanda's plea bargain with the prosecution and sentenced him to life, the highest the court can award, basing on his lack of genuine remorse for what he did, and because of the powers he wielded.

He later changed his plea to not guilty on appeal, but the higher court upheld the ruling in 2000.

"We shall soon engage the ICTR or the Residual Mechanism, whoever is in charge, to know how a convict of crimes of such a nature can be given airtime. We have to get to the bottom of this because it is not the first time," said Busingye, who is also the Attorney General.

He said that Kambanda's role in the Genocide is known to all, including his widely-circulated footage during rallies where he brandished a gun, openly calling for the extermination of the Tutsi. 

Despite claims by the ITV that this was the first time that Kambanda had been given a forum on the international media, in 2004 the convict was interviewed by the BBC Radio Kinyarwanda/Kirundi service, BBC Gahuza.

According to Nkongoli, British media should know better, than holding in contempt a final decision by the ICTR, an international tribunal that was instituted by the UN Security Council on which their country is a permanent member.

Action plan

Meanwhile, the head of Ibuka, the umbrella body of Genocide survivors' associations, Prof Jean Pierre Dusingizemungu, said he was not surprised by the interview, saying it was an execution of a well-laid plan to systematically undermine the Genocide against the Tutsi, to the extent that it would not be recognised any more.

"This should be seen in the same prism as the BBC documentary last year and the recent arrest by Gen Karenzi (Karake) in the UK. They are not isolated cases, they are connected and this is something that we know, but however much efforts they put in, they will never triumph against the truth," said Dusingizemungu.

He added that Rwandans should continue to openly challenge such cases by confronting them with the truth of what exactly happened in Rwanda 21 years ago.

Dusingizemungu also took issue with the ICTR for giving the convict access to the media, saying that since its inception, the tribunal has not acted in the interest of the survivors of the Genocide as ought to be the case. He gave an example of numerous former leaders who were acquitted by the UN  court despite overwhelming evidence against them.

The ICTR, which winds up its activities at the end of the year, has been replaced by the Residual Mechanism for International Tribunals.

Efforts to get a comment from officials of both the ICTR and the Mechanism were futile, as either side referred us to the other.

Rwanda has on numerous occasions requested to have the convicts of the tribunal complete their sentences on Rwandan territory but the tribunal instead chose to transfer most of them to Mali and Benin.

Previously, there have been reports of convicts incarcerated in Mali who were operating businesses outside prison.

###

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

###

__._,_.___

---

Posted by: Nzinink <nzinink@yahoo.com>

---

Reply via web post

•

Reply to sender

•

Reply to group

•

Start a New Topic

•

Messages in this topic (1)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Voice of the Poor, the Weak and Powerless.

-----------------------------------------------------------
Post message:  AfricaRealities@yahoogroups.com
Subscribe: AfricaRealities-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
Unsubscribe: AfricaRealities-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
List owner: AfricaRealities-owner@yahoogroups.com
__________________________________________________________________

Please consider the environment before printing this email or any attachments.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-http://www.africarealities.com/

-https://www.facebook.com/africarealities

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-New International Scholarships opportunities: http://www.scholarshipsgate.com
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Find  Friends in Africa:
http://www.africanaffection.com
http://www.datinginafrica.com/
http://www.foraha.net
https://www.facebook.com/onlinedatinginafrica

Visit Your Group

• New Members 1

• Privacy • Unsubscribe • Terms of Use

.

__,_._,___

[AfricaRealities.com] RWANDA: INDICTMENT WOULD PREVENT PRESIDENT KAGAME TO USURP AN UNCONSTITUTIONAL THIRD TERM [1 Attachment]

Press release

ONLY AN INDICTMENT WOULD PREVENT PRESIDENT KAGAME TO USURP AN UNCONSTITUTIONAL THIRD TERM.

As far as President Paul Kagame believes he is above the Rwandan laws and institutions, as far as he is ready to make his people pay the ultimate human cost, namely death, with unknown impact in time and figures, for no form of peaceful internal political pressure would drive him away of his plans to establish a totalitarian state in Rwanda.

As a matter of fact President Paul Kagame knows that international economic sanctions do more harm to the ordinary people than to the ruling elite and because the world's Powers that impose such sanctions ultimately end up removing them mostly owing to their own interests, he flouts such an option.

For this man, who nonetheless is accused of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide on his people, continued to benefit for more than twenty years from a total blind eye of the international community and the world's Powers who helped him climb to power and establish his totalitarian rule, Paul Kagame has come to believe that he may get away with anything.

Finally, because President Paul Kagame is finding out that countries such as the United States of America and the United Kingdom which have protected him until now have begun to question themselves openly, to document his crimes, especially by current hearings by the US Congress, to cooperate with justice such as the recent arrest of the head of his intelligence apparatus by the UK Metropolitan Police pending judicial extradition to Spain, the General President knows that he has no other options but to forcefully get a life term in office so that he may get shielded by the diplomatic immunity that would be conferred to him by the function of a Head of State.

The ongoing gesticulations aiming at arranging millions of signatures from the population for an unconstitutional third term and the subsequent 14 July 2015 decision by the Rwandan Parliament in favor of a referendum for a constitutional usurpation in this respect are just the ultimate exploitation of the popular vote for Kagame's lifetime presidency , the only potion with impunity for his crimes.

Even though the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) has done an important work by holding accountable the leaders that were primary responsible within the Habyarimana regime, for crimes against humanity and genocide, it however significantly failed to live up to its mission by refraining itself from trying those leaders with similar ranks within the former rebellion, who were responsible for crimes against humanity and genocide and are currently in power in Kigali. Such a failure of the ICTR could therefore be interpreted as a blank check that was given to President Kagame so that he may deepen his dictatorship and export his war into the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). It is important to note that this war has destabilized the Great Lakes Region and has been an unprecedented major tragedy since the Second World War. It took away indeed the lives of more than 6 million Congolese and was the scene of new crimes against humanity according to the UN Mapping Report of October 2010 and of the "genocide" on Rwandan Hutu refugees.

Since the publication of the UN Mapping Report, several Rwandan and Congolese organizations either political or of the civil society, human rights NGOs, and experts from the Great Lakes region, have unsuccessfully proposed the establishment of an ad hoc International Criminal Tribunal for the Congo. In particular, in August 2013, 52 major international women leaders appealed for the creation of an international criminal tribunal for the DRC. Such a tribunal was presented as "an essential solution for peace and justice in the Great Lakes region." In February 2014, The United States Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues, Mr. Stephen Rapp, who also happens to be the former prosecutor of the Special Court for Sierra Leone which prosecuted and convicted President Charles Taylor of Liberia, called for the establishment of such a tribunal. All of these organizations and individuals believe that it is appropriate to end impunity throughout the region and work towards peaceful political transitions. It is time for the international community, the members of the UN Security Council in particular, to listen to all of these requests and to establish such a tribunal to try the individuals who are responsible for war crimes, crimes against humanity and acts of genocide, which were perpetrated on the Congolese territory.

The establishment of the International Tribunal on the Congo, at which the Head of State immunity cannot be invoked, would mark an end to impunity.

Likewise, according to the National Movement Inkubiri, the establishment of such a tribunal would allow the Great Lakes region to end the fuelling of destabilizing proxy rebellions that are remotely controlled from Rwanda and to be able to project into a peaceful future. Finally, the indictment of President Kagame, stripped of his immunity, would take away his maneuvers aimed at usurping the Constitution for his re-election to the presidency of the Republic in 2017.

The National Movement Inkubiri believes that, instead of the current concert of bells and whistles calling upon President Kagame to give up the third term, the most effective way to stop the adventures of a man who is determined to establish a lifetime authoritarian rule and to destabilize the Great Lakes region and beyond is an international justice indictment. The ad hoc International Criminal Tribunal for the Congo would constitute such an opportunity.

Done in Lyon (France) on July 21, 2015

Eugene NDAHAYO

National Movement Inkubiri

Chairman

---