Republican Rally for Democracy in Rwanda

After one of its metamorphoses, Republican Rally for Democracy in Rwanda (RDR) has become INKINGI –FDU (or United Democratic Forces). By blending into “cousin” organizations, RDR is playing hide and seek to acquire some credibility. The spokesperson of Ban Ki-Moon, the Secretary General of the UN, should have gathered enough information before allowing confusion to reign at the UN because of allegations, fabricated by people who fear neither God nor man, against the nomination of General Karake Karenzi as Deputy Commander of the UN-AU Hybrid Force for Darfur. To refute those allegations, it is necessary to review the origins of the RDR, its political doctrine and its allies. ORIGINS Shortly after the Genocide of Tutsis, in 1994 with the help of Operation Turquoise, an “interim government of Rwanda” in exile was set up in Bukavu (DRC, former Zaire). As for the command of Rwandan Armed Forces (FAR), good at its tactics of using people as human shields, took hostage of a huge mass of Rwandan refugees and drove them to the vicinity of Goma (north Kivu) into camps hastily set up by the UNHCR. In these inhospitable camps, located close to Rwanda’s border for political rather than rational reasons, cholera was going to wreak havoc. The Secretariat of the International Christian Democrats (IDC) in Brussels was shocked. A “democratic Christian regime” carefully nurtured since the fifties and cared for with outstretched arms ever since, had just sunk into Genocide, the first genocide in Africa. A political adviser of the IDC, Alain de Brouwer, was sent to Bukavu, with a band of Christian Democratic parliamentarians, to the Rwanda government in exile” in order, so it was said, to organize a kind of court of honour for separating those who had blood on their hands from the others. The latter were to be prepared for power-sharing negotiations with the RPF which was already in charge in Kigali. This move was never taken. No one knows whether the mission failed or whether the envoy of the IDC found nobody with clean hands. No one knows either whether the meeting called by INKINGI (RDR and the like), in Holland on September 22 planned to go through the same process to acquire the credibility it craves so much from the government in Kigali. It will be very difficult because a number of the members of INKINGI have a clouded history. The IDC then tried another move: they were going to start rebuilding from the base, since the top was rotten, and create a political movement which would rally together the refugees. Origin of RDR RDR was created by François Nzabahimana, a former civil servant and minister in the Habyarimana regime; he was then a refugee in Belgium. François Nzabahimana got means and encouragement from two Belgian Catholic parties to go and explain his programme in the Rwandan refugee camps in Tanzania and Zaire. Passing through North Kivu, Nzabahimana enticed the former FAR with his project: at the end of their meeting of April 28-29, 1995, about twenty senior officers asked the interim Rwanda government in exile in Bukavu to dissolve itself and hand over all its files to Nzabahimana. The latter was thereby going to become the leader of all the refugees and would bargain their return to Rwanda. The movement was then called Rally for the Return and Democracy in Rwanda; it was only later that it took its current name (without the word “Return”), when it became obvious that the refugees were going home in big numbers by various other means. The leaders of the movement now dreaded to see themselves staying alone in the countries of exile. The topic of “return” had been made irrelevant by the political developments initiated by the government in Kigali: the Constitution of 2003 in its Article 3 stipulated the right of every Rwandan to return to his homeland and exercise the full rights of a citizen. It was precisely for this reason that the Rwanda Patriotic Front had taken up arms in the first place. It should be noted that Father Serge Desouter of the Congregation of White Fathers, a former missionary in Africa, in Rwanda particularly, supported the movement of Nzabahimana from the start. In his writings, he still supports its cousin organisations and offshoots. Father Desouter, in effect, denies that there was any genocide of Tutsis in Rwanda; he has written it several times and most explicitly in an article on the website of Minorisa-Inshuti. He still denies it in his current writings. We shall meet him later on in the company of fellow negativists. ALLIANCES The RDR apparently likes to change names. In a meeting in Brussels on October 15, 2006, it confederated with three other political formations (FRD, ADR and AJIIR) to create what was called Inkingi/Forces Démocratiques Unifiées (FDU) or United Democratic Forces (UDF). Rwanda Democratic Forces (FRD) was founded in 1995, in Brussels, by Faustin Twagiramungu and Seth Sendashonga. Twagiramungu, who was present at the last meeting of Brussels, seems to have distanced himself and claims to be simply a sympathiser. Maybe, he was reserving himself to contest for the presidency of the Republic and left the presidency of the party to Eugene Ndahayo. Ndahayo is known for no other high deed than being the son of his father. He entered politics by inheritance, just like his mentor, Twagiramungu, whom he once served as secretary in MDR, a party his father had entered through “ethnic” solidarity. Snugly settled in France, he accomplished a very long distance research (8000 km from Rwanda!) on “the RPF system.” He probably instigated his neighbour, Judge Jean Louse Bruguière, to carry out his infamous long distance judicial inquiry on the plane of Habyarimana. ADR-Isangano (Rwandan Democratic Alliance) is led by Jean-Baptiste Mberabahizi, a veterinary doctor in Dakar. Once, before 1994, Mberabahizi who is the current Secretary General of Inkingi, made a pilgrimage to the headquarters of the RPF in Mulindi, claiming to be a socialist from the internal opposition to Habyarimana’s regime. Just like many other members of the internal opposition, he had hoped to use the RPF to gain power and, thereafter, to discard it. He told himself that he would take the RPF bus to Kibungo and get off in Rwamagana to go his own way. When he realised that he had underestimated the RPF, he chose to go and exercise his opportunism elsewhere. The AJIIR Group (Action for impartial International Justice in Rwanda) is led by Jean-Marie Vianney Ndagijimana, who served briefly as a minister in the 1994 transitional government. In the suburbs of Lille, JMV Ndagijimana said blandly to an acquiescent audience: “Who did not lose someone in 1994?” “Nobody”, replied the audience. “You see then,” he went on, “you should not speak of the Genocide of Tutsis, but of a Rwandan genocide.” Presented in this way, the denial of the Genocide of Tutsis passed unobserved, thanks to the skilfulness of a diplomat. Sent abroad to provide supplies for his country’s embassies, he preferred stashing away the money for his own use and went to hide in his favourite country, France, where he had represented Habyarimana and MRND. This very knowledgeable man rightly thought that it was the safest place for souls tormented by Genocide. This clever man managed to entice Carla del Ponte, then Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), and persuade her that any death in war is equivalent to a genocide. Ndagijimana had just founded his “Action for Impartial International Justice in Rwanda (JIIR) where “impartial” means that killing a Hutu in pitched battle and committing genocide is the same thing. He so convinced the Prosecutor, that she sought judgement in Arusha, against those who had committed Genocide (sponsors of the RDR and today members of Inkingi), and those who had stopped it (the RPF). J MV Ndagijimana is currently the 2nd Vice President of Inkingi which, after Carla del Ponte, causes confusion in the mind of spokeswoman of the UN Secretary General. This failed diplomat is undoubtedly a breaker of weak hearts. The central committee of INKINGI consists of the following: Victoire Ingabire (RDR), Chairperson, (with the spirit of her father, Joseph Gitera, founder of APROSOMA); Eugene Ndahayo (FRD) is first Vice President, JMV Ndagijimana (AJIIR) second Vice President, while Mberabahizi (ADR) is Secretary General of the movement. Such are the people who provide the UN “disturbing information” questioning the integrity of people called upon to carry out high international functions. Such are the people who would like to claim they have the trust of Rwandans and the credibility of the international community. DOCTRINE The programme of INKINGI movement is to rally together the opposition to the government in Kigali, to define a concerted action plan and undertake active resistance against the government that they call “the RPF regime.” That is a route taken by so many others, who thought they were so smart, but were actually ill informed. However, at the Brussels meeting in October 2006, the attempt to “rally the opposition” was not entirely successful. The following either stayed away or were not invited: PDR (Party for Democracy in Rwanda) of Rusesabagina, “still at the embryonic stage” (sic), FDLR (Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda) “because it is divided”(sic), the Intwari Partnership “because some of its members are Tutsis”(sic), as well as Joseph Ndahimana’s monarchic movement which has a dormant existence. Birth of Minorisa-Inshuti in Spain During the dismantling of the “refugees’” camps in North Kivu by the new Rwandan army, a group of them moved to Spain with the help of CARITAS. They were received by Minorisa Association and together they formed the Minorisa-Inshuti association which has a website of the same name, frequently visited by the promoters of denial of the Genocide of Tutsis and by those who uphold the ideology of double genocide in Rwanda. Minorisa-Inshuti, in effect, denies the Genocide of Tutsis and maintains that genocide of Hutus is taking place in Rwanda even today. On the same site Desouter argues that what took place in Rwanda in 1994 has been “a misuse of the word genocide.” It is Minorisa-Inshuti, the cousins of Inkingi from the camps of North-Kivu, which launched the initiative to complain against the Rwanda Patriotic Army (APR) for Genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity in Rwanda and Zaire. Their lawyer is Jordi Palou-Loverdos, who was recently heard on radio in the General Karenzi Karake affair. When the godsons of the ex-FAR come together to preach justice and fight for human rights, it is a little like the devil becoming a peace-loving monk. Nothing shows, however, that after so many trials and tribulations and so many changes, those who make up Inkingi today have abandoned (RDR, ex-FAR) their intention to complete the Genocide or gotten rid of those who have blood on hands. Nor have the others (FRD) abandoned the heritage of MDR-P, which met in Ruhengeri on May 18th, 1960 to order that “the Tutsi colonialist of Ethiopic breed should be thrown into the river to take them home to Ethiopia. Nor have the others, such as the chairperson of INKINGI, disavowed the ten commandments of her father, Gitera, leader of the Aprosoma, who proclaimed, in September, 1959, the “ten commandments for the Hutus”, which preached a form of ethnic hatred so extreme that, in comparison, “the ten commandments for Bahutu” of Kangura newspaper in December, 1990, seem like the simple wishes of a child taking first communion. What they have in common is the same bitter hatred, the same determination to spoil for conflict. It is surely not the annual celebration of Kamarampaka, (the referendum of 1961 which brought Aprosoma and Parmehutu to power) a symbol of exclusion, which will put things right. The writer is the spokesperson of RPF secretariat