EDITORIAL: Rwandans more united a month after General Karake’s shocking arrest

It is exactly one month since Lt Gen Karenzi Karake, the Secretary General of the National Intelligence and Security Services, was arrested while on an official government mission to the United Kingdom. The manner in which the arrest was planned and carried out – without mentioning the motives – is what made many scratch their heads in bewilderment. The British authorities not only blatantly violated the Vienna Convention regarding diplomatic immunity, for the General was travelling on a diplomatic passport, but they went out of their way to humiliate the senior Rwandan official by incarcerating him in a facility for the most dangerous criminals. The fact that a Spanish village judge, acting on fictitious testimonies from Genocide fugitives and sympathisers, could cook up frivolous indictments against the very people who stopped the Genocide is baffling to say the least. The plot thickens even further when the UK rushes to implement the indictment that had been thrown out by the Spanish National High Court. But those behind the arrest of Gen Karake did not wait long to realise they were barking up the wrong tree. The very people they were trying to pull down would not go down easily. This is a generation of Rwandan leaders who embraced fighting injustice while in their 20s: From actively taking part in removing dictatorships in Uganda to the ultimate liberation struggle in their country that put an end to the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. In all those struggles, the odds were stacked heavily against them, but they persevered. Today, Gen Karake, who spent his youth fighting injustices and dictatorships having initially joined the struggle to liberate Uganda as a 23-year fresh University graduate way back in 1983, begins the second month under restricted bail in London. Nonetheless, he should rest assured that Rwandans will come out of all this much stronger and more united than ever before, as has already been portrayed through the Ishema Ryacu campaign. Needless to say, the liberation struggle continues as those who killed a million of our compatriots, or those complicit in the slaughter or stood idly by as the Genocide ravaged the country would like to rewrite the history of Rwanda by turning the victims into the perpetrators and the liberation heroes into the villains for one reason or another. However, truth will ultimately prevail.

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EDITORIAL: Rwandans more united a month after General Karake’s shocking arrest