KK freed: UK owes Rwandans an apology

Editor, RE: “Lt Gen Karenzi Karake is free” (The New Times, August 11). It is inconceivable that the UK political, judiciary and police authorities could not see how utterly implausible and thoroughly corrupt were the so-called indictments by a Spanish judge acting in close concert with Rwandan génocidaires and their foreign supporters against the entire Rwandan political and military leadership. That the UK authorities could choose to give effect to an irredeemably risible piece of fiction passing itself off as a judicial document in the logic of the BBC’s Rwanda; Untold Story and arrest a senior official with diplomatic status and immunity on mission agreed with the British authorities shows that this was always a political, not a legal case. While we are happy that our Liberation War hero can now return home where he should have been able to return last June, Westminster now has a case to explain to Rwandans as to its real reasons for this spurious legal aggression. Rwandans believe in friendly relations among all nations. What London just did was not friendly, but the action of an overly arrogant power acting in the belief that its supposed power give it license to engage in law-fare against a less powerful country. This action dishonours the UK more than it does Rwanda. A degree of some honour might be recovered with sincere apologies to the Rwandan people for this gratuitous aggression under a clearly phony legal fig leaf. Let us welcome Gen Karenzi Karake as a soldier truly returning back from the front for that in reality is where he has been. But let us also not forget too quickly the kind of arrogance that would seek the obscene transformation of a real hero against genocide into a genocide perpetrator on the say-so of supporters of those whose genocidal project of total extermination of a large section of our population he defeated, and the British willingness to lend their assistance to this macabre operation in total violation of international conventions regarding the treatment of envoys on mission under diplomatic immunity. As President Paul Kagame said, in picking on us for law-fare, these people picked on the right set of Africans who have developed uncommon resilience for having had to fight for our survival since our youngest ages and never ever accepting to knuckle under even in the face of seemingly impossible odds. The more aggression we encounter and overcome, the greater our resilience becomes. There is always a silver lining to every dark and stormy clouds – the solidarity of Rwandans around the UK-Spanish aggression against Rwanda through their attempted judicial lynching of Lt. Gen. Karenzi Karake makes one proud of how today’s Rwandans truly value their Agaciro and how an attack against one of the symbols of our liberation is seen as a personal attack by each Rwandan. Mwene Kalinda

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KK freed: UK owes Rwandans an apology