Rwanda and France: All is fair in love and in war

Today, the French government will receive our Director for State Protocol, Rose Kabuye, for her to face trial for the indictments issued in 2006 by a French Judge, Jean Louis Bruguiere, against nine senior Government officials. The French will receive more than just one Rose, because friends of Rwanda will join Rwandans based in France to protest in Paris against her illegal arrest, in the process they are going to give French officials, a thousand white ‘Roses’. What better place for such a romantic political encounter to take place than Paris! After all, French is a language of love. Like all exciting romantic scenes, there will be power struggles; tears, anguish, but ultimately, the truth prevails. They say love conquers all and it is Rose’s love for the truth to be told of what happened in her country that will conquer French chauvinism. A truth that Kabuye in her defiance of the bullying by the French government is determined to expose. All is well in love and in war. Rose is innocent, she has freely handed herself to the French authorities, even after having petitioned French courts to hear her case, to no avail. She is not a criminal caught on the run, in this regard; we hope that she will be accorded the deserved respect, given that she has been through enough abuse already. The hearings should be quick and fair, the verdict even faster. All Rose wanted was a day in a French court. All the French can do in cleansing their already shamefully tattered image, is doing the right thing – set Rose free. That also means apologise to Rwandans and close that ugly chapter. Thousands of us will protest, all over the world, from Rwanda, Europe, USA, Asia, every justice loving individual will stand up to say let Rose go; as Yvonne Chaka Chaka sang of apartheid activists under illegal arrest then; ‘let her go, let her go, to her children, to her family, let Rose go.” Ends

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Rwanda and France: All is fair in love and in war