Rose Kabuye: In the midst of a Major Diplomatic Row

As the Chief of Protocol, Rose Kabuye had traveled ahead of President Paul Kagame in preparation for his official visit to certain European countries. On Sunday, November 9th 2008 she was arrested and detained at Frankfurt International Airport by German police. It emerged after her arrest that the Germans were keen to enforce an indictment issued by a French magistrate one Jean Louise Bruiguire, over allegations that she was involved in the shooting down of the jet carrying former Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana in April 1994. The David and Goliath duel Ever since the RPF assumed the reigns of power in July 1994,the Franco-Rwandan diplomatic relations steadily degenerated into a major row which culminated into the issuance of a warrant of arrest for key Rwandan senior Government officials among them Rose Kabuye by the French authorities in December 2006. The major issue was centered around the war of liberation from 1990 to 1994. Former President Juvenile Habyarimana had enjoyed close relationship with France. There is little disagreement on this point. But the exact nature of the French role leading to Rwanda’s greatest tragedy-the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsis is a matter of great controversy. This is what has sparked this row. For one there has always been a vast gulf between the official French account of that role and the interpretation preferred by most disinterested observers; so far as one can determine, few experts in the field accept the official French version. With the change of regime in Rwanda after the fall of the French propped up genocidal regime, relations between Rwanda and France deteriorated so much so that diplomatic ties were severed in 2006. Rose Kabuye’s arrest marked the peak of this row which pointed to a David and Goliath contest pitting a tiny African country against a global superpower. Immediately upon the RPF invasion from Uganda into Rwanda in October 1990, the French government committed itself to defend and support the Habyarimana regime. ‘In the eyes of the Mitterrand regime’, concluded one scholar, ‘the RPF campaign assumed the dimensions of an anglophone conspiracy to take over part of francophone Africa, and the defence of Habyarimana... became part of the more general defence of francophonie and the French role in Africa’. French officials never overcame their deep-seated antagonism to the RPF as just another ‘anglo-saxon’ Trojan horse in their African preserve. Sheltering the genocidaires The French opposition to an RPF victory was such that they were willing to encourage their protégés to do anything, including genocide, to stop it. The genocidaires escaped the inexorable RPF advance courtesy of the French patronage by creating a ‘safe’ zone for them to regroup. Indeed, France actually declared that it would use force against any RPF encroachment on the zone. Once it was clear the RPF could not be halted, however, France took the next logical step and facilitated the escape of much of the genocidaires into Zaire. To this day, Africa continues to pay dearly for this unanticipated development. France would not agree to arrest officials accused of genocide who were taking sanctuary in its ‘safe’ zones. Through July, August, and September of the year 1994, according to UN officials, the French military flew a raft of genocidaires out of Goma to unidentified destinations. None of these men had shown an iota of remorse. On the contrary, they were refreshingly candid about their next steps. They were going back to finish the work they had not quite completed. Thanks to the unanticipated opportunity provided in substantial part by France, they could now begin re-organizing themselves from Zaire and elsewhere. In the midst of the diplomatic war Upto the time of Rose Kabuye’s arrest France had remained utterly unrepentant and, in its own eyes, utterly blameless for any aspect of the Rwandan tragedy. Many in the French establishment were bitter that ‘their’ side had been defeated. The escape of genocidaire leaders into Zaire now renamed the Democratic Republic of Congo led, almost inevitably, to a new, more complex stage in the Rwandan tragedy, expanding it into a conflict that soon engulfed all of central Africa which is actually an exclusive francophone zone. Rose Kabuye as a member of the new Government was at the centre of all these unfolding events within Rwanda’s recent political history. With time as the RPF secured a larger form of recognition within the international arena and as it focused its attention to Rwanda’s reconstruction efforts, the David and Goliath battle lines shifted to the diplomatic fronts which by December 2006 Rwanda formally severed its relations with France. By November 2008 in her position as the Director of State Protocol within the Office of the President, part of her duties entailed organizing the presidential entourage on the occasions whereby the Head of State was scheduled to travel abroad. Thus her position entailed being part of the President’s advance team on such scheduled travels. It was on such an assignment that she was arrested at Frankfurt International Airport in Germany. Upon her arrest, media reports indicated that she had requested to be transferred to France where she would face the case head on in her characteristic style. This according to observers is not only testimony of her resilience and courage, but a clear conscience of innocence. Taking the bull by its horns She was visited by President Kagame while being held by the German authorities. President Kagame commented that the arrest of Kabuye was a violation of Rwanda’s sovereignty. To show solidarity with her incarceration demonstrations were organized in many parts of the world. On Wednesday 19th November 2008, she was transferred to France where she appeared before a Judge and was later released on bail. She appeared composed, happy and poised as ever as she greeted well wishers outside the court in Paris. In many ways, Kabuye has emerged as an ambassador and embodiment of the continuous struggle of the Rwandan people to fight off colonial systems which are deemed as negative to the wishes and aspirations of the African people. The David and Goliath battles exhibit the extent to which a colonial power can use any form of oppression to further its own narrow and selfish interests. ‘Kabuye’s struggle symbolizes that collective struggle. It dawned on us from the outset that France was determined to humiliate the Rwandan people and this they would do by tying their leaders to baseless allegations of political criminality. This was in due part obvious as Kabuye had diplomatic credentials which were largely ignored by the German authorities’, remarked a media personality. From all these tribulations commentators were quite to remark that Rwanda will emerge stronger than ever before. They pointed out that the country’s resilience is under scrutiny once more with the arrest of a top aide to President Kagame by the French authorities given the nature of the Franco-Rwandan relations in the last 15 years. Thus the struggle to beat such odds that Kabuye arrest personifies now, has been part of the larger one which had started over half a century back. Ends