International
Rwandans won't buy Al Jazeera gambit to turn Victoire Ingabire into a democracy martyr
The
love story between Mrs Ingabire Victoire and Al Jazeera is flourishing as the
convicted criminal goes to great lengths to present herself as a victim
fighting for democracy. It is the second article in only five months that
Ingabire runs to Al Jazeera in a desperate attempt to whitewash her criminality
- with the latter playing the part of a laundromat.
Unsurprisingly,
“My
story: Being an opposition figure in Rwanda,” is riddled with blatant
omissions that distort the entire picture of the journey that inevitably led
her to prison.
Ingabire's
story, like the one before, is aimed for a gullible newspaper and audience.
Ingabire presents herself as an opposition figure who was in exile before
deciding to take her political activism back home, to Rwanda.
“In
1994, I was in the Netherlands, studying business management and economy, when
a genocide against the Tutsi took place in my home country, Rwanda,” Ingabire
writes. But she fails to explain why someone who did not take part in the
killings and was not even present during the genocide remained in exile until
2010 before returning home, long after many others had decided to do so
voluntary through government-led programs (such as “Come and See, Go and
Tell") that encouraged Rwandan refugees who had not taken part in the
killings to return and help rebuild their country.
There
are two main reasons for the deliberate omissions behind her delayed return.
One, Ingabire is the daughter of Therese Dusabe, who fled the country after it
was liberated from genocidaires and joined her daughter in the
Netherlands. Ingabire’s
mother was convicted in absentia for, among other genocide crimes,
killing Tutsi women who came to give birth at the health centre of the former Butamwa
Commune (current Mageragere sector), where she was a nurse. Ingabire’s story
is, therefore, not unique despite her efforts to make herself an exception.
Relatives
of such perpetrators that have found refuge in foreign countries have tended to
delay their return to Rwanda. Some choose to see for themselves what the New
Rwanda looks like; others remain under the influence of the perpetrators and
stay away while cursing their home country. Ingabire belonged to the second
group.
Two,
although Ingabire herself did not commit genocide, she got heavily involved
with genocidal forces in eastern DRC long before she decided to return to
Rwanda in 2010. This is her second deliberate omission; it is also the second
reason behind her delayed return to Rwanda. This reason has major implications
as far as her criminality is concerned. “I watched the reports of political
upheaval, suffering and death coming from my beloved country in horror. Despite
being miles away, I felt compelled to do something, so I founded a political
party called The United Democratic Forces of Rwanda (FDU-Inkingi),” Ingabire
tells uninitiated Al Jazeera readers.
But
she skips another significant and embarrassing
part of her dark past. Before founding FDU, Ingabire had been appointed, in
1998, as the Netherlands coordinator of the Rally for the Return of Refugees
and Democracy in Rwanda (RDR), a “political” party formed in Mugunga refugee
camp in former Zaire. Those who appointed her were the masterminds of the
genocide against the Tutsi; their armed wing made up of ex-FAR and Interahamwe
militias remained active in the camps.
Two
years later, in August 2000, during the 3rd congress of the RDR in Bonn,
Germany, Ingabire was elected President of the RDR. In other words, it is by
taking the leadership of the movement formed by mass killers that Ingabire
intended “to do something about the suffering and death coming from her beloved
country.” Among the founding fathers of RDR were none other than the notorious
genocide masterminds and ideologues, respectively, Col Theoneste Bagosora and
Dr Ferdinand Nahimana.
The
latter led the Cameroonian branch of the party. Both would later get arrested and
convicted by the International Criminal Court for Rwanda (ICTR). Hence, when
Ingabire tells Al Jazeera readers that her detractors have no evidence against
her other than her “Hutu ancestry”, she shows her true colors. She has never
been one to let facts get in the way of a self-serving story. It's narcissism
at its exemplary.
It
takes narcissism to imply, as she does, that her detractors are all Tutsis and
that Hutus are collectively victims of persecution. It’s her usual tactic to
deflect attention away from the serious issues about her dubious past, while
framing the debate in terms of ethnic confrontation. In this, Ingabire sounds
like a German whose links with Nazi and Nazism would be exposed and in turn the
German would accuse his or her detractors of being Jews. It is as if being
Jewish is the crime when at issue is the links to Nazism. Ingabire fails to
address the issues around the ideology she harbours, one that is evident not
only through her political associations since 1995, but also through her past
and recent speeches.
Just
like the RDR, FDU-Inkingi - the political party Ingabire founded in 2006 - is
made of genocide fugitives. For instance, in 2010, the past caught up with the
vice-president of FDU, Joseph Ntawagundi, who had returned in Rwanda in
Ingabire’s company. He came face to face with damning testimonies, including
that of his own wife, and was brought to justice. Ntawagundi pleaded guilty to direct
participation in the Tutsi genocide for having called for the killing of eight
persons.
Joseph
Mushyandi, another genocide fugitive currently living in France, is in charge
of FDU's Commissariat of Human Rights at FDU. The list is long and gives a
clear picture of what FDU-Inkingi stands for, to Ingabire's great displeasure
when the facts are mentioned. It is for this reason that she decided to part
ways with an organization that could not dupe Rwandans with regard to her
objective, which is to reintroduce ethnic politics in Rwanda. She has been
rebranding herself since but without abandoning her criminal political
ideology.
Ingabire’s
speech at the Gisozi memorial, which she distorts in the Al Jazeera story,
isn't the only speech which gives insights into her advocacy for ethnic confrontation
and violence.
“Our
message is that if nothing is done to bring about a representative government
which in turn would bring about fair justice, there will still be problems,
which will be bloodier than those of 1994. […] The UN sits idle and Rwandans
could decide to stand up and solve their own problems violently, when the UN
could have intervened long before to help them find a solution,” Ingabire
said in 2005 during a demonstration outside the headquarters of the European
Union.
It
is both this advocacy for violence and the minimization of the Genocide against
the Tutsi in her speech at the Gisozi memorial that led her to prison. Indeed,
her links with violent armed groups, such as the FDLR, was proven beyond a
reasonable doubt in court; substantial evidence against her was provided by
Dutch authorities, as a result of judicial cooperation of Rwanda and the
Netherlands. This happened despite the spirited dilay
tactics on the part of her husband who, attempted in vain to challenge
the court decision to transfer the evidence found at their home in the
Netherlands to Rwandan judicial authorities.
Ingabire’s
deliberate omissions in the article are many and cannot be exhausted in a
single article. But since she decided to challenge the denialist character of
her speech at the Gisozi Memorial, I feel compelled to expose her one more
time. In that speech, Ingabire says that a second genocide against the Hutu
took place in Rwanda.
“This
memorial limits itself to the victims of the Genocide against the Tutsi. There
is no memorial for the victims of the genocide that was perpetrated against the
Hutu, who are also suffering,” Ingabire says before asking: “When is our turn?”
Those
unfamiliar with Rwanda’s history struggle to understand why this is genocide
denial. But a common tactic of deniers is to relativize genocide by pointing to
other crimes that might have been committed although they are not classified as
genocide. It is not different from a Neo-Nazi saying that Holocaust memorials
limit themselves to Jews victims and that they fail to include Germans who died
during World War II. A German cannot ask that now that we see the Holocaust
Memorials, "when is our turn?"
Moreover,
as Jos van Oijen reminds us in his review of In Praise of
Blood, “the double genocide theory is not new. It was used by
genocidaires in their trials and has been promoted by their acolytes and
supporters. Hutu hardliners have accused the RPF of genocide throughout the
Rwandan civil war of the early 1990s.Then in May 1994, with half a million
Tutsi killed at the time, the extremist regime accused the RPF of having
slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Hutu.” In other words, Ingabire - like a
good protege - is only rehashing the talking points her acolytes in RDR and FDU
made during and after the Genocide against the Tutsi.
All of this would be evident to Al Jazeera if their editors cared to verify who they are promoting. If they did, Ingabire would not be able to conceal her criminality behind the veil of freedom of speech and democracy. Al Jazeera should check the "sell by" date of its product.
Source: www.newtimes.co.rw