Les FDLR affirment entamer leur processus de désarmement en RDC

Theogene Rudasingwa

• President Frederick M. Lawrence, Brandeis University, Irving Enclave 113, MS 100, 415 South St., Waltham, MA 02453
• President Drew Faust, Harvard University, Massachusetts Hall, Cambridge, MA 02138
• President L. Rafael Reif, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Ave., Room 3-208, Cambridge, MA 02139-4307
• President John L. Hennessy, Stanford University, Building 10, Stanford, CA 94305-2061
• President Anthony P. Monaco, Tufts University, Ballou Hall, Second Floor, 1 The Green, Medford, MA 02155

Kambale Musavuli, a native of the Democratic Republic of Congo, is based in New York City and serves as national spokesperson for Friends of the Congo, which raises global consciousness about the situation in the Congo. He is featured in the short film “Crisis in the Congo: Uncovering the Truth” that explores the role that the United States, Rwanda and Uganda have played in triggering the greatest humanitarian crisis at the dawn of the 21st century. Here he speaks at Congo Day in Connecticut, on March 8, 2014.

Your invitation of Paul Kagame to your institution co-signs his repressive practices inside Rwanda and his aggressive interventions in neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

• In 2008, The Spanish National Court, The Audiencia National (which charged disgraced Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet), indicted 40 Rwandan military officers for terrorism, mass killings and several counts of genocide against Rwandans, Congolese and Spanish citizens, following the 1994 genocide, Spanish Judge Fernando Andreu has said he has evidence implicating Rwanda’s current President Paul Kagame, who has immunity from prosecution as a head of state.
• Following the August 2010 election, where Paul Kagame won with 93 percent of the votes, many observers have called it fraudulent and noted that it was marred by political violence, incarceration and intimidation and repression of press freedom. The White House issued a statement raising concerns that “[n]o one should underestimate the enormous challenges born of the genocide in 1994. Rwanda’s progress in the face of these challenges has been remarkable, and is a testament to the people of Rwanda. Rwanda’s stability and growing prosperity, however, will be difficult to sustain in the absence of broad political debate and open political participation.”
• On Oct. 1, 2010, the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNOHCHR) published “The United Nations Mapping Exercise Report,” which documents crimes committed in the Congo from 1993 to 2003. It singled out the crimes committed by the Rwanda army by noting that “the apparent systematic and widespread attacks described in this report reveal a number of inculpatory elements that, if proven before a competent court, could be characterized as crimes of genocide.”
• In May 2011, British news sources reported on attempted assassinations carried out by Rwandan government personnel against Rwandan refugees and exiles.
• The June 3, 2011, report from Amnesty International condemns Kagame’s government, saying: “The Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), in power since the 1994 genocide, tightly controls political space, civil society and the media, contending that this is necessary to prevent renewed violence. Human rights defenders, journalists and political opponents cannot openly and publicly criticize the authorities. People who do speak out risk prosecution and imprisonment.”
• On July 21, 2012, The New York Times reported that the U.S. State Department said that “it would cut military aid to Rwanda for the year, citing evidence that the country was supporting rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The move is significant, coming from one of Rwanda’s staunchest allies.”
• On Dec. 18, 2012, President Obama personally called Paul Kagame to emphasize “the importance of permanently ending all support to armed groups in the DRC, abiding by the recent commitments he made in Kampala along with Presidents Kabila and Museveni, and reaching a transparent and credible political agreement that includes an end to impunity for M23 commanders and others who have committed serious human rights abuses.”
• On Oct. 3, 2013, the United States sanctioned the Rwandan government and blocked further military aid because of its support for M23 rebels in the DRC who are believed to be using child soldiers. Reuters reported that State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said Rwanda was sanctioned because of its “support for the M23, a rebel group which continues to actively recruit and abduct children” and to threaten the stability of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
• On March 12, 2014, the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives wrote a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry to express his “deep concern over the numerous attempted attacks and killings of Rwandan dissidents living outside that country.” Chairman Royce called on the State Department to “reevaluate U.S. engagement with Rwanda.”

The global community led by the United States is moving in a direction to hold the Rwandan government accountable for its repressive actions inside Rwanda and its destabilizing activities in the DRC and elsewhere in Africa.

A former aid worker remembers the silence, pain, and foreboding of Rwanda -- just after the 1994 genocide.

I was dispatched from our base at the embassy with a colleague, Kim Maynard, to assess a cluster of displaced-person camps in northwestern Rwanda. As we drove west, the low, rolling hills were green and lush, but the entire countryside was vacant. Just months before, Rwanda had been the most crowded country in Africa, its roads thickly congested with people, vehicles, and livestock. Yet now there were no workers toiling in the fields; the markets were empty; schools, churches, and businesses were abandoned. Those few people we saw lingered nervously near their homes and melted away upon our approach.

In contrast to the stillness of the countryside, the first displaced camp we visited was teeming. There were thousands of people. Some were living in a low-slung building that looked like it had been a school, but the majority of families sprawled out across a field stripped of its vegetation. Most were living out in the open, or in ramshackle temporary huts made of plastic, cardboard, or scavenged pieces of corrugated tin. Implausibly thin mothers clutched sickly newborns and begged for medicine.
An old man lying prone in the red clay had flies resting on his sunken cheeks.

"I could not stop this," the nurse added. She fled into the countryside, taking refuge with family members, and had only just returned. She was hoping that the hospital would start functioning again. She needed the work. The nurse had heard that Hutu fighters had forced some of her coworkers to retreat with them to "take care of the wounded." She did not expect to see them again.

It was unclear from the woman's story exactly how she had been separated from her husband and children. I did not ask. "I hid in the fields for days, and I could hear the men searching," she told me. "They were drunk. They were singing and blowing whistles, celebrating when they found someone. I do not think I slept. I saw many bodies. Even then, some of the other families in the fields wanted to return to their houses. They thought it would be safe. This was so foolish. It made me angry."

But while Rwanda had brought out the very worst in some people, it had also revealed remarkable strengths. There were Hutus that risked their own lives to save Tutsi friends and neighbors, sometimes literally hiding them under the bed or floorboards. Hutus helped Tutsis forge identity cards or claimed them as family members. Bizarrely, we even heard stories of Hutu soldiers who hid Tutsi friends in their closets -- but then went out during the day and slaughtered other Tutsi.

Near the end of my time in Rwanda, I drove back to the border crossing between Rwanda and Congo. The people I was picking up were late, so I struck up a conversation with a Rwandan Tutsi border guard.