RALLY FOR THE RETURN OF

REFUGEES AND DEMOCRACY IN

RWANDA

R.D.R

4, RUE A. CLUYSENAAR

1060 BRUXELLES

BELGIQUE

Tél: 32-2-5348035 Fax: 32-2-5348053

7, RESIDENCE MONTESQUIEU

49000 ANGERS

FRANCE

Tél/Fax: 33-41489987


17 th JUNE 1996

 

YOUR MONEY WILL END UP IN THE UPGRADING OF THE REPRESSIVE MACHINERY OF RPF REGIME AND INCREASING CASH FLOWS OF ARMS DEALERS

 

A Round Table Conference of donors of Rwanda is to be held in GENEVA on the 20th and 21st June 1996.

In January 1995, when the first Round Table Conference was organised in Geneva, the refugee community had warned that the political and social environment prevailing in Rwanda was not conducive to any form of social and economic rehabilitation. Time and reality have proved it right.

Indeed, the hard work and experise of public relations agencies and lobbies hired or supporters of RPF have failed to clear the immage of RPF regime in beating the national record in mediocrity.

¨ Within two years of mismanagement by RPF regime, the GDP per capita has declined from 270$ (World Bank Report, 1993) to 80 US$, making Rwanda the poorest country on the planet.

¨ In terms of creating refugees, the RPF regime beats the world record, including Somalia which has desintegrated as a State, with more than two millions refugees outside and many displaced people inside.

¨ The RPF regime also beats the world record in prison population. The number of prisoners is estimated at more than 100000 who include 76000 held in gazetted areas while others are held in army barracks, in private houres, warehouses and containers. It cosnsitutes 15% of the total population. The mortality rate in detention centres has nothing to envy the stalinist goulags.

 

¨ Rwanda is unique in the world in systematically violating a fundamental law. The ARUSHA Peace Agreement which was supposed to form, with the existing constitution of 1991, the fundamental law, has been discarded. THis may explain the massive violations of inalienable human rights of citizens.

¨ Whereas the tendency in all countries is to extend the horisons of human freedoms, the RPF regime has introduced a draft law in parliament to extend the period within which a suspect is held without formal charges before a judge to 18 calendar months instead of a maximum of 8 days in force before RPF took over power.

¨ While even developped and rich countries are reducing their armies, the RPF, running a country of a GDP of 80 $ per capita, has an oversized army of 55.000 men disseminated all over the country where they maintain a state of terror and dissarray. The whole country looks more of a big barracks.

¨ The Kigali regime is unique in the world to declare publicly that it will carry out terrorism anywhere in the world and indeed materialise its threats against political opponents. It has put up its own its list of suspected "genocide mastermindes" meaning political opponents. It has vowed to execute them anywhere in the world irrespective of the work and decisions of the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda.

¨ The Directorate of Military Intelligence of RPF has been carrying out with impunity for the last 6 months a campaign of red terror in the districts of CYANGUGU, GIKONGORO, BUTARE, KIBUYE, GIDENYI, RUHENGERI, GITARAMA and part of BYUMBA (8 districts out 10). The accounts of the repression are horrifying.

¨ Just as a tip of an iceberg, the UNDP in Kigali revealed on the 14.06.1996 that RPF army has butchered more than 200 people during only two months of April and May 1996. At the same time the ICRD has indicated that eithin 3 weeks of May 1996, the RPF Army had arrested a thousand people including two hundred from one town of GITARAMA and its suburbs.

¨ While torture has been prohibired by international law and UN conventions on Human Rights the RPF is ever refining whith impunity torture methods. The new inventions include the suspension of a victim on a bar suspended head down, before crushing its head by means of a hammer, others include the tying together of elbows behind the back (Kandoya/three piece) and KAVELA whereby a victim's head is placed in plastic bag and tied along the neck leading to suffocation.

¨ Sadism of the highest order has not escaped the imagination of RPF intelligence services. Thus in order to destroy any type of evidence about massacres committed in Rwanda. Corpses of RPF victims are now being cremated and inhabitants of areas near areas of cremation in BUTARE, MUTARA and BUGESERA, GABIRO are complaining of horrible stench coming out of these areas. Other corpses are put in mass graves and are quickly attibuted to INTERAHAMWE. According to information availed by a Journalist of Sunday Express of APril 21, 1996, 174 sites of mass graves have been identified apart from latrines and military barracks.

With such a sinister record, it would be immoral to offer to RPF another lease of life in form of financial assistance instead of asking it to account for its mismaganagement of the country and atrocities committed.

RDR is of the view that economic rehabilitation will remain a mirage as long as the factors that underlie social tension that include the problem of refugees are not removed. However humanitarian aid should continue.

Ceteris paribus, giving new financial assistance to the RPF regime is tantamount to approving its repressive policies and encouraging it to go ahead.

Instead of organizing a Round Table Conference for financial assistance to Rwanda, such a conference should be organised on security in the sub-region of the Great Lakes Region and in Rwanda in particular.

 

For RDR

Chris Nzabandora

Director of Information