14th, September, 1995

PRESS RELEASE Nº 24.

The Rally for the Return of Refugees and Democracy in Rwanda condemns in the strongest terms the sadism of the RPF leadership and the UN Representative in Kigali Mr SHAHARYAR KHAN over the suffering of the rwandan people under the RPF army.

Once again the RPF army has struck in the commune of KANAMA ,killing more than one hundred people including women and children found in their bedrooms.And once again in a callous manner the RPF propaganda machinery has been put in full gear to explain away this crime against humanity.The people of Rwanda are waiting to see whether the international community will remain true to its moral values and obligation and punish the culprit.

The RPF machinery is trying against all odds to deceive the world that the people even those who were killed in their beds died in a crossfire between the RPf army and militia and that uniforms and arms caches had been found in the area of the incident.

In a public relations exercise the Vive President and Minister of Defence Mr KAGAME Paul went to the scene of the atrocities committed by his army allegedly to apologise to the villagers.This is reminiscent of the exercise done by his President after the Kibeho holocaust in April 1995.However the

Vice President betrayed himself while addressing the villagers.He blamed them for not doing enough to stop "infiltrators" and made a threat by saying that people should help the army or face the consequences,adding that he knew that among the villagers were collaborators,relatives ,brothers and sisters of infiltrators.

RDR categorically rejects the allegations of the killing of an RPF soldier at a road block by Hutu militia from ZAIRE,and of arms caches and uniforms found in the area where RPF committed atrocities.These incidents are not only stage managed but also demonstrate the sadism of the RPF leadership. Reliable sources indicate that the soldier died in a home where he had gone for unclear reasons.Otherwise there is no way one could explain why the RPF military leadership refused independent observers to reach the scene immediately it came to their knowledge and why the incident had been kept secret until foreign observers got wind of it.

RDR would also like to express its shock about the behaviour of the UN representative on this incident.Three days after the tragedy and while the UN military team and human rights observers were confirming that the RPF was responsible for the massacres and even the Minister of Defence admitting that his army had gone on rampage, the UN representative ,Mr SHAHARYAR KHAN was still insisting that the perpetrators of the massacres had not yet been identified and that he was waiting for a report from "his"men.

In an interview on BBC, in the news bulletin of 10.00 0!clock,september 13,1995,Mr S. KHAN refused to admit that massacres had taken place because according to him the people had died in a cross fire between government forces and militia,yet many had been killed in their beds.This recalls his behaviour during the Kibeho holocaust whereby after the UN troops where in charge of Kibeho camps told the world that they had made a partial count of 4050 people killed by RPF soldiers,Mr SHAHARYAR KHAN declared that a " scientific" count had put the figure at a round figure of 2000 dead.

RDR rejects totally the political gimmicks of RPF of planning to kill innocent people ,then pretending to arrest the executioners instead of arresting the planners of these operations.It also rejects totally the idea of establishing a joint commission of enquiry made up of people appointed by the RPF government and the UN representative ,Mr S. KHAN whose stands in this incident are very close if not complementary. A totally independent commission of enquiry,unlike the one set up to probe the killings of Kibeho is needed.

For RDR

NZABANDORA Chris

Director of Information