EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE	RDR Rassemblement pour le Retour des Réfugiés et la Démocratie au Rwanda Rally for the Return of Refugees and Democracy in Rwanda Ihuliro Liharanira Itahuka ry’Impunzi na Demokarasi mu Rwanda Pour un Peuple Reconcilié dans un Etat de droit - For a Reconcilied People in a Rule of Law Duharanire Ubwiyunge bw'Abanyarwanda mu Gihugu cyubahiriza Amategeko
info@rdrwanda.org http://www.rdrwanda.org	Victoire Ingabire, President Postbus 3124 2280 GC, Rijswijk, Netherlands Phone/Fax : 00-31-180633822	Emmanuel Nyemera, Vice-President P.O. Box 5352, Postal Station B Montreal, Canada, H3B 4P1	RDR is member of the Union of Rwandese Democratic Forces (URDF)

Press Release No.14/2001

TAXPAYERS MONEY SHOULD NOT BE USED TO SUPPORT TYRANNICAL AND CRIMINAL REGIMES SUBJECTING AND OPPRESSING THE PEOPLES IN THE GREAT LAKES REGION

On 9 August 2001, British International Development Minister, the Rt Hon Clare Short, promised UK help in the demobilisation, disarmament, repatriation, reintegration and resettlement (DDRRR) of the alleged Rwandan "negative forces" in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) as a way of bringing peace to the Great Lakes region. Ms Short pledged 7 millions US dollars for this purpose. While this initiative appears, for non-informed outsiders, to be a contribution to a noble and just cause, it is based on erroneous assumptions put forward by the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF)-led dictatorial government of Rwanda to justify its invasion and illegal occupation of the DRC by its army, the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA), and embodied in the Lusaka Peace Accord for the DRC. The false assumptions are that all Rwandans opposed to the Kigali government, armed or not, in the DRC are an anonymous homogeneous mass of all-alike people bent on restarting and finishing the Tutsi genocide, hence the term “negative forces”, so that they should be treated in an identical fashion. This is not true. The DDRRR of the so-called Rwandan “negative forces” is a military solution to an ill-posed problem; it will certainly fail to bring about durable peace in Rwanda and in the Great Lakes region. Instead of wasting taxpayers money on supporting General Paul Kagame’s tyrannical rule and his wars in the Great Lakes, Britain, a democratic and free country, should be investing its taxpayers money in the liberation of the Rwandan people from dictatorship, neo-colonialism, economic exploitation, oppression and misery.

Rwandans in DRC constitute an heterogeneous group of people, each one having his own personal reasons which forced him to flee his homeland or taking up arms against the current RPF-led dictatorial government. It is not true that all Rwandans in DRC are suspected war criminals who should be disarmed and prosecuted. Many of them are genuine political refugees who flew rampant persecution in Rwanda. There are positive forces who took up arms to resist and free themselves against the RPF dictatorship, massacres, oppression and ethnic discrimination. Many of them are the survivors of the numerous massacres of civilians carried out by the RPA in Rwanda since 1990 and in the DRC since 1996. Preliminary report S/1994/1125 and final report S/1994/1405 of the impartial U.N. Commission of Experts on the 1994 Rwandan genocide accuse RPF leaders, now ruling Rwanda, of having committed war crimes and crimes against humanity. In 1996-1997, the RPA invaded DRC and destroyed Rwandan refugee camps there under the pretext of a noble and just cause: the liberation of innocent refugees taken hostages by militiamen Interahamwe and soldiers of ex-FAR (Rwandan Armed Forces). The process ended up with the massacre of more than 200,000 refugees, mostly children, women and elders by the RPA. Many survivors managed to escape RPF death squads and took refuge in the Congolese jungle and neighboring countries. These crimes have been condemned by the United Nations Security Council in its Presidential Statement S/PRST/1998/20 of 13 July 1998 and leading international human rights organizations (Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, International Center for Human Rights and Democratic Development, etc.) but are still unpunished. The current Rwandan government is controlled by RPF suspected war criminals who have no legitimacy to govern the country nor moral authority to judge the same crimes they are also accused of having committed. It has no lesson to give to the Congolese government. It is the responsibility of individual governments to arrest and prosecute suspected war criminals on their territory or, alternatively, to hand them over to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). The justification of the Rwandan invasion and illegal occupation of the DRC by the idea of a hot pursuit against suspected war criminals is unacceptable. RDR warns against other possible crimes against humanity, war crimes and acts of genocide under the pretext of disarming the so-called Rwandan “negative forces” in DRC.

RDR fully supports the process of demobilization and disarmament of all suspected Rwandan war criminals, wherever they are, without any discrimination based on their ethnic group, past or current status, and their handover to the ICTR. However, for the oppressed people of Rwanda struggling for democracy, freedom and justice, negative forces which should be disarmed in order to ensure the security of the Rwandan people are rogue armies invading their land, burning their homes, massacring, pillaging, raping, torturing and mutilating civilians in complete impunity. These are, on one side, the members of RPF/RPA responsible of the massacres of hundred thousands of Rwandan civilians during the 1990-1994 war, the massacres of more 200,000 Rwandan refugees in Eastern Congo in 1996-1997 and the massacre of hundred thousands of civilians in Rwanda since July 1994 and in the DRC since August 1998 and, on the other side, the members of Interahamwe militia and ex-FAR who participated in the 1994 Rwandan genocide. For the oppressed and struggling people of Rwanda, as for members of Interahamwe militia or ex-FAR who personally participated in the 1994 Rwandan genocide, the right place for RPF political and military leaders responsible of crimes against humanity, war crimes and acts of genocide is behind bars in Arusha, Tanzania, to answer for their horrendous crimes before the ICTR, and not at the top of the Rwandese State.

When Kabila took power in Kinshasa in May 1997, he appointed Colonel James Kabarebe, then Chief of the RPA’s operations in DRC and now Brigadier-General and Deputy Chief of Staff of the RPA, as Chief of Staff of the new Congolese army. Over a year, RPA controlled the entire Congolese territory. The second war in DRC erupted in August 1998 only when President Laurent Desire Kabila ordered Rwandan military advisers out of his country. Rwandan military advisers refused then to leave Congo when ordered to do so. Rwanda and Uganda suddenly sent fresh troops in Congo. Colonel James Kabarebe used hijacked planes to airlift troops from Eastern Congo to Western Congo in order to take Kinshasa. Their objective failed, thanks to the intervention of the Angolan, Zimbabwean and Namibian armies on the Kabila’s side, and their troops retreated in Eastern Congo. To justify RPA’s illegal occupation of Eastern Congo, General Paul Kagame and his sponsors started then to recycle in international information medias the idea of perpetual existence of members of Interahamwe and ex-FAR in DRC bent on restarting and finishing the genocide. However, if RPA failed to disarm the so-called “negative forces” while it controlled the entire Congolese territory in 1997-1997 and has failed again to disarm them while being hundred miles away deep in DRC for more than three years, there is something wrong in all that. The problem is in Rwanda and not in the DRC. RPF leaders have applied and continue to apply an inappropriate military solution to a problem which is fundamentally political. Those they killed in 1996-1997 didn’t resurrect. Neither does the population of those who survive their numerous massacres have an exponential growth rate nor the capacity of ubiquity. The problem is political. The military solution has failed and will always fail to crush the aspirations of the Rwandan people to democracy and freedom.

Current RPF political and military leaders are co-responsible of the Rwandan tragedy and distrusted by the Rwandan people. Incapable to win the hearts and minds of the people, they maintain the power they seized in July 1994 by force, violence and continuous massacres. They have banned all political activities for other political organizations and muzzled all forms of political expression by legal and peaceful means. People who are not members nor sympathizers of the RPF are excluded in the civil service, territorial administration, education, army, police, judiciary and other spheres of public life. Their bad leadership have generated widespread opposition to their dictatorial rule and crimes by Rwandans from all walks of life and ethnic groups. For the restoration of durable peace in Great Lakes, the Rwandan conflict must be solved once for all. The evil political system put in place by the RPF in Rwanda must be dismantled. An inter-Rwandan dialogue is necessary. No amount of money cannot buy the aspirations of the Rwandan people to democracy and freedom. Their march to freedom is irreversible and no military build-up and show of force can put them down.

Done in Montreal on 16 August 2001

For the RDR

Emmanuel Nyemera, Ph.D.

Vice-President