September 29, 2011
Faculty members at Carnegie Mellon University’s Marianna Brown Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences have signed a petition questioning the university’s partnership with Rwanda’s president, Paul Kagame, as they plan to open a branch campus in Kigali in 2012. The petition cites charges that his government has committed gross human rights violations in Rwanda and in the Congo. It also cites increased repression of the press and political freedoms.
September 16, 2011
As a coalition of Africa-focused human rights and peace organizations representing a broad range of individuals, including Rwandans, Ugandans and Congolese people, we write to express our dismay at your university’s decision to welcome and inaugurate a partnership with Rwandan President Paul Kagame at Carnegie Mellon University on Sept. 16
July 11, 2011
Ethiopian troops are in the oil rich, contested Sudanese Abyei region in accordance with a new U.N. Security Council resolution invoking sovereign nations’ “responsibility to protect” vulnerable populations from genocide and mass atrocities if their own governments aren’t protecting them. But what about Ethiopia’s own genocide in the Ogaden Basin that the West is funding?
June 30, 2011
Prisoners in the Security Housing Units, SHUs, at Pelican Bay and Corcoran state prisons in California are beginning an indefinite hunger strike on July 1, 2011, to protest the cruel and inhumane conditions of their imprisonment in what is being called “an unusual show of racial unity.” Breaking news: Prisoners at Centinela have joined the hunger strike. A prisoner there reports: “Only a few inmates are walking the yard. No Blacks or Hispanics have left their cells. No one has gone to work. He said all the races are united in this fight.”
May 25, 2011
It doesn’t look as though Uganda is going to “hang the gays,” at least not now. But they may hang some pro-democracy activists for organizing peaceful protests against Uganda’s soaring food and fuel prices. They’ve been charged with terrorism and could get the death penalty.
May 10, 2011
This is time for the gay movement around the world to make common cause with the average citizen of Uganda to decry the abuse of human rights of ALL Ugandans. Do not separate the two issues.
May 6, 2011
In the state of California, 227 people who were juveniles when they were convicted are serving life term prison sentences without the chance to ever re-enter society. Senate Bill 9, the Fair Sentencing for Youth Act, would allow sentence reduction to 25 years to life.
May 4, 2011
The U.S. is the only country in the world where youth can receive a life-without-parole sentence. Get involved in ending this injustice. Join CCWP for a screening of ‘Juvies’ on Friday, May 13, 7-9 p.m., Eastside Arts Alliance, 2277 International Blvd, Oakland.
April 23, 2011
Jean Leonard Teganya was recently found to be a war criminal by the Canadian Federal Court simply because he survived an attack on a Rwandan hospital where he was a medical student intern in 1994. This is such an assault on war victims all over the world.
October 17, 2010
The Permanent Consultative Council of Opposition Parties in Rwanda is calling for the immediate and unconditional release of Ms. Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza and the release of all other political prisoners.
August 24, 2010
Last week the Pentagon proclaimed that the last U.S. combat forces had left Iraq. The U.S. has long outsourced the Iraq occupation to troops from some of the world’s poor nations, and many of the mercenaries due to replace other U.S. troops will also come from those countries, especially from Uganda.
August 18, 2010
In January this year, Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza returned to her native Rwanda to run against incumbent Rwandan President Paul Kagame. Many observers believe that she would have been the leading candidate had she been able to officially enter the race.
July 25, 2010
For many Western observers – Tony Blair, Bill Clinton and Bill Gates among them – Rwanda’s economic growth is the foundation of its democratic transition. Yet, as Rwandans head to the polls next month to elect a president, Paul Kagame’s ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) has perverted the very democratic ideals it claims to uphold.
June 23, 2010
On Monday, May 26, Ugandan Bishop Christopher Senyonjo, fondly known as Bishop Christopher, spoke to a circle gathered round him at San Francisco’s African American Art and Culture Complex. He explained his counseling work with LGBT youth, his advocacy for LGBT rights and his opposition to Uganda’s infamous proposed Anti Homosexuality Act.
June 21, 2010
As a Rwandan Genocide survivor, I would not be alive if not for good people who stood up, advocated for and protected me, facilitating my ultimate survival amidst the deafening silence of the international community. With the present-day eerie similarities to the pre-1994 genocide period, will the international community intervene now? Millions of lives could be saved.
June 13, 2010
“Peter Erlinder is in need of all assistance the international organization for human rights lawyers can muster. He is in the hands of a murderous, brutal regime,” declares six-term Congress member and Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney. Professor Erlinder was jailed after traveling to Rwanda to defend Victoire Ingabire, leading candidate challenging incumbent President Paul Kagame.
May 28, 2010
Rosen glosses over the damning case against Kagame – in the same way he ignores most Kagame critics. He fails to mention that right now Kagame’s regime is shutting down newspapers, is kidnapping the homeless and is demonizing and pronouncing Victoire Ingabire guilty. And hours ago in Rwanda, Kagame arrested eminent American law professor, Peter Erlinder.
May 23, 2010
Violence, repression and human rights abuse continues to increase as 2010 elections approach in the East African neighbor nations of Rwanda and Burundi, whose ethnicity, politics and conflicts are closely intertwined. This week Burundi ordered Human Rights Watch’s researcher out of the country by June 5, after she published her report on political violence, “We’ll Tie You Up and Shoot You.”
May 23, 2010
Rwanda Chief Prosecutor Martin Ngoga warned leading opposition presidential candidate Victoire Ingabire that she might be jailed once again if she continues speaking to the press. He also said that “some defense lawyers at the ICTR (International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda) have badly deviated from their professional duties and turned into activists and advocates of genocide denial.”
May 23, 2010
Opposition presidential candidate Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza stood before a judge in Kigali, Rwanda, on April 22 after the Kagame government arrested and charged her with “associating with terrorists” and “genocide ideology,” a crime unique to Rwanda which includes “divisionism” and “revisionism,” meaning politics and/or attempting to revise the received history of the 1994 Rwanda Genocide.