
In Rwanda, which has received over $1 billion in U.S. foreign aid in the past 10 years, Mrs. Victoire Ingabire made every attempt to participate in the political process that Rwandan President Paul Kagame insists is democratic, but instead she now stands in the dock in Rwanda’s capital Kigali, facing charges that could keep her behind bars for 30 years to life.

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.

Kagame refers to the former Rwandan soldiers who took refuge in Congo as “genocidaires.” He says he is going after them every time he invades the Congo and he has used them as his excuse to occupy and plunder Congo’s resources, with the blessing of the international community.

The 2010 U.N. Mapping Exercise Report, U.N. Prosecutor Del Ponte’s 2009 exposé of Rwandan Patriotic Front crimes, and the 2008 Spanish genocide indictment of President Paul Kagame and the Rwandan Patriotic Front tell the real story.

Law professor and legal scholar Charles Kambanda and Rwanda Genocide survivor, writer and activist Aimable Mugara spoke about the truth of the Rwanda Genocide story, as more and more lobbying groups push for Pentagon campaigns to stop genocide, even with Predator drones.

On Jan. 20, Rwanda’s High Court once again rejected the bail appeal of Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza, chair of Rwanda’s FDU-Inkingi coalition of opposition parties.

Rwandan President Kagame denied the accusations in the new U.N. report, most of all the accusations of genocide, and then responded by arresting Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza, the second of three opposition presidential candidates to be jailed since attempting to contest this year’s presidential election against Kagame.

Frank Habineza, leader of the opposition Democratic Green Party, told VOA all three opposition candidates who challenged President Kagame’s ruling Rwanda Patriotic front (RPF) during the recent presidential vote have undergone what he said are serious and dangerous trials.

The leaked U.N. report to be officially released Oct. 1 is not the first such report to have been drafted by the U.N. – nor is it the first one to be covered up. On Oct. 11, 1994, Robert Gersony of USAID reported that Kagame’s RPF army had been committing systematic massacres of the Hutu population in Rwanda starting in April 1994.

Before the recently leaked damning U.N. report, many believed the apex of Rwandan self-destruction was the 1994 genocide, but fresh investigations indicate the Rwanda Patriotic Front-led government also committed genocide against the Hutu in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

President Obama said, in his 2009 speech in Accra, Ghana, that America should support strong institutions and not strong men. But Obama has expanded AFRICOM, the U.S. Africa Command, and now he remains silent as Rwanda’s strongman, President Paul Kagame, prepares a sham presidential election to retain his brutal grip on power.

On June 24, 2010, U.S. agents in Manchester, New Hampshire, arrested Rwandan genocide survivor Beatrice Munyenyezi, a Hutu and a U.S. citizen since 2004, who is charged with genocide and with rape as a war and genocide crime. Meanwhile, a federal prosecutor for the case is known for misconduct, falsification of evidence and perjury. Is it a crime to have a Facebook profile? Is it a crime to use a computer?

Rwandan opposition leaders Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza and Frank Habineza report ongoing torture of opposition party members arrested in Kigali on June 24, 2010, as they attempted to protest exclusion from this year’s presidential election. Ingabire also reports that her Rwandan lawyer, Mr. Theogene Muhayeyezu, has been arrested, tortured and detained incommunicado.

U.S. law professor Peter Erlinder returned from three weeks imprisonment, from May 28 to June 17, in Rwanda’s capital, Kigali, where he had traveled to act as defense counsel for embattled presidential candidate Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza. Ingabire remains under house arrest, unable to leave the country, and faces a possible 20-year prison sentence.

“We are appealing to the voices that have spoken out for Professor Peter Erlinder to continue to be on the side of Rwandans that Peter Erlinder has been standing and fighting for in order to get to the root causes of the Rwandan crisis.” – Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza

“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.

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.

Today, 62 percent of the people packed into Rwanda’s prisons have been charged or convicted of genocide-related crimes and some of the country’s most admired leaders are being accused of the “genocide ideology” thought crime. Most prominent are Victoire Ingabire, Kagame’s strongest competitor for the presidency, and Paul Rusesabagina, the hero portrayed in the film “Hotel Rwanda,” who is charged with “Double Genocide Theory.”

In case anyone needed further evidence that President Paul Kagame’s Rwanda is the Pentagon’s proxy, 140 Rwandan police are about to undertake special training before heading to Haiti, as reported in the Rwanda New Times, because, according to Rwandan Police Chief Edmund Kayiranga, “Rwanda wants to be involved in promoting peace in other countries” and, if need be, they would send more peacekeepers to other countries.

If Rwanda’s three viable opposition parties are allowed to register and participate in free and fair elections, they have a good chance, in coalition, of defeating Rwandan President Paul Kagame and his ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) Party. Those three parties condemned the Feb. 19 deadly grenade attacks in Kigali, calling them “an attempt to instill fear in the population” prior to Rwanda’s August presidential election.