Tag: Human Rights Watch

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

"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.

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.”

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.”

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.

Rwanda arrested presidential candidate Victoire Ingabiré Umuhoza on Wednesday, April 21, at her home in Kigali, and her Rwandan support team thank pressure from the international community for her surprise release on bail the next day. Supporters should be ready, should Rwanda Greens candidate Frank Habineza be arrested, to post the news and call for his release.

Rwandan opposition presidential candidate Madame Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza, Rwanda’s first female presidential candidate, was released on bail one day after being jailed by the Kagame government of Rwanda. “Ingabire was arrested on trumped-up, political thought crimes," asserted law professor Peter Erlinder, one of Ingabire’s U.S. lawyers.

On the morning of April 21, Rwandan police arrested presidential candidate and icon of peace and justice Victoire Ingabiré Umuhoza less than four months before the Aug. 9 presidential election. Mrs. Ingabire is currently at risk of torture or even death while incarcerated.

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.

Childbirth is a painful and difficult experience for most women, but Toya Murray says for her, it was torture. Like many other incarcerated women across New York state, she was shackled immediately before and after giving birth. “When it was due for me to have my baby, they shackled my hands and feet when I went into labor to go to the hospital,” Murray said.

I recently received a phone call from an investigator for the prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, and I shared my uncertainty about the ethics of collaborating with an "International Criminal Court" that was only indicting Black Africans.