Ingabire Victoire Umuhoza
Thirty-one years after the 1994 Genocide Against Tutsi, the genocide ideologues are reinventing themselves, and Western commentators, academics and news organisations are all too ready, not only to give them the platform but to help them don the new clothes behind which they conceal their ideology of genocide.
After their defeat in 1994, the genocidal establishment was safely escorted to then neighbouring Zaire, now Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), by their French benefactors. The cynical, morally despicable Operation Turquoise, that masqueraded as a “humanitarian” mission, was in fact, a military operation to give cover to the entire genocidal machine, so it could make good their escape from the advancing Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) forces. The deployment also had the objective of attempting to hide France’s complicity in the crime of genocide.
Safely situated in the DRC, where they continued to be armed, the mass murderers regrouped and begun plotting how not only to return to Rwanda, in their words, to “finish where we left off,” but to also convince the wider world that no crime had taken place. It had all been the fault of the RPF, who attacked the country, and what they termed the “violence” was a spontaneous reaction from the populace.
A congress was organised, under the leadership of the former head of former head of the genocidal army, Augustin Bizimungu, who would later be sentenced to fifteen years in prison, by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), for crimes of genocide.
The main items on the meeting’s agenda, were how to continue the war to recapture Rwanda, and how to erase the fact of the Genocide Against Tutsi, from the world’s consciousness.
The first aim would be spearheaded by what would become the FDLR (Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda), and the second would be accomplished by among others, one Victoire Ingabire. She was selected as one among the generation of younger believers, who would carry on the torch of the ideology of Hutu supremacy, colloquially understood among Rwandans as “HutuPower”, more formally, the ideology of Parmehutu, a party for the so-called “Hutu Emancipation.”
Ingabire was central to the Congress’s strategy to win over the world to its point of view. She and other young activists would be the acceptable face of the genocidal establishment. The leaders who could be directly connected to the genocide against Tutsi, would move into the shadows, and leave all the light to the younger generation, to continue the fight against the RPF.
The fight would take all forms. Young people from all backgrounds, would be encouraged to occupy positions if influence where possible, including media, multilateral organisations, and from there, religiously spread the anti Rwanda gospel. Mostly importantly, was to single out Paul Kagame for attacks. The tactic being to create an impression of a put-upon people, who need to be rescued from an “autocratic” leader. It is no accident that the word is parroted every time the Rwandan head of state is mentioned.
Among the new breed of ideologues, Victoire Ingabire so distinguished herself, that she was asked to lead the Netherlands chapter of a new organisation, Republican Rally for Democracy in Rwanda (RDR), which was formed in Zaire. The organisation was also at times referred to as the Rally for the return of Refugees and Democracy in Rwanda. This latter description would turn out to be redundant, as the RPF emphasized repatriation of all Rwandan refugees, wherever they found themselves.
The RDR however, continues to be the umbrella organisation for the genocidal establishment, with its hope of restoring a Rwanda divided along ethnic lines.
In 2000, the organisation’s rising star, Victoire Ingabire, had impressed so much that she was appointed its leader worldwide. It is a position she has never really relinquished. The periodic changes of political parties, FDU-Inking, DALF-Umurinzi, are nothing more than a chameleon’s change of colour to the better to take advantage of changing circumstances. The colours may look different but the animal remains the same.
Why Western commentators, news organisations, even some parliamentarians, have lurched on to Ingabire as a vehicle to what is an anti Rwanda campaign, is a story for another time. Suffice to note for now, that for most of them, Rwanda’s greatest sin, is to choose to take its destiny in its own hands, to save itself, rather than wait to be saved by self appointed saviours of Africans. To punish Rwanda for the temerity to divert away from the prescribed route, they are willing to make common cause with adherents of what is an ideology of genocide, masquerading as advancing democracy.
There is an irony and something of a symmetry to the Guardian giving a platform to Ingabire’s son Amahirwe. “The West ignores Rwanda’s dark side – and political prisoners like my mother pay the price” is the headline the paper’s sub-editors created for yet another scion of the advocates of the Genocide Against Tutsi. “She was arrested after planning to run against Paul Kagame. “It’s time democracies woke up to the true nature of his regime” read the strapline.
The irony of course, is that if there is a “dark side” that is being ignored by the West, it is that of his mother. And if “democracies” need to wake up to anything, it is in effect to their support and amplification of RDR ideology and propaganda. Like many among the offspring of the planners and perpetrators of the Genocide Against Tutsi, Amahirwe is now taking the baton from his mother, who in turn took it from her monstrous mother and father, fugitives from justice for crimes of genocide.
The Guardian describes Ingabire as a “dissident,” and a “political prisoner.” In language that the West can best understand, Ingabire is either or both of these in the same way as any leading Nazi or neo-Nazi jailed for his or her genocidal views, would be a “dissident” or “political prisoner.”
There is something grotesque and nauseating about witnessing supporters of an ideology of the mass murder of men women and children, posturing as defenders of the freedom of the individual. Amahirwe informs us that even from the stability and comfort of their home in the Netherlands, his mother “could not stop thinking about her native Rwanda and was deeply troubled by the events unfolding there.”
What he does not, cannot say, is that the events that were unfolding there, then as now, were the deliverance of Rwanda from the abyss of horror into which Amahirwe’s grand parents had played a large a part in plunging it, and into which his mother would now return it, if she had her way.
Neither Amahirwe nor his mother seem unduly troubled by what they and news organisations in the Britain, including the Guardian, insist on referring to as “the Rwanda genocide,” intentionally muddying the waters as to who the victims of that genocide were, the people that were intended to be wiped out.
It is so very easy to mouth the words, “politically motivated trial” it has become a meaningless cliché. Ingabire was never jailed for political dissent. She was properly tried and convicted in a court of law, for what in Rwanda, is a serious offence of genocide denial, to which she added supporting a terrorist organisation. In the last charge, the prosecution relied on evidence obtained by the Dutch police, when they raided her home in the netherlands, and seized her computer. Among the findings were transfers of money to the FDLR, which is in effect the armed wing of the RDR.
As for Ingabire’s recent re-sentencing, most Rwandans wonder how it took so long. The authorities were in real danger of giving the impression of granting her some kind of impunity. After asking for Presidential pardon and being granted one, Ingabire immediately repudiated the very idea of ever having asked for the pardon, presumably because a martyr for democracy does not accept her wrongs and ask for a pardon.
The denial was to maintain the image of “a courageous lady” as her supporters paint her. And she herself seemed to have believed her own self publicity a little too much. Warning after warning that she was contravening the terms of her release were ignored or dismissed, and now she is once enjoying free accommodation at tax payers’ expense, sending her supporters, including Western news organisations, into a frenzy of anti Rwanda condemnation. Expect further claims of her being held in solitary confinement, which like so many of her claims in fact a fabrication.
Thirty-one years after the Genocide Against the Tutsi, Rwandans are now in a war for the truth, and their foe is not just the planners and perpetrators of the mass murders, alongside different generations of their offspring, it includes many in the West for whom Rwanda sets a precedent for true independence that they are determined will not be allowed to hold.
Rwandans will have to decide how it ends.
