kagame is a typical example why africa will remain the world’s laughing stock. My suspicion is that kagame is a stinking tribalist who cant stand the hutus. for if not, why would he choose to conviniently demand the impossible, the capture of guerilla fighters(interahamwe) instead of the repatriation of hutu people(much more achievable) after which he would sieve and arrest known so called genocide perpetrators. this would not be in his interest because it would mean a hated tribe legally retaurning home the majority of whom obviously innocent.

You talk about the killing fields of Rwanda? It is not the aim of FOTC to talk about the problems of Rwanda. You are more than welcome to have a Friends of Rwanda organization that will do that (in fact, here in the United States, Kagame’s lobbyists are numerous, including Amb. Andrew Young). But DO NOT come and tell me that the Congolese people in the Kivus and in the Orientale Province have to pay for your safety with their lives. It is simply cruel and objectively nonsensical, and I will not tolerate that. Instead of promoting peace in Rwanda, and working on reconciliation there, Kagame prefers to dull people with an ephemeral economic boom, continue to rule with an iron fist in a velvet glove, and more importantly for me, he is manufacturing a pocket of hatred towards Rwanda in the East of the Congo, that could have devastating consequences for both countries. And you want to talk to me about borders, or about past matters thatw ere internal to Rwanda? Please!

I will let you know this. I was 12 years old, and living in Kigali (Kimihurura) when the genocide began. I lost some of my best-friends at the French school who were cut in pieces in front of my eyes. Same for my mother. Those were people we loved, people we cared for. It is not the same thing as losing Family, of course, but it doesn’t change the fact that today 15 years later, I still have vivid nightmares about it. I have 6 siblings, 4 of which are half Congolese-Tutsi. If I hated the Tutsi, I would also hate my own siblings, which for me is NEVER an option.

So understand that I have nothing but sympathy for the plight of the Rwandans in general, and the Tutsi in particular, for 1994 (and 67, and 73, etc, etc). I think what happened was unacceptable, reprehensible, and a scar of shame for all of humanity. Nevertheless, my dear, that does not give the Rwandan Tutsis (or the Hutus for that matter), or your country, or your government, or your calculating, coniving, lynx of a President the right of life and death over MY people, the right to occupy (and apparently seek to annex) MY land, the right to indiscrimintely wreck havoc in the region directly and/or by proxies, to drain all MY people (whether Kongo, Luba, Nande, Shi, hema, lendu, Ngala, Lunda or our Hutus and Tutsis) of all hope, and suck MY mineral resources dry. And believe me when I tell you that I will fight anyone who dares violate my country and my people – ALL my people – with every fiber of my being.

My male cousin, 15 years old at the time, was raped by APR soldiers when they were supporting the RCD-Goma, and he was not the only one. Because of the conflict created and manufactured in Kagame’s office, between 4 and 6 million people in my country have died, and tens of thousands of women were raped, and are suffering from fistula. So spare me your attempts at pulling at our heartstrings about the past sufferings of the Tutsi people in Rwanda. Do you really want to enter a historical debate on that? Do we want to drag our neighbor Burundi into this, and talk about the successive massacres of tens of thousands of Hutus by the regimes of Micombero, Bagaza, and Buyoya respectively? Should we even go there? Is that very constructive? I don’t think so.

You claim that people do not want to stand up for you, and you defend your “leader who has managed to do what the UN and the world could not do…”. MINUAR was a disaster, Yes. And MONUC is only marginally better, I will also grant you that. But the man that you describe as a savior for us all, has been one of the masterminds behind a holocaust of biblical proportions in the Great Lakes region, and particularly in Congo, and you want me to not blame him? Please!!

John, could you give the page link for this as I’ve searched that website and what you’re talking about doesn’t exist.

http://www.truthout.org/article/uns-louise-arbour-under-fire-over-rwanda