Paul Kagame

Paul Kagame was born in October 1957 with Kamonyi, province of Gitarama in the center of the Rwanda of which he is currently president.

Biography

Paul Kagame leaves his country at the two years age, according to his family, at the time of the first persecutions of the Tutsi following the independence of 1959. The family settles in Uganda.

At the 22 years age in 1979, it joined the future president of Uganda, Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, in a resistance movement with the dictatorship of Idi Amin Dada, which became the NRA, National Resistance Army . Several Rwandan refugees form also part of the core of this resistance which will face then the dictatorship of Milton Obote, then that of Tito Okello. This period will allow Fred Rwigema and Paul Kagame to build a culture politico-revolutionist, in which the great revolutionary figures of Latin America and Chinese have a dominating place. In 1986, Yoweri Kaguta Museveni becomes President of the Republic of Uganda and several of his/her Rwandan comrades in arms, become officers in the Ugandan army. The little story tells that Yoweri Kaguta Museveni invited the President of Rwanda of the time, Juvénal Habyarimana, at the time of an official visit, to grade itself these “Ugandan” officers, sign of a indéfectible friendship between the two Presidents.

Married with Jeannette in 1989, whose family was taken refuge with the Burundi, he is father of four children.

Arrival of Paul Kagame on the international scene

Coming from Uganda, on October 1st 1990, the patriotic Front Rwandan (FPR) of Fred Rwigema starts the return to the Rwanda the exiled Rwandan ones, taken refuge starting from 1959. As of on October 2nd, 1990, Fred Rwigema is killed with the combat, or by his friends according to the Rwandan Armed forces of the mode Habyarimana. The death of this leader emblematic will be hidden several days with the combatants of the FPR. Its persons in charge are in the distress. The Ugandan president, Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, very near to the persons in charge of the FPR, of which several illustrated themselves as officers in the rows of his army, imposes his chief of the military informations, Paul Kagame, old friendly of Fred Rwigema, to solve this circumstantial crisis of the FPR. Paul Kagame, then in training course with the the United States in Fort Leavenworth, enters on the international scene by taking the orders of the FPR which it had created with Fred Rwigema.

From 1991 to 1993, alternating combat, defeats and victories, Paul Kagame will in parallel negotiate the agreements of Arusha with President Juvénal Habyarimana, thorough with the discussion by the France, via Pasteur Bizimungu which it will make elect president of the republic of the transitional period, after the genocide. For the period of these negotiations and at the time of a stay from September 17th to 23rd 1991, Paul Kagame will be stopped in Paris by the French services a dozen hours, under the reason for terrorism, just after being received by Jean-Christophe Mitterrand and Paul Dijoud advised French government for the African Businesses near the Elysium. Paul Dijoud will justify this arrestion: " the guides of Major Kagame, who circulated with bags of tickets, had been made locate by the police force and were stopped, without the Quay of Orsay being informed by it, then released the evening after the intervention of the Foreign Minister ".

In 1994, at the time of the attack against the president Juvénal Habyarimana, the Belgian soldiers of the Minuar are shown by those which are on the point of forming the temporary government to be the authors about it. Ten of them are assassinated the following day by soldiers with the Kigali Camp. Thereafter, Paul Kagame will be shown in his turn to have financed the assassination of the president Juvénal Habyarimana, in particular by France, the French antiterrorist judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere, and by dissenting officers of FPR. Paul Kagame will lead the troops of the FPR to the military victory against the Rwandan Armed forces and the temporary government. In spite of lower troops of numbers (15 000 men against 50.000) and from the average soldiers less important, showing of a great strategic direction and a great firmness, it will also profit from the exhaustion of the unfavourable troops mobilizing all their energy in the control of a Génocide which will make approximately 5 to 8.000 dead per day during hundred days and will exterminate more 90 % of the Tutsi of the interior of the Rwanda. He becomes vice-president of Rwanda and Ministre for Defense on July 19th, 1994.

“The strong man” of Rwanda

Paul Kagame will be then the craftsman of the rebuilding of Rwanda, completely destroyed and emptied by the genocide but also by the escape of more than two million Rwandan which left in Democratic republic Congo to flee new Rwandan justice or fearing the revenge on the tutsi. But at the same time it is one of principal the craftsman of the inversion of his counterpart of the Zaire in 1997, the president Mobutu Sese Seko, whose country is eighty ten times larger than Rwanda. Close relations of its officers tell that at the beginning the Rwandan ones did not intend to reverse Mobutu Sese Seko. But in front of low resistance that they met with the Zaire they would have decided to go until Kinshasa, involving Uganda, which did not want to be in remainder, and AFDL of Laurent-Desired Kabila in their wake, at the time of the First war of Congo.

Paul Kagame is elected president of the Republic by the Parliament on April 17th, 2000, after obtaining the resignation of Pasteur Bizimungu. Following the introduction of a news Constitution by Referendum, he is re-elected with the Vote for all direct on August 25th, 2003 with more 95 % of the voices.

Personality of Paul Kagame

The Westerners who approach Paul Kagame describe it like somebody of courteous, calm and lucid and with whom the “power is on well”. Its detractors see in him of torture, educated, of a hardness relentless, former chief of espionage of Kampala where it was called Kagome ( umugome , “the malicious one” in Kinyarwanda).

The mode of Paul Kagame and human rights

Arguments of its partisans

49% of the deputies, 30% of the senators and the ministers are women. According to the official informations, Mrs Kagame takes a very active share in the industrial relations policy of Rwanda and the fight against the AIDS, another plague of the genocide, whose rape was a weapon of predilection including on young girls of less than ten years.

The fight against the ethnism is one of the topics of the FPR and Paul Kagame, well before the genocide of 1994. This combat against the ideology of the ethnism is registered in the new constitution.

Criticisms and charges against Paul Kagame

The official fight against the ethnism is interpreted by Africanists such as Rony Brauman, Stephen Smith, Claudine Vidal and Filip Reyntjens like a folding screen of the ethnism tutsi.

At the time of the countryside in DRC against the genocidary forces which had taken refuge there (militiamans Interahamwe and old Rwandan Armed forces), the troops of the Rwandan patriotic army are shown to be itself delivered to massacres of civilians. In 1996-97, it is shown to interfere into the internal businesses Zaire of the Mobutu Marshal and to violate national sovereignty of it. This interference will lead to the First war of Congo and the fall of Mobutu. Kagame was not worried by the international community for the disorders caused in the area of large the lakes. According to its opponents, the feeling of guilt of the international community with respect to the genocide of 1994, which because 800.000 died according to UNO, is probably not foreign there. The mode of Kagame is shown to take pretext of the argument safety to contribute to plunder the natural resources of the east of Congo, area where the Banyamulenge live, Congolese rwandophones, and whose part was a Rwandan province before the fixing of the borders, in 1896.

The opponents of Kagame suspect it of having supported, just after the end of the genocide, the accession with the capacity of an Hutu with an only aim of giving the impression to reflect beyond the ethnic considerations whereas it already held, with its party, the true capacity on all the country. They reproach him for refusing the negotiation with the opposition parties (Hutu in general), which have of another choice only to be moulted in rebel movements.

The only personality which could have been a serious adversary with the presidential elections of 2003, the former President of the Republic Pasteur Bizimungu, was imprisoned for fifteen years, six months before the elections, by Rwandan justice. One regrets of disappearances of several opponents and the assassinations. Others were maltreated during the electoral campaign.

Assassination of president Habyarimana

An investigation is open in France on the attack against the president Juvénal Habyarimana in April 1994. In 1998, the families of the three French team members of the shot down presidential plane carried felt sorry for " assassinations in relation to a company terroriste".

French justice thus privileges the thesis of an attack perpetrated by the patriotic Front Rwandan (FPR). According to testimonys of former members of the FPR, this decision was taken at the end of 1993 and at the beginning of 1994 by the chiefs of the Rwandan patriotic Armée, of which Paul Kagame.

November 21st, 2006, the parquet floor of Paris gave its agreement to the examining magistrate Jean-Louis Bruguiere so that it delivers mandates of international stops against nine close relations of Rwandan president Paul Kagame, of which James Kabarebe, chief of general Staff of the Rwandan Forces of defense and Charles Kayonga, chief of Staff of the Army.

The examining magistrate cannot engage of continuations against Paul Kagame because of the immunity granted in France to the Heads of State in exercise. It should ask UNO to seize the International penal court for Rwanda (TPIR) in Tanzania to engage against Paul Kagame a legal procedure.

Reference

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