Your Excellency President Barrack Obama,
I am very grateful for your speech delivered in the Ghana’s parliament on July 11, 2009 addressing not only the population of Ghana but also all the people of the African continent in general.
As an American of Rwandan origin, I would particularly like to bring to your attention my opinion on the current governance in Rwanda.
In Rwanda there is a vague law outlawing "genocide ideology". This law is written so broadly that it can encompass even the most innocuous comments. As many Rwandans have discovered, disagreeing with the government or making unpopular statements could easily be portrayed as genocide ideology, punishable by sentences of 10 to 25 years. That leaves little political space for dissent.
In Rwanda, there is no meaningful opposition in Rwanda. The press is cowed. Nongovernmental organizations are under attack. When parliamentary elections held last September produced a whopping 92% victory for Kagame's ruling party, evidence collected by the European Union and Rwandan monitors suggested that the government actually inflated the percentage of opposition votes so as to avoid the appearance of an embarrassing Soviet-style acclamation.
Kagame and his western supporters claim that Tutsis and Hutus have been united as “Rwandans” by Kagame which absolutely is not true. Although the Rwandan people are terrorized and severely oppressed they cannot speak up because soldiers and local defense militia are everywhere, on each hill, with a specific mission to silence and/or physically eliminate any potential opponent.
In Rwanda, the monopoly system has made it possibble that most of the wealth be concentrated into a small group of individuals that rule the country, to the expenses of the mass.
In Rwanda, one instrument of repression in Rwanda is the gacaca courts -- informal tribunals run without trained lawyers or judges -- which the government established at the community level to try alleged perpetrators of the genocide. The original impetus was understandable: Rwandan prisons were overpopulated with tens of thousands of alleged genocidaires and no prospect of the country's regular courts trying them within any reasonable time. The gacaca courts provided a quick, if informal, way to resolve these cases. In theory, members of the community would know who had or had not been involved in the genocide, but in reality the lack of involvement by legal professionals has left the proceedings open to manipulation.
Another powerful tool of repression is free and forced labor (modern slavery) that has been institutionalized under the umbrella of TIG works (from a French acronym TIG: Travaux d’Intérêts Généraux or Works of General Interests) which began in 2005 along with the Gacaca courts system. Both Gacaca courts and TIG works together constitute a powerful tool of public repression that went unnoticed by the International Community mostly due to a powerful network composed of some renowned western ideologues that advise Kagame in the commercialization of the Rwandan genocide.
Kagame is often given credit for apparent economic growth in Rwanda. People who blindly give such false statements in order to maintain Kagame on Power should do their homework before making such misleading statements that do neither serve the American interests in region nor genocide survivor’s interests in Rwanda. Poverty is wide spread nationwide and Rwanda’s economic growth per capita has not reached its 1994 level before the Rwandan genocide.
Here is an excerpt from the UNDP, 2008 report on Rwanda: “Although the Rwandan economy depends mainly on agriculture, which supports 80% of the workforce and produces 42% of the GDP, the agricultural sector receives a mere 3% of the national budget, a far cry from the 10% threshold recommended by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Government spending in Rwanda is clearly oriented away from the majority and toward those who will help the government maintain its power”.
Thank you for your understanding and cooperation.Sincerely,
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