The Rwandan Patriot

  The 102 victims and survivors from the bloody attacks conducted by Paul Rusesabagina's FLN rebels in southwestern Rwanda, will be forgotten completely. That is if we allow it. The Americans have decided that the victims don’t exist, by their latest action to categorise Rusesabagina as a “wrongful detained” person. Degrading and distasteful as it appears, a new narrative is taking shape. Away from this speculative decision, these are the facts. We know the victims who were killed, those left with lifelong injuries, not forgetting the property they lost yet they had worked for many years. The national liberation front (FLN) which Rusesabagina has publicly accepted he led, attacked different villages including Nyabimata, Bweyeye, Yanze and Mururu. They attacked a highway too. As a result, a total of 9 (nine) people were killed including a 13-year-old girl. These are their names; Ornella Sine Atete, 13; Isaac Niwenshuti, 17; Joseph Habarurema, 25; Fidèle Munyaneza, 45; Anat...

  A misguided and ill-intentioned narrative has been doing the rounds that President Paul Kagame wants to be this or that. The overriding goal is to show him as a leader intent on doing bad.  President Kagame’s commitment to his people’s interests is demonstrated by example and by tackling action that is available at the political level, for instance:   - He has created a legislative and  institutional arrangements that reinforce ethical behavior and create tough sanctions against wrongdoing.  - He is providing adequate support  and resources for ethics-related  activities throughout government. As a consequence, these ideas are bringing verifiable changes into the lives of ordinary people.  In addition, somethings have happened in Rwanda, that, Kagame, as leader, has the obligation to ensure they never happen again. Otherwise, he wouldn’t need to be in office.  Over time, the choices adopted, are paying off. A particular example is ...

  The world got more humane with demise of Robert Krueger this week. He was appointed US envoy to Burundi in May 1994. Since then Krueger advanced his political career, all the way to US Senator, by promoting a revisionist version what really happened in Rwanda. He has been a loud voice in the genocide denial lobby. Krueger provided breeding ground for emergency of the likes of Michela Wrong. Her book is an exact replicate of Krueger’s. The only slight difference is Wrong used her book as opportunity to keep memory of her lover Patrick Karegeya. Krueger sold the notion that, miraculously, the victims of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi woke up from the dead to kill Hutus. To make his version as believable as possible, Krueger fabricated events in Burundi that can only have taken place in his mind. I will highlight one example, though there are multitudes of them. Hosted for a talk at Texas Tech’s Department of History in February 2012, Krueger claimed that three months...