Rwandan crisis deepens as Kagame begins
seven-year term By Alex Lefebvre 13 September
2003
Rwandan President Paul Kagame was sworn in Friday to a seven-year term. Kagame won a landslide victory
in the August 25 presidential election, which took place amid a clampdown on organized political opposition in the country
and widespread allegations of electoral fraud.
The international press generally presented the elections, the first
since the 1994 ethnic genocide between majority Hutus and minority Tutsis, as a democratic transition. However, the
social conditions facing the country and the repressive run-up to the elections themselves show that Kagames government
has been unable to solve any of the social and economic problems that led to the genocide.
According to official
voting results, the US-backed Kagame won 95.1 percent of the vote. The challenger attracting the most attention, French-
and Belgian-backed Hutu moderate Faustin Twagiramungu, received 3.6 percent. A third candidate, Jean Nepomuscene Nayinzira,
whom some press reports described as running on a platform of divine inspiration, received 1.3 percent of the vote.
Observers
indicated that the outcome of the elections was never in doubt, as Kagame accused his opponents of stoking ethnic divisionism,
a serious crime in post-1994 Rwanda. Thanks to this charge, Kagame arrested Twagiramungu supporters, denied them the
right to hold meetings and confiscated their campaign leaflets. The Rwandan government reportedly confiscated so much
of Twagiramungus campaign materiel that he was reduced to a couple of cars. On election night Twagiramungu announced that
his campaign was ready for prison.
The US humanitarian organization Human Rights Watch issued a statement accusing
Kagames Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) of tightening control in the name of unity. It quoted Kagame as saying in a speech:
I can even say that the outcomes of these elections are known. Those elected will be individuals who are 100 percent
in line with the current political agenda, aimed at building the country.... Anyone who would bring in divisionbecause
I know that the views of those who intend to come back are based on divisionwill not be elected.
In the French
daily Le Monde, EU voting observer Colette Flesch praised the elections as an important step towards democracy. However,
she went on to say that she had seen evidence of ballot-stuffing in several voting precincts and that Kagames supporters,
present at all polling stations, were intimidating. For unstated reasons rival candidates decided not to send their
supporters to the polling stations. Flesch also noted widespread evidence that Kagame had misused public funds for his
re-election campaign.
The New York Times wrote that the election had all the trappings of democracy, adding
that observers dispatched at polling places across the country on Monday had few complaints. However, in a more accurate
comment on Kagames real social support, it added that Kagames backers were terrified that his opponents might draw
attention to the fact that, under him, benefits have largely accrued to a layer of Tutsi businessmen and government
officials.
Under the tutelage of the IMF, the Rwandan government under Kagame has tried to create a favorable climate
for international investment, reducing corporate taxes and eliminating taxes on exports. Rwanda is scheduled to join
the southern and eastern Africa free trade area in 2004. The governments economic policy has been to promote its connections
with the Tutsi diaspora and depend on its relatively well-educated urban workforce to attract investors seeking to
develop a cheap-labor service industry, thus getting around Rwandas lack of manufacturing and industrial infrastructure.
Social
and economic conditions in Rwanda are disastrous. Over 65 percent of the population live under the official UN world poverty
line of $1 per day. Although the official life expectancy figure is 49 years, 9 percent of the population has AIDS.
The CIA World Factbook states that, with higher mortality due to AIDS taken into account, life expectancy is in fact only
40 years. Rwanda, the most densely populated country in Africa, has a large and poor population in the countryside85 percent
of the population lives off farming. As its agriculture switched to coffee and tea for export under the recommendations
of the IMF in the early 1990s, it faced a serious soil erosion and depletion problem. Coffee and tea exports provide 80
percent of Rwandas export revenue. The population also suffers from the long-term effects of the 1994 genocide, with
hundreds of thousands of Rwandans displaced within the country or as refugees in nearby countries.
Under these
conditions, the countrys tenuous economic development is largely dependent on outside influence. The Rwandan government
obtains substantial revenues by selling coltan and other precious minerals pillaged from the neighboring Congo by
militias trained by and associated to the Rwandan army. It also depends on international financial institutions temporary
willingness to extend it credit. According to Rwandan Minister of Finance and Economic Planning Donald Kaberuka, Luckily
our budget deficit [of 9 percent of Rwandas GDP] is financed by the African Bank for Development and the World Bank.
Our creditors know this deficit is healthy, since it finances social investments.... The long-term objective is to arrive
at a budget deficit of 6 percent of GDP.
These institutions forbearance, relative to their gutting of social spending
in other African countries, comes in part from the privileged relations between the US and Kagames regime, which the US
is using as a client state, principally to undermine French and Belgian influence in the region.
Kagame, a
Tutsi exiled since childhood from Rwanda to Uganda, got his start as a rebel fighter and military intelligence operative
in Uganda and came to political prominence as a member of the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) operating
there. He obtained military and strategic training in Fort Leavensworth, Kansas in the US in 1990. With training and active
logistical support from the US, Great Britain and US-backed Ugandan forces, the RPF took control of Rwanda during
and after the 1994 genocide, launched by the French-backed Hutu Power Rwandan government, that targeted Tutsis and
moderate Hutus.
Hundreds of thousands of Hutus fled the country; many were tracked down and slaughtered by RPF
forces. The extent of RPF massacres remains a hotly contested topicestimates range between several thousand to 30,000
or even 200,000 killedbut Kagame himself has acknowledged that RPF officials committed violations of international
humanitarian law.
After coming to power, the RPF benefited from counterinsurgency and combat training from US Special
Forces. Although Pentagon officials claimed this training consisted of simple classroom exercises stressing respect for
human rights, documents leaked to Washington Post reporter Lynne Duke indicated that the US training was extensive and
included combat training, according to Dukes August 16, 1997 article.
The 1996-1997 Rwandan-backed military campaign
to overthrow neighboring Zaires dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, who had close links to France and Belgium, started a few
weeks after a visit by Kagame to Washington. According to Duke, the campaign benefited from frequent liaison visits from
officials of the US embassy in Kigali, the Rwandan capital. US officials also told Duke that the United States may have
trained some of the fighters who ousted Mobutu. At this time Rwandan forces also began extracting mineral resources
from eastern Zaire, now called the Democratic Republic of Congo.
In February 2001, shortly after President Bush
arrived at the White House, Kagame visited Washington DC to request a continuation of the military support obtained
under the Clinton administration. Kagames regime has continued to function as a US protectorate, lending diplomatic cover
to the Bush administration in its various criminal international adventures.
In a March 5 visit to Washington,
during which he spoke to a gathering of US investors and briefed President Bush and National Security Adviser Condoleezza
Rice on the political situation in Central Africa, Kagame repaid the Bush administration with cover for its own criminal
adventures abroad. In a move that is all the more significant as details of US involvement in Rwanda at the time of
the genocide continue to come to light, Kagame signed an accord with Bush exempting US and Rwandan nationals from lawsuits
from the other country at the International Criminal Court. Kagame also voiced his support for the Bush administrations
preparations for its invasion of Iraq in mid-March 2003.
Kagame also depends on US backing at the UN to shield
his government from investigations of atrocities committed by the RPF. International war crimes tribunal prosecutor
Carla del Ponte was recently removed from her post as head prosecutor in Rwanda, amid complaints of pro-genocide bias
by the Rwandan government. Rwanda essentially halted her investigation of RPF war crimes by denying her access to
witnesses and documents. The US has up to now blocked moves by the Security Council to force Kagames government to
comply with the tribunal.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/sep2003/rwan-s13.shtml
|