Your source for credible news Issue no 026
February, 2021
On drama-filled first day of the “Nyabimata” trial, Rusesabagina tries to renounce Rwandan citizenship
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The torture of 2nd. Lt. Ankunda, a case of the victimization of a Ugandan because of Rwandan roots Page 2 NEWS
Abducted, tortured by Uganda CMI just because of their nationality, seven Rwandans tell of their ordeal Page 4 NEWS
Freedom House should know that plotters of instability and their backers will never succeed Page 6
There was drama in the High Court Chamber for International and Cross-Border Crimes – temporarily moved from its seat in Nyanza District to the more spacious trial chamber of the Supreme Court in Kigali – when terror suspect Paul Rusesabagina attempted to renounce his Rwandan citizenship. “I am not a Munyarwanda, write that, I am a Belgian!” the Gitarama-born Rusesabagina told court as an astonished public, which was following proceedings on FacePage 3 book, hooted with laughter. Get a free copy of our e-paper
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Ugandan online outlet targets Rwanda with misinformation, to deflect from Kampala’s deepening problems Page 8
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Issue no 026 February 2021
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The torture of 2nd. Lt. Ankunda, a case of the victimization of a Ugandan because of Rwandan roots
2nd Lt. Phillip Ankunda, a pilot in the Ugandan military was arrested last year, detained, and tortured. Ugandan Military Intelligence (CMI) victimized this Ugandan just because of his Rwandan ancestry.
A harrowing audio recording played on NTV last week provided irrefutable proof that 2nd. Lt. Phillip Ankunda, who was arrested in May last year on accusations of spying for Rwanda, has been badly tortured. This happened in military custody in Makindye Barracks. Ankunda’s story highlights the kind of tribulations that we Ugandans with Rwandan roots have come to suffer, more and more in recent times. Our government has turned us into an enemy. In order to victimize people like Ankunda, the state turns them into “foreigners”, though they are as Ugandan as any other citizen of this country. They have the constitutional, and legal rights of every Ugandan. Ankunda, a UPDF pilot attached to Special Forces Command, was together with six fellow junior officers and pilots. These are 2nd Lt. Alex Kasamula, an officer of the UPDF regular forces, ASP Frank Sabiiti a police officer, Pte. Samuel Ndwaine, Pte. Moses Asiimwe Makobore, and Pte. Godfrey Mugabi – the last three reported to be attached to the Airforce Wing at Nakasongola as students of flight engineering and aircraft maintenance.
They were arrested from various places in Kampala on claims that “they had shared sensitive information with agents of Rwanda with intent to prejudice security.” But while in custody Ankunda apparently managed to record himself, an audio of which NTV obtained through its investigative work. In the recording he is speaking in Runyankore. He says he was tortured by interrogators that wanted him to admit he was a Rwandan agent. “But I refused to admit something which I am not!” he is heard saying. His interrogators subjected him to worse torture. They hang him by his hands and legs with chains to the ceiling, and left him dangling there for hours. When one of the chains loosened, he fell on the floor. They then made him lie in the hot sun and beat him with sticks while others poured hot water on him. “You will admit you are Rwandan at all cost!” they kept berating him. Still he refused to say what they wanted him to. He is still in detention. Ankunda’s sister, Mariam Mwiza, tearfully told NTV that the reason her brother is suffering is
because he seemed to be doing very well in his career as an airforce pilot. “He kept rising in rank, and getting good missions. His superiors were very jealous of him. So they began making up these stories that he is Rwandan, as a way to victimize him,” says a tearful Mwiza. She goes on to narrate the suffering they have gone through, looking for Phillip, who they aren’t re-united with yet. The last time she saw him, two armed agents of the Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence (CMI) had brought him to their home – nine days after he was arrested – to search their house.
cases. There will be no legal procedures to ensure one gets a fair hearing. As a result so many Ugandans that have committed no crime, such as Ankunda and those he was detained with, are ruined. Their health is ruined, and their careers destroyed. The bitter irony of all this is that the people victimizing fellow Ugandans on grounds that “they are Banyarwanda” are Banyarwanda themselves. It is an open secret that President Museveni is a Munyarwanda, and his wife is a Munyarwanda – which means the entire family are Banyarwanda.
“My brother was very emaciated, and looked in a very bad way,” Mariam says.
CMI chief Maj. Gen. Abel Kandiho’s mother was a Munyarwanda.
But Uganda under President Museveni is a place where laws are dead.
The Ugandan state security apparatus is choke-full of Ugandans of Rwandan origin. It is unconscionable that they are the main persecutors of people like them.
The systems are dead. Someone in the security forces merely accusing another of “spying for Rwanda” is enough to condemn the victim to lengthy periods in illegal detention, and torture. Because the law is dead, and there are no professional ethics anywhere, leave alone the military, no one will investigate these
Ankunda at least managed to record himself, so there is some hope he is still alive. The fate of the six others is unknown. They could be injured beyond repair. They could already be dead
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Issue no 026 February 2021
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On drama-filled first day of the “Nyabimata” trial, Rusesabagina tries to renounce Rwandan citizenship By Jean Gatera There was drama in the High Court Chamber for International and Cross-Border Crimes – temporarily moved from its seat in Nyanza District to the more spacious trial chamber of the Supreme Court in Kigali – when terror suspect Paul Rusesabagina attempted to renounce his Rwandan citizenship. “I am not a Munyarwanda, write that, I am a Belgian!” the Gitarama-born Rusesabagina told court as an astonished public, which was following proceedings on Facebook, hooted with laughter. The drama continued as Rusesabagina, whose arrest in August last year attracted global attention due to his status as the subject of a fictitious movie, Hotel Rwanda, insisted that he be taken back to Belgium “to be tried from there.” The case, dubbed the Nyabimata trial – of 21 terror suspects of the MRCD-FLN group – got underway with Rusesabagina the principle suspect – being the leader of the group that among other crimes perpetrated a
couple of attacks in south-western Rwanda in 2018 in which nine people were killed with many others injured, and that left extensive damage to property. MRCD-FLN claimed responsibility for these attacks against civilians. It is expected that individual responsibilities will be derived in the trial. In the opening, the leader of the terrorist organization, Rusesabagina started his ruse by demanding his biographical data be amended on claims that he is not a Rwandan citizen but rather that he is “a Belgian national”, even as he was saying everything in flawless Kinyarwanda. Rusesabagina’s argument is that when he acquired his Belgian citizenship in 2000 he henceforth ceased to be Rwandan. Both Rwanda and Belgium allow dual citizenship, and the suspect failed to show any official renunciation of his Rwandan citizenship. A legal analyst noted, “Rusesabagina’s ruse was calculated to try to avoid trial all together, implying that Belgian citizenship offered him immunity
Prosecution, however, was visibly prepared for the citizenship challenge with damming evidence to counter the defense maneuver. Prosecution pointed out, for instance, that Rusesabagina filed a court case in the East African Court of Justice (EACJ) as a Rwandan citizen in October 2020. It became clear that Rusesabagina switches citizenship to suit his interest; he is a Rwandan when it suits him in EACJ, and now wants to be Belgian in front of Rwandan courts! said the analyst. The Judge asked Rusesabagina about the submissions he made in the East African Court of Justice (EACJ), as a “Rwandan and East African citizen.” Caught off guard, Rusesabagina said he “needed time to crosscheck how the application was made.” More drama then ensued when one of his co-accused, Callixte Nsabimana “Sankara” – formerly Rusesabagina’s number two as the MRCD-FLN Vice-President and spokesperson – took the stand, denouncing his former boss, and requesting that trial progresses. The citizenship
Callixte Nsabimana
debate was embarrassing said Nsabimana, adding that it was causing unnecessary delays. “Mr. Paul Rusesabagina here with us was our leader and his mission was to become the president of Rwanda. For him to stand here and say that he is not Rwandan but rather Belgian is embarrassing for me. Did he want to be a Rwandan president yet he was Belgian?” asked Nsabimana. The Court asked Rusesabagina’s lawyer Me. Gatera Gashabana if Rwandan courts could not try a Belgian citizen if suspected of committing crimes on Rwandan territory. The lawyer tried to argue that it would depend on a number of circumstances, but he had clearly lost the point. “The fact that he filed a court case in EACJ as a Rwandan, that he founded an armed militia to overthrow the Rwandan government, and that his crimes were committed on Rwandan soil are insurmountable hurdles in the ‘I-am-a-Belgian’ defense,” our legal source pointed out.
Terror suspects Paul Rusesabagina appearing in court on the first day of the “Nyabimata trial”.
In light of the objections and amendments requested, Judge Antoine Muhima of the International and Cross-Border Crimes adjourned the hearing to Friday the 26of February to rule on the jurisdictional objections presented by Rusesabagina and his defense.
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Issue no 026 February 2021
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Abducted, tortured by Uganda CMI just because of their nationality, seven Rwandans tell of their ordeal By Alain Mucyo Ugandan security services have recently dumped seven Rwandans after subjecting them to illegal imprisonment and torture. They were dumped last Wednesday, 03 February, at the Kagitumba Border Post. Among these was the family of Nzeyimana Fidele, 27, who was with his wife Uwayisaba Angelique, 24. The couple has a child, Kirabo Ester, who is just one year old. The family, which hails from Rubavu District but had been legally residing in Uganda when Ugandan local authorities in Mubende, told of cruel mistreatment just because they are Rwandans.
Six of the seven Rwandan nationals who were dumped at Kagitumba border of enduring brutal torture in CMI dungeons in Uganda.
Last year, Nzeyimana narrates, he was abducted and detained at Kitalya Prison where he was incarcerated for 5 months, with hard beatings and labor, as he tells it. He says he was accused of “spying for Rwanda”, but was never taken to any court to charge him. They later released him, only to be rearrested on 29 Aug 2020.
for the only reason that they are Rwandan,” an official that requested confidentiality said. Meanwhile, Ndagijimana Augustin, 44, of Burera District, said that while in Uganda he was arrested, on 28 Oct last year, by agents of Uganda’s Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence who leveled their usual accusation against any Rwandan: that he was “on a spying mission for Rwanda.” Ndagijimana suffered several beatings in a dungeon, he says.
When they dumped him at the border hey made sure to do so with his family. “These people suffer such inhuman harassment
Another of the group most recently dumped, Semahoro Kado, 27, a University student at Adventist University of Central Africa
(AUCA) in Kigali and a resident of Gasabo District had traveled to Kenya in March last year via Tanzania, which he entered through the Rusumo Border Post. Semahoro had gone to attend a family function in Nairobi. But on 21 October last year while on his way coming back to Rwanda crossing through Uganda, he was shocked to be accosted by agents of CMI at the Kisoro Bus Station. He, just like the others, was abducted and taken to CMI Mbuya headquarters in Kampala, where its notori-
ous dungeons are located. They were illegally detained, incommunicado, at Mbuya while suffering beatings and other physical abuse, including starvation. “It was just terrible!” one said. Ngoga Nzamukosha Diane, the lady whose story of torture was widely reported in the media, is still undergoing medical care at Kanombe Hospital in Kigali. The deportees disclosed that they left behind dozens of other Rwandans undergoing torture in the Mbuya dungeons.
Three Kampala-based Rwandan businessmen latest victims of CMI’s Kandiho By Alex Muhumuza CMI operatives headed by one Maj. Nelson Kyatuka in the night of last Friday, 05 February, abducted two Rwandan nationals: Munyurangabo Renatus and Mugisha Gahungu Shadrack. According to reports, Maj. Kyatuka arbitrarily arrested the two Rwandan nationals on the orders of his boss – Maj. Gen. Abel Kandiho the head of CMI. According to reports, the CMI operatives just abruptly turned up at the business quarters of the two Rwandans and, with no arrest warrant or any legal document, forced them into their
vehicles. Munyurangabo is a businessman in Kampala who has been operating a popular restaurant and bar called Pyramid in Kansanga, a suburb of Kampala which is a popular hangout for Rwandans or Ugandans with Rwandan roots in the Ugandan capital, but which is also frequented by many Ugandans. “This is just a normal bar like any other in Kampala,” a patron said. Mugisha is a partner of Munyurangabo in the business, working as the manager of Pyramid Bar and Restaurant.
Earlier last month, on 10th, yet another Rwandan businessman in the Ugandan capital, Napoleon Rebero went missing after arbitrary arrest by CMI operatives. Rebero ran a shop in the busy Kikuubo trading area downtown. He was taken together with his wife, but after 4 days she was released. Rebero remains in illegal detention. CMI is accusing the businessmen of “being Rwandan intelligence operatives.” Similar accusations have been hurled at hundreds upon hundreds of Rwandans as a result of a policy of hostility against Kigali
adopted by Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni who has been plotting to destabilize Rwanda for a long time. Museveni specifically tasked CMI to work with Kayumba Nyamwasa’s RNC, but with other proxy groups such as the genocidal FDLR as proxies to achieve this goal. One of the ways CMI and RNC devised was to kidnap any able-bodied Rwandan they could in Uganda. The strategy was to coerce the kidnap victims, with torture most often, into joining RNC as recruit fighters and then transported, with CMI facilitation,
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Issue no 026 February 2021
After Rwanda had complained about this harassment of her citizens for a couple of years, Kigali took the step of issuing an advisory to her citizens, at the beginning of March 2019, against travel to Uganda. Later on the Government of Angola facilitated a meeting of the leaders of Uganda and Rwanda who signed what’s known as the Luanda MoU – a document with provisions to re-normalize relations between the two countries.
>> From page 4 to training camps in Minembwe, DRC. The pretext for kidnapping these Rwandans would be many: “illegal entry”, “illegal stay in Uganda”. But the most common accusations against those Rwandans whom they wanted to recruit into RNC not as fighters but as supporters of the terror group in different ways – as contributors of funds, or in kind donations – were: “spying for Rwanda”, or “illegal weapons possession.” Several victims of concocted charges like these – the most famous, for those that have been following the news, being Rene Rutagungira – have suffered horrendous physical and psychological torture. Yet in no case has Uganda ever produced in court a single one of the Rwandans they’ve arrested – save people like Rutagungira whom they tortured and brought to a military court, unlawfully as
CMI chief Maj. Gen. Abel Kandiho. He continues to order arbitrary, illegal arrests of Rwandan nationals based in Uganda.
he is a civilian – to show in what way they are “spies.” It is always the same: CMI operatives surround someone, shove them in a car with dark glasses, take them away to torture dungeons, hold them incommunicado, but never produce proof to back their accusations.
One of them was ceasing and desisting from harassment and persecution of each other’s citizens. “In reality Rwanda wasn’t doing anything to Ugandans but for the sake of diplomacy both had to sign on the document,” said a media commentator. To the Ugandan regime however laws mean nothing, the commentator added. CMI has continued to persecute
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Rwandans with arbitrary arrests and torture. But the CMI bosses also have been using their regime’s anti-Rwanda hostility as a loophole to conduct criminal side-businesses of extorting or blackmailing Rwandan businesspeople. Kandiho and his men have been selecting Rwandans running successful businesses, Rwandans in Uganda with money and property, to victimize them. Any Rwandan targetted in such a way find themselves getting arrested on “espionage” charges. Next their money is taken. When they are deported (after months or years of illegal detention and torture) Ugandan security operatives then take possession of their property: houses, vehicles, or farms. Munyurangabo, Mugisha and Rebero are the latest victims of this scheme of Kandiho’s.
Rwandan man killed in Uganda by armed assailants By Patience Kirabo A 60-year old Ugandan national of Rwandan descent, identified as Lawrence Sebusande, has been killed at his home in Uganda by state security operatives. Sebusande, a resident of Isingiro District in southwestern Uganda, was attacked by three men who shot him dead with a rifle at 11 pm in the night of last Wednesday. They left him dead, lying in a pool of blood while his wife Juliana Mbabazi was brutally beaten into a coma. After his murder, Sebusande’s body was taken to Mbarara regional referral hospital for postmortem while his wife was later taken to Nakivale Health Center III where she is currently nursing wounds. Reports further reveal that one cartridge of an AK-47 SMG rifle was found at the crime scene, but none of the assailants has been captured or arrested yet.
Maj. Gen. Abel Kandiho.
Local authorities say they are “going to investigate.”
In executing their vendetta against Rwandans however, the CMI head and his operatives are increasingly targeting Rwandans either running businesses or that have money. The cases of three Rwandan businessmen – two running a popular bar and restaurant, and one running a wholesale shop in the busy Kikuubo trading center in Kampala – who were abducted on accusations of “spying for Rwanda” are a case in point.
However, it has been a known fact that investigations in matters to do with Banyarwanda victimized in Uganda are mere words. In all cases of Rwandans, or Ugandans with Rwandan roots are murdered in Uganda, assailants walk around scot-free, with no one to hold them to account. The authorities never conduct any follow-up. There have been several cases similar to Sebusande’s ever since Kampala adopted a policy of hostility against Rwanda, and by extension Rwandan nationals. In a case identical to Sebusande’s for instance, one Janvier Nsanzimana and his brother were attacked by machete-wielding assailants in Kyenjojo. Nsanzimana was hacked to death with a machete and died on the spot while his brother was saved by the hills. No investigation was conducted but instead the police hurriedly buried the deceased,
Lawrence Sebusande, a Ugandan with Rwandan roots recently assassinated in Isingiro, Uganda.
without informing a single family member. Rwandan nationals, or Ugandans of Rwandan origin living in Uganda continue to be a target of Ugandan security forces, most especially the Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence headed by
“They abduct such Rwandans, throw false “espionage” accusations at them, and because they are an easy target due to the hostility against Rwandans, they detain and torture them while robbing them of their money,” said a source familiar with the plight of the three. According to sources close to the Sebusande family, after he was killed the assailants took off with his money – a sum of five million shillings.
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Issue no 026 February 2021
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Freedom House should know that plotters of instability and their backers will never succeed By The New Times In its latest report, Freedom House, which at least in Rwanda’s case, conceives “freedom” as the right to form irregular armed groups that launch terror attacks targeting innocent civilians, has decided to challenge Rwanda’s right to preserve its security. This is part of its political agenda that is at odds with any advocacy for human rights and justice or any quest for freedom since if they cared about freedom they would be concerned for the victims of terror (and demand justice) rather than its perpetrators. Freedom House claims that “labelling groups like the RNC (Rwanda National Congress) as
terrorist organizations gives the Rwandan government a veneer of legitimacy on the world stage, and offers a pretext for taking action against alleged affiliates of the group.” This misleading framing of issues, which is premised on the false idea that the government persecutes innocent people on the grounds that they expressed mere dissent, is problematic on many aspects. One, it aims to sanitize a terror group involved in a series of grenade attacks that hit Kigali in 2010 and targeted innocent civilians. Two, it denies justice to victims – who should be the primary concern of any genuine human right organization or any
freedom house for that matter – by labelling as “persecution” any attempt by the Rwandan government to bring to account those responsible for these crimes, including any individual lending support to such groups. Imagine any Washington DC media outlet claiming that an Al Qaeda affiliate is suffering from American persecution! Yet, this silly idea that Rwanda persecutes terror organizations like the RNC and its affiliates is a recurring theme in the entire report in efforts to sanitize terror as a legitimate means to remove what Freedom House considers an “authoritarian” government. The same silly notion reemerged with the arrest of Paul Rusesabagina whom and the western
media industrial complex, completely out of thin air, has long turned into a “hero”. The media advocacy, such as is happening with Freedom House, attempted to erase from the public discourse Rusesabagina’s openly stated support and actually ownership of the FLN terror organization that perpetrated terrorist attacks in Southern Rwanda on different occasions in 2018. FLN indiscriminately killed civilians, burnt vehicles and looted shops. Rusesabagina supported these crimes with his infamous call for war on Rwanda was viewed as “dissent” in western media. It is from this silly perspective that Freedom House insists on his fictitious and discredited depiction as a ‘hero’ who saved Tutsi during the genocide, an unrelated issue that can never be a shield from the serious accusations Rusesabagina faces. Freedom House would rather promote the “dissenting views of terrorists” than allow for due process for a terror leader. It rehashes more “dissenting” voices from members of the RNC and FDU-Inkingi terror outfits who are given space to promote their conspiracy theories and radical extremism. Unsurprisingly, Freedom House doesn’t find it convenient to inform its audience that the RNC and the FDU-Inkingi are two of the five ‘political’ movements belonging to the “P5” umbrella that a UN group of experts’ report in December 2018 pinned for running illegal armed groups arming in DRC bent on destabilizing Rwanda. Yet, the misinformation campaign– that aims to sanitize Rusesabagina and these other groups by exploiting the ignorance of western audience –also describes as rendition the bilateral mechanisms of cooperation that have led to the arrest and repatriation of FLN, RNC and FDLR combatants, including notorious criminals such as Callixte Nsabimana and Joel
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Issue no 026 February 2021
>> From page 6 Mutabazi. If the western audience wasn’t so gullible, at this point of the report one would be justified to throw it in the bin where it belongs. Freedom House isn’t done, however. It regurgitates the usual smears about “deaths squads” sent to kill Rwandans abroad, which they back with “testimony” of self-avowed enemies of Rwanda. But how credible is a testimony of an RNC member – the same people that were throwing grenades in markets and other public places in Rwanda not too long ago – like Robert Higiro? Higiro claims he was “asked to kill Kayumba Nyamwasa and Colonel Patrick Karegeya in South Africa, for a fee of $1 million.” How can the words of a high-profile member of a terrorist group bent on destabilizing a government be taken as gospel truth about the leadership of that very government he wishes to do
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harm? But since Freedom House is not accountable to anyone, yet it seeks the accountability of the government of Rwanda, it doesn’t find it necessary to assess the credibility of its interview subjects. It claims to have “conducted interviews” with Rwandans “that shed light on a diaspora community living in intense fear of their home country’s (Rwanda) government.” But if Freedom House sought out Higiro, one can be certain that these interviews are of the same kind as Higiro’s. Western media like the BBC, was fond of publishing similar rumours peddled by Rene Mugenzi, a man whose father is a genocide perpetrator yet he claims to be a survivor of the very genocide his father perpetrated. This should have raised red flags for the BBC. Yet, it continued to take him as a credible source in its agenda against Rwanda. Mugenzi appeared in a British court and pleaded with the magistrate to ban any mention of his
name in newspapers following his condemnation for fraud on the grounds that being an outspoken critic of the Rwandan government, his life was in danger. Of course, his interest was to prevent the public from learning that his lies had finally caught up to him, embarrassing himself and the BBC in the process. However, the magistrate Judge Katharine Moore dismissed this camouflage ruling that Mugenzi himself had repeatedly appeared in the media, published photos of his location on social media, revealed his work addresses online, and even stood to become an MP in 2015. This evidence was brought to court by residents of Norwich who, unlike Freedom House, were not willing to help a criminal masquerading as a human rights activist conceal his crimes and continue to mislead unsuspecting audiences. Freedom House’s advocacy, its whitewashing of RNC and its
boss Nyamwasa, is the most damning evidence of its agenda to impose its version of events, far removed from the truth. Nyamwasa declared, ordered, and instigated violent insurrection in Rwanda and in the process his actions led to the indiscriminate killing of innocent people in markets and bus parks. The facts are there for anyone interested in looking. Nyamwasa is still plotting for more bloodshed. Yet Freedom House lionizes him as a “principled dissenter.” One wonders what principles are in the killings of innocent people going about their lives. Plotters of instability and their backers will never succeed because Rwandans know that nothing good can come out of terrorism. Western audiences should know better. Source: The New Times – Rwanda
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Issue no 026 February 2021
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Ugandan online outlet targets Rwanda with misinformation, to deflect from Kampala’s deepening problems By Alex Muhumuza An article last week on the Chimpreports website – one of the many outlets of anti-Rwanda propaganda in Kampala – attempts to exploit a politically motivated report recently put out by the US-based Freedom House that aims to tarnish Rwanda basing on a litany of long-debunked falsehoods. Chimpreports, for instance, resurrects claims such as that “Lt. Joel Mutabazi was kidnapped”, false as it was through bilateral cooperation between the police forces of Uganda and Rwanda that Mutabazi was handed to Kigali to stand trial for crimes he was suspected of. Moreover, they publish, as if Gospel truth, the claims of overseas-based Rwandan individuals, many who fled the country after perpetrating great crimes. These are the people that spend their lives smearing the Rwandan leadership, in bitterness at their defeat but also because they are haunted by the crimes they committed, and the possibility that one day they will have to answer for those past deeds. It is people or groups like these (and those that sympathize and are allied with them) that Freedom House sources its “information” from. Chimpreports, whose chief editor Giles Muhame is on the payroll of Uganda’s Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence, CMI, in turn regurgitates the claims of Freedom House – one of the several organizations of the West through which they always are trying to control the political narrative in Africa. “Apparently, when it comes to tarnishing Rwanda these Ugandan organs will happily ally themselves even with the Devil if it were possible!” an informed reader in Kigali said. The headline of the article itself (“U.S. Report: Uganda a ‘Hotspot’ of Rwanda’s Transnational Repression”) echoes the claims of groups like the terrorist
State violence against civilians during last month’s elections in Uganda. Kampala propaganda attempts to deflect attention from such issues by publishing misinformation about Rwanda.
RNC, genocide suspects, and their Western-based allies – the very parties most motivated to spin the most incendiary propaganda about Rwanda. Chimpreports then detours into a recently spun bit of fiction by Museveni when, after election violence got out of hand, he took to the microphone to claim that, Rwanda had “sent agents to disrupt the election.” Up to now they haven’t produced a single one of these alleged agents – proving that this is just another tall tale in the Ugandan ruler’s constant scapegoating of Kigali. What’s more risible about Chimpreports’ piece, however, is that, even as they publish fictions about Rwanda, the Kampala propagandists are ignoring the real reported, documented atrocities happening in Uganda. “The Kampala regime is in hot water because it has killed people,” remarked a political observer in Kampala that preferred not to be named. “The regime’s crimes are an open and shut case, and will come back to haunt it, sooner rather than later!” During last month’s presidential election in Uganda, and months
before and during campaigns, the world was shocked by the videos and audio recordings coming out of Uganda. Opposition candidates were subjected to daily arrests, pelted with teargas canisters, or shot at. The international community saw all of that. The abuses were worse against supporters of the opposition candidates. When Bobi Wine was arrested and jailed in November, prompting protests, the security forces responded with live gunfire, teargas canisters, and mass arrests. Dead bodies littered the streets – with the tally of the deceased estimated in the hundreds. Those that escaped death still chocked on billows of teargas, or were pummeled with water cannons, or doused with pepper spray. Survivors of torture have been on camera saying people are being tortured to death. Reports are that widespread torture is ongoing – rendered credible by images such as bodies in villages being retrieved from mass graves. Mass abductions of civilians by men in numberless vehicles – vans and double cabin trucks – are a daily staple of news from Uganda. Videos of people crying
for disappeared loved ones are everywhere. To read the anti-Rwanda propaganda from the likes of Chimpreports is to realize that their CMI masters are desperately casting around, trying to find ways to deflect attention from the violent repression for which they are increasingly realizing they will have to answer for. “Museveni is someone that for years somehow managed to hoodwink the world that he is some sort of democrat,” our source in Uganda said. “Even with the crimes he has authored for years, the violence against people like Kiiza Besigye; the numerous, unaccounted for assassinations of perceived opponents, he still managed to hoodwink many. “But the unprecedented suppression with all the state’s security apparatus in full frontal confrontation with civilians in this age of social media has fully exposed him! He and his henchmen will not get away with these crimes against humanity so easily!” The scapegoating of Rwanda cannot help them much however, added the commentator.
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Issue no 026 February 2021
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Chimpreports laughably claims that “Rwanda’s economy is collapsing”, but real problems are closer home By Jean Gatera Chimpreports, one of the main outlets of misinformation by Uganda’s Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence (CMI) has published a piece of propaganda this Monday with wild falsehoods about the Rwandan economy in the times of Covid-19, trying to insinuate that “the economy is on is knees.” The editor of the website, Giles Muhame has come up with one of his infamous fictitious, negative stories about Rwanda – even as the actual dire situation in fact is in Uganda, his country. In its article, the intelligence outlet blows out of proportions a World Bank Report and mixes it with the analysis of David Himbara, an agent of Kayumba Nyamwasa’s RNC who for a long time has been on the payroll of Uganda. As anyone that follows these things, Himbara is well known for distorting into negativi-
ty anything to do with Rwanda. For long Himbara has plucked “figures” and “facts” out of thin air in his endless quest to paint a dire image about the Rwandan economy. But the economy is indifferent to his fictions. It always grows at a healthy, average pace of 8 percent. The Covid-19 global pandemic has given Chimpreports and Himbara a golden opportunity to spin their latest alarmist story about Rwanda. This one too won’t stick, as false as it is. According to World Bank forecasts, the global economy will shrink by 5.2 percent this year, and Uganda has been in recession since May 2020 according to the figures. But Chimpreports and Himbara prefer to focus next door, in Rwanda where the recession is at only 0.2 percent. Official Ugandan government estimates themselves placed their economic downgrade to 3.1 percent for
2019-2020 as announced in their budget speech for 2020/2021. Most economists, skeptical about the data, place the Ugandan economic contraction much higher at around 10 percent.
sis from a hostile propagandist dated in October 2020 does not reflect reality. It merely fits within their Ugandan intelligence guidelines on hostile propaganda against Kigali.
The pandemic spared no economy,
As for Uganda for instance, it is estimated that it will have to spend 97 percent of its domestic revenue in debt repayments. That is just unsustainable. But that’s not the worst of Uganda’s problems. The Covid-19 relief and economic recovery effort is marred with corruption scandals. But it is at this time that Kampala has unilaterally decided to block the biggest donor fund (DGF) to development projects. Indebted and embattled, a serious economic crisis is anticipated.
but Rwanda was one of the countries that took the bull by the horn early on during the pandemic, putting in place curve-flattening measures, while institutions like the Central Bank and the central government enacted measures to relieve the distress of slowed economic activity. Rwanda was one of the earliest countries to gain recognition for its efforts, by for instance winning rapid credit facilities worth hundreds of millions of dollars in relief from institutions like IMF. All this meant Rwanda is finely poised to ride the storm. A US$ 900 million plan has already been adopted and will ensure recovery. Chimpreports “economic” analy-
One wonders how Chimpreports can jump from this, and other mountains of problems facing them in Uganda, to post an article laughably claiming that “Rwanda is collapsing!”
Monitoring for Covid-19 in Rwanda – despite Ugandan propaganda that “the pandemic is collapsing the Rwandan economy”, in reality it will have minimal effect.
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