Your source for credible news Issue no 027
March, 2021
Italian diplomat’s death; Kampala propaganda echoes smears of FDLR against Rwanda, DRC
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CMI officer that abducted and illegally detained two Rwandan businessmen extorted them, sources Page 2 NEWS
Little wonder Kampala propaganda attempts to whitewash Rusesabagina, they worked with his group Page 4 NEWS
Kampala media of misinformation, echoing other anti-Rwanda groups, go berserk about death of RNC man in Cape Town Page 5
One of the dozens of Kampala-sponsored propaganda websites and blogs, SpyUganda, has published an article with a headline that claims the heads of state of Rwanda and DRC “killed Italian Page 4 ambassador (to DRC) Luca Attanasio.” Get a free copy of our e-paper
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Kampala misinformation on Rwanda’s tenure as EAC chair goes overboard Page 6
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Issue no 027 March 2021
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CMI officer that abducted and illegally detained two Rwandan businessmen extorted them, sources
The concocted reasons to justify harassment of Rwandans by agents of CMI under Maj. Gen. Abel Kandiho (pictured) are becoming more ludicrous by the day.
By Jean Gatera Two Rwandan nationals, Munyurangabo Renatus and Mugisha Gahungu Shadrack, abducted earlier this month, 4 February by the dreaded Uganda Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence (CMI) yesterday appeared in the CMI Unit Disciplinary Court. Initially charged with espionage, CMI has now changed its tune; it is charging the two of “wearing military uniform.” The charge sheet claims that the two were wearing red berets, “so nearly resembling those authorized for use by members of the defense forces as to be likely to confuse the public.” According to people familiar with the case of Munyurangabo and Mugisha, this accusation bears the hallmarks of a concocted charge, shoddily put together to beat a High Court Habeas Corpus order filed by the two men’s lawyer compelling CMI to produce them in court. Twelve days ago, the two Rwandan nationals, both businessmen, were abducted by Maj.
Nelson Kyatuka of CMI and held incommunicado, contrary to Ugandan laws that states that suspects should be charged within 48 hours. A legal analyst wondered why it took twelve days for the Major to notice the “red berets” issue. “The law provides for 48 hours to charge a suspect even in complex cases, but for something as obvious as wearing a military beret, suspects should be charged immediately,” the lawyer said. “Moreover, they should be charged in the right court and not be subjected to a secret military court without legal assistance,” he added. The law can’t allow the Unit Disciplinary Committee of a military institution to charge civilians. One wonders why CMI is doing this to Munyurangabo and Mugisha. Which CMI “code of conduct” are the two men supposed to have violated? The timing of CMI’s maneuver to a disciplinary committee confirmed what most feared however, the two are victims of the by now routine harassment and persecu-
tion of Rwandans in Uganda. Over the past three years, hundreds upon hundreds of Rwandans have suffered arbitrary arrests, illegal detentions incommunicado, torture, and many have lost their lives. Rwandans and even Ugandans of Rwandan origins, have regularly been kidnapped and subjected to horrendous abuse in dungeons of Uganda’s intelligence services, mostly CMI, following a policy of hostility against Rwanda adopted by Kampala. This hostile stance against Kigali, which Kampala has pursued by working with proxy groups – mainly Kayumba Nyamwasa’s RNC – with the aim of destabilizing Rwandan security has victimized a lot of innocent Rwandan nationals. “Spying”, “illegal possession of weapons”, “kidnap” are some of the most commonly used accusations to frame any Rwandan that falls victim to abduction by CMI agents, or ISO, police, and others. Munyurangabo and Mugisha are the latest victims.
Also, Ugandan security agents have been taking advantage of their government’s hostility against Rwanda to subject Rwandan nationals to extortion. “That is the case with the two businessmen,” a source close to them told us. Munyurangabo owned a popular bar and restaurant in Kasanga-Kampala called Pyramid, and Mugisha his partner was in charge of its day-to-day running. Reliable sources have disclosed that Maj. Kyatuka’s true intentions are either to take over Pyramid Bar and Restaurant, or to force Munyurangabo into giving him shares in the thriving business. Our source is certain the highly irregular way the two businessmen were arrested, detained, tortured, and charged (by CMI through the UDC) confirms that Kyatuka is extorting them using state terrorism, and he is after their wealth, or to be given shares.
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Issue no 027 March 2021
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Little wonder Kampala propaganda attempts to whitewash Rusesabagina, they worked with his group By Alex Muhumuza A Kampala-based website, Chimpreports has jumped onto the bandwagon of those using the Rusesabagina case to attempt to tarnish Rwanda. In an article posted this Thursday titled, “Rusesabagina trial becomes tricky for Paul Kagame”, Chimpreports – a principle propaganda outlet of Uganda’s Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence, CMI – mimics the many attempts to sanitize Rusesabagina by Western media, or Western apologists of the terror suspect. These constantly assert either that “Rusesabagina is a hero” (because Hollywood said so in the fictitious 2004 film Hotel Rwanda), or that he is “a Belgian citizen” – the subtext being that such a status renders him above the law in Rwanda. Regardless what crimes he is accused of such as his militias killing nine people in southwestern Rwanda during a couple of terror attacks in 2018.
Chimpreports – whose chief editor Giles Muhame has been busted on numerous occasions peddling outright fictions about Rwanda – to no one’s surprise is energetically pushing the propaganda that seeks to let Rusesabagina walk free.
about Rwanda will somehow deflect attention from the dire situation.
The website repeats all the talking points deployed to try to let Rusesabagina off the hook, chief of them being that “he was illegally renditioned” – another claim that’s thoroughly discredited. What happened was that Rusesabagina walked into a trap when he boarded a plane in Dubai, thinking he was going to a neighboring country to plan more terrorism against Rwanda. He found himself in Kigali instead.
The man’s acts of terrorism – which he has been caught on video and audio boasting about on more than one occasion – also had the support of Kampala. Rusesabagina’s FLN – the armed wing of MRCD of which Rusesabagina is a principle founder – is one of the groups Kampala has been working with in its long-term plans to destabilize the security of Rwanda.
The desperation of Kampala propagandists to tarnish Rwanda however has grown with matters in their own country are getting from bad to worse, according to daily reports from Kampala. Perhaps CMI-paid propagandists imagine that publishing fictions
But there is another incentive of Ugandan propaganda in joining efforts to whitewash or sanitize Rusesabagina.
FLN was part of the so-called “P5” coalition of illegal armed groups committed to violently destabilizing Rwanda but that have since been smoked out of the Congo following intensification of military operations by Kinshasa, beginning mid 2019, to eradicate illegal armed groups.
Uganda has been a central player in recruiting for, facilitating movements, and arming of these groups. In May 2019 when former FLN spokesman Callixte Nsabimana appeared in court following his arrest he implicated Uganda for having worked with FLN. Nsabimana “Sankara” divulged that he had been to Kampala, that very year 2019, to meet with CMI head Abel Kandiho. He disclosed that he met with a CMI colonel (whom Kandiho had sent to represent him saying there were some last minute urgent commitments). “In our meeting with the CMI colonel we asked for military support, and backing in terms of diplomatic relations,” said Nsabimana, adding that the answer from Kandiho’s office “was positive.” With these facts out there, a security analyst commented, it is obvious CMI-controlled media have every motive to sanitize Rusesabagina while tarnishing Rwanda.
Ugandan propaganda’s interest in sanitizing Paul Rusesabagina, who is on trial for terrorism, has much to do with the fact Kampala worked with his militias.
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Issue no 027 March 2021
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Italian diplomat’s death; Kampala propaganda echoes smears of FDLR against Rwanda, DRC By Alex Muhumuza One of the dozens of Kampala-sponsored propaganda websites and blogs, SpyUganda, has published an article with a headline that claims the heads of state of Rwanda and DRC “killed Italian ambassador (to DRC) Luca Attanasio.” This smear, which was posted Wednesday 24 this week, closely echoes the propaganda of the terrorist FDLR, a terror group which in fact Congolese authorities pinned for the murder of the Italian diplomat earlier this week on Monday in eastern Congo. Attanasio, 43, was killed in a hail of gunfire in an ambush as he accompanied a WFP convoy in Goma, North Kivu Province. An official communiqué from the Congolese Ministry of Interior and Security said the ambassador – together with his Italian bodyguard and Congolese driver – had fallen victim to an armed attack by elements of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR). Scarcely had the news come out however than FDLR put out a “statement” of its own, blaming “the armies of Rwanda and DRC for the killing.” SpyUganda, which is run by one Andrew Irumba, on the payroll of Uganda’s External Security Organization, immediately took up the cry. It said that FDLR “denied the accusation they were behind the killing of the Italian ambassador to the Democratic Republican of Congo.” The article goes further, saying, “FDLR rejected the allegations of the government,” before assigning responsibility to Kinshasa and Kigali. Ugandan intelligence is assisting the FDLR in efforts to exonerate itself of its heinous crime, while throwing mud at the leaders of Rwanda and Congo. “Imagine quoting the statement of a criminal, regional terrorist organization and giving it value over the official statement of a
FDLR in DRC; Ugandan propaganda plays apologist to the cutthroat group whose most recent crime is the killing of an Italian diplomat, his bodyguard, and driver.
government, on whose territory that very criminal group is encroaching!” a commentator on security issues said in bemusement. “It is hardly surprising that Kampala intelligence organs are doing this on behalf of FDLR, however,” he added. FDLR, the main offshoot of the Interahamwe and ex-FAR genocidaires, is one of the outfits that president Museveni has been working with to sow instability in Rwanda. That has long been an open secret. Even as for years it terrorized the people of eastern Congo, raping, looting, and killing as they sought to establish a fiefdom from which they could re-launch armed attacks into Rwanda, Museveni pulled them closer into his orbit. Kidnap for ransom has for long been one of the FDLR’s activities. As far back as 1999 elements of FDLR crossed over from jungles in Congo into Uganda’s Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, and
kidnapped 31 tourists in an attempted hostage taking. They ended up killing eight of the tourists before the others were rescued. Such incidents never deterred Museveni from working with this group. High-ranking officials of FDLR – two of them, LaForge Fils Bazeye and Theophile Abega Kamara, respectively FDLR spokesperson, and head of intelligence that were arrested in mid December 2018 – have revealed FDLR’s workings with Uganda. This only is one incident among countless ones, through which Museveni has been exposed in activities to destabilize Rwanda. When Bazeye and Abega were arrested at the Congolese border town of Bunagana they were coming from a meeting in Kampala at the invitation of Uganda, through the country’s State
Minister for Regional Affairs, Philemon Mateke. The two disclosed that Mateke had chaired the meeting at the Kampala Serena, with the agenda to better coordinate the activities of FDLR together with Kayumba Nyamwasa’s RNC – Kampala’s main proxy group in its anti-Rwanda plot. At that meeting RNC was represented by Frank Ntwari, the group’s “Youth Commissioner” who also happens to be Kayumba Nyamwasa’s brother in law. “Indeed we had a very good welcome in Uganda, which promised to do everything possible to make the RNC and FDLR coalition a success,” Bazeye said in court in 2019. So, to see these Ugandan intelligence websites amplifying the pronouncements of FDLR should come as no surprise at all to anyone, remarked the analyst.
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Issue no 027 March 2021
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Kampala media of misinformation, echoing other anti-Rwanda groups, go berserk about death of RNC man in Cape Town By Jean Gatera Hordes of anti-Rwanda groups and individuals all over the world were trying to exploit the death in Cape Town of one Seif Bamporiki, a member of the terrorist RNC, with claims that “Rwanda killed him.” They were making these claims beginning early Monday morning, yesterday, about a death that occurred last Sunday night. They were throwing Rwanda’s name around before a single investigation by South African authorities. Kampala-based propaganda outlets like Commandonepost, Spyuganda, and Chimpreports – the latter which has published two articles full of falsehoods on the incident – all controlled by Uganda’s Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence (CMI) were the busiest. According to reports, Bamporiki was gunned down while delivering a bed in Nyanga, said to be one of the most dangerous areas of Cape Town. According to South African Police, his car and other properties were stolen and investigations are under way.
all the Kampala propagandists, and every apologist of RNC all over the world went into an uproar, exactly along the same lines as with Bamporiki. “Rwanda has killed Nkurunziza!” they shouted. Even Ugandan official media like the New Vision jumped on that bandwagon. But when investigations were conducted, it was revealed Nkurunziza had been shot by police during a botched car hijacking in Cape Town.
unknown) was shot and killed.
The propagandists went silent. Until the next incident.
News organizations like BBC also published details showing Bamporiki was killed in an armed robbery incident.
With the Bamporiki case, the South African Police spokesperson André Traut said, “The circumstances surrounding a murder are being investigated by Gugulethu Police, following an incident yesterday afternoon at around 16:20 in Europa squatter camp where an adult male (age
“It is alleged that the deceased and another male, aged 50, were doing a delivery of a bed in the area when they were approached by two unknown suspects. The deceased was pulled from his vehicle and shot, while the 50-year-old male who accompanied him managed to escape unharmed. The suspects, who are yet to be arrested, fled with the deceased’s vehicle.”
But the CMI-run outlets of misinformation are reporting their own version of events, far placed from reality. They are omitting facts as relayed by South African Police, because these contradict their preferred narrative, while echoing
fellow travellers in peddling anti-Rwanda smears. “They are just so predictable,” laughed a reader.
They were throwing Rwanda’s name around before a single investigation by South African authorities.
Websites like Commandonepost – run by one Bob Atwine who operates under the thumb of CMI Deputy Director Brig. CK Asiimwe – did not wait for reports of any investigation before dragging in Rwanda. The website dredged up an allegation by unnamed “Twitter sources” that “Bamporiki, coordinator of the Rwanda National Congress was killed by Rwanda’s external operatives using silencer handguns.” No South African security authority has come out with any statement like that. CMI is known to openly work with the terrorist RNC in the Kampala regime’s long-running efforts to destabilize Rwanda, part of which is propaganda and misinformation. “Any death anywhere they can use to smear Rwanda excites them immeasurably,” a security observer said. In May 2019, with the death of another RNC member Camille Nkurunziza, too in Cape Town,
Seif Bamporiki, a member of the RNC terrorist group, has died in an armed robbery in a violent Cape Town neighborhood.
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Issue no 027 March 2021
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Kampala misinformation on Rwanda’s tenure as EAC chair goes overboard By Alex Muhumuza An outlet of Ugandan misinformation, Sky News has just published a piece of propaganda using the just ended tenure of the Rwandan head of state as chair of the East African Community to launch its diatribe, titled “Kagame leaves East Africa more wounded.” The article is off, with pure distortions, from the word go. “Since 2018 when he became chairman of the EAC Summit his relations with some member states have become fraught,” Sky News begins. “He has accused some of them, including former close allies, of harboring dissidents set on toppling his administration, and he has publicly disapproved internal policies on management of Covid-19 in Tanzania and challenged governance policies in Uganda…”
“It is as if they think Tanzanians are mere simpletons that can be fed any lie,” our analyst laughed. But shameless as these fabrications are, they pale in comparison to subsequent ones that aim to turn truth on its head, in a way to cast Uganda as “a victim of Rwandan aggression!” To do this, the writer chooses first to bring up the border closure issue. They start with the claim that “no sooner had President Kagame taken over leadership of the six-member state bloc than he locked horns with his erstwhile friend and counterpart, Museveni. Kagame shut the border with Uganda claiming irreconcilable differences.” This is a lie of several dimensions, beginning with the timeline, and ending with cause and effect.
No! problems between Rwanda and Uganda did not begin when Rwanda took over as EAC (in 2018). Problems began way before that, when the Ugandan leadership chose a policy of hostility as opposed to good neighborliness. Problems go as far back as the late Nineties when Museveni began working with Kayumba Nyamwasa – at the time still a high-ranking officer in the Rwandan military – with Museveni’s ill intentions to topple the leadership in Kigali, to his advantage. When later, in 2010, Nyamwasa fled as the law was closing in on him, it was with the assistance of Uganda. When Nyamwasa and his cohorts went to self-imposed exile to start their terrorist group, Rwanda National Congress, it was with the help of their godfather in Kampala. When RNC,
around the start of 2017 stepped up its campaign of harassment, of arbitrary abductions, of illegal detentions, and physical abuse of hundreds upon hundreds of Rwandans (either traveling to Uganda or living there), it did so with the facilitation, and participation of CMI. These are not stories. These are facts, proven with documents, audio as well as visual. Rwanda though diplomatic channels repeatedly protested Kampala’s workings with terrorist groups whose stated goal was violent conflict against the Government of Rwanda. Rwanda showed, moreover that RNC only was one group which Museveni used to export violence to Rwanda. Kampala also was working with
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But even as it reports a none-existent rebuke of Tanzania (who ever heard Rwanda say anything about how other countries handle their Covid-19 issues?), Sky News seeks to turn the Kampala regime into a “victim of Rwandan accusations.” This is one of the oldest tricks in the propagandist’s bag: when your wrongdoing is exposed, attack those that have exposed you – with the aim of deflecting from your own transgressions! This is what Sky News – one of the many outlets of misinformation run by Uganda’s Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence (CMI) – is doing. But also, the article is consistent with a long-running propaganda campaign to tarnish the Rwandan administration – as part of a longstanding plot by Ugandan president Museveni to sow instability in Rwanda. The fabrication that “Rwanda has disapproved of management of Covid-19 in Tanzania”, followed by another that “there were rumblings of discontent in Rwanda’s relationship with Tanzania” for instance are attempts, albeit clumsy ones, to create discord between Dar and Kigali.
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Issue no 027 March 2021
>> From page 6 the genocidal FDLR, the equally genocidal RUD-Urunana, and others. Kigali has called the attention of the International Community to these aggressions. But operating on Joseph Goebbels propaganda theory that, if you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it, CMI peddlers of misinformation hope their repeated falsehoods about Rwanda can magically turn into truth. But facts are stubborn. The same facts debunk the other repeated big lie that “Kigali closed the border.” It is the activities of Museveni’s security agencies, CMI foremost, of constant harassment of Rwandan nationals that led to the closure of the border. It was after Rwanda had repeatedly called upon Kampala, in
vain, to restrain its intelligence services’ mistreatment of countless numbers of Rwandan nationals: of incarceration of multitudes with no trial; of detention with no recourse to consular services; of torture while in custody; of dumping of half-dead Rwandans at the borders, and such acts carried out with utmost impunity, that led to closure of the border. When the authorities in Kigali saw that Uganda and its security agencies weren’t about to stop their criminality against Rwandan citizens, that was when in early March 2019 they issued a strong advisory against Rwandan citizens crossing to Uganda. The safety and security of any Rwandan citizen that did could not be guaranteed. “On the other hand, since there could be no trade without freedom of movement of people, then there could be no movement of goods from Uganda to Rwanda,” Kigali reasoned. They curtailed heavy commercial trucks from Uganda. Passenger buses and vehicles carrying Ugandans could
enter and go as they pleased. Museveni’s propagandists gloss over these truths as if everyone else has forgotten. “The main beef of their bosses in Kampala, and why they keep pushing the lie that ‘Rwanda closed the border’ is only because they want access to our market; they aren’t concerned about anything else!” a social media commentator said. One can see the accuracy of this assessment when Sky News whines, further down in its piece, that, “as a result of the border closure between Uganda and Rwanda, Kampala lost more than US$ 664 million’s worth of exports to Rwanda in three months after Gatuna Border was closed.” It goes on, “in the period between August 2019 and August 2020, cumulative export earnings from Rwanda fell to just US$ 5.1 million (from US$ 131 million in the same period – between August 2018 to August 2019).”
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mentators in Kigali to observe: “let them trade with RNC or FDLR who are their allies! How can they mistreat, torture, or kill Rwandans then expect access to the Rwandan market?” The whole piece, a mishmash of grievances invented in the offices of CMI propaganda handlers – from the fact the DRC government put out a statement showing FDLR was responsible for the killing of Italian diplomat Luca Attanasio – which Ugandan propaganda now is tying to Rwanda; to breathless claims of “Rwandan enmity with every country in the region.” It strains to support its claim that “Kagame has left the region more bruised.” But no one will buy that. The main factor of regional instability is well known. He sits in Kampala, and Entebbe.
Such complaining has led com-
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