Your source for credible news Issue no 038
August, 2021
Armed, violent Ugandan smuggler shot dead by Rwandan border patrol in self-defense
NEWS
In a diabolical twist, Uganda regime knowingly exposed their Rwandan kidnap victims to Covid-19, then dumped them at border Page 2 NEWS
Uganda’s CMI kills Rwandan businessman, but propaganda claims “accident” Page 3 OP - ED
Ugandan media have been flooding the zone with a story about a Ugandan that was shot in Rwanda, with some like the Monitor even claiming the fellow was a “businessman”, to imply innocence when in fact he wasn’t, according to border officials familiar with the matter. A simple examination of the facts shows that the man, one Justus Kadogo Kabagambe, was a smuggler that not only broke the law when he transported dangerous moonshine (kanyanga) and other contraband into Rwanda, he also tried to attack, with sharp weapons, members of a security patrol Page 3 who had no choice but to shoot in self-defense. Get a free copy of our e-paper
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A year a half after Rutagungira’s torture, Museveni’s security forces continue to inflict injustices upon innocent Rwandans
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OP - ED
Abel Kandiho’s real mission to Burundi: sabotage Page 6
NEWS
Issue no 038 August 2021
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In a diabolical twist, Uganda regime knowingly exposed their Rwandan kidnap victims to Covid-19, then dumped them at border
Some of the Rwandans dumped Thursday evening at Kagitumba. Not only were they subjected to illegal detention and torture by Ugandan security organs, they also were deliberately exposed to Covid-19.
By Patience Kirabo At around 08:00 pm yesterday, Ugandan authorities, in an ongoing trend, once again used the cover of the night to dump another group of innocent Rwandans, composed of 26 victims that were illegally incarcerated in different Ugandan prisons. Those dumped included even sick women, and young children. The Ugandan authorities did this again, with no observations of Covid-19 protocols. When medical authorities on the Rwandan side tested them for the illness as per standard procedure, it was discovered that 18 out of the 26 had been infected with Covid-19 in Uganda. The victims, 24 adults, and two children aged two and ten years, were arbitrarily arrested from different locations in Mbarara District, and locked up in different places including Ugandan Military Intelligence’s (CMI) Makenke Barracks in Mbarara, Mbarara Police Station, and other unknown dungeons. The Rwan-
dans were arbitrarily arrested with the usual CMI-concocted claims of “illegal entry” and “illegal stay” in Uganda.
have been exposed for a number of months, they are then unceremoniously dumped at the borders.
“Something is not correct with the mentalities of people that abduct even children of ten years, or two years; were they also spying with their mothers that were all locked up?” Kigali social media commentators were wondering. “Of course CMI victimizes these people because they are easy to victimize, and CMI are quite shameless in their criminality.”
Upon arrival, the latest group narrated their ordeals in detention, characterized by brutality and harassment by their CMI abductors, and how they were robbed of their money, amounting to millions of shillings as some of them have been doing well as traders. They were also robbed of personal property like phones.
The 26 victims that were illegally in detention between May to this month, August, were thrown into the same bus in the wee hours of Thursday morning and driven to Kagitumba border post. In what seems like there is an ongoing plan to intentionally expose Rwanda to Covid-19 and its variants, the Ugandan authorities are dumping Rwandan their victims with zero observations of Covid-19 protocols, such as testing, masking, socially distancing, and the like. After the victims
In his testimony one of the victims, Celestin Ntawukigiruwe, 36, went to Uganda legally in 2017 via the Kagitumba border immigration offices. He was however abducted by the UPDF together with plain-clothed operatives who took him to Makenke Barracks for a week of torture and interrogation, and was later transferred to Mbarara Central Police on allegations of “illegal entry and stay in Uganda.” Yet all the time he has been in detention they never took him to any court of law.
As for Burundian Abdul-Rashid Macumi, he was abducted by the UPDF soldiers that thought he was Rwandans, bundled him into their vehicle, and barked at him that he shouldn’t be in Uganda. “They handcuffed me and took me in custody, and later brought me at the border with others but after stealing my wallet,” he said. Since the beginning of this month, Ugandan authorities have dumped close to 80 Rwandan nationals at Kagitumba, of which many were Covid-19 positive cases. The latest arrivals have been put in isolation facilities while those that tested positive are under treatment. With such mistreatment of Rwandan citizens, Uganda continues to violate all types of laws: its own laws that stipulate no one is to get locked up, beyond 48 hours with no trials; laws against torture and illegal detention; as well as the Angola MoU that stipulates lawful treatment of each country’s nationals.
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NEWS
Issue no 038 August 2021
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Uganda’s CMI kills Rwandan businessman, but propaganda claims “accident” He was with a friend on the bicycle when the pickup vehicle knocked them, though only Sivo dies while good Samaritans were trying to evacuate them to hospital.
By Melody Mukansonera The usual campaign of harassment of Rwandans in Uganda has gone a whole new level. Uganda’s Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence (CMI) has now started staging road accidents to kill Rwandans. The latest such victim is a Rwandan businessman by the name of Sivo who was knocked and killed on the spot by a speeding vehicle. The incident happened at around 5 pm this Wednesday in Bujenje along the Masindi-Hoima road. But according to our reliable sources, the vehicle was
The deceased Sivo was a trader operating a business in Masindi. From arbitrary arrests, illegal incarcerations incommunicado, CMI director Abel Kandiho. His agency torture, and extra-judicial execuhas continued to harass, and even kill tions now one can add “intentioninnocent Rwandans. The latest to die at al accident” to the ways the the hands of CMI was a Masindi-based Museveni regime has mistreated trader, whose body is still in Uganda. innocent Rwandans. operated by a CMI operative with So many of the Rwandan victims instructions to ram into Sivo who of Ugandan security forces, most was riding on a motorcycle.
notably CMI, have suffered for reasons they know absolutely nothing about. Kampala has been pursuing a policy of destabilizing the government of Rwanda, executed by CMI working hand in hand with their main anti-Rwanda proxy group, RNC. In the process, countless Rwandan nationals that traveled to Uganda, or that already lived there bore the brunt of Museveni’s hostility against Rwanda. With the killing of Sivo, Uganda has hit a new low, said a Kigali commentator on security matters.
Armed, violent Ugandan smuggler shot dead by Rwandan border patrol in self-defense By Melody Mukansonera
completely biased story.
Ugandan media have been flooding the zone with a story about a Ugandan that was shot in Rwanda, with some like the Monitor even claiming the fellow was a “businessman”, to imply innocence when in fact he wasn’t, according to border officials familiar with the matter. A simple examination of the facts shows that the man, one Justus Kadogo Kabagambe, was a smuggler that not only broke the law when he transported dangerous moonshine (kanyanga) and other contraband into Rwanda, he also tried to attack, with sharp weapons, members of a security patrol who had no choice but to shoot in self-defense.
Those familiar with an ongoing anti-Rwanda propaganda campaign in Uganda – which is paid for, or outright funded by Uganda’s Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence, CMI – knew the game the journalists were playing. “CMI dished out ‘brown envelopes’ to journalists to amplify the anti-Rwanda negatively,” Virunga Post’s source in Kampala told us, on reliable information.
When Kampala media outlets began reporting about the Ugandan “shot by Rwanda” yesterday, Thursday 19, they omitted key facts to make it seem as if “Rwanda killed a blameless man.” By today, Friday morning, it had become a stampede of misinformation. All websites of Uganda – from the usual CMI funded peddlers of misinformation like Softpower, Chimpre-
Ugandan media, both the so-called mainstream, and the pure propaganda organs of CMI, have gone overboard with misinformation about a Ugandan smuggler deceased in Rwanda.
Sources on the ground narrate that Kabagambe and nine others with him turned violent when a Rwandan security patrol ordered them to stop in the night of Wednesday, this week, in the Kibuye Sector of Burera District. That’s about two kilometers inside Rwanda. Kabagambe and his fellow smugglers had entered Rwanda using a porous route.
ports, Watchdog, Commandonepost, Trumpetnews and others, on to their usual partners in anti-Rwanda propaganda in the mainstream media like The New Vision, The Monitor, and The Independent, and on to the TV channels – were hyping up the
According to eyewitness sources, the group carried with them over 60 liters of the Kanyanga moonshine (commonly known as waragi in Uganda) in jerrycans, as well as 90 packets of the cheap Movit cosmetics that also are used as illegal skin bleach,
mukorogo, and other contraband that are illegal in Rwanda. The smugglers were armed with machetes, knives, and thick, sharpened sticks, ibisongo. “When the security patrol intercepted them, asking them to stop, they resisted and turned violent,” a source told this website. “They drew their weapons and attacked the security men with murderous intent, and this prompted the shooting of one of the smugglers.” The rest of the group dropped all their contraband and weapons and fled back across the border, as fast as they could. Regulations in Rwanda stipulate that any member of the security forces has a right to discharge their firearms in self-defense if their life is in imminent danger from a violent attack. The smuggler’s body was taken to the mortuary nearest hospital, as arrangements to hand it over to Ugandan authorities and to his
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OP-ED
Issue no 038 August 2021
> From Page 3 family were being made. Media analysts in Kigali say that the latest onslaught of Kampala propaganda around the incident is an attempt to draw false equivalences with the countless incidents of innocent Rwandans harassed in Uganda, many hunted down for no reason other than that they are Rwandan. Untold numbers of innocent Rwandans have been illegally detained, incommunicado, on accusation of spying or illegal
weapons possession and other charges – yet none is ever tried in court to defend themselves against those accusations. Instead Ugandan security organs, mainly CMI, subject them to torture, and inhuman acts like rape, or starvation. Quite a few have been murdered in Ugandan dungeons. Yet there are never any cases that Ugandan authorities come out to publicly explain. They just dump their victims at the borders, and that is that.
Even then, Rwanda has maintained that innocent Ugandan citizens are always welcome to Rwanda; but if any want to enter they should use any one of the several, recognized border crossings between the two countries. Rwandan authorities indicate that any law-abiding Ugandan entering Rwanda can only do so in legal ways, moreover in daylight. “In fact only law breakers use porous routes in darkness; otherwise we have so many Ugandans in Rwanda that are very welcome,” a border official said.
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According to the authorities, another danger with using ungazetted routes (panya) is that these are the same routes that militias groups sponsored by Uganda to destabilize Rwanda have used, or attempted to use in their acts of terrorism. “So, we can never at any moment relax in our vigilance where Rwandan security is concerned; people should completely avoid using these illegal crossings,” a border security official remarked.
A year a half after Rutagungira’s torture, Museveni’s security forces continue to inflict injustices upon innocent Rwandans By Patience Kirabo Rene Rutagungira will never forget the day operatives of Uganda’s Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence, CMI, roughed him up, abducted him, and transported him to the torture dungeons at their headquarters in Mbuya. That was on the eight of August 2017; the evening when CMI men burst into the bar in Namirembe Bakuli where Rutagungira was having drinks with some friends, and manhandled him from his stool, telling him he was under arrest. There was a wild melee in the bar as Rutagungira tried to resist, asking what he had done. But
that’s not how CMI operatives conduct their business; they do not inform. In the normal world, the professional way to arrest involves informing them of their alleged offense. CMI’s method is strong-arm abduction, implemented in the most thuggish way imaginable. Abel Kandiho’s men will brandish small firearms at their victim, yelling, kicking, and bundling them into a double-cabin vehicle or van with dark-tinted glasses. They will then handcuff their victim and throw a blindfold over his or her face, in the meantime going through the wallet – looking for money to steal – or ordering the victim to tell them the pin number for his mobile money account, to empty it of any cash. Rutagungira, and very many other Rwandan nationals, have suffered this treatment. Few however spent as much time in Ugandan dungeons, and few suffered the injustices he did. They first tortured him in Mbuya, on accusations that even they seemed to not have coordinated between themselves. First the CMI torturers accused Rutagungira of “spying for Rwanda.” They showed nothing to back that. Then they accused him of “working for Rwanda, running a kidnap ring in Uganda.”
A handcuffed Rene Rutagungira is led to the cells with others. He was accused by Ugandan security agencies of “spying” and of “kidnap”, which they backed with nothing.
They claimed Rutagungira had “kidnapped Joel Mutabazi and handed him to Kigali.” This turned out to be a very childish accusation. Mutabazi was an individual
that indeed was wanted in Kigali, as one of the RNC terrorist operatives in Kampala. It seemed however that only CMI – which is the lead agency of Museveni in his plot to destabilize Rwanda using proxy groups like RNC – had been entrusted with the duty of running elements like Mutabazi. Museveni hadn’t yet co-opted the Uganda police force into his anti-Rwanda machinations. That in fact was how it came about that in fact it was Uganda Police that delivered Joel Mutabazi to Rwanda National Police, in late October 2013. It was part of standing bilateral cooperation between the two forces, to combat transnational crime. In exchange, Rwanda handed to Uganda a number of fugitives from that country wanted for various crimes who had chosen to hide in Rwanda, one of them Shanita Namuyimba, better known as “Bad Black” in Kampala. So, as the lawyers of Rutagungira too would show, CMI abducted him – just like every other Rwandan they forcefully took away – on false pretexts, with not the flimsiest evidence. The Kampala-based businessman only was a victim of the wars that Ugandan ruler Museveni started against Rwanda, with Museveni’s ultimate goal being to install a puppet of his choosing, namely Kayumba Nyamwasa, to rule Rwanda. The more Museveni and his security agencies failed in their plot however, the
more they victimized innocent Rwandans – those visiting Uganda or others, such as Rutagungira, already resident there. Rutagungira went through hell, for close to three years, before Uganda released him and eight other Rwandans to Rwandan authorities in January last year, following sustained pressure by Rwanda on Kampala to either try her citizens to prove Uganda’s accusations, or release them. After Mbuya, they had transferred him to Makindye Military Barracks. They even illegally tried him, a civilian, in military court. One time former Ugandan internal security minister Henry Tumukunde even drove to Makindye to try to coerce the Rwandan to confess to “spying.” Tumukunde slapped and kicked the illegally jailed Rutagungira, and spat on him. But the Rwandan could not confess to things he knew nothing about. Rutagungira has been back home for over a year and a half now. In the meantime – even as cases like his have clearly shown that Kampala’s campaign against Rwanda and Rwandans is based on falsehoods, born of a vindictive policy, in the wake of their failed ambitions to control Rwanda from Kampala – more Rwandan citizens continue to fall victim to similar injustices as Rutagungira’s.
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OP-ED
Issue no 038 August 2021
5
Museveni feigned concern for “the rights of foreigners”, yet he is the one that ordered the abuses and violations of the rights of Rwandan nationals Ishimwe Rutare whom they abducted in Bugolobi in December 2018. Ishimwe was illegally detained, and tortured, for several months. They would beat him with electric cables, in addition to brutal kicks, not mentioning starvation as part of the torture. Ishimwe almost died. He still wakes up screaming at night, tormented by nightmares about Mbuya. He was lucky because his family members could pay a hefty bribe to CMI men to release him.
By Alex Muhumuza Following Museveni’s speech last Saturday during which among other things he supposedly issued instructions to his regime’s authorities that “deporting foreigners without trial should be stopped”, one once again was reminded of Obote’s insightful observation. Museveni is a pathological liar that only tells the truth by accident. Museveni – who continued along his theme of feigned concern for foreigners saying “they should be handled legally”, and that “keeping people in jail for long is not allowed” – in fact is the very person that’s been ordering these exact things. We are talking of Rwandan nationals that Ugandan security organs, most notably the Chief taincy of Military Intelligence, CMI, have been harassing for the past four years. We are talking of a sustained campaign of victimization of Rwandans either visiting Uganda, those already resident there, or even Ugandans with Rwandan roots. These are people that have faced arbitrary arrests, followed by illegal detention in stinky police cells, and then in torture dungeons either at Mbuya Military Barracks, Kireka CMI Police Station, or in dozens of ungazetted places of detention, the so-called safe houses. All this moreover with the victims never allowed visits from either family, or consular staff of the Rwandan High Commission. Reliable sources inform us that Museveni is kept abreast of all the outrages the likes of CMI have perpetrated against innocent Rwandan nationals, usually on such charges as “espionage”, “illegal weapons possession” and “kidnap of refugees” for which they back with nothing, yet for which victims are subjected to the most sadistic, brutal torture. We can reliably inform the reader that a whole bunch of people close to Museveni – from his envoys in the region, to some of his ministers, to any number of close advisers – have kept him
Rwandan citizen Fidele Gatsinzi who in December 2017 was abducted in Kampala by individuals working with Uganda’s Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence, CMI, while visiting his son. CMI tortured him to the extent he couldn’t stand, and dumped him at Gatuna.
informed about the atrocities and rights abuses that the likes of CMI have been perpetrating against Rwandans, on accusations they never show proof of, and for which no victim is ever given a chance to defend themselves in court. But Museveni has maintained a deaf ear to all this. For the duration of the time it’s been going on. This shows only one thing: it is Museveni actually giving his security officials, Maj. Gen. Abel Kandiho of CMI at the forefront, to perpetrate the abuses. The Rwandans that suffered at the hands of agents of Ugandan security organs (prompting Kigali to issue a strong advisory against her nationals crossing to Uganda as their safety and security weren’t guaranteed) number in the thousands. We can only remind the reader of only a few of the most infamous cases of abuse, such as what befell one Fidele Gatsinzi in December 2017. Gatsinzi, a private citizen in late middle age, had traveled to visit his son, a student at Mukono Christian University just a short distance from Kampala, when unspeakable misfortune befell him. On the morning of 9 December, two
individuals working with CMI abducted Gatsinzi in the suburb of Ntinda, forcing him into a vehicle with dark-tinted glass and blindfolding him. That’s the way CMI conducts its business. No one told Gatsinzi what he was supposed to have done. His abductors had no arrest warrant. As Gatsinzi would describe it, they just drove with him to Mbuya and threw him into a dungeon where torturers undressed him, tied him up by the arms and legs, and proceeded to savagely beat him. The reason was that they wanted him to confess he was “spying for Rwanda.” They beat him for several days, demanding he confess to something he wasn’t. As he would narrate it, Gatsinzi thought he would die. He says he spent the first night on a cold floor, next to an old man that looked dead. After two weeks of torture in CMI custody, they suddenly decided to let him go. From Mbuya, they drove him, in a small saloon car, to the Gatuna Border where they dumped him. Gatsinzi could neither walk nor stand upright. He was in a wheelchair, in great pain when they left him to Rwandan immigration. That was how CMI treated Moses
Museveni’s security organs’ torture of innocent Rwandans has consisted not only of beatings, but also electrocution after immersion in ice baths, waterboarding, and other diabolical treatment. Rwandans have died too, an example being one Emmanuel Mageza who was driven out of his mind by sustained pain, dumped at Butabika hospital for mental illness by CMI, and lost his life there. Rwandan women haven’t been spared. Many have been subjected to sexual crimes by their abductors, undressed by security agents “to see the nakedness of Rwandan women,” obviously subjecting them to rape. Many of the victims are left with physical and psychological scars, or trauma that they will carry for the rest of their lives. Many are disabled, and can’t support themselves. Museveni is responsible for it all. All along his policy against innocent Rwandans has been to treat them with torture, brutality, mercilessness, and other inhuman acts. Yet he lies without batting an eyelid that he is “against deporting foreigners without trial”, or that “foreigners should be handled legally.” One has to repeat it, Museveni is a pathological liar. But one day he will be answerable for the abuses inflicted on innocent Rwandan victims of his security organs, on his orders. It is just a matter of time.
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OP-ED
Issue no 038 August 2021
36
Abel Kandiho’s real mission to Burundi: sabotage By Jean Gatera Commandonepost, a notorious vehicle of Ugandan misinformation, has posted an article trying to obfuscate the reasons for the recent visit to Burundi of Uganda Military Intelligence (CMI) director Abel Kandiho. The website, which in fact is one of the several under the control of CMI, not surprisingly chose to lie about the true nature of the visit. The main bit of misinformation in the article is that Kandiho was in Bujumbura as Museveni’s “special envoy” to follow up on plans on the supposed construction of roads in Tanzania as an alternative commercial route between Uganda and Burundi. Does Museveni have no technocratic ministers suited for such discussions? What would someone like Maj. Gen. Kandiho – a man whose skillset exclusively lies in torture and making people disappear – bring to a discussion about roads? CMI, which Kandiho heads, has been revealed on several occasions as being at the center of activities to destabilize the security of Rwanda, working with terrorist groups such as Kayumba Nyamwasa’s RNC, the genocidal FDLR, Rusesabagina’s FLN, among others. CMI is also notorious for its harassment and persecution of Rwandan civilians living in Uganda, in complete disregard of EAC laws. All this, and other nefarious anti-Rwanda activity is part of a long-term plot by Museveni to create instability in Rwanda, with (pipe) dreams of installing a puppet regime in Kigali. For years Museveni’s plan was to destabilize Rwanda with a proxy war strategy using RNC and the other militias either via jungles in DR Congo, or Burundi. That is, until these groups were routed, beginning in mid 2019. Now the terrorist groups have bases in Uganda, which harbors hopes of re-activating them in dense forests in DRC or Burundi. These plans hang by a thread however, with the jungles of eastern DRC being a no go area. As a result of the failures in Congo, the Ugandan regime is more desperate than ever to
Ugandan ruler Museveni recently sent his man, CMI director Abel Kandiho, to Bujumbura and tried to hoodwink the public that it was “to discuss roads.” False. Kandiho’s mission was sabotage.
sabotage any good initiative from which Rwanda would stand to benefit, including any developments leading to more peaceful relations with neighbors. So when recently the prime minister of Rwanda visited Burundi to attend that country’s independence celebrations, and when Rwanda handed over to Burundi members of a militia group – the RED Tabara – wanted by that government, something that Kigali did in line with bilateral, peace-building initiatives, Museveni panicked. It was impossible for him to sit still thinking Kigali and Bujumbura could restore good ties, which Museveni played a big part in disrupting in the first place. Museveni decided to act. And so, we see Kandiho in Bujumbura. He was there for purposes of sabotage, nothing else. “If Burundi followed the good-neighborly footsteps of DRC, to pursue rapprochement and cooperation with Rwanda, that would spell doom for Museveni’s anti-Rwanda project,” a security source in Kigali remarked. “You can be a hundred
percent sure that was what Kandiho’s mission was about – to bad mouth any détente between Rwanda and Burundi.” Commandonepost peppers its article with the usual falsehood that “Rwanda closed the border”, falsely citing that as part of the supposed rationale for the CMI head’s visit (“to discuss plans for the route bypassing Rwanda to Tanzania”). All these are lies manufactured by Kampala, to hoodwink the world about the role of Museveni and his intelligence agencies in causing the impasse at the Rwanda-Uganda border. They keep repeating the lie of “border closure” in the hope that the public forgets it was the activities of Ugandan security agencies, mainly CMI, in persecuting and harassing Rwandan nationals in Uganda, hunting them as if they were animals in complete violation of their human rights, that led to Rwanda issuing a strong advisory to her citizens against crossing to Uganda. That was it. Any Ugandan that wanted to come to Rwanda, could come, visit, and go as they wished.
Nothing has changed about that. What Rwanda barred from Uganda was heavy commercial trucks carrying goods to the Rwandan market. Rwanda’s reasoning was that since the Museveni regime had made it a policy to randomly harass, jail and torture Rwandans, all because of its partnership with RNC, then Uganda could not have access to the Rwandan market. “There could be no freedom of trade with no freedom of movement,” Kigali said. Also, Rwanda never stopped any Ugandan trade passing through to Burundi. There has never been an incident when Rwanda barred a Ugandan commercial trailer on its way to Bujumbura. Hence Museveni’s talk of “building roads through Tanzania to Burundi” is mere devious diversion, part of his propaganda to tarnish Rwanda, and to create more excuses to justify his anti-Rwanda hostility. Regardless what CMI websites claim, this hostility is what Kandiho’s visit to Burundi was all about.
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OP-ED
Issue no 038 August 2021
7
As fears increase for Museveni of the possibility of one day answering for his crimes, Kampala propagandists try harder to smear Rwanda By Alex Muhumuza In another example of Kampala misinformation outlets doing anything they can to soil Rwanda’s name while attempting to deflect from their regime’s crimes, one Charles Kazooba has posted an article full of wild conjectures about how the Rwandan head of state supposedly “isn’t safe from ICC.” Writing in something called Sky News on Friday last week, the devious Kazooba – one of the many peddlers of misinformation on the payroll of Uganda’s Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence, CMI – first tries to create an illusion of “balance” with mention of Museveni as supposedly being “in the same trouble as the Rwandan leader”, in an article titled “Bashir goes to ICC: Should Museveni, Kagame worry.” The article contains plenty of cheap ploys like treating a lot of old, debunked negative allegations against Rwanda as if they were fact, while exonerating Museveni of all his crimes. Let’s look at some of the atrocities the article tries to exonerate Museveni of, such as the massacre of about 165 Bakonzo in Kasese by Museveni’s man Brig. Peter Elwelu, in November 2016. Kazooba probably assumes people can’t think when he claims that Museveni is excused because “the military was dealing with an armed group.” No, the military was dealing only with traditional guards of the Omusinga, the cultural head of the Bakonzo, who were armed with arrows and spears, and, at worst, probably some old muskets. In such situations, when civilians are in a standoff with a government, the responsible thing is to send in paramilitary police units to subdue them, and then arrest them. But Museveni sent a senior military man, Brig. Elwelu, armed with machineguns, APCs, and RPGs. It was an intentional, and intended massacre of civilians. There was never any intention to arrest them as law-breakers. Museveni, like he has done so
The Ugandan military has been implicated in many serious atrocities and crimes against humanity, all of which Ugandan president Museveni is in deep fear of answering for.
many times – in Teso when his military suffocated dozens of innocent people in old train wagons, in northern Uganda through brutal ethnic cleansing of Acholi and Langi on pretext of fighting Kony, and so on – was intent on “teaching the Omusinga (Wesley Mumbere) a lesson”, by means of a brutal massacre. Brig. Elwelu himself said these people deserved to die, which he did when the massacre was over. All that happened in full view of witnesses, including journalists, and Museveni fears he will answer for it one day. He also fears he will be asked about the many incidents of ethnic cleansings of Acholi and Langi people, which moreover have been well documented. In his piece, Kazooba pontificates at length about the ICC, going on about Rwanda’s supposed none-membership of the court (and how that supposedly can’t excuse Kigali), and so on. Yet the alleged crimes he accuses Rwanda of, presumably on behalf of ICC, are concocted ones – the kind of things all anti-Rwanda negativists spend their lives making up. It’s the only thing they can do in the absence of any crimes to accuse Kigali of. Kazooba first brings up the old allegation that “Rwanda’s leaders could face prosecution at the ICC for arming groups responsible for
atrocities in the Congo.” One wonders at the chutzpah of Ugandan propagandists, that they even dare mention the Congo! First of all the UPDF, Museveni’s army, is the only military that actually has been found guilty of atrocities in the DRC, by a recognized, authoritative tribunal: the International Court of Justice. In December 2005 the ICJ found that Uganda violated Congolese sovereignty by sending its army into the DRC, which then looted natural resources, killed or tortured civilians, and destroyed villages. The court then ordered Uganda to pay DRC US$ 10 billion in damages. But what does Kazooba do? He overlooks that to reproduce fictitious accusations against Rwanda, claiming Kigali “armed M23 rebel groups to commit atrocities in DRC.” To support this claims, he alleges that, “in 2012 the head of the US war crimes office (at the time a lawyer called Stephen Rapp), warned that the Rwandan leadership could be open to charges of aiding and abetting crimes in a neighboring country, DRC.” Of course nothing like that ever happened; no US official, whom Kazooba casts as some kind of overlord of the fate of Rwandans, made any pronouncements about Rwanda similar to what the article alleges. The facts are that
M23 emerged as an internal movement of Congolese against the country’s president, Joseph Kabila at the time. Even the best Ugandan propagandist couldn’t succeed at tying them to Rwanda. Secondly, what Rapp in fact said is completely contrary to what Kazooba alleges. Talking about the M23, Rapp in 2012 said that in his investigations he never saw evidence of war crimes; of atrocities like mass killings, rape, looting, and the like. Rapp in fact was repudiating anti-Rwanda talk of the kind that Kazooba dishonestly resurrects. It is the same with every other allegation against Rwanda that Kazooba writes. All of it is easily disprovable stuff. The Kampala propagandists have an impossible task trying to sanitize Museveni, an old man that’s haunted by the countless documented, or filmed crimes – and others with hundreds of witnesses – that he has perpetrated. The surest sign of panic is the frantic way they keep trying to drag Rwanda into Museveni’s problems. They will fail, again.
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