Victoire Ingabire on the UN report on Congo genocide

Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza spoke to Womens International News Gathering Service about "the Pucinella secret that so many knew but pretended not to know" in July 2010, a month before the UN confirmed it.

by Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza

Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza was widely considered the leading opposition candidate in this year’s presidential election, likely to win had the election been fair, but instead of being free to run, she was jailed briefly and is still not permitted to leave Kigali.

The U.N. report on human rights abuse, including genocide, in the Democratic Republic of Congo has been explosive in the international community, but it simply confirms what has long been a “Pucinella” secret that many knew but pretended not to know. So many atrocities were committed, some during broad daylight, in both Rwanda and Congo, during this time that they could not be concealed forever.

What happened in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the subject of the report by the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR), was just a continuation of a pattern of atrocities that Kagame’s Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) committed after seizing power in Rwanda, encouraged by the silence and complacency of the international community.

Read more at San Francisco Bay View, National Black Newspaper, http://sfbayview.com/2010/on-the-u-n-report-on-congo-genocide/.

Digital Journal: Rwanda's 1994 genocide and 2010 elections

Skulls of victims of one of the massacres during the 1994 Rwandan genocide are displayed at the Genocide Memorial Site church of Ntarama in Nyamata, Rwanda, in 2004.

On 01.17.2010, I posted a short report the Netherlands-based blog Colored Opinions, on Victoire Ingabiré's return to Rwanda from a 16-year exile and arrival at the Kigali, Rwanda airport. The slew of articles attacking Ingabiré in the Rwandan press, within one day of her return, and the tension I then sensed, even over the phone to Rwanda, caused me some concern about publishing beyond Colored Opinions and this blog, but the worst things happen when the world is paying no attention.  So, on 01.20.2010, I published this more detailed version of that story, with pictures sent from Rwanda, to the Canadian Digital Journal:

Rwanda's 1994 genocide and 2010 elections

http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/286067