FSRN, PLEASE: The UN Security Council Has No Moral Authority in Congo

The UN Security has no moral authority anywhere, but this is about Congo, weaponized rape and weaponized rape prosecution, organized by representatives of the Security Council, in eastern Congo.  I responded, below, and on the KPFA Radio and Free Speech Radio News websites, to this segment from the Free Speech Radio News broadcast of January 21, 2011 regarding the weaponization of rape and rape prosecution in eastern Congo, which also aired on the KPFA Evening News the same day:


DRC arrests soldiers for rape  

In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, or DRC, officials arrested a group of soldiers for their involvement in the rapes of dozens of women on New Year’s Day. They could be tried as early as next week. A UN spokesperson told Reuters that the commander who authorized the attack on the town of Fizi in the eastern part of the country has also been arrested. Human rights groups have long raised concern about armed groups using rape as a weapon of war in DRC. And some say sexual violence will continue if authorities fail to investigate and prosecute those responsible.  The UN’s Jocelyne Sambira has more.

My response, as posted to the FSRN website:

Several of my Rwandan friends posted these responses on the KPFA Website:

Champ· 2 days ago

Ann you are correct about the reporting of the rape story in Eastern Congo as has been told by the UN Security council. This story was known by the UN Security Council for weeks before they said a word about it? Why did they come out with it when they did? Because a leaked shameful/embarrassing report about Rwanda and Uganda, darlings of the UN Security council was released. Who made the report? It was made by the UN Human Rights High Commissioner. Why was it blocked? Because the security council didn't want Rwanda's and Uganda's disgraceful atrocities, including possible genocide brought public. What did the Security Council do after they couldn't block the Human Rights High Commissioner report anymore? They screamed about the rape story to create a distraction, even though they hadn't even conducted an investigation.


KPFA would do best to investigate this rape story before reporting on it. They will find those involved in perpetrating the crime to be more diverse and will include Congo's regular army, the Rwandan army, and the Ugandan army and their proxies.


On the other hand, Ann has been spot on in her reports about the Rwandan and Ugandan army involvement in the atrocities in the region as well as both of these armies serving as the US proxy militias in conflicts in Africa. Ann, you are make KPFA listeners proud with your Africa reporting.

Aimable Mugara· 1 day ago

As a survivor of the carnage that has engulfed Rwanda and neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo, I was shocked by the bias in the report regarding the rape in DRC. The story talks about stopping impunity. It goes on to mention various sides of the conflict in DRC. But somehow it does not mention how the current president of Rwanda, General Kagame is the one who started the conflict in DRC. The United Nations is mentioned but somehow, there is no single mention of the October 1st, 2010 United Nations report that accused General Kagame's extremist Tutsi forces of rape as well as genocide.


That UN report said "The extensive use of edged weapons (primarily hammers) and the systematic massacres of survivors after the camps had been taken show that the numerous deaths cannot be attributed to the hazards of war or seen as equating to collateral damage. The majority of the victims were children, women, elderly people and the sick, who were often undernourished and posed no threat to the attacking forces. Numerous serious attacks on the physical or mental integrity of members of the group were also committed, with a very high number of Hutus shot, raped, burnt or beaten. The systematic, methodological and premeditated nature of the attacks listed against the Hutus is also marked: these attacks took place in each location where refugees had been screened by the AFDL/APR over a vast area of the country. The pursuit lasted for months, and on occasion, the humanitarian assistance intended for them was deliberately blocked, particularly in the Orientale province, thus depriving them of resources essential to their survival. Thus the systematic and widespread attacks described in this report reveal a number of damning elements that, if proven before a competent court, could be classified as crimes of genocide."


I expected better from KPFA. I expected more professional, unbiased reporting and that story was a total disappointment for me.

This is not the first time that I have objected to FSRN's Africa reporting.   I can't, at this point, remember an FSRN story on Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo that I have not objected to, and many of my African friends, including Rwandan journalist Eleneus Akanga, contributor to the Newsline EA, and Hampshire College Professor Susan Thomson went to the FSRN website to object to its false reconciliation story, Rwanda village brings together Hutus and Tutsis on path toward reconciliation.   Zack Baddorf, FSRN Reporter and Board President Zack Baddorf, and the producer of that piece, failed to respond.   Nathan Moore, FSRN Administrative Director, responded instead, but without addressing the fundamental issue---that, FSRN had reported a story of false reconciliation, as described by as Hampshire College Professor and Africa/Rwanda expert Susan Thomson wrote, in her response to that piece: 

reaction to reconciliation village segment

SUBMITTED BY SUSAN THOMSON ON WED, 09/29/2010 - 18:49.

I am writing to express my concern about the quality of reporting on this piece. It reads as government propaganda, and indeed many of the reactions I've read thus far support this claim. However, I think the journalist is simply naive and perhaps a little lazy. It is certainly note the kind of reporting I expect from FSRN. It is important to go beyond the narratives of the ruling RPF to understand the various motivations and methods of killing as well as the structures of power put in place since (controlled as they are by the RPF) to understand and explain "reconciliation". Indeed, it is an affair of the heart, and of the stomach as poor and traumatised individuals are left to fend for themselves for their daily needs. At the same time the government is strictly monitoring their political activities to assure commitment to the "script" of national unity and reconciliation. In other words, if you ask people who have lived their lives in chronic adversity to speak about their real feelings in a government-controlled space like the reconciliation village what do you expect their answers to be? I am hungry? I can't send my children to school because I am not the right kind of survivor? Or I lost my health benefits because I didn't forgive correctly at gacaca? No. Of course not. So yes, there is tolerance, which is conceptually different than reconciliation. Tolerance means you have no option but to accept sharing with another individual. Reconciliation means something different, and in the Rwanda context it means to heal the heart. Such cultural clues go unrecognised on this shameful piece.

Stations throughout the Pacifica Network, with five sister stations in New York, Washington DC, Los Angeles, Berkeley, and Houston, and many affiliated independent radio stations throughout the United States, play FSRN, and FSRN has, over the years, done a great deal of good reporting on other issues.  So, I keep responding and suggesting that others, who understand what's wrong with FSRN's reporting on this part of the world, do the same.  Here's the link, for writing to FSRN about their January 21st, 2011 broadcast: http://goo.gl/Vo4U0, and here's the link for KPFA Evening News, http://goo.gl/vU7IY.   

Keith Harmon Snow on Obama's Invasion of Congo on his Inauguration Day

Photo -- "Keith Harmon Snow asked to swap camera for RPG Rocket Launcher" -- FARDC Operation "Iron Fist" (spin-off), remote hills in or near Kahuzi Beiga National Park, South Kivu (province), DRC. Circa June 2006.

On Sunday, 01.23.2011, I called veteran Africa investigator Keith Harmon Snow for KPFA Weekend News regarding the second anniversary of the outset of the catastrophic 2009 Eastern Congo Offensive. As is always the case with “sound bite news,” I couldn’t include most of our conversation, but Keith was kind enough to write out his answers to the questions I’d sent for AfrobeatRadio.net. We at AfrobeatRadio consider Keith’s website, Conscious Being Alliance and the various audio recordings of his presentations, including, recently, his Lecture on Profiteering from Genocide in Central Africa, at the Brecht Forum in New York City, to be some of the best investigative reporting and analysis of African issues available.  -Ann Garrison

KPFA/Ann Garrison: Most Americans, including those who campaigned hardest for Obama, would have a near impossible time making sense of this. Few would recognize the acronyms of the Rwandan Defense Force (RDF), the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), the National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP), or the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR).

Keith Harmon Snow: There has been a US backed campaign to destabilize, depopulate, and colonize eastern Congo/Zaire since the first US-supported invasion of 1996, which occurred under William Jefferson Clinton, and which followed the US destabilization and coup d’etat in Rwanda. The US and its allies are deploying their proxy army, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) — renamed the Rwandan Defense Forces or RDF about 10 years ago – in our secret campaign to balkanize Congo and create a Republic of the Volcanoes in this region. This would be an expansion of Rwanda achieved through the annexation of the Kivu provinces of Congo, possibly along with Maniema Province. Uganda for its part, with US support, would like to annex the Ituri province. These campaigns are backed by multinational corporations, and the goals are political, military and, mostly, economic.

KPFA/Ann Garrison: So, what sense does it make, to say that Barack Obama invaded Congo, the heart of Africa, on his Inauguration Day?

Keith Harmon Snow: The US backed military invasion of 20 January 2009 included US military commanders, special forces, military advisers, technicians and other US military personnel, and it involved weaponry supplied by the US and Britain.

KPFA/Ann Garrison: Can you explain the CNDP militia and the significance of its integration into the Congolese army, the FARDC, on January 20, 2009?

Keith Harmon Snow: First, the name CNDP – Congress for the Defense of the People – couldn’t be further from the truth. The CNDP was a Rwandan Tutsi based militia that was created by Rwandan war criminals that had infiltrated Eastern Congo, infiltrated troops into eastern Congo, and that mobilized, armed and economically empowered Rwandan Tutsi civilians that had infiltrated eastern Congo in recent years and in recent decades. There was a tripartite agreement between Rwandan dictator Paul Kagame, Ugandan dictator Yoweri Museveni, and the president of Congo – another Rwandan – Joseph Kabila – which worked behind the massive propaganda of “peace talks” to advance the military campaign to infiltrate and control eastern Congo. By quote “integrating” these Rwandan militia elements into the Congolese National Army the Rwandan program was advanced through a kind of Trojan horse operation.

KPFA/Ann Garrison: Can you explain the arrest of Laurent Nkunda and Bosco Ntaganda’s assumption of CNDP leadership in his place?

Keith Harmon Snow: This was a cosmetic move with no real importance, meant only to pacify certain international calls to arrest and remove the self-proclaimed General Laurent Nkundabatware. Both Nkunda and Bosco Ntaganda were documented war criminals. Nkunda of course knows too much, he is too much of a liability to Kagame, and so he is living a very good life at present in Rwanda.

KPFA/Ann Garrison: And, what about the UN Mapping Report leaked on August 26th, then finally released on October 1st?

Keith Harmon Snow: Well, that report, while revealing and progressive, in the sense of holding certain armies and individuals accountable for war crimes, was also a whitewash of the real situation. On one hand it introduced, for the first time, some credible evidence, produced by international bodies and the United Nations, that the Rwandan and Ugandan militaries committed genocide against unarmed Hutu people – mostly women and children – in Congo from circa 1995 to 1999. At the same time the evidence and facts are distorted and downplayed, and the criminality of Rwanda and Uganda are downplayed and even questioned, and the numbers of dead and kinds of atrocities are downplayed or distorted, and there is absolutely no mention of western agents or militaries or corporations involved in the killing. For example, we know the names of US diplomats, USAID officials, and military commanders involved in hunting down and killing hundreds of thousands of innocent Hutus, mostly women and children.

KPFA/Ann Garrison: What do you think this operation, the 2009 Eastern Congo Offensive, which began on Obama’s Inauguration Day, says about the racial justice that many hoped the election of Barack Obama would represent?

Keith Harmon Snow: The operation called “Umoja Wetu” resulted in massive war crimes, and Barack Obama is no symbol or agent of racial equality, but just another US official involved in persecuting people of color everywhere, and through all sorts of horrible deprivations and war crimes.

KPFA/Ann Garrison: And what about the racism inherent in this mission to “hunt down Hutu militias”?

Keith Harmon Snow: Well, this is more nonsense—the whole “hunt for Hutu genocidaires was a key element of the psychological operation against the western English-speaking world to cover up for western imperialism and the commission of massive war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide—and plunder of hundreds of billions of dollars worth of minerals, timber, and lives. Under this psychological operation—using such propaganda films as Hotel Rwanda and Sometimes in April and Shake Hands With The Devil and Beyond the Gates—the English-speaking world suffers a collective mental illness about what really happened in Rwanda. Instead of the racist story about Hutus killing Tusis with machetes in 100 days of genocide, the truth is that the US, British and Israeli military and their Ugandan and Rwandan proxy forces are responsible for genocide against both Tutsis and Hutus in Rwanda, Congo and Burundi. Who are the victims? The innocent civilians in Uganda, Burundi, Rwanda and Congo and they are still suffering massively under US overt and covert operations in the Great Lakes region.

Many thanks to Ann Garrison, David Landau & Anthony Fest, and the KPFA Weekend News.  -Keith Harmon Snow

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/.

Rwanda accuses Hotel Rwanda hero of 'Double Genocide Theory'

Hotel Rwanda - Trailer | Movies & TV | SPIKE.com

Rwanda's government has accused Paul Rusesabagina, the Rwandan exile played by actor Don Cheadle in the movie Hotel Rwanda, of being a "revisionist" who "harbors the Double Genocide Theory."

A "revisionist," in Rwanda, is someone who dares to challenge the received history of the 1994 Rwanda Genocide. The "Double Genocide Theory" is the belief that Hutus, as well as Tutsis, were victims of genocidal violence in 1994. 

Read more at Digital Journal, http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/289105

KPFA News Rwanda: 256.com correspondent Godwin Agaba says government responsible for Kigali bombings

KPFA Radio News Update on Rwanda, 03.07.2010

KPFA News update on Rwanda and endangered journalist Godwin Agaba

Godwin Agaba, a 256.com correspondent in Rwanda, has gone into hiding since incumbent President Paul Kagame's government ordered his arrest for alleged links to Lieutenant General Kayumba Nyamwasa. 

03.08.2010


Political violence and anxiety continue to trouble Rwanda, in its 2010 presidential election year, with polls scheduled for August 9th, but only one of the three viable opposition parties, the Parti Social-Imberakuri registered, and its registration threatened.  Neither the FDU-Inkingi Party nor the Democratic Green Party of Rwanda  have yet been able to register.


Godwin Agaba, a 256.com correspondent in Rwanda, has ow gone into hiding and applied for asylum, after incumbent President Paul Kagame's government ordered his arrest for alleged links to General Kayumba Nyamwasa.


My 03.07.2010 radio news update, includes a brief conversation with Mr. Agaba, who answered the phone from an undisclosed location, on March 7, 2010, for KPFA Radio News, in Berkeley, California.  He said that he has contacted Reporters without Borders and other organizations to protect journalists and applied for asylum.  
The radio archive can be played at this hot link:


KPFA Radio News: Political Violence in Rwanda, 03.07.2010, http://bit.ly/dgH8dU

Rwandan political update, including claims of a plot to murder Frank Habineza

Posted 02.24.2010, via World News Journal, 02.23.2010

The President of the Democratic Green Party of Rwanda, Mr. Frank Habineza, yesterday's (Mr. Habineza's birthday) edition of Umuseso published claims of plot to kill him by the RPF. A translation of part of the article follows below. This issues follows yesterday's Nyarugenge Primary Court ruling that handed various jail sentences to editors of Umuseso after they were found guilty of defaming and invading the privacy of Cabinet Affairs Minister Protais Musoni. They will be allowed a chance to appeal. Charles Kabonero, the former Managing Editor and his predecessor, Didas Gasana, were given one-year and six months jail sentences respectively. They were also each ordered to pay a fine of 1 million Rwf. Richard Kayigamba was sentenced to six months and a fine of 1 million Rwf in a verdict that was pronounced in the absence of all defendants. The Rwandan government has threatened to close the newspaper permanently. While the paper has been accused many times of defamation and publication of inflammatory articles by various Rwandan officials, Reporters Without Borders has documented the Rwandan Government's repeated oppression of Umuseso and shown the government has often violated the right of freedom of speech to independent Rwandan periodicals in general. The well-known organization ranked Rwanda as one of the worst countries in the world for press freedom. Last year, they ranked 157th out of 175 countries and is the 4th worst country in Africa.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

UMUSESO NEWSPAPER No.396 of 22nd February-01 March 2010

BAD PLANS-HABINEZA TO BE KILLED IN 60 DAYS

Translation of some text from Page 2.

………………. While Victoire Ingabire is in the process of being sent to prison, another opposition politician Mr.Frank HABINEZA will be killed within 60 days.

One of the security operatives who gave us the information had this to say Frank is going to be killed within 60 days, they have no case against him. They can’t charge him with harboring genocide ideology.

They have been trying to frame him up but have not yet succeeded, yet he is the one fully supporting (giving courage) to Victoire Ingabire.

Frank Habineza, who was physically threatened by an unknown person while at a Kigali Hotel known as Le Printemps admits having received this information but says he does not believe that this Government can do such a thing “I do not believe that RF can stoop so low by killing a person just simply because he/she has different views, but from what aim hearing anything is possible”

Arrangements are being made to kill Frank Habineza, the party he is reading is at road blocks, still struggling to get registered.

Disputed histories of the Rwanda Genocide

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

I was surprised and alarmed on, 02.02.2010, to read Amil Omara-Otunnu's one-sided history of the Rwanda Genocide, "Rwanda Genocide: Lessons for Human Rights Advocacy," in the Black Star News, a publication I rely on for investigative reporting and commentary about Africa.  This is especially disturbing now, as tension around disputed Rwanda Genocide history increases amidst political repression leading up to Rwanda's August 2010 national elections.  

Professor Omara-Otunnu's elegant English, rationality, and partial rightness put this essay leagues above the vicious propaganda currently being published in the Rwanda New Times or the confusion in the Rwanda News Agency, both of which are promptly reproduced on allAfrica.com, seemingly without editorial review or discretion, but his account of the Rwanda Genocide and its aftermath is wholly biased towards Rwandan President Paul Kagame, his ruling RPF Party, and the suffering of Rwandans identified as Tutsi.  It disregards all the evidence that Kagame and the RPF are themselves guilty of major human rights violations, including compromised courts and elections, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocidal violence against Rwandan Hutus, and, of ruthless invasion and resource theft in Eastern Congo.  

Omara-Otunnu makes no mention of the tension and repression of opposition political parties in Rwanda now, as the nation's 2010 national elections approach.

And he makes no mention of the Human Rights Watch release pointing to the failure of the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda (ICTR) to indict the ruling RPF, which makes the ICTR's legacy an example of one-sided justice rather than a historic example for human rights investigations and courts to emulate.  

Nor does he mention Rwanda's prisons, which house the third highest per capita prison population in the world, including many political prisoners.

Though he decries the international community's "inaction," in accordance with the received Rwanda genocide narrative, he says nothing about evidence of foreign powers covert involvement, including that of the U.S. and its allies, and France, and/or of their ongoing involvement in Rwanda and the wider region now.

This essay is elegantly written, but the writer's disregard for disputed narratives of the Rwanda Genocide, including those of Victoire Ingabiré Umuhoza, FDU/UDF-Inkingi's 2010 presidential candidate, and the need to reconcile disputed narratives is dangerous and irresponsible.

I should add, however, that Professor Amara-Otunnu's has been outspoken in his opposition to Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni's state terror and genocidal violence against the Acholi people of Northern Uganda. 

See: 

"Rwanda's 1994 genocide and the 2010 elections" 

"ICTR's legacy threatened by failure to charge Rwandan Patriotic Front," 

All Things Pass, Writings of Keith Harmon Snow  

David Barouski's Z-Space Page

Rwanda Documents Project, created by Dr. Peter Erlinger, Lead Defense Counsel for the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda

Dr. Peter Erlinder and "The Rwanda Genocide Cover-up"

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 01.20.2010, I published "Rwanda's 1994 genocide and 2010 elections" in the Digital Journal.

This morning I received the response,below, from Peter Erlinder, the Lead Defense Council at the International Criminal Tribunal of Rwanda (ICTR).   Neither Dr. Erlinder, nor I, nor any of the journalists, Rwandan dissidents, exiles, or opposition Rwandan political parties deny that genocidal mass murder occurred in Rwanda. We disagree only with the onesided history, in which the former Hutu government and military are said to have conspired to commit genocide against Tutsis, and in which only Tutsis, not Hutus, were mass murdered.

The victorious, now ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front party has made this history not only sacrosanct, but also a legal requirement, by passing laws against "genocide ideology"---meaning history that disagrees with their own.

Members of the RPF are now calling for the prosecution and incarceration of FDU-Inkingi leader Victoire Ingabiré Umuhoza for daring to say that Hutus were also targets of genocidal mass murder, upon her return from exile.

"Ms. Garrison,

Thanks for the article. As Lead Defense Council at the ICTR I have had a chance to closely examine a the violence associated with the RPF takeover of Rwanda, and have concluded that the "victors" have told the story of the 4-year war, and its aftermath.

During the past 7 years the Prosecutor at the ICTR, with the help of the Kagame government, US and UK have been unable to marshall evidence that the former military or government planned or conspired to kill civilians, much less Tutsi civilians.

In Feb 2009, the Judgement in the Military I (Bagosora) case found that NONE of the top four officers (including Bagosora) were guilty to conspiracy before or after the assassination of Habyarimana.

In Feb 2009, the former ICTR Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte admitted in her memoirs that she had been ordered to bury evidence of RPF crimes, including Kagame's assassination of Habyarimana which had been known to her office in 1997...by the U.S. State Dept.
 

'The Great Rwanda Genocide-Coverup' is beginning to unravel....but US, as you note, is deeply invested in maintaining a Prussian-style military presence in Central Africa. I have posted several articles and the - Rwanda Documents Project - has many of the contemporaneous confirming documents.  -Peter Erlinder"

Rwanda Police escalate harassment of Rwanda Greens

Frank Habineza, interim President of the Rwanda Green Party, forwarded this Rwanda News Agency (RNA) report, from Kigali, Rwanda's capitol, on 11.24.2009.   The Rwanda Greens fourth attempt to convene in Kigali ended in violence and arrests, and, now Rwanda Police will not grant them the certificate they need for a fifth attempt to convene in Gasabo District, Kigali.  

I fear for the Rwanda Greens, the other political parties attempting to register and participate in Rwanda's 2010 elections, and the Rwandan people. 

  Police chief Brig Emmanuel Gasana (left) and Green Party leader Mr. Frank Habineza (right): The Police boss wants names of the trouble-causers from the Green Party

Police refuses to give Green Party crucial document        
By RNA Reporter      
Wednesday, 25 November 2009

Police chief Brig Emmanuel Gasana (right) and Green Party leader Mr. Frank Habineza: The Police boss wants names of the trouble-causers from the Green Party
Kigali: 

Gasabo district cannot allow the controversial Green Party space on its territory unless it has a Police Certificate indicating they will “not cause trouble again," but now the Police also says it cannot avail that document at the moment, RNA reports.

Police Commissioner-General, Brig Emmanuel Gasana instead informed the Green Party yesterday that he does not intend to grant them the clearance “because investigations are still ongoing” on the chaos that erupted on October 30, as the party conference got underway.

“I take this opportunity to request that if you have any information on the people who caused the chaos, indicating that they were not your members, then you should avail that to the National Police, because those arrested at St. Paul turned out to be innocent saying they had instead been hit with chairs in the meeting you were presiding,” the new police chief writes.

The chaos erupted in the founding conference on the morning of that October day at the Diocesan hall St. Paul in Nyarugenge district. The trouble ridden party then decided to ask neighbouring Gasabo district for space to hold another conference, at which they hope to finalise their registration dossier.

The Green Party leaders had planned to hold the conference in Gasabo on November 20, just a week before the Heads of State Commonwealth summit due this weekend in Trinidad and Tobago. President Kagame is expected to lead a high-level government delegation to the event where Rwanda could be allowed into the 53-nation block.

However, the embattled Mayor of Gasabo district, Ms. Nyinawagaga Claudine, who has also resigned over other issues, declined to offer the space demanding for the police clearance. She said the document would give her assurances that the same trouble would not be repeated in her administrative area.

This means that the Green Party has been put to task to prove that the chaos in which several people were seriously injured was not caused by them. In a response letter to the Police chief, Green Party officials have sent him two names of people it alleges where behind the troubles.

The individuals whose names have been submitted to the Police Commissioner-General are Mr. Kimenyi Claude, from Nyamurambo in Nyarugenge district; and Mr. Kayisire Emmanuel, from Kimironko in Gasabo district. 

Mr. Kimenyi, according to the Green Party is a money-changer in Kigali, and Mr. Kayisire is a Blocker, also here in Kigali.

The Green Party also seems to be desperately trying to move fast so it can have the founding conference which has been postponed for five times. In the correspondence to the Police Chief, party leaders say the situation which happened at St. Paul hall has been “resolved” because those who caused it are out free, and those who were injured have been treated.

“… that is why I am requesting you that you accept to give us the clearance, such that in the next congress we will collaborate with you especially on security,” they write in the letter sent Tuesday. 

It was not clear by press time, when the Police Commissioner-General will respond.