Rwandan Congress of Canada (RCC) 586 Martin-Perrier Nord Gatineau, Qc, J9H 5P3 Email address:
[email protected] Ottawa, October 20, 2010
His Excellency Mr. Ban Ki-moon United Nations Secretary-General 1st Avenue, 46th Street New York, NY 10017 USA Re:
Request to withdraw General Paul Kagame from the Millennium Development Goals Group
Excellency Mr. Secretary General,
The Rwandan Congress of Canada (RCC) is calling your Excellency to suspend the tenure of Paul Kagame as a co-chair of the group for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The Rwandan Congress of Canada (RCC) has among its goals to combat impunity and promote good governance in Rwanda. The RCC is very concerned by the attitude of the United Nations vis-à-vis the Rwandan president Paul Kagame who is being accused of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide by a number of high profile judges including a Spanish and French judges as well as well known human rights organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Right Watch, among others NGOs. Those crimes have also been recently revealed to the public by the French newspaper, “Le Monde”, on August 27, 2010 in a UN draft report that is planned to be released on October 01. This report was prepared by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navanethem Pillay, and it is the results of two years of work by hundreds of researchers in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
The report of the Mapping Exercise documenting the most serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law committed within the territory of the Democratic Republic of the Congo between March 1993 and June 2003, reveals that Kagame and his army, the Rwandan Patriot Army (RPA), “committed crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide” against the elderly, woman and children hutus, both Rwandans and Congolese between December 1996 and July 1998 and from August 1998 to 2003.
In 2008, Spain's High Court announced its intention to prosecute 40 Rwandan army officers for genocide, crimes against humanity and terrorism related to events that took place between 1994 and 2000, including under the Kagame's rule. The Spanish judiciary accused Kagame of fomenting the ethnic clashes in a bid to seize power. The Rwandan officers are accused, among other things, of murdering missionaries and Spanish expatriates who were allegedly witnessed a number of massacres. In light of these horrendous accusations charged against President Kagame, the Rwandan Congress of Canada did appreciate the decision of the Spanish Prime Minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero to not go ahead with a meeting with President Paul Kagame in Madrid after the Coordinating Committee for Development NGOs in Spain (CONGDE) had criticized "Zapatero's passivity for accepting without objection to work beside someone accused of genocide".
At the same occasion, your statement to reporters in Madrid was also encouraging where you had stated that:”I firmly believe in principles of human rights, that I defended them and that I had clearly always condemned all violations of human rights.” The fact that the Kigali regime threatens to withdraw its troops from Darfur cannot be a reason of promoting impunity by a respectable organization like the United Nations. The presence of troops under serious suspicion of genocide is unacceptable within a mission that has been deployed following acts of genocide and for which the International Criminal Court (ICC) has
been seized. It would be an honor for the UN to have troops with a blank criminal record and free from all suspicions. To trade the rights of thousands of human souls who have either perished or abused in various way in Congo under President Kagame directives against the convenience of meeting President Kagame’s blackmail list including the threat to withdraw the Rwandan troops contingent from Sudan would damage the credibility of the core mission of the UN. The RCC hope that your Excellency will consider this request with interest to ensure that no one, without exception, of those who have perpetrated acts of genocide in Rwanda and Congo against innocent civilians escape justice.
Pierre-Claver Nkinamubanzi, Ph.D. Rwandan Congress of Canada VP, Public relations and Information
