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Prof Lungu 9 years ago
Great, then!
Let Parliament get to work! Can Parliament show the people a prioritized list of work they hope to accomplish before the election?
What fights do they want to pick because it is easier to win, and get that b ... read full comment
Great, then!
Let Parliament get to work! Can Parliament show the people a prioritized list of work they hope to accomplish before the election?
What fights do they want to pick because it is easier to win, and get that behind? Why is all of that not available, if you are fighting for the FOI bill, Parliament?
Sometimes, "trying a whole lot" does not amount to a hell of beans, if all that trying is not strategic. Then, there is feigned "trying a whole lot", which the citizen themselves must determine based on information timely and freely provided to the people.
ITEM: You may call it the "Coalition on the Right to Information". However, as we've long argued, it is of paramount strategic importance to call the bill, the "Freedom of Information" bill. A "Right" is easily yanked.
READ: "...It may have taken almost twelve years to tie all the knots on the Right to Information Bill, but the relevant Committee of Parliament and the Coalition on the Right to Information has done "WELL" (our emphasis) in the face of executive obstruction..."
WE SAY: It has always been either executive obstruction or executive inaction. It is what we will now call the Bagbin-Mahama-Stop for the FOI bill.
That aside, how does IMANI know about the "well"? Where can the man in the street get a copy of that "well" document, to understand? Or is that document a secret document?
By-the-Way (BTW):
We Googled >. We obtained approx. 225 results. Nearly 50% was about "Health Minister snubs Parliament Assurances Committee." Tells us, maybe, the Parliament Assurances Committee does not even have a website. If that is the case, it will be pitiful indeed, inexcusable, if we must take the Parliament Assurances Committee as a serious stakeholder in these matters.
Peace!
Prof Lungu 9 years ago
Pass the Freedom of Information Bill!
Pass it now!
Pass the Freedom of Information Bill!
Pass it now!
YIKRA 9 years ago
All Ghanaians need to know how much each public official earns.
Why do they get paid our tax money at committee meetings while the citizens get paid with pothole roads, joblessness,and filthy environments?
Why BIG resou ... read full comment
All Ghanaians need to know how much each public official earns.
Why do they get paid our tax money at committee meetings while the citizens get paid with pothole roads, joblessness,and filthy environments?
Why BIG resources are sold in secret without anyone holding the seller responsible for causing losses?
Prof Lungu 9 years ago
YIKRA,
Yes, transparency!
LISTEN:
www.ghanahero.com/FOIB.html
No joke!
Let's get it done without further delay!
We don't want no Kibaki-problem!
We don't want Mugabe nonsense!
Pass it now, fili-fili!
Your C ... read full comment
YIKRA,
Yes, transparency!
LISTEN:
www.ghanahero.com/FOIB.html
No joke!
Let's get it done without further delay!
We don't want no Kibaki-problem!
We don't want Mugabe nonsense!
Pass it now, fili-fili!
Your Comment:
ELINAM 9 years ago
What the hell is democracy? Is it the importation of white man's values and culture of wearing a tire and suits or could it be values imbedded in our thousands of years living as the first socially evolved people on this plan ... read full comment
What the hell is democracy? Is it the importation of white man's values and culture of wearing a tire and suits or could it be values imbedded in our thousands of years living as the first socially evolved people on this planet? YES, BLACK PEOPLE.
My following comment may not closely relate to the topic but it is relevant to it.
In a story told to youth participants of the "KWIBOHORA 20 - PAN-AFRICAN YOUTH SUMMIT: - CONVERSATION WITH PRESIDENT KAGAME- Wed ,02 July 2014", President Kagame talked about how they pulled out a workable ancient African tradition to try over 150,000 perpetrators of the genocide and peacefully resettled them based on African norms while the so-called International Criminal Court opened in Kigali spent tens of million US dollar just to try only 60 culprits over many many years.
He admonished the youth to use both workable African norms and laws together with workable norms from other places.
East African leaders especially Presidents Kagame and Museven are in fact activist presidents and strong Pan-Africans who interacts with youths to create a seamless link between the old and youth for greater and fast integration of East Africa.
On other hands, West African leaders creates this big-manism aura around themselves and made themselves out touch and unapproachable to the youths and DO NOT TAKE INTEGRATION based on values of PAN-AFRICA seriously simple because France won't be happy with them.
They consult EU on everything and remained grossly "white men" in black faces.
Franklin Cudjoe, you're a smart dude, and i advice you follow these two East African presidents and bring their proactive approaches to bear on your friend politicians.
WE'RE LOSING IT IN GHANA AS THERE'S NO DIRECTION.
On the same forum with president Museveni (CONVERSATION WITH PRESIDENT MUSEVENI) ,he reminded young people that there're young people who could have old and outmoded ideas due to the ways they've been programed.
And we do have a lot of that amongst our Ghanaian youths.
Source: You tube
Prof Lungu 9 years ago
ELINAM,
Yes, your take is related because you also speak of "Constitutional" order, whether informed by African, totally African, or imported.
In particular, we will note the waste at bottom of the US federal/Judicial sys ... read full comment
ELINAM,
Yes, your take is related because you also speak of "Constitutional" order, whether informed by African, totally African, or imported.
In particular, we will note the waste at bottom of the US federal/Judicial system(s), via the US Constitution.
Many of the hard-fought "rights" that were made possible through tremendous sacrifices over generations have now been declared illegal, or headed that way. At the same time, the influence of personal/family fortunes on matters in the public domain is all out of proportions to the narrow behinds of their owners, and getting worse.
THAT IS WHY THE BEST FOI BILL MUST COMBINE THE BEST FEATURES OF THE BRITISH AND AMERICAN SYSTEMS, WITH DUE RECOGNIZANCE OF THE PEOPLE IT IS SUPPOSED TO EMPOWER/SERVE. For that, Ghanaian do not need Kagame. Nkrumah's work still remains the foundation.
In fact, we also know that Kagame is a war criminal. Therefore, Kagame thrashing the International Court of Justice does not amount to a hell of beans in our book. It only serves Kagame's narrow behind.
READ:
"...On 17th August 2012 counsel (1) for several Rwandan and Congolese (DRC) political and civil organizations, (2) delivered a complaint to the Prosecutor of the ICC concerning crimes allegedly committed by the current President of Rwanda Paul Kagame which are within the jurisdiction of the ICC. (3)
The complaint filed included UN reports dating back to 1994 concerning Kagame’s mass atrocities in Rwanda and Congo. These reports, two of which were suppressed by the UN and the prosecutors of the ICTR (4), are just a small sample of the extensive and overwhelming evidence which exists in the possession of the ICTR prosecutors that establish that serious crimes against humanity and war crimes were committed by Kagame and his Ugandan and western allies in Rwanda and Congo since 1990. The reports filed include the report of Robert Gersony of USAID who was tasked by the UNHCR in later 1994 with determining the conditions for the return of Hutu refugees who had fled the RPF forces into then Zaire that year. In his October 1994 report, Gersony states that the RPF forces committed systematic and sustained massacres of Hutus civilians beginning in April 1994 and that they were continuing. The UNHCR marked this report confidential and it was suppressed. However, it was placed in the hands of the prosecutor at the ICTR but the various prosecutors there have also kept it suppressed and even denied its existence.
The second report is that of Michael Hourigan, the Australian lawyer and Lead Investigator for Louise Arbour when she was Prosecutor. She tasked him with the mission of determining who had assassinated the Hutu presidents of Rwanda and Burundi and the Rwandan Army chief of staff on April 6, 1994 when their plane was shot down over Kigali. She did so thinking those responsible were Hutu «extremists». However, Hourigan learned, and had the documentary evidence and testimony to prove it, that the Zero Network of the RPF shot down the plane on Kagame’s orders, with the help of a foreign power.
When Hourigan presented this evidence to Arbour she ordered the investigation terminated and the file handed over to her. No further action has been taken on that evidence since. There is evidence that she stopped the investigation on the orders of the American government. This had three consequences; it hid the truth of who was responsible for the events in Rwanda in 1994 from the world, it made Louise Arbour an accessory to a mass murder, and at the same time, it established her value as a cooperative asset that the USA could use in the aggression against Yugoslavia in 1999 when she was told by Bill Clinton to prevent negotiations and prolong the war by charging President Milosevic with false accusations of crimes against humanity.
The third report included in the complaint is the Mapping Report of 2010 to the UN Secretary General that details the large-scale atrocities that were committed by the RPF and the Ugandans and the Congolese in Rwanda and Zaire (DRC) from 1993 to 2003. The final UN report is the Addendum report of the Special Committee of the Security Council (Group of Experts) on the situation in the Congo of June 2012.
These UN reports are supported by the evidence held by the Prosecutors at the ICTR and by the evidence presented by the defence in several of the trials as to what actually transpired in Rwanda from 1990 to 1994. This evidence is completely at odds with the accepted western version but has been studiously ignored by both the western media and academics and many so-called experts.
The UN Report giving the ICC jurisdiction over Kagame is known as the Addendum. It is a supplement to a letter to the Secretary General of the UN submitted by the Group of Experts. Once again, it appears there were efforts to suppress this report as the United States tried to prevent its release. These documents present findings that provide a reasonable basis to conclude that crimes within the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court have been and are being committed by Paul Kagame and others under his command and control and which could not escape the attention of an ICC Prosecutor who was dedicated to eliminating impunity for war crimes. The documented evidence establishes that the Rwandan authorities, led by President Paul Kagame, and including, among others, his minister of defence, General James Kaberebe, General Charles Kayonga, the Rwandan Defence Forces Chief of Staff, and his Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Defence, General Jack Nziza, committed serious international crimes in the DRC by supporting the M23 «rebel» group.
Specifically the Addendum provides reliable and documented evidence that these officers are providing direct military assistance to the M23 rebellion inside the DRC including the use of children under the age of 18 as M23 combatants (5), and forced former enemy combatants of the Democratic Forces For the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) to serve with units sent by the Rwanda Defence Forces to reinforce M23 (6). The criminal responsibility of the President Paul Kagame and his subordinates for these crimes is based on Article 28 of the Rome Statute of the ICC concerning superior responsibility.
The Mapping Report of 2010, which covers the period 1993 to 2003, provides evidence that the crimes committed by Kagame and his allies amounting to genocide against the Hutu people in Rwanda spread into the territory of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, beginning in 1996 through to 2003, where the armed forces of Rwanda, Uganda and of the DRC committed genocide against the Hutu ethnic group in the DRC. One Hutu witness at the ICTR who fled 3,000 kilometers through the Congo forest to escape this attempted extermination called it the «genocide with no name and further testified, along with other witnesses, that they observed UN and US spotter planes over them before each RPF attack». (7) During the entire period of time in which these crimes were committed Paul Kagame had command responsibility over the Rwandan armed forces. (8)
The Complainants in the action of August 17 represent various civil society groups in Rwanda and Congo and include former senior members of the RPF government in Rwanda. This action is perhaps the first of its kind by Hutus and Tutsis acting in cooperation against the Kagame regime and provides a basis for optimism that Hutus and Tutsis can come to an accord and can lead Rwanda and its people forward together. They have requested the Prosecutor to commence an investigation with a view to laying charges against Paul Kagame and any other person or persons complicit in the crimes set out in the Addendum and they have relied on the stated intention of the ICC, set out in its preamble, that no one has impunity for crimes committed within the jurisdiction of the ICC.
The Complaint also notes that there is a vast amount of evidence against Kagame in the hands of the Prosecutors of the ICTR and that, while neither this evidence nor that of the Gersony, Hourigan or Mapping reports provide the ICC with evidence of crimes within its jurisdiction, they do provide evidence that the crimes of Kagame are of a continuing and grave nature and reveal a systematic pattern and intention and add credence to the Addendum Report. The Complainants also note that this protection of Kagame and his allies from prosecution at the ICTR has had the direct consequence of giving him a sense of impunity and has encouraged him to commit more crimes. An example of the evidence in the hands of the ICTR, (the Hourigan Report being another cited above) is the testimony of defence witness Abdul Ruzibiza, a former officer of the RPF, who testified in the Military I trial that the assassination of the Rwanda and Burundi presidents in 1994 was planned and committed by the Rwandan Patriotic Front under command of current President Kagame and that he was a member of the shoot down team. (9) In September of 2010, Ruzibiza died in Norway at the age of 40 under unclear circumstances and amid rumours of threats against him by the CIA.
This is not the first death of witnesses who gave testimony or others who were intent on exposing the crimes of the RPF and Kagame. Witness GAP, a prosecution witness in the Military II trial against General Bizimungu, the Rwandan army chief of staff, and who had recanted his testimony as false and extorted by threats of the RPF regime was recalled in 2009 to the ICTR to explain his recantation. He never reached the courtroom. He arrived in Arusha and was placed in a UN safe house to await his testimony. The day before he was due to testify he disappeared from the UN safe house and has not been seen by anyone since. Protests and a demand for an investigation by defence counsel about how he could disappear from a UN guarded safe house were ignored.
Seth Sendashonga, the former RPF Minister of Interior, was assassinated by an RPF death squad in Nairobi May 16, 1998, after he announced he was going to testify at the ICTR that the witnesses provided by the RPF to the tribunal were all forced to give false testimony by the RPF government (10). In December 2005, Juvenal Uwilingiyimana, a Hutu, and former Minister of Trade and Commerce, was found floating in a canal in Brussles, naked, with his hands cut off, after disappearing a few weeks earlier. He had been in contact with Steven Rapp and two of his investigators, who were pressuring him to give false testimony for the prosecution at the ICTR, according to a letter he had sent to the President of the ICTR prior to his disappearance. In the letter to the President of the ICTR and to Rapp, he said that Rapp’s two Canadian investigators had threatened to kill him and cut his body in pieces unless he cooperated. He refused to do so and refused to meet with them again. Shortly after that letter was sent he was murdered. Again, a demand by defence counsel for the suspension of Rapp and the two Canadian investigators pending an investigation into their possible involvement was ignored.
One of the writers (11), counsel to General Augustin Ndindiliyimana, chief of staff of the gendarmerie of Rwanda in the Military II trial, was himself threatened in July 2008 by a CIA officer working at the ICTR that if he did not watch his step he would be killed. This threat, echoing previous threats by the RPF, was reported to the President of the Tribunal but he was disbelieved. Scottish lawyer Andrew McCartan, Scotland’s foremost military lawyer, was killed in October 2003 when his car went off a cliff in Scotland just a few weeks after having told the same writer at a meeting in Toronto that he had tried to confront Bill Clinton about the US role in Rwanda and that he had learned secrets about the US involvement in Rwanda in 1994 and its control of the ICTR. Scottish police could find no cause for the car crash. In her memoirs the former Chief Prosecutor of International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, Carla del Ponte, reported that Paul Kagame torpedoed the investigation of crimes committed by RPF and that the US government also put pressure on her to leave Kagame alone and when she refused to sign a document to that effect she was soon replaced. (12) To no one’s surprise the new Prosecutor, Hassan Jallow, immediately lost interest in the RPF and Kagame. In 2010, American defence counsel, Peter Erlinder was arrested by the RPF regime the day he arrived in Rwanda to try to defend FDU-Inkingi politician Victoire Ingabire, facing political charges by the regime, because he had merely repeated publicly what the evidence was at the ICTR about RPF crimes. He was only released after extensive intervention by other defence counsel and the reluctant intervention of the US State Department.
The Rwandan and Ugandan invasions of the Democratic Republic of the Congo beginning in 1996 created a severe problem for Africa. Year by year the situation became worse. In 1999 the Democratic Republic of the Congo initiated proceedings against Rwanda in the International Court of Justice. (13) That proceeding was later discontinued because of the Congo’s expressed belief in their ability to resolve the matter by negotiation. But in 2002 Congo was forced to institute new proceedings against Rwanda. Because of technical reasons (with very questionable argumentation) (14) the ICJ found no jurisdiction in the case, so the Congolese claims stay unanswered. (15)
The attempts by the NANO powers to indict heads of state for actions committed on the territory of foreign countries, using the UN as their tool, have become more and more frequent but the leaders targeted for this treatment are those who stand in the way of western interests, never those that bend to their interests. We can cite as examples the case against Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic for the alleged planning and fuelling of the war crimes in Bosnia, that against Liberian President Charles Taylor for his alleged aiding and abetting crimes committed in Sierra Leone, and finally the case against the vice-president of the DRC J-P.Bemba for the military assistance in CAR.
Kagame is an example of an American supported leader whose crimes go unpunished because he is useful to them and because they are party to his crimes. The Prosecutors of the ICTR have wasted 17 years protecting Kagame from his responsibility for the crimes he and his forces committed in Rwanda in 1994. The consequence has been a continuation of those crimes into the Congo, drowning the Great Lakes region of Africa in blood. Since the ICTR has refused to act on its responsibilities, it is now up to the ICC to take up the burden and to commence an investigation into the crimes set out in the Addendum report and the crimes committed by Kagame and others who support him since 2003, the date on which the jurisdiction of the ICC begins. The impunity given to Kagame and his allies can only come to an end, and with it the wars in the Great Lakes region, when his crimes and those of the powers that support him are exposed and brought to justice. It is not enough to study the consequences of these wars. It is necessary to understand the reasons and the causes for these wars. The August 17 action at The Hague is an attempt to start the long delayed process of bringing Kagame and his allies to justice. Only when this is achieved can Africans begin the to create the conditions for the restoration of peace and the conditions necessary to develop Africa’s immense potential . The August 17 action should be supported.
Christopher C. Black – Barrister, Counsel to the complainants in the present case (Canada).
Alexander B. Mezyaev – Head of the Department of International Law, Law Faculty, University of Management (Russia).
SOURCE: www.globalresearch.ca/kagames-mass-atrocities-in-rwanda-and-the-congo/5346739
Prof Lungu 9 years ago
READ:
by Christopher Black , Alex Mezyaev
"...On 17th August 2012 counsel (1) for several Rwandan and Congolese (DRC) political and civil organizations, (2) delivered a complaint to the Prosecutor of the ICC concerning ... read full comment
READ:
by Christopher Black , Alex Mezyaev
"...On 17th August 2012 counsel (1) for several Rwandan and Congolese (DRC) political and civil organizations, (2) delivered a complaint to the Prosecutor of the ICC concerning crimes allegedly committed by the current President of Rwanda Paul Kagame which are within the jurisdiction of the ICC. (3)
The complaint filed included UN reports dating back to 1994 concerning Kagame’s mass atrocities in Rwanda and Congo. These reports, two of which were suppressed by the UN and the prosecutors of the ICTR (4), are just a small sample of the extensive and overwhelming evidence which exists in the possession of the ICTR prosecutors that establish that serious crimes against humanity and war crimes were committed by Kagame and his Ugandan and western allies in Rwanda and Congo since 1990. The reports filed include the report of Robert Gersony of USAID who was tasked by the UNHCR in later 1994 with determining the conditions for the return of Hutu refugees who had fled the RPF forces into then Zaire that year. In his October 1994 report, Gersony states that the RPF forces committed systematic and sustained massacres of Hutus civilians beginning in April 1994 and that they were continuing. The UNHCR marked this report confidential and it was suppressed. However, it was placed in the hands of the prosecutor at the ICTR but the various prosecutors there have also kept it suppressed and even denied its existence.
The second report is that of Michael Hourigan, the Australian lawyer and Lead Investigator for Louise Arbour when she was Prosecutor. She tasked him with the mission of determining who had assassinated the Hutu presidents of Rwanda and Burundi and the Rwandan Army chief of staff on April 6, 1994 when their plane was shot down over Kigali. She did so thinking those responsible were Hutu «extremists». However, Hourigan learned, and had the documentary evidence and testimony to prove it, that the Zero Network of the RPF shot down the plane on Kagame’s orders, with the help of a foreign power.
When Hourigan presented this evidence to Arbour she ordered the investigation terminated and the file handed over to her. No further action has been taken on that evidence since. There is evidence that she stopped the investigation on the orders of the American government. This had three consequences; it hid the truth of who was responsible for the events in Rwanda in 1994 from the world, it made Louise Arbour an accessory to a mass murder, and at the same time, it established her value as a cooperative asset that the USA could use in the aggression against Yugoslavia in 1999 when she was told by Bill Clinton to prevent negotiations and prolong the war by charging President Milosevic with false accusations of crimes against humanity.
The third report included in the complaint is the Mapping Report of 2010 to the UN Secretary General that details the large-scale atrocities that were committed by the RPF and the Ugandans and the Congolese in Rwanda and Zaire (DRC) from 1993 to 2003. The final UN report is the Addendum report of the Special Committee of the Security Council (Group of Experts) on the situation in the Congo of June 2012.
These UN reports are supported by the evidence held by the Prosecutors at the ICTR and by the evidence presented by the defence in several of the trials as to what actually transpired in Rwanda from 1990 to 1994. This evidence is completely at odds with the accepted western version but has been studiously ignored by both the western media and academics and many so-called experts.
The UN Report giving the ICC jurisdiction over Kagame is known as the Addendum. It is a supplement to a letter to the Secretary General of the UN submitted by the Group of Experts. Once again, it appears there were efforts to suppress this report as the United States tried to prevent its release. These documents present findings that provide a reasonable basis to conclude that crimes within the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court have been and are being committed by Paul Kagame and others under his command and control and which could not escape the attention of an ICC Prosecutor who was dedicated to eliminating impunity for war crimes. The documented evidence establishes that the Rwandan authorities, led by President Paul Kagame, and including, among others, his minister of defence, General James Kaberebe, General Charles Kayonga, the Rwandan Defence Forces Chief of Staff, and his Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Defence, General Jack Nziza, committed serious international crimes in the DRC by supporting the M23 «rebel» group.
Specifically the Addendum provides reliable and documented evidence that these officers are providing direct military assistance to the M23 rebellion inside the DRC including the use of children under the age of 18 as M23 combatants (5), and forced former enemy combatants of the Democratic Forces For the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) to serve with units sent by the Rwanda Defence Forces to reinforce M23 (6). The criminal responsibility of the President Paul Kagame and his subordinates for these crimes is based on Article 28 of the Rome Statute of the ICC concerning superior responsibility.
The Mapping Report of 2010, which covers the period 1993 to 2003, provides evidence that the crimes committed by Kagame and his allies amounting to genocide against the Hutu people in Rwanda spread into the territory of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, beginning in 1996 through to 2003, where the armed forces of Rwanda, Uganda and of the DRC committed genocide against the Hutu ethnic group in the DRC. One Hutu witness at the ICTR who fled 3,000 kilometers through the Congo forest to escape this attempted extermination called it the «genocide with no name and further testified, along with other witnesses, that they observed UN and US spotter planes over them before each RPF attack». (7) During the entire period of time in which these crimes were committed Paul Kagame had command responsibility over the Rwandan armed forces. (8)
The Complainants in the action of August 17 represent various civil society groups in Rwanda and Congo and include former senior members of the RPF government in Rwanda. This action is perhaps the first of its kind by Hutus and Tutsis acting in cooperation against the Kagame regime and provides a basis for optimism that Hutus and Tutsis can come to an accord and can lead Rwanda and its people forward together. They have requested the Prosecutor to commence an investigation with a view to laying charges against Paul Kagame and any other person or persons complicit in the crimes set out in the Addendum and they have relied on the stated intention of the ICC, set out in its preamble, that no one has impunity for crimes committed within the jurisdiction of the ICC.
The Complaint also notes that there is a vast amount of evidence against Kagame in the hands of the Prosecutors of the ICTR and that, while neither this evidence nor that of the Gersony, Hourigan or Mapping reports provide the ICC with evidence of crimes within its jurisdiction, they do provide evidence that the crimes of Kagame are of a continuing and grave nature and reveal a systematic pattern and intention and add credence to the Addendum Report. The Complainants also note that this protection of Kagame and his allies from prosecution at the ICTR has had the direct consequence of giving him a sense of impunity and has encouraged him to commit more crimes. An example of the evidence in the hands of the ICTR, (the Hourigan Report being another cited above) is the testimony of defence witness Abdul Ruzibiza, a former officer of the RPF, who testified in the Military I trial that the assassination of the Rwanda and Burundi presidents in 1994 was planned and committed by the Rwandan Patriotic Front under command of current President Kagame and that he was a member of the shoot down team. (9) In September of 2010, Ruzibiza died in Norway at the age of 40 under unclear circumstances and amid rumours of threats against him by the CIA.
This is not the first death of witnesses who gave testimony or others who were intent on exposing the crimes of the RPF and Kagame. Witness GAP, a prosecution witness in the Military II trial against General Bizimungu, the Rwandan army chief of staff, and who had recanted his testimony as false and extorted by threats of the RPF regime was recalled in 2009 to the ICTR to explain his recantation. He never reached the courtroom. He arrived in Arusha and was placed in a UN safe house to await his testimony. The day before he was due to testify he disappeared from the UN safe house and has not been seen by anyone since. Protests and a demand for an investigation by defence counsel about how he could disappear from a UN guarded safe house were ignored.
Seth Sendashonga, the former RPF Minister of Interior, was assassinated by an RPF death squad in Nairobi May 16, 1998, after he announced he was going to testify at the ICTR that the witnesses provided by the RPF to the tribunal were all forced to give false testimony by the RPF government (10). In December 2005, Juvenal Uwilingiyimana, a Hutu, and former Minister of Trade and Commerce, was found floating in a canal in Brussles, naked, with his hands cut off, after disappearing a few weeks earlier. He had been in contact with Steven Rapp and two of his investigators, who were pressuring him to give false testimony for the prosecution at the ICTR, according to a letter he had sent to the President of the ICTR prior to his disappearance. In the letter to the President of the ICTR and to Rapp, he said that Rapp’s two Canadian investigators had threatened to kill him and cut his body in pieces unless he cooperated. He refused to do so and refused to meet with them again. Shortly after that letter was sent he was murdered. Again, a demand by defence counsel for the suspension of Rapp and the two Canadian investigators pending an investigation into their possible involvement was ignored.
One of the writers (11), counsel to General Augustin Ndindiliyimana, chief of staff of the gendarmerie of Rwanda in the Military II trial, was himself threatened in July 2008 by a CIA officer working at the ICTR that if he did not watch his step he would be killed. This threat, echoing previous threats by the RPF, was reported to the President of the Tribunal but he was disbelieved. Scottish lawyer Andrew McCartan, Scotland’s foremost military lawyer, was killed in October 2003 when his car went off a cliff in Scotland just a few weeks after having told the same writer at a meeting in Toronto that he had tried to confront Bill Clinton about the US role in Rwanda and that he had learned secrets about the US involvement in Rwanda in 1994 and its control of the ICTR. Scottish police could find no cause for the car crash. In her memoirs the former Chief Prosecutor of International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, Carla del Ponte, reported that Paul Kagame torpedoed the investigation of crimes committed by RPF and that the US government also put pressure on her to leave Kagame alone and when she refused to sign a document to that effect she was soon replaced. (12) To no one’s surprise the new Prosecutor, Hassan Jallow, immediately lost interest in the RPF and Kagame. In 2010, American defence counsel, Peter Erlinder was arrested by the RPF regime the day he arrived in Rwanda to try to defend FDU-Inkingi politician Victoire Ingabire, facing political charges by the regime, because he had merely repeated publicly what the evidence was at the ICTR about RPF crimes. He was only released after extensive intervention by other defence counsel and the reluctant intervention of the US State Department.
The Rwandan and Ugandan invasions of the Democratic Republic of the Congo beginning in 1996 created a severe problem for Africa. Year by year the situation became worse. In 1999 the Democratic Republic of the Congo initiated proceedings against Rwanda in the International Court of Justice. (13) That proceeding was later discontinued because of the Congo’s expressed belief in their ability to resolve the matter by negotiation. But in 2002 Congo was forced to institute new proceedings against Rwanda. Because of technical reasons (with very questionable argumentation) (14) the ICJ found no jurisdiction in the case, so the Congolese claims stay unanswered. (15)
The attempts by the NANO powers to indict heads of state for actions committed on the territory of foreign countries, using the UN as their tool, have become more and more frequent but the leaders targeted for this treatment are those who stand in the way of western interests, never those that bend to their interests. We can cite as examples the case against Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic for the alleged planning and fuelling of the war crimes in Bosnia, that against Liberian President Charles Taylor for his alleged aiding and abetting crimes committed in Sierra Leone, and finally the case against the vice-president of the DRC J-P.Bemba for the military assistance in CAR.
Kagame is an example of an American supported leader whose crimes go unpunished because he is useful to them and because they are party to his crimes. The Prosecutors of the ICTR have wasted 17 years protecting Kagame from his responsibility for the crimes he and his forces committed in Rwanda in 1994. The consequence has been a continuation of those crimes into the Congo, drowning the Great Lakes region of Africa in blood. Since the ICTR has refused to act on its responsibilities, it is now up to the ICC to take up the burden and to commence an investigation into the crimes set out in the Addendum report and the crimes committed by Kagame and others who support him since 2003, the date on which the jurisdiction of the ICC begins. The impunity given to Kagame and his allies can only come to an end, and with it the wars in the Great Lakes region, when his crimes and those of the powers that support him are exposed and brought to justice. It is not enough to study the consequences of these wars. It is necessary to understand the reasons and the causes for these wars. The August 17 action at The Hague is an attempt to start the long delayed process of bringing Kagame and his allies to justice. Only when this is achieved can Africans begin the to create the conditions for the restoration of peace and the conditions necessary to develop Africa’s immense potential . The August 17 action should be supported.
Christopher C. Black – Barrister, Counsel to the complainants in the present case (Canada).
Alexander B. Mezyaev – Head of the Department of International Law, Law Faculty, University of Management (Russia).
SOURCE: www.globalresearch.ca/kagames-mass-atrocities-in-rwanda-and-the-congo/5346739
ELINAM 9 years ago
Those who can build Africa and doing things Ghanaian leaders can never do with the kind of mentality prevailing in the brainless heads of our leaders will never be in the good books of the western media and leaders.
WHY? ... read full comment
Those who can build Africa and doing things Ghanaian leaders can never do with the kind of mentality prevailing in the brainless heads of our leaders will never be in the good books of the western media and leaders.
WHY? Because what you need to build Africa with is what the EU too wants. Those who will give hope to our people to be confident in themselves and not in our natural enemies will never be in the good book of the west.
If Kagame is war criminal, then what is the crime of France and Belgium who set up these ppl through social stratification as Tutsi/Hutu?
Did you know that the your god white Belgians would separate even twins as Tutsi/Hutu on their identification card based on who was slim with long nose and who was stout with broad nose?
I'd rather live under Kagame who now embraced his local language as national language and speak it at functions and got rid of an evil colonial past and it's french language.
Yeah I know you'd say the've adopted English and what about that. But let me tell you that the RWANDA's with their english taught to them by Kenyans and Ugandans wouldn't have no sentimental attachment to England or the whore called Elizabeth. They're learning english just as the Chinese are learning it with no regards to England. So in that sense, they'd be much better in the mind than we Ghanaians.
THE WAR IS ON THE MIND. And the liberation GOTTA be on the MIND.
The future Rwandans will have NO colonial master and they would take no crap from no one as we in Ghana ready and willing to take.
Sad that as a professor, you do not know what Africa really needs.
SORRY FOR YOUR STUDENTS THAT YOU KEEP PUSHING IN A BOX.
WHEN BBC/CNN SAY SOMETHING IS NOT GOOD FOR US, then EVERY PARROT starts singing it because it is the gospel truth?
Prof Lungu 9 years ago
ELINAM,
You are ascribing a lot to us about things you do not know.
What is that about " god white Belgians?
And "PARROTS OF THE WHITE MAN"?
We are glad you know what Africa needs!
QUESTION: What does Kagame's ... read full comment
ELINAM,
You are ascribing a lot to us about things you do not know.
What is that about " god white Belgians?
And "PARROTS OF THE WHITE MAN"?
We are glad you know what Africa needs!
QUESTION: What does Kagame's criminality have to do with "the crime of France and Belgium"?
Clearly, it did not have to take ethnic cleansing for Kagame to " embrace...his local language."
On the other hand, maybe, when one is a war criminal, and one is wanted by many, one will always want to do better, like attaching themselves to their Africaness, to the people they brutalized, also!
Finally, we are as well glad that you know that "...future Rwandans will have NO colonial master and they would take no crap from no one..."
We can only wish!
We can only wish that Kagame will not be Rwanda, and Rwanda, Kagame!
ELINAM 9 years ago
All 'am saying is let's look into our culture and bring in the best practices. We can not say we do not have NO best practices in Africa to tap from that can best relate to the culture that we live with.
BEING AFRICANS DOES ... read full comment
All 'am saying is let's look into our culture and bring in the best practices. We can not say we do not have NO best practices in Africa to tap from that can best relate to the culture that we live with.
BEING AFRICANS DOES NOT MEAN WE'RE BACKWARD AND BEING EUROPEAN DOES NO GUARANTEE CIVILITY. HELL NO!
How about the wisdom behind the settlement of 150,000 wrong doers through African traditional system that worked without spending so much money that could have been used to build schools or health center.
The last time Ghana went court over an election to find a solution our forefathers 200years ago would have deliberated without all that money wasted in 2013, everyone lose as productivity was down. I'm not saying court system is bad but NOT all is good either.
Can we go deep in to our tradition to find solutions to say,our prison system?
Yes of cause.
We took prison system from barbarians to lock wrong doers up but do not have the means to house and feed them properly.
Do you want to tell me that Africa that has been socially active long before the white man came out from his cave do not know how to deal with criminals in any better way than this, that this barbarian system is the only way?
IT BECAME THE ONLY WAY SIMPLY BECAUSE WE STOPPED THINKING.
Prof Lungu 9 years ago
ELINAM,
Thank for the note/comment.
We agree with you on all those points. And yes, Ghanaians ought to do better, particularly on the prison question.
It is just that we thought Kagame did not belong there, at all. If ... read full comment
ELINAM,
Thank for the note/comment.
We agree with you on all those points. And yes, Ghanaians ought to do better, particularly on the prison question.
It is just that we thought Kagame did not belong there, at all. If only because Kagame has a particular agenda vis a vis the young ones he was speaking to. Maybe Kagame is thinking it is one of those young ones that will finally bring him to account, in his old age.
As you may know, there is no status of limitation on mass murders and atrocities, including ethnic cleansing.
Thanks, greatly!
ELINAM 9 years ago
Kagame will be fine and be remembered for many years to come.
When I was kid in my town, criminals and liars organized a social protest and asked us to chant "Nkrumah fiafitor nandu ruwa ka sheije"
Yes, the traitors were ... read full comment
Kagame will be fine and be remembered for many years to come.
When I was kid in my town, criminals and liars organized a social protest and asked us to chant "Nkrumah fiafitor nandu ruwa ka sheije"
Yes, the traitors were preparing us to skin Nkrumah should he ever returned to Ghana when we are in position to judge him. But when I became a man and think independently as a man, I knew better.And also read the confessions of the cartoonist Ghanatta that he was paid and pressured to presented him in a bad light.
Yes 'am aware certain people like you believed in western ideals and believed those who fight for Africa liberation are bad.
In todays Ghana, with all the legalized corruption, anyone who succeeds to clean it has to spill blood and throw thousands in jail. Thats the only way out and I know your friends in the west won't speak good of that person.
But the inevitable has to come, and when it did, JJ would looked like a choir boy.
Abeeku Mensah 9 years ago
You're some 20+years a little late asking the question Franklin Cudjoe; where were you during the 1992 constitutional convention or passage by our wonderful parliament? Remember parliament chose to indemnify evils of their ow ... read full comment
You're some 20+years a little late asking the question Franklin Cudjoe; where were you during the 1992 constitutional convention or passage by our wonderful parliament? Remember parliament chose to indemnify evils of their own past activities as a priority over a need for oversight desired in a system of co-equal branches of government. Furthermore, our current system is just as shallow as the one under Nkrumah we claim not to like; we left intact the supremacy of the executive to do what it please. Nkrumah did essentially rule for almost 8 years, the same amount of time subsequent presidents have ruled Ghana with iron fist and complete control of the nation's money, appointments and unilateral decisions when it comes to negotiations with foreign entities. Why now Franklin? Which government do you want to deny the powerful tools of the executive which have been abused and misused by J. J. Rawlings, J. A. Kufour, the late Atta-Mills and now John Mahama? It goes to show we are incompetent in Ghana when we cannot accurately copy the system of government from UK and the USA or should I say it was by design to enable others hide behind tribal and party loyalties to ruin Ghana?
Prof Lungu 9 years ago
Abeeku Mensah,
We agree!
The "powerful tools of the executive" contribute greatly to corruption (theft of "nation's money, appointments and unilateral decisions...").
So how do we help stop all of that, in 2015, and i ... read full comment
Abeeku Mensah,
We agree!
The "powerful tools of the executive" contribute greatly to corruption (theft of "nation's money, appointments and unilateral decisions...").
So how do we help stop all of that, in 2015, and in the short-term?
ITEM: WE believe IMANI itself could do more by providing access to documents or links to documents that support the work they want us to believe they are doing. Providing links in their own essay, would be a beginning.
In our book, it is getting to the point of bizarre to claim, for instance, the so-called Right to Information bill is "well", and then neglect to point readers to copies of that same "information bill"/document, as it is today.
Unless it is a secret document!
Finally, this essay could be a bit confusing to some. We ought to be able to render in ordinary words what experts say, if we must depend on them.
Unless, we have the same or identical interests/agenda.
If we don't, then let's all do better communicating to all!
Again, peace!
Anita 9 years ago
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Great, then!
Let Parliament get to work! Can Parliament show the people a prioritized list of work they hope to accomplish before the election?
What fights do they want to pick because it is easier to win, and get that b ...
read full comment
Pass the Freedom of Information Bill!
Pass it now!
All Ghanaians need to know how much each public official earns.
Why do they get paid our tax money at committee meetings while the citizens get paid with pothole roads, joblessness,and filthy environments?
Why BIG resou ...
read full comment
YIKRA,
Yes, transparency!
LISTEN:
www.ghanahero.com/FOIB.html
No joke!
Let's get it done without further delay!
We don't want no Kibaki-problem!
We don't want Mugabe nonsense!
Pass it now, fili-fili!
Your C ...
read full comment
What the hell is democracy? Is it the importation of white man's values and culture of wearing a tire and suits or could it be values imbedded in our thousands of years living as the first socially evolved people on this plan ...
read full comment
ELINAM,
Yes, your take is related because you also speak of "Constitutional" order, whether informed by African, totally African, or imported.
In particular, we will note the waste at bottom of the US federal/Judicial sys ...
read full comment
READ:
by Christopher Black , Alex Mezyaev
"...On 17th August 2012 counsel (1) for several Rwandan and Congolese (DRC) political and civil organizations, (2) delivered a complaint to the Prosecutor of the ICC concerning ...
read full comment
Those who can build Africa and doing things Ghanaian leaders can never do with the kind of mentality prevailing in the brainless heads of our leaders will never be in the good books of the western media and leaders.
WHY? ...
read full comment
ELINAM,
You are ascribing a lot to us about things you do not know.
What is that about " god white Belgians?
And "PARROTS OF THE WHITE MAN"?
We are glad you know what Africa needs!
QUESTION: What does Kagame's ...
read full comment
All 'am saying is let's look into our culture and bring in the best practices. We can not say we do not have NO best practices in Africa to tap from that can best relate to the culture that we live with.
BEING AFRICANS DOES ...
read full comment
ELINAM,
Thank for the note/comment.
We agree with you on all those points. And yes, Ghanaians ought to do better, particularly on the prison question.
It is just that we thought Kagame did not belong there, at all. If ...
read full comment
Kagame will be fine and be remembered for many years to come.
When I was kid in my town, criminals and liars organized a social protest and asked us to chant "Nkrumah fiafitor nandu ruwa ka sheije"
Yes, the traitors were ...
read full comment
You're some 20+years a little late asking the question Franklin Cudjoe; where were you during the 1992 constitutional convention or passage by our wonderful parliament? Remember parliament chose to indemnify evils of their ow ...
read full comment
Abeeku Mensah,
We agree!
The "powerful tools of the executive" contribute greatly to corruption (theft of "nation's money, appointments and unilateral decisions...").
So how do we help stop all of that, in 2015, and i ...
read full comment
Support for Mum and Dad
Odo Home & Social Care Agency
Odocare provide Home & Social Care to individuals of all ages with various requirements including care for the elderly and support for families and friends.
If you are ...
read full comment