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Tag: HomeNews

  • Motor-Taxi Operator Wins MTN Laptop

    {{Vedast Ndeze a motorcycle taxi operator has won a laptop in a weekly contest -Sharama na MTN prize on August 29th.}}

    In the next five days, MTN will issue the second Sharama car to the winner.

    Vedast said, “I have won the laptop today. But I will compete for car”.
    Among other prizes given include; “2 motorcycles, 21phones, 5 bicycles, and 5 matresses.

    Other 10 winners received 50.000frw each for making transactions through mobile money transfer.

    Egide Ntunguranyi who won a phone said,“ it makes me hopeful I may get the car”.

  • Catholic Church Bans Women Handbags

    {{In Nigeria, ST. Theresa Catholic Cathedral, Nsukka, Enugu State has announced that from September 9th 2012, the church will no longer allow women with big head gears and handbags into the church premises. }}

    Only head scarfs and very small purses are allowed.

    “Please, in view of the present security challenges, the church has urged women to stop coming to Sunday service with big headgears and bags to enable security men know when bomb will be smuggled into the church.

    The church has directed security men at the church gate to seize big head gears and bags from Sept. 9. This measure is aimed towards enhancing the security of the faithful during Sunday mass.”

  • Rwanda’s 9YBE Education Model Wins Award

    {{Rwanda’s Education model- ‘Nine Year Basic Education (9YBE)’ has won the 2012 Commonwealth Education Good Practice Award.}}

    Rwanda was presented with the award in Mauritius at the opening ceremony of the 18th Conference of Commonwealth Education Ministers.

    Dr. Ahmed Rashid Beebeejaun, the Mauritian Deputy Prime Minister presented the award to Emmanuel Muvunyi the Deputy Director-General of the Rwanda Education Board who received the award on behalf of Rwanda government.

    Rwanda was chosen winner out of 123 applications from 27 countries submitted for the third round of the awards.

    The 9YBE was launched in 2009 after government successfully implementing the Universal Education, initiated six years earlier.

    Dr. Vincent Biruta, noted, “Rwanda has many best practices to offer, from which other countries can draw inspiration. This is a vote of confidence for Rwanda’s development and progress in the field of education.

    With Rwanda being a new member of the Commonwealth, it’s a vote of confidence in our nation’s development and progress in the field of education.”

  • Miss Rwanda 2012 to Get Luxury SUV

    {{The Miss Rwanda 2012 Crown Beauty queen will walk away with a ‘Havar M2’ car valued at Frw12million.}}

  • Eastern Province to Double Honey Production

    {{Rwanda Agriculture Board (RAB)has donated equipment worth Frw2.750Million to Honey Producers in Karangazi, Nyagatare district and urged them to increase honey production in the area.}}

    Kayihura Agaba Fred in charge of development of honey production in the area revealed that the province intends to harvest over 84 tones of honey in 2012 alone.

    Currently only 40 tons are produced annually in the province but Kayihura urges all those engaged in honey production to increase their yields to double the output.

    Sirikare Diyonizi a bee farmer commended the support provided by RAB saying the equipment will aid bee farmers improve their practices.

    He however, urged RAB to provide capacity building to the bee farmers in the area.

  • KAGAME: Rwanda’s Priorities Focus on Development, Not Illicit Foreign Ventures

    President Paul Kagame said in an Interview with a Newyork based Metro media outlet that Rwanda plays no part in the current crisis in the DRC —he said Rwanda has no interest in ‘costly, pointless foreign adventures’ that divert Rwanda’s progress from the world’s poorest country 20 years ago to one of Africa’s most dynamic countries today.

    Below are details of the conversation as told to TONY METCALF of New York Metro. The Interview was first published August 29, 2012 4:00 a.m.
    The original intro of the conversation has been edited to suit our readers.

    Metro: {{On the cusp of your nation’s Security Council membership, an addendum to a United Nations report by the Group of Experts accused Rwanda of unacceptable interference in the mineral-rich eastern part of the DRC, where lawless militia and illicit business interests rule, for failure of control of a weak central Congolese government. How do you respond to these accusations?}}

    {{Paul Kagame:}} These accusations are not true. Our national priorities have to be directed toward our country’s development, not toward foreign ventures, in particular illicit ones.

    The history and national interest of Rwanda and the Rwandan people dictate our national orientation. Our country experienced the horrors of genocide only 18 years ago.

    Since then, on the basis of a policy of national reconciliation, more than 1 million of our people have been lifted out of poverty, over 90% of Rwandans are covered by health insurance and we are ranked by World Bank Doing Business as the third easiest place to do business in Africa, under conditions of low corruption according to Transparency International.

    We have established wonderful partnerships with development partners. We’re attempting to rebuild the structures of our society in a way whereby every Rwandan has a stake in our future.

    Metro: {{Many commentators, including the U.N. Group of Experts on the DRC, seem to believe historical and cultural ties to the rebel groups make it inevitable that Rwanda will get involved. You worked with these groups before, and you share ethnic and language heritage with them. Don’t you see how this causes suspicion?}}

    {{Kagame:}} There’s a habit in the West to view Africa and our region in particular through the outdated and erroneous prism of tribalism and ethnicity.

    Because there are Congolese of Rwandan origin, such as those you referred to in your questions, who rebel against the Congolese government, people jump to the conclusions that Rwanda must be complicit in supporting them.

    Modern Rwanda rejects this primitive outlook. We embrace our Rwandan national identity and we will pursue our national interest irrespective of events in neighboring countries, regardless of so-called tribal affiliations.

    The new Rwanda is about building an economy that delivers prosperity and opportunity for our citizens based on a robust private sector. Foreign adventures would be costly and counterproductive distractions from these challenging objectives.

    We simply cannot support a rebellion outside our border.

    The Rwandan people, put to the sword perhaps like no other in the last 50 years, know the value of peace. So do I.

    Metro: {{Rwanda has come in for a lot of criticism from human rights groups for alleged support for rebel groups like M23 as well as broader criticisms over your record on media and political freedoms. What is your response to these criticisms?}}

    {{Kagame:}} I understand that human rights groups are locked in a fierce competition for big checks from wealthy donors and they need to generate big headlines. We do not like to be lectured to by unaccountable advocacy groups acting for their financiers about how to protect the rights of our citizens.

    Human rights are not the preserve of Western activists: The definition must extend to encompass the right to the dignified life; the right to send your kids to school, for that child to get health care, for access for greater prosperity for generations to come and to have a say in the destiny of your community and country.

    Under that definition, Rwanda has nothing to learn from advocacy groups who think they own the copyright on what constitutes human rights under all conditions in every corner of the world.

    Metro: {{Your government is reported to view Steve Hege, coordinator of the U.N. Group of Experts — which in an addendum to its own report has accused Rwanda of fomenting unrest in eastern Congo — as having an impermissibly “benign view” of people who carried out the 1994 genocide. Is this still your view?}}

    {{Kagame:}} We understand that experts come to the table with a variety of preconceived ideas and opinions. We accept that, in some cases, this will work against Rwanda’s interests. But there is a point at which this translates into outright bias.

    In the case of the coordinator of the Group of Experts, he has crossed the line from expert to partisan political activist. His anti-Rwandan views are well on the record and both the methodology and falsehoods that have found their way into the offensive addendum to the report conform to his unacceptable views.

    In his prior writings this coordinator appeared as an apologist for a group of Congo-based extremist militants who have repeatedly been sanctioned by the U.N. Security Council and whose leaders are the same leaders which factually led the genocide and were labeled terrorist by the U.S.?State Department.

    It is completely unacceptable for a person with this history to sit in judgment on Rwanda or any other country for that matter. It’s really all quite extraordinary. Rwanda will not let this matter stand.

    Metro: {{Western governments, including the U.S., have withheld aid to Rwanda over M23 claims. What do you see as the consequences?}}

    {{Kagame}}: Some countries have reacted to this very flawed U.N. report by temporarily suspending aid funding to Rwanda.

    This is regrettable, because we place a high value on good relations with development partners. But we are confident that these funds will be unfrozen once we tell our side of the story.

    It is a timely reminder to Rwandans that we still have some way to travel as a nation before we are truly independent. Strong economic growth, and especially a significant increase in private sector investment, is the only sustainable path forward for Rwanda.

    The donors as recipients can undermine aid effectiveness just as easily, and this is exactly what happens when countries use the development dollar as a weapon to impose political will on smaller and less powerful countries.

    Metro: {{Rwanda is said to have economic interests in Eastern Congo: You are accused of looting mineral resources in the DRC.}}

    {{Kagame: }} This is a persistent myth. Rwanda leads the region in stamping out illegal trade in minerals. We have a functioning mineral certification process. We play by the rules. Recently we handed back to the DRC 80 tons of minerals that had been smuggled into Rwanda.

    Our geographic position dictates that our economic interests are best served by a stable and prosperous DRC, because under such conditions, Rwanda would benefit greatly from increased trade and legitimate transit of Congolese minerals.

    To this end, Rwanda supports the establishment of a so-called “Neutral Force” which has been agreed between the 11 member states of the International Conference of the Great Lakes region in Africa. This is a homegrown solution to a regional border problem.

    Metro: {{The New York Times quoted a report by a human rights group accusing you of running a repressive regime. How do you answer those claims?}}

    {{Kagame}}:They are mainly talking about laws related to genocide ideology, which I am more than happy to defend. Rwandans will not tolerate voices that promote a return to the ethnic divisionism that precipitated the genocide 18 years ago.

    To that extent, we place limits on freedom of expression in a similar way to how much of Europe has made it a crime to deny the Holocaust.

    Aside from that, Rwanda is a very open and free country. Key to our recovery as a nation has a range of grassroots, citizen-centered polices we call “homegrown solutions.” The idea that Rwanda is highly controlled from the center belies the reality, which is that citizens in every village have a powerful say in how things get done.

    We prize accountability and Rwandans are quickly adapting themselves to the possibilities of a digital economy. A lot of this talk of repression results from outdated stereotypes about Africa.

    Metro: {{Rwanda has been described as the “Israel of Africa.” What similarities do you see between the two? And what lessons can you learn from Israel, especially in dealings with the U.N.?}}

    {{Kagame}}: Like Israel, we live in a difficult neighborhood. We understand that national security is vital for economic and social progress. Our sense of national purpose has been forged in unfathomable tragedy. We also have in common critics who attack our fundamental legitimacy, or even our very right to exist.

    Israel and Rwanda both play an active part in international organizations, including the U.N., but I think it’s true that our unique experiences as nations have shaped a fierce independence that we will not relinquish.

  • Court Remands Uwinkindi to 30 Days in Prison

    {{Nyarugenge Court has Wednesday,ordered the provisional detention for 30 days of Genocide suspect Uwinkindi Jean saying that if he is granted bail, he would escape from the country.}}

    Uwinkindi is suspected to have a hand in the 1994 Genocide against Tutsi which claimed a million lives.

    However, Uwinkindi appealed this court order and was granted five days to present his appeal before court.

    Uwinkindi was formerly a pastor at a Pentecostal church in Kanzenze in Kigali Ngali Prefecture.

    He is accused of complicity in the genocide and crimes against Humanity in the area.

  • Congo, The Dark Side

    {{It was just recently that Steve Hege, the coordinator of the UN’s Group of Experts, was exposed in the media as the pro-FDLR revisionist that he is; the term used was ‘Ideological Warrior’, if memory serves me right. }}

    How, you may ask, did he secure that job then? He is no stranger to the UN. Before this ‘gig’, he worked as a consultant in Nepal and Lebanon and as an adviser on the UN Security Program in the DRC (military and police).

    He is, indeed, quite an influential “expert” in both the UN and NGO circles. This is where the story gets interesting… the year was 2009 when Steve Hege and his ‘buddy’, Jason K. Stearns, saw the great potential for making billions of dollars on the backs of the suffering masses in the East of the mineral-rich DRC and its never-ending wars.

    In and out of Congo since 2001, Jason Stearns is no stranger to the Congo wars and their opportunities for profit. A former employee of the United Nations’ Mission in Congo-MONUC, he was appointed by the UN Secretary-General to lead an investigation on the violence in this Central African country in the year 2008.

    Together, these two gentlemen, undoubtedly, form a dynamic duo with unparalleled influence in the highest circles of the UN and… the US Congress.

    Using their affiliation with the very influential American Think Tank, CIC (Center on International Cooperation), Hege and Stearns proposed a plan to put in place an organ, referred to hereafter as the “Enterprise” in this article, to be in charge of overseeing the extraction and distribution of 4 of Congo’s most sought after minerals: Gold, cassiterite, coltan and tungsten… all of which are found in the Kivu provinces affected by the ongoing conflict.

    The idea is to create a ‘conflict-free’ label controlled by the “Enterprise” and imposable on all minerals extracted in the DRC, if all goes according to plan in the Kivu region; this plan would effectively turn the DRC into the new Eldorado of young foreign entrepreneurs eager to make a serious buck.

    For funding, the partners thought out the perfect scheme under the hood of the United Nations and the European Union; a Great Lakes conference to give it a framework and the seal of approval of the United Nations to throw dust in the eyes of the major donors and facilitate raising millions of dollars needed for a startup with such a scale of ambition.

    For the sake of political correctness, the “Enterprise” was disingenuously dubbed “Project for independent supervision of eastern Congo’s mines”.

    The mission, as stated, is to fight the militarization of resources, a noble goal that everyone would be proud to support. To help convince donors of the importance of such an organ, the “Enterprise” enlisted the help of friendly NGOs that would help do the groundwork by producing cascades of alarmist reports on the situation in the Great Lakes region… easy when dealing with a region that has known only chaos for the last two decades.

    On the side of big multinationals, including U.S. based ones, the plan was thought out perfectly; they would, indeed, find themselves in support of such a plan whether they liked it or not, or risk being at the receiving end of heavy criticism from lobbyists and NGOs for being immoral and avid consumers of Congolese minerals at the expense of human suffering for profit.

    Accusations which would, of course, hurt their brands; in other words, show me the money and I will show you the immunity! Nintendo knows all too well what I’m talking about.

    The duo was able to petition the “Friends of Congo”, and well-meaning US Congressmen lobbied actively trying to pass laws imposing the concept of “corporate responsibility”. The “Enterprise” was able to hijack the humanitarian values of American policies in DRC.

    To justify their project, our dynamic duo argued that Congolese institutions are too corrupt and inefficient, by definition, to handle this kind of ‘gargantuesque’ task.

    Is Africa such a backward place that every time someone claims that locals lack the ability to deal with their own problems, western societies do not find the need to question the absence of unequivocal evidence to substantiate such a claim?

    Pushing such an argument, the “Enterprise” proposed that it be given all the necessary independence to operate freely as, and I quote, ‘the famous Group of Experts of the UN’… in fact, the “Enterprise” can easily be called the avatar of “The Group”!

    And why think small; on behalf of the Congolese Government, they are setting the standards of legal and illegal minerals. Under this plan, the ‘Enterprise’ will also be able to report suspicious intermediaries, based on eyewitness accounts, just like the ‘Group’.

    Even though the enforcement is left to the Congolese Government, the “Enterprise” will also have the power to have anyone detained on the basis of eyewitness accounts.

    And to top it off, the “Enterprise” will enjoy the ultimate comfort of being under the protection of the UN in the DRC and its annual $ 1.5 billion budget.

    Understandably, they will also be in charge of the, so-called, ‘dynamic mapping’, which means, in lay man’s terms, that they will be able to assess the situation in real-time and review their areas of operation whenever they see fit.

    To this end, a command and control center will be put in place to oversee the entire system by centralizing information collected by special cells deployed in nine strategic cities. Useful precision, these cells will operate in total symbiosis with the NGO Human Rights Watch and others. The “Enterprise” takes care of its friends.

    After considering the mountain of evidence pointing to the true intentions of Steve Hege and Jason Stearns, it is now clear that their, so-called, ideology was only a smokescreen to shield us from a much bigger and gruesome picture: a modern-day colonial venture ring “legally” exploiting one of the richest regions of the world!

    Steve Hege and his pal, Jason Stearns, are not the neutral observers and impartial investigative experts they would want us to believe they are; quite the contrary!

    They are the mastermind of a shady “Enterprise” that aims to, with their friends, indirectly control the minerals in Congo. Unfortunately, the attainment of this objective has been unintentionally facilitated by the newly-adopted securities rules requiring public companies to disclose the exact source of minerals procured from DRCongo.

    Yet the new rule, part of the broader Dodd-Frank package of mostly finance industry regulations, is aimed at supporting efforts to curb the exploitation of mines by rebel groups and militias in eastern DR Congo.

    But it is having the opposite effect, as trade in minerals is being pushed underground, creating windfall profits opportunities for militias and smugglers. A noble cause that has been hijacked! In other words, it seems the “Enterprise” is usurping the laudable cause defended by the US Congress and administration, for the personal benefit of a few.

    It is now also crystal clear that the tsunami of accusations against Rwanda is part and parcel of this grand scheme. With Rwanda trapped in the game, Hege could eventually give a clean bill of health to his friends in the FDLR and, through them and others, gain complete control of the minerals in this sea of chaos and despair.

    A simple look at Hege’s own publications confirm, without a shadow of doubt, his disdain for the current Rwandan leadership and his affinities to the FDLR, which he refuses to see as the terrorist and genocidal group it is, in direct contrast to the US government and the UN, both of whom listed it as such.

    Yet here he is, Steve Hege, in charge of the Group of Experts, accountable to no one but himself and his big ambitions; he couldn’t have hoped for better icing on his cake! What in the world is really happening at the UN?

    So here we are today, faced with a rather unfortunate and ridiculous situation that has led to the terrible loss of life of Congolese nationals. President Kabila launches a full scale to capture a single man, Bosco Ntaganda.

    A war which has displaced and victimized hundreds of thousands of the citizens his government swore to protect… and once he failed to capture that man, the propaganda machine swung to overdrive in blaming the M23 mutineers and pointing an accusatory finger at Rwanda, for supposedly supporting them.

    In Libya and Syria, such actions sparked international indignation and condemnation across the board, yet in the case of the DRC, the regular army –FARDC- is yet to be taken to task for the atrocities committed by its rogue units on its population.

    The lack of evidence against Rwanda has, so far, left the international community unfazed, moving instead to freeze much needed foreign aid.

    And to add insult to injury, the recent addendum to the addendum of the report, introduced even more forged “evidence”, such as the fake Rwandan Military ID officially added to the UN report’s list of evidence, which bore a hard to miss typo in the word “defense”, spelt with a “c”.

    The few western diplomats I was able to exchange with on this matter always claimed to possess complementing information outside the report.

    However, none of them was able to share that “evidence” with me? Again, what is the quality of that “evidence”, if there is any? Some would claim that I’m killing the messenger to discredit the message.

    What kind of world would we be living in, where you can be freely accused of the most atrocious things without being given a chance to clear your name or a hearing to prove your innocence.

    In any court of law, any defendant has the right to question the credibility of a testimony by proving that the witness is untrustworthy.

    Why would it be any different in the present case? The, so-called, expert’s report has been forever compromised by the shady character of the person in charge of gathering the evidence in the addendum (suggestion: the shady characters and prejudices of the main authors of the report).

    As an observer, should I remain silent in the face of such an injustice hiding the heist of the century! It is all the more important when considering the fact that the very Congolese people we would like to see protected and vindicated still remain in the same situation of despair, without a solution in sight.

    While we are caught in a whirlwind of accusations and counter-accusations, the Heges and the Stearns stand to gain billions of dollars from the age-old strategy of divide and conquer, whatever the cost in human life… and that, ladies and gentlemen, is the dark side of Congo upon, which I will never cease to shed the light.

    {with Contribution from {{Dominique Bourra–Information and Cyber War-fare Specialist}}}

  • President Kibaki to Address EALA Plenary in Nairobi

    {{The East African Legislative Assembly (EALA) will resume business next week holding its Plenary in Nairobi, Kenya.}}

    The sitting will take place from September 3 to September 14th, 2012 is the second Meeting of the first Session of the third Assembly.

    The Chairperson of the EAC Heads of State Summit and President of Kenya, His Excellency Mwai Kibaki, is expected to address a Special Sitting on September 4th, 2012.

  • MICT Takes Over Roles of ICTR

    {{A Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals has taken over some of the tasks of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, as the Tribunal winds down.}}

    However, it seems the roles of the MICT and the ICTR are still confusing some people, including legal practitioners.

    The presiding judge of the ICTR Appeals Chamber recently had to issue a reminder to Tanzanian lawyer Francis Stolla after he filed an appeal to the wrong body.

    Stolla is Duty Counsel defending the interests of fugitive genocide suspect Pheneas Munyarugarama. He is also current president of the Tanganyika Law Society.

    His July 11 appeal, filed to the ICTR, challenges a Referral Chamber decision to transfer Munyarugarama’s case to Rwanda.

    “Pursuant to Security Council Resolution 1966 (2010), the Mechanism, and not the Tribunal, has competence to conductand complete appellate proceedings in relation to this case,” presiding judge of the ICTR Appeals Chamber Theodor Meron reminded Stolla in a July 17 order.

    Nevertheless, the lawyer made the same mistake again on July 31, filing submissions in support of his appeal before theTribunal. However, he filed them again a day later before the Mechanism.

    According to the December 2010 UN Security Council Resolution, the MICT was established to complete essential functions of the ICTR and of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) after their respective closures. The ICTY branch is not operational until next year.

    The ICTR branch in Arusha started operatingon July 1 this year. All appeals filed after that date fall under its jurisdiction.

    Other functions of the MICT Arusha branch include tracking and prosecuting (if they are caught) the three most wanted fugitives; supervising enforcement of sentences;

    providing assistance tonational jurisdictions that are investigating Rwandan genocide suspectson their territory; preservation and management of Tribunal archives; and victim and witness protection.

    The ICTR must complete all appeals and othermatters that were pending before July 1, 2012.

    {Hirondelle}