President Kagame Speaks Out On Arrest Of Rwandan Spy Chief:
“This is an official of a state of Rwanda, official of a people who respect themselves and who want to decide for themselves what they will become.
Pick security chief on the street like some thug. They claim they have a legal obligation.
France, Spain, now UK – I don’t know who is coming next. All directed to inconvenience and destabilise and just show absolute contempt they have for Rwanda and for Africa. Not the first time, not going to be the last time.
But any decent human being, any decent Rwandan, any decent African, even any decent person from those countries, cannot accept this, absolutely not. Absolutely not.
Sometimes I feel like being cynical about it, but let me put it this way. I think it is good, I really feel happy, that of all people it happens to us, to Rwandans. If it had happened somewhere else, it would just disappear. But here, it is happening to the right people. The right people who want to stand up to this and who will always stand up to this.
I am happy that such people pick on us, on Rwanda. We are up to the job. We don’t have the power of wealth, or military strength, or technology, the things these countries have pride in.
But we have one thing, a couple of things. We have the power of the spirit. We have the power of being underrated. The power that comes from the anger of being held in contempt. The power that comes from the anger of being insulted. The power that comes from the anger of being pushed against the wall. Because when that happens, left with nothing else, building on that spirit, you come back in full strength.
We have the power of resilience. We have the power that derives from the anger of the historical attempt to wipe us off the surface of the earth, and we refused to go. Those who want or were behind or associated with the genocide that happened here in Rwanda, they did not reach the point they wanted to reach. Not because they changed their mind, or forgave us. But because they failed to achieve it. They won’t achieve it now. They won’t achieve it today.
People may think they can put us down, but they’ll never take us out. We are a decent people. People of strength enough to not accept this rubbish of injustice.
You know, I kept reading comments in the social media. Some useless African, held in high esteem – writing that, you see, it is right for these people to be arresting Karenzi because it is time to do justice, that the victims of genocide got justice, now it is the time for justice for others. What that means to me, the history of our country isn’t the history you read in books. It’s the history we have lived. My question here was, in my mind, is it what the victims… In other words, it was okay to lose 1 million people, so long as you have a good justice after. We did not need genocide here in Rwanda. It is as if Rwandans chose justice after they got genocide. But have they even got justice?
Every single day, there are all over the place chasing people who actually fought and sacrificed and stopped genocide, and they protect and take pride in associating with those, who actually carried it out. They do. Those capitals are full of people who carried out genocide. Saying those who stopped it should be tried for stopping it, or for any mistakes some individuals could have made during that time, and you equate it to genocide, well again, it is an issue of being selective. Why don’t they look a little bit back in their history? The history would have suggested would have been to try those people who stopped those who were carrying out the Holocaust. In Nuremburg they should have tried the Allied forces that stopped the Holocaust, those who fought the Nazis. Why didn’t it happen? Because it’s not an African situation.
Today all these stories you hear about, in fact what they don’t say out there, a couple of things. Spain wants somebody from Rwanda, for anything. They have never asked Rwanda to try or discuss whatever issues they need to talk about relating to justice. It is actually Rwanda several times that has gone to Spain and asked, what’s your problem. They created these cases to inconvenience people so they can’t travel to do their business.
I want to understand under what circumstances the laws of countries like ours, or others, become completely subordinate to the laws of other countries, to the point that other countries will say no, we think somebody did something in your country, we want them here to answer something. These things get decided by village judges, like in one of our villages operating on their own saying we want your minister.
It has been discussed at the AU Summit. But every time they decide to shelve it because they want this situation to go on and on forever. It is history repeating itself in a different form. A continuation of slavery, of colonialism, of arrogance, bigotry and telling the African, wagging a finger at them and saying, this is where you belong. We are no longer the Africa that belongs there.
But there are Africans who belong there. Even among us. Even those who sit and drink and live with us. And these are the Africans preferred of course by those countries, because in the end they serve their interests. One typical example associated with this case, we have Rwandans who are out there, who exiled themselves, under all sorts of claims. But all of them having cases here to answer for. All of them. Not a single one of them that does not have a case to answer here. Not a single one of them, if you check on the records. Used to be in army, committed crimes, on record.
One of them used to work for me. And the only thing he can talk about, take pride in, is having ever worked for me. The only thing. Nothing else. Ran away twice. Deserved. Asked for forgiveness, we allowed him back. He worked for some time. Got in another mess. Ran away again. But when he is out there, this man Himbara, you hear of him every day, on radio talking about this case. These are people these countries find very important to associate with, and you know the reason? Among them, you have seen this BBC documentary, the so-called Untold Story. What they are talking about is not the untold story. The untold story is what underlies that documentary. These countries and people who are behind it want to change the narrative, the actual story of what has happened in Rwanda, that they were so deeply involved in. They want to mask it by saying no, it’s not us, look – these are the savages of Africa who kill each other. Genocide, it was between the Hutus and the Tutsis, it is a normal thing in Africa, these blacks turn on each other and kill one another. Nothing to do with us.
So that they take the moral ground on which to always operate from, dictating to Africans. It is not us. For us, we are people of high standing and above these fellows, so… But of course, inadvertently they make one big mistake. How do you maintain any credible ground by associating with such criminals? Who feed you and advise you and you want to fund, people who respect democracy and human rights, they have run to us, govt was about to kill them. Kill them? Since when did we become killers? These same people have killed more people than they can claim that Africans have ever killed. Among them, millions of Africans. How? How do we become killers? How do we give our lives to save our country and our people and at the end of the day, we are called killers, just because you hobnob with these foolish fellows, criminals, in your country who you use as witnesses. How can you take pride it this, and call it justice?
These Rwandans they use. Now one them happens to now have a dual citizenship, a fellow called René Mugenzi. How he wants to be of political influence in UK and then in Rwanda at same time, it is going to be difficult. Another thing from our army who ran away, a criminal, called Marara. They move around and tell police and we feel threatened, because he will kill us. Oh, OK, we’ll go for him. That is one of the things that happened. Because this man, Karenzi, was arrested three four days after. We didn’t know, but they knew. They were already writing talking of arrest of this man, on 17th of June. For us we only knew when it happened. These people have formed their own imaginary state of Rwanda they work with to determine what happens to us. This is not serious. Absolutely not serious. How can this be?
As I said last time here, we are really good friends, we support your development, which we appreciate by the way. But do you support my development and take away my dignity at the same time? Are you really helping me because you despise me? You hold me in contempt. This level of disdain is just unacceptable. To tell me, you see, you are not good enough. You are not relevant enough, to deserve any respect from me. This is what the story is about. So now the argument, how can it be extradition? You should not have arrested him in the first place. There are no grounds. You are talking about justice, it has a course it follows, which respects certain norms. So I can’t discuss with you, I don’t understand the grounds we talk about extradition? What right does Spain have in this matter, to try Rwanda?
If we arrested one of their chiefs of anything, even for a very good reason – is that even thinkable? Can you even imagine it? You know what would happen. But it is easy to do it to the Africans. I think they must have mistaken him, you know this problem they have for illegal immigrants, these fellows sinking in the Mediterranean. the way they treat that is the way they treat minister from Africa, head of intelligence. They really must have mistaken him for that. This illegal immigrant, what is he looking for here? Yet he has been working together with them on many sensitive things. That’s how they turn around. But of course, in other places, Africans or black people have turned into shooting practice. They become shooting practice targets. Like dummies made from paper. Actually as we know it, we Africans and other blacks we have become targets of trigger happy people whenever they want to learn how to shoot they practice on us. That is how far it has gone.
They respect the Africans who are not respected by Africans themselves, petty criminals and thugs. Rujugiro, their sponsor. We found he’s the one who paid the money to finance the hearing Himbara had in another friendly country. Himbara appearing anywhere to talk about Rwanda… Can you imagine? Why don’t they invite one of you? Because he has a bad story to tell about us. Well if there are bad stories we will take care of that ourselves. I don’t take care of your bad story. If there are any wrongs here, and there will always be things to put right absolutely, we should be the people who can look at it and put things right. But for somebody else to want to put things right, it is not the way to do business. But of course I think they’ve run this kind of business for too long, they’ve gotten too used to that, pulling back is almost impossible for them. Sweeter to keep practicing the same thing, even as it gets worse with us, and makes us more angry every day.
We come here, swear in ministers, judges, MPs, and we just go. We just go and do what? If we don’t internalize this and understand it. Any decent human being, any decent Rwandan, any decent anybody. You cannot accept that people will do to us, whatever they want, because they can. No. We will do things with people because it is the right thing to do. And they should be doing with us, or to us, the right things. Not just because they can.
So we will keep our heads cool. Just need to keep your heads cool, because these things can drive you to a level of anger that you can make a mistake. I’m trying to keep mine cool, I’m really trying. I’m struggling but I’m not finding it easy, but I know I have to keep the calm that is necessary to do things right. It is important. Otherwise the anger that people might have about others and what they do to us can drive people crazy. They can influence people to make mistakes. And we shouldn’t make mistakes. But that doesn’t mean we can accept a mistake being done against us, no.
I think, in the end, we must and will prevail. It doesn’t matter how long. Other things we learned in our earlier days, is really to be patient. But patient and not just hope for time, but it is also about what you do in the time. It is what you do. Don’t just sit back and say you are waiting it out, you are patient. You must be patient while you are doing something. These struggles we have been in, they take a long time. They require a lot of patience. But even more, they require a lot of thinking and a lot of doing. And simply have the right spirit that won’t be broken.
So those who take us on, we advise them that we are aware that we are in it for the long haul. We remain with our heads high.
There are too many things to say, I think I should allow you time to go have your own thinking, and more so doing, of things that can make our country better in spite of all these things that happen to us. Thank you very much.”
President Paul Kagame, Rwanda