AfroAmerica Network
Johannesburg, South Africa
12.09.00
Pasteur Bizimungu, the former President of Rwanda who resigned earlier this year has been in South Africa for a few weeks. AfroAmerica Correspondent in Johannesburg reports that he may be seeking asylum.
Bizimungu went to South Africa officially for medical treatment. However, he managed to travel with his wife and children.
"Something is going on. I may understand that he is seeking medical treatment. I even see how his wife should be with him. But taking the kids with them during a scholar year... This is odd!" said an immigration officer in Kigali.
Bizimungu resigned amid financial scandals and political intrigues. On the news that Bizimungu was contemplating exile, Bideri, a top adviser to General Paul Kagame, the current President of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF)-led Government confirmed that Pasteur Bizimungu was staying in the Country, spending his days between farming and playing tennis.
However, few believed that Paul Bizimungu will stay in Rwanda. Pasteur Bizimungu along with the former Prime Minister Rwigyema, who fled to USA in July 2000, were among several ethnic Hutu who had wholeheartedly embraced the RPF-led Government, before realizing, the hard way, that the regime was controlled by a few Tutsi extremists.
To many Rwandans if Pasteur Bizimungu and Rwigyema, one of the last influential hutu within the RPF-led government, prefers the road of exile will be yet another serious blow to Rwandan Patriotic Front.
This happens while Deus Kagiraneza, a former aide to General Paul Kagame and a military intelligence officer with the Rwandan Patriotic Army, just published a testimony admitting his participation in mass murders, systematic elimination of Hutus, and massacres of ethnic Tutsis committed by the Rwandan Patriotic Army. Deus Kagiraneza accuses General Kagame of personally ordering the massacres and murders.
(c) AfroAmerica Network, December, 2000.
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