AfroAmerica Network
Washington, D.C.
02.02.01
"I just came from a tour in Africa. I met an overwhelming number of Rwandan refugees, new and old. Hutu and Tutsi alike. People are running away from Rwanda in drones. What's wrong with you Mr. Paul Kagame? What's wrong with your government? What's wrong with RPF?" asked Marie Rose, the President of a women association, based in Washington, D.C. USA during a meeting organized for General Paul Kagame by the U. S. Institute for Peace to give a public lecture on "The Challenge of Reconciliation, Justice and Renewal in Rwanda" on Friday, February 02, 2001.
Marie Rose had managed to slip through a tight security cordon, apparently set up to keep away people like her. "Mr. Kagame, I was among people who supported you in 1988-1989. You were then organizing fund raising at the University of Makerere, Uganda to help Rwandan Refugees to go back home. That is what you told us. To go back home, in peace. The next think we knew, you were invading Rwanda. Using the money we gave you, having young Tutsis boys recruited from Rwanda, Burundi, Zaire, Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania killed. What did you expect when you invaded. That Rwandans will not put up a resistance? You lied to us. And you had young people killed. You started it all in 1990. So what did you accomplish? Instead of peace, Rwanda has only known death, desolation, and despair. And you are responsible for that, now even more than ever. And your responsibility extends to Congo and Burundi", Marie Rose had started her intervention.
Marie Rose was rather an oddity in an audience selected to listen to Kagame. General Kagame answered that the Rwandan genocide started in 1959. But he was very embarrassed and avoided to give any answer when Marie Rose mentioned the recent flow of refugees, most of them from Kagame's own government. The security had to interrupt the debate.
After the meeting, civil servants from the US Government and officials from human rights groups and other non-government organizations surrounded Marie Rose to ask for more information on Rwanda and the Great Lakes region tragedy. She distributed copies of several documents.
"We learned more about Rwanda from Marie Rose than from General Paul Kagame", several members of the audience confided to AfroAmerica Network after the meeting.
(c)AfroAmerica Network, February, 2001.
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