The List of Murdered and Exiled Journalist in Rwanda Continues to Grow

The recent loss of one Rwandan journalist is fresh in the minds of many, and far from the first.

Salem-News.com

(BRUSSELS / PORTLAND) - The murder of journalist Jean-Léonard Rugambage on the night of June 24, is another suggestive inclination for the Kagame regime.

This adds to an increasingly long list of questionable acts that are ever exasperating tensions inside Rwanda.

“There is no doubt that journalist Jean-Léonard Rugambage was murdered by Rwandan Patriotic Front – RPF’s death squads whose tactics and murder scenarios are a public knowledge. Statements that were issued by the Rwandan government ordering an investigation allegedly to shed light on the assassination of Jean-Léonard Rugambage are just an attempt to throw dust in the eyes of the International community. General Kagame just wept crocodile tears during his monthly press conference of June 28, 2010 for the sake of impressing his Western friends and donors in this campaign period.” Faustin Twagiramungu the former Rwandan prime minister told Salem-News.com last week.

Indeed, two international arrest warrants have been issued against the Kigali president, while he continues to campaign in the upcoming August presidential election. Reports have begun to circulate that President Kagame has already declared himself a winner and has promised “to stop the violence the way he stopped the genocide in 1994.”

Mr, Twagiramungu adds “The dictator Paul Kagame is striving to legitimize his own violence against the opposition and any critical opinion. The incarceration of opposition politicians and their legal advocates, the banning of independent newspapers, harassment and murder of journalists are acts that are common currency in Rwanda under the false guise of fight against genocide ideology. The dictator’s deceptive strategy to use the Tutsi genocide to hide his crimes has become obsolete now. General Kagame may soon be short of resources as Rwandans and the whole World have become fed up. Genocide cannot be continuously used to cover a criminal and dictatorial power, or to justify all the infringements of Rwandan citizens’ freedoms.”

Jean-Léonard Rugambage's Murder is not the first of Rwanda’s journalists to be executed. Writer Edouard Mutsinzi was beaten up and left for dead in Nyamirambo in 1995. The former director of Le Messager-Intumwa has become physically disabled as a result of torture. The killing of other journalists including Apollo Hakizimana; savagely murdered in 1997, Emmanuel Munyemanzi in 1998, and Jean-Marie Vianney Hategekimana in 2002.

Dozens of journalists have been forced or escaped into exile for fear of their lives or their loved one in effort to escape the continued media oppression.

The former prime minister believes “The theory of revenge by a genocide survivor put forward by the Kigali dictatorial regime to justify the murder of journalist Rugambage is a trick to mislead the international community. The dictator is just anxious to polish his image yet bearing in mind that his motives are to continually maintain ethnic tensions among Rwandans as he uses genocide survivors for his political gains. I am deeply disturbed by the murder of the young investigative journalist Rugambage and condemn without reservation the deceptive tactics of the Rwandan government. An independent investigation by an international agency is needed. As to President Kagame’s intention to stand as candidate in the August 9th elections, I reiterate my appeal to the Rwandan people to explicitly boycott the elections.“