RWANDAN DICTATOR PAUL KAGAME SHUNED BY SPANISH PRIME MINISTER: IS IT THE BEGINNING OF THE END?
RWANDAN DICTATOR PAUL KAGAME SHUNED BY SPANISH PRIME MINISTER: IS IT THE BEGINNING OF THE END?
Paul Kagame shunned by Spanish President Zapatero
Photo: Juan Carrero Saralegui, President of Fundacion S’Olivar of Mallorca Spain; un Hombre de Paz
The President of the Spanish Government, Prime Minister Louis Zapatero has shunned a meeting that was planned with Rwandan Dictator, General Paul Kagame.
Under pressure from Spanish Non Government Organizations through the Coordinating Committee for Development NGOs in Spain (CONGDE), Amnesty International, Fundacion S'Olivar and the Nobel Prize Winner the Argentinian Adolfo Esquivel, the Prime Minister Zapatero had to decline meeting the accused criminal Paul Kagame and instead will send his Foreign Affairs Minister, Miguel Angel Moratino. The venue of the meeting was also changed from the seat of the Government at Moncloa Palace to a luxurious commercial hotel in downtown Madrid.
In June 2010, after the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon had appointed him to serve as Co-Chair of the UN Millennium Development Goals with the Rwandan dictator General Paul Kagame, the Spanish NGO had written to the Prime Minister warning him of working with the alleged war criminal Paul Kagame.
They said: "Mr. Zapatero, don’t be co-chair of the Millenium Goals with Kagame, don’t go down in history as the accomplice of such a fiend and his extremely powerful godfathers in their operations of global pillaging and deceit. They will be brought to light in the short run. Don’t lend them a hand, don’t stain your own hands with innocent blood. This attempt to clean up the image of this thug Kagame and of his criminal pillage of Congo is so blatant and preposterous that it will most certainly backfire".
(See our June 26, 2010 article Spanish President Zapatero Warned Against Working with Criminal Kagame on http://www.afroamerica.net/AfricaGL/)
The Nobel Peace Prize winner, Adolfo Esquivel also wrote to Prime Minister Zapatero:
"I regret that the UN Secretary General Mr. Ban Ki Moon, does not have the wisdom and courage to avoid that an individual responsible for genocide, Paul Kagame, is honored by co-chairing with you the Committee on MDG's, to overcome hunger and poverty, the UN goals for making the world more just and humane. The contradiction here is enormous between words and deeds."
Paul Kagame is accused of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, he has committed since he launched the Rwandan Patriotic Front rebellion on October 1, 1990 to overthrow the legitimate Rwandan Government. He is targeted by France, Spanish and American judicial systems.
The Spanish judiciary has also indicted him for similar crimes committed in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). For the DRC, he is accused of being responsible for the systematic massacre of more than 5 million Congolese civilians.
Spanish families and NGO accuse Kagame of having ordered the massacres of 5 Spanish missionaries and priests after they witnessed systematic massacres of Hutu civilians in Northwestern Rwanda between 1994 and 2,000. The Spanish NGO affirms that:
"The father Vallmajó [Spanish Priest in Rwanda] "disappeared" in April 1994 in Byumba, apparently having witnessed the killing of 2,500 people (by the RPF) gathered in the stadium. Uzcudun Isidro was murdered in June 2000, who witnessed in his parish of Mugina that the RPF had killed 1325 people. Four Spanish Marist Brothers were killed in October 1996 in Zaire for demanding international intervention that would avoid the extermination of the refugees (by the RPF). Three Spanish Doctors of the World committed the imprudence of disseminating their discovery in January 1997 of a pit full of corpses and noted that the RPF carried out massacres of civilians in Ruhengeri. (and were subsequently assassinated) .”
This rebuke by the Spanish Prime Minister happens in the background of yet another assassination of an opposition figure, Mr Andre Kagwa Rwisereka, and a renewed clampdown on local independent journalists.
The meeting co-chaired by the Spanish Prime Minister and the accused war criminal and genocidaire General Paul Kagame could have been an embarrassment for the Spanish Government, the ruling party Spanish Socialist Workers' Party of Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, and the Spanish National Court judge Fernando Andreu who indicted the 40 associates of the Rwandan dictator in 2008.
On the other hand, it is equally an awkward situation for the UN Secretary General, Mr. Ban Ki-Moon who appointed the two leaders. The Spanish Prime Minister decided to meet Mr. Ban Ki-Moon after the meeting, in private and without the presence of General Paul Kagame, perhaps to tender his resignation or request that a less controversial African leader be appointed.
One may then wonder whether this is the beginning of the end of a long honeymoon between the liberator turned “fascist mass murderer” General Paul Kagame and the West.
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Thursday, July 15, 2010