How the World Economic Forum Became A Partner In Kagame’s Delusions of Grandeur

Open Letter to Mr. Klaus Schwab, Executive Chairman, the World Economic Forum (WEF)

August 30, 2016

Dear Sir, in your annual competitiveness reports, you rank Rwanda very highly. In the Global Competitiveness Index 2014–2015, for example, you ranked Rwanda 62nd out of 147 economies. According to you, Rwanda is one of Africa’s most competitive economies and the top performer in East Africa — well ahead of Kenya ranked 90th, Tanzania and Uganda, ranked 121st and 122nd, respectively.

Mr. Schwab, these rankings are questionable, not least because Rwanda is heavily dependent on its neighbors from which it imports most of its basic needs as well as foreign investment. For example, four out of six companies listed on the Rwanda Stock Exchange are Kenyan. Further, Rwanda’s economy is by far the smallest compared to its neighbors in terms of gross domestic product (GDP) and per capita income as indicated by the 2015 World Bank data:

• Kenya’s GDP was $63,398 with a GDP per capita, PPP (current international $) of $3,082.5.
• Tanzania’s GDP was $44,895 with a GDP per capita, PPP (current international $) of $2,667.3
• Uganda’s GDP was $26,369 with a GDP per capita, PPP (current international $) of $1,825.3.
• Rwanda’s GDP was $8,095 with a GDP per capita, PPP (current international $) of $1,758.7.

Even when looking at the factors WEF supposedly measures to determine its competitive rankings, namely, institutions, infrastructure, and education and health; there is no way that Rwanda outperforms its larger neighbors, least of all, in the state of economic infrastructure as I comprehensively demonstrate in my new book, Kagame’s Economic Mirage.

Dear Mr. Schwab, I now know where your problem is — it is in the method you use to draft your competitiveness report, or more precisely, what you term “partner institutes” that provide you the data. This is how you explain the importance of your partner institutes:

The World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness and Benchmarking Network is pleased to acknowledge and thank the following organizations as its valued Partner Institutes, without which the realization of The Global Competitiveness Report 2014–2015 would not have been feasible:

In the case of Kenya, your partner institute is Kenya Institute for Development Studies, the University of Nairobi. In Uganda, your partner is the Uganda Kabano Research and Development Center. In neighboring Burundi, your partner institute is the Burundi University Research Centre for Economic and Social Development (CURDES), the National University of Burundi.

And which institute do you partner with in Rwanda? In the 2014–2015 Competitiveness Report, you cite the Rwanda government itself through Rwanda Development Board (RDB), and its then CEO Valentine Rugwabiza. Your 2013–2014 Report says that your partner institute was RDB headed by the Acting CEO Claire Akamanzi. Your latest report — 2015–2016, cites RDB and its CEO Francis Gatare. That you also cite Private Sector Federation does not help either — that, too, is government-controlled. In any event, Rwanda’s private sector is dominated by the ruling party’s Crystal Ventures Ltd, and therefore, unlikely to provide an independent view on Rwanda’s realities.

We can make two possible conclusions on why WEF chose a different research method for Rwanda that is sharply different from the rest of East Africa. Either WEF is an innocent victim tricked into allowing an intellectual conflict of interest to evolve, whereby a government ranks itself — as opposed to engaging a neutral and independent research institution. Or WEF is a willing partner in President Paul Kagame’s delusions of grandeur of having built an African economic lion.

Either way, Mr. Schwab, you became Kagame’s loudspeaker. Please find a independent researcher to supply you credible economic data on Rwanda, if that is possible under a totalitarian state that controls anything that moves.

Yours Sincerely,

David Himbara

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War Criminal Paul Kagame will Pay For All This.

Ibi Byose Umwacanyi Kagame Azabiriha

A dying Rwandan woman tries breastfeeding her child next to hundreds of corpses waiting to be buried at a mass grave near the Munigi refugee camp, 20 km north of Goma. FPR - Inkotanyi killed Thousands of refugees in that area.

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Arusha Needed to Avert a New Political Violence in Rwanda

Theogene Rudasingwa

The political opposition, composed of the following political organisations, namely AMAHORO PC; FDU-Inkingi; PDP Imanzi; PS Imberakuri and RNC (Rwanda National Congress), calls on peace loving people, governments and organisations and particularly friends of Rwanda to impress upon the Rwandan government the need to enter dialogue with the opposition on the basis of the Arusha Peace Agreement which was derailed by the resumption of war in 1994 that gave total victory to one protagonist, the RPF/RPA. We feel very strongly that the conditions that led to war in 1990 and subsequent social upheaval and genocide 1994 are more acute and explosive that they were at the time.

These included, authoritarian form of government, unresolved problem of refugees, regionalism, nepotism, favouritism, lack of a free press, freedom of expression and association. Economic disparities much lower than they are today. Disparities have doubled in the last 20 years and Rwanda is now among the top 15% of the most unequal countries in the world, in a country that is most aided in the region, and where 60% of the population live under poverty line.

The apparent stability masks deep seated tensions and unresolved grievances that are kept under check by the most repressive regime that Rwanda has ever had, which operates beyond borders to hunt down critics and assassinate them. Just to give a few examples, the former Home Affairs Minister Seth Sendashonga, and former member of Parliament Colonel Lizinde were gunned down in Nairobi; while the former Chief Spy, Colonel Patrick Karegeya, was strangled in South Africa. In August, a South African court convicted two Rwandans and two Tanzanians of the attempted murder of General Kayumba Nyamwasa—a former senior military official and leading RNC member—in South Africa in 2010, and sentenced them in September to eight years’ imprisonment. The judge stated that the attack was politically motivated and emanated from a group of people in Rwanda.
With regards to the problem of refugees, Rwanda has now the highest number of refugees of all time, and for the 1st time Rwandan refugees include people of all ethnic groups, Hutu, Tutsi and Twa, of all social status and age, military, business men, young and old people.

The social capital i.e. relationship of trust and frank collaboration between a social grouping like a family, community values and social norms that glue members of a community together have been destroyed by the ruling party indoctrination programme that promotes loyalty to the party and its leader than to any other social network including family.

We are convinced that the cycle of brutal massacres that have bedevilled Rwanda are not a product of congenital brutal hatreds between Hutu and Tutsi but the failure of the political leadership to manage peacefully the naturally divergent interests of people and societal demands without resorting to violence or appealing to ethnic sentiments.
The long negotiations in Arusha in 1992- 1994 had tried to find a formula to end the cycle of violence but was derailed for opportunistic reasons.

The various stakeholders had done a lot of ground work that can be used as a foundation for a new dialogue taking into account the new environment. We feel that the arrogant and militarist attitude of the present Rwandan leadership might lead eventually to another violent change of regime.

We are calling for an all-inclusive national dialogue of all stakeholders in the Rwandan conflict to agree on legal and institutional mechanisms to end the cycle of violence in Rwanda and build a real reconciled, peaceful, prosperous and democratic society.

Dr. Theogene Rudasingwa.
Chair Platform
Washington DC June 24, 2016
E-mail: ngombwa@gmail.com
Tel: 001-240-477-9110

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The other Rwandan Massacre: 20 Years on

An Australian soldier carrying a young Rwandan boy injured during the Kibeho massacre, Rwanda, 1995 [Photograph: George Gittoes]

The 1994 Rwandan genocide was one of the most horrifying events of the 20th Century. But many are unaware of another massacre the following year. Australian Author Paul Jordon and filmmaker George Gittoes witnessed the brutality.


Twenty years ago, on April 22, thousands of unarmed civilians were killed by Rwandan soldiers at the Kibeho Internally Displaced Persons Camp (IDP) in the south of Rwanda.
A small team of 32 Australian Defence Force personnel were the only western troops to witness the massacre.




It is admittedly one the worst carnages Australian troops have been exposed to since the Second World War.

Australian author Paul Jordan was there.

He was one of the highly trained elite SAS forces deployed in Rwanda at the time.

“We arrived as part of the second contingent in February 1995. We took up residence at the hospital and started providing care for those who were injured.”

Kibeho was the last and the biggest Internally Displaced People's camp remaining in Rwanda after the 1994 genocide.

Outnumbered by the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA) and unable to intervene in virtue of their UN mandate, the small Australian contingent deployed extraordinary courage in an effort to save lives.

The Australian Defence force was providing medical support to the United Nations Assistance Mission to Rwanda (UNAMIR) following the Rwandan Genocide.

Jordan’s section was tasked to support and protect a small Australian Medical Team sent to the Kibeho IDP which was about to be closed.

“We were then told in April that the camp at Kibeho was to be closed. And our job was to go there and document those who might be injured; provide care where we could while people were being repatriated to their villages.”

Deadly motives of the 'repatriation operation'

Behind the official IDP repatriation operation that started on the 18th of April 1995 and ended tragically on the 22nd of April 1995, there was another unspecified agenda.

Earlier this month George Gittoes was awarded the 2015 Sydney Peace Prize in recognition for, amongst other things, his courage to witness and confront violence in the war zones of the world.

Australian activist and war artist George Gittoes has been awarded the 2015 Sydney Peace Prize. (AAP)

A seasoned investigative documentary maker, Gittoes was on a mission to document the deployment of Australian forces in Rwanda.

He had learned about the other possible motives of the Kibeho IDP repatriation operation.

“They did it in a grotesque way. They’d shoot them in the leg and then they’d laugh at them and then watch them trying to get up and eventually put a bullet in their head or somewhere fatal.”

“Before I left Kigali I had been briefed on the likelihood that there would be a retaliatory massacre at Kibeho. So I came in very aware and alert.

“I came with the Australian infantry soldiers who were supporting a medical team setting up a field hospital run by Captain Carol Vaughan Evans.”

It wasn’t long before Gittoes witnessed the other aspect of the "repatriation operation".
“The first sign was watching the RPA clear the villages and hills around it. People being forced out and as they ran… they were made to run, they would shoot them."

He says the RPA were ruthless in their execution.

“They did it in a grotesque way. They’d shoot them in the leg and then they’d laugh at them and then watch them trying to get up and eventually put a bullet in their head or somewhere fatal.”

Completely surrounded by heavily armed and trigger happy RPA troops, the people in the camp had nowhere to run.

And as Jordan recalls, armed militias within the camp were also busy doing their own killing.

“The Rwandans had machine guns, they had mortars, and all set up to mow these people down; which they did.

“And while this was going on, there were also people running within these poor people with machetes and other weapons killing them from within as well. So these displaced persons were being hit from both sides; from the army and from militias from within the camp.”

Attempts to stop the killings

In the midst of this carnage one would wonder whether there were any attempts to intercede.

Jordan says that there were numerous initiatives from Australian forces and other parties to stop the killings.

“It was coming from the UN and it was coming from our command element. And we had one signaller who spent his entire time on that radio maintaining communications and reporting exactly what was going on.

“But it was also our officers within our small group who were pleading with the Rwandan Patriotic Army officers, a major in particular, that this had do stop.”

But their calls fell on deaf ears.

“It was to the point where there was a set of horrible circumstances and some of the events leading up to the events where… displaced persons who knew that things were going bad and would make a run for it.

“And one or two soldiers would give chase. Rwandan Patriotic Army soldiers would give chase, fire a few shots, wing this poor guy and then proceed to bayonet him to death.”

He says there were endless efforts to stop the killings but often it was too late.

“There are countless incidents that took place where innocent people were murdered and executed in front of us and you know not only myself but everybody who was involved in those couple of days stood up to Rwandan soldiers and said no."

"There are countless incidents that took place where innocent people were murdered and executed in front of us and you know not only myself but everybody who was involved in those couple of days stood up to Rwandan soldiers and said no.

“If we were given the opportunity we did that and often we were successful but sometimes you just weren't there on time.”

Faced with mounting casualties and a situation of total helplessness there was increased pressure on the Australian Medical team to leave Kibeho altogether.

But, in true Anzac spirit, the small team decided to continue their mission of saving IDP's lives despite their own being at risk.

Gittoes recalled those moments of extraordinary courage.

"The RPA commander came and said to Carol Vaughan Evans you can’t go back we are going to finish them all. So they would kill the people that the Australians had been treating.

“Carol made an amazing decision. She said no we are going back. So with the heavy machine gun fire it seemed that all the Australians could have been killed in the process of trying to save all these people.

“They had been attached to them. They went back and got them and helped them. This meant tripping through razor wire and stuff … Trying to get people out and bullets flying everywhere.”

Counting the casualties

At the end of more than four days of killings the counting of casualties was to become one of the most controversial events surrounding the United Nations mission in Rwanda.

Jordan and his team were asked to count the victims for the United Nations

“I was charged by the UN along with another officer to take half a section of infantry and move around each side of the camp and count the dead bodies. This took place the day after the massacre. You know we walked along with pace counters and we counted everybody that we found.”

They provided a partial tally of more than 4000 victims.

But the Rwandan government disputed this figure and came up with its own figure of 338 people killed in four days of unabated killings.

Human Right organisations and many scholars believe the tally is much higher. Their figures vary between 10,000 and 15,000 people killed in a matter of four days.

Jordon has his own account.

“I recognise that by being there and bearing witness to what had taken place they would have to kill all of us … to clear that evidence from their slate.

“Or, they had to stop what they were doing. And they didn't kill 12,000 people. I believe the count was somewhere between 4,000 and 10,000. And I would say closer to 10,000."

_____
sbs.com

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