POLITICS-RWANDA: Donors Urged To Impose Arms Embargo

By Moyiga Nduru Reprint | | Print |

Moyiga Nduru

HARARE, Jan 9 2001 (IPS) - A Rwandan opposition group has urged the international community to stop selling arms to Rwanda so as to prevent human rights abuses in the tiny central African country.

The group, Rally for the Return of Refugees and Democracy in Rwanda (RDR), said in a statement made available to IPS on Tuesday, that the Kigali regime imprisons political leaders, restricts people’s movement, attacks the press and infringes on the freedom of speech.

The statement said more than two million civilian Hutus and Twas have been massacred by the Tutsi-dominated army since October 1990.

“Despite numerous crimes against humanity committed by his army, the Rwandan ruler – General Paul Kagame – continues to be the darling of Western donors,” said RDR President Victoire Ingabire, who is based in The Netherlands.

He said: “More than 60 per cent of the Rwandan government’s budget is financed by foreign aid.”

The London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies says Rwanda, with a standing army of more than 60,000 – including militia – spends more than 62 million US dollars on defence per annum. But military experts in the region say the figure could be higher.

Ingabire said feelings of guilt still guide donor aid to Rwanda. “Having failed to prevent and stop the 1994 Rwandan genocide, some members of the international community provide, as compensation, unconditional financial aid to the Kigali government and continue to turn a blind eye to its political repression and oppression,” claimed Ingabire.

Up to one million Tutsis, and politically moderate Hutus, were slaughtered by Hutu militia known as “Interahamwe”, or those who fight together in Kinyarwanda, in 1994.

“We urge all those providing financial aid to the Rwandan government to suspend all non-humanitarian aid and those supplying the Rwanda Patriotic Army with all the panoply of war to stop their supplies,” said Ingabire.

He said some of the weapons have found their way into neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) where the RPA is backing rebels seeking to overthrow the government of Laurent- Desire Kabila.

“The presence of the RPA in the DRC is mainly for economic reasons. By plundering Congolese natural resources (diamonds, gold, ivory, coffee beans, timber, tantalum, niobium, etc) and selling drugs and stolen goods, high-ranking members of the Kigali government and its security establishment get rich quickly than they would be with their meagre salaries in Rwanda,” claimed Ingabire.

The statement comes as the World Bank Group’s International Development Association (IDA) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have agreed to support a comprehensive debt reduction package for Rwanda under the enhanced Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative.

This debt relief package will save Rwanda about 810 million US dollars in debt service over the coming years. The relief from the enhanced HIPC Initiative will reduce, by 71 per cent, Rwanda’s debt which is still outstanding despite the full use of traditional debt relief mechanisms.

IDA’s assistance under the enhanced Initiative amounts to 405 million dollars, while IMF’s Initiative amounts to 55 million US dollars.

The African Development Bank, Rwanda’s largest multilateral creditor after IDA, also has agreed to deliver 75 million US dollars under the enhanced HIPC Initiative in the near future.

Rwanda will, the World Bank says, receive the full amount of assistance under the enhanced HIPC initiative when it satisfies the requirements for a floating completion point, including the completion of a poverty reduction strategy paper prepared with the full participation of all stakeholders.

The World Bank says poverty worsened dramatically due to the 1994 genocide with the proportion of households living below the poverty line rising to 70 per cent in 1997 from 40 per cent in 1985 and 53 per cent in 1993.

Rwanda opposition parties, who operate from abroad, appealed to the international community not to put profits before human lives. “We appeal to them to rethink their sense of moral values,” said RDR Vice-President Emmanuel Nyemera.

He said: “For peace’s sake, the RDR asks the United Nations Security Council, the European Union and the Organisation of African Unity to impose a total gem ban and arms embargo on Rwanda.”

The appeal has been described by a government spokesperson in Kigali as ‘a non-starter’.

“These are the very people who turned a blind eye to the 1994 genocide before fleeing Rwanda. Now they want the international community to stop helping Rwanda from rehabilitating what they had destroyed,” he told IPS in a telephone interview on Tuesday.