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Category: News

  • Kobagaya: Defence calls son as 1st witness

    The son of
    a man accused of lying to immigration officials about his participation in the
    1994 Rwandan genocide took the stand Monday to testify about their life as
    Burundian refugees in Rwanda and his father’s efforts years later to become a
    U.S. citizen.

    That testimony came as the defence team for Lazare Kobagaya began
    laying out its case. The 84-year-old Topeka, Kansas, man is charged with
    unlawfully obtaining U.S. citizenship in 2006 and with fraud and misuse of an
    alien registration card. The indictment also seeks to revoke his citizenship.

    Prosecutors have said the case is the first in the U.S. requiring
    proof of genocide. An estimated 500,000 to 800,000 people, mostly ethnic
    Tutsis, were killed by Hutu militias in Rwanda between April and July 1994.

    Jean Claude Kandagaye testified that his father is a Hutu and his
    mother is a Tutsi. Kandagaye told jurors that while he was growing up in
    Rwanda, his family was discriminated against because they were Burundian
    refugees. As refugees, they could not join political parties, attend public
    secondary schools or get some jobs and social services.

    Kandagaye told jurors that as a refugee his father was not a
    leader in the Rwandan village of Birambo where they lived — a key point as the
    defence team tries to counter the government’s allegations that Kobagaya was an
    influential community leader who led others during the genocide.

    Kandagaye, who filled out an immigration form in 2005 for his
    father, is considered a key witness as the defence tries to show jurors that the
    elderly Kobagaya did not understand English well and depended on others to
    translate documents and help him fill out immigration paperwork.

    Earlier Monday, prosecutors rested their case after putting on the
    stand the immigration official who interviewed Kobagaya during his citizenship
    application in April 2006.

    Adjudication officer Jeryl Bean testified that Kobagaya responded
    “no” when asked whether he had ever persecuted anyone or ever
    committed any crimes for which he was not convicted. Kobagaya also denied ever
    giving false information to immigration officials or lying to them to gain
    entry into the United States, she testified.

    Prosecutors used Bean to attack Kobagaya’s claim that he did not
    purposefully misrepresent to immigration officials that he was not living in
    Rwanda during the 1994 genocide because he was unfamiliar with the English
    language and may have misunderstood that question on the immigration forms.

    The defence has argued that it was one of his sons, Kandagaye, who
    actually filled out the paperwork because Kobagaya did not speak English at the
    time.

    However, Bean told jurors that Kobagaya spoke English and that no
    interpreter or family member was present during the 2006 interview for his
    citizenship.

  • BNR targets inflation at below 7.5%, Governor Says

    The National Bank of Rwanda will aim to keep inflation below 7.5 percent this year, lower than a previous estimate of 8 percent, newly appointed Governor Claver Gatete said.

    The inflation rate climbed to 5 percent in April from 4.1 percent a month earlier as food and fuel prices increased. Last month, former Governor Francois Kanimba said inflation may reach 8 percent this year. Gatete, who was appointed as Kanimba’s replacement on May 6, said the official estimate is that inflation will reach 7.5 percent by the end of the year.

    “We don’t want it to go that far,” he said in an interview after his swearing-in ceremony on May 13 in Kigali, the capital. “We are fighting inflation.”

    The National Bank of Rwanda kept its key lending rate unchanged at 6 percent last month, after three reductions in the past year, to help boost lending and support the economy’s expansion. Rwanda’s Finance Ministry has forecast economic growth in the coffee-growing country will slow to 7 percent this year from 7.5 percent in 2010 as poor rains curb agricultural production.

    The central bank hasn’t decided whether it will raise interest rates to curb inflation, Gatete said.

    Rwanda’s national budget will increase to 1.12 trillion Rwandan francs ($1.85 billion) in the 2011-12 fiscal year, from 984 billion francs a year earlier, according to the Ministry of Finance. The increase has been accounted for in the central bank’s inflation projection, Gatete said. Inflation advance last month largely because of higher food and fuel costs, he said.

    While food prices are still rising, the rate of increase has slowed, he said. In April, food prices climbed 6 percent, after jumping 8 percent in the previous month. Higher fuel prices are mainly due to political instability in the Middle East and are beyond the bank’s control, he said. Gasoline prices in Rwanda increased 14 percent between January and April, according to industry regulators.

    “We can only control the effects,” Gatete said.

    Gatete, a former ambassador to the U.K. and previously a deputy governor at the central bank, replaced Kanimba after his predecessor was named as the new minister of trade.

    Gatete said he plans to focus on modernizing communication systems, training staff and improving research capabilities at the bank during his tenure as governor.

  • HUAWEI to launch smartphones in Rwandan market

    Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei through its local subsidiary is soon to launch android powered smartphones in the Rwandan market through telco operators MTN Rwanda and TIGO.

    The smartphones to be powered by the popular android operating system offer a full range of remarkable features and applications. According to the Chief Operating Officer of Huawei Rwanda Adriaane Heine, the model expected to retail via the TIGO and MTN Rwanda operators is HUAWEI U8150 IDEOS.

    “Huawei will be dealing with provision and marketing of these products and ultimately, the operators will be selling to the markets,” says Heine,.

    Hein reveals that the Huawei smartphones have been well received in many countries across the world, a factor attributed to “the phones’ new, simple and incredible technology coupled with numerous amazing features.”

     “The handsets received a good response particularly in countries like Kenya where about 100,000 units were sold in the first few months. Since its release in January until February (2011), they (Huawei Smartphones) had already taken 45.4 percent of the market share surpassing that of even other more popular established brands such as Nokia with a market share of 33.3 percent,” Heine says.

    He says that the phones fitted with a range of powerful features from hardware to software.

    “The powerful android operating system will provide the user with categorised applications they can use, which are directly accessible from the android market feature on the phone,” he observes.

    During an exclusive interview with IGIHE.com, Heine demonstrated the brilliant applicability of the phone by opening Google Maps, an application that allows a user to trace topographic directions at their disposal via satellite communication.

    The phone’s uniqueness goes beyond the software and integrated hardware, It offers elements such as a capacitative touchscreen , powerful 3G connectivity and other powerful features such as a router.

    HUAWEI is a global telecommunication company specialising in the supply of a diverse range of telecommunication equipment. With its strong and broad network of around 110,000 employees worldwide, it has partnered with more than 470 operators in more than 130 countries. The company has been operating in Rwanda since 2005 and helped local telecommuinications firms like MTN to build the network infrastructure.

  • Czech Republic minister calls for closer ties with Rwanda

    The Czech Republic Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Tomas Dub yesterday held discussions with Defense Minister Gen. James Kabarebe about strengthening defense ties between his country and Rwanda.

    “In the recent months, we signed a memorandum of understanding on defence cooperation” Dub said after the meeting. “Leaving aside the MoU signed recently, the two countries can exchange a lot of fighting techniques,” Dub said.

    He however noted that the pact between the two countries is not fully implemented hence the continuous visits and discussions on how to strengthen defense ties between Rwanda and Czech Republic.

    “I would like my visit to simply focus on continuing our cooperation,” he said.

    Defence and military Spokesperson, Lt. Col. Jill Rutaremara, told reporters that Dub’s visit at the ministry aimed at looking into how the Rwanda-Czech defence pact can be implemented.

    He added that Rwanda could learn a lot from the Czechs mainly in fighting techniques, particularly through its air force.

    Dub later invited the defense and foreign affairs ministers to the Czech Republic to pick out what Rwanda could learn from them.

  • Karugarama briefs US varsity delegation on Rwandan justice system

    The Minister of Justice, Tharcisse Karugarama, yesterday received in his office 15 students and three professors from the department of International Peace and Conflict Resolution of Arcadia University in Pennsylvania, the United States.

    The delegation is in Rwanda on a week-long study tour to gain a deeper understanding of the country’s conflict resolution management.

    “They are here to find out how genocide survivors managed to reconcile with the genocide perpetrators, “Minister Justice Tharcisse Karugarama told reporters.

    Karugarama told the delegation that the country’s judicial system during the pre-genocidal era was inept where to become a judge or prosecutor never required any academic qualification.

    “There was no fairness at all and to become a judge or prosecutor never required you to present your papers ; but through the will of the then President, he could appoint you (as judge or prosecutor) because he had full powers,” he pointed out.

    Minister told the US delegation that Rwanda’s justice system is today based on truth, equity, fairness and transparency, adding that the present government laid emphasis on training of judges and prosecutors to try the colossal backlog of genocide perpetrators in the country’s prison facilities.

    The minister briefed the delegation on the Gacaca courts system which had tried many perpetrators compared to the contemporary justice system which led to delays. He further attributed notable peace in the country to the unprecedented success of the Gacaca which resolved 1.5 million Genocide-related cases.

    Karugarama underlined that Rwandans today believe in forgiveness and tolerance where both perpetrators and survivors live in harmony.

    He allegorically underscored that though Rwanda has 1000 problems, it correspondingly has 1000 solutions.

    The delegation also nods in the agreement for the introduction of Gacaca courts. I think how we are told, if that’s how it works, it is then efficient,” Connor Moriaty a student part of the delegation noted.

    A member of the delegation and a student at the university Connor Moriaty lauded the role of Gacaca courts.

    “Basing on the account given to us, the Gacaca court system is efficient,” he said.

  • President Kagame meets U.S health experts

    President Paul Kagame yesterday at Village Urugwiro met with representatives from a consortium of 16 top medical, nursing and health management schools universities from the U.S through the Clinton Health Access Initiative.

    The delegation of 38 health experts is in the country on a week long study tour to explore ways of enriching the Rwandan health sector.

    Ira Magaziner, the Chief Executive Officer and the Vice Chair, Clinton Health Initiative (CHAI), who is the head of the delegation, said their discussions with the President centred on the benefits that would arise out of a partnership with the Ministry of Health.

    “We discussed with the President about the ways of promoting good health in Rwanda while analysing the cheapest means of bringing Rwanda’s heath sector to the top,” Magaziner pointed out.

    He revealed that through a Memorandum of Understanding signed with the Ministry of Health, the CHAI would work alongside their Rwandan colleagues to offer world class training.

    “By the end of seven years, Rwanda will have a world class health education system,” Magaziner said.

    He noted that the programme is in line with the vision President Kagame shares with Clinton – to build a quality, world class healthcare system in Rwanda.

    “The need is also to develop a base of highly educated people that can lead to the creation of research in health industries and the health economy of Rwanda, that is what we are working on with the leadership of the Ministry of Health,” Magaziner said.

    The group will focus on several areas of specialty such as dentistry, nursing, obstetrics, paediatrics and many others providing diverse expertise.

    The representatives were drawn from Harvard, Yale, Brown, Dartmouth, Duke, Virginia, Colorado, Texas and Maryland universities as well as leading nursing schools. 

    Chantal Kabagabo, the Dean of Students at the Kigali Institute of Health said that lectures based on the partnership would be instituted within a year. The training would be conducted in health training institutions and hospitals to equip local health workers like physicians and nurses with modern skills.

  • Rwandan woman identifies Kobayaga in genocide

    A woman whose husband and three young children were slaughtered during the 1994 Rwandan genocide cried Thursday, 12 May, 2011, as she identified from the witness stand Lazare Kobayaga she contends led a mob attack up a mountain where she and many others had sought refuge from the ethnic carnage that was sweeping Rwanda.

    Her account was the most emotional yet as the trial of Kobagaya entered its fifth day of testimony in a federal courtroom in Wichita, U.S. The government is seeking to revoke his U.S. citizenship for allegedly lying to immigration authorities about his involvement in the genocide.

    The 84-year-old genocide suspect is charged with unlawfully obtaining U.S. citizenship in 2006 with fraud and misuse of an alien registration card in a case prosecutors have said is the first in the United States requiring proof of genocide. Kobagaya contends he is innocent.

    An estimated 500,000 to 800,000 people were killed in Rwanda between April and July 1994. Most of the dead belonged to an ethnic group known as the Tutsi, while most of the killings were carried out by members of an ethnic group known as the Hutu.

    Valerie Niyitegeka, a Tutsi woman whose family farmed near Kobagaya’s village, recounted for jurors the events of April 15, 1994, when she, her husband, Appolloni, and their six children fled as mobs of Hutu men burned Tutsi houses.

    “I was OK for my house to be burned _ as long as I am not dead,” she testified through a translator.

    Niyitegeka detailed how she climbed _ and at times crawled _ up the steep, rocky mountainside of Mount Nyakizu with her youngest son strapped to her back. She described how the women and children gathered piles of stones for their men to throw as mobs of Hutus attacked.

    She told jurors she was able to identify the elderly Kobagaya as the leader of the attacking mob because she recognized the way he walked and the cane he carried that day. She pointed at him in the courtroom : “He is there. He is the one.”

    The defense tried to cast doubt on that identification by noting trees and other obstructions on the mountain that day.

    During the melee as the family fled the mountain in the ensuing days, Niyitegeka was separated from her husband and three of her children. She testified she would never see them alive again. Their slain children’s ages were 12, 10 and 8.

    Joseph Yandagiye, a 76-year-old Hutu farmer, testified about what happened to the children and their father, who sought refuge at Yandagiye’s house. After taking them in, Yandagiye went to run some errands. When he returned, he said he found a crowd of Hutus had already surrounded his house.

    Yandagiye testified that when the crowd threatened him in an attempt to get into the house, Appolloni came out and told the mob : “Take me instead.”

    Yandagiye also told jurors he initially followed the mob that had taken Appolloni and his children, but turned back after they told him they would make him kill them himself if he continued to follow.

    Later that day, a group of Hutu men came to get him too, Yandagiye testified. It was then that he learned that Appolloni and his children had been killed.

    Yandagiye testified that Kobagaya told the mob that they should kill him too because he had sheltered Tutsis in his house during a 1959 conflict. Yandagiye said another community leader, Francois Bazaramba, urged the crowd not to kill him but to punish Yandagiye by making him buy beer, which he did.

    Bazaramba is a former Rwandan pastor who was sentenced last year to life imprisonment by a Finnish court for committing genocide.

  • Rwanda cleric pardons genocide crimes

    The Rev. Ubald Rugirangoga was counseling inmates in a Rwandan prison in the wake of the country’s 1994 genocide when he was forced to truly practice what he was preaching. 

    His mother, brother, and around 70 members of his extended family had been killed in the slaughter that claimed more than 800,000 lives, mostly minority Tutsis, over 100 days, at the hands of Hutu extremists.

    Speaking mostly through an interpreter Tuesday to the Worcester County Bar Association, the priest said the man who killed his mother happened to be in the prison, but he didn’t know who he was. He said the man sought him out and explained what he had done. He asked Rev. Rugirangoga for forgiveness. 

    “It was difficult,” he said. “I had preached to forgive, and I had to practice what I was preaching, so I had to search deep down in my heart. And I went up to him and I told him, I forgive you.” 

    Even though he forgave him, the man who killed his mother still had his doubts. To further prove his forgiveness, Rev. Rugirangoga reached out to the man’s children, who were left without parents after the man’s wife died. Rev. Rugirangoga said that after forgiving the man, all the pain and anger just left. 

    “I was free,” he said. 

    Speaking in the jury pool room at the Trial Court building on Main Street, Rev. Rugirangoga told another story of forgiveness, in which a Tutsi woman took in the daughter of a girl, even though the girl’s Hutu father murdered most of her family. The two families had been neighbors, Rev. Rugirangoga said. The woman’s surviving son at first didn’t understand why the woman would take in the daughter of the man who made her a widow, but later he came around. And in a surprising twist, he ended up marrying the girl years later. 

    Rev. Rugirangoga has been running schools in Rwanda where he mixes children of victims of the genocide and children of perpetrators of the genocide. 

    He said it’s important to start early with children. He said the government has used his schools as a model. 

    “I try to bring them together,” he said. “Hopefully in the future, with the history in our country, this will not happen again because I have to stand with these children.” 

    He said it is a burden to carry anger around, and said if you can’t forgive, you are slowly dying inside. 

    “If you carry anger around, you can even get sick, not knowing why,” he said. “It can lead to depression.” 

    Asked a question about developed countries’ inaction during the genocide, Rev. Rugirangoga, who fled Rwanda by foot during the genocide but later returned, said he was not angry. 

    “At the time of the genocide we were in survival mode, we couldn’t hear what was going on, who was helping or not,” he said. 

    “But you have also, the U.S. and other countries that have shown support with the help they’ve offered us. If we’re forgiving the killers, then we need to forgive the grudge that nobody helped us.”

  • Extraordinary efforts needed; President tells new cabinet appointees.

    President Paul Kagame, May 10, presided over the swearing-in ceremony of eight newly appointed cabinet ministers at Parliamentary Buildings in Kigali. 

    In his remarks immediately after the function ; President Kagame called upon the new ministers to work tirelessly and enhance positive gains for the country.

    “With great performance, Rwandan society will reach sustainable development and poor performing will lead to poor development which will bring a bad image to the nation,” Kagame cautioned.

    The Head of State appealed to the ministers to commit themselves and use extraordinary efforts in serving the citizens as required, adding that they should produce extra results compared to what is expected out of them. Kagame wished the new ministers the best in their new duties.

    The new ministers that were sworn in included Dr. Agnes Binagwaho, the new Minister of Health, Aloysia Inyumba, the State Minister in Prime Minister’s office in charge of Gender and Family Promotion, Francoise Kanimba, (Trade and Industry) ; Pierre Damien Habumuremyi, (Education Minister) and Albert Nsengiyumva (Infrastructure).

    Others were Venantia Tugireyezu, the Minister in the President’s office ; Christine Nyatanyi, the Minister of State in charge of Social Affairs and Community Development and Dr. Alex Nzahabwimana, the State Minister in the Ministry of Infrastructure in charge of transport.

     

     

     

  • Habineza thanks President Kagame for diplomatic appointment

    Former minister of Sports and Culture Joseph Habineza, who was recently appointment as the Rwanda High Commissioner to Nigeria has expressed his gratitude to President Paul Kagame for the appointment. In an exclusive interview with IGIHE.com from Paris, France, where he was on holiday, the former minister further thanked the Rwandan public for showing sympathy towards him and encouraging him following a much publicised scandal that resulted in his resignation from government.

    “I am very happy and grateful to His Excellency President Kagame. I also thank the general public for showing me sympathy and for encouraging me. Asked what he thought of getting back to government months after his resignation, Habineza said that it was difficult to respond, adding that the appointing authority was best placed to answer the query.

     He tendered his resignation in early February this year after a wide circulation of internet photographs that showed him cuddling several women. 

    Mr Habineza told the media then, that he had resigned for personal reasons.

    “But when you see people publishing pictures and all that, it is not good for your image as a minister,” he said.

    The photos, which Mr Habineza says were taken in 2008, were published on on an opposition website called Le Prophete.

    Most of the 11 photos showed the minister dancing or cuddling with one woman in particular in a well-furnished room.

    The person who posted them said he was a university student and wanted to illustrate how the government was spending lavishly.