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239 ANNEXTURE OPEN LETTER TO HIS EXCELLENCY PAUL KAGAME, PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF RWANDA AT KIGALI Arusha, Tanzania, 12th May, 2009 OBJECT: The denunciation of the discriminatory actions and intentions of the Rwandan authorities. Your excellency, President of the Republic, The detainees of the ICTR, signatories of the present document have judged it necessary to react to your racist and discriminatory intentions announced by several Rwandan personalities on the occasion of the 15th anniversary of the Rwandan “genocide”, celebrated on Nyanza hill, a Kigali the 11th of April 2009. The Rwandan government stated that 5,000 people were taken from the Official Technical School (ETO) at Kicukiro, the 11th of April 1994 and were then massacred at Nyanza hill. Those who stated this were Charles Muligande, M. Simburudi, president of the IBUKA Association which represents the Tutsi survivors of the “genocide” the deputy mayor of Kigali and Dr. Augustin Iyamuremye, senator and former chief of the civilian intelligence services in the Rwandan government of 1994. We think that the things said do not take any account of the truth or the reality of the history of our country, but instead, have as the purpose of terrorising, intimidating and humiliating the Hutu people of Rwanda who are globally accused of having planned and committed a “genocide” against the Tutsis. Our reaction is motivated by the fact that the RPF regime wants to wipe from the history of Rwanda, the revolutionary period that liberated the people of Rwanda from the yoke of a feudal monarchy and that ushered in national construction once the country achieved its independence. The ultimate objective of the RPF is clearly to erase the history of Rwanda and the benefits of the republican period to better support their false thesis according to which the Hutus only marked the history of the country with barbarism and “genocide” of the Tutsis. It is a vision both false and divisionist and it is clear that, by propagating it, you have abandoned the interests of the Rwandan people. 1. Pre-colonial Rwanda and Colonial Rwanda cannot be a model The deputy mayor of Kigali stated “We want to change history in order to present another Rwanda that is not that of the period between 1959 and 240 1994, a Rwanda like it was before; that which we inherited from our ancestors; the Rwanda of children of Rwanda who live without division, without hate, without discrimination.” Thus the RPF regime pretends that in the precolonial and colonial periods the ethnicities composing the Rwandan nation lived harmoniously in peace, understanding and solidarity. It is a complete reversal of history.1 The feudal-monarchical regime of Rwanda is not a model to propose to Rwandans today. It was a period of social, political, economic and cultural inequality that characterised that period and that led to the social revolution of 1959. Many authors including eminent Tutsis in high positions of power have written about this.2 We think that in the context of the search for durable solutions for our country, the RPF must stop the manipulation and falsification of the history of Rwanda. We believe that the remedy is to search for a democratic, political compromise in the context of a sincere dialogue between the power and its opponents. Such a step cannot be accommodated with obscurantism of the past. We condemn without reservation all attempts to rewrite the history of Rwanda for propaganda and ideological aims that seek the monopolisation of power by the Tutsi ethnic group to the exclusion of the others composing the Rwandan society. 2. The Planning Of The Criminal War by the RPF Is The Essential Cause of the Rwandan tragedy Minister Muligande stated that “the ‘genocide’ of the Tutsis was planned by the government defeated in July 1994, without furnishing the least proof of this alleged planning. Very simply, he stated that the ‘genocide’ was taught over a long time by the MDR/PARMEHUTU and later by the MRND. Such statements are nothing but propaganda. The MDR and MRND parties never practised racism or discrimination against the Tutsis. It is well known that under the Habyarimana regime between 5th July 1973 to the war in October 1990 the Hutus and Tutsis lived in symbiosis. The ethnic divisions of 19901994 were the consequence of the strategy of destabilisation of the RPF to rally the Tutsis of the interior of Rwanda to the cause of the RPF Tutsi from Uganda who had invaded the country and to attract sympathy in...

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