Rwandan papers highlight controversies over recent allegations by Nobel peace laureate in UN Mapping Report
Kigali, Rwanda (PANA ) - Rwanda newspapers this week gave significant coverage to the controversies surrounding the UN Mapping Report on Congo, an official source told PANA here Saturday.
Nobel peace laureate Dr. Denis Mukwege has been referring to negative propaganda targeting Rwanda over recent months.
The media became especially interested in assessing how Dr Mukwege had for long openly sided with Genocide Against Tutsi deniers and fanatics.
Under the headline "Debunking Lies: Did Gen. Kabarebe Threaten Nobel Prize Co-Laureate Dr. Mukwege?", the semi-private 'KT Press' wrote that on 17 August,
Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), a New York-based organization, issued a statement alleging Congolese Nobel Prize Co-Laureate Dr. Denis Mukwege was a victim of threats and intimidation from Rwanda.
PHR claimed that Dr. Mukwege, the founder and medical director of the Bukavu-based hospital in South Kivu, in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), was threatened by Rwanda’s General James Kabarebe, currently serving as the Security Advisor to Rwandan President Paul Kagame.
The alleged reports by PHR also say that during the past several weeks, Dr. Mukwege had been the target of an alarming intimidation campaign online and offline.
Commenting on the allegations, 'KT Press' recalls a talk show on the Liberation of Rwanda, that was aired on public Rwanda television in July, this year.
The panelists included Gen. Kabarebe, the minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation; Dr. Vincent Biruta, Rwanda’s Ambassador to Angola; and Wellars Gasamagera , amon other speakers.
During the talk show, according to the newspaper, Gen. Kabarebe addressed a question on the negative propaganda targeting the Rwandan government and its forces, mainly based on the United Nations Mapping Report, in which it was alleged that Rwandan soldiers committed atrocities and human rights violations in DRC during the period between 1993 and 2003.
Gen. Kabarebe described the UN Mapping Report as one of the tools those fighting Rwanda used to spread harmful propaganda against the government and its forces, especially those who still harboured the bitterness of defeat by Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF-Inkotanyi) forces, which officially dislodged the genocide government and liberated Rwanda on July 4, 1994.
“The propaganda that Rwandan forces went to Congo and killed people is mainly propagated by people who still harbour the grudge of defeat, especially those who were dislodged by the liberation struggle,” Gen. Kaberebe said without directly referring to Dr. Mukwege as an individual.
The newspaper also wrote that while on face value the 65-year- old medic comes off as an apolitical humanitarian worker who is only interested in the plight of the people, intelligence sources both in DRC and Rwanda have over the years documented how the 2018 Nobel Prize Co-Laureate was driven by a political agenda, deeply rooted on ethnic divisions, which made his global appeal a mere façade.
Highly confidential intelligence documents obtained by the newspaper also detail how Dr. Mukwege has over the years pursued a well calculated self-aggrandizing campaign, albeit with the support of NGOs, that not only discredits the Government of DRC but also uses Rwanda as a launchpad for his agenda.
In another opinion article, the English daily 'The New Times' writes that many Congolese people like to speak of the Congo Mapping Report as proof of 5, 6 and at times 10 million dead in DRC’s two-decades-long armed conflicts.
The UN Mapping Report on Congo was recently resuscitated by Dr. Denis Mukwege, a Nobel peace prize laureate from South Kivu, Eastern DRC, according to the newspaper saying the Nobel Price laurate was convinced that the report documented the alleged five million Congolese victims.
The newspaper recalls that until recently in 2017, when President Paul Kagame, freshly elected for a third term declared that Rwanda, for the first time controls its own narrative, the government of Rwanda had been in a two-decades open conflict with western NGOs and media.
The Congolese tragedies started from Leopold II with its brutal colonization to successive dictatorial regimes supported by the same genocidal forces that the Fayulu and Muzito had served well.
The whole buzz is meant to justify ex-post the lynching of Tutsi, started since 1959, culminating in this Genocide in Rwanda in 1994 and so far continued quietly with impunity in the whole region, according to the newspaper.
-0- PANA TWA/RA 22Aug2020
