By James Karuhanga,
Kigali RWANDA
Belgium-based former Rwandan Prime Minister Faustin Twagiramungu,
who openly supports genocidal forces that have, among other atrocities, killed
civilians in south-western Rwanda, should be prosecuted instead of being given
a safe haven in Europe, experts and observers have said.
former Rwandan Prime Minister, Faustin Twagiramungu (1994-1995) |
Twagiramungu, in a recent video,
openly urged Rwandans to join MRCD Ubumwe-FLN, a terrorist network operating in
the east of neighbouring DR Congo, to wage war on their country, remarks that
have drawn the ire from many.
Genocide scholar and researcher Tom
Ndahiro told The New Times that: “He (Twagiramungu)
should be prosecuted for his support to terrorism and war. It is against the
law and Belgium knows that. According to Article 17 of the European Convention
on Human Rights, such a speech is not protected and one can get decisions which
are applicable to his utterances.”
Drafted in 1950, the European
Convention on Human Rights is an international convention to protect human
rights and political freedoms in Europe.
Ndahiro said Belgium is party to
the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and “any propaganda
for war shall be prohibited by law."
Rwanda’s Minister of State in
charge of the East African Community, Olivier Nduhungirehe, said: “It’s not
acceptable that a Belgian citizen or resident can sit in Belgium and call for
Rwandans to join an armed and terrorist group on foreign soil. He has done this
publicly and explicitly.”
The DR Congo government has
demonstrated its committed to addressing the insecurity problem in the eastern
parts of the country.
Its military has dealt a heavy blow
to armed groups opposed to Rwanda, which operate there. Over the weekend, they
also overwhelmed Twagiramungu’s MRCD Ubumwe-FLN, from its bases and killed its
top commander Gen Jean Pierre Gaseni, something that may possibly have
triggered the former’s latest statement.
In September, they killed the
former supreme commander of the
genocidal militia, FDLR, Sylvestre Mudacumura who evaded capture for
over a decade.
Just last month, the Congolese army killed another commander of
RUD-Urunana, General Musabyimana Juvenal, alias Jean-Michel Africa.
According to Dr Alphonse Muleefu, a
Senior Lecturer in the School of Law at the University of Rwanda, statements of
people like Twagiramungu, calling for the support of FLN, MRCD’s military wing,
the group responsible for recent attacks targeting civilians in and around
Nyungwe Forest, raises at least three legal issues that deserve some serious
investigation.
Understanding these issues is very
important, he noted, because of the serious nature of the alleged violations
the group is responsible for according to Rwandan laws, but also because of the
location of individuals making those statements; Europe.
Muleefu said: “The fact that these
individuals are making these statements based in European cities requires us to
reflect on its implications in relation to the European Convention on Human
Rights (ECHR), especially in as far as the protection of the freedom of
expression is concerned.”
“The protection of freedom of
expression does not cover statements inciting hatred or violence; it has never
been the spirit of human rights instruments in Europe or elsewhere. Different
human rights provisions provide for the restriction of the right to freedom of
expression in the interest of other values such as public order, moral values
and peace.”
Muleefu explained that the
protection of freedom of expression is to allow people in a democratic society
to express themselves even if their views might be controversial but it does
not go as far as supporting violence or hatred.
The legal issues that arise when
someone in a foreign country makes a statement calling people to join a violent
armed group against another country are threefold, he said.
The position Rwanda has taken is
that FLN is a terrorist group, he added, and therefore the first issue to
investigate is whether its conduct of targeting civilians fits the description
of terrorist organizations according to the laws of countries hosting those
individuals making such statements.
“It can be fairly argued that, in
this case, this determination might not be very difficult to reach given the
fact that FLN has adopted tactics similar to those of FDLR, which is already on
the list of terrorist organisations in different countries.”
“If this determination is accurate,
then calling for the support of FLN is tantamount to supporting terrorism,
which is punishable in different countries. And, as some people have indicated,
the case of ROJ TV A/S against Denmark is interesting in this situation.”
Roj TV was a satellite television
that promoted activities of PKK broadcasting in the Kurdish language throughout
Europe and the Middle East.
The varsity don noted that the
Copenhagen City Court after determining that ‘the PKK was on the list of
terrorist organisations in the EU, Canada, the US, Australia and the UK’, and
that Roj TV was promoting the views of the PKK, concluded that Roj TV had
breached the anti-terrorism laws and its owners were found guilty of "promoting
terrorism."
The decision was upheld at all
levels of appeal in Denmark and at the European Court of Human Rights.
Second, Muleefu said, it is now
possible to link Twangiramungu and others supporting FLN to all the violations
of human rights the group is responsible for, as accomplices or accessories to
those crimes.
“In this
scenario, we can refer ourselves to the case of Ignace Murwanashyaka and
Straton Musoni in Germany where, in 2014, the two FDLR leaders were convicted
of supporting and being members of a terrorist group abroad and responsible for
the group’s serious violations of human rights.”
Third, he
said, it is an important legal and diplomatic or political question to put to
countries hosting people spreading violent propaganda – in particular Belgium.
It is
important to ask, he noted, why such countries do not intervene to regulate
political activities of foreigners on their soil, since such intervention would
conform to Article 16 of the ECHR, especially when such activities are in contradiction
with the international community’s effort to bring peace to DR Congo and
Africa’s Great Lakes region, in general.
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