[AfricaWatch] RPF sustained propaganda on Hutu being rapists

http://therisingcontinent.wordpress.com/2014/02/25/rpf-sustained-propaganda-on-hutu-being-rapists/

The most recent occurrences of such propaganda were on 10 and 14 February 2014, in Paris and Seattle respectively. During the ongoing court hearing of the case of Captain Simbikangwa who is accused of genocide in Paris, the French journalist Francois Dupaquier claimed that raping Tutsi girls was part of a Hutu ritual for young males of that community in order to become adults. This was publicly stated on 10 February 2014.

Being Rwandan well aware of the culture of my country, unless RPF might have changed it since 1994 as this is when I left it – even with that no contact back home has mentioned the raping new culture by young Hutu, I was astonished to read such story of raping Tutsis as a rite of passage. The question which came to mind was this: Having learnt that that Jean-Francois Dupaquier was married to a Tutsi woman, could his statement come from explanations from his partner as part of certain realities of their intimate life, or was it the result of his investigative work as journalist? I could not be fixed.

Four days later, after the public claim of Dupaquier in Paris, more than 10,000 miles away in Seattle – California, President Paul Kagame of Rwanda stood in front of an American audience and uttered the same insanity about Hutus. He highlighted his story showing how fundamentally rapists they were from a more subtle and soft perspective. He referred to a story [see and listen to the clip] of a Tutsi woman raped in 1994 who came to him seeking his assistance about the child born out of such regrettable incident. The story was narrated on 14 February 2014.

I realized that these two statements were not made almost in the same period by pure coincidence. Similar stories about Hutus are being propagated around in Rwanda, Africa and the rest of the world. Probably the Rwandan Patriotic Front of President Kagame, seeing its rating among Westerners going down dramatically, has spotted that playing the Hutu rapist card could change the trend.

Since 7 January 2014 the Rwandan regime is out and loud remembering the 20th anniversary of the 1994 genocide. Everything is being done using all available imagination to tarnish further the image of Hutus, particularly when plenty of evidence is today pointing at direct responsibility of the Rwandan president in that national tragedy.

Another point is that 20 years have passed and the regime has committed enormous atrocities inside and outside the country, this under an indescribable dictatorship. Victims amount in millions, Rwandans, Ugandans, and more significantly Congolese. Kagame and his power are declining dangerously. As a consequence, he needs to use the opportunity of the 20th anniversary of the genocide to rebuild his image by especially tarnishing more Hutus, who are gradually getting politically organized.

Rwanda Human Rights Observer

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