Monday, October 12, 2009

The Truth about the Death of Maj. Gen. Fred Rwigyema

The RPF is said to have invaded Rwanda on Oct. 1, 1990, just over 19 years ago. However,
according to an intelligence officer in the Ugandan army, the NRA, at the time, they actually
started moving a few days before.

The original date for the RPF invasion of Rwanda was Christmas Day, December 25, 1990. The
RPA had by September 1990 massed most of its troops in Mbarara and Kabale.

However, it was realised that in Rwanda, Christmas Day was usually a normal day and therefore
there was a chance that the Rwandese army might be at its bases and posts. The date was then
moved to January 1, 1991.

However, in Sept. 1990 there came an unexpected opportunity: President Yoweri Museveni was
to travel to the UN headquarters in New York to attend a summit of world leaders. So too would
Rwandese President Juvenal Habyarimana. The RPF saw this as their best opportunity to strike.

The departing RPF fuelled their vehicles at Wankolo Petrol Station as they headed for the border,
Sept. 30, 1990.

According to sources, the group of RPA officers made up of Major Dr. Peter Bayingana, Major
Chris Bunyenyezi, and Major Frank Munyaneza, and others had planned, even before the
invasion, to eliminate Rwigyema.

So while they set the date of departure for Oct. 1, they started moving a few days before that.
Rwigyema, who was supposed to be the overall commander of the RPA was actually one of the
last to depart Kampala.

On the night of Sept. 30, 1990, Rwigyema was dressed in a light-blue shirt and drove a BMW
belonging to his friend Capt. Mike Mukula. Rwigyema's wife, Heanette Birasa Rwigyema, had
only recently had a baby. He bid farewell to a few friends then left.

Whether he arrived at the Uganda-Rwanda border dressed that way, in a light-blue shirt, or went
home and changed into military uniform, the Uganda Record cannot establish with certainty.

There has always been a story in Kampala that upon arriving at the border, he stripped off his
Ugandan army Major-General epaulettes, saluted in the direction of Uganda, and crossed over.
Perhaps so.

However, the Uganda Record is certain that he wore civilian clothes, a light-blue shirt that night,
Sept. 30, 1990.
All reports say that within three days, the veteran guerrilla Maj.Gen. Emmanuel Gisa, also
known by his guerrilla names of Fred Rwigyema, was dead.

The first version of Rwigyema's death was that he had been hit in the back of the head by a bullet
from a jeep manned by soldiers of the Rwandese government army, the FAR.

The coincidence of only a single bullet being fired, hitting only Rwigyema, and the FAR soldiers
not bothering to fire on the escorts and other soldiers around him, proved to be so implausible
that it was quietly dropped.
Eventually, despite their best efforts to keep it secret, word of Rwigyema's death started to leak
to the outside world.
Sources in Kampala claim that for two days after Rwigyema crossed over to Rwanda, September
30, 1990, he did not make any radio contact with Kampala as would normally be the case.
President Yoweri Museveni got concerned.

He then sent his brother Maj. Gen. Salim Saleh with a force of over 30 vehicles to check on
Rwigyema. The late Lt. Col. Reuben Ikondere, who had been in Ruhengeri in Rwanda, was one
of the NRA officers who accompanied Saleh to Rwanda to investigate Rwigyema's odd silence.
He came in a Cross Country vehicle. Saleh, it is said, got into radio contact with Major Peter
Baingana, asked Baingana where he, Baingana, was.

Baingana is said to have asked Saleh why Saleh should be asking him that. "This is not Uganda!"
snapped Baingana.

According to a soldier who escorted Saleh on that mission, Saleh asked Baingana where he,
Baingana, was and Baingana replied, "Where are you yourself?"
Asked by Saleh where Rwigyema was, Baingana was sarcastic and did not reveal much. Later
Saleh told Baingana that he had taken up position where Rwigyema had been buried.

The Uganda government newspaper, the New Vision, finally reported Rwigyema's death in a
front page story on Nov. 5, 1990: "There appears no truth in the widespread rumour that
Rwigyema was killed by Baingana in a power struggle and that Baingana was subsequently
executed. Baingana was not in Kagitumba when Rwigyema was killed…Rwigyema's death was
kept secret for a month by the people who were with him at the time. They feared it would
demoralise the RPF forces."

The article was written "By Our Reporter". In all likelihood, "Our Reporter" was either the then
Editor-in-Chief William Pike or his wife Catherine Watson. Watson, then working as a BBC
reporter, was one of the first foreign news reporters to visit the RPF's bases inside Rwanda after
the invasion.

The tone of the article was careful to protect the RPF's image, was clearly inclined toward them,
and it was the first of many reports by journalists from the English-speaking western world on
the RPF.
Here, Pike was doing in 1990 what he had done for the NRA in Luwero in 1984 as a free-lance
reporter with the South magazine --- putting a positive spin to their image, promoting them as
pragmatic, revolutionary, and well-educated soldiers with a historic sense of purpose.

The facts are these, though: Fred Rwigyema did not die on Oct. 1, 1990. Nor did he die two or
three days later.

According to a Ugandan source who fought alongside the RPA in that 1990-94 civil war, Fred
Rwigyema was alive on the first day of the invasion when the RPA captured Nyagatare. He
addressed the RPA troops, commanded the next battles, and he organised the RPA into new
units.

His death came three weeks later the invasion; in late October 1990. After Rwigyema's death, it
was Salim Saleh who took another Tutsi NRA officer, Maj. Paul Kagame, to the RPA
headquarters inside Rwanda.

To this day, Major Peter Baingana's widow does not see eye-to-eye with Rwigyema's widow
Jeanette Rwigyema, suggesting that Baingana at least had a hand in Rwigyema's death.

Several months before the invasion, in mid 1990 or so, Rwigyema kept on insisting to a family
friend that it was time to go to Rwanda. He seemed fatalistic about. Asked by the family friend
what the rush was for, he said that he had to take the risk.

He might meet his death in Rwanda; but, he added, he was equally in danger in Uganda. He
expressed the fear that there was a plan to kill him. The sensitivity with which he said this
suggested that it was from within the ranks of the Tutsi NRA officers in Kampala.

The purpose of this story is to shed light on what was going on inside the RPF even before it had
started to engage the Habyarimana government in the battlefront. The RPF was not a benign,
cultured, high-minded, politically astute and progressive force as its spin doctors then and now
portray it. It was about raw power, egos, and something else --- deadly Tutsi vs. Tutsi clan
rivalry, Somalia style.

After Rwigyema's murder, there was a continuous struggle for power within the RPF.
The DP newspaper, the Citizen, in a Jan. 3, 1991 news story captured it well:
"The Rwandese Patriotic Front which stormed Rwanda on October 1, 1990…are said to be tied
up in a historical power struggle. Reports reaching The Citizen say that RPF is divided on three
ethnic groupings within the Tutsi tribe. It is alleged that among the Tutsi there are three different
groups each with its own objectives.

The groups are referred to as Abega, Abanyiginya and the commoners. It is further alleged that
Abanyiginya are the true Kings of Rwanda…Reports further say that after the death of the top
three commanders, Major Paul Kagame who is said to be from the Abega group took over
leadership, which is said to be unacceptable to the Abanyiginya led by Kigeli the last king of
Rwanda and Major Adam Wasswa. It is alleged that [the] King Kigeli group has played a very
significant role disorganising the RPF, distorting the whole cause to a mere power struggle...On
[the] Uganda side, it is reported that from Kamwezi through Kishuro hills down Kahondo valleys
[valley] insecurity is on the increase. Meanwhile the Rwandese government has denied
allegations that its troops abducted four Ugandans on 28 December 1990 at Mugali in [the]
Katuna area. In a statement issued by the Rwandese embassy in Kampala on 31st December
1990, Rwanda's government accused the rebel RPF of perpetuating these crimes in the border
area with the aim of antagonising the relationship between the two neighbouring states...The
Rwandese government statement revealed that RPF rebels had acquired some Rwandese armed
forces uniforms and since they are fluent in Kinyarwanda pose as Rwandese government troops.
'This RPF sinister scheme was brought to the attention of President Museveni at Cyanika summit
on 20th November 1990'...Again people residing along River Kagera are reported to be scared by
floating bodies. The bodies are believed to be from the Rwanda side of Akagera National Park".

Note the details. The Citizen reported rivalry amongst the Tutsi in the top leadership of the RPF.
It was "historic". Then too, note the instance of the royal line of the Tutsi feuding with the other
non-royal Tutsi.
We are already reading a report, according to the Rwandese embassy in Kampala, of RPF
soldiers dressing up in the uniforms of the FAR government army, reportedly committing
atrocities, and then blaming them on the Habyarimana army.

Where have we heard of this guerrilla tactic before? Not Luwero Triangle in central Uganda
during the NRA war?

In his 2009 book, A Thousand Hills: Rwanda's rebirth and the man who dreamed it, the
American journalist Stephen Kinzer described Kagame's formative years as a guerrilla in
Luwero:

"Central Uganda is a good place to wage guerrilla war. Its heartland, known as the Luweero
Triangle, comprises 3,000 square miles of savannah and tropical forests. Enough people live
there to provide a social base for rebels, but there are also vast empty areas where fighters can
move and hide...This was Paul Kagame's home for five years. The way the NRA fought made a
deep impression on Kagame. It decisively shaped his idea of what a guerrilla force should be and
do. The lessons he learned proved invaluable to him when he began to forge, and later emerged
to lead, the force that would liberate his homeland."
So if "The way the NRA fought made a deep impression on Kagame" and it "decisively shaped
his idea of what a guerrilla force should be and do" and furthermore "it proved invaluable to him
when he began to forge, and later emerged to lead, the force that would liberate his homeland,"
we must then go to Luwero to examine what these vital lessons were that left such a mark on
Kagame that he would use years later in Rwanda.
For the answer to that, we go --- ironically (given his fanatically pro-RPF stance) --- to an
interview published on April 15, 2005 in the Daily Monitor by its then Political Editor Andrew
Mwenda with the former President Milton Obote as he explained the Luwero killings. Said
Obote, speaking in Lusaka, Zambia in Oct. 2004:

"Museveni has for the last twenty three years [2004] fought different enemies in different parts
of Uganda…In all these wars, the adversaries are different, the theatre of war different, the
period different. There are only two elements that are constant: Museveni on the one hand and
massive atrocities on the other….It is Museveni who employs atrocities against civilians to
achieve military victory, but in a more subtle way by ensuring that his adversary instead takes
blame for Museveni's atrocities."
This method of fighting, where you commit the atrocities in order to blame them and have them
blamed on your adversary, was the central plank of the NRA war in Luwero.
A report on this was published by the Shariat newsletter, a Kampala publication edited in the mid
1990s by Haruna Kanaabi and the late Musa Hussein Njuki.

Said the Shariat, Jan. 24, 1995: "On 6 February, 1981, Yoweri Museveni and a gang of his
Rwandese cousins launched a war on the Republic of Uganda. They knew quite well that the
people of Ankole where Museveni comes from could never support them in their madness which
was a result of Museveni's insatiable lust for power. They went to Luwero which was a good
choice because they knew it had more Rwandese than any other part of Uganda……
A few days ago through Capital Radio's "Desert Island Program", Lt. Col. Pecos Kutesa,
Museveni's aide de camp in Luwero, revealed that they killed thousands and thousands of
Obote's soldiers in Luwero. It is also true that they killed thousands and thousands of non-
Baganda and some Baganda who could not support them. They blew up buses killing many
civilians who were passing through Luwero…
…[Museveni] kept the skulls of those he killed or caused to be killed to use in his
campaigns…He knew that if he could keep on telling Baganda that the skulls are the creation of
Milton Obote, he could remain a hero for as long as he showed the skulls of UNLA soldiers
which he now claims to be of innocent civilians --- something he calls 'heroes'".

Obote put it more succinctly to Andrew Mwenda:

"At the burial of [UPC stalwart] Adonia Tiberondwa recently [on December 28, 2004], Maj.
Gen. Kahinda Otafiire, for example, revealed that the National Resistance Army rebels used to
wear UPC colours and then go into villages in Luwero and kill people in order to make the
people think these were actions of the UPC government. Otafiire was boasting of the "tricks"
NRA employed to win support in Luwero, but was also revealing the sinister side of Museveni
and his insurgents... Each time there was a reported case of mistreatment of civilians by the
army, we arrested those responsible and punished them severely.
"The truth is that most of the soldiers in the army who were committing atrocities were
Museveni's people. And whenever we zeroed in on them, they would run to join him in the bush
in Luwero. Take the example of [Colonel] Pecos Kutesa. He had an interview with William Pike
on Capital Radio in Kampala in [January] 1995 in a programme called Desert Island Discs. He
told Pike that he was in UNLA but as an NRA infiltrator whose mission was to undermine the
credibility of the army from within.
"Pecos Kutesa's testimony is instructive of how Museveni personally orchestrated the killings of
innocent people and the harassment of civilians not just in Luwero but other parts of Uganda as
well during the 1980s. His testimony is also important because it fits very well with what
Otafiire and Lt. Gen. Elly Tumwine have confessed. Let us listen to Pecos Kutesa, whose
interview on Capital Radio I have kept as my evidence. He told Pike that he used to be at a
roadblock in Konge. As a lieutenant, he was the man in charge of that roadblock. According to
Pecos Kutesa's own testimony on Capital Radio, Konge roadblock was the most notorious in
harassing civilians, robbing them of their money and killing some. Kutesa says reports reached
army headquarters of his harassment of the civilians and Oyite Ojok summoned him to Kampala
for disciplinary action. He ran to the bush." (Daily Monitor, April 15, 2005).

From all the above quotes, we must ask ourselves the all-important question: if this is the way
Museveni's NRA conducted itself in Luwero and according to Stephen Kinzer admiring book on
Kagame, the methods of guerrilla warfare in Luwero we have just read about left a "deep
impression on Kagame", is there anything more to be said about the way the RPF fought its war
under the command of the now Maj. Gen. Paul Kagame between 1990 and 1994?
According to the Citizen newspaper in Jan. 1991, this is late Dec. 1990 and what do we already
see, long before the 1994 genocide? Reports of bodies floating down the Kagera River from the
RPF-held areas.

Why do the international media, governments, historians, the ICC in Arusha, and others not want
to listen to this side of the story? Why are the Hutu being persecuted when this report plus the
one on today's cover story clearly point to who it was who orchestrated that 1990-94 genocide in
order to have it blamed on the Hutu?