I’ve always been asked, “how do you live with the dark past, and a cruel present? How do you manage that? Actually, it’s not me who is always asked, but Rwanda as a whole.
My response was/is, from the beginning we were under an illusion that the two were siblings and we were to deal with them as such. We have to deal with the cruel present, knowing that it is very much related to the dark past. They are inseparable.
So for us we have a choice to make. You are either crushed in between and you stop existing or you stand up and fight.
When people were saying in the testimony that the hope they have is that what happened here 30 something years ago will never happen again. It won’t be because those who were responsible for that dark past will not try again or are not even trying again. It will not happen again just because there will be people who will stand up and fight.
Because anyway there is a risk you may die when you stand up to fight. But again, if you don’t, it’s a sure thing you are going to die. So why don’t I try the former?
Why don’t I try to stand up and fight? With the chance that you might survive and live your life as you want it. Instead of giving up and you let people treat you as if for you to live, it’s a favor that they are going to do for you. Why?
I’ve also had people come to me and warn me, “President, you know you are too vocal. You say things that challenge these people who have the power in their hands, and they are going to kill you.” Well, first of all it means they are killers. But my answer to them is, you know what? If I were to be there to just accept these things to happen, I don’t think I would count myself as living anyway. It’s like I would already be dead.
To live a life of lies, of pretense, and owe my life to somebody else, I would be dead anyway. So, why don’t I die fighting? So, you Rwandans, why don’t you die fighting? Instead of dying anyway, just dying like flies. Why?
But my message goes to other Africans. Who live like this on a daily basis. Who are dehumanized. And they accept it, and they beg. I can’t beg to live. I can’t beg anybody.
We will fight. If I lose, I lose. But there is a chance, a significant chance that if you stand up and fight, you will live. And you will have lived a dignified life that you deserve, that anybody deserves.
So these people who are there at the UN, they are there at these Western capitals, they are everywhere, they are saying Rwanda. This small country, this Rwanda.
You see, when you are talking about Rwanda and ganging up together against Rwanda, you think it’s some small country. Then when I remember the facts about it, I just imagine the world has gone a mock.
But in the midst of all that, we have to live. We have to live our lives, we have to fight for that, we have to live the way we want.
And I tell anybody, to his face, to go to hell. If anyone comes around and thinks they can… You know, they come and say, hey, we’re going to sanction you. To what? Go to hell. Just go to hell. You have your own issues to deal with, go and deal with your own issues. Leave me to mine. This is the spirit, I think, Rwandans must have in their daily lives.
So, my worry is not about how powerful these people are-who come down upon us and throw anything at us. I’m never worried about that. I worry about one thing, which has lived on for centuries. It’s for Rwandans. It’s for Africans. Who sit back and find nothing wrong with accepting to be treated like that. That’s my only worry.
When can Rwandans, when can Africans refuse to be mistreated like this? To be told they have no value. To be told that their lives have to be lived as a result of a favor they are being done by somebody else. What a shame for people to accept that, even for a moment. You must not accept it; you must get up and fight for yourself.
And then you have fools leading countries and being used as puppets. And they are stealing from their own resources, which they should be putting to the good use of their own people and develop them. They just put everything to their own use.
You find ‘billionaires’ in a sea of poverty, millions of people going hungry, and their leaders, billionaires, with money that has been stolen from the resources of these people. And these are the ones received in Western capitals and praised when Rwanda is being crucified.
Literally the UN, everywhere these are the ones who show up and everybody is doing their bidding. They don’t talk; these ones don’t even say a thing. There is somebody to say it for them. They don’t say a thing. Even in meetings where solutions are being sought about and crafted and so on, they are absent, because somebody else is there. When their name comes up, they say, no…
I see it on a daily basis. Somebody has agents, orders them, pays them to go everywhere, preaching hate speech, killing people in broad daylight, setting fire on these people, burning in broad daylight. And when it comes up for discussion, they say, no, it’s not this one. You see it’s some other people; we will look for them. But the person keeps coming up.
They say, no, I will take the war to Kigali, I will remove the government, these Tutsis, we are tired of them. Like we were tired of them 31 years ago here. And it’s okay. These ‘wonderful’ people, these ‘powerful’ people who tell us what to do and what not to do, they are okay with that. They are fine with that. And they expect us to accept it also ourselves. In broad daylight.
Hate speech, killings of people for their identity, uprooting them from their homes, and most of them are refugees here in this country. We have 125,000 people as refugees who have been living in camps, uprooted from their homes in Eastern Congo. And then these powerful ‘good people’ come here and pick one, two, three, another day, five, if there are many, to go and settle them in those beautiful countries of theirs. And they leave the majority here. And they expect us to be thankful like that’s a huge gesture of generosity.
First of all, they take them knowing that these are actually refugees from the neighboring country. They don’t take them as Rwandans. They take them as refugees from Congo. Only that they are taking very few. I wish they could take all of them. Those who wish to go, to go and resettle them. So the rest becomes my problem.
So, what they do is, cleanse Eastern Congo of all these people, bring them to Rwanda, take to their countries those they want-very few, not even 0.1%, and the rest should remain Rwanda’s problem, because, after all, these ones are Tutsis like Kagame. That’s a simple conclusion.
But ask yourselves, how did these people end up being across the border of Rwanda? Was it really done by Kagame? Was it done by Rwanda? For us, we are here, lucky that we are alive, that we survived. But as I say this, even for my sanity and the country’s sanity, we have sometimes to just try to do things differently. Meaning, if you want to be helpful, if you want us to be partners, because we are happy to play our part, and you can be sure you will find a reliable partner in us. Irrespective of what we think about you.
You know, this whole thing you see every day, of groups-Group of experts. These are people who go around, experts who are supposed to know our situation better than ourselves. Can you imagine? And the ones who lead those groups are the very people connected with this history I’m talking about, or that Bizimana was talking about. Can you imagine the cynicism? And this expert comes to me and asks me, you know, but this and that.
So, the whole thing about genocide, this ideology that has killed millions of people, has been turned into a problem of minerals. You know, it’s, okay. Let’s imagine it’s a problem of minerals now. Was it a problem of minerals in 1994? Which minerals were we fighting for here? Just imagine. Which minerals?
Second, if it were to be minerals, how many are actually fighting for these minerals in those places? Assuming you found evidence about Rwanda being implicated in what’s happening in Congo for minerals in eastern Congo. Are you really saying it is just Rwanda? Why don’t you be brave enough to say Rwanda is invading our territory we have created for ourselves and is encroaching on the minerals we are also encroaching on in eastern Congo? Why don’t you be brave enough to admit that? At least say that.
Minerals? If these allegations were true, you know what? Rwanda would be as rich as you are, those who make the accusations. We would, actually not be needing your money at all. Which, you ‘give’ us, then come and beat us for everything. I mean, yeah, that is the world between the dark past and the cruel present.
But what didn’t kill us and finish us 31 years ago has hardened us and prepared us for the bad things that will always come anytime these people want and wish. Honestly, I want to assure you, we will not die without fighting like last time. And fighting does not involve invading anybody’s territory, does not involve going after something that is not ours. The fighting I mean is, “if you find us here and want to treat us the way you want, like in the past, I just want to assure you, you will not succeed!”
I think I beg all these Rwandans; we should be itching for a fight with anybody who wants to come here and turn things upside down. And I think there are many who are ready to join for that.
But for our friends, our partners, please don’t misunderstand us, don’t mistreat us. We have had enough of it. Take it somewhere else.
You know minister Bizimana who was telling you this whole history that I think he should compile and distribute it to our ‘friends’ and all of us, I actually want a copy of it too, though I think our friends need it most. Much as in the cruel present, facts don’t matter, evidence doesn’t matter, the truth doesn’t matter, what matters is what pleases ‘you’ on any day and not the facts of others.
And I was saying this because minister Bizimana made another presentation another time that involved the same people he was talking about today. The next day people from embassies came threatening him.
And I think another message went through foreign affairs. They threatened him for saying the truth, face to face, claiming he will not get a visa, to travel to some places. Somebody from the embassy threatened our minister.
Of course, I can’t blame them, given this history we have heard, that from the embassy they think they are above the minister. They can come and say, “you, how dare you say this?” He wasn’t saying this is contrary to the truth or evidence we have. Nor was he presenting lies? No, they were just saying whether lies or truth, you shouldn’t have said it. That is the cruel present we live in, but we must confront it. And we will, there’s no question about it.
I’ve also told people that anyway, for us, we’re in a sort of not bad position, because the worst has already happened to us. I don’t think anything worse will ever happen. So those who are scared, fearful of anything, I just want to console you in some way, if you may, that actually the worst has already passed.
When we lost the people during that time, (like the young man was saying in a testimony), do you think anything like that would ever happen again? I don’t think so.
So why would we be scared of anything? The worst (the hurricane) came, and we took cover and things, and it passed. And we rebuilt. We rebuilt our strength of all kinds. I don’t think there is any other hurricane that will come and sweep across the country, destroying everything. I don’t think so.
This day always reminds us of some of the things that I ignored and facts. Remember the book written by somebody many of you know, Philip Gurevich, with a very long title? The title of the book was, “we wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families.” Who were they informing and who was going to stop that and who was going to come to their rescue? Nobody. It just happened as they said it.
People kept telling the world we want to inform you that tomorrow we’re going to be killed with all our families. And who cared? And the families were killed indeed, including the family of the young man who was testifying here. Well, including our families. Those of us standing here who have been demonized every single day about our history. The history where there is a force that always has been attempting to turn victims into perpetrators.
So, these people who give testimonies and say what happened to them, they are actually now ‘perpetrators’, they are no longer victims? That’s the cynicism I was talking about of what happens in this world. “These very people who barely survived and who lost everything else, and their families are now the ‘perpetrators’, no longer victims.” That’s what the world wants to create about us.
You know, during the war times, there used to be battles taking place across the country. Militias killing people, soldiers fighting government forces. And sometimes in our movements, one of the commanders would come to me and say, “President, come and see what has happened here.” I went there once and saw a mass grave that they had just dug with caterpillars and buried in over 2,000 people. Out of them all, 12 people were still breathing and we saved them.
I was told the other day of the 12, five lived for some time and later passed. Seven are still alive. But from that moment, I told the commanders that they should never bring my attention to this kind of thing. They should just handle it, and we agreed on how. I didn’t need to be informed. And the reason was simple-I didn’t want my judgment and my conduct of the war and the leadership I was supposed to be providing to be impaired in any way by the anger of what I saw.
It’s unfortunate that such a moment of remembrance sort of takes you back into that. So that’s why I wanted to keep my own balance so that we go through so many things. Otherwise, if I kept seeing people put in a mass grave, my mind would go to: but who is this? Whoever is doing this, why is he doing it? Anyway, let me end here. There will always be another day, another year to commemorate those people.
But for Rwandans, I beg you. Don’t owe your life to anybody else. And please have the courage to deal with a situation, a moment like this. Don’t offend anybody but always fight for what is yours. Don’t allow anybody else to dictate to you how you should live your life, because the moment you accept it, that is the day you have lost your life. God bless you!
