- Title: RWANDA: Ex-president Pasteur Bizimungu is freed from prison
- Date: 7th April 2007
- Summary: (BN13) KADUHA, RWANDA (FILE - APRIL 1995) (REUTERS) CHURCH WERE 12,000 TUTSIS ALLEGED TO HAVE BEEN SLAUGHTERED WORKERS SHOVEL HUMAN REMAINS ONTO PLASTIC SHEETS RELATIVES OF THE DEAD LOOKING ON PLASTIC SHEETS CONTAINING REMAINS LOWERED INTO GRAVE RELATIVES STAND BY HUMAN REMAINS ON PLASTIC SHEETS
- Embargoed: 22nd April 2007 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: Rwanda
- Country: Rwanda
- Topics: Domestic Politics
- Reuters ID: LVA125Y7L8VA8IB7AZHU0PLP6GJP
- Story Text: Rwanda's ex-president Pasteur Bizimungu was freed from prison on Friday (April 6) after a presidential pardon for a 15-year sentence he received on charges that included inciting ethnic violence.
Bizimungu was jailed in 2004 after a trial critics said was politically motivated. He had been convicted for creating a militia, embezzling state funds and inciting ethnic violence in a nation still healing from genocide.
An ethnic Hutu, he was appointed president when the ruling Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) took power after the 1994 genocide, in which extremists from the Hutu majority butchered 800,000 Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus.
President Paul Kagame, whose Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Army ended the hundred days of slaughter, was then vice-president, but in reality had more power than his superior.
"I want to thank the president for the pardon he has given. It has taken me by surprise," Bizimungu, dressed in a suit and tie, told reporters after he left prison.
Kagame gave no reason for the pardon.
"Based on the prerogative of mercy entrusted to him by the constitution, President Paul Kagame has today extended pardon to Mr. Pasteur Bizimungu and waived off the remaining part of his sentence," a statement said.
Cooperation between Bizimungu, a Hutu, and Kagame, a Tutsi, was intended to symbolise post-genocide reconciliation.
But their relationship soured, and in March 2000, Bizimungu resigned after falling out with fellow senior RPF members over the make-up of a new cabinet. Bizimungu was arrested in 2002.
In 2006 he lost a court appeal to have his conviction overturned, having claimed it was politically motivated. He subsequently sent Kagame a letter, pleading for mercy and a release he said would "be for the good of the nation".
Bizimungu, who is in his mid-fifties, joined the RPF in 1990, when it was a rebel group fighting to overthrow the regime of late president Juvenal Habyarimana, whose death set off the genocide after a rocket downed his plane.
He lived in exile in Belgium from 1990 to 1994 and served as an RPF representative to peace negotiations in Tanzania in 1993.
After his resignation, Bizimungu formed an opposition party that was immediately outlawed. Shortly before his arrest, Kagame publicly warned him not to dabble in divisive politics.
Rights groups said at the time of the trial Bizimungu's arrest and prosecution were politically motivated, and Kagame has been accused in the past of stifling dissent by arresting critics and accusing them of ethnic incitement.
Bizimungu was pardoned just days before the 13th anniversary of the slaughter of almost a million Tutsis and Hutu moderates, who were hacked, shot or clubbed to death by Hutu extremists in 100 days of bloodletting.
The pardon of Bizimungu, a Hutu, by Kagame, a Tutsi, is also intended to symbolise post-genocide reconciliation.
But amidst the outward improvements, the tiny central African country remains deeply scarred by the dark days of the genocide and is still grappling to come to terms with lingering resentment, issues of justice and grinding poverty.
In the village of Ruhanga 35 kilometres east of the capital Kigali mass graves were unearthed barely three days before the genocide anniversary.
According to local residents, as gruesome as the findings are, they are important for the country's history.
"This genocide commemoration is important, as you know it is a good way to give back honour to these victims. It is an occasion for our families to remember the people we lost and to bury them with honour because before they were buried like animals," said Pius Ndayambage, a genocide survivor.
This recent mass grave in Ruhanga would however not have been discovered if prisoners who took part in the killings or in burying the victims would not take part in local reconciliation courts known as "Gacaca".
"Today many former prisoners are being released by presidential pardon, they are arriving in their villages and they testify to what they did during the genocide. Many have shown where they buried victims, they testified and they continued to show the mass graves of people they killed during the genocide. They are many and this is why we cannot say when all the mass graves will be found," said Theodore Simburudari, the head of the survivors organisation.
On April 6,1994, Rwanda's President Juvenal Habyarimana, was killed in a rocket attack. He was struggling to stop power slipping from his hands as his country slid back towards civil war and famine.
Habyarimana, 57, and Burundi President Cyprien Ntaryamira, 38, both died when a rocket destroyed the plane they were travelling in as it approached the airport in the Rwandan capital Kigali. They were returning from regional peace talks in the Tanzanian capital Dar es Salaam.
Rwanda's supreme ruler for 17 years until a rebel invasion in 1990, Habyarimana held on to power steadfastly despite accepting a peace pact that reduced his influence.
Habyarimana, a Hutu, took power in a bloodless coup in 1973 that ousted Gregoire Kayibanda, Rwanda's first president, also a Hutu, who had been in office since independence from Belgium in 1962.
He was confirmed as president in single-candidate elections in 1978, 1983 and 1988, when he won a final five-year term with 99 per cent of the vote.
Habyarimana's death triggered an orgy of violence as extremist Hutus slaughtered an estimated 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus.
But Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) rebels, camped around the hilltop parliament in the centre of Kigali, held him responsible for what they said was a campaign of evasion.
Rwanda's mass killings were planned and carried out by the Hutu government in power in 1994, but the Tutsi-led Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) is also widely accused of reprisal killings after the former rebel group chased the extremists from power. - Copyright Holder: FILE REUTERS (CAN SELL)
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