After 17 years of back and forth peace initiatives which have resulted in nothing, the OLF is convinced the TPLF minority dictatorship cunningly uses “peace overtures” of one kind or another, not to genuinely resolve the Oromo question peacefully but rather to distract our aggrieved population and sow discord among the Oromo liberation camp, thereby buying precious time to overcome mounting political challenges.
The OLF Provisional Committee takes this opportunity to make a complete departure from this dubious past culture of deception and fruitless exercise and rather focus on the fundamental task of transforming the Oromo struggle by building the necessary organizational strength with which to meet the aspirations of our people and end their age-old misery.
At this juncture we would remind our people not to be deceived and confused by fake, empty and fruitless projects seemingly undertaken in the name of peace when it is abundantly clear that the
TPLF is the sole perpetrator of conflicts and destabilizations at home and abroad. The TPLF is not a force for peace. The regime has chosen the course of force and massacre. In this public gimmick, what the TPLF minority regime and the so-called elders are demanding for is to submit and surrender. We shall not submit and surrender but rather we will fight back by all means within our power in defense of our people and our freedom.
Victory to the Oromo People!!
OLF Provisional Committee
The whole planet is deliriously happy. It is possible that data from Hubble telescope will show a slight wobble by our planet at exactly 8:17 PM Pacific Standard Time on November 4th. 2008. It must be from the spontaneous dancing by the majority of living things on earth. I said living things, not just Humans. Even the Moose in Alaska approved. Neither Color nor Gender or Nationality mattered. We were all happy Obama won!
Why are we happy Obama won? The response to this simple question is as numerous as the stars in heaven. I have talked to so many people regarding Obama and no two have given me the same answer. But all answers share a certain common thread. It is a belief in the possibility of building a just world where humanity relates as one big family. For Africans in general and Ethiopians in particular he embodies our wish that this son of Africa will be the one to bring what has been denied to us, Freedom, Democracy and the rule of law.
These are not just words. They are the building blocks of a strong and vibrant Union. The US produced such a leader because the Constitution, as the foundation is embedded in granite rock. The founders based their new association on solid ground composed of ideas and principles. Individual Freedom, Democracy and the supremacy of the law were not open to negotiations. The constitution is a living document open to tinkering and modification, but the principles of liberty, equality and the pursuit of happiness are nothing to trifle about. This guiding principle allows the Union to grow and accommodate the different demands arising as time goes by. The mostly forward movement is both gradual and peaceful.
Mr. Obama is the forty forth President. The first was George Washington. He took the oath of office in New York and the year was 1789. In a letter addressed to James Madison he wrote, ”as the first of everything, in our situation will serve to establish a precedent, it is devotedly wished on my part, that these precedents may be fixed on true principles.’ He served two terms and retired to his farm in Mount Vernon. He set the example for a peaceful transfer of leadership. He was happy to serve.
The two party systems emerged around this time. John Adams and Alexander Hamilton led the Federalists. Thomas Jefferson was the leader of the Democratic-Republican Party. John Adams won the election and became the second President of the new Republic. After two terms in office he retired to his farm in Quincy, Massachusetts. Thomas Jefferson followed him.
For the young Republic it was a time of nation building and charting of new courses. The two Parties were vying to define the road ahead. The two great powers of the time the British and the French were at war. It was Washington that advocated a neutral stand and John Adams continued his policy. Jefferson and his party were inclined to side with the French.
All three Presidents fought the British in the Revolutionary war. When their time was up all three Presidents left office peacefully. They did not fight the British to replace one kind of tyranny by another. They fought because they valued freedom for themselves and others. They did not use their offices to enrich themselves and reward their family. Nor did they question the patriotism and integrity of their opponents because of differences of opinion. After a healthy contest the loser wished the winner good luck and retired to a new life.
To think that this took place two hundred nineteen years ago and we still have a problem with this concept in Ethiopia is mind-boggling. Actually that is not true. All indications are the Ethiopian people stayed up until the wee hours waiting for the results. Mr. Obama’s victory was received with delight. They were happy to see the fruits of democracy in a far away land. They celebrated by knowing smiles and hidden signals. That is the way of a terrorized people.
On the other hand the good news was a source of terror and agony to the TPLF. Arat Kilo suddenly got frigid cold. Mr. Obama’s election is throwing a monkey wrench into the coercive machinery. It is taking them back to square one. The transition from Albanian type Communism to pretend free market system and make believe democracy was hard enough. Obama’s definition of Democracy and Human Right does not bode well for the future of TPLF and their partners in crime.
You see the problem is that a ‘Police State’ is not capable of change. A democratic system has laws, rules and regulation built in to it to handle change. The Police State knows one thing and one thing only. Use of force is the only option in the book. Thus when the possibility of Obama’s election became real the Ethiopian government drafted assortment of laws and measures to combat the disease known as ‘hope’.
· First they held their pretend ‘convention’ in Awasa. They mistook form for essence. They were willing to share regional dress but were unwilling to share power. They allowed their junior partners to talk, but they wrote the speech for them.
· They burned villages in the Ogaden, exposed millions to poverty and famine. As a solution they passed a law to control and intimidate NGO’s whom they suspected of leaking the news. Doctors without Borders were sent away packing and Human Right Watch was declared enemy of the State. Too bad they are not capable of blocking ‘Google Earth’ from exposing their ill deeds.
· The last ‘terrorist’ card was played with the rounding up of anybody and everybody with Oromo blood. Politicians, University lecturers, business people, students were all arrested and branded terrorist. The most prominent is Ato Bekele Jirata Secretary general of Oromo Federalist Democratic Movement a legally registered opposition party. The TPLF regime was cunning enough to convince the US embassy to issue an alert regarding a terrorist attack. Why the embassy doesn’t do that when the Ethiopian people are terrorized by their own government is a mystery.
· TPLF made headlines by shuffling the cadres that dutifully pose as Ministers. Again form trumped essence. The policy is the same the face is different. Change Ethiopian style.
· They claim there is freedom of the press but they arrest editors for reporting the news. They imprison or fine reporters and editors for common mistakes. In Ethiopia you do not publish ‘corrections’ you go directly to jail. Names like Berhanu Nega or Teddy Afro are to be avoided. Remember it was illegal to quote Mandela or Miriam Makeba during Apartheid. Junior Apartheid is alive and well in Ethiopia.
· They invaded another country and spent thousands of lives and millions of needed money. They support all sides as long as the result is chaos in the neighborhood. An instable situation in the vicinity makes the TPLF look like a pillar of calmness.
After all is said and done responsibility has to be shared equally by all. As there is no end without a begining; there is no oppressor with out the oppressed. Wars are fought, soldiers are paid, informers are taken care of officials are bribed all with capital. Money makes all evil acts possible. Where does it all come from?
· Taxes from the Ethiopian people
· Loans from the IMF and World Bank
· Loans and grants from friendly governments.
· NGO’s
· Remittances from the Diaspora.
We cannot tell the Ethiopian people not to pay their taxes. It is not wise to tell NGO’s to pack and leave. On the other hand we have the power to influence the last four items on this list. We stand a good chance of being heard by both IMF and World Bank as long as we speak in one voice and we definitely can reduce our own investment. We have to learn to practice what we preach. If tyranny is considered bad and evil, we cannot go around helping and coddling tyrants, nor can we try to sneak in a quick profit at the expense of our own people.
Some might say ‘my investment help create jobs’. This is nothing but a fig leaf to hide behind immoral deed. The Western investors tried the same argument during the debate to ‘boycott’ the Apartheid regime. Foreign investment by the US and Europeans was creating jobs for the Black population in South Africa. Steven Biko and ANC advocated divestment because the tax and other income were propping up the Apartheid regime. Steven Biko wrote ‘those who professed to worry over Blacks suffering if the economy deteriorated had missed the point. We’re already suffering’ He often reminded us ‘those who live in constant fear of being shot, beaten, or detained without charge, for those whose children already live in abject poverty and near starvation, an economic downturn is not the major area of concern.’ Nobel Laureate Albert Lutuli, president of the African National Congress in one of his speeches said:
The economic boycott of South Africa will entail undoubted hardship for African. We do not doubt that. But if it is a method which shortens the day of bloodshed, the suffering to us will be a price we are willing to pay.
Please spare us of your sermon regarding your good deeds. The damage caused by your investment outweighs your so-called kind intentions. The land belongs to TPLF, the construction company is a subsidiary of TPLF, the Finance is controlled by TPLF, the materials supplier is TPLF and the only non-TPLF entity is you my Diaspora friend. So you send you hard earned money to the mighty TPLF and cause inflation for your poor cousins and as a bonus you fly Ethiopian Airlines and fatten the wallets of your tormentors. Ethiopians-Americans alone contributed $1.2 billion last year. What we got here is a merry go round of the ugly type. Talk about pistol whipped by your own gun.
Your million-dollar castle without water, sewer, electricity and unpaved road inconveniently located miles from transportation lines is nothing but a white elephant. Budget deficit and inflation has rendered your make believe million dollar home into a toxic investment. Thanks to you Woyane cadres have reinvested you generous donations in shopping centers and apartments in the West. Justice might be late but it is always around the corner. Thus, yesterdays highflying investors in stocks, bonds and western real estate are today’s confused and liquidity challenged shell-shocked dictators. The so-called infrastructure development is the ultimate ‘bridge to nowhere’.
We Ethiopians were not always like this, so they say. We used to be proud and brave people. Our fore fathers stood up against foreign invaders. It is only yesterday that our own friends went out marching to demand ‘land to the tiller’, and there was nothing in it for them. I guess the military junta was successful in castrating all our manhood and woman hood and left us as a shadow of our former self. We seem to have lost our backbone to stand up against injustice. No spine just ligament. The hope is that it is just a temporary condition. May be this financial meltdown and the assent of our friend Obama will inject some sense of self-realization into our collective heads.
It was James Monroe the fifth President of the US who wrote “It is only when the people become ignorant and corrupt, when they degenerate into a populace, that they are incapable of exercising their sovereignty. Usurpation is then an easy attainment, and an usurper soon found. The people themselves become the willing instruments of their own debasement and ruin.” The year was 1817. It is never too late to learn. Let us hope that we will go beyond this disease of denial and stand up for what is right and just for our country. Here is to overcoming the dissonance caused by this uncomfortable feeling of holding two contradictory thoughts simultaneously. Logic and mental health dictates rejecting one of the contradictory ideas. It cannot be done my friend. Just look at the actions of the TPLF mafia, they are grasping for answers to reconcile dictatorship and democracy.
Pirates have hijacked a Saudi-owned oil tanker with 25 crew aboard off the coast of Kenya, the U.S. Navy and the British Foreign Office confirmed on Monday.
he Sirius Star — a crude “super tanker” flagged in Liberia and owned by the Saudi Arabian-based Saudi Aramco company — was attacked on Saturday more than 450 nautical miles southeast of Mombasa, Kenya. The crew includes British, Croatian, Polish, Filippino and Saudi nationals.
U.S. Navy Fifth Fleet Cmdr. Jane Campbell said the super tanker weighs more than 300,000 metric tons and “is more than three times the size of a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier.”
Oil industry insiders say a tanker of this size can carry up to 2 million barrels of oil. A U.S. Navy spokesman said the tanker was carrying some oil, but it was not known how much.
A multinational naval force including vessels from the U.S., the UK and Russia has been patrolling the Indian Ocean waters seas near the Gulf of Aden, which connects the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea, following a sharp increase in pirate attacks in the region.
“It was attacked more than 450 nautical offshore of Mombasa. This means that the pirates are now operating in an area of over 1.1 million square miles. This is a measure of the determination of the pirates and … a measure of how lucrative piracy could become,” Campbell said.
Campbell said the Navy does not expect to dispatch a vessel to aide the super tanker because it does not have dangerous weapons aboard like the MV Faina, a Ukrainian ship loaded with arms that was seized by pirates on September 25.
The UK Foreign Office confirmed two Britons were aboard and said it was seeking more information about the incident.
U.S. Navy spokesman Lt. Nathan Christensen of the U.S. 5th Fleet told the Associated Press the pirates holding the Sirius Star are nearing an anchorage point at the Somali town of Eyl — a haven for pirates where a number of other ships are still being held.
South Korean officials said on Sunday that armed gunmen hijacked a Japanese freighter and its 23-member crew off the coast of Somalia. The hijacking came as the Korean government was considering sending a warship to join those of other countries to combat piracy in the area.
A Russian patrol ship also thwarted an attack on a Saudi vessel.
Eleven vessels are currently being held by pirates hoping to secure ransoms for their release, according to The Associated Press. They include the MV Faina, which was hijacked along with 200 crew and a cargo of weapons and T-72 tanks.
Ninety percent of ships transiting the perilous seas are using a guarded corridor and there have been no hijackings inside the zone since it was set up on August 22, Danish Commodore Per Bigum Christensen told AP last week.
Around 20,000 oil tankers, freighters and merchant vessels pass along the crucial shipping route each year.
“Our presence in the region is helping deter and disrupt criminal attacks off the Somali coast, but the situation with the Sirius Star clearly indicates the pirates’ ability to adapt their tactics and methods of attack” said U.S. Vice Admiral Bill Gortney, commander of the Combined Maritime Forces.
“Piracy is an international crime that threatens global commerce. Shipping companies have to understand that naval forces can not be everywhere. Self protection measures are the best way to protect their vessels, their crews, and their cargo.”
MEKELE, ETHIOPIA – An Eritrean rebel group, the Red Sea Afar Democratic Organization [armed and trained by the Meles regime in Ethiopia] claimed killing over two hundred Eritrean government troops during an attack carried last week against a military training center inside Eritrea.
The Red Sea Afar Democratic Organization (RSADO) on Sunday said that its fighters have killed at least 285 Eritrean military officers including top military leaders in what it called was the most devastating assault taken earlier this week at a military training base in the remote central Denkelliya region of Afambo local area.
The attack comes after 200 Eritrean Afar-ethnic government Militias willingly surrender to the Afar rebel group two weeks ago, according to RSADO.
RSADO’s Executive committee member and head of information and communication, Yasin Mohamed, back from the borders to coordinate the mission and now in Mekele (capital of Tigray Region, the base of the ruling Tigrean People Liberation Front), says the accomplished mission is well prepared and the most successful and the biggest attack ever attempted by any other Eritrean resistance groups.
“In an unusual attack our gallant fighters on Monday at around 8:30 local time have sneaked a big military training center based at Afambo area and bombarded a hall packed with over 450 Eritrean military officers who were celebrating the end of higher military training,” he said.
The rebel official added they also hit a truck carrying gas tanker and a generator outside which completely turned the whole area into massive fire and end up the fun and laughter into shouts, crying and dead bodies.
The Afambo military training base is the biggest training center next to Sawa, an area where tens of thousands of Eritreans from all wakes of life take mandatory military training.
The group explained the success of the attack saying it was taken along with the 200 deserted government militias who had every inside information needed to accomplish the attack.
“We have confirmed the death of at least 285 Eritrean military officers” Yasin said adding “we believe hundreds of others are also wounded or dead then after”
He also said during the occasion, Eritrean military officials who were engaged in training Ethiopian rebels for cross border attacks and also Ethiopia rebel leaders from OLF, ONLF, Tigray rebels who are based In Eritrea were invited .
“We believe Ethiopian former Derg regime’s commander, colonel Selhadin Ali, currently coordinator of cross-border attacks against Ethiopia is killed during the attack” Yasin alleged, adding “ colonel Birhanu head of the attacked military center and top military leader of Eritrean forces is also dead or seriously wounded.”
Yasin said, the sudden and massive attack taken has created frustration and resentment to Eritrean authorities, higher military officials and to Eritrean troops in general
“Eritrean president Isayas Afeworki had to postpone his scheduled visit to neighboring Sudan for at least one day after he heard the shocking news” He claimed.
The rebel RSADO is a member of the Eritrean democratic Alliance, umbrella opposition of 13 Eritrean political parties. The group which is led by Amin Ahmad, seeks to separate the Afar tribe from Eritrea and unite it with Djibouti.
In a separate incident the rebel group has also destroyed a radar station in the southern Red sea zone same day same time.
“In parallel to the above raid a different force of RSADO has smashed radar stationed at the mountainous area of Ramllo area” He added.
EDITOR’S NOTE: U.S. Africa policy under Jendayi Frazer has been a disaster. She has been directly or indirectly responsible for the Somalia horror, the Ogaden genocide in Ethiopia, Ethiopia’s stolen election in 2005, the Zimbabwe hypocrisy, the Darfur holocaust… just to name a few. From her past record, Susan Rice, who is expected to hold a more powerful post under Obama, is not expected to fair better. The following is an informative profile of Dr Susan Rice, head of President- Elect Obama’s foreign policy transition team:
In April 2007, as the United States was enmeshed in two wars, a Brookings Institution scholar and Clinton-era State Dept. official testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in favor of taking military action as a last resort to stop the genocide in Darfur.
“A collective shame” was what Susan Rice, now one of President-elect Barack Obama’s closest foreign-policy advisers, called the international community’s failure to act. Rice was hardly sanguine about what it would take to stem the genocide, nor did she exhibit a preference for taking military action.
“The U.S. should press for a Chapter 7 U.N. resolution that issues Sudan an ultimatum,” Rice told the committee, chaired by Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.), now the vice president-elect. “Accept the unconditional deployment of the U.N. force or face military consequences. The resolution would authorize enforcement by U.N. member states collectively or individually.”
As for the potential consequences and risks, Rice added, “We have to acknowledge that they can’t be eliminated. Yet we also have to acknowledge the daily cost of the status quo of a feckless policy characterized by bluster and retreat. … I would submit, Mr. Chairman, Sen. Lugar, that that cost is too high.”
Rice’s testimony could offer a window into the next four years of U.S. foreign policy. According to interviews with longtime associates, the woman who was just named to head the foreign-policy transition team for an Obama administration — and herself a likely candidate for deputy national security adviser or other top position — is a rigorous thinker and thorough pragmatist, impatient with ideology and incompetence.
Over the past year and a half, Rice has become increasingly close to Obama, owing in large part to their mutual frustration with conventional foreign-policy thinking. Unlike many seasoned foreign-policy hands, Rice’s focuses less on traditional state-to-state relationships and more on transnational threats, challenges and opportunities — befitting the emphasis of a new generation of global strategists. With Rice at the helm, former colleagues said, an Obama foreign policy would likely be bold but not dogmatic.
Rice, who turns 44 Monday, is the youngest person ever to become an assistant secretary of state, a position she attained at age 33. A protege of Madeleine K. Albright, the former secretary of state, Rice joined the Clinton administration in 1993 as an staffer on the National Security Council, after a stint at the McKinsey & Company business-consulting firm.
On the NSC, Rice earned a reputation for pragmatism, which she carried over to the State Dept. as assistant secretary for African affairs, a post she held from 1997 to 2001. But her record was not without its blemishes.
According to human-rights expert Samantha Power’s study of the U.S. reaction to genocide, “A Problem From Hell,” Rice didn’t distinguish herself in the Clinton administration’s lax response to the Rwandan genocide of 1994. As an Africa expert on the NSC, she shocked an interagency conference call by interjecting domestic politics into the discussion of the administration’s policy options.
“If we use the word ‘genocide,’” Rice allegedly asked her colleagues, “and are seen as doing nothing, what will be the effect on the November [congressional] election?” Rice later told Power — who herself became a trusted foreign-policy adviser to Obama before leaving the campaign during the Democratic primaries — that while she didn’t remember saying that, “If I said it, it was completely inappropriate.”
Her colleagues said that Rice’s willingness to subject herself to the scrutiny she expects of others is a characteristic trait. “She’s always examining not just what she thinks but why she thinks the way she does,” said Jane Holl Lute, the assistant secretary general of the United Nations for peace-building and a friend of Rice’s. “She’s one of the most honest thinkers I know.”
About Rwanda, Rice later told Power, “I swore to myself that if I ever faced such a crisis again, I would come down on the side of dramatic action, going down in flames if that was required,” which might explain Rice’s passion about Darfur.
Something that also might explain it is Rice’s facility with nontraditional foreign-policy issues. Former Sen. Tim Wirth, the Clinton administration’s undersecretary of state for global affairs from 1993 to 1997, said Rice saw connectivity in the world’s problems, instead of viewing them through the traditional prism of individual state power.
“She was one of the few people to live in the foreign-policy world who understood global issues, transnational issues like human rights, climate change and terrorism,” said Wirth, who worked with Rice when she was at the NSC and who now heads the United Nations Foundation. “The foreign-policy community is largely about political relationships. That’s what drives the [typical] foreign-policy world. But the new one is transnational problems, problems that don’t have passports.”
What position Rice could receive in an Obama administration is a guessing game. She has been mentioned for everything from deputy national-security adviser to U.N. ambassador to even secretary of state — all a function of her bond with the president-elect.
The only knock against Rice is a reputation for abrasiveness. A rumor circulating in foreign-policy circles this month is that she and a top Obama defense adviser, Richard Danzig, have developed a frosty relationship, though it is hard to get Obama aides to explain the source of any turbulence.
Wirth said Rice’s sense of dedication is occasionally misunderstood as harshness. “She’s very calm, very careful, but once she determines where to go, she’s very firm about that,” said Wirth, “and that’s where that comes from — people saying she’s abrasive. She’s very firm when a decision gets made.”
Rice herself declined to comment for this article. But in February, she indicated to me that an Obama administration would need to be bold in differentiating itself from the Bush administration to restore American global standing.
“After eight years of George Bush,” Rice told me for an American Prospect cover story, “when the next president puts his or her hand on the Bible to be sworn in, the U.S. is going to get one brief second look [from the world] about whether the U.S. truly learned to change from its past mistakes, recent and historic, and whether we’re again the kind of America people look to lead in a constructive fashion, or whether we’re hopeless.”
What that means exactly is hard to say. But Rice challenged the idea that Obama’s more controversial foreign-policy proposals — setting a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, negotiating with foreign adversaries, bolstering the U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan and renewing the hunt for Al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan — were, as his critics maintained, imprudent. “I don’t see it as radical at all,” she told me in February. “I see it as rational, wise and long overdue.”
Obama-watchers have seen Rice quickly build a rapport with the president-elect, something that will aid Rice in staffing the foreign-policy team. “It indicates they’ll be very pragmatic,” Wirth said, “and focused on strengthening the international machinery, to regain America’s reputation around the world. And she’ll just be reflecting what Obama has said.”
Another colleague, John Prendergast, an Africa aide on the NSC after Rice moved to the State Dept., was similarly impressed. “She was a brilliant strategist with a big vision, who was relentless in pursuing the president’s objectives,” remembered Prendergast, who now runs the Enough Project, an anti-genocide activist group. “She had a firm command of all of the relevant issues, and a keen insight into how to move decisions through the system so that the U.S. could act in a relevant and decisive manner.”
Rice was one of the few Democratic foreign-policy luminaries to oppose the 2002 invasion of Iraq. Prendergast said he was not surprised by her position. “Susan has an uncanny ability to weigh all sides to a situation and see through rhetoric and diversion,” he said.
Anne-Marie Slaughter, the dean of Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson Center, came to know Rice when they worked on the Phoenix Initiative over the last four years, an attempt by progressive foreign-policy thinkers to craft a post-Bush grand strategy.
Slaughter’s assessment of Rice echoed Wirth’s. “She has a very holistic vision of national security,” Slaughter said, “one that includes the problems of weak and failing states and the overall imperative of standing for increased prosperity and justice for all people around the world.
“That doesn’t make her a starry-eyed one-worlder,” Slaughter continued, “although Obama may soon be giving that term a different and far stronger connotation, but it means that her experience with Africa has sensitized her to the many ways people can die violently — not just in conventional war.”
Wirth and others said Rice would be “very loyal to Obama,” to use Wirth’s words. Another former colleague, who requested anonymity, added that Rice doesn’t have an agenda separate from Obama’s.
Slaughter added that Rice’s potential ascendancy represented a milestone in gender equity for the foreign-policy community. “It is very important to women in foreign policy that Susan is not married to her job,” Slaughter said. “She has a great husband and two young kids, and she managed to balance it. After Madeleine Albright, whose kids were grown, and Condi Rice, who does not have a family, that’s a very important message to send. After all, most men in foreign policy manage to have families, too.”
LONDON (AFP) — President Paul Kagame of Rwanda said Monday that Europe had shown “total contempt” for his country by arresting one of his key aides suspected of involvement in the death of a former ruler.
He told the Financial Times the allegations against Rose Kabuye, his chief of protocol who was arrested in Frankfurt on November 9 on a French warrant, were “baseless”, and rejected the principle that allowed such an arrest.
Kabuye was arrested over her suspected involvement in the {www:assassination} of former Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana in 1994, and will be transferred into French custody on Wednesday.
The incident became the catalyst for the Rwandan genocide that started a few days later and left at least 800,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutu Rwandans dead, according to the United Nations.
Kagame accused European countries of abusing the principle of universal jurisdiction, whereby one country’s courts can pursue another’s citizens.
“You don’t just give one country {www:jurisdiction} over another country, in particular if that country has actually been involved in the case. It is madness,” he told the business daily.
“It’s offensive in a {www:sense} that it is Africans who are perpetually the offenders, the criminals, and the others who are their judges.”
Arresting Kabuye has caused a diplomatic furore, being condemned by African organizations and greeted by {www:street} protests in the Rwandan capital Kigali.
Kagame’s government has accused France of having actively supported the genocide perpetrators and said Rwandan courts were poised to issue arrest warrants against 23 French military and political officials over their role.
