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Rwanda gospel singer Kizito Mihigo's death likely a 'political assassination'
https://www.dw.com/en/rwanda-gospel-singer-kizito-mihigos-death-likely-a-political-assassination/a-52463272
Rwandan opposition leaders have denounced police claims
that Kizito Mihigo died by suicide. The gospel singer had been detained
after illegally trying to cross the border into Burundi last week.
The 38-year-old devout Catholic, known for his songs of forgiveness, was a fierce critic of President Paul Kagame. He was found dead at a police station in the capital, Kigali, on Monday.
Doubt over suicide claims
Diane Rwigara, another Kagame critic, cast doubt over the police report. She said that she could not see how suicide could have been possible.
"I have been in prison in Remera, there is not even a window," she said. "Rather, there are ventilation holes. So, I don't see how anyone can tie sheets in that kind of hole."
Rwigara was imprisoned for over a year on charges of tax evasions and barred from running in presidential elections. But in a surprise move, a Rwandan court dismissed all charges against Rwigara in October 2018 and released her on bail.
Challenging genocide narrative
In April 2014, Mihigo released a critical song challenging the official government narrative of the 1994 genocide, in which nearly a million ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed within a period of 100 days.
In the video, the gospel singer said: "There is no such thing as 'good death' be it by genocide or war," a reference to the post-genocide revenge attacks on ethnic Hutus living in refugee camps in neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo after President Paul Kagame's Tutsi army had taken over Kigali and stopped the genocide.
"Even though genocide orphaned me, but let it not make me loose empathy for others. Their lives, too, were brutally taken. But that did not qualify as genocide," according to the lyrics of the song "Igisobanuro Cy'urupfu."
Read more: Rwandan court acquits government critic Diane Rwigara
Presidential pardon
Mihigo was subsequently arrested and charged with planning to oust the government and sentenced to 10 years in jail. He had pleaded guilty to the charges, but HRW claimed "he was beaten and forced to confess to the crimes."
In September 2018, Mihigo was released by a presidential pardon.
Last week, the popular singer was re-arrested in Nyaruguru District for allegedly attempting to cross the Rwandan border to Burundi. Following the arrest, the Rwanda Investigation Bureau (RIB) wrote on twitter that he had been charged with attempting to illegally cross the border, joining terrorist groups, and corruption.
"Whatever the cause of Kizito Mihigo's death, Rwandan police were responsible for his life and safety in detention,” said Lewis Mudge, HRW's Central Africa director.
Mixed calls for investigations
"An investigation is necessary to know the truth," Diane Rwigara said describing Mihigo a "national treasure." Unlike Rwigara, prominent opposition politician Victoire Ingabire believes any "investigations for people opposing the RPF [the ruling party] regime will always amount to nothing."
In 2012, Ingabire was sentenced to 15 years in jail after she was convicted of denying Rwanda's 1994 genocide as well as conspiring with the FDLR Hutu rebels, which Kigali considers a terrorist group.
"I met RIB's secretary general, Colonel Jeannot and he told me that even in developed countries like the United States, there are investigations that are done but nothing comes of it," Ingabire told DW.
She served eight years in prison after receiving a pardon from President Paul Kagame. However, her party maintains she was imprisoned for her political ambitions and opposition to Kagame.
Read more: Rwanda's opposition rattled by killings and disappearances of members
Opposition politicians targeted
Opposition politicians have voiced concerns for their safety following a series of high profile killings and disappearances. The most recent was the murder of a prominent member of the unregistered opposition FDU-Inkingi (United Democratic Forces). Rwanda's government denied any wrongdoing.
President Paul Kagame is praised for turning Rwanda's economy around but criticized for suppressing free speechAlthough Ingabire did not blame President Kagame for the murder of her party members, she said the killings are politically motivated and warned that many more will die under the regime she described as a dictatorship.
"Today is Kizito. I think tomorrow will be Bernard Ntaganda or someone else in the opposition," said Bernard Ntaganda, leader of the opposition PS-imerakuri party. Ntanganda was jailed for four years for allegedly opposing the ruling party.
"I have to send a message: Kizito's death, like that of the others who have been murdered, will never make us back down because we have a noble cause that has an interest for Rwandans," he added.
Ntaganda told DW in 2019 that political murders are common in Rwanda. "We have about four people who have disappeared, for example, Aimable Rusangwa, Dominique Shyirambere among others but we also have several who are in jail."
Congolese rights activists as well as Amnesty International have called for a full investigation into the singer's death.
A conspicuous silence irked Rwanda on Friday as Kizito Mihigo's funeral date was announced for Saturday.
Rwanda: Ensure Justice Over Kizito Mihigo Death
https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/02/20/rwanda-ensure-justice-over-kizito-mihigo-death
Popular Singer Died in Police Custody
© Kizito Mihigo/Facebook
The Rwanda National Police announced on February 17, 2020 that Mihigo had been found dead at 5 a.m. in his cell at the Remera Police Station in Kigali, the capital, in an alleged suicide. He had recently told Human Rights Watch that he was being threatened to provide false testimony against political opponents and wanted to flee the country because he feared for his safety. In 2014, Mihigo was held incommunicado for nine days, during which he was beaten and forced to confess to crimes with which he was later charged in court.
“Whatever the cause of Kizito Mihigo’s death, Rwandan police were responsible for his life and safety in detention,” said Lewis Mudge, Central Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “When it comes to rule of law and respect for human rights, Rwanda’s partners and donors should not be silent. They should call for a credible investigation and an unequivocal commitment to deliver justice for this critical case.”
The Rwanda Investigation Bureau (RIB) said Mihigo was handed over by “security organs” on February 13, 2020, near the border with Burundi in Nyaruguru District, and charged with attempting to illegally cross the border, joining “terrorist groups,” and corruption.
The Rwanda National Police did not provide further information in its February 17 statement to support its conclusion that Mihigo had committed suicide. Marie Michelle Umuhoza, the spokesperson for the investigation bureau, later told local media that Mihigo had used bedsheets to “strangle himself” and that his body has been taken to Kacyiru Hospital for a post-mortem examination.
An independent autopsy report should be commissioned, and judicial authorities should ensure that any investigation establishes Mihigo’s treatment in detention and examines the possibility that he could have been ill-treated or killed in custody, Human Rights Watch said.
Under international human rights law, Rwandan authorities have an obligation to conduct a thorough and independent investigation and to account for any death in custody. The investigation should identify anyone responsible if his death was due to negligence or unlawful action and should lead to their prosecution. Failure to investigate and prosecute anyone responsible would violate Rwanda’s obligations to protect people from arbitrary deprivation of life and to provide an effective remedy.
On April 6, 2014, Mihigo was arrested and detained in an unknown location until April 14, when he was presented to the media during a press conference. He was taken before a prosecutor the next day.
Before and during his incommunicado detention, senior government officials repeatedly questioned him about a song he had released the month before in which he prayed for victims of the country’s 1994 genocide as well as for victims of other violence. They also questioned him about his alleged links with the Rwanda National Congress (RNC), an exiled opposition party with recently reported ties to armed groups.
Mihigo told Human Rights Watch that police officers beat him and forced him to confess to the offenses with which he was later charged in court. Mihigo and his co-accused – Cassien Ntamuhanga, a journalist, Agnès Niyibizi, and Jean-Paul Dukuzumuremyi, a demobilized soldier – were charged with, among other things, offenses against the state and complicity in terrorist acts for allegedly collaborating with groups considered by the government to be enemies of Rwanda. In November 2014, he confessed to all the charges, although he later told Human Rights Watch he did so under duress.
In February 2015, the High Court in Kigali sentenced Mihigo to 10 years in prison for alleged formation of a criminal gang, conspiracy to murder, and conspiracy against the established government or the president. Ntamuhanga was sentenced to 25 years in prison and Dukuzumuremyi to 30 years. Niyibizi, accused of carrying money to assist in the alleged offenses, was acquitted. Ntamuhanga reportedly escaped Nyanza prison on October 31, 2017, alongside two other convicts.
Mihigo was among the 2,000 prisoners released in September 2018 after a presidential pardon, which also included high-profile political opposition figure Victoire Ingabire. Since then, at least four opposition members and one journalist have either died or disappeared in mysterious circumstances in Rwanda. Although the investigation bureau said they opened investigations into these cases, Human Rights Watch has not been able to determine that any of the findings were made public or if anyone was prosecuted.
Mihigo is not the first detainee to die in police custody in Rwanda. In April 2018, 10 days after he was arrested, police said Donat Mutunzi, a lawyer, hanged himself in his cell at Ndera police station. According to reports, the autopsy revealed “severe wounds” on his face and temples. In February 2015, Emmanuel Gasakure, a cardiologist and former doctor to President Paul Kagame, was reportedly shot dead by police while in custody at Remera Police Station. A police spokesperson alleged in a statement to the media that Gasakure was attempting to disarm a guard when he was shot.
Human Rights Watch has documented numerous cases of arbitrary arrests, detentions, prosecutions, killings, torture, enforced disappearances, threats, harassment, and intimidation against government opponents and critics in Rwanda. In addition to the repression of critical voices inside Rwanda, dissidents and real or perceived critics outside the country – in neighboring Uganda and Kenya, as well as farther afield in South Africa and Europe – have been attacked and threatened.
Rwanda is set to host the next Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, which will include discussions on governance and rule of law. The meeting is expected to bring together leaders of 53 Commonwealth countries in Kigali in June. The Commonwealth should publicly raise concerns about grave human rights violations in Rwanda, Human Rights Watch said.
“Ahead of the Commonwealth meeting, its members should demand accountability for Mihigo’s death,” Mudge said. “They should speak out strongly and in public, including in Kigali, if Rwanda continues to undercut the Commonwealth’s values.”
The Kizito Affair: A hunting tale as told by the hunted
https://www.jambonews.net/en/actualites/20200329-the-kizito-affair-a-hunting-tale-as-told-by-the-hunted/
On March 10, 2020, the NGO Global Campaign for Rwandans Human Rights published the first of a series of three documentaries entitled “Kizito Mihigo’s journey of the cross: from the explanation of death to death itself”, translated from the original titled in Kinyarwanda: “Inzira y’umusaraba ya Kizito Mihigo: Kuva ku gisobanuro cy’urupfu kugeza k’urupfu“.
New twists and turns of an assassination that has led to unpredictable consequences.
“Until the lion learns to write, every story will glorify the hunter” goes the African adage. If that were so, the brave Kizito would have sold his own skin, defending his life until exhaustion, to deny his hunters the last word.From within the Kigali hell-on-earth known as “1930” prison, Kizito Mihigo aptly delivered a prerecorded audio message to the world, revealing, undeniable detail. The harassment served upon him from the country’s highest political authorities following the release of his song “Igisobanuro cy’urupfu” (the definition of death). He came close to his own death before being hauled to a “safe house”, where he suffered many more forms of torture: merciless beatings, food deprivation, endless brutal interrogations, harassing visits, etc.
His reprieve from what he believed to be a sure death sentence only came after he conceded to a deal with the devil. And so, with his life in their hands, the torturers extracted from Kizito a confession of guilt. They promised he would die in prison after being sentenced to life, should he refuse the deal! It was after this behind-the-scenes shenanigans that a handcuffed Kizito Mihigo was paraded to the public and interrogated by journalists, nine days after he was kidnapped.
Sentenced to 10 years in prison after a mock trial, he was to languish in the largest prison of death in Rwanda. He managed to establish contact with the outside world, and through a network of friends, he recorded audio messages about the circumstances and conditions of his imprisonment.
In his chronicles, he would also speak about visits by the national police chief, who informed him about obtaining presidential pardon, which Kizito finally obtained after four long years of imprisonment that were both unjust and unjustifiable.
In short, this is a taster of the first episode in a series of three to come. Kizito also succeeded to exfiltrate a manuscript that has been used to draft an autobiographical book yet to be published, posthumously of course.
But the hunters will not budge.
While many are yet to summon the courage to face the painful reality of Kizito’s kidnapping, torture, the masquerade of trial and the ensuing incarceration, and others are trying very hard to refrain from crying, seemingly in another world, the hunters are not budging.They continue their campaign of tarnishing the image of a righteous man, their irritability aggravated by the bitter realization of the breaches happening right from within the fortress. Their propaganda is articulated in the modus operandi of “Lie, lie, there will always be something left“, which they owe to a certain Joseph Goebbels.
Their irritability turns to rage inoculated by realizing too late that it is no longer them alone, the predators, who get to narrate the story of the chase. They are enraged by this prey, who has masterfully seized control of his own narrative.
Dying for empathy
Listening to this piece in the series, one is struck by the suffering Kizito endured. All this ordeal just for a song? Even before they searched his cell phone, he had been taken to a forest to be killed.Let’s analyze the controversial verse of his song: ’Nta rupfu rwiza rubaho yaba genocide cyangwa intambara, uwishwe nabihorera, uwazize impanuka cyangwa se uwazize indwara, abo bavandimwe aho bicaye baradusabira. Genocide yangize imfubyi ariko ntikanyibagize abandi bantu nabo bababaye bazize urundi rugomo rutiswe genocide, Abo bavandimwe nabo ni abantu ndabasabira …… ” (There is no good death whether it be genocide or war, death by revenge, by accident or disease. All those gone, wherever they are now, they pray for us. The genocide made me an orphan, but it should not make me forget others who suffered other forms of aggression not qualified as genocide. These people are also humans and I pray for them).
This is how Kizito, who suffered a great ordeal, was able to translate the message of “Never again” into words and deeds, transforming the hatred he suffered into love as a creed, as a reason for being. This is how he says, in a memorial psalm: “kuko twagiriwe ibyago tuzaba abahamya b’urukundo’’ (because we have known hatred, we are going to be witnesses of love).
Kizito was an empathetic man who could relate to other people’s feelings and this sensitivity was valid for all known and unknown victims. How can one be persecuted because they show empathy? When does such an emotion become an offense punishable by death penalty?
Cynics and sadists unite to explain that in this case, if empathy is not punishable by law, it will be punished by extrajudicial execution.
So, whatever he did, Kizito’s fate was sealed and he was doomed, according to an unprecedented decree of his executioners, to fall from charybdis to scylla.
« …And yet it moves »
Those from outside who do not know Rwanda’s stories might wonder why such a song is controversial.It is no longer a taboo as by now everyone knows, that in Rwanda there was genocide against the Tutsis. There were also killings against the Hutus. No one can deny that, except those who want to turn a blind eye or deny part of Rwanda’s history.
Anyone who says “killings”, also says “victims”.
This is the crux of Rwanda’s problems. This is indeed the Achilles heel of the current government of Rwanda. The years-running debate about the two-fold truth is ongoing, and even foreign participants have begun to tune in. True deniers bury their heads in the sand and carry on as status quo, because the war against denial is directed towards the so-called genocide deniers, who inherited this abominable label by the mere fact that they dare mention victims of other killings better left unspoken.Certainly, no one is prevented from commemorating their loved ones. But these Hutu victims too deserve the right to be commemorated publicly, as victims of atrocious killings. However, Rwandan authorities do not like to be told what to do in their domestic affairs, neither by foreigners, nor by anyone else. We live in hope for the day Rwanda will resolve this matter once and for all.
Otherwise, this will continue to plague and potentially hinder national reconciliation as these forgotten victims and survivors start to tell their tales. What’s more, they dislike being lumped with genocidaires, having nothing to blame themselves for. It will be an endless battle.
Will they also be killed? If it is so, then let it be. Instead of retracting, those fighting for the forgotten will say, like Galileo; “and yet it moves!” Or rather, “and yet they are right! … And yet they are entitled!”
Empathy does not rhyme with denial
A friend was grumbling about the disintegration of Rwandan culture. In our culture, he said, there are two events during which even the worst enemies visit each other: when a child is born and when someone dies. The reason is that, at birth, the family grows, and you never know, you could end up in the same family later on through marriage.Death, because it’s a calamity that strikes everyone and no one will escape it. It seems that Kizito had been reproached for the notable fact of having sung at the masses of families commemorating April 6, 1994. In Rwandan culture, when someone dies, the obituary is delivered as follows: “Family X is sad to announce to friends and acquaintances the death of Y. You are asked to have sympathy and support the rest of the family. “
The plane crash of April 6, 1994 killed, in addition to President Habyalimana, others who were on the same flight. Is it a crime, for a Tutsi genocide survivor, by his own choice, to participate in mass and to present his sympathies to members of the affected families?
Let it be said, “empathy” does not rhyme with “denial”.
In addition, since these are the families of the deceased, is there a difference between the children of ex-President Habyalimana and those of ex-President Sindukubwabo whose daughter is “second Lady” in Rwanda? Why would some families be admirable, and others treated as outcasts?What is the modus operandi for knowing which person to rub shoulders with, or not, so as not to commit a crime, if there is a crime?
In addition, who determines which groups of people are accessible and which are the untouchables of Rwandan society? Is there an unwritten rule from the ruling authorities, or is it the action of the zealous people who have given themselves the role of Ayatollahs for good relationships between sons and daughters of the country? There are many unanswered questions, even when we know of potentially valuable programs such as “Ndi umunyarwanda” exist.
Headed by the government, Ndi umunyarwanda urges all Rwandans to overcome ethnic hatred and even embrace their offender.
We must know what type of reconciliation is in place in Rwanda. Explanations are necessary to avoid a crime that can lead straight to death!
What is this society where an army chief of staff hugs an ex-FAR general and commander of the FDLR under applause, aiming to underline this sign of reconciliation, while one cries of treason when a genocide survivor does the same for a survivor of the camps in ex-Zaire?
Above are two good questions for the whole of Rwandan society, but, above all, they are addressed to genocide experts and specialists who, in general, multiply conferences and symposia to explain post-genocide Rwanda and “Never again».
Originally published in French by Clarisse A. Mukundente et Philibert Muzima
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