With fire in her belly, the Director of State Protocol, Rose Kabuye returns to France. She is determined to take the bull by the horns to prove her innocence. After a two week jaunt back in Rwanda, it was all tears at the airport as her many fans saw her leave. She spent the Christmas and New Year festive season with family, friends and her allies in the political leadership. It was a time to relax, enjoy the many festivities, but to also prepare for battle. If the French thought by releasing Kabuye back to Rwanda it was the last they would see or hear of her – then they had better prepare for what is coming. Kabuye has called their bluff, she is on her way back to France. In what is set to be one of the most profound challenges to the skewed application of the principle of Universal Jurisdiction; Kabuye, will stand trial on the basis of arrest warrants issued in 2006 against her and other senior Rwandan government officials by French judge Jean Louis Bruguière.
With fire in her belly, the Director of State Protocol, Rose Kabuye returns to France. She is determined to take the bull by the horns to prove her innocence. After a two week jaunt back in Rwanda, it was all tears at the airport as her many fans saw her leave.
She spent the Christmas and New Year festive season with family, friends and her allies in the political leadership. It was a time to relax, enjoy the many festivities, but to also prepare for battle.
If the French thought by releasing Kabuye back to Rwanda it was the last they would see or hear of her – then they had better prepare for what is coming.
Kabuye has called their bluff, she is on her way back to France. In what is set to be one of the most profound challenges to the skewed application of the principle of Universal Jurisdiction; Kabuye, will stand trial on the basis of arrest warrants issued in 2006 against her and other senior Rwandan government officials by French judge Jean Louis Bruguière.
That Kabuye has boarded the flight back to France, should shame her detractors, who thought she would fall for their ruse, to never set foot in Europe, that way she would be branded a fugitive for life.
The case would also hang forever till donkeys grew horns. That is not the way the much revered Kabuye will go, she has instead opted to fight against the French injustice on their territory.
Raising other fundamental issues, to do whether the senior French politicians and army officials, who are named in the Mucyo Commission report for their complicity in the 1994 Genocide, will come to Rwanda to face trial.
It is demonstrably foolhardy, for the French to think they have a monopoly over the truth of how the Genocide took place, and that only they have the moral basis to drag the Rwandan leadership to court without themselves being made to account for their actions.
The warrants have been dismissed by all and sundry as a deliberate act of intimidation by a country, that would otherwise never want the truth around the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi to be told.
Indeed, while the principle’s application has been condemned by the African Union and other regional bodies and progressive institutions and persons – this battle is not Kabuye’s alone.
All those who stood with her during the first days of her custody will stand with her again today, to the logical conclusion of her case.
Ends