Our security organs deserve commendation

Editor,REFER TO the story, “How Kizito Mihigo planned to gain power through terror” (The New Times, April 16).I am forever amazed at the capacity of some individuals who live in their magical kingdom of delusion where facts are what they want them to be rather than what they are.Anyone who watched Mihigo before the press can make up their own mind as to whether he was under any kind of duress or whether he had been coerced into confessing his involvement in the subversive activities of the FDLR/RNC and their local networks.Try and spin it any way you wish as furiously as you will, but the facts are clear. The only question many of us would like to know the answer to is: what makes a person like Mihigo, widely admired, who has been supported and given every opportunity to shine and prosper, throw everything away to join a band of criminal losers like these?To be prepared to dab in terror against his fellow Rwandans on the off-chance that these killers might eventually take power and reward him – with what exactly that he couldn’t have achieved with his acknowledged talent and the support of a leadership that had sponsored his education abroad and a doting public? Really, why?It’s regrettable that Mihigo, whose songs could inspire the best in many of us, is apparently also the same person who would hook up with the worst among us to do the worst to the rest of us.And this is a pattern with the same incomprehensible human behaviour we Rwandans are fully familiar with, but which we still find difficult to grapple with.As many of us are aware, during the Genocide against the Tutsi some people saved some hunted Tutsi at the risk of their own lives, and yet investigations show that the very same people were involved in murdering other Genocide victims.How can one, seeking clearly explanations as to virtue and evil, explain such Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’s behaviour?Some of us know many other fragile young women and young men whose families were exterminated during the Genocide against the Tutsi who have also been recruited into the cult-like following of Callixte Nsabimana, aka Sankara, and who do his bidding.Their devotion to all his wishes and orders are such that they have cut links with their disapproving surviving relatives and efforts to build their own futures in order to devote all their energies to serving him wholeheartedly.Mr. Nsabimana preaches that Tutsi are God’s chosen people. He combines religiosity with violent political activism, including anti-Rwandan government propaganda.These kinds of charlatan are extremely dangerous as they know which buttons of such emotionally fragile people like Kizito Mihigo to press to turn them into putty in their own hands.I for one am glad the police made the suspects available to the press to counter the anti-government propaganda from the likes of who would have come out with all kinds of wild accusations that these people were being kept away from the press and being held incommunicado in order to hide signs of torture and mistreatment.Now that this cheap accusation has been nipped in the bud before some are able to make it, they are running at the mouth that the suspects shouldn’t have been availed to the press, but should only have been brought out for the first time in court. Nothing in our national law prevents the police, if it so chooses, from bringing out suspects and letting the media interview them about the crimes they are charged with.It is in any case an opportunity for the accused to plead to public opinion and put their version of the case forward.I and most Rwandans are glad our security forces are doing a sterling job to protect us from these terrorist wannabes.Mwene Kalinda, Rwanda

Opinions

Our security organs deserve commendation