Rwandan opposition says general unfit for Darfur
August 23, 2007 (NAIROBI) — Rwanda’s exiled opposition groups on Thursday dismissed as insulting the appointment of a Rwandan general as deputy chief of a planned peace force for Sudan’s war-torn Darfur region.
General Kerenzi Karake was named on August 14 as the second-in-command for a joint United Nations-African Union peacekeepers, but has since been accused of abuse of power involving detained extremists of the country’s Hutu ethnic group.
“It is an insult to Africa, to Sudan as a state and to the Sudanese in Darfur as well as to the memory of Rwandan victims of his heinous crimes,” said a statement by a three-member United Democratic Forces (FDU) coalition.
The group, exiled in Europe, accused Karake of ordering and supervising numerous extra-judicial killings when he was the intelligence chief after President Paul Kagame’s Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) rebels took power in 1994.
“Karenzi also oversaw the disappearence of several refugees from ex-Zaire (now Democratic Republic of Congo) who were forced to return to Rwanda … between 1998 and 2000,” the statement added.
The FDU also accused him of assassinating Hutu politicians just before the 1994 genocide — when Hutu troops and an extremist militias killed some 800,000 minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus — when he was liaison officer for the then rebel RPF with the UN forces in Rwanda.
Another coalition, Intwari Partnership (Heroes in Kinyarwanda), gathering three political parties, urged Kigali to solve the crimes arising from the genocide before venturing into Darfur.
“Before pretending to stabilise Sudan or any other African country, Rwanda must first sweep its doorstep,” it said in a statement.
On Wednesday the United Nations said it was concerned by the allegations, which the Rwandan army has denied, terming them baseless.
“The FDU is a group of extremist genocide perpetrators. Their allegations against General Karake are only aimed at tarnishing the image of the army and the government,” army spokesman Jill Rutaremara said in a statement at the weekend.
The politico-military opposition Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, based in the neighbouring DRC, said: “Karake does not merit being part of the AU troops.”
Sudan last month approved a landmark resolution for the deployment of a large AU-UN peacekeeping force to replace an embattled African contingent in Darfur.
(AFP)