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StumbleuponRwandan government: Man living in Dayton area convicted militia leader
> Man living in Dayton sought by Rwandan government
Sunday, July 13, 2008
DAYTON — Ultimately, it may be the Immigration and Customs Enforcement division of the Department of Homeland Security that decides the fate of Oswald Rukemuye.
The government of Rwanda claims that Rukemuye, who has lived in the Dayton area for 12 years, was a militia leader who directed attacks on Tutsis in and near his home village of Gisozi on the outskirts of the Rwandan capital Kigali.
Consul Kaliza Karuretwa of the Rwandan embassy in Washington said her government is urging U.S. officials to review Rukemuye's case to confirm his crimes. The United States has no extradition treaty with Rwanda, Karuretwa said, but she said Rwanda hopes immigration officials revoke Rukemuye's refugee status and deport him to Rwanda to face justice.
Rukemuye said he is also anxious for officials to review his case, because he said an unbiased investigation will show he is an innocent victim driven from his home by violence in which he did not take part.
Rukemuye said he was scheduled to meet with immigration officials in Cincinnati in May, but the officials postponed the meeting while immigration and customs investigators try to sort through the conflicting accounts of Rukemuye's background.
Both sides of the story
The conflicts between Rukemuye's version of the past and the Rwandan government's version are stark.
Rwandan officials said Rukemuye organized and supervised an interhamwe militia, basically a genocidal civilian army of Hutus formed to kill Tutsis.
Hutus are the majority tribe in Rwanda, but for most of the country's modern history it has been ruled by a minority tribe, the Tutsis. For a time in the early 1990s, the country was run by Hutus, but the Hutu government was opposed by a rebel army of Tutsis, the Rwandan Patriotic Front.
According to Human Rights Watch, Hutu extremists bent on maintaining Hutu control of the Rwandan state launched a campaign of genocide on April 6, 1994, with the aim of wiping out the Tutsi minority.
The Rwandan government claims that Rukemuye, who was known as Oswald Rurangwa at the time, organized a militia that may have killed thousands.
African Rights, a non-governmental group based in Kigali, released a report this year saying the group conducted an 18-month investigation of Rukemuye's activities from 1992 to July 1994 when he allegedly fled to Zaire.
African Rights said its report was based on eyewitness accounts from 20 people including militiamen who said they were under Rukemuye's command. The witnesses claimed Rukemuye recruited militiamen and provided them with weapons and training.
Rwandan embassy officials said Rukemuye was convicted of genocidal crimes in absentia after fleeing the country and sentenced to 30 years imprisonment, but the officials have not produced records of those court proceedings.
Rukemuye, they said, was tried in a gacaca court, a type of traditional court where the cases of many alleged genocide crimes are handled.
African Rights released its report this spring after learning that the suspect they knew as Oswald Rurangwa was living in Dayton under the name Oswald Rukemuye. Rakiya Omaar, director of African Rights, said the organization had been investigating the case for some time when they got a tip in April that Rukemuye was attending Central State University near Xenia.
A Central State spokeswoman confirmed Rukemuye earned a degree at the college this year, and the school's records indicate he also attended Sinclair Community College and the Miami University Middletown campus.
Rukemuye believes action by African Rights was triggered by an announcement he circulated to friends online that he was about to graduate from Central State. He said the Rwandan government targets critics overseas, and he believes the government might have felt he would become more affluent and respected and possibly more outspoken after earning a college degree.
He accuses African Rights of being a propaganda tool of the Rwandan government, a charge the director Omaar denies.
Rukemuye also says the so-called trial in gacaca court was orchestrated by the Rwandan government. Gacaca courts, he said, traditionally have been forums where community elders handled low-level disputes on an informal basis.
Now the gacaca courts, which have no lawyers or formal rules of evidence, are being used to air coerced and biased testimony to punish and intimidate government enemies, Rukemuye said.
Paul Rusesabagina agreed. Rusesabagina, who became famous as the hero of the "Hotel Rwanda" story, said he too has become a government enemy in recent years. And he said the current Tutsi-dominated government is carrying on the Hutu oppression of the past.
"In Rwanda today, you have the Hutus who were the losers and the Tutsis who were the winners," Rusesabagina said. "And the winners want to keep the losers powerless."
Rukemuye said he is a legitimate refugee who suffered, along with his family, in the 1994 genocide. On April 6, 1994, Rukemuye, a Hutu, said he was an elementary schoolmaster living with his Tutsi wife and a son in a mixed ethnicity neighborhood. On the evening of the second day of unrest, he said a Hutu militia attacked a nearby Tutsi home.
"We asked our Tutsi neighbors to hide in our home," Rukemuye said.
Three days later, Rukemuye said the Hutu militias were chased out of the area by Tutsi rebels. Rukemuye claims the Tutsi rebels targeted Hutus in the neighborhood for death, so Hutus took their turn hiding in the homes of the Tutsi neighbors they had helped earlier.
While it is generally accepted that the Rwandan genocide involved Hutus killing Tutsis, Human Rights Watch said Tutsi rebel troops also killed hundreds of civilians as they advanced on Kigali to seize control of the government.
Rukemuye said he and his household were able to flee their neighborhood 11 days into the conflict as the violence intensified. He said Tutsi rebels killed many of the Hutus who stayed in the neighborhood, including his grandfather who stayed because he was ill and couldn't walk.
Karuretwa said it's very common for criminals who are guilty of genocide to masquerade as genocide victims. "That's a typical reaction of suspects," she said.
Rukemuye said he was able to get out of Rwanda, and he and his family lived as exiles in African refugee camps for a year and a half. Eventually, his wife's sister, a Tutsi and an America citizen, applied to bring them to the United States as refugees.
Coming to Dayton
They settled in Dayton with the help of the House of the People which has helped dozens of Rwandan families get a foothold in America. Pio Ngilik, director of the House of the People program said he believes Rukemuye is telling the truth.
But he acknowledges he's not able to personally check deeply into the backgrounds of the people who come to his program for help. And he said it's possible that both spies for the Rwandan government and militia members may be among the Dayton area's Rwandan population.
"I have to depend on immigration to do the screening," Ngilik said.
