{"id":179924,"date":"2021-03-01T12:00:42","date_gmt":"2021-03-01T12:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=179924"},"modified":"2021-03-01T11:21:58","modified_gmt":"2021-03-01T11:21:58","slug":"kizito-mihigo-and-the-struggle-for-rwandan-truth-and-reconciliation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2021\/03\/kizito-mihigo-and-the-struggle-for-rwandan-truth-and-reconciliation\/","title":{"rendered":"Kizito Mihigo and the Struggle for Rwandan Truth and Reconciliation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rwandans around the world celebrate the life of the nation\u2019s most popular singer, apparently killed for opposing Paul Kagame\u2019s ethnic and military dictatorship.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Kizito Mihigo<\/p><\/div>\n

17 Feb 2021 – <\/em>A year ago Rwandan gospel singer Kizito Mihigo tried to flee Rwanda by crossing its southern border into Burundi. He had already spent four years in prison for recording a song in which he dared to say that the Rwandan Genocide was a tragedy for both of the country\u2019s two major ethnicities, Hutu and Tutsi, that each group massacred members of the other, and that only mutual compassion and forgiveness could lead to true reconciliation. The state had forbidden him to leave Rwanda upon his release and required him to regularly report to authorities who found multiple ways to harass him, made it difficult for him to make a living by canceling his concerts, and pressured him to spy on fellow Rwandan dissidents who trusted him.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe US is the Rwandan government\u2019s top bilateral donor.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Police apprehended Kizito at the Burundian border and days later reported that he\u2019d hung himself in jail. It\u2019s difficult to find anyone who believes that story outside Rwanda, but inside Rwanda, anyone who publicly questions it will no doubt become a victim of the same totalitarian state and its apparatus of force. President Paul Kagame and his Rwandan government rule by their legally codified and enforced history\u2014that the 1994 Rwandan Genocide was \u201cthe genocide of the Tutsi,\u201d committed by Hutus, and that he ended it by leading his Tutsi army to victory in a four-year war in July 1994.<\/p>\n

\u201cPolice apprehended Kizito at the Burundian border and days later reported that he\u2019d hung himself in jail.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In fact his Tutsi army was guilty of massacring Hutu people throughout that war, before, during, and after the final 100 days of massacres, and then in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Rwanda invaded DRC in 1996 and 1998 and it continues to partially occupy and plunder its mineral-rich Kivu Provinces with the diplomatic, political, and financial support of the United States, the UK, Canada, and other Western allies. The US is the Rwandan government\u2019s top bilateral donor.<\/p>\n

Shortly after the 1994 genocide, Israel stepped up to buttress Kagame\u2019s \u201cgenocide against the Tutsi\u201d narrative and, eventually, his crusade to see it legally and criminally\u00a0codified <\/a>\u00a0internationally, as Holocaust denial is in\u00a0many <\/a>\u00a0European countries. In Belgium they\u00a0succeeded <\/a>, though there have been no prosecutions yet based on the law banning denial of \u201cthe genocide against the Tutsi.\u201d<\/p>\n

In my\u00a02013 interview <\/a>\u00a0with Professor Edward S. Herman, co-author with David Peterson of\u00a0The Politics of Genocide\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0Enduring Lies: Rwanda in the Propaganda System<\/em>, I asked him what the Israeli government and the Zionist movement get out of their identification with Rwanda.<\/p>\n

He said, \u201cThe main thing they get is a reminder that holocausts exist. The Israeli government and the Zionist movement need that reminder of the Holocaust to justify their own policy, as they need the accusations of anti-Semitism. So it may be a false equation, but it keeps in mind the possibility of a holocaust and a reminder of what the Jewish people went through back at the time of the Nazis.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kizito tried to join Kagame\u2019s army, then fled to escape his iron rule<\/strong><\/p>\n

A sad irony of this story is that Kizito, a Tutsi himself, succeeded in fleeing across Rwanda\u2019s Burundian border in April 1994, at age 12, in hopes of joining Kagame\u2019s army to avenge the death of his parents at the hands of Hutu extremists. He wasn\u2019t able to become a child soldier, but after Kagame seized power, he returned to Rwanda and became a darling of the new regime.<\/p>\n

As a secondary school student he so excelled in music that he became the most popular liturgical organist and composer in Rwanda\u2019s Catholic Church. In 2001, he helped write the national anthem, then went to study at the\u00a0Conservatoire de Paris <\/a>\u00a0on a presidential scholarship. When he returned to Rwanda, his songs were played on the radio, and he performed the anthem at genocide memorials and other official ceremonies where the president and other state officials were present. His religious concerts attracted huge crowds, especially at Christmas and Easter, and he composed more than 400 songs. The president\u2019s wife, Jeannette Kagame, presented him with a \u201cCelebrating Young Rwandan Achievers\u201d award. He was even rumored to have been dating the president\u2019s daughter Ange, but later, after his fall from grace, to have said that he felt he should marry a Hutu in the interest of reconciliation.<\/p>\n

\u201cHis songs were played on the radio, and he performed the anthem at genocide memorials and other official ceremonies where the president and other state officials were present.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Whether that was true or not, he rapidly fell out of favor when, in 2014, he recorded\u00a0Igisobanuro Cy’urupfu<\/em> <\/a>\u00a0 <\/a>(The Meaning of Death) <\/a>, which was shared with English subtitles on Youtube. The song included these lyrics (translated from Kinyarwanda):<\/p>\n

\u201cEven though genocide orphaned me<\/em>
\nLet it not make me lose empathy for others<\/em>
\nTheir lives too were brutally taken<\/em>
\nBut not qualified as genocide<\/em>
\nThose brothers and sisters<\/em>
\nThey too are humans, I pray for them<\/em>
\nThose brothers and sisters<\/em>
\nThey too are humans, I comfort them<\/em>
\nThose brothers and sisters<\/em>
\nThey too are humans, I remember them\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He did not identify \u201cthose brothers and sisters\u201d as Hutus, but that is clearly what he meant. Soon he was brought up on preposterous charges that he was plotting to kill President Kagame, and in 2015, he went to prison, where he wrote his\u00a0book <\/a>\u00a0\u201cRwanda: Embracing Reconciliation: To Live in Peace and Die Happy.\u201d He was released in September 2018, along with opposition leader Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza, who had also dared to say that the massacre of Hutu as well as Tutsi people had to be acknowledged for the country to achieve true reconciliation. Upon returning to Rwanda from the Netherlands in 2010 to attempt to run for president against Kagame, Victoire knew that she faced not only military dictatorship but also totalitarianism. \u201cAt some point,\u201d she said, \u201csomeone will have to break the first brick in the wall. Let this be my contribution.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was brought up on preposterous charges that he was plotting to kill President Kagame.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Both Kizito and Victoire were released to such a highly surveilled and officially tormented \u201cfreedom\u201d that Kizito finally tried to escape across the Burundian border\u2014this time fleeing Kagame instead of fleeing to join his army\u2014but didn\u2019t make it and died for trying.<\/p>\n

Masses will be held this week to remember Kizito Mihigo on four continents, and there have been appeals to the Catholic Church to canonize him, although normally a candidate for Catholic sainthood must have been dead for five years to ensure that he or she has an enduring reputation among the faithful.<\/p>\n

_______________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em>Ann Garrison is an independent journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She attended Stanford University and is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment<\/a>. In 2014 she received the Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza Democracy and Peace Prize<\/em> for her reporting on conflict in the African Great Lakes region. She can be reached at @AnnGarrison<\/em>, ann@kpfa.org,<\/em><\/a> ann@anngarrison.com.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 blackagendareport.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

17 Feb 2021 – A year ago Rwandan gospel singer Kizito Mihigo tried to flee Rwanda by crossing into Burundi. He had already spent four years in prison for recording a song in which he dared to say that the Rwandan Genocide was a tragedy for both major ethnicities, Hutu and Tutsi \u201cPolice apprehended Kizito at the Burundian border and days later reported that he\u2019d hung himself in jail.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":179925,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[127],"tags":[237,2155,2388,1412,2387],"class_list":["post-179924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-africa","tag-africa","tag-hutus","tag-paul-kagame","tag-rwanda","tag-tutsis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179924"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179924\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/179925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}