OPEN LETTER

The Support Committee of Mr. Félicien KABUGA and of his family

donaka@skynet.be

 

 

 

His Excellency Mr. Koffie ANNAN

Secretary General of United Nations

UN Headquarters
First Avenue at 46^th Street
New York, NY 10017

 

 

6 March 03

 

 

Subject: unjustified legal proceedings against Mr. Félicien KABUGA.

 

 

Your Excellency,

 

 

We, members of the Support Committee of Mr. Félicien KABUGA and of his Family, wish to take this opportunity to draw your kind attention to the unjustified legal proceedings brought against Félicien Kabuga by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) and to request you to use your personal influence to help this family regain its rights and human dignity.

 

The context.

 

As your Excellency is fully aware, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) a politico-military organisation started a war against Rwanda on the 1^st of October 1990 with a declared intention of seizing state power. Indeed it took power in 1994, after a bloody war during which large-scale massacres took place. Warring parties, the RPF and the then government traded accusations against each other over the responsibility for the massacres.

 

The creation of the ICTR brought a sigh of relief and hope that it would identify and punish people responsible for the killings. Despite its limited mandate both in terms of time and geographical area, we still believed in the competence and independence of appointed Prosecutor and the Judges.

 

Unfortunately, all hopes were dashed as we soon realised that ICTR lacked complete independence, an indispensable prerequisite for equitable justice that would lead to national reconciliation. It became clear that ICTR was working under undue pressure and propaganda.

 

This interference in the work of ICTR has led to a situation whereby legal proceedings are taken against innocent people who are then charged for crimes they have not committed. In particular we would like to draw your kind attention to the case of former businessman Félicien KABUGA, now under international arrest warrant.

 

We would like to affirm that Mr. Félicien Kabuga is not a criminal, as the propaganda machinery would like everybody to believe.  In this connection we would like to give you the real identity of Kabuga as we know him and demonstrate to you that the allegations brought against him are unfounded.

 

 

Identity of Mr. Félicien KABUGA.

 

Mr. Félicien Kabuga was born in the early 30s in Mukarange commune, Prefecture of Byumba. Born from a poor family, he was not able to follow a formal education and so taught himself how to read and write. Yet he is portrayed as a big national political heavyweight pulling the strings behind political decisions!

 

Mr. Félicien Kabuga is a self-made man who started from scratch but was eventually able to build a respectable wealth. He earned his first Rwandan franc at the age of 12 from the sale of a basket he had woven himself. He slowly made savings from which he bought salt for resale. The business of selling salt grew as he got more cash to buy bigger quantities.

 

In 1955, Mr Félicien Kabuga was put on the Trade Register; a position coveted by many people at the time. He then built a house in Rushaki Trading Centre (Commune of Kiyombe, Prefecture of Byumba). He had now started selling a wide range of goods.

 

In early seventies, as his business grew, the market in Rushaki became smaller and so he decided to move to the capital city, Kigali, where he had just completed one storied building, which served both as his residence and as a shop. The business increased as he started to import to meet the rising market demand. He started importing second-hand clothes from Holland, from the United States of America and from Belgium.

 

Later on, he extended his import business to a wider range of goods from America, Europe and Asia. These included lighting fitments, refrigerators and stoves, metal sheets, paraffin, textile, farming tools (hoes, shovels, machetes, axes, picks, and so on), rice, sugar, powder milk, and many more such as teapots, plates, cups, frying pans, dishes, ceramic and metal trays, thermos, umbrellas and so forth; building materials such as plastic pipes (PVC), wires, metal sheets, wheelbarrows and so on.

 

Besides carrying out import/export business, Mr. Félicien Kabuga invested also in other sectors of the economy, such as transport, tea plantations, manufacturing and real estate. By April 1994[1], he owned forty trailers operating in the international transport; 350 hectares of tea plantations; a Flour Mill that is located in the town of Byumba and produced more than 39000 tons of wheat per year, many buildings in Kigali, one of which was a building complex, which was designed to contain a hotel[2], offices, a super-market, space for rent and so forth[3]; warehouses. Besides he had personal residential houses in Kimihurura and Remera as well as residential houses for rent in Kigali.

 

Mr. Félicien Kabuga had also shares in the Commercial Bank of Rwanda (BCR), in the African Continental Bank (BACAR); in La Rwandaise (a concessionary company for Mercedes and Toyota; in the Rwandan Company for the International Transport (STIR), and in many other companies. He did not need a political power. He needed peace and security to do his business. He did his business under different regimes, monarchical and republican.

 

All these assets, both financial and in real estates, together with the goods that were still in warehouses located in Muhima, Gikondo, Byumba and in the centre of Kigali, as well as the revenue collected constitute a big fortune that usurpers cannot afford to lose.  They will use any subterfuge to get Kabuga out of the way or any other rightful owner, either by physical elimination or character assassination, the worst being to accuse him of inciting people to commit genocide.

 

On the 29^th of December 1995, he escaped the assassination attempt perpetrated against him in Kenya. Short of physical elimination, the usurpers has mounted a campaign to get him arrested by the ICTR and thrown in jail for life. Only then can they have peace of mind, scared that he might have money outside and use it to regain his robbed property. They must make sure that his accounts outside are frozen.

 

The person that the usurpers wants to get rid of, Mr. Félicien Kabuga, was not interested in just making money irrespective of what happened to the rest of population. He was indeed concerned with issues of development and poverty in the countryside, which led to rural exodus. This is why he decided to build a flour milling plant in Byumba away from the capital, which would have made more economic sense. Five hundred (500) families depended on working on this plant for their livelihood.

 

Mr. Félicien Kabuga also knew very well the importance of education in the social and economic development of the country. He built a Secondary School (Ecole Secondaire d`Economie et Commerce) in Rushaki, deep in a rural area, using his personal money.

 

Kabuga is also a very compassionate person. During the war period 1990-1994 he initiated the collection and distribution of food to families displaced by war in his home district of Byumba.

 

If ever Kabuga had so much political influence he would not have needed to spend his own money investing in an area, which did not make economic sense, built a school in such a remote area of Byumba, or involve him in food relief. He would have used his political influence to have all this done by government, especially that it is alleged that the government was very corrupt.

 

The real profile of Mr Félicien Kabuga scares his detractors. He is not a criminal. He is a highly respected person for his humility, integrity, caring for others, balanced in judgement and endowed with business acumen. He succeeded in business using his own efforts, without a political godfather. He was a good role model for hard work and honesty, giving a clear message that patience, humility, honesty and integrity can pay in business. This was a rare quality in the business community. For the majority quick money overrode moral values.

Although he was believed to be one of the richest businessmen, he welcomed everybody, irrespective of age, creed, ethnicity or social status.

 

A victim of negative media propaganda orchestrated by the new regime in Kigali and in constant fear of physical elimination or of being unjustly thrown in jail by ICTR, Mr Kabuga has been forced to go into hiding in the hope that the ICTR will free itself from political manipulation and intimidation and accept to dig out the whole truth about him and withdraw the false accusations levelled against him. To add insult to injury, his family lives under constant harassment (police searches, tapping of telephones) and the accounts have been frozen to make the family totally destitute without any form of assistance.

 

In our endeavour to help the UN and in particular ICTR carry out its mission of rendering justice to the Rwandan people, the Support Committee has decided to provide information about Félicien Kabuga and demonstrate how the accusations brought against him are baseless.

 

He is accused of importing machetes; of paying contributions to the political Party MRND

( Mouvement Republicain National pour le Developpement) of which he was a member; of having shares in the RTLM (Radio Television Libre des Mille Collines) of which he acted as the chairman of the Initiative Committee (Comité d’initiative); of having taken part in the creation of a Fund for the National Defence and, of supporting the armed opposition against the RPF.

 

Importation of machetes.

 

It is alleged that Mr. Félicien Kabuga imported machetes used to kill Tutsis in 1994. The detractors of Mr. Félicien Kabuga abuse the good faith of the public opinion and suggest that machetes were imported only in 1990-1994. Every person of good faith will know that in Rwanda like in many other African countries, machetes are part and parcel of household tools used in every day activities.  The machetes are indispensable tools to farmers, who represent 90% out of the population. Even in the cities, people make use of them in trimming hedges or for chopping firewood, and so forth. The UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) and the Red Cross distributed tools that included a pan, a blanket, a tent and a machete to the war displaced families of Nyacyonga .

 

The Company Félicien Kabuga (Ets Félicien Kabuga) imported, as wholesaler, machetes since 1981. Ets Félicien Kabuga never operated as a retailer. He was neither the sole trader nor the most important importer of machetes. For example, the Company Ets Jobanputras Suresh, still operating in Rwanda, imported three times the number machetes imported by Ets Félicien Kabuga in 1993. Equally, several Tutsi imported the machetes including Mr. Uzziel RUBANGURA[4] who was an important businessman.

 

In 1994 the Commission of Enquiry appointed by the Belgian Parliament on Rwandan events drew the conclusion that the importation of machetes had nothing to do with the preparation of genocide. Up to now the machetes remain one of the essential items imported and marketed in Rwanda, under the rule of the RPF.

 

It’s important to note that Rwanda has a machete factory “ Rwandex Chillington”, and Kabuga did not have any shares in it. Kabuga like other businessmen imported because the factory could not meet the demand. The sale was not limited to one section of Rwandans.

 

Financial Contributions to MRND Party.

 

Mr. Félicien KABUGA is indicted as part of the group, branded as “ political group” published by the Prosecutor of the ICTR.

 

As stressed above, the speciality of Mr. Félicien Kabuga was doing business. He never depended on political patronage to make his money. He never played any part in the politics in his life although he may have had sympathy for a political party like any other citizen. He was a member of MRND (Mouvement Républicain National pour la Démocratie et le Développement) but he never held any political position even of a local counsellor within the MRND itself or within any other political party or organisation. He had no influence in the party for if he had he would have attracted a lot of investment by government to his area.

 

He was member of MRND, under one party system like everybody else, and under the multiparty democracy, he did not see any reason to change as the party which, as many people admit, brought peace and development in the country.

 

The party he joined, MRND, was legally set up according to the Constitution of June 10, 1991 and its motto was  “Unity, Peace and Development”. Joining a political party legally established and paying contributions should not constitute a crime.  

 

Shares in the Radio-Television Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM), Chair of the Initiative  Committee. 

 

As far as Mr. Félicien Kabuga is concerned, RTLM was nothing less than a new opportunity for him to boost his business fortunes. He was pioneer in investing in many other companies (STIR, La Rwandaise, BACAR, BCR).

 

For Mr. Félicien Kabuga, the creation of RTLM was one of the outcomes of economic liberalisation and of the Structural Adjustment Program recommended by the World Bank. Media and communication seemed to offer good business opportunities after the state had monopolised it for a long time. It was attractive in terms of advertisement.  At the social political level, it broke the monopoly of any government in power over information and political debate. Indeed many politicians including people from opposition parties and some of the ideologues of the RPF ( i.e. Tito Rutaremara ) had political debates on RTLM. Some of the first shareholders of RTLM are now political heavyweights in the RPF government ( i.e. Boniface Rucagu). Anyone who wanted to express his views with others could do it on RTLM.

 

RTLM was created in 1993 in accordance with both the laws in force and the procedures related to private companies, in Rwanda. Its statutes were published in official gazette. An agreement of its establishment was signed with the Ministry of information, which was headed by a Minister from an opposition party.  The second point of article 5 of the agreement is clear: “The RTLM commits itself to never broadcast programs that could incite to hatred, violence or any other form of discord”.

 

Even though he held only 1% of the shares[5], Mr. Félicien KABUGA was appointed as the Chairman of the Committee of Initiative to give confidence among other investors given his personal reputation as a good businessman. However, being the Chair of the Initiative Committee did not give him any special power with regard to the management and day to day running of RTLM, like supervising radio broadcasts. Mr. Félicien Kabuga has never been a member of the board of directors, neither the manager nor journalist for RTLM. The statutes of the RTLM clearly indicated the role of each and everybody involved in running RTLM.  

 

It is normal that anybody who may have used the RTLM to encourage evil doing be accountable for his or her actions as an individual. As any honest observer knows, Mr. Félicien Kabuga never engaged in such activities. He never called on people either to commit crime or to promote hatred. Therefore, he has nothing to do with whoever used the Radio to incite people to violence. 

 

 

Creation of a fund for the national defence (FDN).

 

Together with other businessmen at Gisenyi, Mr. Félicien Kabuga took part in an initiative  aimed at creating a Fund for National Defence. The objective of the Fund was to support the National Army in the fight against  external aggression, the RPF, and not to groups that were killing unarmed civilians.

 

The setting up of the Fund as such was not a new phenomenon in Rwanda. As a matter of fact, a similar fund was put in place at the request of both the Government and the population when the RPF started the war in October 1990. The whole population irrespective of ethnicity contributed to the Fund.. The same exercise was repeated in 1994.

 

The FDN was not aimed at supporting the killers, as the detractors of Mr. Félicien Kabuga would like everybody to believe. Supporting the regular Army in the defence of the country was a civic action.

 

Anyway, the Fund never served anything because the RPF soon took power before it was even used. The little money collected was deposited on an account open at the BCR (Banque Commerciale du Rwanda) and no penny was spent. Unless the money was misappropriated, it should still be on the account and should be checked.

 

Supporting armed opposition to the Regime in Kigali.

 

Accusing Mr. Félicien Kabuga of supporting whatever armed groups opposed to the Regime of Kigali is a mere figment of imagination. It is no less than sadism. His properties have been confiscated since 1994 and his accounts have been  frozen. If he had any money he would rather feed his family or invest it in business elsewhere instead of dreaming of political power he has never strived for.

 

 

 

 

 

In conclusion,

 

It is very clear from the above that Félicien Kabuga is victim of a smear campaign devised to get his wealth by getting him out of the way either by physical elimination or throwing him in jail and starving his family.

 

1. The profile of Kabuga, his character, his rise to wealth, his position in Rwanda, all show that he is not the person who had any political influence or interested in gaining political power. He joined political parties like any other citizen.

 

2. The real problem for Félicen Kabuga is paradoxically his reputation as a serious person and his wealth.

 

3. RPF Authorities are afraid that they may be asked to return his properties in Kigali, Rushaki and Byumba and hence lose a huge source of revenue. His family has tried in vain to get them back.

 

We still hope that it is not too late for the UN to rise above political manipulation and live to its mission to be the fair arbiter. It should render justice to all the people irrespective of ethnicity, social and status or political affiliation.

 

It would be a real tragedy if the UN were allowed to participate in the violation of human rights. The family of Kabuga has every right to enjoy the fruits of their lifelong labour. Kabuga needs to be redeemed.

 

That is the reason why we appeal to you, Excellency, in order for you to make use of both the competence and the capacities in your hands and,

 

-         Ask the Prosecutor of the ICTR to reconsider the case of Mr. Félicien Kabuga and to render void the indictment against him.

-         Stop the manhunt on Mr. Félicien Kabuga.

-         Ask all governments concerned to restore full rights to his family.

-         Ask the Rwanda government to return the properties to Mr. Félicien Kabuga’s family.

 

We thank you in advance whatever action you take to assist Mr. Félicien Kabuga and his  family in recovering their inalienable human rights.

 

Sincerely yours and  may God bless.

 

 

On behalf of the Support Committee of Mr. Félicien KABUGA and of his Family,

 

Donatien NSHIMYUMUREMYI.