Green Party Watch

From the website of the Democratic Green Party of Rwanda

Frank Habineza, Founding President of the Democratic Green Party of Rwanda, has received a Democracy Prize in Swedish Parliament, today, 28th April 2011.

The Prize was awarded by Hon. Bodil Ceballos, a Swedish Parliamentarian, member of the Foreign Affairs Committee and alternates on the Defence and Justice Committees. She is also a member of the Green Party of Sweden.

This initiative originated from the Green Party in Gävle, led by Ms.Inger Schörling, former Member of Swedish Parliament and European Parliament. She is also the Vice Chairperson of Green Forum Sweden and particularly in charge of East Africa.

The Prize is given in honor of the democratic struggle started in Rwanda and the resolve to continue it, using peaceful and non-violent means, despite all the hard challenges faced.

This is a great encouragement and we highly applaud the Green Party in Gävle, Ms.Inger Schörling and Hon.Bodil Ceballos for this recognition.
For more information, please contact :

Ms. Inger Schörling : Email : inger.schorling@mp.se

The Democratic Green Party of Rwanda has issued it’s interim platform.

DEMOCRATIC GREEN PARTY OF RWANDA

INTERIM POLITICAL PLATFORM

Preamble

We, the founding members of the Democratic Green Party of Rwanda require that our Government operate within limits set forth in the Constitution of the Republic of Rwanda.

As Green Democrats, we believe :

1. Non-violence and peaceful means of conflict resolution are the best and only solution to national problems.

2. Social Justice and equal opportunity while focusing on personal and social responsibility guarantees a better future.

3. Participatory Democracy is rooted in community practice at the grassroots level. Citizens have the power and Government exists to serve them.

4. Unity and reconciliation of Rwandans should be promoted and ethnic politics be guarded against.

5. Balancing the interests of a regulated market economy and community-based economics with effective care for the ecosystems will lead to Ecological and Economic Sustainability.

6. Government must take special care to protect and defend the rights of the innocent and defenseless members of our society.

7. Government must practice fiscal responsibility, limit taxation and control spending.

8. No individual has special rights above another individual.

9. Government exists to protect and ensure the unalienable rights of the people, which include the right to life, liberty, peaceful assembly, expression, worship and the pursuit of happiness.

10. Our unalienable rights are granted to us by God.

Much more detail below the fold. read more »

In an article written by San Francisco Green Ann Garrison, San Francisco Bay View is reporting the murder of Rwandan Democratic Green Party vice-president Andrei Kagwa Rwisereka. Garrison writes that Rwisereka was

found dead, his head almost completely severed from his body, in the wetlands of the Makula River near Butare, Rwanda, on the morning of July 14, 2010.

The Rwandan Greens have tried to find a place in civil and political life in Rwanda, but the government of President Paul Kagame has made that participation almost impossible. Reports from Greens in Rwanda make mention of armed thugs breaking up meetings, police and political figures refusing to allow Greens to register their party and ignoring requests for investigations of violence done to Green leaders and their supporters. Non-violent representatives of other political parties have suffered similarly, and arrests and detentions for long stretches appear to be a tool of repression. read more »

Voice of America reports from Rwanda:

The leader of the opposition Democratic Green Party of Rwanda has called on President Paul Kagame’s government to help end the escalating violence ahead of the general elections scheduled for August this year.

Frank Habineza said the period leading up to the election is contributing to the ongoing violence.

Habineza’s comments follows last week’s shooting death of Leonard Rugambage, acting editor of the banned Umuvugizi independent newspaper in the capital, Kigali. read more »

The chair of the Democratic Green Party of Rwanda, Frank Habineza, has been elected President of the African Green Parties Federation, last weekend in Kampala, Uganda.

Habineza, who’s Green Party has faced police and military attacks for even seeking permission to hold meetings and register the party with the national government, has had his life threatened in the past.

This is a big recognition and support for the Democratic Green Party of Rwanda, which is still struggling to get registered. Its also a big support for Democracy in Rwanda.

-Frank Habineza

Over at World News Journal, David B posted the letter, which is copied in full bellow the fold.
read more »

On 2/18/10, Amnesty International released a statement condemning intimidation of opposition parties, including the Democratic Green Party of Rwanda, and urging Rwandan president Paul Kagame to “use the elections as an opportunity to show the government’s commitment to freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly.”

Amnesty International has strongly condemned a worrying attack on a Rwandan opposition group as the country prepares for presidential elections in August 2010. read more »

Posted by David Doonan at the Green Pages Facebook page.

Dear Greens,

Its indeed been a terrible day, the man who started the shouting and threw chairs, we have established that he is an Ex-Soldier and a former employee of Military Intelligence, the other three people who joined him, one of them had something like a gun-pistol, it was also seen by the US Envoy and Netherlands Envoy and many others.

This was a well planned sabotage done by security operatives. Another guy was also from the Local Defense Forces. The police was not helpful at all. It looked like they were compromising us.

What is surprising though is that the police has released the guys who caused trouble and rather arrested our members one of them a mother. Thankfully our members have been released but made statements at the police. They were asked why they decided to be members of our party.

Several people are injured, one Lady is in intensive care. Her Back is having a problem. Am still finding out how many are injured.

Keep us in prayers
Frank Habineza

This should tell the world what Rwanda, the U.S.A.’s closest ally in Africa, and its President Paul Kagame are:

The Rwandan Democratic Greens tried, for the fourth time, to hold their founding convention in Kigali, but this time the police came instead.

I just spoke to Frank Habineza, interim Rwandan Green Party leader, who is in a Kigali hospital trying to arrange an X-ray for a Rwandan Green, a woman with a broken leg.

Another would be Rwandan Green woman has a broken back.

More are injured, and I believe he said some are in jail. He was on a cell in a hospital and I always have to work to understand his sweet French/Kinyarwanda English accent as well.

He wasn’t able to give me any more details now. He had to hurry off to help his friend with the broken leg.

No news on the Web yet. Frank said to watch the BBC and the Rwandan News Agency websites. I told him the state run Rwandan News Agency website won’t let me on their damn website. He himself had to pay them $250 to get on to pick up the articles he sends me, which are almost always yanked off the site as soon as they’re posted.

I didn’t have a chance to urge Frank to Twitter, but I’m going to try calling again to urge him to do so on my way to San Francisco Superior Court in an hour. Frank Habineza’s twitter account.

I have to run and I’ll be gone all morning, but we obviously we need to get on the phones to the White House, the Rwandan Embassies, and the press.

Greens of course, and I addressed this mostly to Greens, but this isn’t just about Greens, obviously. No one should wind up in a hospital with broken bones, or in jail, for attempting to convene a legal, nonviolent political party.

This is the Rwanda that Bill and Hillary Clinton and Reverend Rick Warren point to as Africa’s future, “a shining beacon of hope for Africa.” Bill Clinton hung a Global Citizenship Award around Rwandan President Paul Kagame’s neck a week before Reverend Rick Warren presented him with the same International Medal of Peace he presented George Bush with last year.

This is the Rwanda that the U.S.A. uses to control the vast geostrategic mineral wealth of its neighbor D.R. Congo.

(Anyone feel free to post this note to Green Party lists and websites, and wherever else, ASAP.)

Many times we are asked to do things in support of Green candidates or Green Party leaders, and because of the cost it’s difficult. Some of us have enough income to live well, while others of us are barely getting by. Today I offer you a dollar free way to help protect the life of a Green Party leader in Rwanda.

The following is from Ann Garrison’s blog.

I’d like to urge Green and human rights Tweeters to follow Frank Habineza, interim leader of the Rwandan Democratic Green Party, for the sake of Frank’s and other party members’ safety, and, for political rights in Rwanda.

Rwandan President Paul Kagame’s government should know that Greens and other human rights activists are watching Frank and the Rwandan Democratic Greens, especially during the next two weeks, as they continue their struggle to register as a political party with a ballot line, and convene in Rwanda’s capital city, Kigali, on October 30th, despite have been shut down by the state three times.

Please post to your Facebook pages, websites, e-lists, and/or blogs, and urge others concerned with political rights, in Rwanda, Central Africa, and beyond, to do so as well.

Canadian, Australian, European, and African Greens have all spoken out for the Rwandan Greens, and some have spoken to Rwandan Embassies. We’re waiting for a statement from the Green Party (in the-editor’s note) U.S.A., but this is not just about Green Party rights; it’s about political rights, and the safety of those fighting for them.”

LGBT human rights are also at issue, to say the least, in Rwanda, where official policy has long been that “homosexuality does not exist.” Frank Habineza told me he would try to contact members of the LGBT community willing to speak to press outside Rwanda, but also said that “they are so beaten down here that they are very hard to find above ground.”

So there it is folks. If you have a Twitter account, please consider adding Habineza to your list of folks to follow. This will let the repressive government in Rwanda know that the world, or at least a part of the world, is concerned about his safety, and will not allow him or the Green Party to be repressed.

This article was originally posted last week on the Rwanda News Agency website, but it quickly became unavailable. Thankfully, Save Rwanda had already reposted the story.

Rwandan Green Party blocked from meeting: “Sad Day for Democracy in Rwanda” (10/5/09)

Kigali: They moved hundreds of kilometers – some for the first time to the capital. Others braved the trouble of having to move with babies. Some abandoned their jobs to be in Kigali for the event that did not happen. Up to 900 supposed delegates of the Democratic Green Party of Rwanda (DGPR) found themselves at the center of an unexpected controversy, RNA reports. read more »