(New York, May 4, 2001) The Rwandan government should step up efforts to
resolve recent cases of disappearances and an assassination, Human
Rights Watch said today. Such cases, relatively common between 1995 and
1997, seem to be becoming more frequent in a context of growing tension
between Rwanda and its neighbors. Human Rights Watch urged action on the
disappearances last month of a former Interior Minister and a
demobilized army officer, as well as the brazen assassination of Rwandan
diplomat in February.

"Rwanda has just won a vote of approval at the recent meeting of the
United Nations Commission on
Human Rights," said Alison Des Forges, Senior Advisor to the Africa
Division of Human Rights Watch. "Rwandan authorities now have the chance
to show their commitment to the rule of law by locating the missing and
by bringing an assassin to justice."

On April 27, former Minister of the Interior Theobald Rwaka Gakwaya was
last seen leaving his home, supposedly en route to a meeting of
political parties in the northwestern town of Gisenyi. Rwaka, who was
also the Vice-President of the Centrist Democratic Party (Parti
Démocrate centriste, or PDC), was frequently at odds with the Rwandan
government and lost his ministerial post in March. At the time, the
semi-official press accused him of plotting against the
government and of hindering recruitment by the Rwandan Patriotic Front,
the party which dominates Rwandan political life. Rwaka was a founder of
the Rwandan League for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights
(LIPRODHOR), one of the most effective human rights organizations in
Rwanda.

On April 7, a recently demobilized Rwandan army officer, Major Alexis
Ruzindana, also disappeared en route to a destination outside the
capital. He left Kigali for the southwestern town of Cyangugu in the
company of another army officer, Captain Vianney Butera, who
subsequently returned alone to the city. Ruzindana had come back to
Rwanda with the Rwandan Patriotic Army after years of exile in Uganda.
According to some military sources, Ruzindana may have fled the country
to join other recently-departed RPA officers who had also spent their
younger years as refugees in Uganda, including Majors Mupende and
Furuma. Major Furuma has announced the formation of a political movement
in opposition to the current Rwandan government.

A Burundian diplomat, Dieudonné Haburugira, was expelled from Rwanda in
late April reportedly for helping Rwandan army officers leave the
country to join groups opposed to the Rwandan government. He had
supposedly given a Burundian visa to Ruzindana.

In February, a young soldier in uniform assassinated Alphonse Mbayire,
also a RPA officer and former chargé d'affairs at the Rwandan embassy in
Nairobi. The crime took place in a Kigali neighborhood inhabited by a
number of military officers, who have armed guards at their residences.
The supposed killer, himself a guard for a military officer, was
identified by name and rank by witnesses but he has apparently not yet
been apprehended. He fired more than twenty bullets at close range into
Mbayire's head, reportedly because he took offense at a comment Mbayire
made about his dog.

Also in February a man named Jean de Dieu Dufatanye disappeared after
having gone into Kigali, reportedly to meet with a former employer who
is an influential member of the RPF.

In all of these cases, families of the victims have sought official
assistance in finding the missing and in obtaining justice for the
murder, thus far without result.

For more information on human rights in Rwanda, please see:

Congo, Rwanda Responsible for Severe Abuses (HRW Press Release, February
1, 2001) at http://www.hrw.org/press/2001/01/congo-0131.htm

Rwanda: The Search for Security and Human Rights Abuses (HRW Report,
April 2000) at http://www.hrw.org/hrw/reports/2000/rwanda/

Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda (HRW Report, March
1999) at http://www.hrw.org/reports/1999/rwanda/