Excerpts from report by Rwandan radio on 22nd December

The prime minister's office has released a statement regarding the current security situation in the country ... I quote:

By following its misguided leadership based on ethnic and regional discrimination, Rwanda became a victim of obscurantism as manifested in the 1994 genocide and massacres, those sad events which claimed the lives of more than one million Rwandan citizens and destroyed many a public and private property.

However, some Rwandans took [it] upon themselves to put an end to such criminal activities by waging both in words and deeds a liberation war. The perpetrators of those genocidal crimes led a huge part of the country's population into exile abroad, with the intent of showing that these people supported their criminal activities and while making the Bahutu wrongly believe they would be killed by those they had nicknamed Batutsi inyenzi cockroaches...

Rwanda government is calling on Rwandans wherever they are found to continue lending no ear or support to these hard criminals now behaving like deadly beasts, to more earnestly support the now well-entrenched policy of national unity and reconciliation, and to denounce all those killers who did them no other good in their time of leadership than sowing in them seeds of hatred.

Survivors of a recent massacre help dig mass graves

Show all their hideouts, leave them no quarters, spare them no food or roof, because whoever is found in league with those killers has to be treated likewise. There is nothing to be expected from them save death and hunger. And [they] themselves have nothing to offer you, save destroying your country, as they are now busy doing.

Rwanda government calls on all people in the country to remain calm and be assured that it is with them, while furthering its correct policy of reconciling the Rwandan people. Whatever is needed for this purpose shall be required [as heard] and used, as we realize a bright future for our country.

The country's armed forces are ready and well-prepared, with all their might and capability, will and wisdom, to teach a lesson to whoever wants to disturb people's peace and tranquillity, or to pull Rwanda back into obscurantism.

Please maintain your cooperation with your armed forces and your support for the all-Rwanda's national unity government. We want also to call on all those infiltrators and killers to put an end to their beastly deeds, for, as the saying goes, he who does not want to listen will have to face the consequences.

In conclusion, Rwanda government wishes to inform the international community that all these despicable killings taking place in some communes of Ruhengeri and Gisenyi [northwestern Rwanda] are a continuation of the genocide and massacres carried out as ever before by those who had framed them, planned and executed them.

Rwanda government is calling on the international community to arrest these criminals' leaders found in their countries and to extradite them to Rwanda government or to the Arusha [northern Tanzania] international criminal tribunal.

The international community is informed that those leaders are responsible for the untold suffering they caused in Rwanda while they are now moving freely in those countries, still forging other plans to continue committing genocide and massacres in Rwanda.

To continue housing them and protecting them from arrest is contrary to international conventions to punish the crime of genocide and amounts to making genocide a common name.

Source: Radio Rwanda, Kigali, in English 0515 gmt 22 Dec 97

BBC Monitoring (http://www.monitor.bbc.co.uk), based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages.
 

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