Pasteur Bizimungu

Pasteur Bizimungu (born 1950) was the fifth President of Rwanda from 19 July 1994 until 23 March 2000. He is considered belonging to the Hutu caste/ethnic group and was born in the Gisenyi prefecture of Rwanda. Bizimungu worked within the Hutu MRND regime which ruled Rwanda (until 1994), including as director general of the national electricity company. In 1990 he joined the primarily Tutsi Rwandese Patriotic Front when his brother, a colonel in the Rwandan Armed Forces, was assassinated, possibly on the orders of the government.

The Rwandan Patriotic Front was dissatisfied with the Hutu government of Juvénal Habyarimana, who Pasteur Bizimungu was reportedly close to in the 1980s. After Habyarimana's death in a plane crash 6 April 1994 decades of complex ethnic, social and political hatreds were ignited and led to the Rwandan Genocide.

Eventually in July 1994 the Rwandan Patriotic Front gained control of the country and established a national unity government. The RPF leader, Tutsi Paul Kagame, was chosen vice-president, and Bizimungu was chosen President so that the majority Hutus would still be highly represented in the government. Bizimungu was chosen largely for his harsh criticisms of Hutu hardliners. Bizimungu frequently reported that the hardliners assassinated his close friend Juvénal Habyarimana and reportedly supplied information to the MI6 demonstrating the involvement of Hutu hardliners and French intelligence in the assassination.

During Bizimungu's administration, many believed that Kagame had true control of the government. Bizimungu, as deputy leader of the RPF, eventually came into a conflict with Kagame amid growing differences with the government over its policies and what he saw as an unwarranted crackdown on dissent. A crisis was brewing in Rwanda. Allegations of a royalist plot to restore the Tutsi monarchy were circulated. The speaker of the parliament, Joseph Sebarenzi, resigned and fled the country. Three World Food Program workers were killed in three years. In March 2000, his assistant Assiel Kabera was shot in the head by three men in military uniform. He resigned in March 2000, and Kagame became president. He claimed to be afraid for his life.

In May 2001, Bizimungu founded an opposition movement, the Party for Democratic Renewal (PDR), known as Ubuyanja in the Kinyarwanda language. It was almost immediately banned by the government, which accused it of being a radical Hutu party. Critics claim that the government is simply crushing opposition figures under the pretext of inciting racial tensions, and Amnesty International named Bizimungu a prisoner of conscience. He was placed under house arrest for continuing the operations of the party on 19 April 2002 and charged with endangering the state. On 7 June 2004 he was sentenced to 15 years in prison for attempting to form a militia, inciting violence and embezzlement. He received a five-year sentence for each of these convictions, which were to run consecutively. On 17 February 2006, represented by a team of attorneys including Peter Zaduk, Bizimungu's appeal, based on the fact that he was convicted of crimes different from those with which he was initially charged, was denied by the Supreme Court.

He was released on 6 April 2007, having been pardoned by Kagame. As of April 2011, PDR co-founder and later co-defendant Charles Ntakirutinka remained in prison, and was named an Amnesty International "priority case."

References

• ^ Analysis: Why Bizimungu mattered, BBC News, 23 March 2000.

Political offices
Preceded by Théodore Sindikubwabo (Interim)	President of Rwanda 19 July 1994 – 23 March 2000	Succeeded by Paul Kagame