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Benjamin Rutabana Benjamin Rutabana, often referred to as Ben, Benja or Benjah, is a Rwando - French freedom fighter, singer, composer, writer, poet and politician. Survivor of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi, Ben is from Abasesero, a pastoralist group in western Rwanda known for their bravery and strong attachment to traditional Rwandan values. He is the maternal uncle of Diane Shima Rwigara, the Human Rights activist who stood as an independent candidate in the 2017 Rwandan presidential election. Early life and family

Ben was born on 19 January 1970 in Gishyita, Kibuye prefecture, in the current Western Province, in a family of nine children, of which 6 are still alive. Son of Ephraim and Adèle Kayijuka, his father was a 7th Adventist Church pastor who used to move across the country preaching the Holy Gospel to Christians in different parishes. Atthe age of one, Ben’s family moved to Sure, Mabanza commune, Kibuye Prefecture, currently Karongi District. From childhood Ben displayed an array of natural talents and maturity always way beyond his age. Aged three, holding a book upside down and pretending to read in a loud voice, he pronounced prophetic words that astounded everyone: “This king is soon to cause tragedy that will follow us in exile.” Less than a week later, the family had to abandon their home hurriedly after pogroms targeted Tutsi communities in the aftermath of a military coup in Rwanda.

Music was one of Ben’s evident talents from a very young age, but worried it would distract him from his studies, in a country where school was almost the unique way to advance one’s life, his parents totally disapproved. Realising the boy’s unique gift and due to the exceptional fondness that bound them despite the large age gap, his older sister Adeline secretly bought him a guitar. Ben started teaching himself to play it, composing songs and secretly practicing with his nieces Diane and Anne as well as his nephew Aristide.

Education and first glimpses of revolutionary tendencies

Exceptionally gifted student, Ben was always top of his class throughout his primary education and dreamt from an early age of a science career. As a young Tutsi, in a society where his ethnic group was discriminated in all areas of national life, he still managed to get a scholarship to study agricultural science though it had never been his top choice. Admitted to EAFO Nyamishaba School of Agriculture and Forestry, an educational institution of excellence funded by the Swiss cooperation program, Ben excelled in academic subjects but also displayed outstanding talents at sports, writing and music. He is currently a karate black belt holder, a brilliant singer and music composer. Although multi talented, his colleagues and family alike remember him mainly for his loathing of injustice and tyranny that led him to avidly study works and history of global revolutionaries such as Che Guevara, Nelson Mandela and Thomas Sankara. Amongst his secondary school peers, he is remembered as that boy who always practiced truth, equality and justice to the highest level, regardless of ethnic, age or social status backgrounds.

At 17, Ben started asking his teachers embarrassing political questions and engaging his peers on taboo topics in a country under the firm grip of a ruthless despotic regime. His audacious debates on reasons causing a group of Rwandans to live in exile as well as his propaganda for an insurrection against the regime attracted sympathy from his colleagues but failed to raise the support he longed for. Realising the unrealistic task to overthrow the regime with the help of other teenagers, Ben threw whole focus in developing himself academically and through karate.

The 1990 war: first arrest, prison and torture

In October 1990, during his last year of secondary studies, Ben was in his first month of internship at ISAR (Institut Des Sciences Agronomiques du Rwanda) in the south of the country when he learned of a military attack by the RPF (Rwandese Patriotic Front), an armed group composed mainly of Tutsi refugees from Uganda, the same refugees whose problem he had attempted many times to raise without success. Tutsi, young, intelligent, handsome, alone in a region of the country where nobody knew him, brother-in-law of Assinapol Rwigara, a successful entrepreneur targeted by the regime as an important financer of the rebellion, Ben exemplified the perfect suspect. Picked up from ISAR, he was taken to the gendarmerie station in Butare where he spent weeks subjected to brutal torture to try and get him to admit he was an RPF combatant. One morning and four days into custody, Ben was surprised and overjoyed to see a group of five youngsters his age picked up the previous night near the Burundian border, on their way to join the rebellion. The group included one of his best friends with whom he had many times hatched naive plans to overthrow the regime. Unable to contain his happiness, Ben shouted his friend’s name, raising the guards’ suspicions and causing them to intensify the length and cruelty of torture sessions, hoping for information leading to understanding the enemy’s military tactics. They were to be disappointed given Ben and his friends were only fervent young men raging against injustice but with little knowledge about guerrilla war.

Ben was later to spend six months in a Butare prison, where he was joined by his brother Jason. After his release, physically weakened and half-starved, but with his mind as sharp as ever, he was focused on only one target, joining the RPF ranks and help removing the regime he had started fighting as a teenager.

The freedom fighter, the bush war and the genocide

“When the war breaks out, artists are perhaps the last who grant themselves a word of freedom and can radiate this force among the people.” Cheyenne Carron

To join the RPF ranks at the Ugandan border in the north, Ben had to cross the border to Burundi in the south. After spending days with members of his family who had fled before him, he joined a group of other recruits and walked through the Tanzanian Kiminsi forest, hiding during the day to avoid Tanzanian immigration agents. Exhausted after weeks of long walks with scarce food and water, he was ecstatic when he finally reached Nakivale, the famous RPA training camp. Expecting to be welcomed with open arms by those he truly believed were his brothers, he was surprised by their suspicious attitude towards him and every other boy coming from Rwanda. He had to witness in disbelief and with horror the slaughter of many of his comrades, but his time in Habyarimana’s prisons had raised his survival instincts to the highest level. He used his musical talent to avoid suffering a similar fate.

Deployed to the front line, Ben was admired both for his military bravery and his capacity to raise the troops morale using his music. His war songs are still loved by old and younger generations of Rwandans. They’re the same songs that convinced his family he was still alive when his nieces and nephew started humming them after hearing them broadcasted on RPF Radio Muhabura. Asked how they knew the tunes, the children responded Ben had taught them, which happened many years earlier during that time he was hiding to sing after his parents had banned him from playing music.

Ben was shot and injured at Rebero battle in April 1994 towards the end of the war and it’s with a heavy wound in his thorax he discovered almost all members of his family in Kibuye had been slaughtered, including his mother and father.

Arts and literary interests: music and writing

Ben started performing at a young age when he sang to a delighted crowd at a packed Stade Régional in Kigali aged just 14. However, though acknowledging his talent, his father instructed him to curb his enthusiasm for music and focus on his studies instead.

Ben revived his singing talent after leaving the military in 1995. Upgrading his war time famous tunes, he also composed new ones mainly based on love and patriotism themes. His 1996 first album “Ijuru ry’Intwari” was quickly followed by “Imbaraga z’urukundo” in 1998, “Le Retour d’Imana” in 2007 and “Amnesia” was launched in 2014, making Ben one of the most successful and cherished Rwandan artists of all time. It is however the remix of his famous war song “Africa” in 2001 that raised Ben’s name to superstardom status.

In 2014, at the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the genocide against the Tutsi, Ben published his autobiography “De l’enfer à l’enfer - du Hutu Power à la dictature de Kagame”, retracing his troubled life, mirrored to Rwandans tragedy during the last two regimes. This book worsened the Rwandan government’s hostility towards Ben and was followed by a dozen of brutal physical attacks against him including one with fire arms, in Brussels where he lives with his family. The Belgian police allegedly conducted investigations but never disclosed results nor prosecuted the culprits. It was therefore never made clear the attacks were relating to Ben’s political opinions or whether they were just random.

Falling out with the RPF Government: commando mission to save a human live, second arrest, prison and torture

During the political unrest in 2000, Ben got information the then Parliament speaker was about to be assassinated. He prepared and led a commando operation that extracted him from the house arrest he was closely kept under and managed to sneak him out of the country to Uganda. Upon his return from the border, Ben was approached by Bertin Murera, a secret services agent who informed him his operation had been uncovered and that he was on a mission to assassinate him. On the question why he was not fulfilling his deadly duty, Murera instructed him to just flee with him to the nearest and safest country border. They both rushed to Tanzania and spent the night in a Kigoma hotel before being apprehended by Tanzanian security services on INTERPOL behalf, after the government of Rwanda had launched a deceptive international arrest warrant against them.

Brought back to Rwanda manu militari, Ben and Bertin underwent horrible sessions of torture at the hands of the same RPA they had sacrificed everything for and for the alleged crime of saving innocent lives. Saved by an outcry that alerted international Human Rights organisations and media, Ben was released a few months later and decided to leave Rwanda following information his life was in danger.

The RNC (Rwanda National Congress) political leader and the disappearance

Upon arrival to Europe in 2004, Ben threw himself into work to rebuild his new life with his family but never forgot the problems and the people he had left behind in Rwanda. After its formation in 2010 by amongst others two former RPA leaders Colonel Patrick Karegeya and General Kayumba Nyamwasa, Ben decided to join the RNC (Rwandan National Congress), a new political opposition mouvement founded in exile. He was elected as its Commissioner for Capacity Development and was regularly praised for his wholehearted commitment, his sense of organisation, as well as his zero tolerance towards corruption and injustice. His ever growing popularity amongst party members alerted some of the leaders especially General Kayumba Nyamwasa the de facto head of the mouvement and Frank Ntwali, head of the Youth Commission and brother-in-law of the former. Lack of respect to human life, absence of the rule of law, financial mismanagement, favouritism and despotism are some of the vices Ben continually denounced and tried to combat, which worsened his relationship with Kayumba and Ntwali.

On September 4th 2019, Ben travelled to Uganda on one of his many party missions, but before leaving, he confessed to his wife, some of his family members and his closest friends he was worried about Kayumba and Ntwali’s growing enmity and that he feared for his life. Until September 8th 2019, date of his disappearance, Ben was in Kampala and in regular contact with his wife. From that day on, all communication stopped and he never returned home to Brussels. In their letter to the RNC management on October 2nd 2019, Ben’s family raised concerns about his disappearance but were opposed with denial from Kayumba who insisted to not knowing Ben’s whereabouts, whereas Charlotte Mukankusi the RNC Commissioner of Diplomac and a relative to Kayumba, as well as other party leaders reassured the family through telephone conversations and text messages Ben was sound and safe.

In his October 8th 2019 interview on Radio Urumuli, Gervais Condo, the RNC Secretary General confirmed he had information Ben was seen alive and free on October 2nd 2019 but refused to disclose the name of the person who saw him and where. A week later, Rugema Kayumba, another relative to Kayumba, disclosed in another radio interview that Ben was welcomed in Kampala by RNC local leaders on August 5th 2019.

Contradiction upon contradiction, the RNC leadership kept changing its narratives until the latest maintaining Ben is now held in a Kigali safe house by Rwandan secret services. One would wonder how he got there when in October the same leadership was trying convince his family to keep quiet alleging Ben was well in a safe place. As Ben’ saga keeps dragging on, his family have opened a law suit and every RNC official in support of a transparent handling of the case has been thrown out of the organisation. Ben’s family and fans are in disarray but the love for this great man keeps growing amongst Rwandans and Africans alike.