Pierre-Célestin Rwigema

Who is Pierre-Célestin Rwigema?

Pierre-Célestin Rwigema is a Hutu Rwandan politician previously associated with the moderate faction of the MDR party. He was Prime Minister of Rwanda from 1995–2000 and Education Minister from 1994-1995. When he was sworn in as Prime Minister he pledged to reunite his then ethnically torn country.

In 2001, he was accused of alleged involvement in the Rwandan Genocide and had an arrest warrant issued for him by the Rwandan government. These charges were brought against him after his resignation as Prime Minister, when he fled to the United States to seek political asylum. At the time of the accusation, he was studying towards a Master's degree in Business Administration at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, United States. The political climate in Rwanda was volatile at the time. The speaker of the house, Joseph Sabarenzi, resigned and fled. There was allegations of a royalist faction working to undermine the RPF government, and restore the Tutsi monarchy. It has been reported that these charges against him may have been politically motivated. According to Joseph Sebarenzi, a Tutsi and former speaker of the national assembly from 1997 to 2000, in his newly published memoir "God Sleeps in Rwanda", he says that Rwigema was innocent. As quoted in Sebarenzi's memoir: "Regularly I would hear from friends or on the radio that someone else in Rwanda was being targeted. There was Pierre Celestin Rwigema, the prime minister. He was forced to resign. While I was speaker, we had investigated him for mismanagement and embezzlement. The RPF wanted him out and hoped we would censure him. But our investigation could not prove that he had done anything wrong, so we cleared him. I knew that the RPF would not let that stand. So when I heard that Rwigema had resigned, I was not surprised. He eventually fled to the United States. The government of Rwanda told the U.S. government that he was involved in the genocide and asked that he be arrested. But an immigration judge cleared him". He was eventually proven innocent and granted political asylum by the United States immigration court in Detroit.