By Erasme Rugemintwaza
It is the warmth of compassion over the world, after that Shabana Basij-Rasikh has posted seven consecutive messages on Twitter, this Aug 24, 2021 to share the destination of her school SOLA: the Rwanda!
SOLA is an abbreviation for School of Leadership Afghanistan, the only boarding school for girls in Afghanistan. The President and co-founder Shabana Basij-Rasikh shared his distress to see again the people of Afghanistan into the hands of the Taliban who never want that Afghan women have a complete education after the primary school. With the Taliban, all forms of freedoms and rights, even the most basic ones, which elsewhere can never generate a thought of freedoms or rights, like to get out alone without being accompanied, are fiercely prohibited to women.
Immediately after the fall of the Taliban in 2002, schools for girls started up again. Shabana Basij-Rasikh was among the first girls who seized the occasion of study and stood the tests to get to school because all female’s records have been burnt by the Taliban. Before leaving her school, Shabana Basij-Rasikh has also burnt the records of his students, a picture that reminds the one that Taliban have made years ago but whose objective is diametrically opposite: she burnt records of its students to protect them while Taliban have burnt female’s records for belittling and erasing women in the history of their country. Shabana Basij-Rasikh with a broken heart following the dramatic situation in her country but with a ray of hope for SOLA, is very grateful to Qatar, Rwanda and the United States for this human act of saving the community SOLA. She asks the international community to do not avert the eyes from her country Afghanistan, which is now delivered to the horrors and monstrosities of the Taliban.
The warm emotions are flowing from all azimuth to encouraging the SOLA community SOLA with its 250 people and reassure support it when arrived in Rwanda, a country where the emancipation of women is a rooted experience in the history.
On its Twitter account, the Ministry of Education, in the wake of the emotions for this community, wrote: “The Ministry of Education looks forward to welcome the community SOLA in Rwanda for your study program. Murakaza neza. ”
We can note that the United States already thanked Rwanda for having answered yes to his request for a temporary asylum to fugitive Afghans.
However, this humanitarianism of Kagame raises thousand questions. In fact, we know that Rwanda is among the 20 poorest countries of the earth and according to the World Bank; more than 56% of the population of Rwanda live under the threshold of poverty. Over 90% of the population of this country that is among the most populated country with 504 inhabitants/km2 live by the subsistence agriculture and more than 4 millions eat once a day, after a painful sweating. The malnutrition in this Kagame’s country is a pandemic that affects more than 36% of children under 5 years and increasingly difficult to curb! Worse still, the Rwandan education system is criticized by everyone, and even the authorities, as the worst one.
What would then be the motives behind this humanitarianism of the FRP- Inkotanyi and Kagame’s regime? We can first, with zero risk of being wrong, think of diplomatic motives. Kigali wants to make an image of charity to restore its image always splashed by its recurring crimes and UN reports that take Kigali as a hub for smuggling minerals from the Democratic Republic of Congo. Moreover, Rwanda is the country where the violation of human rights and especially the repression of the expression are repeated in UN reports. So becoming an asylum for all refugees, especially the latter created by the madness of Western imperialism, is the best way to lure or calm these great powers, which normally should ask Kigali to be accountable. This is more than ever the brilliant way to silence dissenting voices of political opponents. Responding yes to the request of the United States who were starting to get fed up with Kagame’s political regime, is the best penance for Kagame and a good preparation for a dramatic turn to the trial of Rusesabagina. We cannot rule out economic interests. Certainly, the special refugees like these from Afghanistan, who are a storm of wind sown by the United States, are indeed a source of greenbacks!