Since long western journalists and international organisations like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have accused President Paul Kagame of Rwanda human rights violations, insisting that he should account for these abuses.
Over the past two decades, human rights activists, end-poverty evangelists, politicians and diplomats from the outside world have become extremely vocal in affairs related to political persecution and social injustice exerted against Rwandan people by the Kagame regime.
My utter astonishment however is how the outside world cares about the human rights of our people while a large proportion of our educated class remain indifferent towards this serious question. Is it because they fear the Rwandan leaders who are barbaric tyrants? In fact, Kagame’s many years of dictatorship have generated a climate of fear and distrust. This mwega has promoted nothing humane than division, turmoil and disunity among Rwandan people. Therefore, any negative story you hear about Rwanda under the rule of RPF confirms this truth. So what those human rights activists say is unquestionably true. They have made much effort to crosscheck the authenticity of these accusations. The whole of their allegations should be taken as ipso facto true.
For example, there have been several instances when the Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF) under Kagame has committed horrible human rights abuses. This was done before, during and after the 1994 Rwandan Genocide. It would be unpardonable naivety to share RPF’s self-image as a holy political organisation. Even after war and genocide, the intensity of repression escalates as the RPF regime believes it is getting consolidated. Anyone without enough knowledge of what happens in Rwanda would not be surprised by this bold reality. RPF is the artisan of the tragedy that befell Rwanda. Hence, human rights abuses are inevitable results of RPF’s blood-thirsty leadership. What is surprising is that these abuses seem to have no ending. There is no free political arena. Political opponents are harassed, jailed and killed. (Consider the cases of Umuhoza Victoire Ingabire, Deo Mushayidi, Diane Rwigara, Boniface Twagirimana and consorts, etc). The Rwandan justice is used as the regime’s powerful tool to muzzle the dissidents. And to live a couple of days, everybody must fit into Kagame’s world. The Kagame administration commits grave atrocities against ordinary civilians. Its own military structures detain suspects, torture them, execute them without trial and invade other countries to cause chaos in the region. This makes President Paul Kagame a delusional despot. In truth, RPF has been unable to consolidate power and establish a stable political order.
Post genocide Rwanda confronted mass murderers who killed two hundred and twenty Tutsis and more than one million Hutus. These murderers were not foreigners beyond the borders of Rwanda. Rather they were resident citizens from the three ethnic groups that populate Rwanda – Hutus, Tutsis and Twas. Although the genocide had been planned by RPF, it was executed by the meanest intelligences of society spear-headed by RPF commandos. That’s how RPF led the population to crime familiarity. This justifies how a vampirical junta could not pacify a country where it has perpetrated cruelty everywhere. And that’s how anyone who tries to exculpate RPF in such context is a biased denier of the truth or an accomplice.
Morally, Kagame fades far below his predecessors Gregoire Kayibanda and Juvenal Habyarimana. These presidents never did atrocious things – including the aberration of pursuing political emigrés to assassinate them in cold blood abroad.
Kagame claims to have promoted restorative justice known as Gacaca Courts but this did nothing than to fuel ethnic conflicts and has propelled them forward into a great continuum beyond comprehension, because only one ethnic group of Hutu people were prosecuted while the RPF ringleaders of genocide beginning by Maj. Gen. Paul Kagame and Tutsi masses who actively participated in the genocide against Hutu were not tried and, so far, are enjoying their full citizenship rights whereas the vanquished Hutus are crammed in prisons.
Within 17 years, Kagame has been able to erect the apartheid and impunity. Human rights abuses have become a chronic thing. The speed and inhumanity of this totalitarianism is a negative shift without precedent in Rwandan history. Kagame has been the driver of all this, a factor that shows his commitment to inhumanity, cruelty and human right-abusing delusional despotism.
The right thinking members of global society should acquiesce to the allegations made by western media and Rwandan political activists, then join a human right campaign for Kagame who rules by terror. A certain sort of gullibility led some western brains to believe the fictious tales by RPF that Kagame stopped the genocide without pausing to question the plot how a hunted and exterminated people could win the war and overpower the State. To understand the history of Rwanda, you must first leaf through some reliable sources such as “UN Mapping Report on DRC of 2010”, “Rwanda’s Untold Story of 2014” by famed British journalist Jane Corbin, Human Rights Watch & Amnesty International reports on Rwanda, etc Rwanda-related documents and reports.
Written by:
Jean Rukika
A London-based activist
14 September 2017
