International

German journalist mulls sinister agenda to advance HRW’s anti-Rwanda rhetoric

2024-03-23 05:27:00

In October 2023, Human Rights Watch (HRW), a New York-based so-called rights group, published a ‘report’ titled “Join Us or Die’ Rwanda’s Extraterritorial Repression”. The report is just their latest smear campaign against the Rwandan government.

HRW claimed to have ‘documented’ killings, kidnappings and attempted kidnappings, enforced disappearances, and physical attacks targeting Rwandans living abroad.

HRW has never hidden its insidious agenda against Rwanda. For three decades, the organization has continuously published fabricated reports aimed at smearing the Rwandan government.

After the publication of the report, international media organizations were quick to publish the accusations against Kigali. Today, a couple of months after the world dismissed the allegations, some individuals are looking to rekindle the lies in the report.

This time, in Germany, a so-called investigative journalist, Sophia Baumann, is causing a stir among individuals interviewed by HRW, claiming to be extending her investigation on ‘politically persecuted’ Rwandans who received asylum in Germany.

Baumann who works for a Munich investigative newsroom "paper trail media", seems to have believed the hearsays, and the questionable credibility of individuals interviewed by HRW, and is ready to spread the organization’s venom against Rwanda, in Germany.

According to a source contacted by Baumann, the ‘research’ is already biased, and is only looking to tarnish Rwanda’s image, by reinforcing the false narrative that some Rwandans in Europe are pressured by other members of the diaspora, and experience ‘harassment’ on social media and their families are intimidated.

“The journalist seemed to affirm the ‘oppression’ of Rwandans critical of the government abroad, which often comes from other people in the Rwandan diaspora who are close to the government. "She asked to what extent these individuals have been harassed,” revealed the source.

To any onlooker, this would look like an innocent interview of a well-seasoned journalist, yet it is deliberately serving HRW’s anti-Rwanda agenda.

On top of the politically motivated questions, Baumann warned the people she is interviewing that ‘Rwandans close to the government’ should not know anything about her ‘research’. She stressed that it is better that her interview questions be passed on to people who are more ‘politically critical’ of the Rwandan government.

Baumann’s ‘research’ aims at sowing division among Rwandans living in Germany, and is only focused on getting one side of the story; the side of the so-called oppressed Rwandans.

Any proper journalist, especially an investigative one, would know some basics of journalism which are; truthfulness, accuracy, objectivity, impartiality, and fairness. Baumann purposely ignored all these principles in her ‘research’ and is instead invested in continuing the smear campaign against Rwanda.

In all her ‘extensive work’ as a journalist, Baumann never questioned the interviewed individuals about the crimes they committed in Rwanda, some of which were committed during the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. Nor has she questioned her government for giving a safe haven to these individuals.

Baumann’s motivations are not neutral as she has already taken a position. Her intentions are pure political, and she will craft her interviews as ‘evidences’, in order to support HRW view as well as hers.

However, Baumann should know that Human Rights Watch has willfully spent the last three decades skillfully and relentlessly driving an anti-Rwanda agenda that has nothing to do with protecting the rights of Rwandans.