Instead of challenging verdict in court, Rusesabagina family opted for political pressure

On September 21, 2021, the Rwandan High Court convicted and sentenced Paul Rusesabagina to 25 years in prison for terrorism and involvement in armed militia attacks that killed innocent Rwandans in 2018 and 2019. The country’s public prosecution appealed against the court’s 25-year jail sentence.

In a statement to the European Parliament, on October 7, 2021, the Vice-President of the EU Commission and High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy stated that the EU understood that “Rusesabagina has the right to appeal the verdict.”

Oddly, he didn’t appeal. The family has had contradictory stories, and until recently, no one seemed to have any real facts about the family’s strategy to challenge the trial verdict.

Initially, in an interview in Kinyarwanda with Voice of America, Carine Kanimba, one of the daughters of Rusesabagina, was asked why her father did not appeal within the stipulated 30 days. She told the Rwandan audience that Rusesabagina “was denied access to the case file which includes the court decision.” She argued that the reason for not appealing is because, “all his basic rights were denied.” Carine also said that her father was denied access to his lawyers. “Under such conditions, you cannot participate in the trial process,” she claimed.

According to the Rwanda Correctional Service (RCS), “everything his family is saying is an excuse.” Here is the truth about their choice not to appeal the trial verdict as disclosed by Rusesabagina’s daughters.

First, some light was shed in an interview that Carine had with the South African TV channel eNCA on September 23, 2021, only three days after the Court read its verdict, where she said that, “from Rwanda we expect no justice.”

She explained that they will rely on the international community to help the family, through political avenues and political pressure, put on Rwanda’s President, Paul Kagame, to let Rusesabagina go.

Second, Anaise Kanimba, the other daughter, was quoted in Peter Beaumont’s “Hotel Rwanda hero to terrorist ‘show trial’: Paul Rusesabagina’s daughters on the fight for his freedom” (The Guardian, 21 December 2021), saying that they have chosen non-judicial approaches to challenge Rusesabagina trial verdict.

“Our strategy is to put as much pressure on Rwanda until Kagame is sick of hearing about my father’s case and the cost of it is too high,” Anaise said during the two daughters’ visit to London “to lobby” the British House of Lords on their father’s case.

Usually, lobbying involves working to bring arguments to bear on lawmakers or policy makers to gain favorable legislative or policy outcomes. And it is a strategy that is executed through tactics such as hiring lobbyists, using the press, social media campaigns and staging public demonstrations.

In some political systems, it is even legal to lobby Courts and judges, and studies have confirmed that, “court case outcomes were more favorable for companies that lobby versus those that don't.”

The media has an important part in lobbying through its power to shape reality as it is a major source of information and it is at the centre of the struggle for power and control in the world. Therefore, to be effective, lobbyists seek to influence media organisations. For journalists, the news value of lobbyists comes from their privileged access to decision makers, and lobbies’ financial resources. Money is important in explaining the influence, or lack thereof, of lobbies on media, and why lobbyists’ actions and viewpoints are often reported.

It is this non-judicial strategy that the Rusesabagina family has chosen to challenge his trial verdict. Among their tactics, besides media coverage and news articles, they intend to make as much loud noise as possible. The sole unadmitted aim is to persuade Europeans and the United States to hold the government of Rwanda to ransom, and either coerce President Kagame to give injunctions to the judiciary to acquit Rusesabagina or simply let him go without any process.

However, the idiocy of the Rusesabaginas’ simplistic thinking is the prejudiced illusion that Western pressure works on Africans, always. The contrary is true.

Lobbyists’ overconfidence has often turned out to be their undoing in the case of Rwanda. Those who choose to ignore President Kagame’s warning that “pressure just doesn’t work” in Rwanda, condemn themselves to live with regrets.

In 2018 when Ingabire Victoire Umuhoza was granted mercy, foreign media quoted her claiming that President Kagame granted her pardon “because he was under pressure” to release her. President Kagame responded by stating that his government “never responds to pressure,” and added that one of the fundamental lesson Rwandans were taught by their tragic history is the imperative to “refuse to be a submissive people.”

As President Kagame further said during a press conference on December 21, 2020, while commenting on appeals of some members of the US Congress to release Rusesabagina, the government of Rwanda is “steadfast on pursuing justice.”

He invited those who seek to apply pressure on Rwanda to find benefit in listening to what Rwandans have to say.

In philosophy, wishful thinking like Rusesabagina’s strategy is defined as a form of uncritical thinking that seeks an outcome to match one’s fantasy.

And as the dip in media noise around his case suggests, Rusesabagina advisors and lobbyists’ overconfidence may turn out to be, in itself, a prison sentence for their client.