Lantos Foundation on vendetta mission against Rwandan leadership

When former US Congressman Tom Lantos created the Lantos Foundation, his goal was “to advance human rights and justice by advocating for the United States and other democratic nations to prioritize these fundamental rights for all global citizens” and to “carry the noble banner of human rights to every corner of the world.”

But according to Michael Rubin, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and a writer for the Washington Examiner, after the death of Tom Lantos, a Holocaust survivor, this organisation has “failed” in that mission. In “Lantos Foundation betrays its principles” published by the Washington Examiner on June 22, Rubin accuses this foundation of bestowing honours on “those in the spotlight who have received other awards, big names whom the glitterati will recognize and then open their check books.”

He notes that it was in that context, in 2011, the foundation awarded its prize to Paul Rusesabagina, who had just shot to fame thanks to the Hollywood film Hotel Rwanda. In 2005, President Georges W. Bush had also bestowed on him the prestigious Presidential Medal of Freedom. At the time, when Lantos was offering its human prize to Rusesabagina, multiple organisations of genocide survivors warned that he didn’t deserve it. But the foundation ignored them.

Rubin noted that: “The problem is that this spotlight and adulation sparked in Rusesabagina first ambition and then frustration. He wanted power, and failing to receive it democratically, he pursued power by other means. The evidence is damning. Rusesabagina embraced violence. His statements were not mere polemics. He channelled funds to designated groups that subsequently staged terrible terror attacks. They targeted not Rwandan officials or the military, but farmsteads, villages, and buses, where they slaughtered unarmed innocents.”

I’m not going to revisit the saga of Rusesabagina’s arrest in in August 2020 and his subsequent trial which ended up with the Court handing him 15 years in prison for being a mastermind of acts of terrorism which targeted Rwandans on Rwandan soil. Following Rusesabagina’s arrest, Katrina Lantos Swett, Lantos’ daughter, sprang into action, calling for the punishment of the Rwandan government for exercising its sovereign rights. It is in this sense that on June 10, it called for the US government to impose on two senior Rwandan government officials, Col Jeannot Ruhunga, head of the Rwanda Bureau of Investigation (RIB), and former Minister of Justice, Johnston Busingye. It disingenuously accused them of “enforced disappearance” and violating Rusesabagina’s basic human rights.

When Busingye was appointed High Commissioner to the UK,  early last month, Swett urged Dominique Raab, then British Foreign Secretary, to reject his credentials because of his alleged human rights violations. After the sentencing of Rusesabagina on September 20, the Lantos Foundation doubled down by joining hands with a cabal of self-seeking Rwandan haters and documentary makers, Benedict Moran and Anjan Sundaram. These individuals are well known for their genocide denial and revisionism.

The duo is planning to produce a documentary seen as an exercise in character assassination of President Paul Kagame. The Lantos Foundation, in its vengeful mission, pledged its financial support to this insidious project. In her statement on October 4, Swett expressed this support in these terms: “The Lantos Foundation for Human Rights & Justice today announced its financial support for a forthcoming documentary in the early stages of production – Man of the Year, a first-of-its-kind film that will take a deep and unfiltered look at the truth behind the lies of Rwanda’s brutal dictatorship.”

As indicated in the same statement, the purpose of this documentary is to peddle genocide denial and revisionism. What does Swett mean when she said that “President Paul Kagame has manipulated and bent the world’s most powerful people and organizations to his will, successfully getting them to adopt his false narrative?” This is what the likes of Canadian journalist Judi Rever and genocidaires and other revisionists have been propagating.

Late Tom Lantos must be turning in his grave at seeing how his foundation has become under the leadership of Swett. It’s hard to believe that this organisation could have abandoned its core principles to throw its overwhelming support to a terrorist kingpin and to back a project aimed at promoting genocide denial and revisionism.

It's become commonplace to see the so-called human rights organisations like the Lantos Foundation, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International veer from their guiding principles and embrace a more militant posture.  Under the leadership of Swett, the Foundation has become too political. It is using its resources and influence to prop up a Rwandan terror mastermind. Since the trial and conviction of Rusesabagina, Swett and his foundation relentlessly worked hard to whitewash his crimes.

Could it be because Rusesabagina, a recipient of the Lantos Foundation Human Rights prize, more than 10 years later, was charged with terrorism offences in Rwanda and it is an embarrassment to the organisation? Is the Foundation doing all it can to save face? Note that genocide survivors’ organisations warned the Foundation not to award Rusesabagina because he did not deserve it.