Political advocacy: Human Rights Watch publishes another outrageous report on Rwanda

Sometimes I wonder who gave such unaccountable entities like Human Rights Watch (HRW) the right to be the arbiter of human rights situations in developing countries like Rwanda. So, every year, it has become routine for HRW to publish a very negative outlook on the human rights situation in Rwanda.

This explains why, its 2021 report on Rwanda is a compilation of the same falsehoods aimed at tarnishing the reputation of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) and the Rwandan government. It castigates the actions of the government to ensure the rule of law, and advocates for lawbreakers, and portrays anyone undermining government programmes as victims.

Villains are sanctified, the state is vilified. This is the world HRW is promoting in its dubious reports on Rwanda.

According to Richard Johnston, a retired American diplomat, “what Human Rights Watch does on Rwanda is not human rights advocacy. It is political advocacy which has become profoundly unscrupulous in both its means and its ends. HRW’s Board of Directors should hold Executive Director Kenneth Roth and the HRW personnel who cover Rwandan issues accountable for this travesty, which has dangerous implications for Western policy toward Rwanda and for the overall credibility of Western human rights advocacy.”

He asked HRW funders to think seriously about what causes their money serves. In a paper titled “The Travesty of Human Rights on Rwanda” published on March 19, 2012, he advised Western governments to be careful about following HRW advice, and courageous enough to challenge them publicly when need be.

Johnson pointed out that HRW’s discourse on Rwanda over the past 20 years has been viscerally hostile to the RPF which defeated the genocidal Hutu Power regime in 1994, and systematically biased in favour of letting unrepentant Hutu Power political forces back into Rwandan political life.

In the annual report, HRW rehashed the same baseless accusations of “arbitrary detention, ill-treatment, and torture in official and unofficial detention facilities.” It alleges that “fair trial standards were routinely flouted in many sensitive political cases, in which security-related charges are often used to prosecute prominent critics.”

These assertions by HRW and its corrupt director, Kenneth Roth, are akin to racism and an outright condescending attitude towards a free and independent country which does everything in the interest of its people and not to please the West. It wants us to believe that only Western countries have the monopoly of rightful arrests, and trials.

   Of Human Rights Watch's systematic bias against Rwanda

         Human Rights Watch a propaganda tool for genocide ideologues

This explains why HRW gives as example of the so-called arbitrary arrests, Paul Rusesabagina, a former hotelier who turned into a terror kingpin. It whitewashes him of his grave terrorism crimes and labels him as “a prominent critic of the RPF”, whom it says was enforcedly disappeared.

Rusesabagina was never pursued for being an RPF critic, but for his proven role in acts of terrorism which claimed the lives of a dozen people in south-western Rwanda in 2018 and 2019 and damaged a lot of property.

Rusesabagina was never disappeared but was tricked into coming to Rwanda to face justice like the so-called western democracies do when it comes to pursuing criminals. The only difference is that Rwanda treated him humanly unlike what the US did to Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden, or to the Iranian General Kassim Suleimani. Pursuing a sworn enemy of the country like Rusesabagina doesn’t equate to the limiting of political space of freedom of expression.

HRW’s report again puts a spin on the death in custody of Kizito Mihigo, a former gospel singer who hanged himself in police custody on February 17, 2020. It casts doubts on the post-mortem examination by relevant Rwandan authorities. This begs the question: how many people commit suicide in the US penitentiary? The American financier and convicted sex offender, Jeffrey Epstein, committed suicide in a New York detention facility on July 6, 2020, but did HRW express a similar outrage?

Faithful to its affinity with the FDU-Inkingi, and its offspring Dalfa Umurinzi, HRW’s report also complains about RIB carrying out searches and seizing properties belonging to the non-registered Dalfa-umurinzi of self-styled politician Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza. It’s astonishing how HRW prefers to ignore that the FDU is an offshoot of the Republican Rally for Democracy in Rwanda (RDR) born out of the genocidal government and its defeated genocidal army in 1995, in the refugee camps in eastern Zaire, now Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

According to Johnston, the RDR is  the core of the FDU coalition which Ingabire wanted to have registered for participation in the Rwandan Presidential election when she returned to Rwanda in early 2010. Her brief political campaign was clearly designed to revive Hutu Power ideology and politics in Rwanda.  Her arrest for trial in 2010 and subsequent conviction in October 2012 were abundantly justified and represent a victory for human rights.

HRW reacted to Ingabire’s conviction with a five-page statement aimed at perpetuating HRW’s mendacious portrayal of Ingabire as an innocent victim of oppression.

Thus, HRW’s cover-up of the history and nature of RDR or FDU, is clear. It has chosen not to address the substance and merits of Ingabire’s conviction for genocide denial and seeks to discredit her conviction for collusion with the FDLR by questioning the reliability of “some” of the evidence presented. This is done while ignoring other evidence less subject to tendentious interpretation; such as the documented evidence of Ingabire’s collusion with FDLR which was seized by Dutch police at her residence.

Another spurious allegation made in this sensational report is that of so-called “arbitrary detention of street children.”

It’s emblematic of HRW to throw around such nefarious accusations without providing evidence. It’s worth recalling that these children are taken to rehabilitation centres where they are given free training in specific trades.

At the end of the programme many return to their respective communities equipped with skills which helped them to start own businesses.  Why hasn’t HRW interviewed those former street children who now run business in different urban centres around the country to gauge the benefits of these programmes?

Another gratuitous attack in the HRW report is the handling of the Covid-19 pandemic by the Rwandan government. So far, the combination of imposing lockdowns and strict observance of Covid-19 protocols have proved useful. It was at times a bitter pill to swallow, but the end results have been saving lives and stopping the pandemic from spreading.

Rwanda has rolled a vacation programme for its population on unprecedented levels and its actions were hailed by the World Health Organisation (WHO). So, HRW criticisms are out of touch with most Rwandans who appreciate greatly the way the government handled the Covid-19 crisis. Its actions should be put into their proper perspective. They are aimed at denigrating any action undertaken by the government for the sake of its people.

Johnston’s recommendation is very clear about how to deal with HRW and its hostile stance against Rwanda since July 1994. People should ignore any publications about Rwanda which mask its anti-RPF, anti-Rwandan government hidden agenda.