Rwanda government haters bid to thwart CHOGM failed. It means something

Since the announcement of Rwanda as the next venue for the 2022 Commonwealth Summit, the enemies of the Rwandan government launched a sustained campaign against this decision.

Despite combined efforts by those negative forces, the summit is now in full swing. People can follow its proceedings online. These enemies of Rwanda include so-called human rights organisations, several media outlets of the global north media, and individuals, some Rwandans or non-Rwandans, who swore to combat anything beneficial to this resilient nation.

Among those who fought tooth and nail to have Rwanda denied this rare opportunity of organising this summit, the one who has relentlessly pursued this campaign of tarnishing the Rwandan government’s reputation in the areas of respect of human rights, is the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW).

From the onset, HRW doggedly pursued a campaign of depicting Rwanda in bad light. On September 27, 2021, it published a biased and groundless report, “Rwanda: Round Ups-linked to Commonwealth Meeting.” The summit was postponed twice, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, and HRW continued to wrongly mud-sling Rwanda’s government.

“Rwanda’s strategy to promote Kigali as a hub for meetings and conferences often means continued abuse of the capital’s poorest and most marginalized residents. As the meeting was rescheduled, Rwanda’s Commonwealth partners have a choice: either speak up for the rights of the victims or be silent as the crackdown is carried out in their name,” a very alarming subtitle: “detention, ill-treatment of poor, gay, and transgender people.”

Those who know Rwanda very well, know there is no such discrimination as levelled up by HRW. All this is just a pile of stereotypes often found in western societies. In Rwanda, notions such as transgender are uncommon in the cultural discourse.

What has become abundantly clear is that HRW at times works as the mouthpiece of all genocidaires, genocide deniers and their friends in the media. At the eve of the summit, it issued another report.

 “Call for Commonwealth Leaders to Speak Up for Rights of Rwandans” (June 10, 2022). This report has nothing new to offer. It rehashes old criticisms against the government in previous reports.

In the latest report, HRW’s activism is obvious. It calls for the release of people in prison, people it alleges were arrested in violation of their rights of expression, association, and peaceful assembly.

It wants people to forget that 28 years ago the same free expression led to the slaughter of more than one million innocent Tutsi. Now, when the government goes after those using the same freedom of expression to deny genocide or stir up divisions in our communities, HRW calls for their release. The same HRW never calls for the arrest of perpetrators of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi who remain at large, worldwide.

The global north media also swallowed the evil campaign against Rwanda by HRW and other diehard individuals who never hid their anti-Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) and anti-President Paul Kagame enmity.

Amongst those individuals is British journalist and writer Michela Wrong. When she published her recent book “Do Not Disturb,” widely publicised in the global media, she thought she had landed a mortal blow on the Rwandan President's reputation, but her ambition remained a pipe dream.

Even as the CHOGM meeting is underway, Wrong is annoyed that it’s taking place in Kigali. Her op-ed titled “Rwanda is a brutal, repressive regime. Holding the Commonwealth summit there is a sham,” published by The Guardian on June 22, 2022, shows how deeply disappointed she is.

The self-styled Rwandan politician Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza, a stalwart of the Hutu Power ideology, also joined the fray in calling for the cancellation of CHOGM summit in Rwanda.

In 2021, Ingabire was all over the place lamenting lack of good governance and freedom of speech, and political space. But she contradicts herself. She uses the same freedom to talk down Rwanda government achievements on radios such as the BBC and VOA. Al-Jazeera has become a conveyor belt of her propaganda. No one has arrested her for her defamatory allegations.

Now that about 5,000 delegates to the summit are on the ground in Rwanda, they will have a different take on efforts made by Rwanda to be part of the global Commonwealth family.

 What they observe will differ from the stereotypes and clichés published in various HRW reports and accentuated by the global north media.