After the Rwandan genocide the Western powers, no doubt conscious of their failure to do anything by way of intervention, were only too happy to sing the praises of new president Paul Kagame. He seemed to promise a new start for the war-ravaged country, and managed in particular to impress we British. Tony Blair called him a “visionary”, and to prove what a decent chap he was Kigame distanced himself from Belgium and France and the whole francophone legacy which he felt - not without reason - had let the country down prior to the genocide, and cosied up to the UK - making English an official language, joining the Commonwealth, and, best of all, introducing cricket.
For years now though it's been increasingly obvious that Kagame, far from being the enlightened saviour of his country, is yet another in a long list of brutal African strongmen. The latest scandal surrounds the abduction and trail of Paul Rusesabagina, the hero of the film Hotel Rwanda.
Ian Birrell has the details:
Paul Rusesabagina was a humble hotel manager when he became a hero amid the horrors of genocide, saving 1,268 people from machete-wielding mobs. His story, immortalised in Hotel Rwanda, was remarkable: fearful days spent pleading with gangs of killers, fraught nights spent firing off faxes begging for help to stop the hideous butchery taking place outside his gates.
His actions brought fame and a United States presidential medal of freedom. But he was dismayed to see his nation become snared in fresh horrors under the one-time rebel turned president Paul Kagame; there was the invasion and looting of next-door Democratic Republic of Congo that left millions dead, as well as the routine killings, detentions and disappearances of Rwandans who questioned their leader’s rule.
Why, he asked me ten years ago, was Britain propping up this despot with big dollops of aid when his democracy was such an obvious sham? “We know what happened in the past. But that does not mean we close our eyes to what is happening now,” he said. “I did not keep silent in 1994 and I cannot keep silent now. We need justice, not aid.”
Today, Rusesabagina stands in a Kigali court clad in prison pink, the latest victim of Kagame’s paranoid misrule. He was seemingly set up by an agent posing as a Burundian priest, lured six months ago from his Texan home to Dubai and then flown on a privately-hired jet to the Rwandan capital. Three days later he was paraded in handcuffs, facing charges on nine offences including murder, armed robbery and membership of a terror group. The president crowed about a “flawless” operation.
And still the money flows in.
Yet there is disturbing irony underlying this latest show trial as Rusesabagina’s presence in that Kigali court reminds us again of the validity of his words when we spoke a decade ago: why is Britain backing this barbarous figure? Even now, even today.
Britain pumps huge sums into this tiny central African nation — £111m over the past two years alone — while its president spends a reported £30m sponsoring Arsenal FC, his favourite football club. Our officials churn out pathetic reports talking about “building effective government institutions” and “development of an open and inclusive society” while Kagame kills his critics, overturns term limits, jails political foes, squashes free expression and shuts down the slightest space for civil society....
The flow of funds from British taxpayers did not even stop when Scotland Yard warned two human rights activists in this country that a Rwandan hit squad had been sent to kill them, or when MI6 gave the government tape recordings of senior regime officials plotting to kill opposition leaders. The author Anjan Sundaram has also written that anti-terror experts provided him with armed protection in the UK when he promoted his superb exposé of Kagame’s dictatorship, based on several years trying to teach journalism in Rwanda on an aid-funded project. Rwandans living here have told me of regular events organised by intelligence operatives based in the London embassy, at which they must pledge loyalty to the RPF on pain of death for them or their families.
If we're supporting Kagame in his attempts to silence all opposition, then we're clearly supporting the wrong man.
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