You may have noticed that Human Rights Watch (HRW) has made a habit of releasing reports about Rwanda, each more eccentric than the last.

Their claims are scandalous - kidnappings, forced disappearances, and mysterious deaths. And yet, Rwanda keeps responding to those reports, debunking each lie. Those allegedly kidnapped are found, and those missing or dead are found alive and well. This has been going on for as long as we can remember.

In 2006, one Leopold Munyakazi went to the University of Delaware and publicly denied the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, calling it a ‘civil war’ and even suggesting that a plane crash triggered it. Upon his forced return to Rwanda, a decade later, he was arrested, tried, and sentenced as per the law against genocide denial in Rwanda - as he should. Munyakazi, a former University lecturer who was one of the key ideologues of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, mainly started preparing and disseminating hate speech targeting the Tutsi in 1990.

Fast forward to 2017. While in prison, he repeated the same claims, and the court added five more years to his sentence - as they should. This obvious open-and-shut case clearly shows that nearly 30 years after the 1994 Genocide, some individuals are relentless in obscuring the irrefutable facts of the genocide perpetrated against the Tutsi in Rwanda. By law, and by all that is right, it is clear that Munyakazi deserved to be held accountable.

HRW disagrees.

In the year of our Lord 2023, HRW uses Munyakazi's case in their report to argue that Rwanda restricts freedom of expression for its citizens. According to this so-called human rights watchdog, Munyakazi should be allowed to deny the 1994 Genocide, while Rwanda should do nothing about it for the sake of human rights. Incomprehensible, right?

This example is only one of many flawed and biased claims HRW has made against Rwanda over the years.

Another example is from 2017 when HRW accused the Rwandan Government of killing 37 people. Lo and behold, several of the people it reported dead were found to be alive and shown to the world to see, the next morning. Others had died of natural causes, while others never existed in the first place. HRW, which is accountable to no one, invented Rwandans and killed others in its report to feed a narrative and agenda against Rwanda’s leadership.

Another time, their then-country manager, Lewis Mudge, was caught red-handed recruiting people for the FDLR, a US and UN-sanctioned genocidal militia operating in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo). This incident led to him being expelled from Rwanda. The FDLR that he was recruiting for is a negative militia group – one of the more than 200 others that continue to wreak havoc in eastern DR Congo – that was formed, in mid 2000 by the remnants of the perpetrators of the 1994 genocide. To date, the genocidal militia group continues to spread genocide ideology in the region and afar.

For recruiting for a terrorist militia, Mudge should have faced justice.

There are many examples of how HRW's reporting on Rwanda is dangerous, utterly biased, and politically motivated. Granted, not many people read their reports from start to finish. Still, for those who do, we can discern that HRW is trying to rally public opinion against Rwanda.

In the words of a wise woman, "HRW has no leg to stand on, punching down on a country like Rwanda that has worked really hard to get to where we are right now."

To this, I will add that HRW needs to be studied meticulously. If they have recruited for a genocidal militia, what else have they done in other countries? If they are backing Genocide deniers from Rwanda, whom else are they supporting to push their own agenda? If they are willing to invent people to prove a point, do they even have principles? Whose human rights are they fighting for? Clearly, it’s not ours. But also, do they have a monopoly over human rights?

In summary, Human Rights Watch is not a human rights organization; it is merely a political tool, and an ugly one at that.

The author is a socio-political commentator