It’s quite astonishing how the western discourse around the war on terror has been promoting double standards. It is often said that the war on terror requires strong state capacity. However, when it comes to Rwanda, some "critics” are eager to undermine the state legitimacy to uphold its primary responsibility of protecting its people from terrorism.
Those who are unashamed of promoting this double standard end up overlooking, downplaying, justifying, and even denying the violence that the Rwandan government has had to confront.
Instead, in a classic trading of places, these ‘critics’ - as Peter Baumont does in The Guardian under the title ‘We choose good guys and bad guys’: beneath the myth of ‘model’ Rwanda – accuse the government of violence.
The article is a review of Michela Wrong’s book that reads like a personal memorial of the late Patrick Karegeya. The review omits key aspects of the story they are trying to tell because they are too preoccupied with pushing a certain narrative about Rwanda – a narrative that justifies the violence of terrorists.
Beaumont cites Michaela Wrong’s "encounter with a French diplomat who described the later [The RPF] pursuit and murder of Hutus fleeing into the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)”.
This is the setting for his revisionist narrative of the Rwandan Patriotic Army’s (RPA) intervention in the DRC, taken from someone who is presumed to have been objective about the unfolding events when it is well established that French officials, at the time, were invested in diverting the world’s attention away from their continued support for genocidal forces.
In a court of law, this testimony would be inadmissible and considered as coming from a hostile witness. Just to refresh the reader’s mind, these genocidal forces supported by the French government were, according to numerous sources, including an Amnesty International report, rearming fighters in refugee camps that were established in the former Zaire from where they were launching terror attacks inside Rwanda.
Regarding the violence coming from the refugee camps in Zaire, in 1995 the Chief of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights office in Rwanda observed, "The motivations for the attacks vary... [and include] killing as a punishment of people who have returned to Rwanda without permission of the refugee camp authorities...[and] killing of people who appear to be cooperating with the Rwandese government, for example, those who have handed over their weapons or have given information about who took part in the genocide..."
It takes serious imagination to try to blame the Rwandan government for this violence. Moreover, it is incomprehensible that anyone attempting to comment on these tragic events would overlook the violence of the genocidaires who had taken in hostage an entire population, including women and children, and were using them as human shields.
Yet, this narrative that places blame for this violence on the Rwandan government does so in complete disregard of international law - which prohibits, not only the use of refugee camps for military activities, but also the use of civilians as human shields.
In a fair world, these people would be writing commentaries celebrating – not smearing – the only military force that stood against the African Nazis and successfully liberated and repatriated hundreds of thousands of these hostages. These commentaries would dismiss with contempt statements by officials of the French government that provided military and diplomatic support to these African Nazis.
Instead, a tragedy is allowed to unfold with Beaumont and Wrong fronting them as credible witnesses. In this reality turned upside down, they accuse these heroes of perpetuating violence while openly whitewashing remnants of genocidal forces as well as the privilege to portray Rwanda as "the destabilising force in the Great Lakes for decades”.
In the process, the African Nazi’s crimes, including the genocide against the Tutsi, are a footnote in that revised history that sets the ground for the recurrence of genocide by emboldening the killers and rendering "Never Again” an empty slogan.
Second, Wrong’s attempt to rebrand her beloved Patrick Karegeya as Rwanda’s Khashoggi should be treated with the contempt it deserves. Wrong warned against the "temptation to personalise and simplify,” only to personalise and simplify.
For instance, she alleges that "South Africans wanted to bury the story [Karegeya’s murder]” even as South Africa expelled Rwandan diplomats and restricted issuance of visa for Rwandan nationals seeking to travel in that country, has sought the extradition of Rwandan nationals on frivolous grounds, even as the courts ruled that criminal proceedings could not be instituted due to inadequate investigations, which prompted the shelving of the case.
This was hardly the attitude of a country that wanted to bury a murder case. Clearly, Wrong’s apparent grief over Karegeya’s death pushes her to personalise the case.
After personalising, Wrong simplifies by confusing casual pronouncements of Rwandan officials on Karegeya’s death with an admission of guilt. Those statements are consistent with the fact that Rwandans working for peace don’t owe any sympathy to the man who publicly declared war on their country and acted on his words.
But, let’s assume for the sake of argument that the Rwandan government took decisive action against one of the masterminds of a series of grenade attacks that hit Kigali in 2010.
Would Wrong oppose a similar operation by the UK government if the MI6 chief, even one she had close ties with, fled under the cover of the night, formed a political party with an armed wing and launched terror attacks targeting London?
Would she compare the renegade to a mere journalist and describe him as the British Khashoggi?
She wouldn’t! And for obvious reasons. One of those reasons being that: the value of British lives rightly treats with contempt attempts by anyone– including by friends of terrorists - who downplays, denies, or attempts to justify the violence of terror groups targeting British citizens. And this, regardless of the reasons said terrorists may invoke to justify their violence.
Did Karegeya kill Sendashonga?
But most importantly, Beaumont and Wrong cannot concurrently paint Karegeya as Rwanda’s Khashoggi and blame Rwanda for the death of Seth Sendashonga. Despite Wrong’s ‘scepticism’ it is well established that Sendashonga was coordinating with genocidal forces to attack Rwanda, as confirmed by the French journalist, Gerard Prunier.
Page 366 of Prunier’s book reads:
"About 600 men and 40 officers of the ex-FAR (Rwandese armed forces) were united behind him (Seth Sendashonga). They were ready to follow him as they could no longer stand neither the Kagame regime in Kigali nor their competitors in ALIR (Army for the Liberation of Rwanda; French: Armée pour la Libération du Rwanda), both representing in their eyes the opposing but symmetrical forms of violent racism.”
If Rwanda was "guilty” of taking decisive action against Sendashonga, then Karegeya, as Rwanda’s chief of external intelligence at the time, would be directly responsible for that operation. Wrong would be wise to look at this incident with caution given the lack of evidence implicating Rwanda in the death of her friend.
Neither does it serve her friend well by implicating him in the assassination of another of Rwanda’s declared enemies. In other words, Karegeya is no Khashoggi; neither are Rwanda’s enemies who have declared war mere ‘political opponents.’
Wrong and Baumont are convinced that Rwanda doesn’t face western attacks because of "a mixture of vanity and lazy thinking, compounded by the west’s post-colonial habit of seeking to anoint favoured African leaders.” One wonders which Rwanda they are referring to that doesn’t face western "scolding.”
The fact that a respected media like The Guardian can allow them to hurl a personal memorial of a friend as a weapon against a government suggests that there’s more scolding of the latter and little accountability of the former taking place here. It is personal, simplified, lazy, and Wrong.