"There is something fully, functionally mental in the way we – the West – have crafted a self-deluding mythology of our intrinsic superiority, goodness, and infallibility in the face of all facts that provide evidence we are not any of these,” someone commented regarding the current conflict and war in Europe. 

In a nutshell, the comment reflects Ian Birell’s offensive blog post titled "Westminster may have shunned Putin, but its continued support of autocratic leaders stinks of hypocrisy.” Birell has been obsessed with President Kagame for a while now and seems to follow him around. But beyond this fixation, the article itself shows the increasing gap between how the Western world sees itself and how it is perceived in developing countries, which in turn explains Birell’s distorted, archaic, worldview and incoherent arguments that he hurls towards Rwanda. 

In his ranting blog, Birell compares Russia’s invasion to Rwanda’s intervention in the then Zaire (now DRC) where over 2 million Rwandans were kept hostage by genocidal militias. "Kagame runs a small country in Africa rather than one of the great global powers – although this did not stop him sparking wars that led to five million deaths,” Birell writes, blaming President Kagame for wars that involved at least seven African countries, a multitude of armed groups, and of course Rwandan genocidal militias that had just murdered in cold blood over a million Tutsi and were launching attacks inside Rwanda; they targeted genocide survivors as well as those who managed to escape from the refugee camps (then scattered in eastern DRC) and dared to return home on their own volition. These facts that Birell treats with willful ignorance were documented in 1995 by the then Chief of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights office in Rwanda. 

Only the world’s criminal inaction – before, during, and after the genocide – prompted Rwanda to get involved in Congo, and this only after the Rwandan government had repeatedly pleaded for two years the international community to do something about that distressing issue. Clearly, no reasonable person would compare Russia’s invasion to Rwanda’s intervention in former Zaire. A more adequate comparison, if Birell were an honest person, would feature a more recent war, one where foreign powers invaded a sovereign nation under the false pretext of destroying (nonexistent) weapons of mass destruction. That war killed over a million citizens of the invaded country, but the self-deluding mythology around the West’s intrinsic superiority and goodness wouldn’t allow Birell, the British citizen, to do some introspection. 

Worst still, in his attempt to draw similarities between Putin, whom Birell describes as "Public Enemy No 1 for the free world” and President Kagame, he (Birell) revives mythical stories about "[Rwandan] hit squads [sent by Rwanda] into Britain to snuff out enemies.” However, like many of those who entertain irrational conspiracy theories, Birell is unable to explain the absence of reaction from the British government to the so-called Rwandan hit squads. Why would the UK sanction Russia, a more powerful country, over alleged assassination attempts conducted on British soil and allow Rwanda to get away with such practices? Any person endowed with critical thinking would conclude that this was another instance of fake news, a hit-job, targeting the Rwandan leadership and that the British government arrived to the same conclusion. But Birell is so short of this critical endowment that one article would not address all of his dubious claims. 

Interestingly, however, Birell’s number one objective is to create more enemies for the "free world”. ‘Sanction everyone I don’t like until there is none left’ is Birell’s ridiculous advocacy. He bemoans the hosting of CHOGM in Kigali, adding that "Rwanda was never even a British colony.” In his delusion of the West’s greatness and inherent goodness, Birell is oblivious to the fact that British slavery and colonial past, both unpunished crimes against humanity, are the commonwealth’s greatest impediments regarding its perception – the attitude to overload over others that Birell seems to be carrying forward. 

This perception was evident during recent visit of Prince William and Kate in Jamaica as protesters gathered to demand reparations for slavery. Maziki Thamem a senior lecturer at the Univeristy of the West Indies rightly noted that this was "not a new cause”, wondering "whether the British are ready to contend with their history”. Such an impediment to the commonwealth objectives can be overcome by shifting from the colonial logical to that of cooperation on equal terms and Birell isn’t helping the British cause. 

In this regard, Rwanda, an assertive and confident African country, is the ideal advocate for new terms of interaction between the former colonizers and the colonized. Indeed, Rwanda is one of the few members of the organization that is credible enough to convince Africans that the commonwealth will not be a perpetuation of past colonial practices but, on the contrary, the birth of new values based on equality, cooperation, and dignity for all peoples. 

"We also want to take our relationship to the next level in terms of a common understanding of governance. The attitude of ‘adult supervision’ has to be left in the past. Examples of bad or wrong conduct can be found everywhere…there cannot be a mutually respectful partnership premised on the unspoken assumption that one party lacks values, or has defective values, while the other party is a fully-formed moral agent,” President Kagame told participants in the 5th meeting of the High-level Group of Personalities on Europe-Africa Relations. These remarks are relevant as Africans seek to recalibrate bilateral and multilateral relationships with a variety of actors. 

If the world is to put an end to human suffering at a time where conflicts around the world threaten to extinguish our species, then perhaps our best hope is that the self-deluded Birells of this world are not calling the shots in western capitals. 

In the meantime, some commonwealth leaders will be relieved to learn that ordinary Rwandans have no basis to ask for colonial reparations and won’t be gathering on Kigali streets to protest the meeting, since Belgium and Germany are the real culprits. Rwandans, on their part, will find pride in the fact the CHOGM will be held in a peaceful environment since the man whose FLN terror grouping terrorized and murdered Rwandans, the same killer Birell portrays as "Rwanda’s most famous human rights activist,” is behind bars. This provides the ideal environment for a win-win scenario to unfold, except for Birell.