Is HRW merely an embedded undercover political actor?

The Ministry of Justice has released an assessment of the work Human Rights Watch carries out in Rwanda. The New Times publishes the assessment in full. 1. It has become inevitable that Rwanda critically reassesses the current relationship with Human Rights Watch (HRW) and seek answers to questions such as: who and for what objectives does the organisation serve? What motivations lie behind their publications? Is it a bona fide, independent human rights watcher or an embedded undercover political actor? To whom is HRW accountable and to whom does one complain when the organisation is thought to be involved in acts harmful to one’s interest? 2. In 2011, the Ministry signed a memorandum of understanding with HRW that defines the terms of their work in Rwanda. It has been renewed annually. We are now in the third year. The overall aim is to work jointly and consistently to achieve broad protection of human rights in Rwanda. 3. In article VI(6), HRW committed itself to “high ethical standards, rigorous methodology and analysis to produce evidence based information.” 4. Article VIII provides for the building of mutual trust and a good faith practice of dialogue which “…would promote openness and transparency.” The MoU contains many more noble ideals which the Ministry has lived up to. 5. The ministry has observed a consistent and persistent pattern of actions, activities and publications on the part of HRW that the Ministry finds capable of only one explanation: a deliberate, sustained, and politically motivated propaganda campaign against the Government of Rwanda. 6. More particularly, HRW seems to have become more overtly the campaign mouthpiece of the FDLR, the armed genocidaires who after committing genocide in Rwanda in 1994, were given safe passage to eastern DR Congo and have been accorded, ever since, a lucrative safe haven and shelter from justice. Today they have turned that area into the country’s loot and rape region. It is a known fact that the FDLR, continues to, plan, train and destabilise Rwanda through incessant armed incursions, terrorist attacks and commits a host of other small and big criminal acts on Rwanda soil. It is also not in doubt that, given the opportunity, the FDLR would, again and again, attempt to finish their unfinished genocide business. 7. Late in 2013, intelligence intercepted information from an FDLR commander in DR congo in which he was instructing a group of operatives to/from Rwanda to immediately inform HRW should they be suspected and/or arrested. This commander supplied a HRW staff e-mail address. This information was recently shared with HRW’s Lewis Mudge. 8. The members of this particular group were subsequently arrested at diifferent times and places both on Rwandan territory and beyond. They included Lt. Joel Mutabazi, a deserter from the Rwanda Defence Forces. The group is currently being prosecuted for, inter alia, terrorism and complicity in terrorism. Prosecution says they had evidence that Mutabazi stage-managed an armed attack on his Kampala residence in the night. The case is still before court and we cannot prejudge. Inspite of this, HRW claimed, through mass publication again, that Rwanda government agents had attacked Mutabazi. 9. Lt. Mutabazi was handed to the Rwanda National Police (RNP) by the Ugandan Police. The government has, in compliance with the law, refrained from discussing this case in the media or elsewhere as it is before the courts. HRW has, however, in the guise of human rights work, unilaterally mounted a relentless campaign against the RNP and attacking the independence of Rwanda’s judiciary by making unevidenced “findings” that Lt. Mutabazi was abducted from Uganda, that he was tortured and forced to confess to crimes, usurping the courts’ role in the process and putting the courts’ capacity to issue restraining orders to stress tests. Flouting and operating above the laws protecting the independence of the judiciary and providing for contempt of court has been a HRW trademark. We hoped that open and transparent engagement would yield a minimum of respect for the law. Careful evaluation of HRW’s conduct in its whole existence in Rwanda, however, shows us clearly the strategy has not worked. 10. On April 28, 2014, HRW requested to discuss with Ministry of Justice a number of cases, all of suspected FDLR operatives. Their concern was that fair trial principles had been violated in those cases. On or about May 6, 2014 the Ministry confirmed that from May 1 - 5, 2014, at a hotel in the border town of Rubavu, Lewis Mudge, the HRW researcher opened an interrogation counter and interrogated many people about many issues related to the insecurity situation in the north and specifically on the arrest, detention and trials of suspects. He was assisted and facilitated by Bahame Innocent, son of a businessman called Butsitsi Alphonse, himself a suspect and on trial for state security offences and complicity in terrorism. 11. On May 13, 2014, the Ministry of Justice invited and met Mudge and supplied to him comprehensive information, including substantive and procedural law, around fair trial on each case submitted prior to the meeting. At the same meeting Mudge claimed there were other similar cases as well as cases of people who have disappeared. The Ministry requested that he provides particulars so each case could be treated individually and we would provide information in due course, in compliance with the mutual accountability requirements in our MoU. HRW supplied a list with about 14 names. Three days later HRW issued a world wide publication “for immediate release” and, without providing an iota of evidence in substantiation, made, among others, the following two “findings”; First, that it has since 2010 documented a number of cases of people “accused of being FDLR members or collaborators, charged with state security offences, detained incommunicado by the Military, forced to confess to crimes, or to implicate others sometimes under torture.” And that when they were brought to trial, and told judges that their confessions were extracted under torture “judges in many cases disregarded their claims and proceeded to convict them in the absence of any other evidence”. Second, that all those people were victims of enforced disappearance and state agencies were complicit. On May 19, 2014 the Ministry had obtained and compiled all the information requested by HRW and was ready to share it but it seems we were too late for the plan HRW, unknown to us, had set in motion. Although we believed we had, promptly and satisfactorily responded to the issues HRW had brought up, and agreed that we would, also provide responses tonew issues raised at the meeting, it seemed HRW would only be satisfied by some amount, any amount, of defense of collaboration with the FDLR. It was unmistakable. 12. Of grave concern is that in their May 16, 2014 release, HRW has joined the fringe that is struggling in vain to sanitise and/or legitimise the FDLR. According to HRW, today FDLR is a “Rwandan armed opposition group” made up, “partly”, of people who committed the genocide here in 1994. Again the intent to cleanse the FDLR of, inter alia, the genocide ideology that is its organisational raison d’etre, the terror it believes in and practices both in Rwanda and DR Congo with increasing boldness, is unmistakable. This description, fortunately, provides an insight into the current HRW/FDLR relationship and perhaps understand the dynamics underlying HRW’s rapid intervention and defence whenever an issue involves suspected FDLR operatives. 13. The Ministry of Justice wishes to clarify that in the last few months our police, army and intelligence units in the North West have dealt with security challenges as a result of armed cross border criminal incursions into Rwandan territory. Between March and May a total of nine sub machine guns, one pistol and nine grenades were recovered hidden either in citizens’ homes or buried under fresh soil. These arms, without exception, are brought into the country from FDLR bases in the DRC. They are transported in covertly, on foot, bicycles, motorcycles, in sacks of food etc. by FDLR operatives. In December 2013, a police officer in Muhoza Sector, Musanze District was shot and killed on the instructions of FDLR Colonel Protogene Ruvugayimikorere a.k.a. Ruhinda. The suspects were Jotham Nsengiyunva and Sadiki Habimana. In January 2014, there was a grenade attack on the National Police College, Musanze. Eight people including two of the suspects were injured. Just after this attack the vehicle of the Mayor of Musanze was attacked as it entered her home on the evening of January 16, 2014. She was not in the vehicle but her child was killed and a watchman seriously wounded. Again the suspects were Nsengiyunva and Habimana. A number of attacks rocked Kigali city before this. Again several have been nipped in the bud, thwarted or they simply became too risky to carry out. On May 28, 2014, one Amri Balume was arrested at the Bugarama border post (Rusizi) ferrying a gun and ammunition rounds in a sack of rice For clarity Rwanda considers that one gun or explosive in the wrong hands, even before an attack, amounts to a very high level of threat to our peace and triggers the deployment of the necessary capabilities to decisively deal with it. 14. FDLR insecurity manufactured in the DRC for consumption in Rwanda has not been in short supply and probably will not be unless that factory is closed one way or the other. The nature of challenge this poses requires discreet, thorough and extremely careful investigation in order to avoid or minimize criminal suspicion against innocent citizens or unknowing participants. Each single incident represents a combination of the effort of tens of participants. The challenge has not just been dealt with through the justice system alone. Scores of small time suspects have been dealt with through “ingando”, demobilisation and reintegration efforts. This notwithstanding, our agencies have done their best to comply with the country’s detention laws. Any issue arising was an exception to the detention law for which courts demand rigorous justification of. Where circumstances are found to be less than justifying, immediate release will be ordered. Where circumstances justify the act, or it is in the interest of justice, courts are empowered to confirm detention. 15. DR Congo and Rwanda share borders. Law abiding citizens on both sides have crossed these borders to and from Rwanda since time immemorial. This relationship is as old as the two countries. Human Rights Watch wants the world to believe that the mere fact of crossing to and fro makes one a suspect. It does not. Cross border lawful activity is recognized and protected. Our borders are open 24 hours. We cannot be lectured on the importance of this relationship by anybody, let alone, HRW. 16. It is a very few misguided operatives and their accomplices who take advantage of the peaceful and mutually beneficial relationship to ferry guns, ammunition and explosives into the country for terrorist operations. It is these individuals that are the subject of investigation, certain arrest and trial. It these whom Human Rights Watch is, knowingly, up in arms defending as ordinary folk victimized merely because they “….used to visit relatives or conduct business in Congo….” This is simply a preposterous allegation. 17. Unlike 1994 the population of Rwanda today is united and solidly behind the country’s development agenda. Not only are citizens focused on the dividends of a future of peaceful democratic development, they are also more willing than ever before to point out suspicious persons and activities in their midst. It is probably this reality that HRW finds inconsistent with its trademark narrative of today’s Rwanda and is intent on throwing it off balance to convince its audience that the picture it paints of Rwanda is true. 18. It is especially significant to note that HRW in its publications has not reported, either as “findings” or as allegations, on the arms ferried into Rwanda from FDLR bases in DR Congo. It has not reported on the actual attacks on high profile targets as pointed out above. Of serious, concern again is it seems increasingly certain is that HRW is wilfully blind to the visible linkage between two human rights issues; the first caused by the terrorist activities from across our borders, the second caused by the suspicion, arrests and, at times, irregular detentions of suspects of the first. For HRW, it seems that there is no human rights tag attached on those who have been targeted, killed, and maimed as a result of the activities of the people they paint as innocent ordinary and lawful visitors to and from DR Congo even before the courts do so. Were HRW to publish or share with us information we think they have, of planned activities and routes of the FDLR most security issues would be nipped in the bud. 19. There are many human rights organizations working in/on Rwanda full or part time in diverse domains. They publish reports, often critical. We listen to the criticism and always seek ways to cooperate in correcting the situation where necessary. A bond of mutual trust and respect exists, which further smoothens the relationship and increases the dividend to the population. The difference between these other organisations and HRW is that they do their work openly, transparently, and in good faith. And, they are not driven by a political motive to hit at the Government of Rwanda and obtain political victory against it. 20. Ultimately, we find HRW’s publications, actions and activities have turned it into a valuable mouth piece for criminal and/or terrorist groups, particularly FDLR, who are self-declared armed enemies intent on violently overthrowing the RPF Government. Consequently they have become emboldened, more risk averse and continue to lure unsuspecting citizens into joining their ranks, promising them quick victory and big positions in a successor government. Perhaps this explains the rapid intervention by HRW when these people inevitably get arrested. 21. For Rwanda, it has become a frustrating impossible to differentiate HRW’s activities in compliance with the MoU and political propaganda for terrorist groups. Its independence and autonomy are, clearly, too blank a cheque. A biased and subjective narrative of the government, presuming it and its institutions culpable and against its citizens’ interest, executed under the banner of independence and autonomy, are now standard currency for the context, content and language in HRW’s publications. The organisation’s staff seems uninterested in doing better, in our view. The current researcher seems intent on chasing after a rich CV and fame for serving in a “global hot spot” and coming out alive. In the process of turning Rwanda into his dream hot spot, he has sacrificed ethics, truth, objectivity and personal integrity. The one before the present one was not much different but, when she ran violated immigration regulations over signature forgery, she went into overdrive and now reports on things she has no idea at all about. Whether this is by design or default HRW knows best, but what is known is that HRW will always stand by the “high ethical conduct” of their field staff, no matter what. To sustain the organisation’s unassailable attitude will require a bit more of thought into who represents it in Rwanda. 22. Rwanda does not claim to be perfect, no country is. That said we neither run offshore prisons nor maintain secret prison locations anywhere. In spite of the challenge we deploy all effort and means to comply with the law. However, the value addition of HRW as a human rights partner to the Ministry, the Justice Sector and the country in general, is clearly negative and daily erodes the gains we have made in this area over the past two decades. Meetings, e-mails, phones calls, desk officers and emissaries have failed to improve the situation. Our MoU has been put under such intense stress that, from the Ministry’s point of view, it is clearly headed towards irreparable damage. The Ministry of Justice re-iterates its readiness to continue cooperating with any and all human rights stakeholders and activists in good faith, open, transparent, and mutually respectful relationships that result in both narrow and broad protection of human rights for the Rwandan people, easier achieved without Human Rights Watch’s divisive, disruptive and destructive contribution.