In the skewed world of HRW, the killers become the victims

On Monday, the Ministry of Justice took the unusual step of washing dirty linen in public- mind you not its own (linen) but rather Human Rights Watch’s. In my experience, this is a highly unusual step simply because most government-civil society engagements are kept in-house. I believe that this way of doing business aims to facilitate honest dialogue without the need for public posturing. So, the fact that Minijust has taken this step is worthy of examination. It is my opinion that the government’s patience with the rights body is fast eroding and the press statement is a public acknowledgment of that fact. As the statement revealed, the government believes that HRW, playing the impartial human rights advocacy card, is attempting to ‘sanitize’ the FDLR. No longer is the FDLR an organization raping, pillaging and murdering people on both sides of the Rwanda-DRC border; today, in the eyes of HRW, they are merely an ‘armed opposition group’. And instead of going down on them harder than a ton of bricks, HRW has decided to go after the one entity in the entire world that is fighting them tooth and nail, our own government. This misdirected ire and concern on the part of HRW reminds me of the dark days right after the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. Instead of helping the nascent RPF government support the survivors of the atrocities and rebuild the country, the international community rallied around the very people who caused the death and destruction in the first place. They spent millions of dollars daily feeding and supporting the refugees in the Mugunga and Tingi-Tingi camps, many of whom participated actively in the Genocide. All the while, the new government has to scrimp and scrounge for funds to rebuild what was destroyed, whether lives or property. To say that those days left a bitter aftertaste in my mouth would be an understatement but I could simply chalk it up to the nature of emergency aid policy. However, HRW love affair with almost anyone who has an axe to grind with my government has gone too far. I could forgive the snarky reports on Gacaca. I could forgive the attacks on our media laws. But I will not, and cannot, forgive an entity that somehow makes FLDR the victim in Rwanda’s war against THEIR terror. I understand that human rights advocacy is grounded on the premise of ‘speaking truth to power’. I also do understand that historically, it has been the state guilty of abuses. However, human rights advocacy should be flexible enough to pivot on different issues. It shouldn’t be ‘policy’ to attack certain governments simply because. That is juvenile and unwarranted. I will not go far as to say that HRW hasn’t reported on FDLR atrocities because they have (a case in point being the 2009 ‘You will be punished’ document) but when we examine the sheer numbers, the attention given to this group versus the attention given to the government is telling. In a nutshell, HRW finds more human rights abuses in today’s Rwanda than in FDLR controlled zones in the DRC. At least that’s what the numbers of shrill reports indicates. But is that true? I will simply let Emmanuel Habimana tell his story. At the age of 15, he was kidnapped on his way from school by the FDLR and ordered to carry cargo back to Rutchuru in north Kivu. “It took us two days on foot to get to their base. Until then, I thought I would be let free after I had abided by their order. I was wrong, they told me I could not leave,” said Habimana, who has since escaped. “We stayed there for three days before we were taken to a military training base in Rutchuru. We were about 60 children; they (FDLR) subjected us to tough military drills, which were hard for us. We trained for five months before we were armed and officially joined the group as fighters. In most cases, we were forced to use drugs before being sent on the frontline,” he remembers. In just this one story, we have the crime of kidnapping, forced drug use, starvation, use of child soldiers and child endangerment. Why aren’t we getting more HRW reports highlighting these crimes? While I will not stick out my neck and say that the government is perfect (after all, which government is?) but we must ask ourselves, who are the bad guys and who are those fighting desperately to protect the innocent? They are not all the same. And perhaps its time that HRW recognized that. Sunny Ntayombya is a New Times journalist Twitter: @sannykigali

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In the skewed world of HRW, the killers become the victims