Referto the article, Politics, not human rights, behind HRW agenda in Rwanda (The New Times, October 24, 2017). As Lord Acton observed long ago, power corrupts; and, absolute power corrupts absolutely. As many of these organizations have become rich and extremely influential and their chiefs integral members of their elite power players their ‘human rights’ label has only remained as an outward accoutrement providing cover for the naked predatory animals underneath. The ‘travesty’ (to use former American diplomat Richard Johnson’s apt term) that is now Human Rights Watch remains about human rights only to those who are willfully blind. HRW has fully become what it claims to combat, an abuser of the immense but illegitimate power that its undeserved influence among Western opinion-moulders and policy-makers procure for it. These organizations are the modern missionaries of yore, softening up the natives and easing the neo-colonial project for those who fund them. And, like those earlier missionaries, these contemporary Fifth Columnists seem to be succeeding as their targets seem generally unaware of how they are being played. Mwene Kalinda A very good piece, Joseph. I think the views expressed in your article are of all of us Rwandan offended by false accusations of HRW. I wish I was The New Times, I would own your views! Jean Marie
