Two days ago, a Canadian journalist, one Chantal Lavigne collaborated with a Genocide denier Judy Rever and a Belgian chief spy Guy Rapaille to frame a young Rwandan lady seeking asylum in Canada into telling a sensational story — at her own expense. Having gone to Canada for studies, the young lady wanted to stay on and was in need of papers. It is still unclear whether it was Judy Rever or Chantal Lavigne who got to her first. The sellable story for Rwandans seeking asylum in the West is simple: “We are politicians or ‘dissenters’ of some sort and given that the Rwandan government doesn’t tolerate dissent, our life is in danger.’ This story works all the time, even faster when you post a few comments on Twitter and Facebook accusing the Rwandan President of all kinds of sins, prior to filing your papers. To keep all the chances on her side, the Rwandan woman identified just as Nadege was advised by the two journalists to spice-up her story a bit more and claim she is ‘Miss Monneypenny’. From a legal standpoint, that was terrible advice, she should have stuck to the simple, tested ‘political dissenter’ line. Now as the African saying goes, ‘too much salt kills the soup…’ They promised to help her, like every vulnerable African seeking asylum in the west, if she accepted to modify her story. They convinced her to say she was a spy, sent by the Rwandan government to collect information on a terrorist on the run. At this point I was more interested in the fate of the poor terrorist. I wished to know his whereabouts, I expected the journalist, Lavigne to research on the alleged terrorist. But that was of no importance to her of course. Which crime is higher? I wondered… Who represents a bigger danger to society? Is it the young lady in early retirement from espionage or a terrorist fugitive? The real story should be: Canada harbors known Rwandan terrorists and sentenced genocidaires and covers that up by co-opting young exchange students to claim they are Rwandan spies. I am glad that this time the person allegedly being spied upon by the young lady wasn’t presented as a politician opposed to President Paul Kagame as is usually the case with this ever-greened wire. But through the story the journalists didn’t miss any opportunity to highlight that in fact, political opponents do live in fear. ‘Behind the shiny image’, the article declares, ‘is hidden an increasingly dictatorial regime which doesn’t tolerate dissent, watches and tacks its critics, even abroad.’ This begs the question, is terrorism equal to dissent? Should a terrorist be left alone once they flee to Canada? ‘During our investigation we realized that a climate of fear prevailed among some of the Rwandan Diaspora..’ Now, for someone who just came back from ‘Rwanda Day’ — a diaspora convention in Bonn-Germany, where Rwandans in thousands traveled from across Europe to meet their President and other Rwandan leaders, this sounded surreal to me. The Canadian journalist sees no shame in quoting a Belgian chief spy, Guy Rapaille declaring that ‘Rwandans have the reputation of being efficient and professional spies’. Imagine how stigmatizing such remarks would be to an entire community of hardworking people living in Canada. Coming from a Belgian, we Rwandans know this simply as genocide ideology. Tutsi are not to be trusted they used to say… Enters Judy Rever, a genocide denial currently touring the world to sell a ‘double genocide theory’ in Rwanda, a theory overwhelmingly debunked by researchers, academics, the International Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) and finally the United Nations — and as expected, it concludes by accusing the government of Rwanda of the death of her friend, Karegeya in South Africa — a case which is still in court. It doesn’t end there, throughout the article — and the related television documentary are illustration of gruesome photos and cartoons of people being tortured to mislead readers into believing the fake story. By the time the documentary ends, the alleged terrorist being comfortably harbored in Canada has been forgotten, and it is the government of Rwanda that is at fault. For some reason, journalists portray remarks by President Kagame as some sort of an admission to all their unsubstantiated accusations against him: ‘If you betray the country or mean harm to its people you will face consequences sooner or later’. In reality, I hope this message is shared by all responsible heads of state— for goodness sake. What else should he have said? ‘If you betray the country and mean harm to its people you will be rewarded and we shall name a street after you?’ is that the appropriate — democratic language? Wasn’t Donald Trump bragging for killing Al Bagdadi just the other day? But the story comes around to its real gist: ‘Nadege demande l’asile’ it says in French. ‘Nadege is seeking asylum’. Except the young lady was ill-advised in her scenario, keen on publishing their sensational story, the journalists tricked her to admit to espionage on a foreign territory. She could have claimed to be a political opponent being tracked by other Rwandan spies in Canada and risking death in Rwanda, her asylum request could have been legally plausible, yet ‘unsensational’ to Judy Rever and her Journalist friend Chantal Lavigne, who both believe that somehow they can stop the travels of our president or touch his international legitimacy. Now the two journalists got likes, retweets and views on the internet for their story, while Canadian courts have ordered Nadege’s imminent expulsion from their territory. So me who is her brother and in no need of short fame at the expense of other people’s lives, I would like to encourage Nadege or whatever her real name is to come home and tell us the real story of how she was used by the two heartless Canadian journalists. In fact, I would be happy to offer her free legal services and, given that her offence would likely be mere impersonation, she wouldn’t be facing much, legally. The views expressed in this article are of the author.
