The first thought that crossed my mind when I read the introductory statement put out by the Europe-based media pressure group “Forbidden Stories”, breathlessly announcing they had put 50 journalists from eleven different countries to work investigating Rwanda was, whoa! What were these people looking for? The gold mines of Eldorado? The self-important group’s announcement of a series of articles (a truer definition is media hit pieces) targeting the Rwandan leadership grandiloquently claims it had “looked into the hidden side of the Rwandan regime.” Really? For that, Forbidden Stories needed all those journalists from all those countries? Who was paying them anyway? Because, you can be certain, neither they as individuals, nor their media houses footed the bill on a story that, in their societies, cannot generate much in clicks, or readership. Anyway, what I will say, as a media professional, is that these people look more like a lynch mob than the investigative journalists they claim to be. They write much about the alleged wrongs of the Kagame “regime” (notice how they hardly call it an administration or government, even though it is lauded far and wide for exceptional performances at the tasks governments ideally exist), and claim they are “exposing the true nature of Rwanda under Kagame”. All they do is rehash old, debunked stories and narratives, something they could easily have done digging up old Human Rights Watch reports, redoing them in their own style and, voila!, they would’ve saved themselves a lot of hustle. It isn’t a stretch to imagine Forbidden Stories’ goal here is to do their part destroying the current order in Rwanda. So they demonize its leadership, smear the president and the state, while in the process attempting to dismantle Rwanda’s good image, or standing, in the community of nations. The cover illustration to the introductory piece alone gives the game away. It’s a patchwork of cutouts of images of President Kagame put together for sinister effect, portraying him with a fierce glare – in other words a play on Western stereotypes of what a brutish, mindless African dictator supposedly looks like. The whole series is like that illustration; it bears some passing resemblance to its subject while at the same time being totally misleading. The reader is led to believe that Rwanda is a dystopia where journalists are routinely kidnapped or assassinated “for doing their job”; where people are under constant surveillance (mention of “Pegasus spyware” is de rigueur, however much the conspiracy theories around it have been debunked), and where “none dare speak against the state”. The audience is force fed information about what a repressive dictatorship the Rwandan government supposedly is. As one of the principal examples they cite Victoire Ingabire, a woman that the Rwandan justice system found to be guilty of genocide denialism, and whose speeches were pure dog whistles of divisionism, of the kind that’s led to untold civil strife in the past. But such facts are of very little concern to the white saviors. Theirs being a hit job targeting Kagame, the mission wouldn’t be complete without assertions that Kigali is destabilizing the Democratic Republic of Congo. They support this with the claims of one Samuel Baker Byansi, a journalist, who among other things says he fell into trouble for “investigating Rwandan military activities in DRC”, and who asserts that his friend John Williams Ntwali was killed for investigating the same). These are complete tall tales for any media person that knows how things are across the border. To cross there on a news gathering mission will depend on factors such as, who are your contacts across the border? Are they in the Congolese military (FARDC), or are they in the M23 rebel group? If your sources are in the FARDC, automatically they will be yelling their usual propaganda that the Rwandan army is fighting them. So, was Byansi or Ntwali in contact with FARDC, in which case they were regurgitating Tshisekedi regime propaganda! Most likely, these fellows were just making up stories, for the simple reason that there isn’t any Rwandan, journalist or not, in their right mind that goes to some place like Goma where it takes just one shout of “Rwandan” for a mob to lynch you. So, if you are an objective person, take any assertions by Forbidden Stories centering on the claims of Samuel Baker Byansi with a giant pinch of salt. In fact, let whoever has read the whole series of stories be warned that the credibility of the whole cast of individuals or groups whom they cite in their so-called investigation is as questionable as that of Byansi. Think someone like Theogene Rudasingwa, a man who served the government in Rwanda, post-genocide, in a variety of capacities, only to leave when the law started to investigate him for abuse of office – precisely for acts of embezzlement – when he was chief of staff at the Presidency. He evaded the law, and left a very disgruntled man. You won’t see Forbidden Stories mention this. Also think of someone like Paul Rusesabagina, whom they claim was “kidnapped”. The man in fact was lured onto a plane in Dubai, which he entered on his own accord, and the next thing he knew, he was bound for Kigali, to stand trial for acts of terrorism. State prosecution among other things produced video of Rusesabagina openly talking about plans “to engage Kigali in an armed attacks.” There is zero mention of that in Forbidden Stories’ series. They just skip any inconvenient fact, anything that could contradict their narrative. Beyond that, they have accused the Rwandan state of murdering two Belgians in South Africa. At this stage, the perceptive reader will ask: what is the logic of all this? Why would Kigali desire to draw the enmity of Brussels for an act like that, whatever the reason? Forbidden Stories says the Kagame regime has shown great savvy and acumen building an image of Rwanda that has bedazzled the world, including marketing the country using some of the world’s most famous sports teams, to appeal to international viewers to visit Rwanda. For what reason would such a “cunning” government then turn around to perpetrate petty acts of criminality, like allegedly assassinating someone like the aforementioned journalist Ntwali, or supposedly plan to “eliminate” someone like Byansi? Or indeed the two Belgians? Also think, Ntwali – who tragically died in a motor-taxi accident – and Byansi aren’t the only journalists in Kigali that have been making claims about alleged Rwandan military involvement in DRC. There are other YouTubers in Rwanda that do the same, mostly to build up audiences or followership, but they enjoy the same safety, rights, and well-being as other Rwandans. I won’t go into names, but a cursory research will turn up many names. Something else to ponder is, there are several other countries of which a lot of bad accusations could be made, and (unlike Rwanda) those actually would be backed up with facts. I will point at the DRC as one example. This is a country whose government currently is executing a campaign of genocide against a section of Congolese in the east. It’s a country where militias affiliated to the ruling-party massacre armless civilians, kill, loot, and rape, in broad daylight. It is a country where the ruler executes gross acts of repression, again in daylight, threatening the lives of major opposition figures, restricting their movements, or siccing his intelligence thugs on them. But, of course, not only won’t you hear anything resembling criticism from Forbidden Stories for this appalling government, you get the distinct impression they are protecting it. Usually, when I see things like these, I am reminded of the events of history whereby the agents of colonialism most hated those native Africans that could stand on their feet to resist them, while rewarding the sellouts with crumbs. Sadly, we are seeing such history repeat itself in our region.
