On Wednesday this week, thousands of angry Congolese gathered at one of the border posts in neighboring Rwanda. They shouted slogans and the hut with their nephews in an easterly direction. Towards neighboring Rwanda. Once again, there is a quarrel between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda. And once again, there are sharp debts against Rwanda’s president, Paul Kagame. One of several thousand who had turned up when a demonstration was arranged against Rwanda in Goma in Eastern Congo this week. Photo: MICHEL LUNANGA / AFP Although Kagame is described as both visionary and energetic, there is no shortage of voices warning against being too naive in the face of the experienced president. The rage in Congo is about the rumor that Rwandan soldiers contributed to riots in eastern Congo. The fact that Rwanda is also to blame for supporting brutal rebel groups inside the Congo makes the protesters even angrier. – Rwanda has been attacking us for 20 years now. “Today we ask the people to be vigilant, and that we all stand up for our country and our military,” Chance Makale, one of the protesters, told AfricaNews.com. In short: Rwanda is being blamed for supporting rebel groups in Congo. In 1994, many of those responsible for the genocide in Rwanda fled to eastern Congo. There, the conflicts from the 90s have lived on, and in addition, new conflicts have emerged. Rwanda is to blame for playing a key role in the conflicts, but the country itself believes that they are not doing anything wrong, and that any military activity is about protecting their own territory. There is unrest in the border towns on the Congolese side of the border between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Photo: Moses Sawasawa / AP From criticism to cooperation Due to the recent debts, Rwanda is more unpopular than in a long time in Congo. But in Britain, the government is more friendly to Rwanda. At least no. Britain and Rwanda have managed to come together on the question of how to stop migrants coming across the English Channel. The solution is what Rwanda offers. The small Central African country is ready with nice hotel rooms and will house people who are waiting for answers to their asylum applications in the UK. For a fee, of course. The agreement has also been controversial in the UK, and has been criticized and tried to stop by British organizations. On Monday, however, the government chose to give the green light, and said that the first 130 asylum seekers would travel with the first plane the next day. But just before departure, the European Court of Human Rights put its foot down and stopped the flight. It is unknown at this time what he will do after leaving the post. This hotel is one of those scheduled to receive asylum seekers awaiting response to their applications for asylum in the UK. Photo: JEAN BIZIMANA / Reuters Denmark also wants cooperation with Rwanda. And in Norway, the Progress Party has advocated the same. – The asylum agreement is a “blessing” for Rwanda The agreement has led to much criticism of the United Kingdom. But the case also swirls criticism around the regime in Rwanda. Because it is not only from Congo that the criticism comes. There is no shortage of startling debts against the Rwandan regime. “The agreement between London and Kigali is part of the president’s campaign to polish his international reputation,” Michaela Wrong wrote in a reader’s post in the Financial Times. She is a former journalist, and now an author, who has spent several years writing the book “Do not disturb”. There she tells how Rwanda recruits agents around the world to track down and kill regime critics who have moved abroad. Controversial president. Paul Kagame was completely when he chased out those who committed genocide in Rwanda. But he is also criticized for being authoritarian. Photo: SIMON WOHLFAHRT / AFP Others who follow Rwanda also believe that cooperation with the United Kingdom is beneficial for Rwanda. – It is very much about getting some form of international recognition. Because Rwanda has a problem with, among other things, human rights and freedom of expression, and criticism of the country’s leadership has begun to emerge, says Simon Turner to Danish DR. He is a professor at Lund University. Turner points out that the United Kingdom is one of the countries that in recent years has become more skeptical of the Rwandan regime, and that it has reduced its support for the country due to all the human rights criticisms. – But once they enter into an agreement like this, they become dependent on Rwanda. And then it is a bit difficult to point a finger later, says Turner, who adds that this is also one of the goals that Rwanda has with the agreement. Mysterious deaths among Kagame’s critics The year is 2013, and it is only hours until the calendar shows 2014. In a hotel room in South Africa, Rwanda’s former intelligence chief, Patrick Karegeya, is found dead. He had left the regime, criticized the president, fled Rwanda, and sought refuge in South Africa. Many suspected that Rwanda was behind the killing by engaging a secret agent who first won the trust of Karegeya, and later exploited the trust by killing the regime defector. No one has been convicted of being behind the killings, and Rwandan President Paul Kagame denies that his people were behind the killings when asked by journalists. But he added that he would like to see that it was his people who had committed the murder. Patrick Karegeya was killed, but by whom? These protesters believe that President Paul Kagame’s regime is behind it. Photo: SIPHIWE SIBEKO / Reuters Later, Kagame came up with new statements, which his critics think only strengthen the suspicion that Kagame had a finger in the pie when Karegeya was killed. – Everyone who betrays this country must pay the price. I promise to dive, he said to a small group of people he met at a bean breakfast shortly after the murder. Karegeya is far from the only Rwandan critic of the regime to have died mysteriously. The businessman Revocant Karemangingo was killed in Mozambique in 2021. In the same country and the same year, the journalist Ntamuhanga Cassien was also killed. In South Africa in 2021, opposition politician Abdallah Seif Bamporiki was killed. Singer and regime critic Kizito Mihigo was found hanged in 2020, just days after he told Human Rights Watch that he had received threats. 2016 was the last year activist Illuminee Iragena was seen. There is a fear that she was abducted against her will. And the list could be much longer. “Hotel Rwanda” star is in prison Other critics of the regime are still alive, but have gotten into deep trouble. One of them is Paul Rusesabagina. He is the man who saved hundreds of people because he let them seek refuge in his hotel during the genocide in 1994. Later, his story was told through the film “Hotel Rwanda”. Rusesabagina is currently in prison in Rwanda. He was an enemy of the regime because he criticized President Kagame for being too authoritarian, and founded his own party. When people from this party carried out an attack in Rwanda, where nine people died, Rusesabagina was wanted as a terrorist. Finally, a Rwandan agent managed to lure him into a plane. Rusesabagina thought he was going to Burundi, but the plane landed in neighboring Rwanda. Since then he has been imprisoned. Right Updated his episode about Paul Rusesabagina The list of critics of the Rwandan regime is long. Some of the largest are Amnesty and Human Rights Watch. “People are not free to say what they want whether it goes against the regime’s position or what the regime itself has said,” the leader of Human Rights Watch’s office in Central Africa, Lewis Mudge, told Al Jazeera in April. Rwanda rejects both this and other criticisms from Human Rights Watch, an organization that they believe has long experience of coming up with “false debts”. Garbage collection and tech hub As a contrast to all the shoulders that Rwanda gets to address, the country has managed to get massive media attention on many positive issues. For the regime in the country, the last decades have been very much about taking the country into the future, and building a modern state that works. Rwanda is a beautiful country, which among other things wants to attract many tourists. Photo: JEAN BIZIMANA / Reuters And this work has from time to time led to Rwanda being able to create headlines that have made the country known for quite a bit other than just the genocide in 1994. Martin Ødegaard constantly advertises for Visit Rwanda, which wants tourists should visit the country. Photo: DAN MULLAN / Reuters And now the country once again gets attention in the media coverage, and this time as a country that comes with a helping hand to people who hope for a better future. – We do this for the right reasons. We understand that there may be opposition to this, but we ask that this plan be given a chance, because it is a possible solution, said spokeswoman for the Rwandan government, Yolande Makola, at a press conference this week. Currently, the plane that was to transport the first asylum seekers from the UK to Rwanda is on hold. The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that the judicial system must complete cases that have been reported before the plane can take off.
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Fears that “asylum plane” strengthens controversial Rwanda – news Urix – Foreign news and documentaries
