Category Archives: Rwanda

Reviled, harassed, abused: Narenda Modi’s most trenchant critic speaks out

Posted on by

The Indian journalist Rana Ayyub speaks about the campaign to silence her that has led to charges of sedition and ‘defaming Hindus’

When I talked to the journalist Rana Ayyub in her Mumbai home last Wednesday she was calmer than she was when I had spoken to her three days earlier. But that is not saying much. Last Sunday her words were jumbled, her voice on edge. She said she had not slept. That she could not eat or keep food down. That she had had thoughts of self-harm.

“I was on a plane yesterday and I said to my brother, ‘Can you feel me sitting next to me?’ And he said, ‘Have you completely lost it?’ And I said, ‘No, I’m just not sure I’m sitting next to you. I feel like I’m in a dream.’ And afterwards, I spoke to my psychiatrist and she said, ‘You’re dissociating. You’ve had a traumatic experience –that’s your brain shutting down.’”

Continue reading...

Dr Paul Farmer, healthcare advocate for some of world’s poorest, dies aged 62

Posted on by

Farmer defied skeptics to create healthcare systems for the most vulnerable in places like Haiti, Rwanda and Peru.

Dr Paul Farmer, a physician, humanitarian and author renowned for providing healthcare to millions of impoverished people worldwide and who co-founded the global non-profit Partners in Health, has died. He was 62.

The Boston-based organization confirmed Farmer’s death on Monday, calling it “devastating” and noting he unexpectedly died in his sleep from an acute cardiac event while in Rwanda, where he had been teaching.

Continue reading...

Margaret Atwood joins writers calling for urgent action over missing Rwandan poet

Posted on by

More than 100 authors from around the world have written to the Rwandan president about the case of Innocent Bahati, who disappeared a year ago today

Margaret Atwood, Ben Okri and JM Coetzee have joined more than 100 writers from around the world in calling on the Rwandan president to intervene in the case of the poet Innocent Bahati, who disappeared one year ago today.

According to human rights organisation PEN International, Bahati was last seen at a hotel in Nyanza district, in the Southern Province of Rwanda, on 7 February 2021. The poet, who is well-known in Rwanda and had published poetry on YouTube and Facebook, as well as regularly performing at live events, failed to return to Kigali, and his phones have been switched off since.

Continue reading...

Rwanda’s history of receiving deportees raises concerns for potential UK scheme

Posted on by

Analysis: UK reportedly considering sending asylum seekers to Rwanda, which was involved in controversial scheme with Israel

Rwanda – one of two African countries to which the UK government is reportedly considering sending asylum seekers for resettlement and processing – was previously embroiled in a highly controversial migrant deportation scheme involving Israel.

Although few details have emerged after a report in the Times that migrants could be sent to Ghana and Rwanda, Rwanda’s previous involvement in receiving African deportees from Israel raises serious concerns over whether – even with UK funding – it has the resources or even willingness to host deportations.

Continue reading...

Hotel Rwanda hero to terrorist ‘show trial’: Paul Rusesabagina’s daughters on the fight for his freedom

Posted on by

Tricked into boarding a plane back to Kigali and allegedly coerced into confessing, the high-profile exile faces 25 years in prison, but his family are determined to keep up the pressure

The children of Paul Rusesabagina, the imprisoned Rwandan opposition figure, are only able to speak to their father for five minutes once a week. Even then the Rwandan authorities listen into the phone call.

Tricked into boarding a private plane in Dubai and flown to Kigali, the 67-year-old Rusesabagina – who came to international attention after his life-saving acts were depicted in the Hollywood film Hotel Rwanda, set during the country’s genocide in 1994 – was given what his family says was a show trial and jailed over allegations that he had been a founder and leader of a terrorist group.

Continue reading...

Return to the refugee camp: Malawi orders thousands back to ‘congested’ Dzaleka

Posted on by

People who’ve integrated into society are expected to return to the country’s oldest refugee camp, as cost of living and anti-refugee sentiment rises

Dzaleka, Malawi’s first refugee camp, is about 25 miles north of the capital Lilongwe. Built 25 years ago in response to a surge of people fleeing genocide and wars in Burundi, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, it was then home to between 10,000 and 14,000 refugees. But the camp now houses more than 48,000 people from east and southern African countries – four times more than its initial capacity.

Several hundred continue to arrive each month, according to the UN refugee agency (UNHCR), and in August 181 babies were born there. The deteriorating situation in neighbouring Mozambique is swelling the numbers further, as is the government’s recent decree that an estimated 2,000 refugees who had over the years left Dzaleka to integrate into wider Malawian society should go back, citing them as a possible danger to national security.

Continue reading...

Theoneste Bagosora, architect of Rwanda genocide, dies aged 80

Posted on by

The former army colonel, who was sentenced to life in prison for crimes against humanity, died in hospital in Mali

Theoneste Bagosora, a former Rwandan army colonel regarded as the architect of the 1994 genocide in which more than 800,000 ethnic Tutsi and Hutus who tried to protect them were killed, has died in a hospital in Mali.

His son Achille Bagosora announced the death in a Facebook post: “Rest in Peace, Papa.”

Continue reading...

Haitians fleeing and Hotel Rwanda case: human rights this fortnight – in pictures

Posted on by

A roundup of the struggle for human rights and freedoms, from Myanmar to Germany

Continue reading...

Hotel Rwanda hero sentenced to 25 years in jail on terrorism charges

Posted on by

Paul Rusesabagina, an ex-hotel manager, was subject of a Hollywood film about 1994 genocide

Paul Rusesabagina, a businessman whose role in saving more than 1,000 lives during the 1994 genocide inspired the film Hotel Rwanda, has been sentenced to 25 years in prison after being convicted of terrorism offences by a court in Rwanda’s capital, Kigali.

The 67-year-old was found guilty on Monday after a seven-month trial and faces a life sentence. Rwandan authorities accused Rusesabagina of being “the founder, leader, sponsor and member of violent, armed, extremist terror outfits … operating out of various places in the region and abroad.” He denied all the charges against him.

Continue reading...

Africa’s park tourism crash is a wake-up call. Can we find new ways to finance conservation? | Peter Muiruri

Posted on by

As Covid continues to curb visits to see our iconic wildlife, now is the time to move away from western-led funding models

That African governments have failed to mobilise funds to conserve their vast protected areas is not in doubt. Countries were just about managing to pay basic salaries to rangers who barely had enough to put fuel in their patrol vehicles. Covid has exacerbated this already dire situation, with the loss of income from foreign tourism.

The continent has more than 8,500 protected areas, described by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as government-led national parks, areas jointly governed by state agencies, communities, privately owned wildlife reserves, and public-private partnerships between governments, companies and NGOs. Included too, are what the IUCN calls “indigenous peoples and communities conserved territories and areas”.

Continue reading...

‘Maestro of humanity’: Italian surgeon Gino Strada dies at 73

Posted on by

Tributes paid to doctor whose NGO set up world-class hospitals in war zones such as Iraq, Yemen and Sudan

Tributes have been paid to Gino Strada, the Italian surgeon and “maestro of humanity” known for setting up world-class hospitals for the victims of war, who has died aged 73.

The medic, who in 1994 co-founded the humanitarian organisation Emergency to provide free, quality healthcare for those injured in conflict, died on Friday in France, reports said.

Continue reading...

Rwandans have long been used to Pegasus-style surveillance | Michela Wrong

Posted on by

Information-gathering always was a speciality of President Paul Kagame. Modern technology has simply extended his remit

It was a silver BlackBerry, surprisingly heavy in the hand, belonging to a businessman who had flown from Kigali to South Africa to visit the exiled former Rwandan intelligence chief Patrick Karegeya. The businessman, Apollo Kiririsi Gafaranga, boasted that he had bought it in Qatar.

“It cost me $10,000,” a friend of Karegeya’s remembers the businessman telling them. “It’s a model you can only buy in the Middle East, a phone you can’t be tracked on.” Karegeya picked it up, weighed it, and put it back down on the counter where it was charging. “You’ve been robbed,” the ex spy chief joked.

Continue reading...

My story proves Rwanda’s lack of respect for good governance and human rights | Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza

Posted on by

Responsibility for defending what the Commonwealth stands for must not pass to the country without reforms

If Rwanda had hosted the Commonwealth heads of government meeting, which has been cancelled for the second time due to Covid-19, the UK was due to hand the country the Commonwealth chair.

Rwanda would have held the responsibility for defending what the Commonwealth stands for – despite violating those same values for decades. When Rwanda was admitted as a member in 2009, I had hoped our government would apply Commonwealth values in its governance. But this did not happen.

Continue reading...

Macron seeks African reset with new view of France’s troubled history on continent

Posted on by

Honest examination of French colonial record in Africa and responsibilty in Rwanda key to new strategy, though critics say little has changed

With the golden winter sun slanting across the palm trees and yellow sandstone, the scene was perfect. Emmanuel Macron and his host, Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa, walked down the red carpet of the Union buildings in Pretoria as the Marseillaise resonated through the clean, crisp air.

The historic setting was apt. Since taking power in 2017, the French president has sought a broad reset of national strategy, relations and intervention in Africa. He has chosen a very contemporary way to do this: by re-examining the past.

Continue reading...

Kagame the winner as Macron gives genocide speech in Rwanda

Posted on by

French president says his country bears a responsibility for hundreds of thousands of deaths, but was not complicit

France bears a “terrible responsibility” for the deaths of hundreds of thousands in the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, President Emmanuel Macron has said, in a long-anticipated speech in Kigali, the capital of the east African country.

Speaking at the Kigali Genocide Memorial, where 250,000 victims of the massacres are buried, Macron said that France had not been complicit in the tragedy but had made errors of judgment that had appalling consequences.

Continue reading...

Rwanda: blood on their hands – archive, 3 December 1994

Posted on by

3 December 1994: When will those responsible for the massacre in Rwanda be brought to justice? As investigators close in, the ex-ministers who ordered the slaughter are living in a hotel across the border in Zaire, desperately trying to rewrite the history of genocide

Rwanda’s former Minister of Information, Eliezer Niyitegeka, looks more comic than intimidating. He wears a dazzling white suit, afro-hairstyle and has an AK-47 slung across his shoulder. He last set foot in Rwanda in mid-July. He and the other ministers of the ousted Rwanda government have taken refuge over the border in Bukava, Zaire. Not for them the miseries of Goma’s refugee camps. Many have settled into the Hotel Riviera, where comforts include pornographic movies after midnight. The exiled regime’s offices are furnished with computers and a satellite phone. Here they are attempting to rewrite the history of the Rwandan genocide.

Related: Thousands massacred in Rwanda

Continue reading...

France ‘did nothing to stop’ Rwanda genocide, report claims

Posted on by

Report by US law firm commissioned by Kigali says France bears ‘significant responsibility’ for deaths

France “bears significant responsibility” for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in the Rwandan genocide of 1994 because it remained “unwavering in its support” of its allies even though officials knew the slaughter was being prepared, a report commissioned by Kigali claims.

The accusation is the latest in the continuing dispute between Paris and the small east-African country over the role played there by France before and during the mass killings.

Continue reading...

Scientists sound warning note over malaria drug resistance in Africa

Posted on by

Rwanda study raises fears erosion of efficacy may have begun, with children at greatest risk

Resistance to malaria drugs in Africa may be starting to take hold, according to a study that maps changes similar to those seen a decade ago when drug resistance spread in south-east Asia.

In Cambodia and neighbouring countries, the artemisinin drug compounds widely used against malaria are no longer always effective. The falciparum malaria parasites have developed genetic mutations that allow them to evade the drugs. There has been great concern that drug resistance could spread to Africa, which has the highest burden of cases of this type of malaria – and the highest toll of child deaths from it.

Continue reading...

Zimbabwe under renewed pressure to give up Rwanda genocide suspect

Posted on by

Protais Mpiranya is top of a list of remaining fugitives indicted by an international tribunal

United Nations investigators tracking one of the most notorious killers in the Rwandan genocide believe he is hiding in Zimbabwe and are launching a new effort to convince authorities in Harare to allow the 60-year-old fugitive to face trial.

Protais Mpiranya, the former commander of the presidential guard of the Rwandan army, has been on the run for 27 years charged with war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity.

Continue reading...

France not complicit in Rwanda genocide, says Macron commission

Posted on by

Report says France did not do enough to halt the 1994 killings but found no evidence of complicity

France bears the burden of “heavy and damning responsibilities” in the Rwandan genocide but was not complicit in the slaughter, according to the findings of an official commission set up by Emmanuel Macron.

As many as 800,000 people, mainly from Rwanda’s minority Tutsi ethnic population, were massacred in a wave of killings in 1994. The report released on Friday confirmed long and persistent accusations that France did not do enough to halt the killings, but said there was no evidence of complicity in the massacres.

Continue reading...