Category Archives: Paul Kagame

Rwanda’s Paul Kagame cruises to crushing election victory

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President wins 99.15% of the vote, allowing him to extend authoritarian rule by further five years

Rwanda’s president, Paul Kagame, has swept to another overwhelming election victory, winning more than 99% of votes in a provisional count in the east African country’s elections that will extend his near quarter of a century in power.

The poll on Monday was seen as a formality, with just two other candidates allowed to compete in a country that is kept under tight control by its longtime leader.

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Paul Kagame expected to be re-elected president as Rwanda goes to polls

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Incumbent since 2000 is seeking fourth term after winning more than 90% of votes in last three ballots

People in Rwanda have gone to the polls for elections in which Paul Kagame is widely expected to extend his rule of the central African country.

This is the fourth presidential ballot since more than 800,000 people, mostly members of the Tutsi ethnic minority, were killed in a genocide in the country 30 years ago.

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Rwanda opposition leader barred from standing against president

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Diane Rwigara’s name missing from list of candidates to challenge Paul Kagame in 15 July vote

A prominent opponent of the Rwandan president, Paul Kagame, has been barred from standing in next month’s election to challenge his three-decade rule.

Diane Rwigara, the leader of the People Salvation Movement, who was also barred in 2017, launched her election bid in May and submitted her candidacy last week. Her name was missing from the provisional list of candidates announced by the electoral commission on Thursday.

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Rwanda’s top UK diplomat oversaw use of Interpol to target regime opponents

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Exclusive: Johnston Busingye formally appointed days after UK agreed Rwanda asylum deal with Paul Kagame in 2022

Rwanda’s top diplomat in the UK oversaw the use of the international justice system to target opponents of the country’s rulers around the world, the Guardian can reveal.

New details of the Rwandan government’s suppression of opposition beyond its borders add to concerns about the regime at the heart of Rishi Sunak’s asylum policy.

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‘Bullet wounds are common’: crime rife in DRC’s rebel-besieged city of Goma

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Robberies, shootings, extortion and rapes have surged since the Rwandan-backed M23 militia cut off the eastern Congolese capital

In broad daylight on 16 April, three armed and uniformed men held up a city centre mobile phone shop.

Threatening staff, they helped themselves to about £700 worth of goods, before making off on a motorbike, disappearing into the busy streets of Goma, in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo.

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Sunak welcomes Kagame to No 10 as Rwanda scheme hits fresh snags

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Meeting to discuss PM’s key policy overshadowed by reports of lack of housing for deportees or airline to remove them from UK

Rishi Sunak has welcomed the Rwandan president to Downing Street amid signs that ministers are struggling to find an airline or housing in Kigali to carry out their flagship deportation plan.

The meeting on Tuesday was overshadowed by the former home secretary Suella Braverman’s criticism of fallen expectations over the policy, which aims to forcibly send people seeking asylum 4,000 miles to central Africa.

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Macron to say France and allies could have stopped Rwanda genocide in 1994

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French president marks 30th anniversary with video, airing Sunday, saying international community lacked will to stop the slaughter

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has said France and its western and African allies “could have stopped” Rwanda’s 1994 genocide but did not have the will to halt the slaughter of an estimated 800,000 people, mostly ethnic Tutsis.

In a video message to be published on Sunday to mark the 30th anniversary of the genocide, Macron will emphasise that “when the phase of total extermination against the Tutsis began, the international community had the means to know and act”, the presidency said on Thursday.

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Exiled Rwandan who survived murder attempt condemns UK deportation plan

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Opposition politician Frank Ntwali says country is unsafe and Sunak’s pursuance of policy ‘quite bizarre’

A Rwandan opposition politician who narrowly survived an assassination attempt has condemned the UK’s plan to deport asylum seekers to Kigali.

Frank Ntwali, chair of the exiled Rwanda National Congress (RNC) movement, said the country was unsafe and that Rishi Sunak’s persistence with the policy was “quite bizarre”.

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Rwanda president: efforts to implement asylum plan cannot ‘drag on’

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Paul Kagame also says he would be happy for the scheme to be scrapped

Rwanda’s president has said there are limits to how long attempts to implement an asylum deal with Britain can “drag on”, indicating he would be happy for the scheme to be scrapped.

Paul Kagame’s comments on Wednesday came before Rishi Sunak faced a potentially leadership-ending rebellion by Conservative MPs threatening to vote down his Rwanda deportation bill on Wednesday night.

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Blinken raises concerns over Hotel Rwanda dissident trial with Kagame

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US secretary of state on last stop of African tour has been clear about US misgivings related to Paul Rusesabagina’s conviction

The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has raised US concerns about the trial of the jailed dissident Paul Rusesabagina with Paul Kagame, president of Rwanda, and other senior Rwandan officials during a visit to the capital Kigali.

Blinken is in Kigali on the last stop of a tour of sub-Saharan Africa that aims to regain the diplomatic initiative across a continent that received little attention under the Trump administration.

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

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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.

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

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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.

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‘We choose good guys and bad guys’: beneath the myth of ‘model’ Rwanda

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President Paul Kagame – long feted by leaders in the west – is accused of serial human rights abuses in expansive new book

A devastating new book will accuse Rwanda’s president Paul Kagame – long feted by his prominent international supporters as the model of visionary new African leadership – of being a serial human rights abuser, including for his role in a sustained campaign of assassinating his rivals in exile.

Written by Michela Wrong, the author who covered the Rwandan genocide in 1994, when more than 800,000 people – largely ethnic Tutsis as well as moderate Hutus – were killed by Hutu militias over 100 days, Do Not Disturb represents one of the most far-reaching historical revisions of Kagame and his regime.

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Until Africans get the Covid vaccinations they need, the whole world will suffer | Paul Kagame

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We’re not asking for charity, but fairness – instead of the hoarding and protectionism currently in play

  • Paul Kagame is the president of Rwanda

The current situation with regard to the access and distribution of Covid-19 vaccines vividly illustrates the decades-old contradictions of the world order.

Rich and powerful nations have rushed to lock up supply of multiple vaccine candidates. Worse, some are hoarding vaccines – purchasing many times more doses than they need. This leaves African and other developing countries either far behind in the vaccine queue, or not in it at all.

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‘Kidnapped’ Hotel Rwanda dissident appears in court on terror charges

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Prosecutors allege Paul Rusesabagina was leader of rebel group responsible for deadly attacks

Paul Rusesabagina, a businessman whose role in saving more than 1,000 lives inspired the film Hotel Rwanda, has appeared in court in Rwanda’s capital, Kigali, facing charges of terrorism and murder.

Rwandan authorities have 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”. The dissident faces a lengthy prison sentence, potentially for life.

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UN urged to intervene in case of detained Hotel Rwanda dissident

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Lawyers for Paul Rusesabagina, who is detained in Kigali, say he faces serious risk of torture

Lawyers for Paul Rusesabagina have called on a UN investigator to immediately intervene in the case of the human rights activist – and inspiration behind the film Hotel Rwanda – who is being detained in Rwanda and is alleged to face a “serious risk of torture”.

The letter to Nils Melzer, the special rapporteur on torture, comes one week after Rusesabagina, a prominent critic of the Rwandan president, Paul Kagame, was revealed to have been brought to Kigali from Dubai in what his lawyers have called an illegal rendition.

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Rwanda dissidents suspect Paul Rusesabagina was under surveillance

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Movements of ‘Hotel Rwanda hero’ arrested in Kigali may have been closely tracked by spyware say supporters

Rwandan dissidents say they suspect that Paul Rusesabagina, the inspiration behind the film Hotel Rwanda, was hacked or otherwise tracked using surveillance technology in the days before his arrest this week by the Rwandan government, raising questions about the country’s alleged use of spyware.

Rusesabagina, 66, who won international acclaim for saving 1,200 Rwandans during the country’s genocide – who has been more recently a prominent critic of Rwanda’s president, Paul Kagame, appears to have been apprehended by authorities while he was on a trip to Dubai and reportedly left the United Arab Emirates on a private jet last week.

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Paul Kagame orders release of women and girls jailed over abortion in Rwanda

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Women’s rights activists welcome presidential pardon of 367 female prisoners as evidence of progress

Rwanda’s president has pardoned hundreds of girls and women jailed for abortion.

The women are expected to be released immediately under the presidential prerogative.

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Trump ‘unwavering’ in commitment to NATO: Pence

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"I bring you this assurance: "The United States of America strongly supports NATO and will be unwavering in our commitment to our trans-Atlantic alliance", Pence declared during the Munich Security Conference, according to the AP". Pence pointed to their shared "noble ideals - freedom, democracy, justice and the rule of law".