Darling of the West, terror to his opponents: Meet Rwanda’s new scourge - Paul Kagame

 

Darling of the West, terror to his opponents: Meet Rwanda's new
scourge - Paul Kagame

Paul Kagame's rivals keep dying, but Clinton and Blair still shake his
hand, writes Ian Birrell

Paul Kagame has been described as a 'war criminal'

By Ian Birrell
Friday 03 January 2014

Patrick Karegeya knew Paul Kagame well. The pair went to school
together, worked alongside each other in Ugandan intelligence and then
fought to free their country from the genocidal gangsters who
unleashed horror in their native Rwanda. When Kagame became president,
Karegeya was put in charge of foreign intelligence services.

But after a decade, their disagreements, including over human rights
and attacks on neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo, became too
strong. He was relieved of his duties, stripped of his rank as colonel
and jailed. Once free he fled, later joining forces with three other
prominent exiles to lead opposition to Kagame's government.

Knowing the Rwandan president so well, Karegeya was under no illusions
what might happen to him, especially after his friend Faustin Kayumba
Nyamwasa was shot in the stomach in South Africa in 2010. "The Rwandan
government can no longer tolerate any dissent," he said last year.
"There is a deliberate plan to finish us off."

Now the plain-speaking Karegeya is dead, his brutalised body
discovered in the room of a luxury South African hotel. A murder
investigation has been launched. It seems he was strangled, a rope
from the hotel curtains found with a bloodied towel in the safe.


Patrick Karegeya was found dead in a luxury South African hotel

Rwandan officials deny any complicity. They always do, of course. It
is part of the regime's tactics, their smart diplomats throwing up
smokescreens while smearing enemies and exploiting global sympathy for
the genocide.

But Nyamwasa, a former Rwandan army chief who has survived two
assassination attempts, asked who else might want to kill his friend.
"It is not the first time and it is not the last. Most of President
Kagame's political opposition are in exile or in prison or are dead."

It may take time for the full facts to filter out. Initial reports say
police want to interview a Rwandan man who met Karegeya at a rail
station then went with him to the hotel in the upmarket suburb of
Sandton.

Yet one thing is certain beyond the death of an important dissident.
Enemies of Kagame – the despot so beloved by Western democratic
leaders and charity dupes – seem to have a strange habit of dying in
disturbing circumstances.

Over the years a succession of prominent critics and campaigners,
judges and journalists, have been killed. They have been beaten,
beheaded, shot and stabbed, both at home in Rwanda and abroad in
nervous exile. Some were good people, others far from saints – and
their deaths came after crossing Kagame.

"We don't know the details of how and why Karegeya was murdered but
there is a long established pattern of assassination and attempted
assassination of Rwandan government critics," said Carina
Tertsakian, senior researcher on Rwanda at Human Rights Watch.

Kagame's strategy has been clear from the start of his rise to power;
indeed, defectors and dissidents have explained in detail how he man
gets rid of his rivals. "He believes that all opponents must die,"
said Karegeya last year.

Those who served as his aides, army officers and bodyguards have said
that even in exile during the days of bush warfare, he eliminated
those who threatened his authority. After taking power following the
1994 genocide, his repressive regime used murder, arbitrary arrest,
jail and strict media controls to sustain its incredibly rigid rule.

Former colleagues told me he never hid what would happen to enemies;
even Paul Rusesabagina, the hotel manager who became a global hero
amid the hell of genocide, had to go into hiding.

All too typical was the story of Seth Sendashonga, the respected
Minister of the Interior in the post-genocide government. After
protesting human rights abuses in a series of memoranda sent to
Kagame, he was dismissed and went into exile in Kenya, where he became
increasingly vocal against the government.

After surviving a first assassination ambush in February 1996, in
which an arrested man with a firearm turned out to be an employee at
the Rwandan embassy, he was shot dead in Nairobi two years later. The
case bears similarities to the recent attacks in South Africa.

This killing of critics has happened with relentless regularity. There
was a particularly nasty spate before the 2010 election, when not only
was Nyamwasa targeted but a newspaper editor murdered, a rival
politician found near-beheaded and even a Tanzanian law professor
involved in a genocide case shot dead.

The following year Scotland Yard warned two exiles in Britain that a
Rwandan hit squad had been sent to kill them, although they were not
high-profile. Scandalously, even this did not stop the flow of British
aid and adulation.

One of the targets was Rene Mugenzi, a father of three and Liberal
Democrat activist. He had to cut off contact with many fellow Rwandan
exiles in Britain for fear they might be government agents and still
lives under a high state of security alert.

"This latest case is very troubling for me and my family," he told me.
"You just feel anything can happen, especially when nothing is done at
the international level against Kagame. It is like he has a licence to
kill."

And this is the key point. For despite the murders, the abuse of human
rights, the locking up of political rivals, the ceaseless and now
well-documented stoking of carnage and conflict in the Congo, Kagame
remains a leader lionised in Washington and Westminster.

The world's foremost scholar on Rwanda has described him as "probably
the worst war criminal in office today." Another leading academic
concluded he was running "a very well-managed ethnic, social and
economic dictatorship".

But Bill Clinton calls him "one of the greatest leaders of our time"
while Tony Blair, who works closely with him and has borrowed his
plush private jet, hails him as "a visionary leader". There is similar
adoration on the right among many Tories and Republicans; Rwanda was
even welcomed into the Commonwealth four years ago.

This disgusting hypocrisy, fuelled by the desperate search for an aid
success story, is underlined by Kagame's intelligence chief meeting
ministers in London despite being indicted by a Spanish judge, while
Theogene Rudasingwa, a leading Kagame opponent based in the United
States, is refused a visa.

Rudasingwa, Kagame's former chief of staff and one of his key
opponents alongside Karegeya, is dismayed by Western reluctance to
acknowledge Kagame's criminality despite a welter of evidence.

So was he scared following the latest apparent murder, I asked him on
Friday? "No," he replied. "This just makes me more determined. I know
he is on a mission to kill all of us but we are going to fight him to
the finishing line."

These are brave words, given what has happened to so many of those who
challenged Kagame. Yet Britain, to our lasting shame, continues to
back the monstrous killer in Kigali.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/darling-of-the-west-terror-to-his-opponents-meet-rwandas-new-scourge--paul-kagame-9037914.html