Editor, RE: “There is this urge to tell HRW: “Good riddance—? (The New Times, March 7). Better late than never. But, in fact, most Rwandans would have been shocked to hear our country still had any kind of cooperation agreement with this organisation, given the virulence of its relentless attacks on our government and ceaseless actions in support of genocidaires or anyone else with an axe to grind against this country.
Editor,
RE: "There is this urge to tell HRW: "Good riddance”” (The New Times, March 7). Better late than never. But, in fact, most Rwandans would have been shocked to hear our country still had any kind of cooperation agreement with this organisation, given the virulence of its relentless attacks on our government and ceaseless actions in support of genocidaires or anyone else with an axe to grind against this country.
Our history of abuse and slander from HRW should be an object lesson: Not every organisation that has the words ‘human rights’ in its name works to advance our rights, but rather their sponsors’ geopolitical interests, even at the expense of our rights.
As former US diplomat Richard Johnson observed in his seminal book, The Travesty of Human Rights Watch on Rwanda, what this George Soros-funded group has been doing on our country ‘... is not human rights advocacy. It is political advocacy which has become profoundly unscrupulous in both its means and its ends.’
Good riddance, indeed.
Mwene Kalinda