The recent Human Rights Watch (HRW)’s statement "UK Should Cancel Refugee Deal” by Lewis Mudge is the perfect illustration of the kind of unscrupulous and vicious anti-Rwanda campaigns that the organization has been involved in for the past two decades. If there was any doubt that this particular organization does not care the least about human rights, then Mr Mudge has gone to great lengths to convince the skeptical.
As is to be expected, Mudge’s statement is riddled with the usual omissions and misrepresentations of facts that characterize any such campaigns whose aims are not to protect refugees’ rights but to push a certain political agenda. Accordingly, President Kagame’s recent address to the Senate in which he speaks about the challenges posed by the conflict in neighboring DRC is framed by Mudge as "the Rwandan government’s politicization of refugee rights”. No mention is made of the fact that Rwanda has hosted Congolese refugees for more than two decades and that these refugees feel safe here. Neither is the cause of (factors responsible for) their presence in Rwanda of any interest to HRW. What is important for Mudge’s organization is to push down our throats the idea that Rwanda is not a "reliable good faith international partner” and should never be trusted to host asylum seekers from the United Kingdom (UK). The idea in itself is ridiculous for a number of reasons.
One, the agreement between the UK and the Rwandan governments is evidence that Kigali is concerned about the plight of asylum seekers stranded in hostile environments in European countries where they are persecuted by law enforcement agencies, hosted in unsanitary conditions and sometimes sent back to their countries of origin without any regard for their safety.
Regarding this particular agreement, President Kagame challenged critics of the deal to propose a better alternative, especially since western governments which are supposed to abide by international conventions and ensure their safety have decided to remove asylum seekers from their jursidictions by all means. HRW has no alternative to offer for this particular issue. Instead, Mudge and HRW choose to vilify the only country that is ready to accommodate asylum seekers. In Mudge and HRW’s absurd, upside down worldview, Rwanda is the unreliable partner. But if the country offering to host unwanted asylum seekers isn’t a reliable partner then who is? And what kind of human rights organization is unable to rein in its biases in the interest of asylum seekers?
Two, Rwanda is a safe country for its citizens and for the tens of thousands of refugees from neighboring countries, such as DRC and Burundi. The 2018 incident that Mudge exploits to make his case (while conveniently omitting that a number of UN staff and Rwandan police officers were wounded during those violent protests) has not changed this perception as refugees from DRC continue to find refuge in the country. Any reasonable and responsible observer would find it bizarre that Congolese would choose to flee to a place that is supposedly "unsafe”, and they wouldn’t be wrong to assume that HRW is misrepresenting the facts of the incident. In fact, HRW does more than that; it misrepresents the entire historical context of the conflict that produced these refugees. Moreover, HRW has refused to take accountability for what former State Department foreign officer, Richard Johnson, referred to as "the travesty of Human Rights Watch on Rwanda”, where he denounces HWR’s "political advocacy which has become profoundly unscrupulous in both its means and its ends.”
More than 70,000 Congolose refugees have fled to Rwanda because their lives were threatened by remnants of genocidal militias that committed the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. Some have been refugees for more than two decades, and more are coming. HRW seems oblivious to the fact that only Rwanda has catered for their basic rights. The M23 itself is a byproduct of the presence of these genocidal militias in DRC, which continue to kill members of Rwandaphone communities in collaboration with local militias and members of the Congolese armed forces.
Meanwhile, HWR which should have been advocating for the rights of Congolese refugees to return to their country was too busy advocating for the rights of those involved in the genocide in Rwanda, even going as far as petitioning UK courts against the extradition of genocide fugitives that have found refuge there. This is the fundamental issue that HRW is unwilling to address in its determination to vilify the Rwandan government. This is also why HRW chooses to blame Rwanda for the resurgence of the M23 rebellion while willfully omitting the shelling of Rwanda’s territory by the Congolese army, the killings of Rwandan civilians by FDLR members crossing from DRC and the collaboration between the DRC army and the FDLR.
It is as if the rights to safety of Congolese refugees and Rwandans have no bearing in HRW’s assessments of the situation in the Great Lakes region. Again, what kind of human right organization ignores hate speech and related killings and acts of cannibalism taking place in DRC and recorded on camera while pretending to care about the rights of Congolese refugees only when there is an incident involving Rwandan security forces?
The answer to these questions is straightforward for anyone willing to look at this issue objectively. As Richard Johnson put it "HRW’s discourse on Rwanda is a threat to that country and to peace and stability in Central Africa.”