{"id":103504,"date":"2017-12-25T12:00:28","date_gmt":"2017-12-25T12:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=103504"},"modified":"2017-12-25T12:13:32","modified_gmt":"2017-12-25T12:13:32","slug":"rwandan-president-paul-kagame-is-not-papa-africa-saving-slaves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2017\/12\/rwandan-president-paul-kagame-is-not-papa-africa-saving-slaves\/","title":{"rendered":"Rwandan President Paul Kagame Is Not Papa Africa Saving Slaves"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u201cMigrants deported from Israel to Rwanda in 2014 and 2015 have been horrifically abused and trafficked back to the Mediterranean.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

6 Dec 2017 – <\/em>On November 14 CNN shocked the world with its video news report <\/a>of Black African migrants being sold into slavery in Libya. Eight days later the Rwandan government issued a press release headlined \u201cRwanda\u2019s door is open for migrants held captive in Libya <\/a>.\u201d The day after that, the New York Times reported that Rwanda <\/a>would welcome their \u201cAfrican brothers and sisters still held in captivity\u201d and quoted African Union Commission Chair Moussa Faki Mahamat praising Rwanda\u2019s offer \u201cto resettle up to 30,000 African migrants languishing in Libya.\u201d<\/p>\n

The same story was reported across the Internet and in daily newspapers in the metropolitan US, Europe, and Africa. Rwandan President Paul Kagame is grandstanding as Papa Africa on the world stage, but nothing could be further from the truth or more preposterous than his proposal. Here are four reasons why:<\/p>\n

Rwanda is a brutal totalitarian surveillance state<\/strong><\/p>\n

President Kagame and his ruling party run a brutal, totalitarian, US-backed regime with the ninth highest per capita incarceration rate in the world. Many Rwandan prisoners are convicted of speech crime\u2014daring to disagree with the government\u2019s legally enforced description of Rwanda\u2019s 1994 massacres as \u201cgenocide against the Tutsi.\u201d Victoire Ingabire, who attempted to run for president against Kagame in 2010, is instead serving 15 years for saying that \u201cbefore, during, and after the genocide, other Rwandan people were killed. Hutus and Tutsis were killed.\u201d<\/p>\n

The African Court of Human and People\u2019s Rights recently ruled that Ingabire\u2019s free speech rights were denied and that she did not receive a fair trial, but Rwanda hasn\u2019t even acknowledged the ruling much less released her.<\/p>\n

In \u201cBad News: Last Journalist in a Dictatorship <\/a>,\u201d Anjan Sundaram describes extreme poverty among Rwanda\u2019s rural majority and a surveillance state so pervasive that Rwandans fear to trust their own family and neighbors. Does this sound like a government ready to open its arms to its \u201cAfrican brothers and sisters\u201d?<\/p>\n

Rwanda is already densely populated and \u201cfood insecure\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Rwanda is the second most densely populated nation in Africa and the second poorest in East Africa. Land is scarce. In July 2016, a headline in The East African read \u201cFamine hits over 100,000 Rwandan families in Eastern province <\/a>.\u201d The report said that rural Rwandans were fleeing famine across the Ugandan border. Howard Buffett, multibillionaire, agribusinessman, and friend of President Kagame, has displaced many of them to grow export crops on land they need to grow food.<\/p>\n

President Kagame is a war criminal <\/strong><\/p>\n

President Kagame is a war criminal with the blood of millions of his \u201cAfrican brothers and sisters\u201d in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo on his hands.<\/p>\n

In October 1990, he led Ugandan troops invading Rwanda. Many of them were the children of the Rwandan Tutsi minority who had fled the country during the 1960s after the Hutu majority came to power. After a four-year war and the assassination of the Rwandan and Burundian presidents, Kagame\u2019s army overthrew the Rwandan government and established a de facto Tutsi dictatorship, which falsely claims to have ended competition between the Hutu and Tutsi. The last 100 days of the war included the massacres of half a million or more Rwandans that came to be known as the Rwandan Genocide. Most of the world has never heard of the invasion and four-year war, only the last 100 days depicted in the oversimplified, decontextualized story told in the movie \u201cHotel Rwanda.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter the death of more than six million Congolese, parts of the country remain under de facto occupation by Rwanda.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In 1996, and then again in 1998, Rwanda and Uganda invaded the vastly resource-rich Democratic Republic of the Congo, enabled by US weapons, logistics, and intelligence. They massacred hundreds of thousands of Rwandan refugees, expelled one president, assassinated another, massacred Congolese people, and drove them from their homes to plunder their resources. Today, after the death of more than six million Congolese, parts of the country remain under de facto occupation by Rwanda. Rwandans have become officers in the Congolese army and many Congolese believe that Congo\u2019s President Joseph Kabila is himself a Rwandan Tutsi.<\/p>\n

The \u201c2012 UN Group of Experts Report on the Democratic Republic of the Congo <\/a>\u201d reported that the Rwandan Minister of Defense, who answers to President Kagame, commanded the M23 militia then rampaging through Congo\u2019s North Kivu Province bordering Rwanda. This week Human Rights Watch reported that Kabila had recruited former M23 militia men from Rwanda <\/a>to suppress Congolese protests of his refusal to hold an election and relinquish power. Sixty-four protesters have been killed and many more injured.<\/p>\n

African migrants have already been severely abused in Rwanda<\/strong><\/p>\n

The most immediate argument against sending 30,000 African migrants from Libya to Rwanda is that migrants deported from Israel to Rwanda in 2014 and 2015 have not found a home there and have instead been horrifically abused and trafficked from Rwanda to Libya.<\/p>\n

Israel does not give the migrants documents certifying their status as refugees, asylum seekers, or any other legal status in Israel. They tell them that they will be given documents in Rwanda, but that hasn\u2019t happened, and those who arrive with documents certifying their legal status anywhere else have been deprived of them upon arrival. This means they cannot seek political asylum or legally cross borders no matter what happens to them. Then they\u2019re trafficked through a smuggling network from Rwanda to Uganda, Uganda to South Sudan, South Sudan to Sudan, Sudan to Libya, and Libya to Italy or other European shores if they make it that far and survive the perilous boat ride. Traffickers all along the smuggling route know that they arrive in Rwanda with $3500 that the Israeli government paid them to leave, and each takes a cut for their leg of the smuggling route if they don\u2019t take it all. For the 10,000 migrants deported in 2014-2015, that added up to $35 million dollars spread out along the smuggling route. Benjamin Netanyahu is now determined to deport 10,000 more despite the objections of the UNHCR and religious groups.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfrican migrants are trafficked through a smuggling network from Rwanda to Libya to Italy or other European shores.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Journalists for the Israeli publication Haaretz have completed two investigative reports about this with the help of the Fund for Investigative Journalism and The Hotline for Refugees and Migrants, an NGO. They published the first, \u201cAsylum Seekers Who Left Israel for Rwanda Describe a Hopeless Journey <\/a>,\u201d in May 2015, and the second, \u201cTheft, Extortion and Death: The Agonizing Stories of Refugees Israel Deported to Africa <\/a>\u201d in November 2017. If not for these investigations, the world might believe that these refugees are all alive and well in Rwanda.<\/p>\n

Anyone who still imagines that Rwanda will welcome 30,000 African migrants from Libya with open arms should read the Haaretz reports.<\/p>\n

Migrants who survived the entire treacherous route and reached safety in Europe saw many die and disappear along the way. They were beaten, robbed, raped, and barely fed by their traffickers, and some were kidnapped into forced labor. They tell their migrant friends still in Israel that they\u2019re better off going to prison\u2014their other option as unwanted migrants in Israel\u2014 than going to Rwanda.<\/p>\n

_______________________________________<\/p>\n

Ann Garrison is a radio producer for Pacifica’s KPFA-Berkeley and WBAI-NYC, and a regular contributor to the <\/em>San Francisco Bay View, Black Agenda Report, Counterpunch, Global Research, and<\/em> Pambazuka News.<\/em><\/p>\n

B\u00e9n\u00e9dicte Kumbi Ndjoko is a Congolese Swiss history teacher, writer, and Pan Africanist justice activist. In March 2013, she disrupted a UN conference in Geneva about the sham Congo peace agreement, and interrupted Secretary General Ban-Ki-Moon till the gendarmes threw her out. Her intervention was captured on video: \u201cFree Congo: Face to Face with Ban Ki Moon, Geneva March 1, 2013 <\/a>.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Ann Garrison and B\u00e9n\u00e9dicte Kumbi Ndjoko are both recipients of the Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza Democracy and Peace Prize<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 blackagendareport.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

6 Dec 2017 – African Union Commission Chair Moussa Faki Mahamat praised Rwanda\u2019s offer \u201cto resettle up to 30,000 African migrants languishing in Libya.\u201d The same story was reported across the Internet and newspapers in the US, Europe, and Africa. Rwandan President Paul Kagame is grandstanding as Papa Africa on the world stage, but nothing could be further from the truth or more preposterous than his proposal. Here are four reasons why.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":103505,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[127],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-103504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-africa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103504"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103504\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/103505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}