RWANDA A RÉPRESSIVE REGIME

• Africa News Update
• June 23, 2022

RWANDA A REPRESSIVE REGIME:

Now, you understand when we say that Rwanda is a brutal, repressive regime. And we are definitely not wrong for thinking that Holding the Commonwealth summit there is a sham.

A big Sham! Pathetic!

But there's a debate we intend to enhance. Two schools of thought., while Ni Joe the director of resource mobilisation believes that UK is right, Barrister Timothy Mbeseha the chairman for the judiciary commission says the Deportation of Refugees policy by the UK is illegal. We intend to bring them both here for that discussion this weekend.

From time immemorial, there have always been two organisations whose meetings regularly took place amid widespread media indifference: the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) and the Commonwealth.

There were solid reasons for our lack of enthusiasm. Such get-togethers were strong on pomp and rigmarole, but the interesting decisions usually took place behind closed doors. Both organisations were widely seen as little more than dictators’ clubs, attuned to the interests of ruling elites while aloof from the millions of citizens they nominally represented.

The Commonwealth heads of government meeting (Chogm) in Kigali, Rwanda this week will do nothing to challenge those assumptions.

Held in a country primed to receive Britain’s unwanted migrants – a deal that even Prince Charles, who will be chairing for the first time, apparently regards as “appalling” – the meeting will highlight the weaknesses of the organisation on which Britain is pinning its hopes of future global relevance.

In the run-up to the EU referendum, Brexiters talked up the benefits of ditching the EU in favour of a market that – thanks to the vastness of Britain’s defunct empire – holds 2.5 billion consumers, a third of the global population. And, since Brexit, it is true that free-trade agreements have been signed with Australia, New Zealand and Singapore, while a host of other deals are being negotiated with members of the 54-nation association.

But the Commonwealth, like the EU, aims to be more than a trading bloc. Supporters talk about a “values-based organisation”. Its nominal belief in individual liberty, the democratic process, the rule of law and the importance of civil society were enshrined in both the Harare Declaration in 1991 and a Commonwealth charter adopted in 2012. Rwanda’s hosting of Chogm exposes a gaping hole where delivery should be.

Kigali will certainly look fantastic. The city where Hutu militiamen once hacked Tutsi families to death at roadblocks has been transformed into a gleaming conference hub. The flowerbeds have been meticulously weeded, every kerb will have been freshly painted, there won’t be a homeless person in sight.

But the explanation for that latter detail – before important get-togethers, the government relocates homeless people to “transit centres” for “reeducation” – highlights why the choice of Rwanda sends out nothing but worrying signals about where the Commonwealth is heading.

Last year, at a UN human rights conference in Geneva, British officials robustly called out Rwanda on its record of extrajudicial killings, disappearances and torture. Once the asylum-seekers deal was signed the tone abruptly changed, with Johnson praising Rwanda as “one of the safest destinations in Africa”, while Priti Patel talked admiringly of a country where refugees could “prosper and thrive”.

A Commonwealth that took its own charter seriously would have reached out to those who have been domestically silenced: jailed bloggers and citizen journalists, for example. An international coalition of 24 human rights and journalist groups has formally called on heads of government to press for detainees to be freed and for guarantees that Rwandan media and civil society will be allowed to work freely during and after Chogm.

But the Hutu opposition leader, Victoire Ingabire, whose jailing prevented her running in presidential elections, has seen her requests to attend the civil society events running alongside the main meetings stubbornly ignored. “It seems the people at the Commonwealth are collaborating with the government of Rwanda to exclude me,” she said. Chogm in Kigali, it seems, will faithfully reflect its unaccountable, exclusionary host state.

Thanks to Covid, which forced Chogm to be twice postponed, the Commonwealth actually had two years in which it could have credibly announced an alternative venue to Kigali. But that would have required something approaching a backbone. As it is, the organisation has certainly shown itself to be a “values-based” organisation; they just aren’t the values many of its billions of citizens share.