Rwanda's Canadian Connection : Arrest of Paul Rusesabagina

"Trudeau's very close to the guy. He's been cozying up to [Rwandan President Paul] Kagame for a while. They are friends."

"The weight of Canada on the international scene, really, it's not much, but Trudeau could at least speak up. I think it's important to try to maintain some normal legal world order and not allow international abductions like this."

"Without that [the intervention of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva, spurred by an appeal of an intermediate country like Canada], his chances [Paul Rusesabagina] of a fair trial are nil."

Philippe Larochelle, human rights lawyer, Montreal

Paul Rusesabagina. President Bush, 2005. LAWRENCE JACKSON/AP/SIPA

"So there's a slew of charges, but most significant is the Rwandan government's assertion that he is trying to topple President Kagame. And in general, any opposition to President Kagame has almost been like a death sentence for most politicians or opposition candidates. Many of them have ended up dead, in prison, sometimes beheaded."

"Mr. Rusesabagina is not the first opposition activist to Kagame to be arrested and brought to trial in Rwanda. You had Victoire Ingabire in 2010. And even before her trial began, the local press smeared her for all sorts of misogynistic accusations. She was described as an enemy of the state, much as Mr. Rusesabagina is facing now."

"The fact that Mr. Rusesabagina is an ethnic Hutu means that he's very likely politically popular in Rwanda. The fact that he saved many Tutsi lives during the genocide means that he is also favored by many Tutsis. And the fact that he has international support as the heroic figure in the movie "Hotel Rwanda" means that he is a credible threat to Mr. Kagame. And so that's partly why Mr. Kagame sees it as so important to arrest him and to eliminate - to neutralize the political threat."

Journalist Anjan Sundaram

Paul Rusesabagina, portrayed as a hero in a Hollywood film about Rwanda’s 1994 genocide, is paraded in front of the media in handcuffs at the Rwanda Investigation Bureau in the capital Kigali © Clement Uwiringiyimana/Reuters

A Hutu -- at a time when the Hutu-led government in Rwanda planned a mass atrocity under the very noses of the United Nations peacekeeping mission, calling upon the Hutu population to wreak bloodshed upon Rwanda's Tutsis -- Paul Rusesabagina has been credited with saving a thousand Tutsis from genocidal extermination, shielding them and giving them haven in his Hotel des Millies Collines in Kigali. And nor was he the only Hutu who attempted to save their Tutsi neighbours, while the bulk of the Hutsi population engaged in mass butchery. In the event, those Hutus who exposed themselves also became victims of the mass murder spree.

 

The 2004 Hollywood film Hotel Rwanda celebrated Mr. Rusesabagina's inspired humanity in April 1994 when in a frenzy of demented brutality 800,000 people lost their lives. He has citizenship status in Belgium and is also a legal resident of the United States, while becoming an influential figure in the Mouvement Rwandais pour le Changement Democratique, an opposition coalition operating for the most part in exile. The National Liberation Front, one of the constituents of the coalition has involved itself and its members in armed violence that often impacts on Rwandan civilians. But this is not the kind of action supported by Mr. Rusesabagina. 

The dictatorship government of Paul Kagame is only too happy to portray this bothersome opposition figure who has great popularity both among the Hutu and the Tutsi population in Rwanda, as a violent terrorist. And since the government controls all the news sources, their versions of events is all that the reading public is exposed to. No effort was made by the government authorities to use legal means to persuade Mr. Rusesabagina to return to Rwanda in the face of charges levelled against him. He had flown from Chicago to Dubai at the end of August, with an early September return ticket.

 

Refugees who fled the ethnic bloodbath in neighboring Rwanda carry water containers back to their huts at the Benaco refugee camp in Tanzania, near the border with Rwanda on May 17, 1994. With a population surpassing 300,000, aid agencies are having difficulty feeding, treating and sheltering them. Karsten Thielker, AP

 

His return was planned for the U.S., not Rwanda, but mere hours after landing in Dubai he was in the hands of Rwandan agents, flying to Kigali aboard a Bombardier Challenger jet, two hours after  he had made contact with his family to assure them that he had arrived in Dubai. Paul Kagame rules with an iron hand and has done so for the past two decades manipulating election results, taking care to imprison any candidates with the misbegoten idea of opposing him in presidential elections. Dissidents are routinely kidnapped and assassinated, as are opposition leaders.

Yet, known as the liberator of Rwanda, the man who put a stop to the genocide, the former Ugandan army officer whose Patriotic Front took over the country, has a friendship with Canada's Liberal-progressive prime minister. Justin Trudeau is steeped in the green movement and Paul Kagame speaks with conviction about climate change, is a proponent of international trade and calls himself a 'feminist', all issues that Prime Minister Trudeau is deeply invested in. Theirs is a mutual friendship based on presumably shared commitments. And Mr. Trudeau's seeming infatuation with dictators.

In 2010 the feminist president of Rwanda charged a female candidate running against him for president with trumped up terrorism offences, had her barred from running for public office and she was sentenced eventually to a 15-year jail term. After eight years in a prison cell, Victoire Ingabire was finally released and of course Kagame won that year's election with 93 percent of the vote. Another female candidate, Diane Rwigara during the 2017 presidential election was arrested on charges of terrorism, incitement to insurrection, forgery and tax evasion, along with her mother and a number of family members.

Quite obviously, announcing oneself as a candidate opposing the current president's ongoing dedication to serving Rwandans in perpetuity, is a foolhardy decision with a guaranteed outcome. But such is some hardy souls' dedication to the concept of justice and democracy that they nonetheless aspire to attain both for a country they love. Prime Minister Trudeau welcomed his Rwandan counterpart to Canada, thanking him for "a very good discussion on fighting plastic pollution and a variety of issues affecting our two countries", at the very time that Ms.Rwigara was in prison, her family's business sold to profit the government.

Rusesabagina, Hotel Rwanda actor Don Cheadle. Michael Kappeler/DDP/AFP/Getty Images

But Paul Kagame won 99 percent of the vote when he was once again re-elected to the presidency in 2017. "Canada congratulates Paul Kagame on his inauguration today as President of Rwanda", Canada's High Commission in Kigali stated. During that same visit to Canada, General James Kabarebe was hosted by Canada's Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan. A UN Security Council investigation identified General Kabarebe as the leader of a Zairean terrorist group held responsible for mass atrocities, mass rapes and "systematic, methodical and premeditated" attacks on Hutu refugees in the jungles of the Democratic Republic of Congo where they had fled when the savage Rwandan massacre of Tutsis ended.