NEW TIMES RWANDA
Kenyan lawyer Makau Mutua has jumped on the bandwagon of the sinister anti-Rwanda lobby in the West which has, over the last year, cynically sought to ignore all the evidence surrounding the arrest, prosecution, and ultimate conviction of Paul Rusesabagina on charges related to terrorism, choosing to turn a blind eye on the crimes he committed against the people of Nyabimata in Nyamagabe district, and instead serving up smear against Rwanda.
The strategy, from early on, was to throw enough dirt at Rwanda in the hope that it would generate pressure that would see Rusesabagina walk free.
Mutua’s falsehoods, therefore, aren’t anything new as he evidently recycled old and tired propaganda. Nonetheless, as a Kenyan and a lawyer you wouldn’t expect him to simply describe a murder that happened in his own country as a “suspicious hit” and therefore conclude that Rwanda must have done it.
In this case, which he says took place in Nairobi, Mutua doesn’t quote any Kenyan authority report, nor does he refer to any police or prosecution documentation that shows Rwanda had anything to do with the killing. Indeed, all the accusations in his piece are baseless fabrications that he and his ilk think will help advance the cause of a convicted terrorist criminal.
Before enlisting to join the Rusesabagina spin and smear crew, Mutua should have first examined the most glaring facts Rusesabagina’s lobbyists wouldn’t want the world to consider. He should have made some effort to interview people in Rwanda, primarily the survivors of the attacks in Nyabimata, carried out by Paul Rusasabagina’s terrorist forces.
Like the rest of the lobbyists behind Rusesabagina, Mutua believes Rwanda has no right to use the same methods used by countries in Europe and North America to go after individuals who have committed crimes on its territory. It is an attitude rooted in racism and white arrogance which, unfortunately, doesn’t seem to bother certain black people in the 21st century.
In October 2013, news broke around the world that Belgian police had arrested a leading Somali pirate, after successfully luring him into the country with false promises to feature in a ground-breaking documentary. German public broadcaster, Deutsche Welle reported that Abdi Hassan “was lured onto the European soil with false promises” where Belgian authorities took him into custody with an alleged accomplice “after fooling them into coming to the country” Hassan was wanted for his role in the hijacking of dozens of commercial vessels from 2008 to 2013.
The European Union (EU) hailed the entrapment and subsequent arrest of Abdi Hassan as “a significant step in the fight against terrorism”, with the then EU Policy Chief, Catherine Ashton’s spokesperson stating that Brussels welcomed the arrest.
Then in June 2015, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) arrested Somali national Ali Omar Ader, with the Ottawa Citizen reporting that he was apprehended “at the end of a five-year undercover operation designed to lure him to Canada”.
The Canadian police had worked to ensnare Ader to stand trial for “his alleged role in the kidnapping of Canadian journalist, Amanda Lindhout”. She had been released after 460 days in captivity with Australian photographer, Nigel Brennan when their families paid a 600,000-dollar ransom.
Like the Belgian and Canadian police did to catch dangerous criminals wanted in their jurisdictions to answer charges related to terrorism, Rwanda’s law enforcement authorities, in August 2020, lured Paul Rusesabagina to have him stand trial on account of his leading role in the 2018 terrorist attacks in Nyabimata in Nyamagabe district, which left several innocent people dead and many more mimed.
However, it quickly became clear that what was taken for granted and easily applicable in the European Union and North America was prohibited for Rwanda, an African country.
All of a sudden, the rules changed and unlike Abdi Hassan and Ali Omar Ader’s entrapments in Belgium and Canada respectively, Western politicians and the news media in their countries labeled Rusesabagina’s case as “kidnapping”.
Strange and outrageous as it is, the white privilege mentality that prevails in these societies still works to promote unequal treatment that translates into open discrimination against certain countries based on the colour of the population that inhabit them.
White privilege is a term closely associated with racism and how white societies have sought to be treated as superior and more deserving in every human endeavour in relation to other peoples, whereby they insist on playing by different rules, even when the circumstances are exactly the same.
When the government of Rwanda announced that Rusesabagina was going to be tried for his crimes, white racism quickly manifested itself with its representatives seeking to delegitimize Rwanda’s judicial system, arrogantly insisting that he would get a fair trial only if he is represented by Caucasian lawyers. A cabal of white men from the United States, Canada, Europe and even Australia lined themselves up claiming to be his “international” lawyers.
The men who were asserting the right to represent Rusesabagina knew very well that they couldn’t just walk into another country’s courtroom and represent a suspect on trial.
They knew it requires certain reciprocal agreements and protocols but continued to demonstrate that the rules don’t apply to them. Soon they launched a vicious propaganda campaign falsely accusing Kigali of denying them permission to represent their client.
Yet, according to the United States State Department advisory to their nationals “Attorneys from the United States may not represent in foreign courts unless they admitted to practice before them. It goes on to advise Americans who find themselves on the wrong side of the law in foreign countries that “questions involving interpretation of specific laws should be addressed to foreign attorneys”.
The case involving Rusesabagina isn’t the first scenario where white arrogance has sought to claim exemption from the requirements of the laws of Rwanda. In 2010, well-known genocide denier, Peter Erlinder, after warnings from his colleagues not to come to Rwanda on account of his documented record of fostering denial of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi, which constitutes punishable crimes under the law in Rwanda, flew into Kigali convinced he was untouchable.
He was claiming to represent another terrorist suspect, Victoire Ingabire, but quickly learnt on arrival that the law in Rwanda is colour blind and was taken into custody. Released a few weeks later, on humanitarian grounds Erlinder flew back to a real lawless society when he was robbed at gunpoint in his hometown of St Paul, Minnesota.
The lobbyists and their allies who created the Rusesabagina fraud saw all the evidence, and most of them knew it existed, way before he was arrested since they were there when he bragged about the 2018 terrorist attacks in Nyamagabe district as the work of his “boys”, but have chosen to portray him as a “victim”.
They have somehow convinced themselves that spreading falsehoods against Rwanda will erase their own complicity. It won’t.
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