In Kigali he is accused of terrorism in a mock trial. The federal government is silent. The Rwandan court reported the arrest of Paul Rusesabagina at the end of August last year . In November 2018, Rwanda had issued an international arrest warrant against the man who single-handedly saved more lives than the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) during the Rwandan genocide. The UN peacekeeping force, including Belgian paratroopers, was stationed in the African country to maintain the peace between Hutus and Tutsis, but failed badly.
When on April 6, 1994, the plane of the Rwandan president Juvénal Habyarimana was downed and then the massacres erupted and ten Belgian paratroopers were also murdered, Rusesabagina was alone in charge of Hôtel des Mille Collines. In the building that was then still owned by the Belgian airline Sabena, more than 1,200 Tutsis and Hutus found protection against the murdering and marauding Interahamwe militias. They survived thanks to the interventions and possibly the bribery of the militia commanders by Rusesabagina. His story later went around the world in the romanticized Hollywood film ‘Hotel Rwanda’.
In 1996, Rusesabagina was granted asylum in Belgium with his family, because he was no longer safe in his native country due to his criticism of the Paul Kagame regime. He received Belgian nationality and settled in Brussels, where he earned a living as a taxi driver. He later moved to San Antonio, Texas. There he left in August of last year via Dubai to Bujumbura in Burundi. But the private plane that took him on board landed in Kigali, where he was promptly arrested. The trap was set by the Rwandan services, which are not even making it a secret. The Rwandan government admitted to paying for the plane that brought Rusesabagina to Kigali.
Wilmès
The fact that the now 66-year-old Rusesabagina, a Belgian fellow citizen, was kidnapped, is irrelevant in the handling of the lawsuit against him, according to the Rwandan court. In a mock trial, he now has to defend himself against the charge of terrorism and support for the rebel movement Forces de Libération Nationale (FLN). He did not get to see his Belgian lawyer. Rusesabagina could not view the file in advance, but according to the Rwandan court such a detail was no reason to postpone the case.
The Belgian federal government seems to accept the situation and remains silent. Especially after the Rwandan Minister of Foreign Affairs Vincent Biruta, after a meeting with the Belgian ambassador Benoît Ryelandt, has given little diplomatic warning that it will affect the good relations between the two countries if Belgium takes the fate of the Rusesabagina family to heart . Since then, Secretary of State Sophie Wilmès has limited her intervention to cautiously expressing her concerns about the health of Rusesabagina, who is a heart sufferer. The fact that a Belgian citizen was literally kidnapped and barely got access to the complaints against him, seems to be less of a concern to Minister Wilmès.
The fact that a Belgian citizen was literally kidnapped and barely got access to the complaints against him, seems to be less of a concern to Minister Wilmès.
It is of course known that the leaders of the MR, the minister’s party, always maintained close ties with the Paul Kagame regime. Both Louis Michel as Secretary of State and his son Charles Michel as Prime Minister have never asked tough questions about Kagame’s floats. Recently, as European President, Charles Michel conferred with Kagame on an international treaty for pandemic preparedness and response without touching the fate of his fellow countryman Rusesabagina. However, the European Parliament was already concerned about his well-being in February.
Disdain for the Belgians
Belgium settles in the attitude of the West, which gives preferential treatment to Kagame. Rwanda is overloaded with money. The Rwandan strongman was once embarrassedly feted at the World Economic Forum in Davos. The Commonwealth Summit will take place in Kigali later this year. This should come as no surprise, as a key adviser to Kagame is former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
France is also trying to get a white foot in Kigali. Last week, a French commission published its decision that France bears crushing responsibilities in the Rwandan genocide . The committee examined the Rwandan drama at the request of President Emmanuel Macron.
The culprit in the report is then-president François Mitterrand, who was overly compliant with the regime of his Rwandan colleague Habyarimana and who ignored all omens of impending disaster. Under the reign of the cynical Mitterrand, Rwanda, say the Hutu regime, was generously supplied with weapons and ammunition, and French army officers trained Rwandan soldiers.
Even after the attack on Habyarimana, the French troops did little to stop the massacres. Paul Kagame’s Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), which had started a guerrilla campaign against the regime in Kigali from Uganda in the early 1990s, is hardly to blame, according to the committee. The latter plays right in the cards of President Macron, who has been developing ties with Kagame for some time now.
Fable convenue
The French report fits in with the ‘fable convenue’ that is being put up around the Rwandan genocide throughout the West today: Kagame as the man who stopped the genocide. In fact, in the European capitals they prefer not to hear what really happened and who 27 years ago ordered the attack on Habyarimana and thus ignited the genocide.
Perhaps they should read at Foreign Affairs what British journalist Michela Wrong, an African reporter, writes about this in her latest book ‘Do Not Disturb: The Story of a Political Murder and an African Regime Gone Bad’.
Wrong, who followed the Rwandan genocide for the BBC, Reuters and Financial Times, has drawn her story around the 2014 murder in South Africa of Patrick Karegeya, former confidant of Kagame and ex-chief of Rwandan intelligence. Karegeya once admitted to being involved with the team that brought down the plane. He also announced that the Congolese dictator Laurent-Désiré Kabila was murdered by order of Kigali.
Karegeya is not the only ex-supporter of Kagame who was killed. The same happened with Seth Sendashonga, a moderate Hutu who was for a time Minister of the Interior but fell into disagreement with Kagame. His ex-Chief of Staff Théogene Rudasingwa, who once testified about the RPF’s part in the genocide, is now in the United States and confessed, “We’ve created a monster.” The fact that Kagame gets away with all this explains his growing disdain for Belgians.
The internationally renowned Africa Desk of yesteryear is understaffed, and that is to put it politely.
Foreign Affairs is now a drifting department with few or no directives. Once something prestigious, today it is seen as a consolation prize in government formation, as it is now for ex-Prime Minister Wilmès. The internationally renowned Africa Desk of yesteryear is understaffed, and that is to put it politely. The federal government doesn’t even seem to notice.
Meanwhile, the life of a fellow countryman is at stake in Kigali. The federal government and the European Union have already been more concerned about the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny than about the fate of the hero of the Hôtel des Mille Collines.
