Ten years ago this month, the Rwandan genocide came to an end. For months, the world had stood by and done nothing, while Rwandan leaders organized the murder of more than half a million people. It was a rebel group, not the United Nations or any international force, which finally defeated the genocidal government.
The victors, the Rwandan Patriotic Front, is still in power. It has vowed to fight against anyone who propagates genocide—on the face of it, a laudable aim. But the "fight against genocide" has become an excuse for new abuses. It served to justify four years of Rwandan occupation of eastern Congo, which in turn sparked Africa's bloodiest war. The genocide was used as a pretext for dissolving the main opposition party before presidential elections last year. Now, the RPF-dominated parliament wants the country's largest and most respected human rights organization to be dissolved—allegedly in the name of preventing genocide.
In order to justify action against the League for the Promotion and Defence of Human Rights (usually known by its French-language acronym, Liprodhor) the parliament insists that Liprodhor "supports genocidal ideas." In reality, since well before the 1994 genocide, Liprodhor defended the rights of all Rwandans. It sought international action to avert the impending genocide. Those appeals fell on deaf ears. In the past decade, it has monitored genocide trials, pressing for justice to be both swift and fair.
On a recent visit to the Rwandan capital, Kigali, I was struck by the atmosphere of intimidation. "If they can do this to Liprodhor, what will become of us?" asked one activist, with fear in her eyes, who has frequently spoken out in the past.
Many committed activists have had to flee Rwanda in recent years. Voices criticizing government abuses have become increasingly isolated; without Liprodhor, they are in danger of being silenced altogether. The way to prevent genocide is through greater tolerance—not by muzzling those who work to protect human rights. "I know that it is difficult to manage a post-genocide society, but we should not be prisoners of our tragic past," one official from Liprodhor told a journalist last week, after fleeing to the Ugandan capital, Kampala.
Meanwhile, shamefully, the rest of the world says nothing. The British government, the largest single donor to Rwanda, is understood to have raised its concerns with the Rwandan government in private—to no apparent effect. It has repeatedly refused in recent years to speak out against Rwandan abuses, whether in Rwanda itself or in the Democratic Republic of Congo, apparently still paralysed by the (justified) guilt over the Western failures in 1994. Today, Britain remains silent, as do other powerful donors. While they wait, independent civil society is suffocated.
Crimes in the past do not justify repression in the present. What will it take for the British and other governments to wake up to that self-evident truth?
