Rwanda’s Global Ecosystem of Repression, Daily Brief, 10 October, 2023

It may or may not surprise you that the Rwandan government goes to extraordinary lengths to silence its critics. They use things like wide-spread surveillance and outright violence, including kidnapping and disappearing people. 

What almost surely will surprise you, however – if you’re not Rwandan, of course – is that Rwandan authorities may be doing it in your country, in your town, perhaps even in your neighborhood.  

Rwandan authorities and their proxies have a worldwide network to monitor Rwandans living abroad and scope out criticism of the government. A new report details how this global ecosystem of repression extends into Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Kenya, Mozambique, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, the United Kingdom, the United States, and more. 

The Rwandan government uses a wide variety of measures to go after critics abroad. In the east and southern African countries, Rwandans have been killed, forcibly disappeared, kidnapped, physically attacked, or threatened to be sent back to Rwanda.  

They sometimes work through local authorities and get people wrongfully arrested. They also manipulate Interpol (the International Criminal Police Organization) and their system of Red Notices, alerts seeking the arrest and extradition of a wanted person. 

Perhaps most insidiously, the Rwandan authorities intimidate Rwandans abroad by targeting their relatives in Rwanda. Even when a person lives in a freer country – even when that person perhaps sought to live in that country precisely because of its greater freedom – they keep their mouths shut, for fear of seeing their family members tortured, killed, or disappeared. 

Incredibly, authorities of the countries where Rwandans are living abroad are aware of this repression in their midst but aren’t doing much about it. Sometimes, they even seem to be assisting the repression. 

The US government, for example, deported a former trade union official despite a leaked FBI report stating that a Rwandan intelligence agent had “almost certainly” planted false information against the accused. 

In the UK, authorities told Rwandans for years to be wary of being tracked, until the British government struck an appalling deal with Rwanda to send asylum seekers there.  

In South Africa, investigations into suspected killings have stalled and one person’s relative was warned to stop pressing for answers. In Uganda, in Mozambique, the story is much the same. 

In almost all cases of kidnappings, forced disappearances, or suspicious killings abroad, investigations have stalled or failed to result in any arrests or prosecutions.   

When will Rwanda’s international partners finally do something about this? When will they act against Rwanda’s extensive human rights abuses, which reach right into their own backyards?