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The widely reported arrest of Mr. Paul Rusesabagina from the famous movie “Hotel Rwanda” leaves much to be desired, in view of the fact that, according to Human Rights Watch, the detainee was criminally abducted by the Rwandan authorities while the man whom widely credited with saving hundreds of Tutsi lives during the Rwandan Civil War, in 1994, he was on a visit to Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE), from the United States of America, where Mr. Rusesabagina had been living for a lot of time. Some time ago (See “Rusesabagina of ‘Hotel Rwanda’ appears in Kigali Court on terrorism charges” Radio France International / Modernghana.com 9/14/20).
It is unclear what the former hotel manager in Dubai was doing at the time of his arrest, but Rusesabagina is known to be a staunch critic of the 26-year-old government of Paul Kagame, who has been widely criticized for using a clumsy approach to the governance, for quite some time. The arrest of Mr. Rusesabagina has also received scathing criticism in some human rights neighborhoods right here in the West, because it does not appear to have followed conventional international standards of application of extradition laws. If the above observation is valid, as stated by Human Rights Watch Director for Central Africa, Mr. Lewis Mudge, then this swashbuckling political tactic should be fully and emphatically condemned by the leaders of the African Union (AU).
The trial of Mr. Rusesabagina, which has already started in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, should also be closely monitored by representatives of the AU, the United Nations and other regional bodies on the African continent, in order to ensure that justice is served. judicial. Mr. Mudge, Human Rights Watch director for Central Africa, has already indicated that the Kagame regime may very well have circumvented the traditional extradition protocol because Kigali did not believe that any incriminating evidence that it claims to have accumulated against the victim of its apparently Unorthodox arrest for kidnapping or kidnapping, may not garner judicial scrutiny. Which simply means that the charges brought against the defendants, including terrorism, murder, kidnapping and arson, may be more related to the Kagame government’s cynical or Machiavellian attempt to permanently silence Mr. Rusesabagina through political revenge than to a substantial attempt.
It is also significant to note that the leaders of the African Union have been sitting as black and white, while Kagame has been organizing kangaroo elections in which the president of Rwanda has obtained 99 percent of the vote, as used to be the case or may that is still happening in francophone African countries like Togo, Gabon, Congo-Brazzaville and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Cote d’Ivoire for quite some time. Which should leave all progressive-minded Africans wondering about the functional purpose and usefulness of the African Union.
On the first day of their court appearance in Kigali, it was reported that Mr. Rusesabagina and his lawyer, David Rugaza, did not plead guilty to the charges read to them by the trial judge, perhaps obviously because both the accused as his lawyer were firm, he believed that the accusations were pure invention and politically motivated. Mr. Rugaza has also indicated that his client is a Belgian citizen and has had Belgian citizenship since 1999, and may have been illegally abducted by a foreign government whose key agents were upset by the fact that Mr. Rusesabagina would use liberally your new law. he found freedom of expression while abroad as a Belgian citizen against the Kagame government. Belgium, it should be noted, ruled Rwanda as a colonial possession of the former until July 1962.
For the present author, however, the importance of Mr. Rusesabagina lies in the fact that for more than two decades, this apparent victim of President Kagame’s kangaroo judicial tactic was undoubtedly recognized worldwide as one of the few great spirits and conciliatory elements of a country. that was tragically and inexcusably convulsed with an act of barbarism the level and extent of which had not been experienced in that part of the African continent for quite some time. Then also, I was inspired to pick up the story of Mr. Rusesabagina because I personally taught the movie “Hotel Rwanda”, with the role of Mr. Rusesabagina as a hotel manager played by Don Cheadle (aka Donald Frank Cheadle, Jr), the renowned African-American actor, in some of my Principles of Journalism classes in the recent past.
Also, not long ago, I have been told that Mr. Rusesabagina gave a keynote presentation – I was unable to attend – at the Community College of the State University of New York, where I have been teaching for almost 24 years. There also appears to be a marked ethnocentric advantage to the arrest and prosecution of Mr. Rusesabagina, which the leaders of the African Union and the world community must not fail to seriously acknowledge as such and address vigorously. Of course, it would not be Rwanda if tribalism were not front and center in the Rusesabagina trial.
* Visit my blog at: KwameOkoampaAhoofeJr
By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
September 20, 2020
E-mail: [email protected]
