WHEN Paul Kagame led Rwandan rebel forces to victory in 1994, he was
praised not only for halting a genocide that had killed half a million
people, but also for advocating reconciliation rather than revenge.
After he became president in 2000, he was acclaimed as a democratic
visionary. Under his leadership, Rwanda is attracting investment,
fighting corruption and improving health and education.
But a shadow hangs over Mr. Kagame’s Rwanda, in the form of persistent
concern about intimidation of the political opposition. Outspoken
journalists and politicians have disappeared or died in mysterious
circumstances, while the government insists that some thoughts are too
dangerous to permit, in the aftermath of genocide.
This week, a court in the capital, Kigali, postponed — for the third
time — a verdict in the trial of the opposition leader Victoire
Ingabire. Also this week, a panel of United Nations experts found that top Rwandan military officers had helped organize, finance and arm mutinous rebels across the border, in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Ms. Ingabire, who had lived outside the country since before the
genocide and is a member of the Hutu majority, stirred immediate
controversy when she returned in 2010 and spoke openly about ethnic
politics — a taboo subject since the genocide. She was blocked from
running for president. Several weeks after the election, which Mr.
Kagame won with 93 percent of the vote, she was arrested for violating a
2008 law that prohibits “genocide ideology.” Ms. Ingabire had suggested
that innocent majority Hutus who died during the genocide deserved to
be mourned alongside the minority Tutsis who were massacred by Hutu
militias. She has said her goal was reconciliation, not historical
revisionism.
Ms. Ingabire is only the most recent critic of the Kagame government to
face dire consequences. In 2010, Lt. Gen. Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa, a
former Kagame ally, was shot in Johannesburg, where he was living in
exile. He survived, but days later, Jean-Léonard Rugambage, deputy
editor of the newspaper Umuvugizi, was shot dead in Kigali after it
published an online article linking Rwanda’s security forces to the
attack in Johannesburg. Two weeks later, another opposition leader,
André Kagwa Rwisereka, was found beheaded in southern Rwanda.
The government denied responsibility for any of the attacks, but they
fit a pattern of harassment that included a crackdown on independent
media.
Mr. Kagame’s resounding victory did not lessen his government’s distaste
for criticism. Early last year, two journalists were sentenced to
prison for insulting the president and violating the law against
“genocide ideology.”
Last November, an online journalist, Charles Ingabire (no relation to
Victoire), received death threats and was then fatally shot as he left a
bar in Kampala, Uganda, where he had been living in exile. No one has
been charged.
Many outsiders find it hard to understand why Mr. Kagame would allow
such human rights abuses, when Rwanda needs international support to
meet the challenges of overpopulation and a paucity of natural
resources. Mr. Kagame has advocated high-tech investment and promoted
education in English instead of French. International investment has
risen, and transparency has improved. Visitors to Kigali are invariably
impressed by the government officials and businessmen they encounter.
Most of these Rwandans, like Mr. Kagame, are repatriated refugees from
the ethnic Tutsi minority who returned after the genocide.
Some outsiders, mindful of the intense trauma Rwandans suffered 18 years
ago, are willing to tolerate the crackdown on dissent as long as
economic growth and the appearance of social calm continue.
But that is a mistake. It is time to worry instead that Mr. Kagame is
rebuilding the country with authoritarian practices that could
ultimately undermine Rwanda’s economic achievements.
His intolerance of dissent stifles the debate and free thought Rwanda
needs if it is to become a modern, technologically advanced economy. The
coercive nature of his government’s national unity program could
someday drag it back into ethnic conflict.
The government says it wants to create a new identity in which all would
see themselves as Rwandans, neither Hutu nor Tutsi. But this strikes
many Rwandans as an effort to impose a false unity on them while
cynically using the threat of renewed violence to strengthen the
government’s position.
An inability to speak openly about ethnic feelings allows ethnic
resentments to fester as whispers. Many Hutus privately complain not
only that Tutsis monopolize the government but that Tutsis are the sole
beneficiaries of Rwanda’s growth.
The Kagame government has a rare opportunity to relax its restrictions
on freedom of expression. One reason given for extending Ms. Ingabire’s
wait for a verdict is that Rwanda’s Supreme Court has yet to hand down a
ruling on a challenge to the constitutionality of the “genocide
ideology” law. If the government were to amend or rescind the law, it
would be a good first step toward welcoming free and responsible debate.
The government should also respond to concerns about its military
interference in Congo by acknowledging its role in the conflict there —
particularly human rights abuses in eastern Congo from 1998 to 2002 —
and by helping to apprehend Bosco Ntaganda, a Rwandan and a protégé of
the Kagame government, whom the International Criminal Court has
indicted for war crimes.
Steps like these could safeguard Rwanda’s reputation as an innovative
leader for East Africa. In the end, Mr. Kagame’s reaction to growing
criticism this summer will show whether he is truly committed to
Rwanda’s transformation, or only to preserving his power.
