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Rwandans in UK fear to be again the target of Kagame's agents

May 6, 2013 by Rwema IT Webmaster Leave a Comment

In 2011, the Metropolitan police confirmed to 2 UK residents of Rwandan origin that their government back home was targeting them to seriously harm them.

The Guardian wrote:

The Metropolitan police have warned two Rwandan exiles living in London that they face an "imminent threat" of assassination at the hands of the Rwandan government.

The dissidents received letters within hours of one another which advised them to take extra steps to increase their safety and raised the possibility of them leaving the country, the Times reported.

"Reliable intelligence states that the Rwandan government poses an imminent threat to your life," the warning letters read. "The threat could come in any form. You should be aware of other high-profile cases where action such as this has been conducted in the past. Conventional and unconventional means have been used."

On May 18^th of this year, the Rwandan president is organizing in London what his government has themed as Rwanda Day, which is a platform to rally his people abroad towards different policies of which some are unfortunately detrimental to the well-being of part of the Rwandan community inside Rwanda and abroad.

For the event scheduled for this month, several sources have confirmed that the London meeting will see hundreds of Rwandans supported in different ways to attend, sometime travelling from different parts of Europe, and even US, with government money, when Rwanda is struggling with financial problems, particularly this after Western aid has been significantly reduced.

Most of the time, what many don't  realize is that a good number of the people who are pressurized to come to these presidential events  abroad are students or professionals who, though being members of RPF elites who are settled in Western countries for different reasons, came as Rwandan nationals. But once abroad, sometime through government scholarships, they declared to host countries that they were refugees and were seeking asylum.

These are the same people who, because of operating as agents of intimidation or harassment of the real refugees, participate to Paul Kagame's cult of personality which are staged as Rwanda Day wherever he needs them.

A recent report by the human rights organization Global Campaign for Rwandans' Human Rights explains that

"Young people in diaspora particularly students on Rwandan government or donor scholarships informed us that they feel pressurized by embassies to participate in those activities. Some students also mentioned that the high frequency of those activities impede their education attainments."

What countries with these groups of Kagame's supporters should do would be to screen out those who are genuine refugees from those who abuse such status to work for the Rwandan government in harassing their compatriots who fled their country for their safety. And this should not be difficult if the task was pursued effectively.

By demanding from venues where these events are held to record participants who attend them, then checking their travel documents, assuming that they don't use several, when they visited Rwanda the last time.

Rwandans in exile have in the past been victims of Kagame's structures of repression. This has happened in several countries, Belgium, South Africa, Kenya, UK, etc. As the planned Rwanda Day nears, there is serious fear in the community settled in UK, particularly considered that there have already been bad precedents.

Francis Rwema