Arsenal and Paris Saint-Germain both have multi-million sponsorship agreements with the Rwandan government but the actions of authoritarian president Paul Kagame and the arrest of Paul Rusesabagina have led to allegations of human rights abuses
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2010s and laterEdit
A map of incarceration rates by country.
[30]
In the lead-up to the
2010 presidential election, the
United Nations "demanded a full investigation into allegations of politically motivated killings of opposition figures".
André Kagwa Rwisereka, the president of the
Democratic Green Party of Rwanda, was found beheaded. "[A] lawyer who had participated in genocide trials at a UN tribunal was shot dead". There was a murder attempt on
Kayumba Nyamwasa, "a former senior Rwandan general who had fallen out with Kagame". And
Jean-Léonard Rugambage, a journalist investigating that attempted murder, was himself murdered.
[31][32]
In 2011,
Amnesty International criticized the continued detention of former transportation minister and Bizimungu ally
Charles Ntakirutinka, who was seven years into a ten-year sentence at
Kigali central prison.
[33] Amnesty International called him a
prisoner of conscience and named him a 2011 "priority case".
[33]
In October 2012, the body of
Théogène Turatsinze, a Rwandan businessman living in Mozambique, who was thought to have "had access to politically sensitive financial information related to certain Rwandan government insiders", was found tied up and floating in the sea. Police in Mozambique "initially indicated Rwandan government involvement in the killing before contacting the government and changing its characterization to a common crime. Rwandan government officials publicly condemned the killing and denied involvement."
[34] Foreign media connected the murder to those of several prominent critics of the Rwandan government over the previous two years.
[35][36]
To improve the perception of its human rights record, the Rwandan government in 2009 engaged a U. S. public relations firm,
Racepoint Group, who had improved the image of Libya's
Gaddafi, Tunisia, Angola, Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia, and Senegal. An internet site was set up by BTP advisers, a British firm, to attack critics. Racepoint's agreement with the government stated that it would "flood" the Internet and the media with positive stories about Rwanda.
[37]
In 2020, regime critic
Paul Rusesabagina who had fled the country and become a Belgian citizen, was tricked into boarding a private flight to Rwanda, arrested, and the next year sentenced to 25 years in prison on charges that human rights advocates called politically motivated.
Critics of the Rwandan government dead or missingEdit
- 1995: Journalist Manasse Mugabo disappears in Kigali; not seen again.[38]
- 1996: RPF colonel and former MP Théoneste Lizinde and businessman Augustin Bugirimfura shot dead in Nairobi.[39]
- 1998: Journalist Emmanuel Munyemanzi disappears from Kigali; body spotted in city but not returned to family.[38]
- 1998: First post-genocide Interior Minister Seth Sendashonga shot dead in Nairobi. A previous attempt at his life had been made in 1996.[39][40]
- 2000: First post-genocide President Pasteur Bizimungu's adviser, Asiel Kabera, shot dead in Kigali.[38]
- 2003: EX-RPF officer and top judge Augustin Cyiza and magistrate Eliezar Runyaruka disappear from Kigali; not seen again.[38]
- 2003: Opposition MP Leonard Hitimana disappears from Kigali; not seen again.[38]
- 2010: Ex-RPF officer Faustin Kayumbas Nyamwasa shot and wounded in Johannesburg.[38]
- 2010: Journalist Jean-Leonard Rugambage gunned down in Kigali.[38]
- 2010: Reporter Dominique Makeli survives abduction in Kampala.[38]
- 2010: André Kagwa Rwisereka, deputy leader of the Democratic Green Party, found beheaded.[31]
- 2011: Charles Ingabire, a journalist and "outspoken critic of the Rwandan government", gunned down in Kampala.[41]
- 2014: Patrick Karegeya, former head of the foreign Intelligence services and supporter of the opposition, found strangled in a hotel in Johannesburg.[42]
- 2020: Kizito Mihigo, songwriter who fell into disfavour of the regime after a song released in 2014, died in a police cell days after being arrested.[43]