Hungry for Truth, Peace and Justice

Rwanda-UK: Boris Johnson and Paul Kagame in the business of asylum seekers

By Emmanuel Neretse
Echos d'Afrique
April 18, 2022

Boris Johnson and Paul Kagame

On Thursday, April 14, 2022, all the major Western media broadcast the news that the United Kingdom and Rwanda had signed an agreement according to which all asylum seekers in Great Britain who arrived in that country illegally would henceforth be expelled and deported to Rwanda.

Reactions have been numerous around the world. Albeit in the United Kingdom itself, where the opposition parties have criticized this agreement or in the NGOs, which have also denounced it. Even the UNHCR, responsible for the protection of refugees throughout the world, a mandate it holds as a United Nations body, has denounced it.

Beyond the legal and humanitarian considerations raised by these bodies, it is also necessary to underline and point out the underbelly of this deal as far as Paul Kagame and his clique in power in Kigali but also Boris Johnson and his conservative government are concerned.  That’s the purpose of this article.

Tip of the iceberg

The agreement with Rwanda, which will be financed by the United Kingdom to the tune of 120 million pounds (144 million euros), provides for the migrants - whose nationalities and conditions of arrival are not specified - to be "integrated into communities across the country," according to the statement issued by Kigali.

The share and calculations of each of the thieves

1. The British Boris Johnson, known as BoJo

According to analysts and specialists in the United Kingdom, Boris Johnson's invention is intended at creating a diversion. Indeed, he is caught up in scandals, the latest of which is the one that exposes the festivities that he organized in full lockdown and in violation of the measures that he himself had enacted against Covid 19. He fears that, after lawsuits and fines, these scandals will eventually bring down his government.

The other point of his calculation is that while the Conservative leader had promised to control immigration, one of the key issues in the Brexit campaign, the number of illegal immigrants crossing the Channel has tripled in the last year. Desperate to regain popularity and appeal to his voters, Boris Johnson and his government have been seeking for months to conclude agreements with third countries where to send migrants while waiting to process their cases. According to British media reports, London had already tried to make this idea work through two failed agreements with Albania and Ghana.

When he justifies his deal with Kagame by claiming that Rwanda is currently one of the few "safest" countries in the world where order and security prevail, the most stable in Africa..., one would like to ask him why he did not ask North Korea to conclude this agreement with him. According to his criteria, Kim Jong Un's country is obviously "safer" than Kagame's Rwanda. There, too, order and the cult of personality reign, and there is no opposition and therefore no demonstrations, just as in Rwanda.

2. The underbelly of the "Rwandan" Paul Kagame

Always well advised by his former masters who were leaders of the superpowers and now officially "his advisors", Paul Kagame was keen, before the announcement and signing of this controversial agreement, to annihilate in advance the embarrassing questions that would inevitably be raised by this agreement. He then toured some capitals to clear the way before the announcement of the agreement.  He first visited Zambia, a southern African country that hosts many Rwandan refugees. From there, he wanted to send a message to other countries in the region that host Rwandan refugees but had not fully complied with his order to implement the 2017 cessation clause (Malawi, South Africa, and his recent colony Mozambique), not to lift a finger and especially not to declare that Rwandans were also refugees in large numbers.

Having succeeded in getting people to admit that the 250,000 Rwandan refugees in the DRC were not human beings and therefore not people to be protected or even mentioned in the humanitarian framework, it was left with the case of Congo Brazzaville. Congo Brazzaville implemented Kagame's injunctions regarding the cessation clause to the letter and decreed that since 2017, any Rwandan refugee in Congo-Brazzaville would lose their refugee status. The two countries then pushed these ex-refugees to return to Rwanda. But only a small number did so. More than 8,500 remained, grouped in camps, and duly registered, but without papers, neither as refugees nor as residents. Paul Kagame's trip was therefore intended to ensure that this case would not be put on the balance sheet when evaluating and criticizing the agreement he was going to sign with Boris Johnson to host as a subcontractor, the deported asylum seekers from the UK.

Having outlined these preliminaries to the BoJo-Kagame agreement, let us now look at the Rwandan dictator's calculation and the expected gains from this "state" trafficking of human beings.

- In the short term

In the short term, Paul Kagame is counting on this agreement to silence the increasingly resounding voices of the powers that created him and have kept him in power for 28 years. The case of Paul Rusesabagina, the Hutu hero who saved the lives of thousands of Tutsis in 1994, but who later became an opponent of Paul Kagame's dictatorship, is stirring up public opinion in the United States and Kagame's lobbies are finding it difficult to defend their client. Indeed, Paul Rusesabagina was kidnapped during his trip from the United States with a stopover in Dubai, by Paul Kagame and brought back to Kigali in a private jet chartered by Kigali. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison without having been regularly tried because he did not attend the tragi-comic masquerade that was this trial.

Now that a so-called "democratic" power like the United Kingdom is touting the governance, justice, and respect for human rights in Paul Kagame's Rwanda to justify its choice of country to relocate its asylum seekers, the cries for Paul Rusesabagina's release will be unheard.

In the UK itself, Paul Kagame has begun to reap the benefits of this agreement. Johnston Busingye, who was appointed ambassador to London several months ago but whose accreditation was pending because he was accused of human rights violations when he was Minister of Justice, has just been accredited as Rwanda's ambassador to the UK.

Finally, the Commonwealth summit to be held in Kigali in June 2022 is almost a foregone conclusion. Indeed, it remained uncertain because several organizations and even member countries of the Commonwealth raised the question that Rwanda, which does not respect the fundamental principles of the Commonwealth, should rather be suspended than host its summit. Now that the agreement is signed, Boris Johnson as Prime Minister will even invite Queen Elizabeth II herself to go to Kigali to open the summit as Sovereign of these Commonwealth member countries.

Knowing that many Rwandans ask for political asylum in Great Britain every day, the agreement does not specify what Boris Johnson and Paul Kagame have reserved for them. But everything suggests that from now on these Rwandans, who are fleeing Paul Kagame's dictatorship and oppression, will simply be sent back to Rwanda on the sly because they cannot be among those whom BoJo intends to sell to Kagame under this iniquitous agreement.

- In the medium term

In addition to the 144 million euros that Kagame will pocket directly after the implementation of the terms of the agreement, it should be noted that this agreement stipulates that the returnees from the United Kingdom will not be accommodated in camps in Rwanda but will have individual housing throughout the country. By this clause, Paul Kagame and his clique will gain doubly because in addition to the millions pocketed at the outset and on which the Rwandan people and their so-called representatives but, lackeys of Kagame (the members of parliament) will have no right of review, in fact, these "relocated" people will stay in houses or hotels belonging to Kagame and his clique in power. These houses and hotels have remained desperately empty for years because they are so expensive and out of reach for a simple Rwandan citizen and even for an average tourist. Thus, as the duration of the agreement is not specified and therefore indefinite, Paul Kagame and his clique are assured in the medium term to make profitable their luxury buildings built to impress the world but were going bankrupt due to the lack of customers. And all this will be paid for by the United Kingdom.

- In the long term

It is this point that makes chills run up and down the spine when one discovers the long-term project of Paul Kagame and his clique that took over Rwanda in 1994.

Studies commissioned by Paul Kagame's creators and conducted by sociologists, psychologists, and other ethnologists, have concluded that within 50 years (half a century), a regime can transform the nature and identity of a people over whom it rules. In the case of Rwanda, they estimated that if the regime of Paul Kagame's clique succeeded in bringing to Rwanda immigrants who understood nothing about the culture and history of Rwanda but granted them rights and privileges superior to those of native Rwandans, in less than 50 years, the identity of the Rwandan as a Tutsi, a Hutu, a Twa, and his history and culture would be relegated to oblivion. But they added that it would be necessary to work in parallel to erase this culture and this history especially by silencing the elites and the opinion leaders who could ensure their safeguard. For illustration, they show him that at present the citizens of North America who matter are descendants of Irish, Italian, German, or Dutch immigrants...and that the natives (Redskins or "Indians" of America) who have not been genocided, remain second-class citizens and even pariahs on the lands of their ancestors. This is the long-term calculation that Kagame is making on the advice of his masters and creators.

The agreement between Boris Johnson and Paul Kagame of April 14, 2022, is, therefore, part of this long-term project that could be described as "genocidal".

In conclusion, we draw the attention of the ordinary Rwandan, of the African, and of all people who love peace and freedom and who are not interested, that this world has been ruled since 1990 by predators without faith or law, but that in their enterprise of domination, they make use of the inveterate criminals whom they have placed at the head of certain countries. The former people need the latter to serve as their cover and the latter people need the former to continue to enjoy impunity for their crimes. The case of Boris Johnson and Paul Kagame with the agreement of April 14, 2022, constitutes a textbook case study.

Source: Echos d’Afrique

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posted by Mamadou Kouyate @ 11:42 PM