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Dr David Himbara - Rwanda isn’t anyone’s darling, but to its strategic interests

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The international friends that engage with Rwanda and its leadership don’t do so out of charity, they do that because it is a constructive partnership. The list of friends hasn’t reduced, as RNC-propagandist Dr David Himbara would like us to believe, but rather keeps at growing. Himbara may not be aware that at COP28 in Dubai, Rwanda’s innovative green vision won accolades. Rwanda’s pavilion was the-go-to place for everyone looking for the big idea. Green City Kigali, a masterplan for the sustainable and inclusive expansion of urban Kigali also won the World Architecture Festival (WAF) Future Project Masterplan Award last week. The Rwandan delegation to COP28 led by President Paul Kagame will be coming back home with over $250m in partnership financing for different green projects. Himbara, this to us here in Rwanda and every right-thinking person, doesn’t look like a country in distress. I will volunteer others numbers that speak for themselves. Dr Himbara, you don’t have to trust
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Did ‘Hotel Rwanda’’s Paul Rusesabagina Just Sabotage Armenia-Azerbaijan Peace?

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Paul Rusesabagina came to fame two decades ago as the hero in the movie  Hotel Rwanda . While reality was not as Hollywood depicted, fame sparked first ambition and then, failing to gain support in Rwanda, bitterness. He spoke about the necessity to overthrow the Rwandan government by any means necessary and then  acted on it , wiring money to a terrorist group. Under Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, one of the State Department’s top goals in Africa was to convince Burundi, the continent’s poorest country, to  cease allowing  cross-border insurgents to use its territory. He succeeded. Rusesabagina fumed. In June 2020, Évariste Ndayishimiye became president of Burundi. Rusesabagina sought to convince him to cease stopping the terrorists Rusesabagina funded. After his capture, Rusesabagina’s story that he was taking a private jet to Burundi to talk to a church never made sense given Burundi’s poverty and the expense of international private charters. After the plane diverted to Rwanda, a
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Translating Ingabire Victoire’s Rubandanyamwishi Coded Messages for Non-Rwandan Audiences

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Ingabire Victoire Umuhoza is being sanitized in a carefully choreographed campaign. She has published in Aljazeera, the Guardian, OpenDemocracy and different other media. Ingabire’s backers want to change her from the ethnic extremist she is, to an international female face of opposition in Rwanda. However, either knowingly or unknowingly, Ingabire’s financiers are letting her continue spreading an old divisionist ideology. Ingabire knows she is fooling non-Rwandan readers, while sending her coded messages to Kinyarwanda speakers both in Rwanda and outside. In a recent interview with British newspaper The Times, Ingabire depicts herself as concerned about unemployment in Rwanda. When Ingabire claims “we have so many young people without jobs”, in actual sense is saying “rubandanyamwinshi”, which is the RTLM hate radio narrative to refer to “Hutus”. For the article for OpenDemocracy, Ingabire writes about the policy to help women work from gazetted places. She alleges the wome
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Anjan Sundaram, done. HRW, done. Concubine Michela Wrong, too. We Know Who’s Next?

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  The falsehoods. The fabrications. The Rwandaphobia. Ladies and gentlemen, join me in a rapturous welcome to the Genocide denial lobby unwilling to let us mourn our dead in peace. The chorus we are seeing this week is expected. First, it was Human Rights Watch through the usual brands Lewis Mudge and his mentor Keneth Roth. Then came caste-traumatised Indian Anjan Sundaram via The New York Times. The latest, is the Patrick Karegeya pained concubine. She is definitely not the last. The perpetrators of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi, their offspring, and their white backers, are running a well-oiled campaign to maintain the alternative “truth”. The script is the same. Single out President Paul Kagame. Paint him as self serving dictator reigning over a powerless people, and solely responsible for the mess in Congo. However, those happily insulting Kagame, are quickest to petition Twitter or Facebook to ban people who come to his defense. The other bit of the script is that
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Britain: More Than 3,000 People Charged Yearly for Online “Offensive Communication”

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In the United Kingdom, anything you post on Twitter, Facebook or any other social media platform could bring the cops to your door. It can be anything, from grumbling about a bad service at the airport, or speaking about victims of a bombing in Afghanistan. According to accounts by two news platforms, The Verge and The Register , arrests and charging of those who fall fowl of the law concerns what is commonly known as “section 127”. Latest figures are not available . However, going back some years, the data is staggering. In 2012, over 3,000 were arrest for posting different things online. That year, to be exact, 1,423 people were found guilty and were jailed or fined up to £5,000 which is about Frw 6million. So how many have faced same wrath in Rwanda? Imagine if less than 10 are arrested in Rwanda.                          
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Germany: Over 200 People Charged Every Year Over Social Media Posts

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Last year in September, The New York Times carried an extensive investigation into social media arrests in Germany. The Times found that there is no national database that keeps data on social media arrests. However, the paper found more than 8,500 cases tracked by different agencies. Overall, more than 1,000 people have been charged or punished since 2018, a figure many experts said is probably much higher. How many were arrested in Rwanda for what they post on social media? The jury is out there for you to decide.                    
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The genesis of Dr David Himbara's anger

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Dr David Himbara never recovered from being refused entry into Village Urugwiro. Around the end of 2009, Himbara was replaced from his job in Office of the President. The following day, Himbara woke up very early as usual going to work. At the entrance, the presidential security couldn’t let him in. It’s obvious, because security protocols require that any guests are recorded beforehand. He had no invitation. Arrogant as he had always been, Himbara probably imagined that he would walk into the presidential office whenever he pleases. I highly doubt anyone else, including the President’s family, apart from the First Lady perhaps, have that right of unfettered access. The Presidency and the holder, is an institution of a country, whose security becomes of paramount importance. However, Himbara had convinced himself, from years of having access there, that he could walk in at anytime he wished. In his usual English language bravado, Himbara shouted at the guards at the entrance, a
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