The Rwandan Patriot

  By its own ‘About us’, The Chronicle of Higher Education is a student news platform established in 1966 to cover American colleges. With a monthly online viewership of over two million, the publication claims to be a source of “essential tools, career opportunities, and knowledge to succeed in a rapidly changing world”. However, the paper’s editorial board has either unwillingly allowed to be misled into glorification of terrorism, or the fact that it’s an African situation. Tom Zoellner’s missive published March 29, 2022, is nothing more than blatant indifference to the facts. First, Zoellner doesn’t tell readers that he is co-author of ‘An Ordinary Man: An Autobiography' about Paul Rusesabagina which fabricates events that never happened. The “sham” trial of Rusesabagina, as Zoellner describes it, has been conducted with the utmost fairness and openness. Proceedings were carried live on television and online for every well-meaning observer to make own judgement. Ruse...

  Living on the fringes of conventional social order is an exhausting sport. There is a band of attention-seekers whose circle has gotten so small that they wake up everyday to pat each other for consolation. They have fabricated their own alternative Rwanda and are so immersed into it that the actual facts on the ground don’t matter anymore. They have their own social support system whereby they excitingly spread each others’ works. In any given week, it will be Jeffrey Smith, who runs an extortion ring called Vanguard Africa, claiming credit for spreading democracy in Africa. If it’s not Smith, you will see Judi Rever/Michela Wrong’s conspiracy theories about Rwandan officials.  At their service too is Human Rights Watch which appears to have run out of what to write, that it is recycling old incidents like they happened yesterday. Throughout the day today, Human Rights Watch’s report has been fact-checked. The results left many in shock. Human Rights Watch reported about a ...

Maina Kiai is former UN special rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association. He is currently working with Human Rights Watch.  One thing he has been consistent about is his unweaving support for anarchy. He tried to sow such nonsense in the UK, which reminded his employer that it won’t tolerate such interference. Result – Kiai’s contract wasn’t renewed.  Kiai’s latest, rather expected stance, is that Rwandan authorities orchestrated internal wrangles in a local NGO called LIPRODOR.  Kiai goes ahead to demonstrate how a former head of the NGO sought redress from the African Court of Human and Peoples’ Rights in Arusha, Tanzania. The cause was opened in 2015. And indeed, as Kiai himself writes, the court, which has itself been heavily critical on Rwanda through it’s previous cases filed there, determined that the case about LIPRODOR was “inadmissible because domestic remedies hadn’t been exhausted.” In a nutshell, the court’s verdict was that...

The Obsessive-compulsive disorder patient David Himbara has teamed up with Tom Zoellner who crafted Paul Rusesabagina’s fraudulent heroism.  Both have written in the MINN POST , regional newspaper based in the U.S state of Minnesota. A brilliant move indeed, yet comes out a misguided attack on one of the most popular politicians in the U.S.  Both question the judgement of Omar Ilhan, the Congressional Representative for Minnesota’s 5th congressional district in Minneapolis.  Representative Omar refused to back the politically motivated resolution introduced by Congressional counterpart Joaquin Castro which sought for release of terror financer Paul Rusesabagina from prison in Rwanda. The resolution is lacking in its merits because it completely and deliberately whitewashes Rusesabagina’s terrorism activities.  As somebody who has stood with right over political survival, everyone remembers how an entire system battled Representative Omar during the 2020 elections....

Last week, British newspaper Mirror joined the condescending news coverage of a very innovative idea - the engagement that Arsenal and PSG football clubs have with Visit Rwanda.  The writer attempts to cast a spell of doubt over the idea, with a summation that it was a government attempt to "launder its reputation through sport". Not only is this far from the truth, the Mirror deliberately leaves out key aspects that have made the Visit Rwanda campaign such a success.  Before I get into what is wrong with Mirror article, and previous ones ran by the Guardian and Daily Mail, let me put the facts out clearly. On 23 May 2018, Rwanda announced that it had signed a ‘Visit Rwanda’ sleeve sponsorship deal – worth around 10 million pounds a year for three years – with Arsenal FC.  An independent review conducted showed that in 2020, 851 social media "Visit Rwanda" posts were shared, creating organic visibility and generating 110 million impressions, reaching 78.5 million ac...