Paul Kagame: Rwanda's saviour or strongman?
Rwandan President Paul Kagame arrives for Rwanda Day in Toronto this weekend, drawing supporters but also, likely, protesters.
Rwanda President Paul Kagame arrives for Rwanda Day in Toronto on Saturday, Sept. 28, 2013. His visit is expected to draw both supporters and protests.
Paul Kagame's supporters praise him as the hero who ended the 1994 genocide and turned Rwanda into an African success story.
His critics condemn Rwanda's controversial leader as an oppressor of human rights who is governing the country with an iron fist.
When Kagame arrives in Toronto for Rwanda Day on Saturday, fans and foes will both be present at an event that in other cities — Chicago, Boston, Paris and London — has drawn both fawning crowds and angry protests, and not necessarily divided along ethnic lines.
Egide Karuranga and Emmanuel Hakizimana, both Rwandan-born university professors living in Montreal and active here in the Rwandan community, are eager to greet Kagame at Canada's first Rwanda Day.
But while Karuranga will be by Kagame's side inside the downtown Sheraton Hotel, Hakizimana will be outside on the sidewalk with others hoisting a protest sign.
The event, initiated by the president's regime, is designed to bring together Rwandans abroad, "celebrate the country's progress, and discuss ways of being part of Rwanda's social economic transformation," according to a website called Rwandaday.org. Organizers expect 3,000 people to attend the one-day gathering.
Depending on who you talk to, Rwandans either admire Kagame or hate him, and there seems to be no middle ground.
"Kagame is a very complicated figure," says Erin Jessee, a post-doctoral fellow at the University of British Columbia's Liu Institute for Global Issues, who has studied Rwanda on the ground since 2007 and is writing a book examining the politics of post-genocide Rwanda.
"His government has made incredible progress in development, helping the country to recover from the genocide. On the other hand, he also has such an appallingly poor human rights record."
During the 1994 civil war, the majority Hutus killed an estimated 500,000 minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus, according to Human Rights Watch, although some put the death toll much higher; Kagame's supporters say he subsequently brought order and prosperity to the ravaged country.
His critics, however, say they are weary of deteriorating civil liberties and oppression against those who oppose him and his ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front party — and wary of rumours that Kagame may ask Parliament to change the limit of the presidential term so he can stay in power beyond 2017.
Karuranga, a Tutsi who moved to Canada in 2000 as a postgraduate student and is now a Laval University business professor, is quick to offer praise of Kagame's leadership and achievements.
"The president is highly regarded because whatever he says, he delivers," says Karuranga, of the Rwanda Diaspora of Canada, which has assisted in organizing Rwanda Day.
"He said he wanted to build a school, he built it. He said he wanted to build a railway, he did it. He wanted more women represented in the parliament, and now 64 per cent of the parliament are women."
According to a New York Times article this month, Rwanda's economy is growing by an average 8 per cent a year and life expectancy has increased from 36 years in 1994 to today's 56 under the Kagame regime.
His government's wide-scale mosquito spraying campaign and distribution of millions of sleeping nets has helped cut malaria-related deaths by 85 per cent from 2005 to 2011, while highrises are popping up in Kigali, the capital, making it one of the safest places in Africa.
One of the achievements Kagame has been credited for is his "one people, one language, one culture and one Rwanda" policy to close the country's ethnic wounds of the past, says Karuranga.
But Hakizimana, a University of Quebec economics professor, says Kagame's human rights record should not be overlooked.
An Amnesty International report last year criticized the Kagame government, saying it has "unduly limited" political and press freedom resulting in "the arrest, exile or killing of many political opponents and rivals."
Leaders of Rwanda's opposition parties, Victoire Ingabire of the FDU-Inkingi, and Bernard Ntaganda of the PS-Imberakuri, are both serving prison sentences, said Human Rights Watch.
In 2012, several foreign governments suspended financial assistance to Rwanda because of its military support for M23, a rebel group responsible for serious abuses in the Democratic Republic of Congo, it noted. Kagame has denied involvement.
Some of the development progress made by Kagame is delusional, says Hakizimana, because the income growth is only spread to the elite 30 per cent of the country, and personal safety is not extended to those who hold dissenting views.
"Rwanda Day is just a way for Kagame to show the foreign countries that he is popular. People who attend come from a small group of people who benefit from the regime," said Hakizimana, a Hutu who came to Canada in 1993 as a doctoral student in economics.
"We want to bring changes to Rwanda. We want true conciliation, freedom and economic progress," added Hakizimana, who founded the Rwanda National Congress in 2010 with like-minded Hutus and Tutsis in Canada.
UBC's Jessee says Kagame's supporters see development as the top priority to lift the country from a genocidal path and believe human rights will come later.
"People outside Rwanda tend to be pro-Kagame because of the positive development. But for those in Rwanda, it is hard for them to ignore human rights and declining civil liberty," said Jessee, an expert who has assisted 13 Rwandan asylum cases — the majority Tutsi — in the U.S.
"As much as (Rwanda Day) may be about connecting the Rwandan diaspora, it has the added benefit of helping Kagame and the RPF to massage their public image."
Franco Ntazinda, who fled with his parents to Uganda in 1962 and immigrated to Canada in 1986, says outsiders should not jump to conclusions in assessing the Kagame government.
"There is always room for improvement. The West often judges other countries by our standard," said Ntazinda, who plans to attend the Toronto event to have a dialogue about Rwanda's future.
"The majority of Rwandans do appreciate and recognize the Kagame government's achievements."
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