For a long time, survivors like me were fed the myth that the current Rwandan regime was our savior, the perfect protector of our peace and security. However, the recent Human Rights Watch report “Join Us or Die”, tears off that mask of deception. Published a few weeks ago, it confirms what many of us knew all along: this supposed protector betrays and attacks the very people he claims to shield.
Outsiders may not know it, but many survivors who narrowly escaped the machetes in 1994 were later killed in staged accidents or strangled in custody under the current regime.
The report shows that even we survivors are not spared Rwanda’s repression when we challenge the government’s narrative or expose ongoing abuses. It debunks a common belief in Western media that a mostly Tutsi government would not oppress Tutsi survivors. By interviewing survivors and finally letting them be heard, Human Rights Watch puts that idea to rest.
The report exposes the government’s tactics to intimidate critics abroad, including fellow survivors. Tactics include online harassment, physical threats, social exclusion from fearful family and friends, and intimidating survivors’ relatives at home. It describes daily struggles that most Rwandans know well but that had stayed hidden from the outside world.
Several exiled survivors faced aggressive online smears when speaking out against RPF abuses, accused of denying the genocide or supporting “divisionism,” a vague charge often used to silence dissent.
The report cites Dr. Philippe Basabose, a survivor in Canada who co-founded the only independent survivor group, Igicumbi, the Voice of Survivors, of which I’m a member. After he called for an investigation into Kizito Mihigo’s death in custody in 2020, Basabose was bombarded with online attacks, his family in Rwanda was harassed by pro-government media, and he was publicly attacked by officials at the highest levels, including Cabinet Minister Jean Damascène Bizimana.
Other survivors were also targeted, and their relatives were pressured to shun them, reopening their trauma. Worryingly, some survivors reported relatives being detained, disappeared, or killed under suspicious circumstances back home after they spoke up.
I have faced social exclusion, online harassment and intimidation for speaking out, so this report hit close to home. The courage of survivors who keep speaking up, like our own Dr. Philippe Basabose, inspires me. Our voices matter for exposing ongoing abuses and preserving our history.
I won’t reproduce the report here, but I urge fellow survivors to read it here and make your voices heard. The Rwandan government exploits our trauma to muzzle and discredit us when we deviate from its tightly controlled narrative.
By speaking about these abuses, we can hope to end the repression of survivors by the very government that claims to have rescued us. Our stories must be told.
By Albert Gasake, November 3, 2023.
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