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Post-genocide Rwanda has become a ‘donor darling’, despite being a dictatorship with a dismal human rights record and a source of regional instability. In order to understand international tolerance, this article studies the regime’s practices. It analyses the ways in which it dealt with external and internal critical voices, the instruments and strategies it devised to silence them, and its information management. It looks into the way the international community fell prey to the RPF’s spin by allowing itself to be manipulated, focusing on Rwanda’s decent technocratic governance while ignoring its deeply flawed political governance. This tolerance has allowed the development of a considerable degree of structural violence, thus exposing Rwanda to the risk of renewed violence. RWANDA IS A COUNTRY FULL OF PARADOXES, difficult for outsiders to comprehend and to apprehend. Although donor assessments differ considerably, and despite concerns over political governance domestically and the country’s interference in the DRC, many in the international community have given the post-genocide regime the benefit of the doubt. Rwanda became and has remained a ‘donor darling’. Since most observers would agree that the regime has achieved impressive results since 1994, many are ready to support it without asking too many questions. The International Crisis Group (ICG) remarked that ‘If they sometimes privately agree that some things are going seriously *Filip Reyntjens (filip.reyntjens@ua.ac.be) is Professor of Law and Politics at the Institute of Development Policy and Management, University of Antwerp. The author has benefited greatly from comments by An Ansoms, Bert Ingelaere, René Lemarchand, Scott Straus, Stef Vandeginste, Claudine Vidal, Lars Waldorf, and two anonymous referees. The usual disclaimer applies. 1. Stefaan Marysse, An Ansoms, and Danny Cassimon, ‘The aid “darlings” and “orphans” of the Great Lakes Region in Africa’, European Journal of Development Research 19, 3 (2007), pp. 433–58. African Affairs, 1–34 doi: 10.1093/afraf/adq075 © The Author 2010. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Royal African Society. All rights reserved 1 African Affairs Advance Access published November 24, 2010 by gest on N ovem er 5, 2010 afraf.oxjournals.org D ow nladed fom wrong, there is a general consensus to give the government a smooth ride’. Yet there is consensus in the international scholarly community that Rwanda is run by a dictatorship with little respect for human rights, little attention to the fate of the vast majority of its population made up of everpoorer peasants, and little awareness of the structural violence its ambitious engineering project engenders. The regime seeks full control over people and space: Rwanda is an army with a state, rather than a state with an army. Although a report by the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative expressed major concern and concluded that the state of governance and human rights did not satisfy Commonwealth standards, Rwanda was admitted to the club without much debate in November 2009. President Kagame, against whom there is overwhelming evidence of responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity, is given red carpet treatment on his frequent international visits, the Rwandan leadership’s vision is lauded in many quarters, and Rwanda is often presented as a ‘model’. How does Kigali get away with it? This article tries to answer this question by looking not at the substantive aspects of governance in Rwanda, but at the regime’s practices (I am of course aware that substance and 2. International Crisis Group, ‘“Consensual democracy” in post-genocide Rwanda: evaluating the March 2001 district elections’ (Report, Nairobi and Brussels, 9 October 2001), p. 20. 3. The only noticeable exceptions are Phil Clark (University of Oxford) and William Schabas (National University of Ireland). 4. Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, ‘Rwanda’s application for membership of the Commonwealth: report and recommendations of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative’ (August 2009). 5. These crimes took place mainly in Rwanda in 1994, in Zaïre/DRC in 1996–7, and again in Rwanda in 1997–8, as detailed in numerous reports by several UN bodies, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch. For an early survey of crimes against humanity committed by the RPF/RPA, see Serge Desouter and Filip Reyntjens, ‘Rwanda: les violation des droits de l’homme par le FPR/APR – plaidoyer pour une enquête approfondie’ (Working Paper, Centre d’étude de la région des grands lacs d’Afrique, Antwerp, June 1995). For a view on RPF abuse from within, see Abdul J. Ruzibiza, Rwanda: L’histoire secrète (Editions du Panama, Paris, 2005). More recently, a major UN report has confirmed and complemented the data on RPA abuse in the DRC: UN High Commission for Human Rights, ‘Democratic Republic of the Congo, 1993–2003: report of the mapping exercise documenting the most serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law committed within the territory of the Democratic Republic of the Congo between March 1993 and June 2003’ (Geneva, August 2010). 6. Kagame set up a Presidential Advisory Council (PAC) which includes CEOs of foreign companies, academics, and even the founder of Saddleback Church, Pastor Rick Warren. Tony Blair acts as an ‘unpaid adviser’ to the President. Kagame travels from one award ceremony to the next. 7. When Kagame received a Global Citizen Award in 2009, the statement of the Clinton Foundation read as follows: ‘From crisis, President Kagame has forged a strong, unified and growing nation with the potential to become a model for the rest of Africa and the world’. Clinton Foundation, ‘Former President Clinton announces winners of the Third Annual Clinton Global Citizen Awards’ (23 September 2009), . 2 AFRICAN AFFAIRS by gest on N ovem er 5, 2010 afraf.oxjournals.org D ow nladed fom procedure cannot be fully separated, and that overlaps are inevitable). I analyse the way in which the regime dealt with external and internal critical voices, the instruments and strategies it devised to silence them, its assertiveness towards the region and the rest of the world, and its management of information and ‘truth’. I look into the way the international community fell prey to the RPF’s spin, by allowing itself to be manipulated and by preferring to see Rwanda’s decent technocratic governance while ignoring its deeply flawed political governance. I go into a great deal of detail that may appear tedious, but only in this way can I show how the regime, acting in a piecemeal fashion, tested step by step the limits of what was tolerated by its backers. Dealing with external meddlers Since the RPF came to power in July 1994, keeping or getting outside observers out has been a constant concern. By the end of 1995, 38 international NGOs had been expelled and the activities of 18 others suspended, their assets frozen, and their equipment impounded. In June 1997 the government, through a large-scale diplomatic offensive, succeeded in having the mandate of UN Special Rapporteur René Degni-Segui terminated, as his reports had become a nuisance. He was replaced by a Special Representative whose mandate and interest in criticizing the regime over its human rights record was much more limited. The United Nations Human Rights Field Operation in Rwanda (UNHRFOR) was next in line. On 7 December 1997, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, previously considered a friend of the ‘New Rwanda’ (she visited the country on a couple of occasions when she was President of Ireland), issued a communiqué condemning the absence of a reconciliation policy and the practice of serious human rights violations. The spokesman for the Rwandan presidency immediately responded by vehemently and categorically denying Robinson’s observations, accusing her of being influenced ‘by informants whose aims are to mislead international opinion on the situation of Rwanda’. The following year the government refused UNHRFOR permission to continue monitoring the human rights situation, and sought to limit its activities to mere technical assistance. Robinson decided that such a truncated mandate was unacceptable, and closed the operation at the end of July 1998. In April 2001, a round of efficient lobbying ensured the support of the African group in the UN Commission for Human Rights for striking Rwanda off the agenda, thus putting an end to formal international concerns with 8. Statement by presidential spokesman, Kigali, 7 December 1997. GOVERNANCE IN POST-GENOCIDE RWANDA 3 by gest on N ovem er 5, 2010 afraf.oxjournals.org D ow nladed fom human rights in Rwanda. Canada strongly objected, and got the routine treatment in return: the Rwandan delegate accused Canada of ‘harbouring many génocidaires’. Other external meddlers were from the press or academia. In 1997 alone, two journalists and one researcher were declared persona non grata. French scholar Gérard Prunier was violently taken to task after the publication of a critical but on the whole appropriate analysis. The director of the official information office lashed out against Prunier ‘who claims to be an academic’, who presents ‘a pseudo analysis of Rwandan society’, and who is no less than ‘indirectly responsible for the 1994 genocide’. On 9 February, Reuters correspondent Christian Jennings was expelled, apparently for having written two days earlier that, during a press conference, (then Vice-President) Kagame had asserted that ‘Rwanda has the right to divert a part of international aid to contribute to the internal war against Hutu extremists’. On 28 November, Stephen Smith of the French daily Libération was in turn declared undesirable. The chargé d’affaires at the Rwandan embassy in Paris explained that ‘Smith only has himself to blame, given the horrors he has written about the country’. More recently, in August 2008, the Rwandan Minister of Informat

Constructing the truth, dealing with dissent, domesticating the world: Governance in post-genocide Rwanda