By Anjan Sundaram

Eyewitness account 

‘I have no problem giving money to a dictator,’ a European ambassador to Rwanda told me.

The ambassador had just promised about £200 million of European taxpayer money to the Rwandan government, whose repressive ways he was familiar with.

He said Rwanda’s president Paul Kagame ran one of the most ‘effective’ governments in Africa.

‘I’m proud to be giving him money,’ he said. ‘We will influence the government in the right direction.’

Over the last decade the world, including the United Kingdom, has financed Paul Kagame’s government while watching Rwandan politicians, military figures, journalists and civil society activists one by one be killed, imprisoned, or flee the country, fearing for their lives.

Independent institutions have been all but stamped out. The parliament, the courts and the media are all under Kagame’s control. Even Kagame’s admirers admit that his power is almost absolute.

Kagame announced this New Year’s day that he would seek a third term in power, breaking previous promises to respect what had been a two-term constitutional limit.

Kagame had once claimed he would have failed should he not find a successor at the end of his terms as president.

On New Year’s day, after a referendum on a constitutional change specifically designed to allow Kagame to remain president until 2034, he addressed the Rwandan population, ‘You requested me to lead the country again… I can only accept.’

It was a classic dictator’s speech, and it revealed just how small Kagame’s circle of trust has become.

Many observers had expected him to at least engineer a Putin-style cosmetic transfer of titles; a few truly believed he would step down. But Kagame has made sure that there are no alternatives to him in Rwanda.

Most of his political opponents are either dead, languishing in Rwandan prisons, or living in exile, having been forced to flee Rwanda.

The United Kingdom has been one of the staunchest supporters of Kagame’s government through this repression.

Dfid gave £76m in aid to Rwanda last year, money that strengthens Kagame’s systems of mass control as it goes through government agencies and to government-approved projects.

Kagame also enjoys political friendships across the British political spectrum. Tony Blair’s Africa Governance Initiative places British consultants at the heart of Kagame’s presidential office.

Cherie Blair is a lawyer for the Rwandan government, recently defending the head of Rwanda’s intelligence in a British court on alleged war crimes. And the Tory party’s runs ‘Project Umubano’ in partnership with Kagame’s government, sending MPs to Rwanda for social work each year.

I lived in Rwanda for nearly five years between 2009 and 2013, training some of the last independent journalists working in the country.

I watched as even benign criticisms of Kagame were met with the closure of newspapers and the harassment of journalists.

One journalist who brought up the attacks on the press at a conference in front of Kagame was beaten into a coma. Another colleague of mine was shot dead on the day he criticised Kagame.

Two young women were sentenced to several years in prison for insulting Kagame. Others fled to Europe, fearing they would be killed.

Many journalists either began writing up propaganda in favor of Kagame or simply abandoned journalism as it was too dangerous. In my book I list more than 60 journalists who faced harassment, leading to the country’s current state: a place where the government’s voice dominates.

None of this is news to the Western governments that finance Kagame’s government and other repressive states like Ethiopia.

Western aid has reinforced Kagame’s regime – it has helped him build a highly efficient state that can produce far-reaching changes on a whim, because people will not resist government orders.

When Kagame orders plastic bags to be eradicated from the country – a benefit to the country – the bags disappear overnight. When he orders people to wear slippers they comply.

Western donors, including the United Kingdom, have helped Kagame build this powerful system but they cannot control how he uses it.

When the Rwandan government tells people to come out and vote for Kagame they comply in huge numbers: participation rates are regularly above to 95%. Kagame won 93% of the vote in the 2010 presidential election.

I witnessed thousands of people who had done themselves harm, tearing down their roofs and living in the open in the rainy season, contracting pneumonia and malaria, because Kagame had called the grass roofs primitive, and local officials had insisted that people tear down their roofs.

The people complied without asking whether replacement housing had been built. Who would they speak out to? There was no one who would listen. A small town pastor, one of the few to protest, was imprisoned for threatening state security.

When people cannot speak, harm becomes possible on a massive scale, and much of it goes unreported: newspapers and radios in Rwanda dared not shed light on the government’s repression.

Western financing for repressive states like Rwanda and Ethiopia has meant people in those countries have to choose to give into repression in order to receive state benefits – in ways that we would never accept for ourselves, our families or our societies.

Many Rwandans are silent about family members who have disappeared or been killed because they fear the repercussions, which include losing access to Western-financed welfare programs.

It is presumptuous to claim to be able to measure progress in places like Rwanda when the very people participating in that progress cannot speak freely about their experience of it.

Researchers from the World Bank who surveyed Rwandans, questioning the government’s narrative of poverty reduction and increasing freedoms, had their data destroyed and project cancelled. Participants in the survey were questioned by the Rwandan police.

A UN report that highlighted increasing poverty by certain measures was retracted after the Rwandan government protested, and the researchers were blacklisted.

Subsequent research teams, at the government’s invitation, have found that life is improving and poverty decreasing, supporting the government’s narrative.

Western donors have developed a perverse relationship with autocrats. The more repression there is in places like Rwanda, the less criticism there is of Western aid programs. This silence benefits donors.

I’ve seen more than one aid official obtain promotions on the back of their alleged successes in Rwanda.

Donors are eager to talk about the good they are doing, but they are silent about the harms their aid inflicts on people, and it is quite convenient for them that the people themselves cannot speak up.

• Anjam Sundaram is author of Bad News: Last Journalists In A Dictatorship (Bloomsbury).

Source: Mail Online