Is Rwanda Out to Silence Ugandan Based Critic Dr Rukundo Rugari?

Any ardent follower of debates and politics on Rwanda on social media, cannot fail to realise that for the past two weeks, Dr Gideon Rukundo Rugari is not visible anywhere on all social media platforms, something that left many wondering what could have happened to him. Dr Rukundo is the head of department minimum access surgery at Mulago specialized hospital and lecturer at Makerere University Medical School and St Augustine University.

The grapevine has it that he is scared to the marrow after credible sources intimated to him that he has been designated as a “red category target”. In a meeting two weeks ago, Rwanda Directorate of military intelligence (DMI) allegedly put a bounty of US$2,0000 (about UGX74,000,000) on his head for “over poking his nose in a beehive. Countless times he has made it a habit to lift a lead on Kigali’s classified secrets.” This threat has been corroborated by secret conversations on WhatsApp group of DMI operatives in Uganda led by a one Odette, a young lawyer, who coordinates targeted operations.

Dr Rukundo has been a social media critic of Paul Kagame for a long time, cataloguing the excesses of Kigali regime, people murdered for opposing Kagame’s caustic political line, his antics to harm neighbours like Uganda through the border blockade and the standoff with Congo. This has earned him the ire of    Kigali, where local media cannot expose these fascist surfeit. Express orders were allegedly given to silence him for good. From this point, the opportunistic “operators” started monitoring his posts and movements in order to partake the 20.000USD bounty. The quest to locate him led that information to leak to him.  It is believed that with that glaring threat he deleted his Facebook account, his tweeter handle had been blocked weeks ago at the behest of myriad petitions from a phalanx of Kigali social media warriors.

Reading through his social media posts, his information about Rwanda is clinically presented, crafted in such a pristine flow that it would render the best spin master pedestrian. He has been too precise stating the atrocity, time, place and the related events part of a build-up to such a nefarious act. This made it too hard for the Rwanda propaganda machinery to rebut. Another person who has been put on the “red category target” is a one Ruhinda, who has been head of security at Acacia Mall. He has been compelled to run for his dear life after media reports indicated that Paul Kagame has acquired an 80% stake in the mall through his Tanzanian protégé.

This rang bells in his head and went into hiding. He is Rwandese who fled to Uganda to save his neck. He fled after his close friend John Bosco Rutayisire was kidnapped in the full glare of the public at a busy road junction by Lt Col Tinka of DMI and ACP Kalisa of special intelligence which is part of Rwanda police. In less than 12 hours later, he was found murdered in his car in the morning. His only crime was because he was related to Patrick Karegeya.  This was enough to scare the hell out of Ruhinda. He fled to Uganda but he never got off Rwanda radar. Now the external hit squad is tracking the dual. He is part of the Rwanda nationals in exile who have been stripped of their nationality and their passports revoked by the Kagame regime.

This group in exile comprising of Rwandese mainly in South Africa, took the Rwanda government to The African Court on Human and people’s rights, which has ordered Kigali to reinstate the passports of its citizens living in South Africa, because they were unlawfully revoked without their notification. The justices of the court ruled in favour of Kennedy Gihana, Kayumba Nyamwasa, Bamporiki Seif, Frank Ntwali, Safari Stanley, Dr Etienne Mutabazi and Epimaque Ntamushobora, the applicants and directed  Rwanda as the respondent state to effect the order within three months. The applicants had alleged that Rwanda had since May 14^th, 2012 invalidated their passports without official notification or an opportunity to appeal against the government’s decision to cancel them. They contended that the invalidation of their passports was an arbitrary deprivation of their nationality, thus rendering them stateless which fundamentally impacted on the enjoyment of their human rights. Such rights include participation in the political life, freedom of movement, citizenship, liberty, family life and work which are enshrined under Articles 6,12,13 and 18 of the  African Charter on Human and People’s rights. The applicants prayed for reparation orders, like the reinstatement of the passport and compensation.

While acknowledging that it made a declaration pursuant to Article 34(6) of the protocol, the respondent state argued that in doing so, it did not envisage that persons like Kayumba  Nyamwasa and Stanley  who were convicted of serious crimes like genocide and crimes that threaten the state, would be allowed to file matters before court. In its judgement, the court held that Article 5(3) of the protocol, read together with article 34(6) thereof, provides for access to the court for individuals regardless of their status and the nature of crimes they were alleged to have committed or to have been convicted of. On merits, the court found the alleged violation of the rights to liberty, work and family life under Article 15 to have not been established, but the respondent state violated the rights to freedom of movement and political participation as a consequence of arbitrary revocation of applicants’ passports.

After losing this court battle to the alleged “criminals” Kagame has set out to handle the matter his own way, that is why hit squads are on the prowl to hunt down all those perceived to be in cohort with these “criminals” or those assumed to be sympathetic to them and abhor the autocratic rule of Kagame. It is the reason is why DMI operatives like Odette and her group are in overdrive to eliminate people like Dr Rukundo Rugari and Ruhinda to win the hefty bounty of the 20000USD placed on the head of each. It is only fair that the security organs pick interest in the heinous plots by Rwanda to stop them in their tracks.