Thousands of refugees are fleeing Rwanda, and Denmark is proceeding with an agreement to send refugees back to Rwanda.
The Danish Broadcasting Corporation (DR) published a report on the human rights situation in Rwanda, stating that human rights organizations confirm year after year that there are significant human rights problems in the country. Figures from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) show that Rwanda is “not for everyone.” Between 2018 and 2021, 5,654 Rwandan citizens were granted asylum in other countries.
According to Thomas Gamletoft Hansen, a professor of migration and refugee law at the University of Copenhagen, “This shows that Rwanda remains a very authoritarian state, and we have received confirmation of this from various organizations. There is surveillance and repression of political activists in particular, as well as suspected cases of torture and political assassinations. There is also a media landscape under very high pressure, which means that journalists who are particularly critical face extremely difficult conditions in Rwanda. This means that people will have to flee and seek asylum in other countries.”.
Political assassinations of opponents
The Danish Broadcasting Corporation website spoke to several political refugees from Rwanda, who were not safe in Rwanda and now live in other countries where they also fear for their lives.
One of the cases that has already caused fear among critics of Rwandan President Paul Kagame occurred in South Africa on New Year's Eve 2013, where Patrick Karajia, a childhood friend of Kagame and the two of whom fought together in the army that stopped the genocide 28 years earlier, was so close to the president's inner circle that he ended up as head of Rwandan intelligence. However, he was unconcerned about the widespread electoral fraud and repression and was at odds with the president, so he joined a political group in South Africa that worked on attempts to secure Rwandan opposition from abroad.
Many political opponents of Rwandan President Paul Kagame fear for their lives and flee abroad. What happened on New Year's Eve between 2013 and 2014 was that the former head of intelligence was found strangled in a room in Johannesburg, South Africa, and then disappeared. It turned out that the perpetrators had fled to Rwanda.
South African police kept the investigation secret for a long time, but after five years they were forced to release information about the perpetrators, which pointed to Rwanda. Journalists who wrote articles critical of the Rwandan president were imprisoned or forced to flee the country; in some cases, they were killed.
Critics of Kagame in both Belgium and Britain are under intelligence protection due to fears of assassination attempts.
The Radical Party threatens the Danish government
Earlier, Development Minister Flemming Møller Mortensen and Minister for Foreigners and Integration Kaar Deppvad visited Rwanda to accelerate the government's plans to establish an asylum reception center outside Europe, and we were able to return to Denmark with a political agreement between Denmark and Rwanda on the establishment of an asylum center in Rwanda. However, at the same time it was clear that there was still no legal agreement on how to monitor the cases of asylum seekers.
The agreement also lacks a financial component and also lacks a specific location in Rwanda where asylum seekers to Denmark will reside.
The Danish government commends Rwanda's respect for fundamental human rights.
Despite all this information, Integration Minister Kar Dipvad confidently continued to speak about Rwanda being able to live up to human rights demands. Minister Dipvad sees no problem in cooperating with what critics call a dictatorship, commenting: “We can cooperate with those who make basic human rights available to the people we deal with, and we can ensure that they are respected.”.
On the other hand, the Radicals see the issue differently and again threatened the Danish government last week, as the leader of the Radical Party, Venstre Sophie Carsten Nielsen, confirmed that the party would not give mandates to a government that makes an arbitrary agreement with a dictator in Rwanda. The same party also reiterated that it had given Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen a deadline of October 4 to announce the date of the general parliamentary elections, against the backdrop of the mink issue.
