Our Statement on the Abduction of Paul Rusesabagina

Statement

The Global Campaign for Rwandans' Human Rights condemns in the strongest terms the abduction of Paul Rusesabagina, the humanitarian internationally honoured for saving the lives of more than a thousand people during the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi.

On 31 August 2020, Paul Rusesabagina boarded a private jet in Dubai, believing he was travelling to Burundi at the invitation of a pastor. Within hours, he had landed not in Burundi but in Kigali, in the hands of Rwandan state agents. He had no lawyer, no consular access, no warrant and no process of any kind. He was, by any legal definition, a victim of enforced disappearance and kidnapping.

What This Reveals

Paul Rusesabagina's only offence was to speak. He was a prominent critic of the Rwandan government and the leader of an opposition movement. Because the government could not answer his criticisms, it chose to take him.

This was not law enforcement. It was an act of international kidnapping, planned and executed by a state against a lawful resident of the United States, carried out across borders, and dressed up afterwards as justice. It was the same contempt for law, for borders and for truth with which the regime treats every critic within its reach.

We recall that this is not an isolated act. It sits alongside the killings and suspicious deaths of critics, the imprisonment of journalists and opposition figures on fabricated charges, and the constant surveillance and intimidation of Rwandans at home and in the diaspora. A government confident in its legitimacy does not need to kidnap its opponents.

Our Demands

The Global Campaign for Rwandans' Human Rights demands:

• The immediate and unconditional release of Paul Rusesabagina, and his safe return to his family.
• Full and public disclosure of how the abduction was planned, by whom, and under what authority.
• Independent legal representation and international monitoring of any proceedings against him.
• Accountability for every official involved in his enforced disappearance.
• The protection of Rwandan dissidents and their families, in Rwanda and abroad, from state-directed abduction, intimidation and violence.

In Solidarity

Paul Rusesabagina saved more than a thousand lives when the world looked away. He now asks only what he defended in others: freedom of conscience and the right to speak. To his wife, children and grandchildren, we pledge our full solidarity and our unrelenting voice until he is free.

The Global Campaign for Rwandans' Human Rights

Secretariat