Paul Rusesabagina and Lewis Mudge.

Q120 Chair: We are now commencing the JCHR’s formal evidence-taking session for our inquiry into the human rights of asylum seekers in the United Kingdom, and this afternoon we are taking evidence on the fact that some asylum seekers in the United Kingdom may end up being sent to Rwanda. We will hear from Paul Rusesabagina, who is a Rwandan Government critic, and from Lewis Mudge, the central Africa director at Human Rights Watch. We are looking forward to hearing from you both. Thank you for joining us. Helena Kennedy will ask the first question.

Q121 Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws: Mr Rusesabagina, I met you at the awards ceremony when your daughters were given a human rights award for the work they had done in securing your release from incarceration in Rwanda. You are a businessman who is well known to many because of your background and the film that was made during the time of the terrible genocide in Rwanda. Is that right?

Paul Rusesabagina: That is right.

Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws: I want you to tell my colleagues here your story as a human rights activist and an outspoken critic of the Rwandan Government. Did you remain living in Rwanda and, if not, why not?

Paul Rusesabagina: Actually, I have a long story. I have been going through torture and everything by the Rwandan Government for almost 30 years. Because of what I did in 1994, when I happened to help 1,268 people to survive the Rwandan genocide in 1994 in a hotel where I was general manager, nobody just happened to get out alive. No one was beaten. No one was taken out. No one was killed. That became a problem, because I became popular and all the journalists coming to Rwanda were always willing to talk to me before they talked to anyone else, including President Kagame himself.

On 5 September 1996, I was seated in my home close to the Kigali Serena Hotel, which used to be the Diplomat Hotel. I was a general manager there. A soldier came to my home. He said that I had stolen computers from I do not know where and I had to show him my house. He wanted me to stand up so that he can shoot me standing up. That day I had two visitors. I was very proud to stand up and show him my home. When I stood up, I told him, “Okay, come. I will show you my house”. When I was almost standing in front of him, he pulled out a gun and our housemaid shouted and told me, “He is going to kill you, papa”. I pushed him. He was still young. I pushed him very roughly. He fell down and I went out calling for help. We were staying at that hotel—it was close to the main military camp of Rwanda. Then one of the army guys came to my home and started telling me, “You know, that guy did not have a gun”. I just shut up.

The following day, on 6 September, I was in my office. His boss came into my office, telling me, “Listen, Mr Rusesabagina, that guy did not have a gun. It was a toy”. I told him, “Sir, it was a toy because it didn’t kill me, but it was a gun”. After that day, I went into exile thinking that in exile I would be in peace. That is when I took a flight to Belgium with my elder children, where I was also harassed many times.

When I arrived in Brussels, once again, because I was familiar to people, I was speaking loudly, talking to the whole world, especially journalists. That remained a problem. The Rwandan Government followed me and tried to kill me by all means, until a time when even the Rwandan ambassador moved from the residence of the Rwandan Embassy to live behind my house in Brussels.

Q122 Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws: Paul, many of us know something about your background and the terrible story of what happened. You were threatened. As you have described, someone was sent there to assassinate you and you were saved by a maid who worked for you. You had to flee your country and you went to Belgium. You have had to live abroad for many years since, but you have been an outspoken critic and a follower of events in Rwanda and of the conditions of the people in Rwanda. That has continued to bring down the attention of the President, Mr Kagame, and his men. You have been harassed, followed, threatened, and your life has basically been pretty wretched, living abroad even. Is that right?

Lord Murray of Blidworth: That is a very long question.

Chair: Hang on a second.

Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws: I am trying to get through the story and if you want you can go away and read it.

Paul Rusesabagina: I was not only followed but kidnapped from Dubai and taken to Kigali, where I was tortured and my head was put in a bag. Can you imagine? The bag was tied. My hands were tied in the back, my legs were tied, I was thrown in a car and taken to places that they call safe places. Why do they call them safe places? That is where they kill people. To them, they are safe because they are the only ones who know those places where they torture and kill people. I was there for four days being tortured, and, you can imagine, not moving, just on the ground. At that time, I had a military boot on my neck. You can imagine that.

It is just an abattoir where I could hear many other people behind the next door. Next door, I could hear many people. It was very dark 24 hours a day, but people were making a noise, being tortured, calling for help, for one, two, three hours. After three hours approximately, because I could not see anything—I was tied, as I am telling you—I could hear the voices slowly disappearing, getting lost. That is how it happened in those abattoirs in Rwanda. May I call them the abattoir? They call them the safe houses because they are the only ones who know those houses. It is hell.

Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws: You were saying that it was like an abattoir. It was like a place for handling animals. That is what you have said.

Paul Rusesabagina: Yes.

Q123 Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws: You said that you were kidnapped in Dubai. You went through Dubai Airport and you were then taken. Were you willingly participating in this or were you brought to Rwanda?

Paul Rusesabagina: Actually, I was not really going to Rwanda. I was invited by a Rwandan agent who called himself a Burundian, a man of God, a pastor, a bishop. He used his lawyer in Brussels, Innocent Twagiramungu, who told me that he was his lawyer, and he knew he was Burundian. He was a pastor and had churches. He is the one who invited me. He is the one I met in a private jet in Dubai. We were supposedly flying to Bujumbura, not to Kigali. Of course, the pilot, when I met the bishop—

Chair: Mr Rusesabagina, I will have to interrupt here and explain to you that I am terribly sorry, but because of the limits of Parliament we have only one hour for this evidence session. If we go into this level of detail, we will not be able to cover everything. As Helena said, many of us have been well briefed about your background and we have some specific, focused questions we want to ask.

Please understand that I do not wish to be rude in any way or to diminish the awfulness of your experiences, but because I have to chair this meeting and we do not have long, I need to focus our questions a bit more. If necessary, we can get you to write to us afterwards if there are things you want to elaborate on. Helena has some specific questions to ask you, and then we will move on to Lord Murray.

Q124 Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws: We know from your history that you ended up being taken to Kigali and that you were held in custody in the way you have described and put on trial. Did you receive a fair trial?

Paul Rusesabagina: I did not receive a fair trial, not at all. There are no fair trials in Rwanda.

Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws: Were you able to choose your own lawyers?

Paul Rusesabagina: The Rwandan Government refused my international lawyers. Also, they told me that they have 1,500 Rwandan lawyers who can intervene for me. When I asked for the list, they gave me a list of five.

Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws: You were given a list from which to choose lawyers and they had to be Rwandan. Did you consider that they would be independent of government and of any pressure?

Paul Rusesabagina: No. Nobody is independent from the Government in Rwanda. Either you are with the Rwandan Patriotic Front, Kagame’s political party, or you are the enemy. The enemy in Rwanda is always killed, is to die.

Q125 Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws: Have you or any family members been targeted or persecuted in Rwanda as a result of your political views or your human rights activism?

Paul Rusesabagina: When I was in prison, my younger brother was called to talk to the Rwandan visitation bureau almost every week. If you go online, you will see my sister being called to come and testify, being forced to tell them who I am. She is a 76-year-old woman who has nothing to do with politics, who lives in a rural area.

Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws: Your sister and your brother, and all because of your criticism of the Government’s political stance.

Paul Rusesabagina: For two years and seven months that I stayed in prison, none of my family or friends could visit me to see how I am.

Q126 Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws: Were you given medical attention while you were in prison?

Paul Rusesabagina: At a given time, even my own medicines—I take two tablets every day—were confiscated until many months later when the international community raised voices and started talking. That is when I got them.

Q127 Chair: We have heard evidence about other people being kept in solitary confinement. Were you kept in solitary confinement?

Paul Rusesabagina: When I was kidnapped, I was taken first to the butchery. From the butchery, I was taken to the police and held in a confinement for 18 days. From there, I was tortured. I was taken to the prison and lived in a small room of about 2.5 metres in length and maybe 2 metres wide without a window. I was not even able to put on the light myself. They would put on the light from outside. I went out for just one hour a day.

Q128 Chair: You got to go outside for one hour a day. Did they provide you with anything to sleep on? We have heard evidence from another witness that they had nothing to sleep on when they were detained prior to their trial. Did you have a mattress or anything?

Paul Rusesabagina: They gave me a tiny bed and a blanket.

Chair: I think what you are describing are the conditions you were kept in before your trial. Can you tell us what your conditions were like after you were convicted and sent to prison?

Paul Rusesabagina: As you know, I had to pull out of the trial because it was a short trial. When I pulled out, nothing changed. For the first almost 10 months, between the night of 27 August and 12 June 2021, I was in confinement without a window, with cameras watching me 24 hours a day on top.

Q129 Chair: Can you tell us how you came to be freed from prison?

Paul Rusesabagina: The whole world stood up. The whole world happened to know that what I was going through was a show. It was not really a trial. That is when the EU Bar Association wrote and signed a recommendation that went out to the whole world to say that this was a show. The US Bar Association did the same thing. The UN human rights organisation did the same thing. Human Rights Watch and many countries did the same thing. The Congress in the United States, the Senate, everybody wrote resolutions and signed them, until a time when even the State Department in the White House called it a kidnapping and said that I was a hostage.

Q130 Chair: Of course, you were helped by the EU, the United Nations, and ultimately by President Biden. You were a very well-known figure because of the film that had been made about you. Do you think that if you had not been a well-known figure you would have got that help? What do you think would have happened to you if you had not been well known internationally? Do you think you would still be in prison?

Paul Rusesabagina: That is a very exciting and very interesting question. So far, I am the only one who has been kidnapped and taken to Rwanda and happened to get out alive. So far. That prison is hell.

Chair: You say, “I’m the only one who has been kidnapped and taken to Rwanda and got out alive”.

Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws: “That prison was hell.”

Chair: Yes.

Q131 Lord Murray of Blidworth: Mr Rusesabagina, we have been provided with some background information. Is it right that in December 2018 you put a video on YouTube in which you denounced Mr Kagame’s Government?

Paul Rusesabagina: I always denounced Mr Kagame. I do not remember what I said in 2018. I always denounced the torture, whatever was done by the Rwandan Government. Even today I am doing it.

Lord Murray of Blidworth: In that particular video, it was suggested that you pledged your unreserved support to the FLN, the National Liberation Forces, which is the armed wing of the Movement for Democratic Change. Did you say that?

Paul Rusesabagina: I think the world misunderstood what I said. In Kinyarwanda, you ask your child to do whatever he or she can to bring a bucket of water by all means. This is very much the same. The FLN that you are talking about was no longer a member of our organisation. We had kicked it out.

Q132 Lord Murray of Blidworth: In your experience of Rwanda today, given the legal guarantees in the constitution, to what extent do you believe individuals can freely express dissent and protest?

Paul Rusesabagina: Individuals can never talk. There is no freedom of speech, there is no freedom at all, in Rwanda. Zero. Rwanda talks about refugees all over and every time. They talk about Congolese refugees. They themselves attacked the Congo. The Congolese people crossed the border and came to Rwanda. Do you remember what happened in 2018? The Congolese refugees, because they were not given enough food, demonstrated. Twelve of them were immediately killed. They were refugees who had no weapons, nothing.

Lord Murray of Blidworth: That was in 2012.

Paul Rusesabagina: More than 20 were injured and many of them were taken to prison. In Rwanda, there is nothing like freedom. It is zero.

Chair: Thank you.

Lord Dholakia: Paul, in 2020 you were arrested and subsequently imprisoned in Rwanda. Do you think you had a fair system within which your rights and expression—

Chair: Lord Dholakia, I think we covered that with Paul. I wonder if you could focus on a question for Mr Mudge from Human Rights Watch.

Lord Dholakia: Mr Mudge, you mentioned human rights conditions in Rwanda since before the 1994 genocide. Do you believe that individuals in Rwanda currently have their human rights respected, including the right to freedom of expression and protest?

Lewis Mudge: Sorry, is that a question for Human Rights Watch or for Paul?

Q133 Chair: Forgive me, gentlemen. We are very tight for time here for reasons I am not at liberty to go into. We are moving on to ask Lewis Mudge some questions now. We will come back to you in a moment, Paul.

Mr Mudge, I think this was the question. You have been monitoring human rights conditions in Rwanda since before the genocide. That is right, is it not? You have had a long involvement. We know that you and your organisation have a lot of experience in this area and have reported on Rwanda in detail. We want an overview at this point. Do you believe that individuals in Rwanda currently have their human rights respected, in particular the right to freedom of expression and the right to protest?

Lewis Mudge: The short answer is no. I will be very brief. By means of context, for full disclosure, I was still in high school in 1993, but yes, HRW first opened its office in Butare in 1993. We subsequently moved the office up to Kigali. I joined Human Rights Watch in 2010. I was there for 14 years, and for many of those years I was the Rwanda researcher until I was kicked out in 2018. I was the third researcher over 10 years to have been made persona non grata from Rwanda.

Q134 Chair: You were kicked out of Rwanda in the midst of doing your job as a researcher for Human Rights Watch, and you say that you are the third person from your organisation who has been kicked out in that way. Can you tell us a bit more about that?

Lewis Mudge: Sure. First, the researcher Alison Des Forges wrote what is regarded by many people to be the seminal work on the genocide called Leave None To Tell The Story. She was refused entry in 2009 and told not to return. Very tragically, just a few months later, she died in a plane crash. After that, Carina Tertsakian, a British national, was kicked out of the country while doing her work for Human Rights Watch. You will have to excuse me, I do not have the dates in front of me, but I believe it was 2010.

I arrived shortly after. My work visa was pulled in 2015, subsequently forcing my family and me to move to Kenya, but I was going back and forth. In 2018, I was denied full access to the country and told I was “undesirable”. It is par for the course for Rwanda. Independent human rights experts are very rarely granted full access, but it is not out of the question to be denied any access as well, as has been the case for Human Rights Watch.

Chair: Thank you.

Lewis Mudge: Can I just now address the question you had asked previously? I will be very brief with regard to freedom of expression and freedom of association. The short answer is no, it does not exist in Rwanda by any definition of the term. To give my personal experience covering the country for 14 years, unfortunately I have seen people’s right to express themselves freely be further and further constrained. When I started at HRW, we were still working in the context of newspapers and trying to fight for those journalists to have any means of space by which to express independent points of view, or do independent free and fair reporting. That was restricted. Very sadly, it resulted in some journalists being assassinated and crimes that to this day are still not solved. There was a lot of self-censorship.

In the mid-teens, we saw a spike in Kinyarwanda radio talk shows, and you saw some independent radio stations trying to push the envelope a bit by enabling people to call in and express themselves anonymously. Very quickly, we saw those shows shut down. Lately, we have seen an attack on bloggers and people who tried to post things on YouTube. You are seeing these individuals now being rounded up and facing serious prison sentences for trying to express themselves.

Whenever there are forays by Rwandans to try to push that space, unfortunately you see that space clamp down and get tighter and tighter. I will not go into too much detail, as I know that time is of the essence, but there are things that it is completely forbidden to discuss in Rwanda. This goes way beyond ethnicity. You are not allowed to criticise the Government in Rwanda, and that does not mean President Kagame; that means government policies more broadly.

Q135 Chair: What about broader freedom of expression and freedom of association? What about trade unions? Do trade unions exist in Rwanda? Are they able to freely organise?

Lewis Mudge: There are trade unions, and that is a valid point. I would say there is some space there for trade unions as it pertains to lobbying on behalf of their members with regard to contracts. When Habyarimana started facing some stiff resistance in the early 1990s, trade unions were one of the key groups, with civil society, that led the charge. In modern-day Rwanda, we do not see anything like what we saw in the early 1990s with regard to the power and organising capacity of trade unions. I will not say that the space for trade unions does not exist, but it does not exist in a meaningful way by which they could advocate for broader change.

Q136 Chair: What about this genocide law we have heard about? We have heard about people being prosecuted for spreading rumours, and about people being prosecuted for views they have expressed about the genocide. It seems to me, as a lawyer, that this law is very broadly drawn and interferes fundamentally with the right to freedom of expression. That is just my impression as somebody coming to this without your expertise. Can you tell us a bit about that law and how it impacts on freedom of expression?

Lewis Mudge: The genocide ideology law is important. It was applied more a few years ago, meaning 10 years ago. There were more prosecutions under genocide ideology. Genocide ideology is tricky in Rwanda and there was an international backlash against the use of genocide ideology law. When I talk about the use of genocide ideology law and persecuting people, I am speaking generally, so you will have to give me some rope here.

People also raise the very real fact that the RPF—the Rwandan Patriotic Front—which subsequently became the Government, committed some very serious crimes from July 1994 on. This was after they took control of Kigali, killing tens of thousands of ethnic Hutu in Rwanda and in subsequent invasions, first in South Kivu in the Congo in 1996 and in subsequent Rwandan invasions in the Congo, and committing other crimes there. If you raise those issues in Rwanda, you did and do have a real, legitimate risk of being persecuted under genocide ideology legislation. There is a narrative on the genocide that is not necessarily false but very much does not incorporate all the facts. If you question that narrative, you very much risk being persecuted.

More to the point—and, frankly, what is more worrying for us—is what they have installed now in the criminal code with regard to criticism of Rwanda. Right now under the criminal code, if you criticise the Government you can be prosecuted for creating a hostile international opinion of Rwanda. That is really worrying, because that is broader. It goes way beyond the genocide ideology aspect. If journalists criticise Rwanda, we see them being locked up and given 10 or 12-year penalties. You have just criticised the Government, you have criticised government policy, and you are locked up.

Paul Rusesabagina alluded earlier to the killing of a dozen Congolese refugees at Kiziba in Rwanda on the South Kivu border. I worked very closely with that case. I was living in Nairobi at the time and communicating daily with these people. One of the leaders of the Congolese refugees was imprisoned. He was given a 15-year sentence. One of the key elements of proof was WhatsApp messages with me. They said that these WhatsApp messages was him trying to create a hostile image of Rwanda. That should be worrying. An individual should be allowed to have a WhatsApp conversation with a human rights investigator and not fear that that conversation will be used in court against him to create a hostile image of the state.

Q137 Chair: That is very interesting. In a hypothetical case, say somebody who had sought asylum in the United Kingdom was sent to Rwanda, went through the procedures there and got asylum in Rwanda. Could they then, as a Rwandan citizen, be prosecuted for criticising the Rwandan Government in the same way as you describe happened to this Congolese gentleman?

Lewis Mudge: I was trying to help to walk you to that conclusion. Yes, and I want to try to be clear and unequivocal to the Members present. An asylum seeker or a refugee will not be able to criticise the circumstances in which he or she is held in Rwanda, because this issue is very important to Rwanda. It knows that the world is watching and that it stands to gain a lot by making this work. It will not allow criticism from the participants. Those people, in our opinion, face a significant risk of being threatened with this legislation, or an example being made of them, and this actually happening.

It is worth noting that these points have been made by proponents of the plan—that, yes, the events in 2018 was very unfortunate, but since then there have been no further refugee uprisings. That is very clear. They rounded up 60 of these people and threw them in jail, after killing a dozen of them. Not one state security officer was held accountable or even questioned in a serious fashion, to the best of our knowledge. Yet the people who rose up to try to get better food allotments for a Congolese camp certainly were punished. So it is not surprising that since 2018 we have not seen any real uprising, because the message was sent very clearly to the leaders of that Congolese camp.

Q138 Chair: That brings me to my next question. What are your views on the UK-Rwanda partnership and the suite of measures that the UK Government have proposed, such as the UK-Rwanda treaty and the safety of Rwanda Bill? To what extent do you think these measures will be sufficient to ensure that people removed from the United Kingdom to Rwanda live in a regime that is compliant with the UK’s human rights obligations?

Lewis Mudge: By means of background, you can tell from my accent that I am not British, I am American. I studied law in Edinburgh and at SOAS, so I have some knowledge of the UK and its obligations. Obviously, we have our London office and I have been briefed and I work very closely with our UK colleagues.

It is our opinion that the UK Government have an obligation to comply with non-refoulement in both international and domestic law. The Supreme Court has been very clear. It said there is a risk of refoulement and that it is unlawful to send people back to Rwanda because of that risk. It is our opinion that the legislation was not consistent with the law, and that the treaty is not consistent with the law.

To your question, we have a treaty that says that it will train them up and put safeguards and mechanisms in place. I would like to address that on three points.

First, with regard to the treaty—this is important—Rwanda is not a good-faith partner when it comes to complying with treaties if they do not suit its interests. It was only yesterday that the US ambassador at the United Nations said that there was credible evidence that Rwandan troops had shot at UN—not Congolese, but UN—aerial assets in Goma. This is a country that sends peacekeepers to the Central African Republic but is also alleged to have shot at UN assets as recently as yesterday.

With regard to transnational repression, yes, there are Rwandans who are targeted outside of Rwanda. I think everyone knows that. What is reported less is the Rwandan refugees outside of Rwanda who are kidnapped and brought back to Rwanda. I have met these individuals in prison in Rwanda. These are registered refugees under all the protections and statutes by the UNHCR. They have registered refugee numbers and we publish them, and I am happy to share that with the committee. They are kidnapped usually out of Congo and Burundi and brought back to Rwanda. There is a complete violation of obligations with regard to refugee norms and the way refugees are supposed to be treated by the Government of Rwanda.

Another example of this non-compliance is the UN convention against torture—CAT—treaties. These are vital treaties to address torture. Rwanda has not submitted a report in over two years—it is two years late—which is rendering it almost impossible to do a meaningful investigation into torture that groups like ours and Amnesty and many other groups have documented for many years. The subcommittee on prevention of torture in 2017 had to suspend, and in 2018 cancelled, a visit to Rwanda. This was the only time it has ever done this. It could not get guarantees for the safety of people it was trying to speak to, and it could not get access to the places where torture was being alleged to have occurred.

On the first point, with regard to a treaty in and of itself, I do not think Rwanda will be a good-faith actor on this. It has demonstrated over and over again in the past that when it comes to violating treaties it is more than happy to do so if that suits its best interest.

Secondly, there is no time right now to assess whether the safeguards that are being proposed—these measures that will rectify issues that the Supreme Court identified; just to play devil’s advocate for a moment and go along with that—will be effective. In that context, you have to default to where Rwanda is now. The fact is that this judiciary is not independent. Paul Rusesabagina’s case is a high-profile example of a very problematic legal case that was not free and fair. For every Paul Rusesabagina case, we have documented dozens and dozens of other cases of people who are not high profile, who did not have a Hollywood movie made about them, who also faced grossly unfair trials in which a raft of trial violations were committed. We have to go back to that default until the time has been made for the checks that are being proposed to have taken effect. That is a very low baseline.

The third and final point that I want to make with regard to what we were discussing earlier is that, even with these guardrails in place, this will not make Rwanda start respecting human rights. As such, the people who are sent there will not be able to go to any monitoring committee. Also, some of these committees might be bodies set up by the Rwandan Government anyway. Even if there was an independent monitoring committee, there are no assurances that a claim about people being unhappy will be treated freely and fairly. On the contrary: the default is that any claim made by asylum seekers that they are not happy with the situation they are in will be considered criticism of networks and systems set up by the Government of Rwanda.

As Mr Rusesabagina and I have tried to demonstrate, that is very dangerous to do in Rwanda. It does not matter if you are a foreigner. It is very dangerous to criticise what is happening. I think this is being rushed on a number of fronts. Even if we were to give it the benefit of doubt, it is being rushed. To be more realistic, you are not going to flick a switch and make Rwanda start respecting rights when the track record, basically since 1994—there are variations that we could discuss, but we do not have time to—is that this country and this Government do not respect basic, fundamental human rights.

Chair: Have I missed the third point? I was taking a careful note of everything you have said, but you said that you wanted to address the treaty on three points.

Lewis Mudge: Yes, the third one went back to your earlier point, which was that there will not be a means for these people to express themselves inside Rwanda with regard to their treatment. We have to default back to the baseline, which is that not only will those means not be there, but it will be very risky for them.

I am basing this on personal experience. It has been talked about in the media but not to a huge degree. In around 2016 or 2017—again, I do not have my notes in front of me—Israel embarked on a scheme whereby it sent Eritreans to Rwanda. I was still accessing the country and going in when these gentlemen were arriving. This was not done through a treaty with the UK, so I get that it is different. However, I can draw broad-based generalities from it, which were that this was handled in a way that just did not respect any normal procedures, let alone human rights.

These guys were taken through a side door in the airport. They got involved in schemes where they had to pay immigration officials, and eventually they were all shipped up to the Ugandan border and kicked into the bush and told to find their own way to Uganda, to make it on their own. There has been a dry run of this.

The default was not to treat the Eritreans who were shipped over from Israel with empathy or compassion. It was not to acknowledge that they were all men facing incredibly difficult circumstances in Eritrea. The default was to shut these guys up, not let Human Rights Watch find them, warn them not to talk to people like me. We had to take enormous efforts to speak to them. It was incredibly difficult to find them. Finally, when they became an issue, the default was to ship them up to the Ugandan border and get rid of them.

This was not done in the context of a UK treaty, I acknowledge all that, but it does show you the default and the baseline as to where things could go.

Chair: We are about to become inquorate, so I have to ask people to leave the public gallery. However, could our witnesses stay with us, because I want to ask them a few more questions informally? Thank you.

The Committee went into informal session.

Gentlemen, I am sorry about that. I have had to bring the formal session to an end, because we have to have a minimum number of Members here. The committee was about to become inquorate, so I could not continue our formal session. I want to give my colleagues the opportunity to come in on some of the things you said there, Mr Mudge, and to bring Paul back in if necessary. Please do not take any offence. I am just constrained by the rules of parliamentary procedure. You gave us a lot of detail, Mr Mudge, and one or two of my colleagues will want to ask questions about it. I am just sorry that we had to bring the formal session to a close. I hand over to Simon now, who has some questions.

Q139 Lord Murray of Blidworth: Mr Mudge, thank you for that evidence. I want to explore your knowledge of the treaty arrangements and the MEDP. I take it that you have had a look at those documents.

Lewis Mudge: I have, but do not quiz me on them.

Lord Murray of Blidworth: No, I am not going to. One of the points you brought out was that Mr Kagame and the Government of Rwanda are very keen that this scheme succeeds, because they have a lot to gain by it. I suspect, and I would be grateful for your comments, that when the scheme starts there will be a lot of international scrutiny on how the Government of Rwanda handle people transferred to Rwanda. Do you think that is right?

Lewis Mudge: I do. I do think there will be a lot of international scrutiny.

Lord Murray of Blidworth: In the treaty itself, a monitoring committee is set up comprising some Members of the Rwandan Government, some Members of the British Government and various other people. That reports to a joint committee of each Government and provides a mechanism by which issues can be resolved between the parties to the treaty. I say that, because in the answer you gave some moments ago you suggested that there was no monitoring committee. I just wanted to check that you were aware of it.

Lewis Mudge: No, and I apologise for that. I was not trying to suggest that there was not going to be a monitoring committee. I do find allusions to the mechanisms and committees to be vague to this day, but if I implied that, that is not what I meant.

What I tried to say, and mean to say, is that some of these monitoring committees will have government actors inside them, and I do not think they will be safe venues where people can raise issues about potential unfair treatment and conditions of their life in Rwanda. Even if they have that expatriate component to them, this is happening on Rwandan soil, and as long as the Government of Rwanda are embedded in these monitoring committees—to the best of my ability in reading the documents, it seems that they will be—I do not think they will be sufficient to assuage the fears people will feel criticising the set-up.

Q140 Lord Murray of Blidworth: Thank you for that. It seems likely that there will be representation in Rwanda of British non-governmental organisations and charities for refugees when the system starts. Indeed, UK law firms will probably have representatives in Kigali. Is there any reason why they would be precluded from publicising in the UK press or in Rwanda anything that they were to find?

Lewis Mudge: There are two things to unpackage there. The first is with regard to NGOs and charities operating in Rwanda. Amnesty International does not operate in Rwanda. Human Rights Watch does not operate in Rwanda. Most, not all, of the larger groups that focus on human rights issues with an independent and objective lens have a very difficult time operating in Rwanda. The charities and NGOs that are successful in operating in Rwanda tend to focus primarily on development projects and tend to stay in their lane and not get involved in anything that is deemed to be critical. I encourage anyone from the committee to have any conversation with members of charities or NGOs that operate in Rwanda off the record, because they will probably only want to speak to you off the record. I assure you that they will confirm that there are areas that you cannot talk about. Criticism of the RPF and government policies is one of them. That is the first point.

Secondly, to your point about the media, there will be international attention on this for sure. Objectively, that is a good thing. It means that more lenses are focused on it. However, there is a concerted effort by the Government of Rwanda—we saw this around CHOGM and the preparations for CHOGM—to manage the Rwandan voice that comes forward. I would not take a few vox pop anecdotal interviews of people saying, “This is fantastic. We’re having a great time. We love it here and we’re glad we were sent here”, as any safeguard and indicative of the broader trend.

On the contrary, I have interviewed people face to face who have said things publicly and then said to me privately, “I was told to say something publicly”. We could go on and on about examples of people who have publicly stated something with an air of positivity and then privately said something different. A very good friend of mine, Kizito Mihigo, who was found dead a few years ago in his jail cell, is a classic example of that. He was arrested in 2014. He publicly came out singing the Government’s praises. He was then deemed an outsider and murdered. Let me strike that. He was found dead. I will not say he was murdered, because it is still unclear how he died.

I want to stress that nationally the media is very weak. It is very curbed and it censors itself. The news will not filter out through the national media. Internationally, as we all know, these are short trips. They usually accompany a large-scale British trip and they will be controlled. I implore you not to regard international media attention as a failsafe that will keep abuses down or keep the Rwanda Government honest on this issue.

Q141 Lord Murray of Blidworth: The second strand that I wish to explore is the institutional changes that are brought about by the treaty—in particular, the training of asylum case workers and the changes to the justice system, in particular the creation of a court of appeal with Commonwealth or UK and/or UK members. Is it right to say that those changes would create a real change in the justice system, because you would plainly have independent judges?

Lewis Mudge: With all due respect, I do not think this will effect change. I do not think that tweaks to the appeals courts will render the judiciary effective. I want to be very clear on the capacity in Rwanda. I have lived in the Congo, in Burundi, in Central African Republic, and in Kenya and Rwanda for many years. The capacity of the judiciary in Rwanda is amazing. It is top notch. Education levels and their ability to do things are of a European standard. That is not the issue.

This is political will. This is independence of the judiciary. Coming in with technical changes and adding new mechanisms is not the solution, because at the end of the day you cannot transpose an independent appeals court on to a judiciary that is not independent.

Q142 Lord Murray of Blidworth: If a decision was taken by a Rwandan High Court judge to disallow a claim by an asylum seeker and that was appealed, and in the decision of the appeal court it overturned the lower judge and the Commonwealth judge gave reasons why that should be, how would that not be an effective method of imposing oversight on the lower judiciary?

Lewis Mudge: With apologies, but that is slightly beyond, as I am on the fly here trying to answer. Is this a UK judge overturning a Rwandan judge?

Lord Murray of Blidworth: There will be a UK judge or another Commonwealth country judge sitting on a Rwandan court with a Rwandan judge.

Lewis Mudge: By virtue of the fact that this is within the Rwandan court system, the judiciary would not be independent. In the ICTR, there have been numerous instances of foreign judges working in collaboration with Rwandan judges, yet the judiciary is still not free and fair and does not guarantee people who come before it safe trial rights.

Q143 Chair: Paul, you have sat there very patiently while we asked Mr Mudge lots of questions, but I want to ask you this question. Do you think Rwanda is currently a safe country to send asylum seekers to?

Paul Rusesabagina: No, Rwanda is not a safe country, for many reasons. Rwanda is now a boiling volcano. Rwanda started a war against the Congo, and those Congolese refugees became refugees because of the Rwandan army, or President Kagame’s army. Not only the Congolese but now also Burundi have closed their borders with Rwanda. Tanzania is fighting against Rwanda on the Congolese soil. At any time, tonight or tomorrow, this war, which is in Goma maybe 2 kilometres or 3 kilometres from the Rwandan border, might also erupt in Rwanda. Are we going to say that Rwanda is a safe country?

Rwanda went too far, because attacking the Congo just to kill innocent people and steal minerals itself created a lasting hatred between two countries. The whole region, or most of it, is now fighting against Rwanda. All the borders are closed. Suppose those refugees are treated like the ones who came from Israel. If they happen to be treated that way and are supposed to be thrown to a border, as the ones from Israel were thrown to the border of Uganda, how are ones who the UK is willing to send to Rwanda to get out, since all the borders are closed?

Q144 Chair: I hear you saying very powerfully why you think it is not a safe country. From your experience of Rwanda, past and present, do you think that the Rwandan Government, the Rwandan system, are capable in the short to medium term of making the changes that would be required to ensure that the individuals sent there from the United Kingdom would have their human rights respected?

Paul Rusesabagina: I am afraid that Rwanda is not ready to change immediately.

Chair: Thank you both very much. I am very grateful to you both for giving so generously of your time and putting up with us in the ups and downs of parliamentary procedure. As you may know, we are going to Rwanda next week, and I can assure you, as the chair of this Committee, that I will be placing very careful weight and consideration on what you have both told me about Rwanda. I have taken a very careful note of the fact that you, Mr Mudge, tell me, as I have heard from others, that what I hear from people in Rwanda might be what they feel they have to say rather than what they want to say. Thank you very much, both of you.

On a personal note, Mr Mudge, I am a graduate of Edinburgh Law School as well. It is a joy to see somebody who has studied at Edinburgh doing such important work. Good luck to you and good luck to you both. Thanks very much.