Wrong message

A UK journalist who came here to talk about Rwanda’s authoritarian regime found herself the victim of a social media hate campaign.

- DANYL McLAUCHLAN

It thas been 30 years since the Rwandan genocide, a mass murder carried out across the geographically tiny African nation over a period of 100 days, killing between 500,000 and one million civilians - the fastest genocide in history. In New Zealand, this anniversary was marked in a curious fashion with a social media campaign directed against a British journalist touring the country.

Michela Wrong, an award-winning African correspondent for Reuters, the Financial Times and BBC, covered the original 1994 massacres, in which extremists in the nation's Hutu ethnic majority massacred members of the Tutsi minority, along with perceived Hutu moderates and collaborators. "The entire country smelled of carrion," she recalls. She also documented the period of recovery and reconstruction after the genocide.

Then in 2021, Wrong published a book documenting the current Rwandan government's policy of "trans-national repression". Do Not Disturb: The Story of a Political Murder and an African Regime Gone Bad was about the persecution and assassination of critics and perceived enemies of the authoritarian government and its leader. The regime is not amused.

For more than 20 years, Rwanda has been ruled by Paul Kagame, a former military officer described by the New York Times as "the global elite's favourite strongman". Kagame is much celebrated for his nation's rapid economic development, for delivering dramatic improvements in health and education, and for turning one of the continent's bloodiest regions into a safe and well-lit place. Most of Rwanda's income consists of international aid, and his success is regarded as proof the West's development model can work, that not all of the money is stolen or spent on weapons and presidential palaces.