Rwandan targeting of dissidents in Canada should be probed by foreign-interference inquiry, activists say

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Rwandan-Canadian activists say they are puzzled at their omission from the federal inquiry into foreign interference, despite evidence that critics of the Rwandan government have been targeted with surveillance and harassment in Canada.

The RCMP recently arrested a Mountie, Constable Eli Ndatuje, who was allegedly providing information to Rwandan officials from police records. He was charged with breach of trust and unauthorized use of a computer.

After the arrest in February, the RCMP cited the case as an example of foreign interference in Canada. Activists in the Rwandan diaspora say it demonstrates how the Rwandan government has routinely spied on its critics in Canada.

The Foreign Interference Commission has heard testimony by activists from the Chinese, Russian, Iranian, Sikh and Uyghur communities in Canada, but so far has not offered a slot to members of the Rwandan diaspora who report similar experiences of intimidation and verbal abuse or threats.

“Cases of harassment, intimidation and spying on Rwandan residents or other Canadians who criticize the Kigali regime are well known,” said Pierre-Claver Nkinamubanzi, president of the Canadian Rwandan Congress.

“I think that the federal government should include Rwanda in its inquiry on foreign interference in Canada,” he told The Globe and Mail.

He said he has personally been harassed in e-mails and WhatsApp messages from people using fake names, including one message that threatened him with “big trouble” if he failed to halt his political activities.

After Rwanda, I found a path to personal peace. Can the world do that?

Some of his friends have been followed or subjected to attacks, he said. They suspect the incidents were organized by Rwandan agents because they had criticized Rwanda’s authoritarian government, which has ruled since 1994 with few opposition candidates in its elections.

David Himbara, a Rwandan-Canadian economist and scholar who says he suffered threats and intimidation by Rwandan officials after he criticized their government, wrote to the federal inquiry in early February to request an opportunity to testify. He received a brief acknowledgment but was not invited to speak.

“As a Rwandan-Canadian human-rights defender, I have first-hand experience of foreign interference in Canadian affairs,” Mr. Himbara said in his e-mail to the inquiry.

“My testimony would focus on the government of Rwanda’s interference in Canadian affairs by relentlessly threatening the lives of Rwandan-Canadians who speak out about human-rights abuses in Rwanda.”

Last week, almost two months after his first request, Mr. Himbara sent another e-mail to the inquiry, asking again whether he could testify. This time, the inquiry told him it will hold further hearings in the fall. “You can be assured we have taken note of the information you have provided about the Rwandan diaspora,” it told him in its e-mail.

The Globe asked Michael Tansey, a spokesperson for the commission of inquiry, why it had not asked any Rwandan Canadians to testify so far. He said the inquiry’s current hearings are focused on evidence of foreign interference in the 2019 and 2021 federal elections, while its future work will look more broadly at diaspora experiences with foreign interference in Canada’s democratic institutions and electoral processes.

“The commission anticipates obtaining information from a variety of diaspora groups in the course of this work,” Mr. Tansey said.

Mr. Himbara told The Globe that he could testify about his personal experiences, including an incident in which Rwandan media published his Toronto home address. In another incident, in 2019, a Rwandan defence attaché asked a Rwandan-Canadian friend of his to find a way to “silence” him, Mr. Himbara said. He took the information to Toronto police, who told him they would investigate, but he has heard nothing further.

Mr. Himbara, a former adviser to Rwandan President Paul Kagame, said the threats began after he testified to a U.S. congressional committee about abuses in Rwanda. After his testimony, Mr. Kagame denounced him publicly in a speech.

Human-rights groups, including Freedom House and Human Rights Watch, have documented an extensive pattern of Rwandan government repression of dissidents and critics in Canada and many other countries. They reported that exiled dissidents have been subjected to killings, kidnappings, enforced disappearances, surveillance and intimidation.

One Rwandan refugee in Canada was subjected to a campaign of online attacks by government-affiliated groups and social-media accounts after he criticized the government, and a pro-government YouTube commentator went to his mother’s home in Rwanda to gather material against him, Human Rights Watch said.

South African authorities have issued arrest warrants for two Rwandans who allegedly killed a dissident in Johannesburg and fled to Rwanda. Police and prosecutors said the suspects have close links to Mr. Kagame’s government.

“Rwandans as far-flung as the United States, Canada, and Australia report intense fears of surveillance and retribution,” Freedom House said in a 2021 report.