And so, it begins. It has become a tradition for much of Western media. For many of them the response to any major event in Rwanda is not how to best cover that event, but how to use to use it to attempt to tarnish the country’s image.
First in line, is Belgium’s Flemish National Broadcasting Company, VRT NWS. Their journalist, Stijn Vercruysse, has reprotedly been prevented from boarding a flight to Rwanda, to cover the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) championships in Kigali.
Understandably, the man is more than a little grumpy about it all, it has rather robbed him what would have been an exciting weekend, and the noise of his toys being thrown out of the pram can be heard all over cyberspace. Even more annoyingly for him, Rwanda is too focused on organising the event to pay any attention to his tantrums.
“As a journalist, I’m not allowed to leave,” complained Vercruysse, “The Rwandan government has forbidden the airline from letting me on the plane.” An official reason is still unknown, but “it might be about my past critical reporting on Rwanda.”
If indeed the Rwanda authorities have declared this particular journalist persona non grata, “critical reporting” will not be the reason. Few countries in the world are more welcoming of visitors, journalists included, than Rwanda. The country regularly tops the list of most welcoming nations.
Anyone travelling to Kigali for the UCI competion, which at the risk of rubbing salt into Vercruysse’s grumpiness, promises to be as much festival as it is a competition, will able to get their visa on arrival, should they wish, and for African nationalities, all they will need are their passports.
It takes an enormous amount of effort to be refused entry into Rwanda. Vercruysse must be congratulated on his diligence in working to achieve this rare distintinction.
VRT NWS, we are informed, “has contacted the UCI and the Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to request an official reason for the entry ban. So far, the ministry has responded as follows: “Minister (Maxime, ed.) Prévot immediately contacted the Rwandan authorities, but at this time, we don’t have any further explanation.”
“Since Rwanda is hosting this international sporting event and also hosting the Belgian cycling team, this entails special responsibilities. However, we are awaiting further clarification before making any substantive statement.”
It does not take great powers of deduction to guess that given Belgium’s decades old contempt and malicious campaigning against Rwanda, will not have contributed to Rwandan officials’ speed to respond to any demands from Belgium.
A disinterested observer will note that Rwanda does indeed have “special responsibilities” as host nation for UCI, but the country, used to welcoming the world as it is, hardly needs anyone, least of all Belgium, to remind it of its responsibilities.
Among the tens of thousands expected for the UCI competition, there will be an estimated 500 – 1,500 media personnel, including journalists.
VRT NWS however, does seem to believe itself indespensable, and that without them the world will be deprived of reporting “critically on the host country, which ultimately has a very authoritarian regime…We were going to tell the truth through nuanced reporting on the sidelines of the World Cup. That won’t be possible now, and that perhaps says something about the authoritarian nature of the regime in Rwanda.”
There is an abuse of language in VRT NWS’s complaint. For “nuance,” read an anti Rwanda narrative. Like so many pedlers of the anti Rwanda narrative, it is clear that this “expert on Africa” intended to get to Rwanda, to search “on the sidelines” of a major event, for anything he could bend and twist out of its natural shape, to vindicate an imagined Rwanda, with which he will have arrived.
That, is his idea of “telling the truth.” It would seem that Rwanda has had its fill of this Orwellian idea of “truth,” and so, poor old Vercruysse, will have to stay at home and tend to his laundry, rather than join the festival in Kigali.
In barring Vercruysse from Rwanda, if the reports are indeed borne out by the facts, Rwanda can justifiably say that it has protected its society from further disinformation, from someone who is a journalist in name only, and who in reality is little more than anti Rwanda propagandist.
