Rwanda President Paul Kagame inspects a guard of honour after arriving in Botswana last week.Stringer/Reuters
A Rwandan dissident who alleged that he was tortured in prison has died on the day of his release, prompting calls for an independent investigation into the unclear circumstances of his death.
Aimable Karasira, a 48-year-old singer and YouTube commentator, had been sentenced to five years in prison on a charge of “inciting division” after he questioned the government’s official version of the 1994 genocide.
Authorities say he died of a suspected overdose of his prescription medicine as he was being escorted from prison at the end of his sentence last week. Human-rights activists are casting doubt on the official statements.
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An estimated 800,000 people, mostly ethnic Tutsis, were killed during the Rwandan genocide. But Mr. Karasira has repeatedly blamed the army of Paul Kagame, who is now Rwanda’s President, for the deaths of some of his family members during and after the three-month killing spree.
Many researchers have concluded that Mr. Kagame’s forces killed tens of thousands of civilians in Rwanda and the neighbouring Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1994. The Rwandan government has banned any mention of this research, deeming it to be “genocide denial” or “divisionism,” which are criminal offences in the country.
Critics of Mr. Kagame have often died mysteriously, both in Rwanda and abroad. The Globe and Mail has reported on death squads that have hunted and killed Rwandan dissidents in exile.
Two rights groups, Human Rights Watch and the Committee to Protect Journalists, both based in the United States, are calling for an independent investigation into Mr. Karasira’s death and the circumstances surrounding it.
His death in state custody, on the day when he was expected to walk free, is “devastating,” according to Muthoki Mumo, the Africa program co-ordinator for CPJ.
“Given past reports that Karasira was tortured behind bars and his unjust, five-year detention, Rwandan authorities clearly have questions to answer,” Ms. Mumo said in a statement.
In a court hearing in 2022, Mr. Karasira accused prison authorities of beating him and using sleep-deprivation tactics against him. “I’ve gone for days without sleeping,” he said, according to a Human Rights Watch report. “I don’t know how to explain the torture I have been subjected to. … It’s terrible torture, like in the movies.”
In 2020, after he first began posting YouTube videos in which he discussed the deaths of his family members during the genocide, he received a series of threatening letters and phone calls, and the government pressured him to use his YouTube platform to denounce other government critics, Human Rights Watch said.
He was arrested the following year. Even after he received the five-year prison sentence, prosecutors sought an additional 30-year sentence on other charges.
“Karasira is just the latest government critic to suffer a suspicious death,” said Clémentine de Montjoye, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, in a statement.
“There are many reasons to question the circumstances surrounding Aimable Karasira’s death in custody, not least the years of harassment and persecution he experienced at the hands of the authorities,” she said.
The rights groups noted that another prominent dissident, gospel singer Kizito Mihigo, died in a Rwandan police cell in 2020 in an equally mysterious case. Authorities said he hanged himself with bedsheets, but activists questioned this account. He had complained of threatening messages shortly before his death.
Mr. Mihigo, like Mr. Karasira, had come under official scrutiny after he publicly questioned the government’s version of the genocide. He was arrested just weeks after releasing a song about the Rwandan victims of Mr. Kagame’s forces. The government immediately banned the song.
Mr. Kagame, who has dominated Rwandan politics since his army took over the country in 1994, routinely wins elections with 98 or 99 per cent of the vote. He has crushed all opposition, with rival candidates usually banned from challenging him.
One of his most prominent opponents, Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza, has twice been imprisoned and is again facing trial for allegedly inciting unrest in the country.