Former-Editor- Great Lakes (@bbcgahuza) - BBC World Service. Personal account
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Joined April 2013
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I would like to thank the Germany-based Kinyarwanda Real Talk Channel for conducting an in-depth interview with me almost three years after my retirement from the BBC Great Lakes. I hope the interview will help Rwandans understand who I am.
It enabled me to respond to the government smear campaign led by Minister @DrDamascene , even though I retired from service nearly three years ago.
It enabled me to refute the lie circulated by the Government of Rwanda that I was responsible for the BBC’s use of the term “Rwanda genocide” rather than “genocide against the Tutsi,” the terminology promoted by the Rwandan government.
I returned to my earlier life as a freelancer for BBC Swahili, when my Tutsi appearance gave me away on trips amid heightened tensions between Hutus and Tutsis following the RPF/RPA invasion in October 1990.
I recounted how my journalism affected my 3 sisters; they were targeted during the genocide because they were related to a brother accused of collaborating with the RPF rebels. Two died in the wilderness. The militias in my village hung photographs of me on trees and pierced them with spears, cursing because they could not find me.
After serving 10 years in prison, one of them came to our home to apologise. When I asked him whether he could have killed me, he replied, “Yes”. When I asked why, he said they had been told I was collaborating with RPF rebels.
I recounted how, after a reconciliation meeting in Kigali in 2007, my manager advised me to acquire British nationality. He said that, based on the meeting he had attended, he had concluded the government did not want me there.
I also recounted surviving a 2009 INTORE plot to have me dismissed during the genocide’s 15th anniversary. It coincided with the Great Lakes service’s suspension in April after it rejected the government’s demand to suppress a programme featuring Hutus who opposed collective apologies for the genocide against the Tutsi as a path to reconciliation. The government called the programme Tutsi genocide denial.
I recounted how, in 2014, Rwandan authorities used the BBC Two documentary ‘Rwanda Untold Story’ as a pretext to suspend the Great Lakes service indefinitely, even though it had no role in producing the documentary. I said they did so because the service had become a thorn in their disinformation strategy.
I discussed my mental well-being. The persistent challenges of covering Rwanda ultimately affected my mental health, and I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). On the advice of mental health professionals, I had to leave. I was unable to discuss my PTSD in detail because of restrictions in the statement of agreement I signed with the BBC, after my managers had distanced themselves from me.
However, page 1 of the Human Rights Watch report “Join Us or Die”: Rwanda’s Extraterritorial Repression accurately describes my circumstances at the time of my retirement.
When I met Clementine de Montjeye, a senior Great Lakes researcher at Human Rights Watch, on 22 August 2022, I was still taking medication for PTSD prescribed by a psychiatrist at Memorial Hospital and carefully following the psychologist’s advice at Erith Hospital. I didn’t realise that, as she listened, Clementine was also observing me:
“When a Rwandan journalist living in London, United Kingdom, sat down on a bench in a public park, in August 2022, the first thing he said, after nervous introductions, was: “My wife didn’t want me to come. We have to be careful.” His eyes darting around to check if anyone was eavesdropping, he explains how some of his relatives in Rwanda are under surveillance and have been marginalized because of his work. In London, he lives afraid and isolated, and has suffered from panic attacks and depression. He has a flak jacket and security cameras at home. “I’ve stopped attending any gatherings of Rwandans. I never invite Rwandans around to my house anymore. But now, I am attacked online, he said.”
Ally Yusuf Mugenzi retweeted
“…the NBA's deepening relationship with #Rwanda risks the league becoming complicit in sportswashing … where governments or companies use sports to distract from human rights abuses, corruption and other activities.”
espn.com/nba/story/_/id/5028…
Ally Yusuf Mugenzi retweeted
For Danish readers. I commented on Denmark's plans to send unwanted asylum seekers to Rwanda, the British experience, Formula One @F1's recent announcement and Rwanda's systematic use of sportswashing in this article: jyllands-posten.dk/internati…
Ally Yusuf Mugenzi retweeted
Pour l'ancien secrétaire général de l'onu l'égyptien Boutros Boutros Ghali, il y a bien eu un génocide contre les hutus après la prise du pouvoir par le FPR au Rwanda.
Ally Yusuf Mugenzi retweeted
#Rwanda : Paul Kagame n'a jamais arrêté le génocide et la guerre dans son pays. C'est une falsification de l'histoire
Ally Yusuf Mugenzi retweeted
I welcome Lewis Hamilton's reservations about hosting Formula 1 in #Rwanda. President Paul Kagame’s role in eastern Congo’s suffering for more than three decades can no longer be ignored. It is time to hold those responsible accountable. today.rtl.lu/news/world/hami…
@DeboraK_RDC @xtr_africa @FullOptionscio @Genocost @CybelleFuraha @Yakil @misswite
Ally Yusuf Mugenzi retweeted
Formula 1 decision to hold African Grand Prix races in Rwanda has sparked an uproar after the body of a prominent Rwandan dissident was found beheaded in Uganda. The story of Robert Kabera's grisly murder & this latest sportswashing prize for Paul Kagame's Rwanda by @geoffreyyork in the @globeandmail .
theglobeandmail.com/sports/a…
Ally Yusuf Mugenzi retweeted
URGENT: I AM ASKING FOR PROTECTION BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE.
President @realDonaldTrump, @FBI, @WhiteHouse and Secretary @SecRubio: My name is Ramadhani Mupenda, known as BadRama of BADRAMA TV. I am a Rwandan government critic and human rights activist living in the United States. I have publicly reported death threats and attempts on my life. I am pleading with you to take these warnings seriously.
Robert Kabera, another outspoken Rwandan critic, has been found beheaded in Uganda. On October 19, police said his head was still missing. A human being’s life has ended in unimaginable brutality. Kagame’s supporters are calling for my head to be next! Especially since I was the last person to do broadcasting with him.
When someone who speaks out is killed like this, those of us who have received threats cannot simply carry on as though nothing has happened.
Please do not assume that being in America guarantees my safety.
Human Rights Watch has documented killings, disappearances, abductions and intimidation targeting Rwandans abroad, implicating Kagame’s government and its proxies. These documented abuses demand a serious response from governments responsible for protecting people within their borders.
Remember Paul Rusesabagina: a U.S. resident and Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient. After travelling from America to Dubai, he was forcibly taken to Rwanda in an operation financed by the Rwandan government. His international recognition and life in America did not put him beyond their reach.
Anne Rwigara’s sudden death in California also raised questions from her family. Investigative journalists later found that her phone number had previously been selected as a potential Pegasus surveillance target linked to Rwanda. Responsibility for her death has not been established. Her case nevertheless deepens the fear felt by people who have watched this family face persecution.
@FBI @FBIPhoenix @TheJusticeDept: Please establish secure contact with me, urgently assess the threats, investigate those responsible and help put appropriate protection measures in place. Please investigate any foreign-state involvement and anyone facilitating threats inside the United States.
@SecRubio @StateDept: Please raise these concerns directly with Rwandan authorities. Make clear that diplomatic relations will not shield anyone who directs or enables violence against critics abroad.
President Trump: I am asking your administration to help protect my life and my freedom to speak. No foreign government should be allowed to reach into America and frighten people into silence.
@batten_von: Please help get this appeal directly to people who can act. To journalists and elected officials: please ask what is being done to investigate these threats and prevent another killing.
I want to live. I want to keep speaking without fearing that it will cost me my life.
Please do not let this become another warning people rediscover after a death.
Hear me now. Investigate now. Help protect me now.
@SusieWiles47 @Presidence_RDC @FelixUdps @HouseForeignGOP @HouseForeign @SenateForeign @SFRCdems @DeputySecState @AsstSecStateAF @PressSec @CNN @washingtonpost @nytimes @hrw @amnesty
Ally Yusuf Mugenzi retweeted
Ubu birasobanutse ubwo umugabo wa Madedeli yemeye ko iriya account ari iya Madedeli koko, akanemera ko iriya tweet ari Madedeli wayiyandikiye ( N’ubwo mu bigaragara ari Inyandiko aba yahawe na PR ya Makolo)
-Ngo Madedeli si umunya-politiki. Gute Kandi mbona yambaye umwenda wa FPR inkotanyi🤣?
- kuki Madedeli atariwe uza kwivugira hakaza umugabo we se🤣?
- Ese madedeli arwanira ishyaka Kagame na Family ye, Madedeli bamubwiye ko kagame na famille ye badafite abavugizi
- kwibasira abantu ugasaba ko bagirirwa nabi aho bahungiye, ukabyita gukunda igihugu ntaho bitaniye nka kumwe interahamwe zicaga abatutsi mu izina ryo kurwana ku gihugu
- Madedeli ntaho yahungira urupfu rwa Robert Kabera ruzamwomaho kugeza ku iherezo rye, kimwe n’uko Mugesera ntaho yahungira icyaha cya Genocide kandi yarakozwe adahari
Umugabo wa Madedeli akwiye kwicaza umugore we, akamusaba kutigira interahamwe ya kagame. Kuko bitinde bitebuke, abibasira abantu mu izina rya kagame bazabibazwa kuko kagame ntabwo azahoraho nk’umusozi
End
Ally Yusuf Mugenzi retweeted
The Globe and Mail's story about the beheading in Uganda of exiled former army sergeant Robert Kabera. As timing goes, this couldn't have been worse publicity for Rwanda, which was only just celebrating hosting #F1 in coming years. theglobeandmail.com/sports/a…
Ally Yusuf Mugenzi retweeted
Rwandans earning around $1.50 a day need schools, hospitals, roads and public transport, not a multimillion-dollar F1 @F1 spectacle. @PaulKagame wants global prestige, but who pays the bill? With human rights concerns and accusations of sportswashing, is this development for ordinary Rwandans or image-building for the regime?
@SkySportsF1 @NewTimesRwanda @HRF @NaomiSchiff @SherrieSilver @LewisHamilton @ali_naka @fia @TherealKwizera @rpfinkotanyi
Ally Yusuf Mugenzi retweeted
You heard it right! #Rwanda uses sports to rebrand itself. A poor country investing $1.2B in #F1 isn’t just about sport or profit. With war crimes and human rights violations linked to @PaulKagame’s regime, he needs something big to whitewash its image,🇷🇼wrote the biggest cheque!
Ikiganiro cyiza kigaragaza uko let y'u Rwanda n'abambari bayo bamwariye I Paris.
youtube.com/live/2EbsdePwtrA…
Ally Yusuf Mugenzi retweeted
Is Rwanda giving Rwandan citizenship to Congolese people linked to rebel groups? 🇷🇼🇨🇩
Denise Dusauchoy, the pro-M23 TikToker arrested in Tanzania and later transferred to Congo, has reportedly been linked to Rwandan citizenship and a Rwandan passport.
If Rwanda really gave her citizenship while she was supporting a rebellion in Congo, was the government trying to legitimize the M23/AFC cause?
Dear Rwanda, if this is true, what else have you been doing behind the scenes? 🤔
Ally Yusuf Mugenzi retweeted
Félicitations à la vigilance de nos services sur place en Tanzanie. Car cette dame Dusauchoy avait déjà été un élément que le Rwanda utilisait pour nuire à l'image de nos institutions et du pays. Ce passeport fait à la va-vite laisse autant d'incohérences chronologiques au regard des évènements.
Un passeport rwandais où on a perçu la nationalité rwandaise attribuée à Denise Dusauchoy.
@fatshi13
AMINATA OEIL DU CHEF
Ally Yusuf Mugenzi retweeted
Niba uyu mugore yari intasi kuri uru rwego, ifatwa rye rirenze gufata bataillon 😮😮.
Kuri byinshi wareba ikiganiro
youtube.com/live/nPHnswofhO4…
Ally Yusuf Mugenzi retweeted
⚠️CALL TO ACTION: If you are a journalist from Europe, the US, Australia, or Canada, please read this article and share it with your local media and immigration authorities. rwandafreedomofspeech.com/sh…
Ally Yusuf Mugenzi retweeted
Rwanda is one of those countries where ethnicity is in everything and named nowhere. It sits in the room for every appointment, every promotion, every arrest, every contract and you just aren't allowed to say it out loud. Tribalism never left. It went underground, and Kagame's regime chose to criminalise talking about it instead of dealing with it.
That's the backdrop to what @__Mpambara (whether knowingly or not) and @YolandeMakolo are doing here. Look at where they retreat to: “keep it in the family,” “a personal feud.” That retreat is the tell. You reach for the private register when you can't discredit the person in public.
The silence in Kagame's Rwanda isn't natural and it doesn't hold itself up. It's held up by fear, the divisionism law, the genocide ideology law, prosecution, and the everyday cost to your career and your safety if the wrong word leaves your mouth. That works on every ordinary Rwandan, and on every foreigner within reach. It doesn't work on @mkainerugaba. He's @KagutaMuseveni's son and the head of his country's army and also he leans on the personal tie to @PaulKagame, the “uncle” he courted in public, as his cover. He's betting that closeness buys him what it buys no one else which is the room to say Hutu and Tutsi out loud and pay nothing for it. That impunity is the only reason the quiet part got said at all.
And it leaves the Kigali propaganda machine with nowhere to go. Normally, the second someone raises Hutu and Tutsi against the government, the machine has a label ready "génocidaire, denier, FDLR, divisionist" and the label does the work so nobody ever has to answer the point. None of it sticks to Muhoozi. He plays the ally, praises Kagame in public. There's no box to drop him in. So the only move left is “it's a family matter”, which is what you say when your usual weapons won't fire.
Thirty years of ndi umunyarwanda didn't make ethnicity go away. It just put the state in charge of it, used when it helps Kagame, hidden when it doesn't. And look who finally cracked it open. Not an exile, not a critic because those get smeared and everyone moves on. It took someone inside the circle, someone the machine can't reach. Now watch the rush to call it "private" a "family matter." They're not calming anything down. They're trying to get the lid back on. And you don't scramble for a lid over something that was never in the pot.
Ethnic hatred has no place in politics. Let personal disputes between Gen. Muhoozi Kainerugaba and his brother-in-law remain in their family. Casually reducing a political disagreement to “Hutu” and “Tutsi” labels, and invoking loaded, threatening language about Rwanda’s President, is careless.
In a region that has lived through the horror of the 1994 Genocide, Rwanda is right to reject this reckless statement.
Public figures with military and political power carry a responsibility to de-escalate, not to use ethnicity as a weapon in personal feuds. Three decades of reconciliation work shouldn’t be treated as fair game for a social media spat.
@YolandeMakolo thank you for not letting this slide.
chimpreports.com/rwanda-reje…
Ally Yusuf Mugenzi retweeted
Kagame’s Rwanda is among the 25 poorest countries, as defined by the World Bank in 2026 with a GNI per capita of $1,175 or less. medium.com/@david.himbara/ka…
Ally Yusuf Mugenzi retweeted
🇪🇸|#Spain | This is not a migration crisis. It is a multi-front war orchestrated by the Mossad and the CIA and executed by Morocco against a nation that refuses to become an imperial vassal.
This is not a wave of migration, it is a carefully orchestrated geopolitical attack. The people flooding the Ceuta border are not refugees; they are being used as human battering rams to punish a government that refused to bow to Washington. When Spain refused to serve as a launchpad for the U.S. war on Iran, Washington, Tel Aviv, and Rabat joined forces to weaponize the North African border.
🎯 The Real Target is Spain not Migrants
On July 30, 2026, thousands of migrants predominantly young men flooded into Ceuta, Spain’s enclave in North Africa. Between 1,500 and 2,000 migrants arrived in just a few days, representing roughly 2% of Ceuta’s population. At least nine people died while attempting to swim across.
But why now? Why Ceuta?
Because Spain said "No."
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez refused to allow the U.S. to use two military bases in southern Spain; #Morón and #Rota to attack #Iran. Spain also refused to let ships carrying weapons to Israel dock at its ports. Spain recalled its ambassador to Israel. Spain recognized the State of Palestine. In short, Spain refused to act as a submissive puppet of the empire.
The punishment - Morocco opened the floodgates.
🗺️ Who Opened the Floodgates? An Invisible Hand at Work
The same thing happened in 2021. At that time, Morocco retaliated against Spain by relaxing border controls, allowing about 8,000 people to pour into Ceuta. Now, the script is playing out again but on a larger scale and with more sophisticated tools.
On the Moroccan side, the auxiliary forces responsible for border security voluntarily withdrew as the crowds passed through. This was coordination not loss of control.
And the timing is no coincidence too. Spain is approaching an election. A migration crisis is the perfect weapon to undermine the incumbent government, a classic tactic of the Mossad and the CIA.
🔪 The Bigger Game is the Struggle for the Strait of Gibraltar
This migration crisis is merely one move in a much larger game. The real prize is the Strait of Gibraltar, a chokepoint through which approximately 10% of global maritime trade and around 100,000 vessels pass annually.
In January 2026, Israel and Morocco signed a joint military action plan. Israel now supplies at least 51% of Morocco's missiles. With Israeli support, Morocco is massively expanding its drone production; it has deployed the Israeli "Spyder" air defense system and is locally manufacturing the Israeli SpyX loitering munition (kamikaze drone). A joint maritime surveillance center is currently being established on Morocco's northern coast.
A U.S. report identifies the Israel-Morocco arms deal as a turning point in the balance of power within the Strait of Gibraltar. Morocco even proposed to Trump that the U.S. bases at Morón and Rota be relocated from Spain to Morocco. A Spanish general admitted: "Morón Air Base will sooner or later be moved to Morocco."
Washington, Tel Aviv, and Rabat are acting in concert to push Spain out of the Strait of Gibraltar and replace it with a compliant Morocco.
💀 The "Multinational Force" in Gaza: Morocco's Ultimate Role
Meanwhile, Morocco is emerging as a key implementer of Israel's post-war plans for Gaza. For the first time, Morocco will host training exercises for a multinational force expected to number around 20,000 troops. Approximately 30 Moroccan military officers have already entered Gaza to conduct on-the-ground reconnaissance. Morocco is expected to deploy around 500 soldiers to Gaza. Israeli officials now describe Morocco as Israel's most important security partner on the African continent.
A nation that uses "support for Palestine" as its diplomatic calling card is now becoming an instrument of military enforcement for Israeli control over Gaza.
⚡ The Complete Chain of the Plot
Here is the full picture:
1. Spain says "No": Refusing U.S. bases, Israeli arms shipments, and unconditional support for Israel.
2. Morocco opens the floodgates: Thousands of migrants pour into Ceuta, creating a crisis to punish Spain.
3. Israel supplies weapons: Missiles, drones, and air defense systems transforming Morocco into a regional military power.
4. The US provides cover: Washington supports Israel-Morocco military cooperation and tacitly condones the weaponization of migration.
5. The Strait of Gibraltar is the prize: a strategic waterway controlling 10% of global maritime trade.
6. Gaza is the ultimate goal: Morocco playing a "peacekeeping" role in Israeli-occupied Gaza.
🇪🇸 | Total Migration Crisis Declared in Ceuta
A total migration crisis has been declared in the Spanish enclave of Ceuta after a mass influx of migrants yesterday, followed by another uncontrolled surge over the border wall today.
Local authorities in Ceuta are now demanding that the Spanish government declare a national state of emergency and deploy the military to regain control of the situation.