Rwanda’s long arm threatens refugees in the Netherlands – Joop
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© cc photo: Paul Kagame
How safe are Rwandan refugees in our country? Zembla journalists Sander Rietveld and Norbert Reintjens spoke in recent months with various people from the Rwandan community in the Netherlands. They state that they are intimidated and threatened in our country by the Rwandan secret service.
“People tell us about strange threatening phone calls saying: we know where your family lives. People are addressed on the street with strange intimidating texts,” says Norbert.
Christopher Houtkamp of the Clingendael Institute conducts research into diasporas, migrant communities in the Netherlands and says the following about it: “Rwanda is known to intimidate political beings. And there are very important rumors that the political trouble caused assassination.”
diaspora espionage
Nevertheless, Rwanda is not on the list of countries such as Iran, China and Russia that engage in ‘diaspora espionage’ in the Netherlands. “We know about Eritreans in the Netherlands who are heavily intimidated by the Eritrean embassy. Iran has even killed people in the Netherlands,” says Sander. “It is clear that there are countries that practice diaspora espionage in the Netherlands. Rwanda is also part of that, also does the same things. Only in the Netherlands is that not a priority.”
Some foreign security agencies, such as the Rwandan operations, actually consider it a threat to national security. Rwanda is known as a country known for example as Russia and Iran, which has been known to keep an eye on and sometimes developed to liquidate.
“The difficult thing is that the Netherlands has a good relationship with Rwanda. That could play a part, although it’s speculation. We are one of the largest donors in the country,” concludes Sander. Zembla itself also has to deal with intimidation from the Rwandan embassy. After the previous broadcast ‘Dicature support no objection’ – about the financial construction of the rule of law in Rwanda – Sander Rietveld and Norbert Reintjens were invited to the Rwandan embassy in The Hague. In the podcast, the journalists tell how they were intimidated there during the conversation. “The embassy about our broadcast a ‘hit job’, an attack on Rwanda.”