Next week, Commonwealth leaders will gather in the manicured Rwandan capital Kigali for the organisation’s heads of government meeting. For the country’s president, Paul Kagame, the event is an opportunity to burnish his reputation as a man the west can do business with — despite widespread international criticism of his treatment of opponents at home and abroad.
On Tuesday, a flight due to carry people seeking asylum in the UK to Kigali, under a deal initially worth £120mn to Rwanda, was grounded after a last-minute intervention by the European Court of Human Rights. But the British government remains determined to press ahead with the scheme, in which Rwanda has agreed to process asylum seekers deported from the UK.
Defending the agreement in April, Kagame said: “It would be mistaken for people to just make a conclusion: ‘You know Rwanda got money.’ We are not trading humans . . . We are actually helping.”