Politics are trusted to use the technology “ responsibly ,” while others , such as Morocco and Rwanda , should simply never be allowed anywhere near that kind of sophistication . The suggestion itself rests on slippery ground .
Very recently , on 25 May this year , Amnesty celebrated its win in a case it had brought before the European Court of Human Rights , which ruled that the UK government ’ s bulk interception of communications powers “ did not contain sufficient ‘ end-toend ’ safeguards to provide adequate and effective guarantees against arbitrariness and the risk of abuse .” In other words , the UK government was secretly intercepting and processing the private communications of millions of its citizens on a daily basis , long before Michela Wrong , a British novelist with a fertile imagination , accused Rwanda of doing a similar thing , albeit without comparable technological and financial means .
Prior to this European court ruling , on 3 September 2020 , the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that “ the warrantless telephone dragnet that secretly collected millions of Americans ’ telephone records violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and may well have been unconstitutional ,” effectively terming NSA ’ s activities of mass surveillance as unlawful . Examples of similar cases abound in many other western countries , such as France . However , none of these cases has prompted Amnesty to ask these governments that engage in surveillance on a scale an African country can only dream of to halt their activities altogether . Neither did revelations that the Trump administration , just like the Obama administration before it , spied on journalists prompt Amnesty International to put the US on its black list of “ irresponsible ” countries . Instead , the emphasis is put on the lawful use of these technologies as a means to fight terrorism , and relevant self-regulatory mechanisms are recommended to quell arbitrariness and the risk of abuse . This is because Amnesty does not challenge these countries ’ right to guarantee the safety of their citizens and to gather all relevant information to achieve this constitution-binding mission .
Siding with terrorism in Africa
For Africa in general , and Rwanda among other countries targeted for regime change , no such sovereign right to protect citizens is recognized . Instead , Amnesty accuses these countries of violating the well-known but unwritten rule prohibiting them from emulating their western counterparts in specific areas . It appears this is the crime requiring reprimand . Consider this . If Amnesty was not prohibiting emulating the west and if it had been able to prove with credible and accessible evidence that these countries had used the Pegasus software , the next step would have been to assess whether their activities were lawful and motivated by credible security concerns . But only a select group of western countries can claim this right to assess the appropriate response to the risks they face ; African countries are not allowed into that club and Amnesty International is the gatekeeper . It is this gatekeeping role that undermines its otherwise worthwhile endeavor in the event that policing human rights was done without hypocrisy .
Can Africans be targets of terrorism ?
In the last two decades , Rwanda , just like the US , the UK or France , has been the target of several terrorist attacks ( in 2010 , 2018 , and 2019 ) which claimed the lives of innocent civilians . Yet , Amnesty and its more corrupt sister , Human Rights Watch , continue to act as if no one is responsible for these crimes . For instance , their shameful advocacy , which obsesses over the method of the arrest of Paul Rusesabagina , suggests that European precedents should not apply to Africans , and undermines the quest for justice for the victims of Rusesabagina ’ s FLN terror grouping is compounded with their active support of the smear campaigns orchestrated by his daughter , Carine Kanimba , who , mocking the victims of her father ’ s terrorism , had previously accused the government of Rwanda of having created victims out of thin air .
“ The attacks my father is being accused of , first of all , we have evidence that these were led to ( sic ) false flags operations by the Rwandan government in order to smear my father because they had seen the video ,” Carine told
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