The dictator Kagame at UN

The dictator Kagame at UN
Dictators like Kagame who have changed their national constitutions to remain indefinitely on power should not be involved in UN high level and global activities including chairing UN meetings

Why has the UN ignored its own report about the massacres of Hutu refugees in DRC ?

The UN has ignored its own reports, NGOs and media reports about the massacres of hundreds of thousands of Hutu in DRC Congo (estimated to be more than 400,000) by Kagame when he attacked Hutu refugee camps in Eastern DRC in 1996. This barbaric killings and human rights violations were perpetrated by Kagame’s RPF with the approval of UK and USA and with sympathetic understanding and knowledge of UNHCR and international NGOs which were operating in the refugees camps. According to the UN, NGO and media reports between 1993 and 2003 women and girls were raped. Men slaughtered. Refugees killed with machetes and sticks. The attacks of refugees also prevented humanitarian organisations to help many other refugees and were forced to die from cholera and other diseases. Other refugees who tried to return to Rwanda where killed on their way by RFI and did not reach their homes. No media, no UNHCR, no NGO were there to witness these massacres. When Kagame plans to kill, he makes sure no NGO and no media are prevent. Kagame always kills at night.

25 Sept 2020

How not to write about the Rwandan genocide

 How not to write about the Rwandan genocide

 

Picture: Linda Melvern receiving a medal from the  killer and dictator Paul Kagame

BY

https://africasacountry.com/author/susan-thomson

 

How Rwandan history is told—and who does the telling—is important as it determines who is able to participate in conversations about the past.

https://africasacountry.com/2020/09/how-not-to-write-about-the-rwandan-genocide

In late August, the Rwandan government abducted Paul Rusesabagina, the hero of the Hollywood film, Hotel Rwanda. His forcible return from Dubai to Kigali has put Rwanda and its ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front back in the headlines. Rwanda’s government accuses Rusesabagina of leading an armed struggle against it. Speaking at a press conference last weekend, Rwandan president Paul Kagame told reporters that Rusesabagina had been brought home on charges of treason, kidnap, and murder. One might expect a representative of the Ministry of Justice to speak about Rusesabagina’s alleged crimes. Not so in Rwanda, where the President sets the tone about who can speak about who did what to whom during the 1994 genocide.

During the 1994 genocide, Rusesabagina was a hotel manager, whose story was the basis of the 2004 movie Hotel Rwanda, with Rusesabagina portrayed by Don Cheadle. The film chronicles Rusesabagina’s central role in saving more than 1,200 ethnic Tutsis at the infamous Hotel Mille Collines in Kigali as fighting between government forces and Kagame’s Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) raged close by. When “Hotel Rwanda” was released, the RPF leadership praised the film, going so far as to send a contingent of government officials to New York for its official launch.

In 2006, George W. Bush awarded Rusesabagina the Presidential Medal of Honor, which raised hackles in Kigali. Rusesabagina used this international acclaim to criticize the government, mostly in Western capitals. By the end of 2011, the RPF leadership had labeled Rusesabagina an ethnic ideologue and genocide denier.

Fast forward to September 6, 2020 and a press conference, as reported by The New York Times, in which Kagame framed Rusesabagina’s crimes as a denial of the RPF’s official version of the 1994 genocide, “ … saying that other survivors from the Hôtel Mille Collines dispute [Rusesabinga’s] depiction as a hero.” Previously, Rwandan officials have dismissed Hotel Rwanda as “pure fiction” and accused Rusesabagina of “propagating lies and misinformation” about the genocide, according to The New York Times. The President’s allegations are a product of selective memory and an ever-changing political climate that equates political criticism with denial of the 1994 genocide.

Hotel Rwanda indeed provided Rusesabagina an international platform, which he used to criticize the government’s post-genocide policies and practices. As I wrote in my recent book, Rwanda: From Genocide to Precarious Peace (2018), the RPF deploys the specter of a return of genocidal violence to manage dissent. Rusesabagina is now considered an enemy of the state because of his public criticism of the moral authority of the RPF government to remake Rwanda on its own terms. The crafting of a particular image of Rwanda as peaceful, stable, and a beacon of economic development, the RPF has long relied on sympathetic journalists and academic scriptwriters to write its version of events into the public record, a record which in turn provides the basis of allegation of genocide denial and treason for critics such as Rusesabagina, as well as for critics who lack international prominence. The history of the genocide and how it is presented as a singular event driven by ethnic hatred is hardly surprising, given the prominence of some writers for the RPF’s official position.

The latest salvo is by British investigative journalist, Linda Melvern. Her latest book, Intent to Deceive: Denying the Genocide of the Tutsi (published by Verso this year) is a regurgitation of the government line, rooted in a selective reading of history that is deployed to reformulate who is a regime critic. Melvern is no stranger to Rwanda. She has dedicated almost 25 years to writing about the circumstances of the 1994 genocide. She authored A People Betrayed: The Role of the West in Rwanda’s Genocide (2000) and Conspiracy to Murder: The Rwandan Genocide (2004). Melvern has also acted as a consultant to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.

But, Intent to Deceive is based on a fallacy that informs the indictment against Paul Rusesabagina and other critics like him: That the winners and losers of the Rwandan genocide are settled history. How Rwandan history is told—and who does the telling—is important as it determines who can participate in conversations about the past, something Melvern overlooks as a critical part of how societies recover from mass violence. The ways in which the history of the Rwandan civil war and genocide is interpreted and recorded matters too, because it raises necessary questions about the ways in which this past will be seen in the future.  As Melvern herself notes, there are always winners and losers in how official histories are told, retold, taught, and memorialized.

In Rwanda, as in other divided societies and regardless of who holds power, history has been interpreted and rewritten to suit the political agendas of the protagonists—in this case, since 1994, the ruling RPF and its leader, Paul Kagame. Political elites, whether in Rwanda or elsewhere, regularly and creatively revise national histories to justify their policies and actions, and to harden their grip on power, often acting without regard for the lives and livelihoods of their citizens.

Melvern leads the reader into believing that denial of the 1994 genocide is so wide-spread and so pernicious that it represents a threat to the stability of the current Rwandan government. In Melvern’s telling, the violence of 1994 was committed only against the minority Tutsi population. There is no denying genocide, in the legal, political and social meaning of the word, occurred in Rwanda in 1994; and scholars generally agree on the intensity and scale of the event. But scholarship also demonstrates there was mass violence committed against civilians of all ethnicities, including the Hutu majority and tiny Twa minority, in the broader context of civil war (1990-1994), during the genocide, and from 1994-1999, as the new government, led by the RPF rebel group turned ruling party, left no stone unturned in securing the country. I do not write the preceding sentence to deny or diminish the horrors of the 1994 genocide. Quite the opposite. Unlike Melvern, I fully acknowledge other mass crimes took place in Rwanda before, during and after the 1994 genocide. Recognizing the human costs to Rwandans of all ethnicities—Tutsi, Hutu and Twa—so that their suffering can be addressed, repaired and memorialized is vital to the long-term prospects for peace and stability in the region.

Instead, Melvern misleads her reader. She systematically rewrites the history of the Rwandan genocide to sublimate the human rights abuses of the RPF government, in both Rwanda and the region. In other words, Melvern fails to disclose that speaking of RPF atrocities or abuses is to deny the genocide of the Tutsi. It may be that Melvern’s deception comes from a place of worry. After all, as Tutsi survivors of the 1994 genocide know all too well, genocide denialism is sadly part of the socio-political landscape in Rwanda and beyond. Melvern correctly notes that the rhetoric of denial is the last of Gregory Stanton’s 10 distinct stages of genocide, in which perpetrators deny their acts of genocide and do all they can to cover up evidence of their crimes.

Melvern’s concern is literal denial that genocide occurred in Rwanda. Rigorous scholarship dismisses this possibility, with most treading carefully to affirm genocide in Rwanda, to honor survivors and in recognition that the genocide continues to live in them, to paraphrase the anthropologist Jennie E. Burnet. To suggest otherwise is to insult survivors of the genocide. Indeed, there can be no denying that a handful of ethnic Hutu political elites, as well as some scholars and pundits, either relativize the violence of the 1994 genocide or flat-out deny it ever happened. Where Melvern’s analysis flounders is assuming all instances of genocide denial in contemporary Rwanda are forms of literal denial, without due regard to multiple periods of systematic and widespread violence against civilian populations in Rwanda and in the region, throughout the 1990s, at the hands of multiple actors. Melvern thus conflates literal denial with the politics of genocide denial, unable to distinguish between denial to avoid individual culpability and denial intended to rewrite Rwanda’s history of political violence to suit the ruling RPF.

To be sure, defense lawyers at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda—a court established in November 1994 to try genocide crimes—regularly employed minimizing or denialist language in defending their clients. Such denials are best contextualized as part of the accused’s right to legal defense. More critical in Melvern’s case is equating literal cases of genocide denial with the politics of denialism, led by the RPF leadership and their supporters, who use the phrase “genocide denier” to suss out its critics and manage political opponents. In 2008, the RPF revised the constitution to legally call the events of 1994 “the genocide against the Tutsi.” This naming formalized Tutsi as the sole victims of the genocide and Hutu as the lone perpetrators. It also framed the RPF as the sole heroes of genocide, as the only military force capable of ending the violence, in the face of a withering United Nations peacekeeping force.

Whether ordinary Rwandan or foreign writer, anyone who questions the RPF’s account of the genocide, or who seeks to broaden the conversation to lives lost, before or after the genocide, is likely to be accused of genocide denial. Since 2012, the label of “genocide denier” has been used to control domestic political opponents, Hutu or Tutsi alike, who wish to commemorate all lives lost during the 1994 genocide, or if they publicly criticize the RPF, President Kagame or government policy.

Yet, as Melvern tells it, people in the global North widely accept a version of Rwandan history in which perpetrators of the 1994 genocide “have tried to alter the story, diminishing the death toll, claiming the killing was in self-defense, and blaming the victims.” As such, her purpose in writing Intent to Deceive is to set the record straight on what we in the global North think we know about the 1994 genocide. To do so, she portrays the sensationalist idea of a double genocide, in which Hutu were also targets of genocide, committed by the RPF, as both widely-accepted and widely-believed beyond Rwanda’s borders. Nothing could be further from the truth. A cursory search of news stories, best-selling books, and academic scholarship demonstrate that the dominant version of Rwandan history in the global North is that Hutu extremists took control of the government and pursued a genocide against Tutsi, opposition political party members, and anyone opposed to the genocide, regardless of ethnicity.

This approach has a long pedigree, in particular among the political opponents of the current government, especially opposition figures living in exile (including Rusesabagina as well as Kayumba Nyamwasa and Victoire Ingabire), many of whom feature in Melvern’s book as powerful and looming figures, waiting in the shadowy wings for the right time to reclaim power in Rwanda. She also puts in her sights the American courts, the French state, and the BBC-sponsored documentary “Rwanda’s Untold Story” as evidence of the double genocide thesis. Legal and scholarly evidence to support a claim of a double genocide is non-existent, yet the analysis in the second half of the book rests on this unsubstantiated claim. Melvern’s text is rooted in such intrigues without compelling evidence. It is as if she has willfully overlooked decades of careful scholarship, legal proceedings, policy opinions, and personal testimony from Hutu and Tutsi survivors of the genocide, all of which make up the body of knowledge. As such, Intent to Deceive is better read as a political tract than the product of serious journalism.

To be fair, a handful of Rwandan political opponents do deny the genocide, offering up an interpretative denial, claiming the mass violence of 1994 was part of a civil war, and as such, could not possibly amount to the crime of genocide. Furthermore, the so-called “double genocide hypothesis” has been popularized by a few fringe academicsjournalists, and members of a small and impotent Hutu Power clique. These individuals are center-stage in Melvern’s text, occupying her attention for much of the 264-page book. She suggests their intent to deceive is a political strategy, but she fails to illustrate how they might actually challenge the ruling RPF.

As my scholarship, and that of fellow political scientists Lee Ann Fujii and Scott Straus demonstrates, Rwandans themselves know that their Tutsi brethren were targeted in acts of genocide in 1994; they also know that they, too, were subject to war crimes and crimes against humanity throughout the 1990s. Yet, they cannot speak of these harms or lost loved ones. Rwandans living in Rwanda during the 1990s know that multiple forms of killing occurred at the hands of different actors—including militias, members of the armed forces loyal to the genocidal government, members of the the-rebel RPF, as well as enthusiastic ordinary people. Those who survived the genocide understand that there were different modes of violence of varying intensity and scale at different times, including during the Rwandan civil war (1990-94), during the genocide (1994), or after (1994-1999). Rwandans understand that multiple actors committed multiple acts of killing. They used to use the Kinyarwanda and French phrases “amarorerwa yo muri 94/les événements de 1994” (the events of 1994) and “muri 94/en 1994” (in 1994) to describe everything that happened in 1994, not just the genocide (itsembabwoko/le génocide). Some also use the language of war to describe the civil war and genocide period (intambara/la guerre). Today, it is illegal to speak in these terms, meaning most Rwandans now comply with using “the genocide of the Tutsi” (jenoside ya korewe abaTutsi muri 1994). Despite this complexity, Melvern describes the genocide in a singular way that functions outside of the experience of many Rwandans who survived the genocide, yet in footstep with the RPF’s version of events.

In my experience, and that of many other academics and journalists, Rwandans themselves know that they cannot speak of anything more than the violence they experienced or witnessed between April and July 1994. As Beatrice told me in 2017:

We used to speak of the genocide and massacres as a way to respect all lives lost. Now we must speak exclusively of the genocide against the Tutsi. How will Rwanda heal and move forward if some of us cannot speak of our harms? Without frank conversation, how can a middle ground be found? It can’t exist because the government won’t allow it. Instead, those of us who question the official narrative are considered [Hutu] extremists.

Ordinary Rwandans like Beatrice, who question the government’s genocide narrative, are enemies of the state, guilty of wishing to honor and remember the loss of their loved ones in violence that occurred before, in parallel to or after the 1994 genocide. Whether wittingly or not, Melvern’s analysis collapses Rwanda’s complex history of political violence—including in 1994—into a few pithy sound bites based on Tutsi victims and Hutu perpetrators.

This is certainly not unique to post-genocide Rwanda. Political leaders of all stripes regularly manipulate history for their own political ends. The US has a long and storied tradition of declaring war based on public falsehoods that are then rewritten to legitimate the leadership of the day. (President Donald Trump’s deceitful and self-serving response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is hardly unique.) A key difference is the role of investigative journalists who actually seek to hold the US president and his cronies accountable. When the American government seeks to politicize history, the institutions of the state are equipped (although not always willing) to push back, while academics and journalists stand ready to analyze and assess government excesses. Such journalism is not allowed in Rwanda, for questioning the RPF’s version is itself a form of genocide denial and punishable by law.

Melvern and others, such as Romeo Dallaire, the former commander of the UN peacekeeping force in Rwanda in 1994, who willingly participate in the government’s efforts to elevate the RPF’s political project as historical fact, legitimate a revised history of state elites, of heroes and villains, of good guys and bad ones. It is shameful that Linda Melvern’s Intent to Deceive denies the experiences of so many Rwandans who have lived through so much. We must be wary of writers who uncritically or, in Melvern’s case, willingly accept the violence of the RPF as the price of peace. Rwandans from all walks of life, of all ethnicities, deserve better from foreign interlocuters.

 

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-“The enemies of Freedom do not argue ; they shout and they shoot.”

The principal key root causes that lead to the Rwandan genocide of 1994 that affected all Rwandan ethnic groups were:

1)The majority Hutu community’s fear of the return of the discriminatory monarchy system that was practiced by the minority Tutsi community against the enslaved majority Hutu community for about 500 years

2)The Hutu community’s fear of Kagame’s guerrilla that committed massacres in the North of the country and other parts of the countries including assassinations of Rwandan politicians.

3) The Rwandan people felt abandoned by the international community ( who was believed to support Kagame’s guerrilla) and then decided to defend themselves with whatever means they had against the advance of Kagame’ guerrilla supported by Ugandan, Tanzanian and Ethiopian armies and other Western powers.

-“The enemies of Freedom do not argue ; they shout and they shoot.”

-“The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish.”

-“The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.”

-“I have loved justice and hated iniquity: therefore I die in exile.”

The Rwanda war of 1990-1994 had multiple dimensions.

The Rwanda war of 1990-1994 had multiple dimensions. Among Kagame’s rebels who were fighting against the Rwandan government, there were foreigners, mainly Ugandan fighters who were hired to kill and rape innocent Rwandan people in Rwanda and refugees in DRC.

READ MORE RECENT NEWS AND OPINIONS

SUMMARY : THE TRAGIC CONSEQUENCES OF THE BRITISH BUDGET SUPPORT AND GEO-STRATEGIC AMBITIONS

United Kingdom's Proxy Wars in Africa: The Case of Rwanda and DR Congo:

The Rwandan genocide and 6,000,000 Congolese and Hutu refugees killed are the culminating point of a long UK’s battle to expand their influence to the African Great Lakes Region. UK supported Kagame’s guerrilla war by providing military support and money. The UK refused to intervene in Rwanda during the genocide to allow Kagame to take power by military means that triggered the genocide. Kagame’s fighters and their families were on the Ugandan payroll paid by UK budget support.


· 4 Heads of State assassinated in the francophone African Great Lakes Region.
· 2,000,000 people died in Hutu and Tutsi genocides in Rwanda, Burundi and RD.Congo.
· 600,000 Hutu refugees killed in R.D.Congo, Uganda, Central African Republic and Rep of Congo.
· 6,000,000 Congolese dead.
· 8,000,000 internal displaced people in Rwanda, Burundi and DR. Congo.
· 500,000 permanent Rwandan and Burundian Hutu refugees, and Congolese refugees around the world.
· English language expansion to Rwanda to replace the French language.
· 20,000 Kagame’s fighters paid salaries from the British Budget Support from 1986 to present.
· £500,000 of British taxpayer’s money paid, so far, to Kagame and his cronies through the budget support, SWAPs, Tutsi-dominated parliament, consultancy, British and Tutsi-owned NGOs.
· Kagame has paid back the British aid received to invade Rwanda and to strengthen his political power by joining the East African Community together with Burundi, joining the Commonwealth, imposing the English Language to Rwandans to replace the French language; helping the British to establish businesses and to access to jobs in Rwanda, and to exploit minerals in D.R.Congo.



Thousands of Hutu murdered by Kagame inside Rwanda, e.g. Kibeho massacres

Thousands of Hutu murdered by Kagame inside Rwanda, e.g. Kibeho massacres
Kagame killed 200,000 Hutus from all regions of the country, the elderly and children who were left by their relatives, the disabled were burned alive. Other thousands of people were killed in several camps of displaced persons including Kibeho camp. All these war crimes remain unpunished.The British news reporters were accompanying Kagame’s fighters on day-by-day basis and witnessed these massacres, but they never reported on this.

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25,000 Hutu bodies floated down River Akagera into Lake Victoria in Uganda.

25,000  Hutu bodies  floated down River Akagera into Lake Victoria in Uganda.
The British irrational, extremist, partisan,biased, one-sided media and politicians have disregarded Kagame war crimes e.g. the Kibeho camp massacres, massacres of innocents Hutu refugees in DR. Congo. The British media have been supporting Kagame since he invaded Rwanda by organising the propaganda against the French over the Rwandan genocide, suppressing the truth about the genocide and promoting the impunity of Kagame and his cronies in the African Great Lakes Region. For the British, Rwanda does not need democracy, Rwanda is the African Israel; and Kagame and his guerilla fighters are heroes.The extremist British news reporters including Fergal Keane, Chris Simpson, Chris McGreal, Mark Doyle, etc. continue to hate the Hutus communities and to polarise the Rwandan society.

Kagame political ambitions triggered the genocide.

Kagame  political  ambitions triggered the genocide.
Kagame’s guerrilla war was aimed at accessing to power at any cost. He rejected all attempts and advice that could stop his military adventures including the cease-fire, political negotiations and cohabitation, and UN peacekeeping interventions. He ignored all warnings that could have helped him to manage the war without tragic consequences. Either you supported Kagame’ s wars and you are now his friend, or you were against his wars and you are his enemy. Therefore, Kagame as the Rwandan strong man now, you have to apologise to him for having been against his war and condemned his war crimes, or accept to be labelled as having been involved in the genocide. All key Kagame’s fighters who committed war crimes and crimes against humanity are the ones who hold key positions in Rwandan army and government for the last 15 years. They continue to be supported and advised by the British including Tony Blair, Andrew Mitchell MP, and the British army senior officials.

Aid that kills: The British Budget Support financed Museveni and Kagame’s wars in Rwanda and DRC.

Aid that kills: The British Budget Support  financed Museveni and Kagame’s wars in Rwanda and DRC.
Genocide propaganda and fabrications are used by the so-called British scholars, news reporters and investigative journalists to promote their CVs and to get income out of the genocide through the selling of their books, providing testimonies against the French, access to consultancy contracts from the UN and Kagame, and participation in conferences and lectures in Rwanda, UK and internationally about genocide. Genocide propaganda has become a lucrative business for Kagame and the British. Anyone who condemned or did not support Kagame’s war is now in jail in Rwanda under the gacaca courts system suuported by British tax payer's money, or his/she is on arrest warrant if he/she managed to flee the Kagame’s regime. Others have fled the country and are still fleeing now. Many others Rwandans are being persecuted in their own country. Kagame is waiting indefinitely for the apologies from other players who warn him or who wanted to help to ensure that political negotiations take place between Kagame and the former government he was fighting against. Britain continues to supply foreign aid to Kagame and his cronies with media reports highlighting economic successes of Rwanda. Such reports are flawed and are aimed at misleading the British public to justify the use of British taxpayers’ money. Kagame and his cronies continue to milk British taxpayers’ money under the British budget support. This started from 1986 through the British budget support to Uganda until now.

Dictator Kagame: No remorse for his unwise actions and ambitions that led to the Rwandan genocide.

Dictator Kagame: No remorse for his unwise actions and ambitions that led to the  Rwandan genocide.
No apologies yet to the Rwandan people. The assassination of President Juvenal Habyarimana by Kagame was the only gateway for Kagame to access power in Rwanda. The British media, politicians, and the so-called British scholars took the role of obstructing the search for the truth and justice; and of denying this assassination on behalf of General Kagame. General Paul Kagame has been obliging the whole world to apologise for his mistakes and war crimes. The UK’s way to apologise has been pumping massive aid into Rwanda's crony government and parliement; and supporting Kagame though media campaigns.

Fanatical, partisan, suspicious, childish and fawning relations between UK and Kagame

Fanatical, partisan, suspicious, childish and fawning relations between UK and Kagame
Kagame receives the British massive aid through the budget support, British excessive consultancy, sector wide programmes, the Tutsi-dominated parliament, British and Tutsi-owned NGOs; for political, economic and English language expansion to Rwanda. The British aid to Rwanda is not for all Rwandans. It is for Kagame himself and his Tutsi cronies.

Paul Kagame' actvities as former rebel

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IRIN - Great Lakes

This blog reports the crimes that remain unpunished and the impunity that has generated a continuous cycle of massacres in many parts of Africa. In many cases, the perpetrators of the crimes seem to have acted in the knowledge that they would not be held to account for their actions.

The need to fight this impunity has become even clearer with the massacres and genocide in many parts of Africa and beyond.

The blog also addresses issues such as Rwanda War Crimes, Rwandan Refugee massacres in Dr Congo, genocide, African leaders’ war crimes and crimes against humanity, Africa war criminals, Africa crimes against humanity, Africa Justice.

-The British relentless and long running battle to become the sole player and gain new grounds of influence in the francophone African Great Lakes Region has led to the expulsion of other traditional players from the region, or strained diplomatic relations between the countries of the region and their traditional friends. These new tensions are even encouraged by the British using a variety of political and economic manoeuvres.

-General Kagame has been echoing the British advice that Rwanda does not need any loan or aid from Rwandan traditional development partners, meaning that British aid is enough to solve all Rwandan problems.

-The British obsession for the English Language expansion has become a tyranny that has led to genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, dictatorial regimes, human rights violations, mass killings, destruction of families, communities and cultures, permanent refugees and displaced persons in the African Great Lakes region.


- Rwanda, a country that is run by a corrupt clique of minority-tutsi is governed with institutional discrmination, human rights violations, dictatorship, authoritarianism and autocracy, as everybody would expect.