CAPE
TOWN, South Africa
A Rwandan
opposition figure was shot and killed in South Africa on Sunday in what the
police said was most likely a robbery but that political allies said resembled
earlier assassinations of government critics.Seif Bamporiki, coordinator of the Rwanda National Congress, an opposition group founded in exile
Seif Bamporiki was shot
in Cape Town sometime after 4 p.m. while making a delivery, his political
party, the Rwanda National Congress, said in a statement.
Accompanied by a
friend, Mr. Bamporiki, a 49-year-old Rwandan exile, arrived in Nyanga township
to hand over a bed from his store to a client when two men approached his truck
and one of them shot him, the party said. The men took him out the vehicle and
fled with it along with some belongings, the South African police said.
Mr. Bamporiki’s friend,
another Rwandan, was reported to have escaped unharmed.
On Monday, the police
said they were investigating the circumstances surrounding the killing and had
yet to apprehend any suspects. “We have reason to believe that the motive for
the murder was robbery,” Col. Andrè Traut, the provincial commander for media
communication for the Western Cape province, said in a statement.
But the Rwanda National
Congress, an opposition group in exile formed by former members of President
Paul Kagame’s inner circle, said the killing was reminiscent of past cases in
which critics of President Kagame were lured to “a compromising and insecure
environment” and then murdered.
“While investigations
are going on to determine the exact circumstances of Mr. Bamporiki’ s
assassination, the incident resembles assassinations that happened before,
where the victims were lured by people they knew; but who fatally betrayed them
to death,” Etienne Mutabazi, the R.N.C. spokesman, said in a statement.
Human rights groups
have often accused the Kagame government of reaching beyond Rwandan borders to
target opponents, including through spyware attacks, kidnapping and
assassination.
Mr. Kagame, who
officially became president in 2000, but has held power in Rwanda since 1994,
has denied these allegations,
In 2014, a former
Rwandan intelligence chief, Patrick Karegeya, was found
dead in a hotel room in Johannesburg after he went to meet a friend; he had been strangled.
In 2010, another member
of the R.N.C., a former army chief named Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa, was shot
and wounded in Johannesburg.
The killings of Rwandan
dissidents in South Africa had led to diplomatic strains between the two
countries, including the expulsion of diplomats, before a thaw in relations
under the current South African president, Cyril Ramaphosa.
Lunga Ngqengelele, a
spokesman for South Africa’s Department of International Relations and
Cooperation, said that South Africa and Rwanda continue to enjoy “good working
relations.”
Of Mr. Bamporiki’s
killing, Mr. Ngqengelele said, “We are being led by the police, and so far they
have not indicated that this is a political killing.”
Beyond South Africa,
Rwandan government critics have also been targeted elsewhere. In Kenya, a
former minister was shot dead in 1998 months after he said he was afraid for
his life. In Belgium, a former government official’s mangled body was found
floating in a canal in 2005.
And last August, after
an elaborate
ruse that Mr. Kagame called “flawless,” Paul
Rusesabagina, a government critic who was credited for saving 1,268 lives
during the Rwandan genocide, was arrested and charged with terrorism. That case
has drawn
worldwide condemnation.
In the case of Mr.
Bamporiki, the man who ostensibly lured him to his death had been calling him
consistently for a week, insistent that he wanted to buy a bed from his shop,
Mr. Mutabazi, the R.N.C. spokesman, said on Monday. Mr. Bamporiki was at a
party conference in Johannesburg at the time, but did not suspect anything
untoward, Mr. Mutabazi said.
“Bamporiki was the kind
of peaceful man who could not believe that one would plan to kill him,” he
said.
Mr. Bamporiki, who was
among a group of Rwandans who sued their government over the invalidation of their
passports and won, was a permanent resident in South Africa at the time of
his death.
Mr. Bamporiki had only
just returned to Cape Town on Sunday morning when the supposed customer, a
South African, called him again. He set off to deliver the bed, just over a
mile from his shop.
Nyanga, the township
where the murder took place, has some of the highest murder rates in South Africa. Wary of the
neighborhood, Mr. Bamporiki parked his delivery truck in a position where he
could quickly leave if there was trouble. But he was not prepared for the two
men who sneaked up on him, Mr. Mutabazi said.
On Monday, those who
knew Mr. Bamporiki said they would miss his rousing speeches and his activism.
“I have been crying
since yesterday when I got the news,” Serge Ndayizeye, who manages the party’s
official radio station, said from Washington, D.C. “He was the kind of human
being who understood the kind of struggle we are in.” – New York Times
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