The CEO of Rwanda’s national development board claims Arsenal approached Rwanda about a shirt sponsorship deal, not the other way around

Emmanuel Hategeka was speaking in a radio interview when he revealed that Arsenal’s controversial deal was something they instigated.

“By the way, they [Arsenal] approached us because they love Rwanda” Hategeka told Kigali-based station KT Radio 96.7FM.

“They said ‘by the way can we do something together. And if so what could that be? How could we promote you? How can we work together?’”

He was also keen to stress the importance of the deal to the country.

“Beyond the complaints, beyond the noise, beyond the headlines that we have seen around this visit Rwanda campaign, it remains one of our biggest campaigns in terms of promoting our tourism industry in Rwanda,” he continued.

“Tourism is our leading foreign exchange earner having generated over US$480 million in foreign exchange for 2017.

“Secondly, we have a target to double that to over US$800 million (UK£619 million) by 2024. Third, we have a strategy to achieve that. I wouldn’t want to look at the Arsenal deal in isolation of every other thing that we have been doing to promote tourism in Rwanda.”

Since Arsenal struck the sleeve deal earlier this year, there has been a lot of controversy surrounding it.

Rwanda’s Minister of State in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Olivier Nduhungirehe, told broadcaster CNN to ‘be quiet’ after they criticised the country’s deal with Arsenal, prompting a backlash in the nation.

The network tweeted a link to an article that criticised the country for spending millions on sponsorship with Arsenal while still receiving foreign aid.

Nduhungirehe responded on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/onduhungirehe/status/1029009436940140545

He also retweeted these:

Speaking recently, CEO of the Rwanda Development Board, Clare Akamanzi, told CNN, “The media has been speculating around £30 million but what I can tell you it’s not £30 million, it’s less than that.”

Kim Kamasa, a diplomat in Rwanda’s embassy in Kenya, also tweeted, “Dear @CNN it’s more about value for money not where the money comes from. #Rwanda is investing some money to make more money so that more money can get to more needy people #VisitRwanda.”

He also retweeted:

If you are interested in learning what has been happening in Rwanda, this thread is worth checking out:

Leaving aside the benefits to Rwanda, real or perceived, that come from the deal, there has been a lot of talk about Arsenal’s sleeve sponsorship deal with the country yet the moral outrage from some journalists that greeted news of the arrangement has been conspicuously lacking in relation to deals with the likes of Emirates, Etihad, or Roman Abramovich.

Even Stan Kroenke receives little-to-no criticism for his business dealings despite how hated he is in parts of America.

arsenal visit rwanda
via Arsenal.com

In June, the United Arab Emirate’s leading human rights activist, Ahmed Mansoor, was jailed for 10 years for his ‘social media activity’.

Mansoor’s ‘crime’ was to use his social media accounts to publish ‘false information’ and ‘spread hatred and sectarianism’. In addition, he was also fined Dh1 million (approx. £204,000) for insulting the ‘status and prestige of the UAE and its symbols’, including its leaders.

The reality, however, is that Mansoor, who had, prior to his arrest, faced ‘repeated intimidation, harassment, physical assault, and death threats from the UAE authorities or their supporters,’ according to Amnesty International, merely expressed support for a fellow activist.

Osama al-Najjar was still being held by authorities despite completing his three-year sentence for tweeting about human rights abuses.

ahmed mansoor
Ahmed Mansoor via Amnesty.org

“Ahmed Mansoor is one of the few openly critical voices in the UAE, and his persecution is another nail in the coffin for human rights activism in the country,” said Lynn Maalouf, Amnesty International’s Middle East Research Director.

“The decision to lock up Ahmed Mansoor for the next 10 years for simply sharing his opinion on social media is what causes the real damage to the UAE’s reputation and so-called ‘social harmony’, not Ahmed Mansoor’s peaceful activism.

“Ahmed is a prisoner of conscience who has been targeted, tried and sentenced for using Facebook and Twitter to share his thoughts. He should never have been charged in the first place and now he must be released immediately.”

International Campaign for Freedom in the UAE
International Campaign for Freedom in the UAE

Joe Odell of the International Campaign for Freedom in the UAE told Daily Cannon, “This outrageous sentence is just the latest episode in the UAE’s continued clampdown on freedom of speech and expression. It is yet another clear indication that the regime who owns the Emirates brand have no regard for human rights – and a clear disdain for anyone who seeks to defend them.

“In reality, all that Ahmed Mansoor is guilty of is speaking up for the rights of the oppressed people throughout the region. It is about time that Arsenal FC Kick out the Emirates and say no to the UAE’s sport-washing.”

So what’s all this got to do with Arsenal?

arsenal 18 19 home kit
via footyheadlines.com

“Emirates Airline is a company that is wholly owned by the government of Dubai,” Odell added.

“In recent years, the human rights situation in the UAE has deteriorated considerably with practices such as arbitrary detention, torture and enforced disappearances becoming increasingly commonplace.

“Despite this, many in the UK continue to associate the UAE with luxury holidays and sporting events rather than human rights violations.

“In some respects, such deals enable the UAE authorities to ‘launder their reputation’ through cultural institutions in the UK such as Arsenal Football Club.”

When you think Rwanda, you likely also think ‘genocide’. That’s what made it so easy to criticise that deal despite the complexities of the situation there.

It is a country that has serious issues when it comes to democracy, free speech and poverty, amongst other things, but on the other hand, they are taking massive strides towards alleviating that poverty and are dragging women’s rights a few inches out of the middle ages.

In the UAE, they are doing none of that, yet because we think of the country as a utopia we all aspire to afford, mouths are kept shut.

It is a country that forbids criticism of its government, government officials, police and royal families and, in 2012, enacted a law to ensure online criticism was also punished.

It is illegal to be queer.

Women must receive permission from a male guardian to marry and it is illegal for them to marry non-Muslims.

They punish those accused of adultery by flogging, but only the unmarried ones. Married adulterers are stoned to death.

80 lashes for alcohol consumption. 100 lashes for pre-marital sex. Theft, drunk driving, kissing in public…lash, lash, lash.

They even have actual laws to dictate what sort of clothes you can wear.

You know this, right?

I think we all do, but on some level choose to ignore it.

While I knew most of the laws listed above, I don’t think I’d ever read them all together, and certainly not within the framework of our current political climate.

I’d been thinking, as I watched the Handmaid’s Tale, that it wouldn’t take much to get us from here to there. A little more Trump and the DUP and who knows what sort of dystopia we could find ourselves in.

But the Handmaid’s Tale is not the future. It is already here, now, playing out in the United Arab Emirates while we support our football team running around with their names emblazoned on our shirts.

William Gibson once said that “the future is already here, it just isn’t evenly distributed.”

Arsenal being sponsored by ‘Fly Gilead’ might seem like an absurd notion, but is it really much different than ‘Fly Emirates’ given how they treat women and ‘gender traitors’?

But yes, let’s focus on Rwanda instead…

Want more? In episode 151 of the Daily Cannon weekly podcast, our host Matthew Wade discusses the issue further:

Rwanda expect Arsenal to send a first-team player to the country for their annual gorilla-naming ceremony known locally as ‘Kwita Izina’ next week.

Arsenal’s participation is part of the deal which saw the country’s tourism office sponsor the club’s sleeves for £30m.

Speaking to the media in the country, the RDB Chief Tourism Officer, Belise Kariza, said, ‘a number of superstars’ have been lined up for the event which will take place on 7 September in Kinigi on the slopes of the Volcanoes National Park but he declined to confirm the names of the players who would be in attendance.

Rwandan children perform in baby gorilla costumes for approximately 20,000 Rwandan villagers, government officials and tourists as part of Rwanda's 7th Annual Kwita Izina (baby naming) Ceremony for the country's rare mountain gorillas on June 18, 2011 in Kigali. Living in parks straddling Rwanda, Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda, the rare mountain gorillas have become the center piece of Rwanda's growing tourism industry as their population has risen to 780 in recent years from just 250 in the 1980's.
Rwandan children perform in baby gorilla costumes for approximately 20,000 Rwandan villagers, government officials and tourists as part of Rwanda’s 7th Annual Kwita Izina (baby naming) Ceremony for the country’s rare mountain gorillas on June 18, 2011 in Kigali. Living in parks straddling Rwanda, Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda, the rare mountain gorillas have become the center piece of Rwanda’s growing tourism industry as their population has risen to 780 in recent years from just 250 in the 1980’s.

Kwita Izina started in 2005 and is described by AllAfrica.com as ‘a uniquely Rwandan event with the aim of creating awareness of conservation efforts for the endangered mountain gorilla.’

In total, 23 mountain gorilla babies will be named at this year’s ceremony which seems tailor-made for Aaron Ramsey, known for his love of wildlife and animal conservation.

aaron ramsey rhino
via WalesOnline

Although his particular favourite seems to be the rhino, who doesn’t love a gorilla?

About the mountain gorilla, the official Volcanoes National Park website writes, “The mountain gorillas (Gorilla Gorilla Berengie), the world’s most endangered ape, is found only in small portions of protected afro Montane forests in northwest Rwanda, southwest Uganda and eastern DRC.

This photo taken on June 17, 2012, shows a young member of the Agashya family of mountain Gorillas frolicking in dense undergrowth at the Virunga National park in Rwanda. For ten years the number of mountain gorillas has shown a steady growth in the Virungas mountains, which is shared by Rwanda, Uganda and Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The large primates in the national park now number about 480 individuals, out of a world population of 790. This trend, achieved despite chronic armed conflict across the D.R. Congo border that adjoins the gorilla habitat, is essentially the result of sustained fight against poaching, say the Rwandan authorities. AFP PHOTO / AUDE GENET
This photo taken on June 17, 2012, shows a young member of the Agashya family of mountain Gorillas frolicking in dense undergrowth at the Virunga National park in Rwanda. For ten years the number of mountain gorillas has shown a steady growth in the Virungas mountains, which is shared by Rwanda, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The large primates in the national park now number about 480 individuals, out of a world population of 790. This trend, achieved despite chronic armed conflict across the D.R. Congo border that adjoins the gorilla habitat, is essentially the result of the sustained fight against poaching, say the Rwandan authorities. AFP PHOTO / AUDE GENET

“Hidden high among the forested volcanoes of East Africa, the mountain gorilla was unknown to science until 1902, when two were first encountered by a German explorer and promptly killed. It set the tone for the relationship. For much of the time since, due to deforestation and poaching, it has seemed that the mountain gorilla was swiftly destined to be lost to the world again. Not long after the species’ greatest champion, the American zoologist Dian Fossey was killed in Rwanda in 1985-there were fewer than 300 of the giant primates left in the wild.

“Today nearly half of the world’s 700 remaining mountain gorillas live in the Virunga Mountains of central Africa, at the intersection of Uganda, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The volcanic slopes here are lush with tropical forests and diverse mammal, bird, and reptile species but they are also at the heart of a region in crisis.”