WHEN democratic governments choose to ignore human rights abuses committed by an autocrat they support, it is normally in the name of national security or shared economic interests. But in the case of Rwanda’s authoritarian president, Paul Kagame, the overwhelming rationale is guilt.

The world stood by in 1994 as factions of Rwanda’s then army, their allied militia and Hutu civilians shot or hacked to death an estimated 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus. While the UN dithered, Kagame — commander of a Tutsi-led rebel army — accelerated his military campaign and crushed the murderous regime and militia, some of whom fled into eastern Congo. In 2000, he took office as president, vowing to rebuild Rwanda.

Since then, his government has won international praise for its effective use of development aid, while the man himself has drawn endorsements from the likes of Tony Blair and Bill Clinton. Even with a third of government revenues still accounted for by aid money, donor governments have been quick to describe Rwanda as an economic miracle.

Nobody can deny that it has made significant progress on state reconstruction. But donors have until now routinely played down Rwanda’s backing for Congolese Tutsi rebels who have committed serious human rights abuses in eastern Congo over the last 15 years and who are a major destabilising force in the Great Lakes region of Africa.

Rwanda’s friends argue that its intervention in Congo is partly justified as it needs to defend itself from the FDLR, the Congo-based Hutu rebel group which is partly made up of those who committed the Rwanda genocide and which now commits regular abuses against Congolese civilians. However, Rwanda’s interests in eastern Congo run deeper than this, notably guaranteeing Tutsi businessmen and military figures access to valuable Congolese grazing land and mineral production, large quantities of which has been smuggled through Rwanda to the outside world.

In June, UN investigators on Congo published a note to the UN security council providing detailed evidence of Rwandan military support to Congolese Tutsi rebels who mutinied from Congo’s army earlier this year.

The writer is a former coordinator of the UN Group of Experts on the Democratic Republic of Congo.—The Guardian, London