Kigali Worlds under fire: “Being a journalist in Rwanda is life-threatening, hundreds of pages of war crimes, but the UCI clearly couldn’t care less”

As the UCI prepares to stage its first-ever Road World Championships on African soil, leading academic Filip Reyntjens has delivered a scathing assessment of the decision to award the event to Rwanda.

Speaking ahead of the Kigali 2025 Worlds, the professor emeritus at the University of Antwerp and specialist in Central Africa’s Great Lakes region has accused the UCI of ignoring widespread human rights abuses and Rwanda’s bloody record in neighbouring nation Congo.

“Being a journalist there is life-threatening,” Reyntjens warned in comments collected by Het Nieuwsblad. “Every dissident voice is silenced. In 2010, the United Nations published a ‘Mapping Report’ detailing hundreds of pages of war crimes linked to Rwanda’s role in Congo. Kagame, not personally but as a leader, is responsible for hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths. And yet the UCI clearly couldn’t care less.”

Rwandan president Paul Kagame, who has ruled the African country for over 25 years and was re-elected last year with more than 99 per cent of the vote, has long faced accusations of authoritarianism and sports washing.

While Kigali now boasts modern infrastructure and a reputation for safety, Reyntjens argues that the gloss hides a darker truth. “There is no opposition, it’s a one-party system. Independent journalism no longer exists in Rwanda. That job is simply too dangerous.”

Despite such concerns, UCI president David Lappartient has stood firm, dismissing calls from the European Parliament and several national governments to strip Rwanda of hosting rights. “There is no Plan B,” he insisted earlier this year, framing the Kigali Worlds as a landmark moment in cycling’s global expansion.

For Reyntjens, that ambition comes at a moral cost. He points to Kagame’s extensive use of sport to polish Rwanda’s international image, from sponsorship deals with Arsenal, PSG and Bayern Munich to high-profile events such as the Formula 1 prize gala. “This is sports washing, pure and simple,” Reyntjens said. “Rwanda is one of the poorest countries in the world, yet it pays tens of millions to the richest football clubs in Europe. It binds big names to Kigali, dazzles them with spotless roads and modern facilities, but they have no idea of the political reality.”

As the rainbow bands go up for grabs in Kigali, the UCI will no doubt present the Worlds as a historic breakthrough for cycling. But Reyntjens’ intervention underlines how, for many, the event is less about global growth and more about complicity. “The political situation is dramatic,” he concluded. “Awarding Rwanda the World Championships is, in itself, an act of recognition – one that legitimises a regime guilty of systematic repression and mass violence. The UCI cannot claim not to know.”