Arsenal fans protest against club's Visit Rwanda deal with ‘Visit Tottenham' campaign

New York Times

22-04-2025

A group of Arsenal supporters have protested against the club's 'Visit Rwanda' sponsorship and called for the deal to be ended before next season.
Gunners For Peace has launched a video mocking the sponsorship, entitled 'Visit Tottenham', the club's local north London rivals.
The campaign group will hand out armbands before the men's match against Crystal Palace on Wednesday, with the idea being that supporters will cover the 'Visit Rwanda' label on the sleeves of the club's shirt. There is also a billboard poster outside the Emirates Stadium.
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The Premier League club has been criticised for its association with the tourist board of the east African country, which is led by President Paul Kagame of the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) party, who is an Arsenal fan. The UK government suspended aid to Rwanda in February over its support for the M23 rebel group in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
'We want the board to drop the deal in time for next season,' James Turner, a Gunners For Peace spokesperson, told The Athletic. 'Now we're getting regular Champions League football there must be a queue of sponsors ready to take Rwanda's place, and it would send a great message that some things are more important than money. We're in touch with Arsenal fans in Congo who are refusing to wear the shirt until this sponsorship is ended. This campaign is for them.
'The video is an advert for the delights of Tottenham as a tourism destination. The Tottenham stuff is a joke, a way to get other Arsenal fans talking on the terraces and in the pub. Obviously, none of us would accept Tottenham on the shirt, so why Rwanda? Where do we draw the line when it comes to these corporate deals? We know that Arsenal fans think about this stuff, so we're just trying to make it easier for them to engage with us.'
.@Arsenal is a great club. We have standards.
Which is why Visit Rwanda needs to end. This is the same regime that's funding a brutal militia with thousands of victims in Eastern Congo. We think anything – literally anything – would be better than Visit Rwanda.
Even Tottenham pic.twitter.com/rngJhzBKq4
— Gunners For Peace (@gunnersforpeace) April 22, 2025
The Human Rights Watch (HRW) World Report in 2023 stated that RPF 'continued to wage a campaign against real and perceived opponents of the government' and that 'over a dozen political opposition members are in prison' and many are 'being prosecuted or have been convicted on spurious grounds'.
Kagame was first elected as president of Rwanda in 2010 and was last re-elected to serve his seventh term in 2017 with 98.8 per cent of the vote, according to the Rwandan National Electoral Commission. HRW said the election 'took place in a context of very limited free speech or open political space'.
Arsenal's Visit Rwanda shirt sleeve sponsorship for the men's and women's teams began in 2018, initially on a three-year deal which was extended in 2021.
As reported in the club's accounts for 2023-24, the sponsorship deal with Visit Rwanda brought in £10million ($13.4m) as part of an overall commercial income of £218.3million.
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Visit Rwanda also holds a deal with Bundesliga club Bayern Munich. Kagame attended the Champions League match between the two clubs at the Emirates Stadium in April 2024.
The 67-year-old was at that game having met with then-UK Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to discuss regional security and the UK-Rwanda Migration and Economic Development Partnership, which proposed asylum seekers in the UK to be sent to Rwanda to be processed under their system. The new Labour government said in July, via Prime Minister Keir Starmer, that it would not continue with the plans.
Arsenal declined to comment when approached about this article.