About a year ago, I was put in touch with a person I'd never met, a woman named

Anayise Kanimba. I'm a Washington journalist, and so it's not unusual for people to just reach out, but Anayise was a little different. Her father was this

legendary human rights activist who had been imprisoned in Rwanda.

By the time we got connected, he had been locked up for nearly two years.

He had initially been held in a secret facility and said he was tortured. President Joe Biden's team and the State

Department were working on his case. Throughout at all, Anayas and her family were

worried that the United States wasn't doing enough, that she might never see her father again. For nearly two

years she had been spending every minute of every day trying to get him released.

The best way I could explain to somebody is that imagine you have something worrying you 24-7 and every minute you have a cloud above you that doesn't allow you to do anything else except to worry and worry and worry and worry.

Rwanda is this tiny country in Central Africa.

Unlike some other countries in the region,

it has a stable government and a decent economy.

But it also has tense relations with some of its neighbors

and a repressive leader. In any case, human rights violations in

Rwanda were not unusual. If you ask the wrong questions, if you push for

accountability within the judiciary, if you push for a

a space within people can express themselves and associate themselves,

eventually in Rwanda you will be labeled a terrorist.

But Anaiso's father was unusual.

His name is Paul Rousassa Begina.

Paul was actually a national hero in Rwanda.

Exactly 30 years ago, he helped save the lives of more than 1,200 people during a

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