Editor,

REFERENCE IS made to the Editorial, "The government is answerable to its citizens” (The New Times, June 5).

When, only 20 years ago, our people were being slaughtered in tens of thousands every day for a hundred days, these self-appointed lesson-givers were nowhere to be seen.

In fact those who were on our territory, including armed so-called peacekeepers, raised stakes and rushed for the exits with cats and dogs in their pet carriers while leaving their Tutsi colleagues or employees at the mercy of the génocidaires.

That was the point at which the lesson-givers, determined to let the genocide take its course and to let the chips fall wherever they might, forfeited any right to lecture us on what we cannot do to keep ourselves safe.

Some watchdog, which has worked so strenuously to keep the génocidaires responsible for the slaughter of a million of our fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, and children, including newly-born babies from being extradited or expelled to this country to face trial for their role in the Genocide, has absolutely no moral grounds on which to lecture our Government on the rule of law and the appropriate treatment of terror suspects.

To my knowledge, none of these foreign busybodies that are so solicitous of terrorists who have killed or injured innocent Rwandans through indiscriminate throwing of grenades in crowded places, has even ever offered any condolences to the Government or people of Rwanda for their loss in these terror attacks. And they have the gall to lecture to us?

They may consider, as they did in 1994 that Rwandan lives don’t matter much, but our Government needs to let them understand we do not at all share that view and will do everything in our power to show anyone who might think otherwise that we will never again be slaughtered like sheep while the lesson-givers go about their business without the slightest care.

Mwene Kalinda, Rwanda