Racism. The lawsuit targeting the "journalist’s book for incitement to discrimination” against the Tutsis of Rwanda appears well far from turning in his favour. The Judgment process is still in progress.  

At the end of last week before the criminal court of Paris was held the law suit following the complaint "for racial slander and incitement to racial discrimination” deposited in October 2006 by SOS Racism - in liaison with Ibuka (association founded by survivors of the 1994 Tutsi genocide) - in opposition to the book of Pierre Péan, Black furies, lying whites.   

Published in great pomp at the end of 2005, this book was aimed to be the culminating point in the negationist campaign launched by Paris after Kigali had announced the creation of an investigation commission on the behavior of the French soldiers of the Turquoise operation (June-July 1994).

To counter that, all arguments were called upon, including those taking roots into the old language on the inequality of the races in the time of the triumphant colonization, from Gobineau to Jules Ferry.

The few quotes selected in the complaint are enough testimony. You learn there that the "culture of lying and hiding” characterizes the Tutsis, making "this race the number one liar found under the sun”.

Change the Tutsi word by the Jewish one and you will recognize the style of the anti-Semitic literature distributed before World War II by the extreme French right. Or else the "ethnist” propaganda conveyed by the hate media of the Hutu Power, ideology that was booming at beginning of the eighties under the Habyarimana regime.

The  infamous, Kangura paper, defined the "Tutsi women as prostitutes spies by vocation” and multiplied obscene drawings showing the Blue Helmets general, Roméo Dallaire, in company of a variable number of these former.

Pierre Péan doesn’t shy away from this kind of arguments, assuring on his part that the Canadian officer was not insensible to their charms, which yet allows him the dismissal in block of the General’s first hand testimony …    

"This complaint represents an important symbolic moment for us, François Ngarambe, the former President of Ibuka declared in October 2006. We know at what point the ideology can kill and let’s say that the racism having inspired the book of Péan is the same one that drove to genocide.

"As in the case of the Shoah or Gypsies wiped out by Nazism and its "pétainist” relays, the negation of the genocide of the Tutsis "is one moment of the genocide itself”. 

"I lost all my family, as result of similar fantasies”, Esther Mujawayo testified before the court. If all Tutsis are liars, "it means that I am just lying to you right now”, she added, contesting to the accused the "right to judge a whole people”.

Péan "plays with words that kill. And the words already killed us enough”. Anyone can write on any topic that he/she wishes, the prosecutor Anne de Fontette concluded, but "one cannot say whatever anyhow”… Judgment is still in deliberation.  

Jean Chatain  
The above article says a lot about the intent of Pean and congratulations to the author but I may add that the conduct of the former during the court hearing when he cried ; I mean ‘shed crocodile tears’ leaves a lot to desire.

It is our view that this time he aimed at calling for the emotions of the public after realising that his real intentions of writing the infamous book had been unearthed and may not be pardonable under the court of law.

Knowing who he is and having seen the gravity of the case, Pean was during the cross examination trying to divert the court into a political play ground by dragging into other issues not relevant to the merits of the case.

With his tricks seemingly well known by the prosecution team, some source has insinuated that he may finally be resorting to claims that by Tutsi, he meant the Government in Rwanda and not the whole Tutsi community, an argument that cannot for sure convince any good-intentioned person under the sun, leave alone the experienced learned friends.  Stay warned, these are the fruits of negationism !

Contact: muhetofe@gmail.com