Editor,

RE: "FARG should not discriminate against children born of rape” (The New Times, May 31).

FARG provides support only to Genocide survivors yet those children were born after the Genocide against the Tutsi, so they are not survivors.

John

***

You are absolutely wrong. FARG is mandated to be a channel through which the people of Rwanda provide needed support to Genocide survivors and the offspring of Genocide victims.

There is no possible definition under which Hellenah Mukansigaye and her son could be considered anything but victims of the Genocide against the Tutsi and all its consequences.

For FARG to refuse to provide her support for her son born as a result of what was inflicted on to her directly by the Genocide on the fallacious argument that her son isn’t a genocide survivor, is utterly unconscionable.

No matter how you cut it, the son – even more than anyone else – is a victim of that cataclysm, from the moment of his conception. The worst thing about this case is that it is exactly those who should understand better than anyone else and be very sensitive to the role of discrimination and ostracism in the designation of those who should be victims – having themselves been subject to these scourges – who are themselves acting in such a discriminatory manner (and in the process ostracizing a mother and her son for no fault of their own).

The way in which this case – which I have no doubt is representative of many similar ones – has been handled, leaves a very sour taste in one’s mouth. In my view, the way FARG has dealt with it seriously undercuts the ethos for its own existence.

As a final point, I would like to know whether no payments have been made by the Fund in relation to other survivors’ children born after the Genocide had been halted. If such payments have been made, why were they while the Fund refused to make them in this particular case?

Mwene Kalinda