Independent presidential candidate Philippe Mpayimana has pledged to institute legal action against countries responsible for Rwanda’s tragic past that culminated into the infamous 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. This is part of the now 54-year-old presidential hopeful’s manifesto that contains over 50 proposals. ALSO READ: Where are the 1,100 Genocide fugitives? Under the justice sector, Mpayimana proposes to prepare a court case under the United Nations (UN) – before its Hague-based International Court of Justice – against countries namely German, Belgium, and France because of the distortion of Rwanda’s history and morality between 1894 and 1994 that led to the Genocide perpetrated against the Tutsi, and the protection of those who committed it and fled to DR Congo. ALSO READ: Rwanda welcomes French experts' report on 1994 Genocide Mpayimana wondered why the implicated countries have not been brought to justice, suggesting that they should not be let off. “If they divided the people, why can’t they be held accountable for that,” he wondered. ALSO READ: Rwanda through history Unlike other genocides reported globally, the 1994 Genocide perpetrated against Tutsi was committed by Rwandans against Rwandans. Over one million people were brutally killed in 100 days during the Genocide. For centuries, the information indicates, Rwanda existed as a centralised monarchy under a succession of kings from one clan, who ruled through cattle chiefs, land chiefs and military chiefs. The king was supreme but the rest of the population, Hutu, Tutsi and Twa – which referred to socio-economic statuses – lived in symbiotic harmony. In 1899, Rwanda became a German colony and, in 1919, the system of indirect rule continued with Rwanda as a mandate territory of the League of Nations, under Belgium. According to the USC Shoah Foundation – the Institute for Visual History and Education [headquartered at the University of Southern California (USC)], an organisation dedicated to carrying out audio-visual interviews with survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust—the genocide against the Jews (which in Hebrew is called the Shoah)–the roots of the Genocide against the Tutsi lay in Rwanda’s colonial past, indicating that colonialism introduced ethnic conflict into a social structure where ethnicity previously did not exist.
