REFLECTIONS : As Rwandans, we demand respect!

It would seem that serious people are finally coming to their senses and waking up to the fact that more than 1.2 million innocent lives in Rwanda, were snuffed out for being who they were born. In this time and age of technological hyper-advancement, brutes can butcher with abandon, in the full glare of cameras, and get away with it! Looking back, it still seems incomprehensible that the world watched disinterestedly as more than 1.2 million Batutsi were put to the most horrifying and barbarous death, in 1994. Anybody can blame the savagery on Rwandans and dismiss them as insignificant rejects of history, but any sane conscience cannot help being pricked. That is why any iota of positive news coming from something that is based in France should be welcomed, if only cautiously. I am talking about the arrest last week of hardcore genocide fugitive Idelphonse Nizeyimana, which was initiated by Interpol, whose secretariat is based in Lyon, France. It is with shame, of course, that I pronounce that name, Nizeyimana (‘I-trust-in-God’), only that I draw comfort in the realisation that, all the genocide criminals, seemed to have replaced God with Satan. If in doubt, you need only recall the similarly nomenclatured principle genocide architect, late president Habyarimana (God-gives-life). There is no doubt that, if anybody gave that monstrous vampire a life, it must have been Satan. Thank God, today that dirty life is back in Satan’s custody! Anyway, kudos to Interpol! Last week it hastily dispatched two of its officers, Albert Toch-Martin and Pierre Duclos, on a mission to nab the hitherto-elusive Nizeyimana. With the assistance of our thankfully re-awakened Ugandan brethren, Interpol pounced on the fugitive in the wee hours of Monday morning. I am reliably informed that the pest was caught fresh out of the hired carnal beneficence of one of our hapless Rwandan damsels. Rapist that he is, Nizeyimana should have been nipped before he could relieve himself of his genocidal vermin. Which vermin, God forbid, may spring into part of a new generation of emulous varmints! As it is, in this generation we have too many unbending génocidaires who would not hesitate to resume their genocidal campaign, given the slightest chance. Luckily, ours is a vigilant community today. However, we are pitted against a formidable force of genocide promoters and deniers, and in our vigilance we must actively fight them. Some of their tricks involve recruiting among their ranks foreign genocide-denial activists masquerading as independent observers or experts on Rwanda. In fact, I’ve seen a list of them that reads like Lucifer’s campaign team. Some of them are preparing a grand conference to be held somewhere in Europe: Ramsey Clark, Serge Desouter, Helmut Strizek, John Laughland, Bernard Lugan, Hans Koechler, Michael Hourigan, Amadou Deme, James Lyon, Jordi Palou-Loverdos (!), Filip Reytjens, Pierre Péan, Peter Verlinden, Christaan de Beule, Florence Hartman. On this number and more, add one Prof Yash Pal Ghai, a Kenyan-Indian scholar and “expert” sent by Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative to prepare a report on the legibility of Rwanda in joining the Commonwealth. He visited Rwanda but does not quote a single Rwandan, only preferring to heap abuses on the country, abuses borrowed from the likes of Lemarchand and Filip Reytjens!A lot has been said on Ghai in this paper, but a lot more can be said on this ghastly character and I’ll revisit his name elsewhere later. For now, let’s consider the denial campaign tactics used by an “expert” reporter who prefers to warm his a— (his American parlance, not mine!) in Nairobi and hardly ever visits the object of his vitriol (Rwanda). Nick Wadhams is a freelance journalist based in Nairobi, Kenya, who writes for papers like ‘The Times’, ‘The Sunday Telegraph’, ‘Time Magazine’ and suchlike. In ‘Time Magazine’ of 7th October 2009, he admits that the genocide against Batutsi was stopped by the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF). Wadhams also admits that RPF rallied Rwandans to the principle of promoting unity and reconciliation, building the shattered economy and turning it into “a technology hub and an exporter of high-end coffee.” He also acknowledges the undeniable fact that RPF chairman and Rwandan President, Paul Kagame, has emerged “as the new face of African leadership.” In a brazen display of his illogical, twisted, hate-induced and ‘tiny’ thinking, however, Wadhams turns round to assert that the people who stopped that genocide should also be tried! The people who laid their lives on the line in a 4-year sacrificial campaign to redeem this now-world-respected country to be tried? Bugger the ‘tiny’ bastard! Who but a ‘tiny-minded’ pea-head like Wadhams can think that you can put yourself in the line of live fire when your aim is to seize power? And, unlike Wadhams, we know that RPF fighters knew that Batutsi inside Rwanda needed liberation as much as all the oppressed Banyarwanda (Bahutu, Batutsi and Batwa) in the country and out. To lump arsonists, pillagers, maimers, rapists, butchers and mass murderers with gallant RPF liberators is to dismiss us Rwandans as a ‘tiny’, inconsequential community that counts for zero. As President Kagame says, we roundly reject that arrogant contempt! ingina2@yahoo.co.uk