A highly distinguished Canadian Professor has offered to act as a volunteer adviser to the government of Rwanda in the fight to eliminate genocide ideologies in the country. Prof. Frank Chalk’s offer comes immediately after a parliamentary commission had found many of Rwanda’s junior schools infested by hate speech among students that is legally known as Genocide Ideologies. In a particular secondary school in Gicumbi District, they were even making death threats against each other. I am here to try to discover how I can be helpful to Rwanda’s desire to combat genocide. I have also come to enquire about a partnership between Montreal Institute of Genocide and Human Rights and the government of Rwanda, Chalk said. Joseph Habineza, the Minister of Sports and Culture confirmed Chalk’s offer. Professor Chalk and his Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights offered to help us study and find out how genocide ideology can be eliminated through out the country, said the Minister. This was during last Thursday’s screening of the movie The Devil Came on a Horse Back, in Kigali Genocide Memorial about the Genocide in Darfur. If more people participate in activities like watching this movie; there would not be any more genocide, He continued, adding that it was possible to wipe out genocide ideologies among citizens of any country, ‘One has to look at the example of Germany today, he said the success of driving out Genocide ideologies was visible today in Germany. The government of Germany has introduced good education; they have prepared the students well, invested a lot in all kinds of education especially multi media education. Now, it is no longer an issue whether ones comes from East or West Germany because such stereotypes have been washed away by the education in Germany, Chalk said. Chalk has lectured and presented papers on genocide at conferences and universities around the world and before the Prosecution Staff of the International Criminal Tribunal on the Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda at The Hague. He has recently published Hate Radio in Rwanda, in The Path of A Genocide: The Rwanda Crisis from Uganda to Zaire. Habineza said Chalk would be in the country during the forth coming 14th anniversary ceremonies which will be held on 7th April in Nyamata, in Bugesera. Nyamata is famous for being the area where during the 1994 Genocide, 10,000 people who had sought refugee in church were brutally murdered inside the building. Ends
