Revisionists in Montréal hit a brick wall, back to square one

A boomerang is a tool mostly associated with Australian aborigines. It is a V-shaped aerofoil that has particular uniqueness; when it is thrown; it flies in a curve instead of a straight line, and returns to its point of origin. So when one talks of a boomerang effect, he alludes to the same effect of spitting in the wind, it comes straight back to your face. That is exactly what happened to four famous revisionists of the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda who are obsessed with peddling their own version of Rwanda’s history. They are the new breed of adventurers who feed off the bones of millions buried in the concrete mass graves which dot the country. Perhaps the most infamous of the lot is one who goes by the names of Pierre Pean whose study of Anthropology seems to have gone no further than the boomerang. He has his own (very low) opinion of Tutsis, and reading from his works - scribbles to be fair - he would do away with them if he had his way. He says in his book that Tutsis are inveterate liars who are born with forked tongues. Yet to his own admission, the main source for his book is one Abdul Ruzibiza, a Tutsi from Bugesera! So does Pean take pride in not only repeating lies but keeping them alive by writing them as well? Would I be correct in saying he deliberately peddles lies?....Continuing with this train of thought makes my head spin and I end up not getting any wiser. This proverb: Show me your friend and I will show you your character, suits this “Genocide expert” like a second skin. I will not bother naming his friends because his character speaks for itself. This fellow and his three colleagues lost their feathers over the weekend in the freezing temperatures of Montréal in Canada. These gentlemen, who claim to know all, had expected to find the usual audience of ignorant pensioners and a sprinkling of the usual crowd of genocide deniers. They never knew what hit them and they are still reeling from the aftershocks. The hundreds of protesters who met them head on and heckled their hate-inspired rumblings were not just a-run-of-the-mill; they were Rwandans who were fed up with some delusional clowns who think Rwanda is their stage. It is possible that Pean and Co. fantasize that when Shakespeare said that the world was a stage, and we humans only players, they thought they had the arena to themselves. Montréal proved them wrong. If these revisionists knew anything about Rwanda, or the liberation struggle in particular, they would have learnt an important lesson in warfare: If you have a REASON to fight, it motivates and gives you the WILL to succeed over a much bigger and better armed force. Pean and his cohorts can ask some of their “innocent” friends somewhere in the jungles of Congo or at the ICTR detention facility in Arusha. The Montréal wall they ran into should be a clear sign that there are many more out there. The driving force of this resistance is that many people at this “flop” of a conference were part of the cast when the Genocide drama unfolded. They experienced what the panelists in the meeting have never, or might never come across in the entire lives. They lost their loved ones or survived in extremis. Survivors of the Genocide remember vividly when their hearts went 150 bpm as they cowered in terror in the most unusual hiding places, ears strained for the approaching sound of the killers. Some took the fatalistic decision to stop running and resigned to fate. They were hacked, stabbed, clubbed and if they were lucky, shot and left for dead. Many were pulled out of mass graves by the RPF because the killers had not found it necessary to fill it up with soil because they were waiting for more victims to throw in. These are the kind of people who showed their resolve to oppose armchair researchers who want to ride on the waves of their suffering. If these revisionists feel married to the Rwandan cause, they are mistaken because the bride is not willing. It is a forced marriage which amounts to rape. I am sure with their imaginative minds they will be able to find worthy causes closer at home - and heart - to fight for in France, Spain, Canada or Belgium. In the meantime, shove off! as the Brits would say. The country will pick up its own pieces and boomerang them back on the board, their point of origin. Ends

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Revisionists in Montréal hit a brick wall, back to square one