DEFENDING MUGESERA: Genocide deniers, negationists and all : Facts don’t matter

In THE GAZETTE, January 19, 2012, Allison Turner comes out swinging wildly defending Leon Mugesera under the banner “Leon Mugesera case: is Canada prepared to place a life at risk?” After a dozen missions to Rwanda since 2005 Turner claims she is an expert on our politics and judiciary, except her tortured logic gives her away. She claims that were Mugesera to be returned he faces torture or summary execution. Much as Rwanda abolished capital punishment. I told you: to these folks facts are irrelevant. Arguing that the U.N. Committee Against Torture wants to investigate conditions in Rwanda before sending Mugesera back, Turner again ignores that the ICTR and the ICC are at peace with Rwanda’s judiciary. Not only that, war criminals from Sierra Leone are imprisoned in Rwanda, the U.N. having been satisfied with Rwanda’s judiciary and prison standards. But Turner and others won’t hear of this, preferring their own set of “facts.” Turner claims that Rwanda OFFICIALLY “prohibits the Hutu/Tutsi ethnic distinction. Come again? Rwanda has outlawed ethnicity as the basis of identity cards and access to public services: the very vehicle that made the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi so swift and convenient. Should Canada bend to the whims of the U.N. and ignore her laws? The lawyer she is, Turner knows well, or should know, that Canada is NOT bound by U.N. mandates, rules and regulations that pre-empt her constitution and sovereignity. For crying out loud, Mugesera has abused and misused Canada’s judicial system. He has thumbed his nose, so to speak, at the Canadian hospitality for decades and insulted Canadian benevolence. Enough is enough. Turner thinks that the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi was a simple act of “settling scores or rivalries” and then she throws this in, for good measure, “or committing genocide for the hell of it.” Decency prohibits me from candidly telling Turner what I think of her views. Trivializing the genocide against the Tutsi in defence of a monster like Mugesera is no virtue, and deserves no response. Such cheap, distorted and convulted arguments making Canada’s decesion to deport Mugesera all the more judiciary sound. shalita@calbar.ca.gov