This week, Rwanda and many Banyarwanda the world over remember those innocent people who lost their lives in the 1994 Genocide which left an indelible scar on the conscience of many. Fourteen years after the genocide, it has become apparent that those who planned, organised and carried out the Genocide are still unrepentant and worse still, bent on carrying on what they had set out to achieve. The total elimination of a people characterized as Tutsi was their primary aim. It failed and was defeated by the RPF. The rest of the world kept quiet and the international community represented by UNAMIR pulled out of Rwanda as people were being massacred. Some countries like France not only trained and armed the genocidal forces, but they also evacuated perpetrators such as Agathe Habyarimana ,the widow of the fallen tyrant. A number of scholars with interest in the Rwanda Genocide of 1994 postulate that powers like France were complicit to the crime of genocide in Rwanda. Evidence to support this is widely available to all and sundry. Others sought to water down the role of France by arguing that Rwanda and in effect the Rwandan people had no strategic importance in the current post-cold war world order. So unlike the intervention in the former Yugoslavia, it would be of no strategic value to stop the crime of genocide in Rwanda. The act of saving lives itself would in my view be of great strategic importance. But it appears that a number of world powers have their own way of determining what is strategic in their foreign policies. The current interest these same powers and lobby groups in Europe and North America have in denying the crime of genocide seems to contradict the argument that these people kept quiet because Rwanda had no strategic importance. How come they are now willing to ally themselves with revisionists and negationists if Rwanda has no strategic importance in the current world order? Why are some think-tanks and higher institutions of learning in the West willing to allow revisionists to hold conferences at their campuses? What is perplexing is that a number of countries in the west have laws that criminalise the act of denying the genocide against the Jews and Armenians and yet are willing to give intellectual credibility to revisionist as regards the 1994 Genocide. It’s telling that these groups are actively seeking to throw dirt at people who sacrificed a lot and put an end to the Genocide. By doing such they completely disregard the plight of the survivors and those who lost their dear ones. So when many in the international community decide to ally themselves to the genocide forces, aren’t they contradicting the notion of the universal responsibility to protect those who are at the risk of being victims of genocide? What are international organizations like the United Nations doing in order to ensure that all nations take up that responsibility to protect? Are such countries which give succour to those who harbour the genocide ideology willing to support efforts to bring those who carried out the crime to justice? After the Holocaust, many Nazi officials and concentration camp commandants fled to far off countries like Argentina. At the same time, some writers have argued that security agencies and governments sometimes knew the whereabouts of ex-Nazi officials but choose to keep quiet or at times turn them into “assets” of their own security organisations and in effect offer them protection from prosecution and from answering for their crimes. After realising that many governments were not up to the task of bringing such characters to justice, the global Zionist movement in collaboration with the Israeli government and its security agencies, Shin Beit, and Mossad, took up the task of apprehending the ex-Nazi officials from wherever they were hiding. Up to now, ageing ex-Nazis are still being arrested and delivered to justice. This tells us that no matter how long it takes, people who organized this crime must face justice. Most importantly the people of Rwanda are on the path of unity and reconciliation because their current government has been at the forefront of fostering a common destiny for all in Rwanda. The current efforts to deny the genocide, tells us that it is a responsibility of all to denounce these criminals and bring them to justice so as to send a message to others who may be harbouring the same ideology that they can never get away with it, not now nor in the future. Contact: frank2kagabo@yahoo.com
