A Belgian appeals court ruling on Friday that cleared their government of recalling its peacekeepers from Rwanda during the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi which left 2,000 people to face death, is seen by the National Commission for the Fight against Genocide (CNLG) as being politically motivated. On April 11, 1994, Belgian soldiers abandoned thousands who had sought refuge at ETO in Kigali, then the main cantonment of the Belgian UN troops, to be murdered in cold blood by Interahamwe militia and government soldiers. Fourteen years after the 1994 Genocide, in 2008, families of survivors filed a lawsuit in Brussels against the Belgian government for having withdrawn its peacekeeping troops from Rwanda at the peak of the Genocide, and causing the death of innocent civilians. During the initial hearing, court ruled in favor of the families but the decision was overturned on Friday at the appeal level, with the court reportedly ruling that it is, instead, the United Nations that recalled the peacekeepers. CNLG Executive Secretary Jean Damascène Bizimana said: The court made a mistake because the decision to recall Belgian troops from Rwanda was made in a unilateral manner by the Belgian government which then notified the UN Security Council on April 8, 1994 and Belgium actually immediately sent additional 300 troops to Rwanda to carry out the evacuation of foreigners from Rwanda. This is what they called Operation Silver Back. “That judgment by the court I believe is based on political reasons and not the law. The court could have wanted to avoid a situation whereby the ETO victims would be many in asking for reparations”. “We saw the news in the media, we haven’t seen the judgment. We need to see and study it first,” Justice Minister Johnston Busingye said while declining further comment. The trial before the Court of Appeal in Brussels, almost 24 years after the Genocide, resumed earlier in March. It was a civil appeal against the Belgian State and two of its military officers (Luc Marchal – deputy to Gen Roméo Dallaire, the commander of the UN Mission in Rwanda in 1994 – and the highest ranked Belgian officer in charge, in addition Col Dewez, who was the Commander of Kibat (Kigali Battalion) that begun on March 2, 2018. They stood accused of war crimes by failing to act. In March, Alain Destexhe, the Belgian Senator who initiated the 1997 Belgian Senatorial Commission of Inquiry into the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, described as “exceptional” the then ongoing trial in Brussels in which the Belgian State and two of the most senior military officers who led a Belgian peacekeeping contingent in Rwanda in 1994 were defendants. According to the Belgian Senator, Belgian officers were not unaware of the fate that awaited the helpless refugees they were leaving behind, as they were surrounded by the then Rwandan army (FAR) and extremist militias who were openly threatening the refugees from outside the school compound. To evacuate the camp, Destexhe wrote, the Belgian troops even had to trick the starving and desperate refugees by lying to them that there was food in the refectory only to take advantage of the moment to leave in a hurry. The Belgian troops reportedly shot in the air and drove off in their jeeps. Destexhe noted that shortly after they left the cantonment, the school was attacked by the killers who forced the refugees out of the school and forced them to march to Nyanza (a few kilometres away) where they slaughtered them with machine guns, grenades and machetes. They did it deliberately Genocide researcher Tom Ndahiro said he is not surprised by what has happened in the Belgian court. “The Genocide Convention requires state parties to the instrument to do whatever possible to prevent and punish the crime,” Ndahiro said, adding: “Belgium is party to the Convention but also part of the history of the Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda.” The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on December 9, 1948. “I am not surprised at all. They did it deliberately, and the court had to side with its government’s act of indifference by abandoning the people who had put their trust in the Belgian contingent,” Ndahiro added. “Colonel Luc Marchal, was the Commander of the Belgian contingent. Ever since he left thousands of Tutsi under the authority of Interahamwe militia and genocidal military, has become a friend of those mass murderers. What a coincidence!” editorial@newtimes.co.rw
