Linda Melvern speaking at the conference on the Genocide in Stockholm yesterday. The New Times / Courtesy.
STOCKHOLM – Renowned British investigative journalist and author, Linda Melvern, on Wednesday, warned against the existence of a broad international campaign by genocidaires and their sympathisers to deny the Genocide against the Tutsi.
Melvern, the author of A People Betrayed: The Role of the West in Rwanda’s Genocide, among other books, was addressing diplomats, government officials, civil society and Rwandans living abroad at the commemoration conference organised in Stockholm, by the Rwanda Embassy in Sweden to mark the 18th commemoration of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda.
“Rwandan genocidaires and their supporters continue to operate a vicious and racist propaganda to ensure that Rwanda, in academic journals, newspapers and broadcasts, is the most misreported nation on earth”, said Melvern.
She warned that the ideology of the Genocide perpetrators “has never disappeared.”
“To this day, its supporters remain organised and financed, and they live among us, determined one day to finish their task,” she warned.
“At the heart of this campaign is a theory that the genocide in Rwanda was not a result of planning but a spontaneous uprising of a population angered by the death of their Hutu president.
“This monstrous lie blames the victims themselves for the moral responsibility for the Genocide and this is the foundation of the campaign,” she added.
Melvern also said that in recent years, the Genocide denial campaign had been “actively promoted by a French investigative magistrate, Jean Louis Bruguiere “whose report is used by genocidaires on trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) where some defence lawyers actually take part in the ongoing Hutu-power denial campaign”.
In 2006, Bruguiere, based on flimsy testimonies by individuals opposed to the Government in Kigali, accused senior Rwandan officials of downing the plane – when they were still part of the RPA rebels – that killed president Juvenal Habyarimana on April 6, 1994.
But his controversial report has since been squashed by the findings of a more meticulous French report, which concluded that the missiles that hit the plane were fired from the Kanombe military camp, which was under the tight control of Habyarimana’s para-commando and anti-craft battalions.
Melvern said that “the deniers maintain that the Genocide against the Tutsi was a myth” despite the fact that it had been confirmed as “a fact by judges at the ICTR, Human Rights Watch, investigators of the Belgian Senate, the OAU (now African Union), Oxfam, Africa Watch, the UN Independent group of experts inquiry, and many others”.
The British author said that denial of the Genocide, as with the Holocaust, had begun right after the massacres began.
“The last stage of genocide is denial, where evidence is destroyed, investigations blocked and the death toll manipulated. With the Holocaust, the first deniers were the Nazi themselves.
“The pattern is repeated with the Genocide in Rwanda. The first deniers emerged in April 1994 when the genocidaires tried to prove to the world that the large number of civilian deaths in Rwanda was due to fighting and a civil war,” she explained.
Melvern said that “sadly the large majority of those who are thought to have masterminded and taken part in the killings live freely in Europe. Some 200 live in the UK, in Canada, in America and, here, in Stockholm. They live among you. In France, evidence against fugitive genocidaires is simply ignored”.
She called on everyone to ensure that “all efforts continue to establish and properly document the Genocide against the Tutsi and to apprehend and prosecute those responsible”.
Melvern’s warning echoed one given earlier in the event by Rwanda’s Ambassador to the Nordic Countries, Venetia Sebudandi.
“Negationism, revisionism and trivialisation of the Genocide against the Tutsi is currently going on openly unabated in conferences, in the media and in academic debates,” said Sebudandi.
She also called on countries harboring Genocide suspects to extradite them to Rwanda or try them in their national courts.
Also speaking at the commemoration was former Swedish envoy to Rwanda, Bo Göranson.
He said that Rwanda had achieved unprecedented socio-economic development since the end of the Genocide against the Tutsi.
“The number of people living in poverty went down from 57 per cent to 45 per cent in five years. Poverty has been reduced by 2.4 per cent each year. This is unparalleled in Africa, and matched only by Vietnam, China and Thailand,” said Göranson.
Holocaust survivor Hédi Fried and Ester Mujawayo, an author and survivor of the Genocide against the Tutsi, also spoke.
Among the many dignitaries in attendance was a member of the Independent Inquiry into the United Nations’ actions during the Genocide in Rwanda, Ms. Lisbet Palme, wife of former Swedish prime minister Olof Palme.
Rwanda will, tomorrow, officially close a week of mourning organised in line with the 18th anniversary of the Genocide, which claimed the lives of over a million people in a spell of 100 days.
Source: Newtimes, 12/4/2012
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