Ex Belgian diplomat exposes affinity with genocide denial, revisionism

The trial and conviction of Paul Rusesabagina on terrorism-related charges provoked the anger of many of his supporters. They all claim that he didn’t get a fair trial and that he should be released in order to, among others, preserve the good relations with a former colonial power.

Among those blindly and ardently supporting the terror convict are some Belgians ready to fight tooth and nail to have their man released. It is in this sense that, early this month, members of the European Parliament issued a statement asking Rwanda to free him immediately.

However, some ill-intentioned people and organisations have used Rusesabagina’s case to further some insidious agenda of tarnishing the image of Rwanda and its leadership, as well as peddling genocide denial and revisionism propaganda. This is notably the case of Johan A. Swinnen who was Belgian Ambassador to Rwanda during the genocide against the Tutsi in 1994.  From August 1990 to April 1994, Swinnen was in Kigali flirting with the regime of Juvénal Habyarimana, the planner of the genocide.

During these four years, he became aware of all preparations for the genocide and was a passive accomplice of the genocidaires.  Today, he prefers to collaborate with the deniers of the genocide, and to offer a rereading of the history of Rwanda by denying the specificity of the extermination of the Tutsi to establish a wrong version of the facts.

In his article, “Bruxelles – Kigali: une crise qui doit ouvrir des perspectives (carte blanche) published in levif.be on September 29, he pushes views aligned with Rwanda’s haters and detractors. The former diplomat appears to have been infuriated by the spat between Rwandan Foreign Minister Vincent Biruta, and his Belgian counterpart, Sophie Wilmes. The latter was unwise to criticise the trial of Rusesabagina and declared in advance that she would raise the matter with the Minister on the side-lines of the UN General Assembly.

What she did not expect is Rwanda’s reaction to this Belgian official preventing the course of justice, something none can do in her country. Consequently, Minister Biruta snubbed her, and the meeting never took place. This cancellation didn’t go well with Swinnen who wrote: “Ni l’attitude rwandaise ni le langage utilisé n’ont leur place dans une relation normale” (Neither the attitude, nor the language used have a place in a normal relation).

It was all right for him not to be pleased by the Rwandan government’s response. But he went a step further and attacked the leadership of President Paul Kagme and his government accusing them of being inept in negotiations.  This is frivolous because Rwanda has never and will never shy away from engaging in dialogue when it’s in the best interest of the country. When Swinnen talks of dialogue, he fails to specify between who and whom.

It is well-known that the diplomat has been openly siding with the very people behind the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi, who live comfortably in Belgium and other European countries. Swinnen often shares platforms with the fugitives who perpetrated the genocide and their supporters to disparage the current leadership in Rwanda and to propagate genocide denial.

But Rusesabagina’s predicament takes little space in his long Op-Ed. The rest of his article is a rerun of the same stereotypical attacks on the person of President Kagame and his accomplishments.

Swinnen goes on to say that people are starting to have doubts about the accomplishments of Kagame’s government, accusing it of falsifying development statistics. This  tired accusation has been thrown around by members of so-called opposition parties in exile and taken up by the global north media.

From attacking Kagame, the former diplomat veers into genocide revisionism. Just like him, the likes of Canadian journalist Judi Rever, British journalist Michela Wrong, and French political analysts like Charles Onana and late Pierre Pean have been pushing for validation of an alternative story to what we know about the genocide against the Tutsi which claimed more than one million innocent lives.

It is therefore strange for Swinnen to campaign for the rights of Rusesabagina whom he calls “notre compatriote” (our compatriot) and to use his case to engage in a brazen political mudslinging of Rwanda’s leadership and to peddle genocide denial and revisionism.

Jean-Philippe Schreiber, Lecturer at Université Libre de Brusselles condemned Swinnen’s genocide denial, in an article titled “Nier les premices qui ont conduit au genocide au Rwanda, c’est vider de sa substance et de sa compréhension, » (Negating the premisses which led to the genocide in Rwanda is to empty it of its substance, its comprehension) published in La Libre Afrique on April 21, 2021.

Prof Schreiber wrote this Op-Ed in reaction to Swinnen’s article in La Libre Belgique on April 21, at the occasion of the 27^th Commemoration of the genocide against the Tutsi.  Prof Schreiber noted that Swinnen’s objective was to sow doubt about the truth as if it has been hidden from us yet the account of this tragedy has been known to us through respectable scientific works.

Swinnen may have intended to use levif.be to advocate for the cause of Rusesabagina, a man facing 25 years in jail for terror-related charges. But he ended up exposing his hate of the Rwandan leadership, and his warm embrace of genocide deniers and revisionists.