Opinion
My take on the historic visit to Rwanda by President Macron in addressing historic injustices
![image](webadmin/images/57688351_303.jpg-20210604080031000000.jpg)
President Macron’s visit to Kigali
will go down in history books as a memorable and turning point in France and
Rwanda relations since the genocide
against the Tutsi in 1994. His speech at Kigali Memorial on May 27, was
impressive and moving. He found touching words to pay tribute to victims
including babies of Hutu-Power cruelty.
For once I understood why some people consider Macron a man of
exceptional intelligence.
Macron included in his delegation two
survivors of the genocide namely; French MP Hervé Berville who was adopted by a
French family in 1994 when he was 4 years old and Annick Kayitesi-Jozan who
lost all her family members when she was 14, and was made to clean off the
blood of her mother killed in front of
her own eyes by Rwandan troops. Kayitesi is the author of the book “Nous existons encore - “We are still alive”
(Michel Lafon, 2004).
President Macron denounced in clear
terms the then French government that aided and abetted a genocidal regime that
carried out the crime of crimes against women and children. Such recognition
comes at a time when Germany has just recognised the genocide against the
Herero and Nam peoples of Namibia and will pay $ 1.2 billion in compensation.
Germany still pays to this day
compensation to the Jewish State of Israel for the genocide against the Jewish
people. Will Rwandan Tutsi ever get compensation from France for her role in
the genocide? Belgium for having
installed a genocidal and cruel regime in 1959 and presided over the expulsion into
exile of the first refugees in Africa? The United Nations for their betrayal in
1959 and again in 1994, the Catholic Church which was the architect of the
genocidal ideology of Hutu-Power?
The American Catholic Church has so
far paid up to $ 4 billion in compensation for sexual abuse of children and
vulnerable young women. Why not compensation to victims of the genocide against
the Tutsi by the Catholic Church which was a state within the state and which
preached hate instead of the gospel of brotherhood and humanity?
Macron’s speech in Kigali was
powerful as president Kagame pointed out. However, it’s no match to the
worldwide genocidal propaganda of Hutu-Power. A few weeks ago, Rwandan State
Minister Edouard Bamporiki wrote an impassioned letter to Rwandan diaspora
youths beseeching them to shun the merchants of hate and war. Will they listen
to him? I doubt, the enemy has the entire matchless propaganda machine on
social media.
While the president of the greatest
superpower in the world Donald Trump was silenced by Google, Apple, Facebook
and Amazon (GAFA), Hutu-Power genocidal venom is spewed freely poisoning the
hearts and minds of Rwandan youths all over the world. As UNESCO preamble
asserts: “since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds
of men that the defences of peace must be constructed.” The German Nazism was eradicated militarily and morally, the Tropical
Nazism of Hutu-Power will not be defeated without a worldwide concerted effort
to outlaw the ideology. Otherwise, genocide against the Tutsi is in the making
as the world watches indifferent like last time.
President Kagame in his speech in reply to Macron said there was an
element of racism that explains the refusal of the international community to
rescue hapless Rwandans. If Hutu-Power is not combatted and defeated, history
is bound to repeat itself. In Europe, countries establish centres for
de-radicalisation of Muslim terrorists; the rampant radicalisation of
Hutu-Power militants portends doom for the Great Lakes region.
Already, in a neighbouring country, a regime subscribing to the killer
Hutu-Power ideology reigns supreme. It came into power through the slaughter of
women and children and the world like in Rwanda looks on indifferent or with
the cheap and useless “We are deeply concerned” that have never ever saved a
single life.
The visit to Rwanda by President
Macron came at the backdrop of the French Duclert Commission Report by
historians and Muse Report by American Law Firm Levy Firestone Muse LLP, which concluded that
France had “heavy and overwhelming responsibilities” in the genocide against
the Tutsi.
These reports should be a game
changer and bring the United Nations, the European Union and African Union to
declare illegal the denial of the Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. It’s
the only way to avoid repetition of the crime that is being spread by fugitive
genocidaires, deniers and apologists.
The future of Rwanda and indeed of
the Great Lakes region is playing now. If the United Nations, the Catholic
Church and the Colonial Power Belgium had not betrayed Rwanda by installing and
supporting a racist, genocidal and Hutu-Power regime in 1959 that produced the
first refugees of modern Africa, history would have been different.
Once again, by ignoring the worldwide trending propaganda by genocidaires, deniers and apologists, the UN, Catholic Church, African Union and the so called International Community are playing with fire as Hutu-Power will turn once again the Great Lakes into a killing field like 1994.
The author is a Burundian Human Rights activist based in Nairobi-Kenya