International
Victoire Ingabire ‘award' ploy to prop up genocide deniers
Every
year, supporters of the Hutu Power ideology and sympathisers of genocide
perpetrators regrouped in a shadowy organisation called the International
Women’s Network for Democracy award a prize dubbed “Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza
Prize” to individuals they deem to be in line with Ingabire’s genocide denial
and revisionist agenda.
This
phoney prize was created in 2011 by the International Women’s Network for
Democracy and Peace led by Perpetue Muramutse, daughter of the grandpa of the
Hutu extremist ideology, Dominque Mbonyumutwa.
She
also created another prize for the youth called “Prix Jeunesse Engagee,” or
“Committed Youth.”
The
funders of this prize purport that its aim is to award a prize to any person or
association promoting peace and reconciliation in the African great lakes
region and educate its population on non-violent strategies of resistance and
achieving change.
But
looked at closely, it is a front for promoting genocide denial and revisionism,
given the kind of recipients who have received this fantasy prize. They are all
genocide deniers, or active supporters of genocidaires.
Ingabire
herself was the first awardee. For the youth prize, the jury gave it to
Ruhumuza Mbonyumutwa, son of Shingiro Mbonyumutwa, who was director of cabinet
for the genocidaire Prime Minister Jean Kambanda. Ruhumuza is an active member
of Jambo asbl, an organisation of the descendants of Rwandan tropical Nazis
living in Europe.
Rwandans,
and especially survivors of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi, never forget the
call on Radio Rwanda by Shingiro during the genocide on the Hutu to exterminate
the Tutsi for good because if the RPF won, it would rule over them for a
thousand years.
The
goal of Jambo is to minimize the genocide against the Tutsi by talking of a double
genocide which also claimed, allegedly, the lives of thousands of Hutu. They
infiltrated many media houses and international organisations which they
persuade to promote their evil cause.
Placide
Kayumba, another member of Jambo asbl, who is currently president of
FDU-Inkingi, part of the P5 armed terror grouping, an offshoot of the Rally for
Democracy in Rwanda (RDR) which was formed
by former senior officers of the genocidal army and some cadres who were
at the helm of the mass-killings of Tutsi such as Charles Ndereyehe, a fugitive
currently holed up in The Netherlands.
Kayumba
is the son of a known mass-murderer, Dominique Ntawukuriryayo, who was
sentenced for 25 years, for being a ringleader in the massacres of the Tutsi in
former Gisagara Sous-Prefecture in Southern Rwanda.
On
paper, the RDR pretended to fight for the refugees to return to Rwanda. But in
reality it fought to bring back the same Hutu Power ideology behind the
genocide against the Tutsi. Ingabire became its president in 1997, before
becoming FDU Inkingi president from 2003 to 2006.
This
award scheme was created to serve the RDR’s agenda and is little more than a
cover for the transmission of genocide ideology from generation to generation,
often in the same family.
The
evidence is in the kind of people given the prize, members of the jury which
determine who gets the “prize,” and people who present them. They inhabit a
genocide denial echo chamber in which they reinforce each other’s prejudices.
In the words of Canadian historian and
academic, Gerry Caplan, who has researched and written about Genocide deniers,
they are people “who gleefully drink each other’s putrid bath water.”
Some
of recipients of Ingabire’s award include, Judi Rever, a Canadian Journalist
known for her close friendship with Rwandan genocidaires and distinguished
haters of the RPF.
There
is also Anneke Verbraeken, a Dutch investigative journalist, who has shown zeal
in defending genocidaires such as Jean Baptiste Mugimba and Iyamuremye Jean
Claude who were deported from The Netherlands to Rwanda to face trial on
genocide cases. One of the recipients of the prize, Fred Holt (Norwegian)
suggested that Ingabire “should be proposed as a candidate for the Nobel Peace
Prize.” There is the family affair of
Christiaan de Beule, and wife Martine Syoen. They run the SOS-Rwanda/Burundi
website and are staunch supporters of genocidaires.
Other
recipients include Cameroon-French polemist Charles Onana, whose genocide
denial is well-documented, and Kenyan Lord Mutai who actively slanders Rwanda’s
leadership on social media.
Two
other notorious recipients of the same ludicrous prize are Canadian brothers,
Robin and John Philpot.
In
his acceptance speech on September 3, 2019, Robin Philpot peddled all sorts of
genocide revisionism and denial conspiracies, including the shooting down of
the plane carrying President Juvenal Habyarimana as the cause of the 1994
genocide.
Robin
Philpot claimed that 25 years on, we continue to wade through the same muddy
lies about the shooting down of the plane yet, according to him, all the
evidence is there to prove that it was the Rwandan Patriotic Front led by Paul
Kagame that shot down the plane.
Without
any shred of evidence, he blamed the shooting down of the plane on President
Kagame.
These
laureates and the team awarding this so-called prize prove abundantly, that
this prize is a front for propping up personalities linked to Hutu Power
ideology and pro-genocidaires.
John
Philpot, the 2022 laureate of this bogus prize is now an ardent advocate of the
nine Rwandan convicts in limbo in Niger. He is working tirelessly to have them
reunited with their families in the West.
His dedication to defending genocidaires is
nothing new. Following the death of Col Theoneste Bagosora, the architect of
the genocide against the Tutsi, in Mali in September 2021, John Philpot sent a
condolence message to his son, Achille Bagosora.
It
read: “Your father was a hero for Rwandan population.” The main goal of this scheme is to make
Ingabire a normal political creature, and to normalise genocide denial and
revisionism.
The
goal is, in the thinking of those who founded RDR, to make the world forget
about their horrendous crimes and, instead, to turn the good people who stopped
the genocide into mass killers.