No Genocide happens without a plan, preparation, and without state involvement, the High Commissioner of Rwanda to the UK, Johnston Busingye, noted on April 25 during an event marking the 30th Commemoration of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi, at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) in London.
The FCDO is the ministry of foreign affairs and a ministerial department of the Government of the United Kingdom. Over 180 guests including diplomats, senior UK Home Office representatives and other officials including UK Deputy Foreign Secretary Andrew Mitchell who has relentlessly expressed concerns over the issue of genocide suspects living in UK, members of the civil society and academia, attended.
ALSO READ: Do not be fooled, the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi was a climax of a long extermination agenda
Busingye said: "No Genocide happens without a plan and preparation and without state involvement. The Genocide against the Tutsi didn't start with the machetes of April 1994. It started decades earlier with state directed ethnic populism, classification, discrimination, dehumanization, over time, all done with unimaginable impunity.
"The classification of Rwandans into ethnic groups and the addition of Hutu and Tutsi onto identity cards were introduced by the colonial administration in the early 1930s. Those were the seeds, the rest was growth and entrenchment through the same colonial administration, through religion; and through a false science which set out to prove that Rwandans were different by comparing faces, noses, [and] height in utterly ridiculous experiments.
In 1959 Tutsi were violently attacked, killed, uprooted and expelled to the neighbouring countries.
"The post-colonial regimes didn't reverse this aberration but entrenched ethnic division as policy, eventually portraying Tutsi as a different, foreign and evil race, coining atrocious rallying calls, mobilizing all sectors of the population and testing genocidal killings from time to time in the decades after independence before 1994."
He explained how, in the lead-up to 1994, lists of Tutsi families and individuals to be killed were drawn up, militias were organized, quantities of weapons were imported and distributed to citizens as "tools for work" while the world was watching. The international community was, he noted, at all times represented, at many levels.
"Before and during the genocide the UN was on the ground, the Security Council debated whether what was happening was a genocide. The Genocide, which began on April 7th 1994, was a planned, systematic, government-sponsored undertaking. It had been planned and tested for decades. Over a million of people were murdered in 100 days in a genocide that was planned over decades, that was preventable and stoppable."
Many Rwandans and other people resisted the call to genocide, the envoy said, some paying the ultimate price for that courage.
"We continue to honour their memory and courage."
Rwanda is transformed and rejuvenated
A generation later, he said, Rwanda is transformed and rejuvenated and Rwandans have focused on staying united, being accountable to each other, and "thinking of ourselves as a people with a tragic past but, importantly, with a future to build."
He said: "The justice solutions we resorted to after the Genocide were drawn from our culture. Gacaca, a cultural dispute resolution system, allowed for timely, truthful, inclusive, and restorative justice, where community mediation sought out the truth and facilitated reconciliation and forgiveness.
"Our economy is growing. There is progress in healthcare, education, gender equality, life expectancy, literacy rates, and women representation, among others. And Rwanda is safe, safe for Rwandans, and safe for all other people wherever they may come from. Our justice system has come of age and is very much in charge of protecting the rights and freedoms so painstakingly secured.
Busingye said the 30th commemoration is "profoundly significant in our journey" of rebuilding Rwanda.
The past 30 years, 1994 to date, the diplomat said, are a generation of firsts.
Since the country's independence, in 1962 when the Belgian flag was lowered and the Rwandan flag hoisted as a signal of the end to Belgian colonial rule, he noted, the past 30 years are the first straight period Rwandans classified as Tutsi have lived their lives with no fear of being in the eye of a storm for who they are.
They are the first 30 straight years that no Rwandan, of whatever the background or circumstances, has had to be required to identify by ethnicity, Busingye said. It's the first 30 straight years that the ethnicity card played no role in politics, in electoral competition, in governance or anywhere else, he stressed.
"For the first time we have a generation of Rwandans, who know that only their Rwandan identity is their rite of passage to do, to be, to achieve anything or to reach anywhere. The past 30 years also represent rebirth and the power of hope and commitment."
Survivors' testimonies, strength help educate, contribute to making "never again" a reality
In 1994, Busingye added, Rwanda was nearly obliterated.
"We could have, opted to give up hope and resign to some uncertain fate, but the struggle to liberate and transform Rwanda had never been downhill, so we chose to rebuild our unity as the guarantor and the foundation if we were ever to rise. This 30th commemoration is, therefore, also a testament that the foundation of unity resulted in incredible resilience, and here we are, united and working to ensure that future generations will protect and expand these gains."
Grateful to Antoinette Mutabazi, a survivor of the 1994 Genocide, who did not make a speech but bravely narrated the horror she personally experienced during the genocide, Busingye stressed that every genocide survivor carries a horror story in their memory, that is always fresh.
He added: "But she [Antoinette] consciously decided not to be a hostage and chose to remember but also renew. Please know that she represents thousands of other survivors, like you heard, survived by accident.
"The testimonies and the strength of survivor's help educate and contribute significantly to our shared desire to make "never again" a reality, to transmit memory through generations and to remind us that genocide denial and ideology are real."
The April 25 commemoration was co-hosted by Rwanda's High Commission and the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust (HMDT), a charity established and funded by the UK Government to promote and support Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD) in the UK.
HMDT Chief Executive Olivia Marks-Woldman said that: "The 30th anniversary of the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda is a powerful reminder that despite the murder of six million Jews in the Holocaust and the world's commitment never to let genocide happen again, it still happened in Rwanda, we still have much work to do to make it a reality."
Mitchell said: "In 1994, Rwanda suffered the most tragic and painful experience any nation can endure. My own conversations, including with survivors of these terrible events, will stay with me forever.
"Memorials like this are vital for continuing our commitment to educate people on the impact of genocides, expanding awareness, and building empathy and understanding. To create a world without hatred, discrimination, and genocide, we must remember and learn from the atrocities of the past."
Genocide denial and genocide suspects holed up across the world, including in UK
Thirty years on, Busingye added, "we still have challenges, not least genocide denial and genocide suspects holed up across the world, some in countries we are closely allied with. Genocide perpetrators who were able or had the connections found refuge around the world and established genocide denial criminal networks."
He said: "You will often hear of or read about misrepresentations of the genocide against the Tutsi as tribal killings, or something called the Rwandan genocide, disingenuous claims of another genocide and so on. Let me thank the United Kingdom for acknowledging that what happened is a Genocide against the Tutsi."
Genocide survivors have asked United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken to retract a blatantly "misleading statement" he made on April 7 at the occasion of the 30th commemoration of the Genocide, when, in a statement posted on X, he referred to April 7 as a day to remember "the victims of genocide" and to "mourn the many thousands of Tutsis, Hutus, Twas, and others whose lives were lost during 100 days of unspeakable violence."
Blinken neither retracted the statement nor apologised, something that continues to upset Rwandans, especially the survivors of the 1994 genocide. Despite UN resolutions that have recognised that what happened in Rwanda in 1994 was a genocide perpetrated against the Tutsi, the US government continues to refer to the tragic events as the genocide or the Rwandan genocide, something that, among other concerns, emboldens genocide deniers and genocide fugitives wherever they are.
Barbara Mulvaney, an American lawyer who was an attorney in the trial of Col Theoneste Bagosora, who was convicted by the now defunct UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) for his role in the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, told The New Times that it is "disrespectful" for the US government to refuse to use the UN-adopted appellation of the massacre.
Genocide deniers and genocide fugitives are currently engaged in genocide denial; the last stage of genocide.
Not so many people were surprised, especially since, among others, Blinken's message in the book of visitors at Kigali Genocide Memorial on August 11, 2022, also evaded mentioning or naming the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi.
Busingye said: "That vagueness isn't innocent. It is called genocide denial; it is the last stage of a genocide. Perpetrators, their backers and successors in title can't live with the crime so they do whatever it takes to deflect it, hide from responsibility or to evade justice. We should, collectively, always, challenge this denial. Let us also learn to differentiate genocide denial from free speech."
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We will not get tired of asking!
In the UK, a number of alleged genocide perpetrators remain at large, at the expense of the British taxpayer, hiding in plain sight, Busingye reiterated. Last year, during an event to mark the 29th Commemoration of the 1994 Genocide, Busingye had, once more, delivered a strong message calling for justice to be served on the alleged genocidaires who remain at large in the UK.
Lately, he said: "All we have always asked is that they have their day in court. We will not get tired of asking!"
Not long ago [in June 2023], he said, the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals in The Hague found Felicien Kabuga, a major genocide financier, too senile to stand trial.
"He will enjoy impunity the rest of his life. The longer the processing of the suspects in the UK is delayed, the older they get, the more justice recedes.
"We asked the same of every country where a genocide suspect was located. Most extradited, deported, transferred, or tried suspects on their soil. So, there is no shortage of good examples. Now that Rwanda and UK know what we are capable of achieving when we work together, I urge that the matter of these suspects be attended to in the same way."
The five suspects who have been living in England for around 20 years, all in their 60s, are named in an extradition judgement as: Celestin Mutabaruka, from Kent; Vincent Brown, also known as Vincent Bajinya, from Islington, north London; Celestin Ugirashebuja, from Essex; Charles Munyaneza, from Bedford; and, Emmanuel Nteziryayo, from Manchester.
Lately, according to sources, there has been another genocide suspect recently arrested in Newcastle, England's northernmost metropolitan borough, who was released on bail. The suspect's name has not been disclosed. It is believed that there could be dozens of other suspects in the UK.
The genocide against the Tutsi happened in Rwanda, but it's a horrible crime "against us all," Busingye said, stressing that the responsibility of keeping memory alive and of standing up against genocide denial cannot be shouldered by survivors and their descendants or by Rwanda alone.
All countries and all people have a responsibility to remember and to stand up against genocide denial and the ideology that underpins it, he said.
"As we leave this event, let each of us think of our individual role in standing up for those we commemorate today and ensuring that 'never again' becomes reality."
