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Rwanda News Agency/Agence Rwandaise d'Information (Kigali)

Rwanda: Canadian 'Negationist' Conference On Schedule Undeterred

17 March 2008

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Kigali — Despite protests from Rwandan and Canadian campaigners, a conference in Canada later this month at which people accused of denying the Genocide in Rwanda is on track just before the 14th anniversary of the mass killing, RNA reports.

Genocide survivors organization IBUKA is bitter that the same invitees are have always come up with similar events every year to coincide with week long commemoration period beginning April 07.

Last week, government in Rwanda put up National Anti-Genocide Commission that is planned to campaign globally against any such future occurrences. Mr. Jean de Dieu Mucyo- who was until recently the head of the Commission of Inquiry into alleged role played by France in the 1994 Genocide is heading the team.

The conference themed; "The Media and Rwanda: The Difficult Search for the Truth" on March 29 will feature four men who dispute the facts of the Rwandan genocide.

French author-journalist Mr. Pierre Pean, Spanish lawyer Mr. Jordi Palou-Loverdos, Belgian journalist Mr. Peter Verlinden and Canadian author Mr. Robin Philpot have all been invited.

Mr. Pean and his publisher face charges of racial slander and provocation in his native France for a book on the Rwandan genocide published in 2005.

The book, called 'Noires Fureurs, Blancs Menteurs' (Black Furies, White Liars), claims Tutsis organized a counter-Genocide of Hutus. Most of the international community has long accepted that Tutsis were the main target of massacres.

Mr. Verlinden was recently denied a visa to enter Rwanda recently because the government here considers him a genocide denier for his television reports.

Mr. Philpot is the author of a number of books on Rwanda including one called 'Ca ne s'est pas passe come ca a Kigali' (It Did Not Happen Like That in Kigali).

It is not surprising that this band of people is once again converging to promote their hate ideas just as Rwandans are preparing to pay respects to their loved ones that were massacred in millions, IBUKA Executive Secretary Kaboyi Benoit said.

"For the survivors and the victims, I find it unacceptable to deny reality," Callixte Kabayiza, president of Friends and Family of the Rwandan Genocide, told The Canadian Press.

Mr. Kabayiza, a Montreal resident who fled Rwanda as the killings took place, said the conference, in the same city, seems timed to steal attention from anniversary memorial events.

The 100-day Genocide carried out by extremist militias led to the massacre of more than a million people.

Detractors say the book by Canadian author-politician Mr. Robin Philpot, just like the others, amounts to a denial of the Genocide. He has dismissed such a suggestion. Philpot's Montreal-based publisher, 'Les Editions les Intouchables', is one of the organizers of the event.

"When you have an event of that magnitude, it's something that should be looked into," he told The Canadian Press. He is a Quebec writer who also ran for the Parti Quebecois in 2007. "It's very important to air the story and to discuss it."

Quebec has long had close ties to Rwanda. Pockets of the province's intellectual, bureaucratic and professional elite have a sympathetic view of the former Hutu-led Rwandan government that turned murderous in 1994, The Canadian Press reported.

"I believe in open debate and historical inquiry but there are facts that are so obvious that when people start denying them, it's very similar to Holocaust denial," said William Schabas, a Canadian human rights expert now with the Irish Centre for Human Rights.

"We're not talking about legitimate historical debate anymore but a form of hate and racism."

Mr. Philpot dismisses the accusation he is a Genocide denier, saying he wrote that massacres were perpetrated by all sides in the bloody war. This is a stand that has been taken by critics of the establishment in Kigali.

"It's not that I've denied that any crimes happened, but I considered the official story did not cover what happened," Philpot said.

The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda has invited so-called "negationists" to go in front of the court but they haven't dared, Schabas said.

"It's one thing to hold a little meeting and try to challenge an idea and create a bit of a media frenzy about it," Schabas said.

"It's another thing to go before judges and marshal evidence and have them decide."

Meanwhile, Montreal is also where a landmark court case is being heard involving Desire Munyaneza, 40, the first person to be charged under Canada's Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act, enacted in 2000. Munyaneza's trial is expected to end later this year. (End)

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