Rwanda News Agency/Agence Rwandaise d'Information (Kigali)
21 March 2008
Kigali — A scheduled conference in Montreal-Canada on March 29 must not be allowed to go on unchallenged, according to an online petition launched by the Rwandan community in Montreal.
The petition that has already been signed by 36 individuals was launched by a community newspaper for the Rwandan diaspora 'HOBE MONTREAL'.
A review of the comments posted on the 'HOBE MONTREAL' webpage indicates the profound anger and bitterness that the latest conference has raised.
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 will speak via video-conference.
"Canada must put in place dispositions to contain and counter these negationists that risk contaminating the peaceful population", says one who has signed up. A Genocide survivor says Canada is a democratic country that should not allow the conference on its territory.
"I completely disapprove of this conference. It is a shame", said another. Another says: "To deny the Genocide is to carry out the Genocide".
It is inadmissible to see these negationists propagate their ideas around the world - intolerable and scandalous, says another petitioner.
Among the 36 that have signed onto the petition, 10 members have simply joined without any comments some of which have raised some debate on the platform.
One petitioner clarifies that in French the word 'negationism' has double 'n'. Another says the 100-day mass slaughter should be referred to as the 'Tutsi Genocide' not the Rwandan Genocide. It is not another people that decimated Rwandans - instead Hutus genocided Tutsis in Rwanda, he adds.
A petitioner who says survived the massacres expresses her disapproval with negationists saying they hurt the victims. It is enough to read what Pierre Pean wrote about me without my knowledge, writes author Yolande Mukagasana.
"I really wonder whether our Genocide is recognized when the survivors are denied and the world does nothing" she says.
In Rwanda, the Genocide survivors umbrella association IBUKA has called on government to use all tools at its disposal "legally and diplomatically" to have such revisionist activities halted.
IBUKA says such revisionist activities have become an annual norm coming as survivors are looking back to their loved ones.
The latest controversy comes as the country is preparing to commemorate the mass killings that according to government left well over a million lives destroyed between April and July in 1994.
The petition in Montreal may not be legally binding but shows the decision makers that the conference is more counter productive happening than not taking place at all.
Last year, a similar meeting planned at the Louvain Catholic University in Belgium was moved to another location following protracted protests from the Rwandan community in the country.
"To deny a Genocide that killed over a million people - among them the old, babies, the sick on hospital beds - where rape was used as a weapon - is to deny humanity", says author Mukagasana.
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