Focus Media (Kigali)
8 July 2009
editorial
Now at The Rwanda Focus we don't like to blow our own trumpet, but I have the impression that the people at HRW read our newspaper. Or is it only a coincidence that one week after we came out with a two-page article lambasting the shoddy work of the Chamber of Deputies on the draft law on reproductive health (see The Rwanda Focus n° 85, "Lawmakers make a mess of reproductive health bill") , suddenly the human rights organization also discovers it?
It doesn't matter. What does is that HRW uses the information - wherever they got it - completely disingenuously. In our report, we quoted the article in question; in the English version, article 22 reads: "The Government shall have the obligation to suspend fertility for mentally handicapped people as long as the handicap is still persistent and upon decision by a medical team comprising at least three medical doctors. An order of the Minister in charge of health shall specify the list and implementation modalities for diseases accounted for by this article."
That is bad indeed, yet it comes nowhere close to sterilization. However, as we pointed out in our report, the whole bill is marred by poor English translation, and article 22 is a particularly bad case. This is even clear from the English version: "suspend fertility for mentally handicapped people as long as the handicap is still persistent." Sorry, but a mental handicap does not go away; it will remain "persistent" throughout the entire life of the person in question.
The French and Kinyarwanda versions are clearer; the French version does not talk about mentally handicapped people, but about "les personnes ayant une incapacité mentale ou d'autres maladies." Although we expressed our anxiety about what "mental incapacities" might mean and what "other illnesses" we might be talking about, it is clear that the first instance refers to people with severe mental problems that can be healed, not mentally handicapped persons.
HRW prefers to ignore all these facts, and even goes a step further by inventing the notion of sterilization. The organization is also blind to the fact that this is democracy in action: a bill was presented, it was (in defiance of any rational thinking) passed by the Chamber of Deputies, yet it was rejected and sent back by the Senate, after which consultations with civil society and other stakeholders belatedly started. And the media had their say (see The Rwanda Focus n° 85 - or did I already mention that?). Sounds quite good to me.
The BBC, always good for a blow below the belt when it comes to Rwanda, was quick to jump on the story (in its Kinyarwanda, English and French programs, for good measure) and confront deputies such as Denis Polisi and Jean Damascene Ntawukuriryayo, who denied the existence of a "sterilization" bill. Yet the Beeb played its "trump card" by saying that HRW claimed to have a copy of the bill, thus its allegations must be true.
Well, BBC, here's a piece of advice for you: you've got reporters in Rwanda, so it shouldn't be so difficult to get a copy of the bill to cross-check the facts. Not every blurb from HRW should be taken as absolute veracity, and a simple check by your Rwandan reporters would have showed that the word "sterilization" does not appear anywhere in the bill. And if you look at the spirit of the draft law, there is no question of mentally handicapped persons either - even though some demented translator thought it was the appropriate word in English to describe mental illness.
What saddens me the most in this sorry story is that after 1994, Human Rights Watch managed to bring out some well-documented and objective reports on what happened in Rwanda before and during the Genocide.
It's sad to see that standards at HRW are falling so fast.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2009 Focus Media. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
