I am writing in reaction to a story published in The New Times which said countries have done little to help the apprehension and trial of Genocide fugitives.

It is general knowledge that the Organization of African Unity (OAU) which was in place at the time did little to stop the mass killings of Tutsis that went undeterred for three months.

Now after it was revitalised and changed the name to African Union (AU), we expected some change, which indeed has been registered in some areas but the fact that it has not intervened in Rwanda’s campaign to bring to book those people who participated in the Genocide is absurd.

The European countries have gone a step further to put on agenda the problem of Rwanda Genocide fugitives on their regular meeting like the one that took place earlier this year where the Rwandan Prosecutor General was invited to give a presentation on the situation of fugitives.

So sad that our fellow African states have not done so, more so is the fact that Rwanda tried to identify some of the countries where those fugitives could be hiding but not a single country sent any team to make investigations on what those people suspected to be hiding in their countries have done.

If a country like Finland, which does not have any bilateral ties with Rwanda (at least not very strong) went ahead and made an arrest and sent their judicial team to Rwanda to carry out investigations that subsequently saw Francois Bazaramba arrested in the Scandinavian country what are others doing?

It is known that Rwanda does not have extradition treaties with many of the countries but why don’t they, in a brotherly African spirit make the arrests?

Talk about countries like Mozambique which have comfortably lived with the name to which they have been dubbed, ‘den of fugitives’.

I hear Genocide perpetrators have intermarried with their nationals while others jointly started businesses with their Mozambicans.
It is not only Mozambique, there are several others; we have the Democratic Republic of Congo, which recently held their first democratic elections and they should stomp these militias out of their country for good neighborliness.

Ambrose Ntwari