Tongues have been busy in the past week after Rwanda withdrew from the declaration of the African Court of Human and People’s Rights, The declaration, of which only seven African countries were signatory, was found to have inappropriately misused its right to hear submissions from individuals or groups of individuals. The situation would not have been as it is today if a wanted Genocide convict and fugitive, Stanley Safari, had not wanted to whitewash his genocidal credentials using the court. But the usual band of suspects want to twist facts to intimate that the government pulled out of the protocol to prevent another convict, Victoire Ingabire, being a subject of deliberations by the court. For someone who was tried and is serving a 15-year sentence on the basis of evidence handed over by judicial officers from the very seat of international justice; The Hague, Ingabire stood no chance of overturning the verdict. It was just another gimmick to minimize the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, and in the process – to use the minister of Justice’s words – “launder themselves”. But in the eyes of Rwanda’s detractors, Safari was a lightweight compared to Ingabire, he was not “mediatised” enough to serve the purpose of tarnishing Rwanda’s image. One thing they have failed to understand till now is that Rwanda does not compromise when the issue of the Genocide comes up; and it never will. Whatever the case, the vultures are still circling and they will not relent. So this calls for more vigilance against more attempts to decontaminate architects of the crime of crimes.
