Editor, RE: “To talk or not to talk about the Genocide?” (The New Times, May 23). Another, and perhaps even more important reason, is that the Genocide against the Tutsi was committed mainly by Rwandans against other Rwandans. The Holocaust is much clearly in eho the victim and the perpetrators; it was respectively mainly Jews and other non-Aryan people labelled as undesirable Untermeschen, and the Nazis and their allies in France, occupied Central Europe, the Balkans and Eastern Europe. It was, therefore, much easier to designate the perpetrator and its victim in the case of the Holocaust and other Nazi crimes. It is all that harder to do so in the case of a fratricidal genocide in which one section of the Rwandan people were so massively involved in the attempted total extermination of another section, often pitting close relatives in the murder of their own kith and kin. Our enemies, including key Rwandan génocidaires and their close foreign allies, whether states or other institutions, have been able to exploit this specificity of the Genocide against Rwandan Tutsi by other Rwandans to pump as much smoke and blur the roles as much as they could, often quite successfully. In this, they have been aided by our own discomfort in addressing the peculiarity of the Genocide—i.e. its fratricidal nature. The understandable need to avoid giving the false impression that all Hutu were complicit in the Genocide against their Tutsi compatriots, increases our discomfort to talk about the crime as openly and fully as would be necessary and provides a breach through which deniers and revisionists are able to continuously pour their poisonous claims. We need to come out with an approach to this question that continues to recognise the complex nature of the Genocide against the Tutsi, enables us to talk about it openly and effectively counters the poisoning of the historical well by deniers and revisionists. Mwene Kalinda **************************There is a huge contrast between the Holocaust and the Genocide against the Tutsi. Today’s major world powers fought against Germany, the country that was carrying out the Holocaust, and defeated it, while for the Genocide against Tutsi the same powers were either directly or indirectly supporting the administration that was carrying out the Genocide. So, while it was natural to forge solidarity against the Holocaust it will never be so easy to forge one for the Genocide against the Tutsi. The Genocide has left many hands with stains of blood, and most would feel comfortable having it silenced. And, the so-called support in donations to Rwanda is not a sign of solidarity. It is sometimes designed to lure Rwanda into dropping an accusing finger which is tantamount to a bribe: “We’re putting something in your mouth, so please stop shouting it out!”. Donart
