ICTR failed Rwandans

Editor, RE: “CNLG accuses ICTR Appeal Chamber of minimising Genocide” (The New Times, December 16). I don’t think its recognition of the Genocide should be notched as an ICTR accomplishment. The recognition as an incontrovertible fact that Genocide had been committed against Rwanda’s Tutsi in 1994 was after all a basic justification for the ICTR’s very creation. Failure to recognize and establish this basic constitutive fact would have put into question the raison d’être of its very existence. And yet, so many subsequent decisions by the Tribunal, especially those of its appellate bench under Meron, have, for reasons that remain obscure and totally unfathomable, seemed to be aimed at undoing the very basis justifying its creation. While the reasons for this may be obscure, it is probable these decisions are driven by the geopolitical interests of those who give “international” tribunals their marching orders. Cui bono? These are not hard to identify when you take account of the identity of those making these decisions. Mwene Kalinda

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ICTR failed Rwandans