As we enter our national mourning period, to commemorate the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi for the 31st time, the peddlers of genocide revisionism and denialism are as usual busily disseminating their divisionist poisons. Their timing isn’t coincidental; it never is. They always choose this most painful of times to do everything they can to kindle the fires of hate between our two main ethnicities, and to keep dousing it with fuel. They do so because of course they know that without hate they have nothing to go on; nothing on which to base their (pipe) dreams of retaking power in Rwanda. These merchants of ethnic hate include groups like the Belgium based so-called NGO Jambo Asbl – the notorious umbrella group of genocide revisionists and deniers (funded by Belgium) that was founded by offspring and grandchildren of the great political criminals of Rwanda that entrenched the extremist ideology whose goal was to exterminate the Tutsi ethnicity in Rwanda. Other notable groups of a similar bent include something called Cliir, run by one Joseph Matata. They are most active during this period, when Rwanda remembers the victims of the hate crimes their parents and grandparents were responsible for. One of their favorite tactics is to pretend there was a double-genocide, which is nothing but a concocted smear that tries to pin a great crime on the RPF – the very group that did everything humanly possible, and against great odds, to stop the genocide that their parents participated in planning and putting in motion. They peddle the enormous lie that the RPF “triggered the Genocide against the Tutsi by bringing down the plane of Habyarimana” – a completely bogus theory that was long ago debunked, even by experts from overseas, but that the deniers cling to, like a dog with a bone. Their motto seems to be: there must never be a time when there is no hate in Rwanda, but rather one part of our society should always be primed, ready to rise up, again with machetes against their neighbors. They know hate is blind and impervious to logic or reason. By the way, let no one fool you that the Belgian hosts of Jambo Asbl and others like them think these groups only are “innocent NGOs” working to advance some ideal of democracy. Far from the case. Brussels knows very well what the hate groups stand for, and still is more than happy, and ready to keep funding them. Anything that serves the plot to destabilise Rwanda... But, back to the Europe-based deniers and negationists; back to every member of hate groups that, in case you are new to their politics, work hand in hand with the Congo-based genocidal outfit FDLR (whose ultimate ambition always has been to bring war and ethnic slaughter back to Rwanda and finish what their ex-FAR and Interahamwe forebears started). There is a fraudulence at the core of their identity that’s rarely discussed. What makes them pretend they own “Hutuness”? Who are they that they claim “to speak for all Hutus”, while disseminating hate against their Tutsi compatriots? Of the founders of Jambo ASBL, one can count the grandsons of Dominic Mbonyumutwa, whose father married a Tutsi woman. One can also think of Gregoire Kayibanda, the first stalwart of Parmehutu extremism, who was married to a Tutsi woman, Veneranda Mukagatare. If you were to carry out a census of every “Hutu Power” extremist in the history of Rwanda and who their wives were, it wouldn’t surprise if up to 90 percent of them were married to a Tutsi. Yet these people, and their offspring are the loudest shouters of anti-Tutsi hate. They are the worst enemies of the ideal of Rwandan-ness (ndi umunyarwanda) that the administration of President Kagame has been building to counter the most dangerous, tribal tendencies; the kind that leads to unspeakable crimes. They should have been among the first on the bandwagon of “ndi umunyarwanda” – an idea that recognizes the oneness of all Rwandans and that seeks to puncture, forever, the false narratives of ethnic divisions in the country. But they love power. They want power at all costs, though they’ve never done anything to remotely deserve a seat at the table of power. How much do they want power? They would rather fool the masses of Hutu people in the country and never acknowledge the “Tutsi side” of their parentage but pretend they are “pure”. That’s how craven these people are. They are the kind of people that, in 1994, would massacre their own Tutsi parents, cousins, and all kind of kin to “prove their Hutuness.” This is how primitive, backward, and completely unsuitable to hold any position of responsibility in Rwandan society are the likes of Jambo Asbl, Cliir, and all such. They all are hoary conmen and women. They can be sure of one thing: over the last thirty years Rwanda has built a foundation of unity and oneness, retrieved from the excruciatingly painful lessons of our past, which they can never breach.
