Once again, treachery was on display. On April 12, 2025, the Rwandan community in the Belgian city of Liège, gathered quietly but resolutely in Avroy Park to mark the 31st commemoration of the Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda. Around 200 people stood solemnly near the memorial stele, honoring the over one million innocent lives brutally taken in 1994. It was a moment of reflection, resilience, and renewal — but conspicuously missing from this sacred gathering was any official representative of the City of Liège. No mayor. No council. No flowers from the city. Not even a press statement. The city that once co-organized this solemn ceremony had vanished into thin air. The absence was as loud as it was shameful. And the excuse? “Diplomatic tensions.” Apparently, the duty to remember the victims of genocide now comes with political fine print. Gone was the solidarity shown in previous years. Gone were the speeches from municipal leaders promising never again. Gone was the civic commitment to remembrance. In their place, a void — filled not by forgetfulness, but by a politically calculated silence. This year, the City of Liège chose to withdraw from the commemoration, citing the deteriorating diplomatic relations between Belgium and Rwanda. The consequence? The memory of over a million Tutsi, slaughtered in 1994, was cast aside as collateral damage in a petty diplomatic standoff. The City of Liège seems to believe that remembering victims of a genocide is a diplomatic courtesy — an optional, politically convenient gesture to be rescinded at will depending on which countries are talking to each other. This is not only morally bankrupt, it is intellectually insulting to the memory of genocide victims and to survivors who live in Liège and elsewhere. Well, well— the Genocide Against the Tutsi, or any other genocide which internationally recognized— is not a diplomatic issue. It is a human issue. The decision was both despicable and pathetic. Who shows up matters The city officials could not even muster the courage to send a token representative. Not even one speech. Not a note. Nothing. Last year, the commemoration was held at the grand City Hall. This year? The Rwandan community was abandoned — left to huddle under trees in a public park with only one local opposition councilor, Sarah Schlitz, and civil society leader Michaël Bisschops, showing any backbone. It was not just an oversight. It was a betrayal. Schlitz, a Green Party opposition councilor, had to call it what it was: nonsense. “This was exactly the moment to reaffirm our full support for the community of survivors,” she said. “And instead, they feel deeply hurt.” No wonder. Because this isn’t just about an empty seat at a memorial. It is about what that empty seat represents — a denial of dignity, of history, and of humanity itself. Sarah Schlitz had the moral clarity to attend. Her presence was not symbolic — it was revolutionary in a sea of absentees. “I attend every year, and I’m here again this year. We are standing alongside fellow citizens of Liège who are of Rwandan origin, some of whom lost family members during the genocide. So it’s important for me to be here every year — to commemorate, to stand with them, and especially, given the international context, to stress how unacceptable this is. And: never again.” Schlitz hit the nail on the head. Never again means nothing if it's contingent. Never again means nothing if it bows to realpolitik. Never again means nothing if, in 2025, city officials can skip a genocide memorial simply because it makes them uncomfortable. Michaël Bisschops, president of Territoires de la Mémoire— showed up to bear witness: “This is a commemoration of victims of a genocide — the genocide of the Tutsi in Rwanda, a genocide recognized by the international community. And we are clearly here to remember the victims.” His statement underscored what should have been obvious to Liège’s absentee leadership: This wasn’t a Rwandan political event. It was a human one. It is a moral imperative. It is a matter of historical truth, international justice, and — dare one say — basic decency. This is not just a lapse in protocol — it is a moral failure. The act of remembering genocide victims transcends politics, diplomacy, and statecraft. It is a sacred duty, an ethical obligation incumbent upon all who lay claim to human decency. A shameful precedent What the City of Liège did is no different than walking out of a funeral because you’re mad at the deceased’s cousin. It is the moral equivalent of refusing to attend Holocaust commemorations because you’re uncomfortable with Israel’s foreign policy. Would that be acceptable? Would anyone excuse that as a geopolitical consideration? Of course not. And yet, that is exactly what the City of Liège has done to the Rwandan community — and by extension, to all who believe in human rights and historical justice. Their excuse? “We don’t want to import international tensions between Congolese and Rwandans into Liège.” How noble. And how utterly stupid. Since when did memorializing the victims of a recognized genocide constitute “importing tensions”? This is not a Congolese-Rwandan conflict re-enactment. It’s a solemn ceremony. It is a date on the calendar — April 7 — recognized by the United Nations and marked globally. Nobody at Avroy Park was throwing stones or shouting political slogans. They were lighting candles. Mourning the dead. Sharing testimony. Praying. Crying. Reflecting. And yet, Liège officials trembled as if they were being asked to negotiate peace in the Great Lakes. To confuse mourning with militancy is not only wrong — it is dangerous. It plays into the toxic, racialized narrative that suggests African grief is somehow suspicious, politically charged, or even threatening. That when Africans gather to remember their dead, they must be watched, regulated, or — in this case — abandoned entirely. The message is loud and clear: in Liège, Rwandan lives matter... only when politically convenient. This is a tragic regression. Because not long ago, Liège prided itself as a city of memory, of peace, of inclusion. In fact, the very organization Territoires de la Mémoire — co-founded in Liège — is dedicated to combating hate, racism, and genocide denial. Its president, Michaël Bisschops, was at Avroy Park and rightly reminded everyone: “This is a commemoration of victims of a genocide recognized by the international community.” That simple truth, it seems, is now too complicated for the city government to understand. Where is intellectual integrity? Where is the moral leadership? Where is the basic understanding that commemoration is not a political favor — it’s a moral duty? The answer: lost in the fog of cowardice. A disgusting message to send The City of Liège has now set an outrageous precedent: that it is acceptable to subordinate memory to diplomacy. That if you’re uncomfortable with a foreign country’s policies, you can skip memorials for its victims. That if genocide remembrance might upset someone, in Kinshasa, it’s better not to remember at all. It spits in the face of survivors like Donatille Karurenzi, a respected author who escaped the very genocide being ignored. “They confused diplomatic and political relations with the duty of remembrance,” she said. “For me, this is a mistake — a political mistake.” Donatille is far too kind. This wasn’t just a political mistake. It was a moral disaster of catastrophic proportions. What next? Will Liège also boycott Holocaust memorials if tensions rise in the Middle East? Will it skip commemorations for Armenian genocide victims if Turkey throws a diplomatic outburst? Or is this level of disrespect only reserved for Africans? Let’s call it what it is: a discriminatory hierarchy of memory. When African victims cry, the world yawns — or worse, calculates political risk. This is the silent racism that thrives under the guise of neutrality. This is the real “imported tension” that haunts Europe: the inability to treat African tragedy with the same solemnity afforded to Western suffering. And now, even a progressive city like Liège has fallen into that shameful trap. But while Liège City administration failed, the people did not. Let’s be brutally honest: If a Belgian city had refused to co-host a Holocaust memorial due to strained relations with Israel, the outcry would have been instant, fierce, and justified. Editorials would rage. Politicians would apologize. The city would have scrambled to explain itself. But here, the victims are African. And worse — Rwandans. And some still suffer from the residual effects of colonial paternalism, stereotypes, and outright racism that view African grief as somehow less urgent, less articulate, less deserving. This is not an overstatement. This is a call-out. The City of Liège has set a shameful precedent: That the memory of genocide victims can be placed on hold, tucked away, or quietly ignored when inconvenient. And this must not stand. The danger of forgetting When a city like Liège — historically known for its commitment to human rights and memory activism — chooses silence over solidarity with the victims of genocide, it signals something far more corrosive than diplomatic hesitation. It signals the erosion of ethical lucidity. It sends a chilling message to survivors: that their trauma is negotiable, that their memory is conditional, and that their pain is somehow less important in the grand chessboard of international affairs. This betrayal is not only political — it is deeply human. In forgetting, or choosing not to remember, we become accomplices to the very ideology that made genocide possible in the first place. We side with indifference. We cozy up to apathy. As the philosopher George Santayana famously warned, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” To the people of Liège who attended — the survivors, the allies, the principled few — thank you for preserving the soul of remembrance. Your presence was an act of resistance, a defiance of erasure. To the leaders of the City of Liège: History is watching. And memory, as fragile as it may be, has a long and unforgiving memory of its own. They confused diplomacy with memory. They abandoned humanity. The duty to remember is not a luxury. It is not a political accessory. It is the bare minimum of human decency. And in failing that duty, you did not just dishonor the dead — you disgraced the living. Survivors, scholars, and memory activists have long warned of the perils of selective remembrance. The French philosopher Paul Ricoeur argued in his book Memory, History, Forgetting (2004) that a society that fails to properly remember its traumas becomes vulnerable to manipulation and moral decay. “Forgetting,” Ricoeur wrote, “is not just an absence, it is a violence.” In Liège, the absence of the city’s leadership is not a diplomatic maneuver. It is a form of violence against memory — a deliberate decision to marginalize victims in the name of geopolitical decorum. Indeed, to suggest that memory — particularly of genocide — can be postponed or suspended due to diplomatic tensions is as cowardly as it is cynical. It signals that human lives are only worth remembering when the weather of international relations permits. Memory studies have for decades made it clear: remembrance is not just a cultural or ritualistic act. It is essential to justice, reconciliation, and the prevention of future atrocities. The late Jan Assmann (2000), a pioneering scholar of cultural memory, warned in his work Religion and Cultural Memory that societies that suppress memory risk descending into cycles of violence. “Cultural memory is the mechanism through which communities forge identity, responsibility, and historical awareness.” Jan’s wife, Aleida Assmann (2020), another leading scholar, draws a clear line between “remembering for justice” and “forgetting for convenience.” In her work Is Time Out of Joint? —she critiques states and institutions that commodify memory — showing up when it's politically useful and vanishing when it's not. Her words ring loudly in Liège's silence. Further, in The Texture of Memory (1993), James E. Young argues that public memorials are not just commemorations — they are confrontations. They force society to face its failures, and demand moral courage from those in power. The City of Liège failed this test miserably. Scholars and survivors of genocide have long warned against the perils of forgetting. As Israel W. Charny, editor of the Encyclopedia of Genocide, wrote, “Denial of genocide is a part of genocide itself—it is a continuing attempt to destroy the truth and dignity of the survivors.” The late Richard G. Hovannisian, one of the foremost scholars of the Armenian genocide, emphasized that the battle over memory “is not only about history but about justice and moral responsibility” (Remembrance and Denial: The Case of the Armenian Genocide, 1999). Deborah Lipstadt, whose legal battle against Holocaust denier David Irving set a precedent for defending historical truth, reminds us in Denying the Holocaust (1993) that “denial is the final stage of genocide. It is what happens when the killing stops and the erasure begins.” Roger W. Smith, co-founder of the International Association of Genocide Scholars, has argued in numerous works that “commemoration is the antidote to denial,” and Robert Jay Lifton, in his psychological studies of survivors (The Nazi Doctors, 1986), made clear that “the healing of survivors depends, in part, on the recognition of their suffering by others.” Leo Kuper, in his landmark work Genocide: Its Political Use in the Twentieth Century (1981), warned that “societies that fail to remember, fail to learn, and fail to protect.” Frank Chalk and Kurt Jonassohn, in The History and Sociology of Genocide (1990), observed that genocide flourishes in environments of “impunity, silence, and political indifference.” Donald E. Miller, who has worked with both Holocaust and Tutsi genocide survivors in Survivors: An Oral History of the Armenian Genocide (1993) and later work with Rwandans, wrote poignantly: “For survivors, memory is not just recollection; it is resistance against a world that often prefers forgetting.” Survivors themselves have echoed this call. Esther Mujawayo, a survivor of the genocide against the Tutsi and co-author of Survivantes: Rwanda, dix ans après le génocide, once said in an interview: “What hurts more than the killing is when the world pretends it did not happen.” Elie Wiesel, Nobel Laureate and survivor of the Holocaust, warned us powerfully in his book Night (1960): “To forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.” Let this be a moment of reckoning for Liège’s leadership — and for any institution tempted to turn away from truth when politics grow inconvenient. The City of Liège, which claims to stand for justice, progress, and memory, has shown the world the fragility of those values when placed under the slightest geopolitical pressure. There is no acceptable excuse for snubbing genocide survivors. There is no diplomatic nuance refined enough to justify the absence of elected officials at a memorial for one of humanity’s darkest chapters. To forget — or to selectively remember — is to aid impunity. To confuse silence with neutrality is to be complicit. Shame is not just in what was done, but in what was not. And to the citizens of Liège and the world: never let those in power turn remembrance into a political option. It is an obligation of conscience. And those who fail in that duty must be held to account. Voices against amnesia The 200 attendees in Avroy Park were not just marking the 31st anniversary of a genocide — they were defying the casual cruelty of political indifference. They were lighting a flame in the dark. They were saying: We remember even when you forget. We honor even when you ignore. We stand, even when you sit this one out. And to the officials of Liège: shame on you for choosing cowardice wrapped in bureaucracy. You failed your Rwandan citizens who are genocide survivors. You failed your own history of remembrance. You failed to distinguish between moral obligation and political expedience. And in doing so, you failed humanity. But it’s not too late. You can still redeem yourselves — not with excuses, but with actions. Issue a formal apology. Recommit to next year’s commemoration. Engage with the Rwandan community not only in times of comfort, but in moments of complexity. Teach your children that the duty to remember has no expiration date, no nationality, and no political clause. Because genocide is not a diplomatic issue. It is a human wound. And how we respond to it defines who we are — not just as officials, but as people. As we say in Kinyarwanda: Ntituzibagirwa. We will not forget. Even if you already have.
