The Parliament of Rwanda has expressed concerns over a recent decision by Belgian authorities to name a Rwandan well known for denying the Genocide on a Belgian Special Parliamentary Commission to probe the country’s colonial past in Rwanda. Laura Uwase was appointed last week as a member of the commission to examine Belgian’s colonial past in Rwanda, DR Congo and Burundi. Uwase is a member of the Jambo Asbl, a Europe-based association which has been put on the spot for trivializing and denying the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. The National Commission for the Fight against Genocide describes Jambo Asbl as a genocide denying association which was founded by youth who do not recognize the role of their parents and grandparents in the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. Most of the young Rwandans who founded the association have been linked to masterminds of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. In a statement issued on Monday, August 10, Parliament condemned her appointment explaining that Uwase is a known genocide denier who belongs to an organization whose mission is the denial and the revision of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. “Her known expertise is the distortion of the recent history of Rwanda,” the statement reads in part. The Parliament informed their Belgian counterparts that “in the view of such circumstances, it already has reservations about the outcome of the work of the special commission.” Uwase was appointed among a 10-member team of scientific experts by a special committee at the Belgian chamber of Representatives which is examining Belgian’s colonial past, Commission Verite et Reconciliation. Earlier, Ibuka Memoire et Justice and the Rwandan diaspora in Belgium reminded that in March 2018, a conference of parliamentary presidents cancelled an academic meeting of Jambo Asbl at European Parliament when they had provided elements indicating that the association was linked to terrorist groups such as FDLR, and that it circulated ideology consisting of denying the Genocide.
